Global Economics-17

Swift handles many of Europe's bank transfers

The EU plans to renew an agreement allowing US officials to scrutinise European citizens' banking activities under US anti-terrorism laws.

EU member states have agreed to let the European Commission negotiate new conditions under which the US will get access to private banking data.

US officials currently monitor transactions handled by Swift, a huge inter-bank network based in Belgium.

German politicians have voiced concern about the scope of US bank scrutiny.

The US wants to have access to a new European database that Swift is setting up in Switzerland. The US Treasury already has access to Swift's American database.

Tracking the funding of terror groups globally has been a priority for Washington since the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.

Swift handles millions of transactions daily between banks and other financial institutions worldwide. It holds the data of some 8,000 banks and operates in 200 countries.

Privacy concerns

Swift's co-operation with US anti-terrorism investigators first came to light in 2006. The data-sharing agreement was struck in 2007 after European data protection authorities demanded guarantees that European privacy laws would not be violated.

The US authorities would continue to temporarily access the relevant data only after legal verification and under strict judicial control Jacques Barrot EU Justice Commissioner

Speaking on Monday, EU Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot said "it would be extremely dangerous at this stage to stop the surveillance and the monitoring of information flows".

A senior member of Germany's ruling Christian Democrats (CDU), Wolfgang Bosbach, said any new agreement had to provide "certainty about data protection and ensure that the personal data of respectable people is promptly erased".

The leader of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), Guido Westerwelle, said the proposal for data-sharing with the US "must be stopped".

The co-chairmen of the Greens in the European Parliament, Rebecca Harms and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, meanwhile accused EU foreign ministers of bypassing the assembly.

Mr Barrot said it was not a "question of giving the US a blank cheque".

"The US authorities would continue to temporarily access the relevant data only after legal verification and under strict judicial control," he added. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8172035.stm>

Armoured crickets have a bizarre and striking way to avoid being eaten.

To become unpalatable, the insects squirt toxic blood out of gaps in their body and make themselves sick by throwing up food they've just eaten.

A few insect species including beetles and katydids actively bleed when attacked, but the benefits of taking such extreme measures were not clear.

Now scientists have shown the tactic really does work to deter predators such as lizards.

Armoured ground crickets (Acanthoplus discoidalis) are fat, flightless insects that live in the African bush across Namibia, Botswana and South Africa.

They are relatively large, growing up to 5cm long, have sharp spines across their thorax and legs and a pair of strong biting jaws. Males are also able to make a harsh loud noise by rubbing body parts together in a behaviour called stridulation.

The blood is pale green and rather acrid smelling Entomologist Bill Bateman

Each feature adds to an arsenal of defence mechanisms that the insects use to avoid being eaten by predators.

However, the crickets also use two highly unusual and quite bizarre tricks to stymie any attack.

Firstly, the crickets regurgitate through their mouths food they have just eaten.

They also squirt blood, which in insects is called haemolymph, from gaps in their exoskeleton on their backs and under their legs.

Blood squirting

A number of insects, including blister beetles, stonefly larvae and bushhoppers behave in similar way when attacked. One katydid is so renowned for this tactic that in German it is called a 'blutspritzer', or 'blood squirter'.

But while this bizarre behaviour is well known, its effectiveness has never before been tested.

"When I was moving them to larger quarters I was thinking about how they would grip a branch and when I pulled I would inevitably feel the squirt of the blood jetting out from under their legs," entomologist Bill Bateman of the University of Pretoria in South Africa told the BBC.

"This is a recognised defence mechanism and has been mentioned in other invertebrates, but no one had published on what exactly makes them do it or whether it actually is effective against predators."

So Bateman and colleague Trish Fleming of Murdoch University in Western Australia tested the defensive abilities of the armoured ground crickets.

First he mimicked attacks by predators by grabbing the insects from the side or above with tweezers. The crickets responded differently depending on the mode of attack.

When attacked from the side, the crickets stridulated and tried to bite their attacker. About two-thirds of the time, they also squirted out acrid-smelling haemolymph from seams in the connective tissue of their legs and from just behind the head.

Attacked from above, a direction in which they could not bite, the crickets oozed toxic blood almost nine times out of ten, Bateman reports in the Journal of Zoology, the journal of the Zoological Society of London.

Sometimes the crickets squirted their own blood up to 6cm.

Green and acrid

"The blood is pale green and rather acrid smelling. I couldn't bring myself to actually taste it fresh but it leaves an acidy, tobacco-like taste on your fingers if you do not wash it off," he says.

He then further tested how the crickets responded to both bearded dragon lizards (Pogona vitticeps) and striped skinks (Trachylepis punctatissima).

When he placed a male cricket in a cage with four bearded dragons, one lizard immediately tried to eat the insect.

Instantly it autohaemorrhaged, forcing the lizard to drop it and retire to wipe clean its jaws. A second lizard seized it for the same to happen. A third lizard approached the insect but refused to attack it.

Bateman also tested the power of the haemolymph and regurgitated food, by painting another smaller species of cricket in either substance, and then seeing if striped skinks would eat them.

While the lizards ate all of 24 clean crickets, they often refused to eat those covered in haemolymph, and occasionally those covered in regurgitate.

"What impressed me is that they control the release depending on how they are grabbed," says Bateman, describing the actions of the armoured ground cricket.

"If it's from above the blood wells out and coats your hand. If grabbed by forceps from the side, by a leg, they lean towards it and crouch down, then there is a slight cracking sound and the blood jets right along the line of attack."

"Any predator would get a faceful, and our experiments indicated that lizards do not like it all."

Bateman say he was surprised by how sophisticated the crickets' defence responses are.

For example, they target their blood squirting according to the angle of attack, while females, which do not stridulate, rely on squirting and biting and vomiting up food they've eaten more than males.

Cannibal crickets

This blood and guts defence has one downside however.

Ground crickets often swarm in search of new sources of food including protein and salt.

But one of the best sources of both is other crickets, and if given the chance ground crickets become cannibals, feasting on each other.

"When the swarms in the African bush meet a road, lots get squashed and the others gather for a feast, so more get squashed until there can be a thick, acrid pancake of dead and moribund crickets on the roadside, bleeding and attracting more cannibals," says Bateman.

That means that any crickets with haemolymph on their bodies attract the attention of other cannibalistic crickets that assume it is injured.

"Crickets that I induced to squirt blood would assiduously clean any droplets off their limbs when put back in the colony, presumably to avoid cannibalism," Bateman explains.

"I saw other crickets approach a bloody one and begin nipping at it. If intact, the bloody one usually runs off." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8172000/8172168.stm>

A new video streaming service is set to feature music and film

Peter Sunde, a co-founder of high-profile file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, says new legal action against the site is nothing more than "harassment".

Thirteen Hollywood production companies filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to try to get the website shut down.

In April the site's founders were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.

However, the site remains open and users can share copyrighted content.

"We have filed a complaint against The Pirate Bay because they have not stopped their activities after they were sentenced to prison," the studios' lawyer Monique Wadsted told AFP.

The lawsuit has been brought by Columbia Pictures, Disney Enterprises, Universal Studios and 10 other firms, many of which were due to receive damages form the April settlement.

But in keeping with their well-established stance of indifference to legal action, Mr Sunde told BBC News that "I'm on vacation, sleeping a lot and eating great vegan food."

"The latest threats are just harassments from the industry of course. We've actually asked the courts to punish them with a high fine for the faulty threats."

The Pirate Bay was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.

Millions of files are exchanged using the service every day.

No copyright content was hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead it hosted links to TV, film and music files held on its users' computers.

Following the most recent lawsuit, the site was bought by Global Gaming Factory (GGF) for 60m kronor (£4.7m) who intend to turn the site into a legal, pay service.

The new owners have outlined a "give and take" model which pays users for sharing their resources. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8173388.stm>

Have you ever had an affair with a married man? Have you ever enjoyed watching a male stripper take off his clothes at a party? Have you ever had surgery to physically enhance your appearance?

These are just some of the questions on a popular TV talk show that have raised the hackles of politicians in India.

They have held animated debates in parliament, arguing whether the Indian version of the hit American show Moment of Truth threatens India's "moral and cultural values".

The show, called Sach Ka Saamna (Face the Truth), was first aired two weeks ago, and is already one of the most-watched programmes on Indian television.

Some say it is possibly the most-watched show in the crowded market of reality TV.

The programme has been debated several times in the Indian parliament

But many of India's politicians are much less enamoured with the show, which goads the participants to answer uncomfortably personal and sometimes embarrassing questions, in return for prize money.

The idea of discussing intimate personal details in public is completely new to Indians. Little surprise then, that the show has become a huge talking point.

Over the last few days, the issue has consistently come up for debate in the national parliament.

The MPs said those taking part in the show were being asked "obscene questions" about their personal lives in front of their families.

Statutory warning

The former deputy speaker of the upper house of parliament, Najma Heptullah, told the BBC that the series must be taken off air at once.

"What purpose are we serving with this programme?" she asks.

"If someone has cheated on his wife, why doesn't he go and tell his wife? Why does he need to do that in public?

"If a girl decides to become pregnant as a minor, it is her problem! Why should that be said in public?"

I would just like to say that not everyone has the courage to come and face the truth in front of the world, even if the lure is money or publicity Show host Rajeev Khandelwal

Those supporting the show, which is broadcast at 2230 on the Star Plus channel, argue that it is on air well past primetime, and carries a statutory warning. The viewers, they say, can always simply turn it off.

But politicians like Mrs Heptullah argue there is no escaping it.

"Blaring promotions for the programme are run across various channels throughout the day and night," she says.

Mrs Heptullah is convinced the show is all about making big money and boosting television ratings.

'Voyeuristic'

The host of the show, Rajeev Khandelwal, disagrees. On his blog he writes: "I would just like to say that not everyone has the courage to come and face the truth in front of the world, even if the lure is money or publicity.

I think the series should be stopped, because it talks about people's private and personal lives too much Jyotsna Chowdhary

"To reveal the truth about one's personal life is not easy. It hurts when people debate about the questions in the show related to their sexual lives, and ignore all the other questions which revolve around more sensitive aspects of one's life.

"Are people voyeuristic or the contestants brazen? I leave it on your sensible minds to ponder over it."

Mr Khandelwal says the contestants who have spoken about their relationships on the programme have told him that their relationships have deepened and become more meaningful.

'Ban it'

But opinions on Delhi's streets about whether to ban the programme are divided.

"If somebody wants to speak out, and the public gets to know about it, what is wrong with that?" says a banker, Sahil.

"I think the series should be stopped, because it talks about people's private and personal lives too much," a young student, Jyotsna Chowdhary, told the BBC.

Meanwhile, the government has sought an explanation from the television channel broadcasting the reality show.

The opposition has called for stronger regulation of broadcasters.

The controversy has sparked a new debate about government intervention in the media.

Ambika Soni wants to ensure that traditional values are not eroded

All Indian TV channels are bound by a programming and advertising code, which analysts say is open to both harsh and lenient interpretations.

The federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Ambika Soni, told parliament: "I am a woman, a mother and a grandmother, and I am concerned about the issues, as all members are, and to see that the values we grew up with do not get eroded".

But she added that there was strong sensitivity in the media against government control, and the government was evolving a consensus that could lead to the formation of an independent regulator.

Censorship fears

There are many in the media, as well ordinary people, who say the MPs need to focus more on the pressing issues of the country's social and economic development, rather dwelling so much on the morality of TV shows.

Meanwhile, many experts say any move to gag the media must be resisted, even though there may be a need to take a look at TV shows that are beginning to test the boundaries of good taste.

Analyst Shailaja Bajpai wrote in the Indian Express newspaper: "No-one was in the least bit surprised when MPs raised questions about Sach Ka Saamna.

"The fact that the furore has given the show more free publicity than it could have paid for (or deserved), is the only tangible result they have to show for their questions.

"Will our dreams and innermost desires, which we may or may not act upon, be censored too?" <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8173180.stm>

A 27-year-old rapper from Normandy, nicknamed by some the "French Eminem", is at the centre of a political storm over censorship in France.

OrelSan has seen 10 of his concerts cancelled recently after the former Socialist presidential candidate, Segolene Royal, and other politicians complained that his lyrics encouraged violence against women.

If you censor this, you could end up censoring many respected authors Stephane Davet Le Monde

Ms Royal even threatened to withdraw the public subsidy from one prestigious festival, Les Francofolies in La Rochelle, in her capacity as head of Poitou-Charentes regional council.

The organisers dropped OrelSan, whose real name is Aurelien Cotentin, from the bill shortly afterwards, complaining that Ms Royal had "positioned herself as a master-blackmailer".

The move led the governing Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) of President Nicolas Sarkozy to accuse Ms Royal of attacking freedom of expression, and of "intolerable" interference.

'Fiction'

Ms Royal and other critics were particularly outraged over a song by the 26-year-old called Sale Pute, roughly translated as "Dirty Bitch", which is about a man who wants to break the bones of his unfaithful girlfriend.

OrelSan says he no longer performs Sale Pute in public

"I hate you, I want you to die a slow death. I want you to become pregnant and lose the baby," he chants in one verse. "You are just a pig who should go straight to the slaughter house."

But OrelSan says the song, which he no longer performs in public, was never meant to be taken seriously.

"This song tells the story of a man who sees his girlfriend cheating, comes back home, drinks and writes her an e-mail in which he insults her," he says.

"But it's a fiction. It's nothing real. I didn't write it about my ex-girlfriend or anything so you can't really take the song personally. I play a role in it, that's all."

"It's like a book or a film about a murderer or a criminal," he adds.

Historical parallel

OrelSan's new album, Perdu d'Avance, has been removed from public libraries in Paris because of concern over what feminist and women's groups say are his sexist, homophobic and violent lyrics.

But the French Culture Minister, Frederic Mitterrand, nephew of the late President Francois Mitterrand, says OrelSan, like other artists, should be free to express himself and that his concerts should not have been cancelled.

Frederic Mitterrand criticised Segolene Royal's threat to cut public subsidies

Mr Mitterrand drew a parallel between the rapper and the 19th Century French poet, Arthur Rimbaud.

"Rimbaud wrote much more violent things that went on to become classics," he said.

However, Ms Royal said the rapper's work was offensive to women and that the issue was not censorship.

Women's groups argue that the law should be as tough on sexism as it is on racism.

Regional councillor Michelle Loup says OrelSan's songs "are full of hatred and violence against women".

"If he wants to do that, OK, but we consider that public money shouldn't finance it," she adds.

Ms Loup and other local politicians have led a lobbying effort to persuade local authorities to drop him from festivals which they are helping to finance.

Disaffected youth

But many commentators agree with the government that this comes dangerously close to censorship.

"Art doesn't have to be politically correct," says Stephane Davet, a music journalist on the newspaper Le Monde. "If you censor this, you could end up censoring many respected authors."

They want us to be exactly like them French youth

Mr Davet says politicians should try to tune into what rappers have to say about disaffected young people.

He points out that rappers were predicting riots in French suburbs long before they happened in 2005.

OrelSan, he says, "gives a very interesting description, a pretty dark description of a generation of frustrated, white trash kids, born with a PlayStation in their hands, spending their time on the internet, looking for sex websites, and one should listen to that instead of saying, we should censor him".

At the Gare de Lyon railway station in Paris, I came across groups of teenagers practising dance moves as if the station concourse were a studio or a gym.

Not surprisingly, they supported OrelSan, although several of them told me that they did not like their younger brothers and sisters to listen to rap songs with violent lyrics.

They said politicians did not try to understand their generation.

"They want us to be exactly like them," one youth told me. "They don't try to help us and they want to take away our personality."

That is also a predicament recognised by OrelSan himself. In one of his less controversial songs, he raps: "Old folk don't understand what's going on in the heads of the young." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8171389.stm>

Charalambos Christodoulides's body was found in a warehouse complex

A property developer accused of killing a tenant who stood in the way of a £2m deal has admitted creating a fantasy life as a "James Bond-style" spy.

The Old Bailey has heard Thanos Papalexis, 37, deny killing Charalambos Christodoulides, who was found in a basement in Kilburn, north-west London.

A Florida prostitute, Rebecca DeFalco, has said Mr Papalexis told her he had murdered a man who "stood in his way".

But Mr Papalexis said he made up a fantasy existence as a killer spy.

The defendant admits he had spun an elaborate fantasy to Miss DeFalco during an intense sexual relationship in the summer of 2004.

I told her about missions, explosions, gun battles in the desert... but nothing to do with the murder of a gentleman in a warehouse Thanos Papalexis

Mr Papalexis, who falsely told DeFalco that he loved her, said: "I wanted her to feel loved and to feel that I was a super-spy and that we would have great sex and great fun together.

"I have regaled her with stories which would make a screenwriter envious - but I have never mentioned anything to do with this murder."

He continued: "I told her about missions, explosions, car chases, gun battles in the desert, stories that you would see in a movie.

"But nothing to do with the murder of a 55-year-old gentleman in a warehouse in London."

He also claimed to have made a colleague tell her he had been injured in an explosion and lost his memory. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/8174963.stm>

A Spinvox customer claims to have been contacted by a call centre

The voicemail-to-text service Spinvox has applied for two patents which describe the service as being operated by humans, the BBC has learned.

Spinvox has previously claimed that state-of-the-art speech recognition technology is the basis of its service.

However, its patent applications claim the approach is accurate precisely because it employs human operators.

Spinvox's head of social media said that the patents were just two among many for which the firm had applied.

The BBC has also learned that an employee of a call centre in Pakistan tagged his own appeal onto a Spinvox message sent to a US customer, claiming that workers there had not been paid.

Spinvox has always maintained that humans only play a minor role in converting voice messages into text.

Both patent applications were lodged in the United States in the name of Daniel Doulton, the company's co-founder. The first, which was filed originally in 2004, describes a "method of providing voicemails to a wireless information device" .

It says an operator "intelligently transcribes the actual message from the original voice message", and concludes that "because human operators are used instead of machine transcription, voicemails are converted accurately, intelligently, appropriately and succinctly into text messages."

The second application, which appears to be dated July 2nd 2009, describes a similar system, but goes into more detail .

It says "the task of constructing voice recognition software that can reliably and accurately recognise natural speech...remains a daunting one." But it says Spinvox's invention challenges the orthodoxy by using human operators.

The idea that agents only hear 'specific parts' of the message always seemed far-fetched Rory Cellan-Jones BBC technology correspondent Read Dot.life in full

When queried about one of these patents by a commentator on the firm's blog, Spinvox's head of social media James Whatley said it was just one among many.

"Spinvox has an entire family of over 70 patents currently residing at international patent offices and many of them have different purposes for their application/submission," he said.

"The one you quote sits firmly under the umbrella of 'the strategic patent'. Generic patents help us build different combinations - i.e.: Humans interacting with machines - to prevent any other companies doing similar things in the long term."

'Real trouble'

Meanwhile Jason Lovell, a Spinvox customer from Virginia in the US, said he received an email from the service this March that included an audio file of a voicemail message for him.

The text read: "We are employees of Spinvox. Since voicemail to text message service has started by Spinvox we are converting your messages here in Pakistan."

It invited him to ring a number in Pakistan and concluded "You can confirm please we are in real trouble. Please for God sake."

Mr Lovell told BBC News that a friend rang the number on his behalf and was told the workers at the call centre were angry because they had not been paid for two months.

The BBC has asked Spinvox to comment on the patent issue and on Mr Lovell's story.  <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8174721.stm>

Peugeot sacked its former chief executive in March

Carmakers PSA Peugeot Citroen, Daimler and Nissan have all reported big losses in the face of continuing declines in global vehicles sales.

Peugeot, France's biggest car firm, made a net loss of 962m euros ($1.4bn; £830m) between January and June. A year ago it reported a profit of 733m euros.

Daimler, the owner of Mercedes-Benz, made a net loss of 1bn euros in the April to June quarter.

Meanwhile, Nissan's quarterly loss totalled 16.5bn yen ($170m; £104m).

Honda also reported results on Wednesday. Although it avoided a quarterly loss, its profits fell 96%. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8173807.stm>

Steve Ballmer has had an eye on Yahoo for years

After failing to buy Yahoo outright a year ago, Microsoft has now announced a search and advertising partnership with its former online rival. It's an important deal, and not just for advertisers.

Poor Yahoo shareholders. They could have pocketed a cool $44.6bn, or $33 a share, when Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo outright. The shares are now trading at just under $16.

Eighteen months on, they have to make do with the promise that Microsoft will help Yahoo to survive and grow by providing a better search, and thus a better advertising platform.

Consumer market

Yahoo's audience will have to wait at least a year before they will see the difference.

First the deal will have to be shepherded past weary regulators around the world; this will take until early 2010, says Yahoo's new boss Carol Bartz. It will take another three to six months before Microsoft's "Bing" search engine starts answering the queries of Yahoo users.

The real benefit will come in the years after that, as Yahoo transforms its web offering and puts search at the centre of the user experience, at long last catching up with how we all use the web these days.

He-who-must-not-be-named

This is not a partnership of love, but necessity. A year ago, I called the proposed Yahoo-Microsoft merger a shotgun wedding, with Google holding the shotgun.

Since then, Google has upgraded its weaponry and extended its lead in search advertising, the one online business model that truly works.

For Yahoo and Microsoft, Google is the enemy who - Harry Potter style - must-not-be-named. During their 45 minute conference call neither Ms Bartz nor Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer used the word Google even once.

Instead they spoke of becoming "a strong number two competitor in the market" and the need to create a credible alternative for advertisers.

Indeed, advertisers will only be too happy to bolster the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership. Whether small online retailers or advertising giants like WPP, many were worried about Google's near-monopoly in the search advertising market.

Competition will not only keep Google on its toes, but should help to control prices as well.

Technology company no more

Yahoo boss Carol Bartz ditches the firm's technology heritage

Yahoo's workforce, meanwhile, may well remember the 29th of July as Black Wednesday. The company always saw itself as a technology leader. Not anymore.

The man who fought last year's takeover bid tooth and nail, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, was forced out, taking with him the sentimental attachment to the firm's technology roots.

Yahoo is bowing to the inevitable. It simply had neither the resources nor the focus to win the technological arms race for search supremacy.

Yahoo's search engineers now have the choice of working for erstwhile archenemy Microsoft, scrambling to get one of the few search jobs left at Yahoo, or find themselves on the job market at a time when even Google has stopped hiring. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8174838.stm>

For years, warlords have conscripted children to fight in bitter conflicts over money, power and land. The BBC Somali service's Mohamed Mohamed reveals widespread alarm that the practice is now becoming entrenched in Somalia.

Children man checkpoints and administer lashings in Mogadishu

Children as young as eight years old are going missing.

Some are drugged, others brainwashed and some paid $50 (£30) for every month they fight.

Most people are frightened to speak openly, but those who can afford it are sending their children out of the country to safety.

An elderly man who did not want to be named publicly told how his 15-year-old son had vanished.

He said he had looked everywhere for his boy, and even asked the militant Islamist group al-Shabab whether they had seen him.

They said they had not, but he later found out that al-Shabab had convinced the boy to join their jihad so "he would go to heaven if he died".

Children as shields

"After a long search I found out that my son is being held in a training camp on the outskirts of Baydhabo," he said.

"They are using our children as a shield. But the children of people who claim to be leaders are not in the camps. They are not fighting.

"Al-Shabab only use children from the poor as fighters."

The boy stops pubic transport and checks if there are men and women passengers sharing the seats. If he finds them, he tells them to get off the bus and flogs them Journalist working in Mogadishu

A journalist working in Mogadishu says he has seen 10-year-old children on street corners in Mogadishu armed with AK47s.

"A child of about 12 years old, armed with a gun and a whip works at a crossroads in Mogadishu's Bakara Market," he says.

"The boy stops pubic transport and checks if there are men and women passengers sharing the seats.

"If he finds them, he tells them to get off the bus and flogs them in public while other members of al-Shabab sit under roadside trees nearby."

Trained by foreigners

Hundreds of Somali youngsters are recruited and trained in camps in southern Somalia by al-Shabab, according to a senior police officer.

Meeting al-Shabab Somali justice, Islamist-style

"The people involved in training children are foreigners who speak English or Arabic and they use translators to help them," says Colonel Abdullahi Hassan Barise.

"They are from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Chechnya and other countries."

He said a few months ago, the police caught a small bus carrying teenagers at a police checkpoint outside Mogadishu.

The children were from villages and towns in Lower Juba and they had been transported by al Shabab.

In their inquiries, he said they found that some of the children had been threatened while others were brainwashed into believing that they would go to paradise if they took part in what was described as the defence of Somalia and Islam.

"Some of the children said that a Pakistani trainer used to spike their drinks with something," he said.

He also said some of the street children in Mogadishu are recruited as they are the most vulnerable, because there is no family to look after them.

American jihadists

Even Somalis who live overseas are not safe from the child recruitment effort of the Islamists.

In the US state of Minnesota, some young men from the Somali community have been recruited to fight with al-Shabab, and have been killed.

Children are brainwashed, threatened, drugged or paid to fight

In October last year, at least one of them, Shirwa Mohamed, carried out a suicide attack against security services in Bosasso in north-eastern Somalia.

Omar Jamal, a community leader in Minnesota, blames local jihadists' influence on young people.

"They were targeting young, vulnerable boys at colleges and universities to indoctrinate them and tell them to join and fight the jihad," he says.

"Some of them were provided with cash and Somali passports and they were persuaded to join this global jihadist ideology and they fall for it.

"We want this to come to an end and we want the US government to investigate."

Meanwhile, the FBI is already looking into how and why these Somali youngsters choose to leave a comfortable life in the US for the dangerous conditions in Somalia.

A worker for a children's rights group in Somalia says that, while using children as soldiers is not new, the scale, number and age of those involved is worrying.

Parents try to stop their children from being recruited - but the lack of schools or other activities as well as, in some cases, peer pressure makes it difficult. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8173079.stm>

Post-SONA analysis: A curious fighting stance

It is not clear what has caused the new disruption.

Large parts of West Africa are struggling to get back online following damage to an undersea cable.

The fault has caused severe problems in Benin, Togo, Niger and Nigeria.

The blackout is thought to have been caused by damage to the SAT-3 cable which runs from Portugal and Spain to South Africa, via West Africa.

Around 70% of Nigeria's bandwidth was cut, causing severe problems for its banking sector, government and mobile phone networks.

"SAT-3 is currently the only fibre optic cable serving West Africa," explained Ladi Okuneye, chief marketing officer of Suburban Telecoms, which provides the majority of Nigeria's bandwidth.

"So all West African countries have to use it."

Companies were being forced to use alternatives - such as using satellite links - to maintain connections to the rest of the world, he said.

Telkom South Africa, one of the shareholders of SAT-3, has not said what caused the problems but said it was aware of "a cable fault on the Benin branch that is being investigated".

The 15,000km (9,300mile) SAT-3 cable lands in eight West African countries as it winds its way between Europe and South Africa.

"The rest of the system is unaffected by this fault," a Telkom South Africa representative said.

Nigeria has been badly hit because around 70% of its bandwidth is routed through neighbouring Benin.

The network, run by Suburban Telecom, was set up to bypass Nigeria's principal telecoms operator Nitel which runs the SAT-3 branch cable which lands in Nigeria.

The SAT-3 consortium is in the process of sending a ship from Cape Town in South Africa to the area to investigate the fault.

Mr Okuneye said that by the time the relevant paperwork was done, it was likely to be "two weeks" before the ship arrived off the coast.

Meanwhile, Benin has been able to reroute its net traffic through neighbouring countries to get back online.

Mr Okuneye said his company was hoping to do the same but said the process would be slower because its bandwidth requirements were so much larger than those of the small republic.

Togo and Niger, which are not part of the SAT-3 consortium, remain offline. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8176014.stm>

In Switzerland, there is a saying that every good Swiss citizen has one in his or her pocket.

It is an object that is recognised all over the world, and it is globally popular.

But the Swiss army knife had humble beginnings, and, at the start, it wasn't even red.

In the late 19th Century, the Swiss army issued its soldiers with a gun which required a special screwdriver to dismantle and clean it.

Carl Elsener senior came up with the knife's original simple design

At the same time, tinned food was becoming common in army rations. Swiss generals decided to issue each soldier with a standard knife.

It was a life-saver for Swiss knife makers, who were, at the time, struggling to compete with cheaper German imports.

"My great-grandfather started a small business in 1884, 125 years ago," explains Carl Elsener, head of the Swiss knife manufacturer Victorinox.

"He was making knives for farmers, for in the kitchen and so on, and then he heard that the Swiss army wanted a knife for every Swiss soldier."

Carl Elsener senior seized that opportunity with both hands, and designed a knife that the army loved.

"It was a very simple thing," explains his great-grandson. "It had a black handle, one big blade, a tin opener and a screwdriver."

Global cult object

Now, to mark the 125th anniversary, that first knife is on display at an exhibition at the Forum for Swiss History, together with hundreds of other Swiss army knives.

"The thing about the army knife is that it really has become a kind of global cult object," says Pia Schubiger, curator of the museum. "Everyone seems to have one, lots of people even have collections of them, and we wanted to explore this phenomenon."

Exhibits include the "Schweizer Offizier Messer", or Swiss Officer's Knife, which came on the market a few years after the soldier's knife.

The very first knife was designed to dismantle guns and open tinned food

A more elegant design, it included a corkscrew and a pair of scissors.

Interestingly, the officer's knife was never issued to those serving in the army. The Swiss military purchasers considered the corkscrew not "essential for survival", and so officers had to buy this knife individually.

But it was this design, says Carl Elsener, which launched the knife as a global brand.

"After the Second World War, Europe was full of American soldiers," he explains. "And as they could buy the Swiss army knife at PX stores (shops on military bases), they bought huge quantities of them."

"But it seems "Schweizer Offizier Messer" was too difficult for them to say, so they just called it the Swiss army knife, and that is the name it is now known by all over the world." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8172917.stm>

Jellyfish help to stir up the ocean as they move, researchers have found.

Using a green dye, scientists showed how the animals' umbrella-shaped bodies were a key factor in this mixing.

The distribution of heat, nutrients and chemicals helps maintain the marine environment and has an important influence on global climate.

Reporting in the journal Nature, the researchers said that marine animals of many shapes and sizes contributed to ocean turbulence.

Charles Darwin, grandson of the famous British naturalist, first discovered that animals stir up the oceans more than 50 years ago.

The influence of this "biogenic" or "Darwinian" mixing on the ocean environment has been under debate since then.

The wind and tides play a big part in mixing the oceans, but this study suggests that the role of biogenic mixing could be more significant than previously thought.

The research showed how small creatures - as well as very large sea mammals - create turbulence.

"This is important because the other proposed mechanism was simply that large animals stirred up the water as they swam," explained lead author John Dabiri from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

He and his colleague Kakani Kaija showed exactly how jellyfish, which were between one and 10cm in diameter, "dragged water around" as they moved, demonstrating the effect by squirting a dye in front of the creatures.

The team had to dive with the jellyfish to demonstrate the effect

But, Dr Dabiri explained, the jellyfish were unlikely to be the "primary ocean mixers".

"Crustaceans - like copepods and krill - are likely the primary biogenic mixers, because there are so many of them," he explained. "We used jellyfish here, because of their uniform shape - and because they were relatively easy to study."

The principle behind the effect, Dr Dabiri explained, was aerodynamics. "When the animal is at depth, it will carry some of the colder, deeper water with it as it migrates upwards," he said.

"The shape of the animal is important, because the more streamlined it is, the less of a disturbance it causes. So a bullet-shaped animal will carry less water with it than a flatter, saucer-shaped animal."

Jonathan Sharples, principal researcher from the UK's Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory told BBC News that this mechanism was likely to be important in specific areas where there was a high density of marine life.

"In warmer surface water there are virtually no nutrients, and the transport of nutrients from the bottom water is very important for the single-cell plants that live there," he said.

"But much of the open ocean is like desert," he added, "and the density of these animals is unlikely to be sufficient (to cause mixing)."

The next step, Dr Dabiri said, was to find out where in the ocean, the phenomenon of biogenic mixing has the biggest effect. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8173384.stm>

The company you keep may influence your weight, experts say

Teenagers who have overweight friends tend to develop a weight problem themselves, mounting evidence suggests.

Latest research from the US found a strong link between teenagers own weight and that of their closest peers.

A UK obesity expert said the link is likely to be causal and down to catching bad habits.

The journal Economics and Human Biology work adds weight to the notion of imitative obesity - mimicking of friends who pile on the pounds.

It looked at data on nearly 5,000 teenagers, many of whom were later followed up after two-year interval.

If you go to dinner with your friends who are fat you are liable to eat the same foods that made them fat Tam Fry, of the UK's National Obesity Forum

From this the researchers found friendships between the adolescents tended to cluster according to weight, meaning overweight children tended to hang out together.

When they looked at weight changes over time, they found having a fat friend could lead to weight gain for a child.

For example, if a 5ft 9in (1.75m) boy weighing 10st 7lb (66.6kg) - deemed a healthy weight using the Body Mass Index measurement of obesity - had a friend of the same height and weight who later gained 7lb (3.17kg), he himself would gain 2lb (0.9kg).

Although he would still be within the healthy weight range, a continued cyclical trend of gain over a period of time could tip him and his friend into obesity.

The study authors from the University of Hawaii say they cannot tell from their work whether overweight teens influence their friends to become overweight or whether obese adolescents simply choose to flock together.

If gaining weight causes one's friends to gain weight, this knowledge will be important for policy makers working on targeted campaigns, says Dr Sally Kwak and her team. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8172258.stm>

The open-source browser Firefox is expected to pass the billion download mark in the next twenty four hours.

The milestone includes downloads of all versions of the web software since its first release in 2004.

Figures suggest that Firefox now has nearly one third of the browser market worldwide, at 31%.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer still dominates the field with around 60%, whilst Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari and Opera are all less than 5%.

Microsoft is currently in talks with the European competition regulators, which ruled in January that pre-bundling Internet Explorer with the company's Windows operating system hurt competition.

The firm recently made a proposal that would offer European buyers of its new Windows 7 operating system a list of potential browsers when they first install the software.

Regulators in Brussels said they "welcomed" the proposal but have yet to make a decision.

Firefox would be among the browsers on offer. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8177829.stm>

To many people around the UK the results of Ofcom's broadband speed survey came as no surprise when it was published this week.

Broadband is distant dependent with copper wire

The telecoms regulator says broadband customers are not getting the speeds they are paying for. Nearly one fifth of those on an eight megabits per second (Mbps) connection actually receive less than 2Mbps.

It also says the speed of broadband delivered through traditional copper wires - rather than faster fibre-optic cables - is slower the further away you are from your telephone exchange. So where do the missing megabits go?

They aren't lost in the way that you would lose water pressure through a leaky water pipe. The extra megabits per second you are paying for and not receiving are usually never given in the first place, say experts.

THE ANSWER The Megabits you pay for are never given in the first place Broadband connection is decided by the "sync speed" This is decided before signal leaves the telephone exchange Broadband rates 'not up to speed'

In most cases the speed of your broadband ADSL connection is set from the start, it doesn't get slower or faster. So if it's only 2Mbps then that's the speed it was sent out from your local telephone exchange, even if you paid for a faster connection.

Several factors decide this rate but the main one is "sync speed", says Richard Shaw from SamKnows, a broadband measurement site and Ofcom's technical partner.

Broadband works best on a stable line and "sync speed" is the most stable speed possible on your line. It is calculated between the exchange and the ADSL modem in your home before the connection is fully established and working.

"You could think of it like a greeting between two people at the start of a phone call before the main conversation starts," says Mr Shaw.

There are two factors that decide "sync speed". The first is line attenuation, which is the natural loss of the signal due to the distance you are from an exchange.

This is the most referred to factor in broadband quality because a signal sent through copper wires degrades over distance. Quite simply the further you are from an exchange, the longer the copper wire used and the worse the signal. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8171984.stm>

The South West was found to have the highest proportion of accessible coast

Hundreds of miles of the English coastline are inaccessible to the public, according to Natural England.

And miles of footpaths which provide public rights of way by the coast could vanish into the sea within 20 years because of coastal erosion, it warned.

Maps drawn up as part of plans for a coastal path around England showed 34% of the 2,478 miles (3,988km) of shore does not have full access for walkers.

On average, people can walk about two miles before finding their way blocked.

Natural England, which advises the government on the natural environment, is aiming to create a coastal path around the whole of England in a £50m scheme over the next decade.

ENGLAND'S COASTLINE ACCESS Percentage of coastline with "satisfactory, legally secure path" North East - 67% North West - 44% Yorkshire and The Humber - 70% East Midlands - 61% East of England - 68% South East - 63% South West - 76% Source: Natural England

The path would have recreational space or "spreading room" around it, and is being created under the Marine and Coastal Access Bill, which is due to become law this autumn.

But an audit carried out before the process of creating the path begins has shown much of the coast is not fully accessible, including beaches people can only walk along at low tide, areas shut off by private landowners and pathways which are dangerous or do not have views of the sea.

A total of 921 miles (1,482km) of coastline was judged not to have "satisfactory, legal secure paths" with about half of that land considered completely inaccessible to the public, with no walked path at present.

The remainder has some kind of access, such as with the permission of a landowner, but is not legally secure and offers no guaranteed right of way.

One aim of the pathway scheme is to create walkways not at risk to erosion

The greatest provision of accessible shoreline is in the South West, where 76% was judged fully accessible, and the least is in the North West where just 44% is considered to have a satisfactory, legally secure path.

Paul Johnson, Natural England's coastal access policy manager, said the issue of erosion was central to the need to get the legislation passed.

He said: "At the moment the real problem is when a right of way falls into the sea, as it often does, effectively you lose it."

The Ramblers Association has welcomed the scheme with chief executive Tom Franklin urging the government to "hold firm and introduce legislation that will make access to our coast the envy of Europe and the world". <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/8177598.stm>

Technology has made modern vessels very efficient at landing fish

There is fresh hope that the world's depleted fisheries can be saved from collapse, says a team of researchers.

They said that efforts introduced to halt overfishing in five of the 10 large marine ecosystems they examined were showing signs of success.

A combination of measures - such as catch quotas, no-take zones, and selective fishing gear - had helped fish stocks recover, they added.

Details of the two-year study by 19 marine scientists appear in Science.

However, the team warned, a large percentage of the world's fisheries remained unmanaged, so much work still had to be done to halt the damage caused by overfishing. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8176292.stm>

Obama: Philippines punches above its weight

Will Hugo Chavez's list make encourage reading?

At April's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez surprised many by giving President Barack Obama a gift.

It was a book entitled The Open Veins of Latin America. Within hours, the left-wing classic by Eduardo Galeano had shot up to number two in the New York Times bestseller list.

Now the Venezuelan leader is trying to promote much more than the bible of the Latin American left.

"Today we launch the Revolutionary Reading Plan," he announced live to the nation in April. "Read, read, read, read. That should be our slogan for every day."

Since the announcement, the pace of the reading plan has quickened. A key component is a series of free book distribution events, which have been held in public squares across the country.

The government has given out tens of thousands of free copies of Don Quijote by Cervantes and Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, saying that such events "promote reading for the construction of socialism and humanist values".

'Blinkered'

At a big book give-away in the Plaza Bolivar in the capital, Caracas, the queues for a copy of Les Miserables trailed back a hundred metres.

The government says it has boosted literacy levels

"I'm really pleased," one man told me as he emerged from the scrum with his copy in his hands. "I've seen the film but never read the book, so this was a great opportunity as they're giving them away for free and it's too expensive to buy."

But far from everyone is convinced that the Revolutionary Reading Plan is the right idea.

A number of prominent Venezuelan academics, including the former president of the National Culture Council, Oscar Sambrano, have described a list of 100 texts which make up the first stage of the Revolutionary Plan as "blinkered".

Titles on the list include The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, Selected Speeches of Hugo Chavez and State Terrorism in Colombia.

"There are lots of accusations that we're somehow indoctrinating people which I think is completely false," says Edgar Roa, who organised the book event in capital's main square.

"What we're doing is putting books within everybody's reach, including children's literature with absolutely no political content. Or Les Miserables by Victor Hugo which can be interpreted in many different ways depending on your political colours."

Benefits

Beyond the book give-aways, another key part of the Reading Plan are thousands of "book squadrons".

It's incredible that a government which is promoting reading has the most expensive books in the world Victor Garcia Random House, Venezuela

These are basically roving book clubs that are intended to encourage reading on the metro, in public squares and in parks.

Each squadron wears a different colour to identify their type of book. For example, the red team promotes autobiographies while the black team discusses books on "militant resistance".

The government say they will spread the word of the benefits of reading to the rest of the community. The opposition say they are the thought police.

The coordinator of the Revolutionary Reading Plan is a young Venezuelan called Carlos Duque.

"When Fidel launched the literacy plan in Cuba in 1961, he told the people of Cuba the plan's slogan was 'We don't tell the people to believe, we tell them to read' and that's kind of the idea here too," he says.

As Mr Duque thumbs through the titles produced by the government-run publishing house, El Perro y La Rana, he points out the presence of international authors such as Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allen Poe which, he says, undermines the accusations of indoctrination.

"I know a lot of those academics making those claims as many were my teachers at university. They're treating the Venezuelan people as though they were simple, as though they can't make their own choices about what they're reading," he says.

But the state control of reading material is only one of the complaints levelled at the Revolutionary Reading Plan.

These books are free but not all reading material comes cheap

"They're not promoting reading, they're giving away free books. That's something quite different" says Victor Garcia, the commercial director of Random House publishers in Venezuela.

"Reading is promoted by the state in the schools. First in the nursery, then the primary schools, and then later at the high schools and universities. That's not what's happening under this plan. This isn't strengthening the education ministry or the culture ministry."

Not a priority

Mr Garcia also says there is a serious contradiction at the heart of the government's plan to promote literature in Venezuela.

"Venezuela has the most expensive books in the world. It's incredible that a government which is promoting reading has the most expensive books in the world," he says.

Mr Garcia says that while the government can afford to produce cheap books through national state-run publishers, the situation for foreign editorials is much tougher.

Since the oil price fell, fewer and fewer economic activities are receiving the foreign capital they need to operate. Books have been reclassified as a "non-priority sector" meaning getting hold of the dollars needed to import them is increasingly complicated.

"I think there's a great contradiction there," says Mr Garcia. "That a government which on the one hand is promoting reading, giving out Les Miserables in a public square, but doesn't allow the free importation of literature - not, it should be said, for any ideological reason, but because of currency controls."

Ironically enough, he says, the government in Venezuela doesn't have the necessary rights to mass produce and distribute The Open Veins of Latin America, the book which Mr Chavez recently popularised.

In the main square in Caracas, the queues of people stayed out until it was dark to pick up a copy of Les Miserables.

The Venezuelan government is fiercely proud of its efforts to eradicate illiteracy, naming as one of its leading achievements during President Chavez's 10 years in office.

But whether the Revolutionary Reading Plan can succeed in making Venezuela a nation of readers is another story.  <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8113388.stm>

After an eventful eight years in Washington, the BBC's North America editor Justin Webb has mixed feelings about his imminent return to the UK.

If you do not like your life and you have drive and luck, you can change it because - being American - you believe you can change it

"You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave…"

America was not designed to be left. The opposite in fact - it was designed to be arrived in.

It was programmed to receive and - as was the case in the Eagles' song Hotel California - there is some wonderment at the front desk when you try to go.

For effect, I sometimes exaggerate our sadness at the end of our time in America, result: confusion.

"Our British home is in south London so we'll probably all be murdered before Christmas."

"Oh, my gosh, um, why not stay?" Because you have no sense of humour, would be one answer. But it is not why we are leaving.

In more than seven years of life in America, I have come to value - to love, actually - the stolid, sunny, unchallenging, simple virtuousness of the American suburban psyche.

The woman who is to sell our house is a prime specimen. She is perky. Nothing gets her down, not even the fact that we are selling in the midst of the biggest depression since the Great Flood. In this area it is different.

"You have a lovely home!"

But she thinks we have too many books. She does not say so but she talks of creating spaces on the shelves - for snow-globes, perhaps, or silver photo frames with perfect children showing off perfect teeth.

This is a cultural thing. When selling a home in America, you have to pretend that you do not live there.

No, you have to pretend that no-one lives there. Or ever has.

Previously owned homes are of course the norm for us Europeans. We understand that previous generations have made their mark. This means - as we English know, having grown up with rattling windows and mouldy grouting - that a home will be imperfect.

They do not make such allowances in America. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8176448.stm>

Facebook or MySpace communication is not "rounded", the Archbishop said

Social networking websites, texting and e-mails are undermining community life, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has warned.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols said MySpace and Facebook led young people to seek "transient" friendships, with quantity becoming more important than quality.

He said a key factor in suicide among young people was the trauma caused when such loose relationships collapsed.

"Friendship is not a commodity," he told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

He added: "Friendship is something that is hard work and enduring when it's right". <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8180115.stm>

Banking results should show the sector recovering from the financial crisis

Bad loans and lending levels will be under scrutiny as the UK's four biggest banks release their results for the first six months of the year this week.

A recovery in financial markets will have bolstered their performance but losses on mortgages and business loans are expected to have risen.

They will also be under pressure to show that lending has increased.

Barclays and HSBC are likely to see the best results, with Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland still struggling.

The banks will also feel obliged to show that they have kept to a commitment to increase lending to businesses.

The Chancellor, Alistair Darling, recently urged the banks to play their part in promoting economic recovery and expressed concern that smaller firms are being charged high interest rates. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8180280.stm>

MPs say degree standards must be made more consistent

Universities in England are failing to safeguard degree standards, according to a damning report from MPs.

The current system for ensuring quality is "out of date" and should be replaced," the Commons universities select committee concluded.

"Inconsistency in standards is rife," said committee chairman, Phil Willis.

Universities UK attacked the report as "ill-thought through" and rejected the accusation that university leaders were "defensive and complacent".

The hard-hitting report calls for urgent action to improve how universities safeguard the quality of degrees.

It describes as "absurd and disreputable" the claim that the growing demand for courses, including from overseas students, is proof that university standards are being maintained.

'Unacceptable'

The cross-party committee attacks university leaders for failing to "give a straightforward answer to the simple question of whether first class honours degrees achieved at different universities indicate the same or different intellectual standards".

REPORT RECOMMENDATIONS Consistent degree standards required across all universities Independent standards watchdog needed Accreditation checks every 10 years Better protection for whistleblowers National bursary system More support for mature and part-time students Oxford or Oxford Brookes: MPs compare degrees

And the MPs question why universities have failed to explain the rapid increase in the number of top grade degrees being awarded.

To protect the "integrity" of degrees, the committee calls for a radical overhaul of the current watchdog, the Quality Assurance Agency, replacing it with an independent body charged with maintaining academic standards.

The report casts doubt on the reliability of self-regulation by universities and calls for tighter rules for external examiners and a way of comparing standards in different institutions.

"We are extremely concerned that inconsistency in standards is rife and there is a reluctance to address this issue," said Mr Willis, chair of the Commons Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee.

The report says it is "unacceptable" for higher education to receive £15bn in taxpayers' funding "but be unable to answer a straightforward question about the relative standards of the degrees of the students".

As an example, the report says that there was no clear answer to MPs' attempts to find the answer to whether an upper second history degree from Oxford University and Oxford Brookes were equivalent . <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8178740.stm>

Joel Tenenbaum said he was glad he had not been fined millions

A US student has been ordered to pay $675,000 (£404,000) to four record labels for breaking copyright laws after sharing music online.

The Boston University student, Joel Tenenbaum, had admitted in court that he had downloaded and distributed 30 songs at issue in the case.

It is the second such case to go to trial in the US.

In the first case, a woman in Minneapolis was ordered to pay $1.92m for sharing 24 songs.

On Friday, the jury ordered Mr Tenebaum to pay $22,500 for each infringement. The maximum that he could have been fined was $4.5m.

Following the ruling, he said he was glad the fine had not been in the millions.

"That to me sends a message of 'We considered your side with some legitimacy'," he said, according to the Associated Press news agency.

But his lawyer said the verdict was not fair and that he planned to appeal. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8177285.stm>

The units in a glass of wine can range from 1.5 to over 3

Daily limits on alcohol consumption are meaningless and potentially harmful, experts have warned.

The government says men should drink no more than three to four units per day and women no more than two to three.

Liver specialist Dr Nick Sheron, of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK, says these limits were devised by civil servants with "no good evidence" for doing so.

He says the advice runs the risk of people taking it to mean that it is safe to drink alcohol every day.

They were turned into daily limits by a community of civil servants and the reasoning behind it is shrouded in mystery Dr Sheron, vice chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK Alcohol units guide Confusion 'fuels misuse'

Dr Sheron's comments follow a report by MPs on the Public Accounts Committee which suggested public confusion about safe drinking levels was fuelling problem drinking.

Dr Sheron says we should go back to using the old weekly limits, which are based on sound research.

The 1987 sensible drinking limits, which set the bar at 21 units per week for men and 14 units per week for women, remained in place until 1995. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8172982.stm>

Cuban President Raul Castro says he is willing to enter into dialogue with the US but the island's communist system remains non-negotiable.

Mr Castro said he wanted to respond to recent overtures by Washington.

But in a speech that was given a standing ovation in parliament, he also emphasised that he had not been elected to return Cuba to capitalism.

US President Barack Obama has said he wants to "recast" relations with Cuba but the US has also called for reforms.

In his speech, Mr Castro acknowledged that there had been less aggression and anti-Cuban rhetoric under the Obama administration.

I was elected to defend, maintain and continue perfecting socialism - not to destroy it Cuban President Raul Castro

He repeated Cuba's willingness "to sustain a respectful dialogue with the United States, between equals".

But he also noted that a decades-old US embargo remained in place and said he wished to respond to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's comments linking dialogue with reform.

"With all due respect, in response to Mrs Clinton, but also to the European Union... I was not chosen as president to restore capitalism to Cuba or to renounce the revolution," Mr Castro said.

"I was elected to defend, maintain and continue perfecting socialism. Not to destroy it."

Mr Castro, 78, stepped up to the Cuban leadership three years ago when his older brother, Fidel, underwent gastric surgery.

He formally assumed the presidency last year.

In his speech, he scoffed at those who say Cuba's political system will crumble after the "the death of Fidel and all of us".

"If that's how they think, they are doomed to failure," he said.

On the economic front, the Cuban president announced that the government had cut its budget for a second time this year amid a growing financial crisis.

The government has recently pushed through a series of austerity measures and cut its projected economic growth estimate for this year to 1.7% <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8180158.stm>

Palestinian officials say the families lived in the houses for over 50 years

Israeli police have evicted nine Palestinian families living in two houses in occupied East Jerusalem.

Jewish settlers moved into the houses almost immediately. The US has urged Israel to abandon plans for a building project in the area.

Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since 1967, a move not recognised by the international community.

The evictions have been condemned by the United Nations, the Palestinians and also the UK government.

The US said the evictions were not in keeping with Israel's obligations under the so-called "road map" to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

'Deplorable'

The operation to evict the 53 Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah district of the city was carried out before dawn on Sunday by police clad in black riot gear.

It followed a ruling by Israel's Supreme Court that the land originally belonged to Jewish families. Israel wants to build a block of 20 apartments in the area.

The police were clad in black riot gear

The evictions were quickly condemned by the United Nations.

"I deplore today's totally unacceptable actions by Israel," the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Robert H Serry said. "These actions are contrary to the provisions of the Geneva Conventions related to occupied territory. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8180413.stm>

Israel rejects US call over settlement work

Israel will continue to allow some construction in West Bank settlements despite US calls for a freeze on its work, a government spokesman says.

Mark Regev said the fate of the settlements should be decided in peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

His remarks appear to be a rebuff to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said all such activity should cease.

Her comments came hours before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was due to meet US President Barack Obama.

Mrs Clinton said on Wednesday there must be no exceptions to President Obama's demands for Israel's settlement work to stop.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with her Egyptian counterpart, Mrs Clinton said that the president was "very clear" with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at their recent meeting that there should be a stop to all settlements.

Challenge of Israeli settlements Read your comments

"Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions," Mrs Clinton said.

"We think it is in the best interest of the effort that we are engaged in that settlement expansion cease."

Correspondents say it is the first time in years that US officials have been so vocal in calling for a settlement freeze in the Palestinian territories. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8071491.stm>

The country's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, launched his so-called "indigenous autonomy" policy in the eastern lowlands.

Peasant and indigenous communities will be entitled to vote for more autonomy in referendums next December.

The provisions are contained in a constitution passed earlier this year.

The new charter was bitterly opposed by Bolivia's traditional elite.

On Sunday, the provisions allowing for indigenous autonomy were presented in a special event in the eastern region of Santa Cruz.

Mr Morales said it was "a historic day for the peasant and indigenous movement".

"Your president, your companion, your brother Evo Morales might make mistakes but will never betray the fight started by our ancestors and the fight of the Bolivian people," he said.

Mr Morales has championed Bolivia's indigenous people, who for centuries were banished to the margins of society.

The BBC's Andres Schipani reports from Bolivia that a largely peaceful revolution has empowered the indigenous majority this year.

Indigenous groups have increasingly seized political control, transforming the country into a 21st Century standard bearer for South America's native populations, he says.

But many opposed to Mr Morales and the new constitution believe he is polarising the country by dividing it along racial lines, our correspondent adds.

The referendums in December will be held alongside Bolivia's presidential and parliamentary elections. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8180790.stm>

Monroe College was founded in 1933

A New York woman who says she cannot find a job is suing the college where she obtained a bachelor's degree, the New York Post reports.

Trina Thompson, 27, filed a lawsuit last week against Monroe College in Bronx Supreme Court.

She is seeking to recover $70,000 (£42,000) she spent on tuition to get her information technology degree.

Monroe College spokesman Gary Axelbank said Ms Thompson's lawsuit was "completely without merit".

This case does not deserve further consideration Gary Axelbank Monroe College spokesman

The ex-student, who received her degree in April, says the college's Office of Career Advancement did not provide her with the leads and career advice it had promised.

"They have not tried hard enough to help me," she wrote about the college in her lawsuit.

Her mother, Carol, said her daughter was "very angry at her situation" having "put all her faith" in her college.

With her student loans coming due, the family would be saddled with more debt, the graduate's mother added.

Monroe insists it helps its graduates find jobs.

"The college prides itself on the excellent career-development support that we provide to each of our students, and this case does not deserve further consideration," its spokesman said. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8180806.stm>

The first Scottish references to haggis came in 1747, Ms Brown said

A haggis recipe was published in an English book almost two hundred years before any evidence of the dish in Scotland, an historian has claimed.

Historian Catherine Brown told the Daily Telegraph that she found references to the dish inside a 1616 book called The English Hus-Wife.

The title would pre-date Robert Burns' poem To A Haggis by 171 years.

But ex-world champion haggis maker Robert Patrick insisted: "Nobody's going to believe it." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8180791.stm>

The BBC listens as two "crazy" pieces of music written by the young Mozart are played for the first time in nearly 250 years. Experts say the works show a youthful composer "running riot" to show what he could do.

Austrian Florian Birsak tackled the pieces - not for the faint-hearted

With its polished parquet floor, the Tanzmeistersaal in the Mozart Residence Museum was full.

After all, it is not every day you get to go to a premiere of pieces by Mozart - played on his own piano and in his own house.

Posthumous discoveries of works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are rare but not unknown.

And the short two pieces unveiled in Salzburg appear to be a "missing link" in the young composer's development, according to Dr Ulrich Leisinger, from the International Mozarteum Foundation.

The first piece to be performed was the Concerto in G molto allegro - probably the first movement of a harpsichord concerto written in 1763 or 1764, when the composer was around eight years old.

Only the solo part of the harpsichord was written down.

'Studendous technique'

Researchers at the Mozarteum believe it forms an important link between the miniatures Mozart wrote as a very young child and the larger instrumental pieces he went on to compose later.

This was a young composer running riot to show what he was capable of Dr Ulrich Leisinger

The Harvard professor, Robert Levin, says: "What the composer expects of the player in racing passagework, crossed hands and wild leaps is more than a bit crazy.

"I consider it quite credible that the movement was composed by the young Mozart who wished to show in it everything he could do."

There are anecdotes which suggest that Mozart began to compose concertos long before his "first" official piano concerto, K 175, in 1773.

The Salzburg court trumpeter and close friend of the Mozart family, Johann Andreas Schachtner, described being shown an inkblot-stained score of a part of concerto written by the young Mozart.

Mozart's father, Leopold, had first dismissed the piece - but then looked at it a little more closely.

"Look here Mr Schachtner," he said. "See how everything is correct and regularly set - it is only useless because it is too difficult for anyone to play."

Technically demanding

The young Wolfgang was not abashed. "That's why it is a concerto," he said. "You have to practise a long time before you can play the notes. Here's how to do it."

The second piece, the Prelude in G major, is also technically demanding, but described by researchers as slightly more "refined".

It was the "crazy" and virtuosic nature of the pieces that helped the researchers at the Mozarteum identify them as being by the young Mozart.

It is thought Mozart's father Leopold transcribed the pieces

The works were part of "Nannerl's Music Book", a collection of music compiled by Leopold Mozart in in the archive of the International Mozarteum Foundation since 1864.

They are written in Leopold's handwriting - but Dr Leisinger believes he transcribed pieces his son played on the piano.

"This was a young composer running riot to show what he was capable of," Dr Leisinger said.

"The piece does contain real technical mistakes and clumsy moments that an old hand like Leopold Mozart would never have made." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8180648.stm>

Spruce Pine, a modest, charmingly low-key town in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina, is at the heart of a global billion-dollar industry.

Although this Mitchell County community calls itself the Mineral City, with just 2,000 residents one could dispute the city status. But when it comes to minerals, Spruce Pine has definitely undersold itself.

The jewellery shops, highlighting local emeralds, sapphires and amethysts, hint at the riches. The mountains, however, contain something far more precious than gemstones: they are a source of high-purity quartz.

This ultra-pure mineral is essential for building most of the world's silicon chips - without which you wouldn't be reading this article.

Geologist Alex Glover, of Active Minerals International, drove me to a disused mine to see this quartz for myself. Our jeep bumped across dried creek beds for miles until we reached two cathedral-like caverns of rock at Hoot Owl mine.

The rocks contain feldspar, silvery flakes of mica, flashes of garnet and smoky veins of quartz. "Fifty years ago men were throwing away the quartz," explained Mr Glover.

It's the most valuable strategic square acreage on the planet Ira Thomas Spruce Pine Gem Mine

"But now it's prized and quartz is the high value item. These are the only places that this quartz is found on the planet."

Spruce Pine quartz is considered the best in the world and can sell for up to $50,000 (£30,000) a tonne.

It is made, like all quartz, of silicon and oxygen but the process of making a computer chip does not rely on its silicon; that can be obtained from common sand.

The clue to why quartz is needed is in the process of making a silicon wafer. These wafers are CD-sized slices of silicon upon which the chips are then etched with electronic circuitry. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8178580.stm>

Nissan sees "high potential" for electric vehicles

Japanese carmaker Nissan has unveiled its first electric car, taking it closer to its aim to become the first car firm to mass produce the vehicles.

The zero-emission hatchback vehicle, called Leaf, is set to go on sale in Japan, the US and Europe next year.

Nissan chief executive Carlos Ghosn did not announce the prices but said it would be "very competitive".

"The monthly cost of the battery, plus the electric charge, will be less than the cost of gasoline," Mr Ghosn said.

Nissan, Japan's third largest carmaker, has been slower than rivals Toyota and Honda to embrace hybrids, which run on petrol and electric engines, and is instead pinning its hopes on solely battery-powered cars.

We need to invest a lot of money to build the car plants Nissan chief executive Carlos Ghosn The future of electric motoring

Electric cars have struggled to become mainstream because of limited battery life and high costs.

But Mr Ghosn insisted that the Leaf would not be a niche-market vehicle.

"We need to invest a lot of money to build the car plants and the battery plants at a moment where all the auto companies are saving investments," he said.

"But there is such a high potential that we (will) go ahead with it."

Nissan has chosen the UK as one of its bases to produce batteries for electric cars.

It is investing £200m at its Sunderland factory, which is expected to create 350 jobs.

Nissan has said that it plans to make 100,000 electric cars a year by 2012. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8180333.stm>

German trial for Kohl-era figure

Karleinz Schreiber has been fighting extradition for almost 10 years A Canadian judge has turned down a last-minute appeal by a German businessman against his extradition on corruption charges. Karlheinz Schreiber, 75, is wanted for tax evasion, bribery and fraud in Germany, and has been fighting extradition for nearly 10 years. He figured in a fund-raising scandal involving ex-Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Canadian media say Mr Schreiber, who denies wrongdoing, was on a flight headed for Germany as of Sunday night. He had appealed at a court in Ontario against his imminent extradition. Canadian case Mr Schreiber is accused in Germany of evading taxes on millions of dollars from commissions for arms deals. He was also at the centre of a scandal surrounding the funding of Helmut Kohl's Christian Democrat Party, the CDU. The scandal began with the emergence of a series of undeclared contributions given by Mr Schreiber. Mr Schreiber, who has both German and Canadian citizenship, was arrested under a German warrant in Canada in 1999. He was released on bail in 2007. In a separate, Canadian case, he has been testifying at a public inquiry about his financial dealings with that country's former Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney. Mr Mulroney has acknowledged taking C$225,000 (£125,000) from Mr Schreiber in return for promoting a project for a German company, though he denies Mr Schreiber's claim that the money was exchanged while he was still in office. Public hearings on the case ended last week.  <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8180736.stm>

Mr Rasmussen spoke to greater civilian co-operation in Afghanistan

Nato's priority must be the war in Afghanistan, including negotiations with moderate members of the Taliban, the organisation's new head says.

Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said there were "groups that you can talk with" with a view to splitting the militant group.

He said his second priority would be improving ties with Russia, though he admitted there would be difficulties.

One of his other ideas is to create a "standing anti-piracy" capability.

Addressing the media on his first day in the job, Mr Rasmussen said he wanted Nato to work more with civilian organisations.

"Nato is a strong military alliance and we need a strong military effort in Afghanistan," he said.

"But to win the peace and to win hearts and minds we need to provide Afghan people with better life opportunities and assist the government in better democratic processes."

He said there was "a lot at stake" both internationally and for Nato in Afghanistan.

While appreciating the increase in troops that Nato's allies have pledged, Mr Rasmussen said: "This is no military solution solely. We have to step up our civilian efforts as well."

Russian focus

As the first anniversary of a brief war between Russia and Georgia looms, Mr Rasmussen said the conflict had had a "very negative impact of relations between Nato and Russia".

It erupted on 7 August last year as Georgia tried to retake control of South Ossetia. Russia quickly repelled the assault, and built up its military presence in both South Ossetia and Georgia's other breakaway region of Abkhazia.

But he said the differences between them should not overshadow common security concerns, such as terrorism.

"We are faced with real disputes on a number of areas.

"However, I consider it a very important challenge for me to convince the Russian people and Russian leadership that Nato is not an enemy of Russia, Nato is not directed against Russia." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8181303.stm>

Shops in Pakistan stock Taliban propaganda alongside Indian movies

The second front in the conflict between the Taliban and their enemies in government is the war of words - and in recent months that battle has intensified.

The Taliban have a sophisticated public relations machine which is making it harder for governments and their international allies to win the ever-important propaganda war.

The insurgents are keen to exploit a sense of alienation among people, fostered by "bad governance" and "mistakes" made during military operations.

Civilian casualties in American air strikes and the violation of local traditions including house and personal searches create an atmosphere where Taliban propaganda can take root.

Afghan political commentator, Rostar Tarakai, says that it is the simplicity of the Taliban's message that makes it most effective.

"They talk about occupation, they highlight the fact that foreign troops are killing Afghans and raiding their homes - and it works," says Mr Tarakai. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8176259.stm>

It is one of the best preserved Stone Age villages in Europe, but Skara Brae in Orkney is just a few metres from the sea and it is a constant battle to save it from coastal erosion.

Experts warn as many as 10,000 historic sites around Scotland are at risk of being swept away, many of them unexcavated and unprotected.

BBC News Scotland Correspondent Lorna Gordon has been to visit the Neolithic community to see what measures are being taken to protect it.

---

It is a Stone Age village of subterranean houses abandoned 5,000 years ago - now tourists travel from all over the world to Skara Brae to get a 3D glimpse of what Neolithic life might have been like.

They see remarkably well preserved and well ordered homes, each with a dresser, beds, a hearth, and underground passageways linking one house to another. All that's missing are the roofs.

We don't know exactly how much has disappeared into the sea over the years before proper coastal defences were put in Julie Gibson Orkney archaeologist

What remains is made of stone and that's part of the reason Skara Brae has survived so long. The other is that when the village emptied of people it was slowly covered over by grass and sand.

For thousands of years it was hidden from view and protected from the harsh island weather, and it is that weather whipping up the sea nearby which is still Skara Brae's greatest threat.

Orkney archaeologist Julie Gibson says recent geophysics have uncovered more of the village a short distance inland, but adds: "We don't know exactly how much has disappeared into the sea over the years before proper coastal defences were put in."

Storm fears

Those defences are well maintained by Historic Scotland and added to every year. But on a walk around the 4m-high coastal wall, Stephen Watt from Historic Scotland explains some of the challenges they face.

Pointing to one part of the wall he admits that a storm three years ago brought trouble.

He said: "This particular bit was badly damaged. There was a hole you could almost walk into. It drew out a huge amount of material from behind the sea wall."

Last year another part of the wall was rebuilt down to the bedrock to stop water getting underneath. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/north_east/8181061.stm>

It is just after dawn in the hills above the Moroccan hamlet of Sbouya and a group of women are walking through the thousands of cactus plants dotted about on the hillside, picking ripe fruits whenever they spot the tell-tale red hue.

But these woman are not simply scraping a living out of the soil.

The cactus, previously eaten as a fruit or used for animal feed, is creating a minor economic miracle in the region thanks to new health and cosmetic products being extracted from the ubiquitous plant.

We are working with a number of European laboratories to develop the use of the cactus for slimming Keltoum Hammadi Aknari cooperative manager

This prickly pocket of the semi-arid south of the country around the town of Sidi Ifni is known as Morocco's cactus capital.

It is blessed with the right climate for the 45,000 hectares (111,000 acres) of land that is being used to produce prodigious numbers of succulent Barbary figs.

Every local family has its own plot and, with backing from the Ministry of Agriculture, the scheme to transform small scale production into a significant industry industry is under way.

Some 12m dirhams ($1.5m) have been pledged to build a state-of-the-art factory that will help local farmers process the ripe fruits.

The move is expected to help workers keep pace with the requirements of the French cosmetics industry which is using the cactus in increasing numbers of products.

Lucrative

Izana Marzouqi, a 55-year-old member of the Aknari cooperative, says people from the region grew up with the cactus and did not realise its true benefit.

"Demand for cactus products has grown and that it is because the plant is said to help with high blood pressure and cancer. The co-operative I belong to earns a lot of money selling oil from the seeds to make anti-ageing face cream."

Barbary fig oil is a lucrative market

Each member of the Aknari cooperative can pick between 30 and 50 pallets of the fruits in a morning during the season which lasts from July to December.

Many of them also work in the factory a short distance away where the fruit is peeled and then the pulp is separated and used to make jam.

The seeds which are ground to produce an oil are the most lucrative part of the plant.

The oil is used in more than 40 cosmetic products, and sells at a very high price as a pure skin oil.

It takes approximately a tonne of the tiny seeds to make a litre of oil.

The leaves are ground into a powder, the flowers flavour vinegar and the pulp of the fruit has been found to lower cholesterol. Nowadays very little is left over for animal feed.

Cactus brand

Keltoum Hammadi, who runs the Aknari co-operative, says that some of the processes are secret.

"In the cosmetics industry rivals never let the competition know their sources.

"All I can say is that we are working with a number of European laboratories to develop the use of the cactus for slimming."

Keltoum Achahour, manager of Saharacactus in the Sidi Ifni area, explains that her company is collaborating on other new products.

"We are a sort of umbrella for a number of women's cooperatives," she explains.

"By forming a group and incorporating we can protect the cactus, create a brand and ensure we get a fair share of the vast sums of money that the international cosmetics industry spends on research and development."

Exact figures are hard to come by, with each cooperative having its own speciality.

Their activities range from making soap to pickling leaves cut into strips, from packing top quality fresh fruits for use within Morocco, to selling on the road side from buckets to lorries that roll up in town early in the morning.

Consequently the exact size of the industry remains difficult to measure.

Boost for women

At present only 20% of the fruits grown for commercial use is processed in the region.

The vast majority is still bought in bulk by outsiders who cream off the highest profit.

They can buy a box for between 20 and 30 dirhams and sell it on for 100 dirhams.

The figs are being used to produce a wide range of products

But with greater financial involvement from the government, it is expected that within two years more than 75% of the production will be processed by the townspeople of Ait Baamram.

The industry is expected to grow by more 20% next year alone.

More than half of the land suitable for cactus production has yet to be involved in any commercial activity and with 9,000 plants per hectare (or acre) there is still a lot of room for expansion.

It is also an industry that has won women a lot of freedom.

Sayka Hafida, a member of the Aknari cooperative, says that her life has been transformed by this organic, naturally occurring plant.

"We still use the cactus leftovers for animal feed and we eat the fruit when it is fresh, and dry it for times when the plants don't produce.

"But I could never have imagined that I could get such a good income from it. You don't have to be educated to work in the factories.

"Our children are feeling the benefits. There is much more money around and it is women who are earning it." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8166905.stm>

The Lib Dems say girls and young women are under pressure

Airbrushing should be banned in advertisements aimed at children to tackle "body image pressure", say the Liberal Democrats.

Altering photos to make them look better means children are subjected to "completely unattainable images", said front-bencher Jo Swinson.

The party also wants cosmetic surgery adverts to give their success rates.

The Advertising Standards Authority said they received only a "small handful" of complaints on the issue.

The Liberal Democrats, Britain's third largest political party, have put forward measures aimed at protecting women and girls from pressure about their weight, and to promote healthy living.

Female friendly

Ms Swinson said airbrushing should be banned in advertising aimed at the under 16s and should be clearly flagged up in adverts aimed at adults.

The party also says body image and "media literacy" should be taught in schools and more sports activities offered to stop teenage girls dropping out of exercise.

The focus on women's appearance has got out of hand Jo Swinson

Among other proposals are for success rates to be included on cosmetic surgery adverts and for local sports centres to be made more "female friendly" by being cleaner and safer.

Ms Swinson said young girls in particular were under increasing pressure due to "completely unattainable images that no-one can live up to in real life".

"The focus on women's appearance has got out of hand - no-one really has perfect skin, perfect hair and a perfect figure, but women and young girls increasingly feel that nothing less than perfect will do," she said.

"Liberal Democrats believe in the freedom of companies to advertise but we also believe in the freedom of young people to develop their self-esteem and to be as comfortable as possible with their bodies.

"They shouldn't constantly feel the need to measure up to a very narrow range of digitally manipulated shapes and sizes."

Few complaints

The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons has raised concerns about some of the adverts used by cosmetic surgery clinics - including the use of financial incentives to undergo surgery.

President Douglas McGeorge has said he was particularly concerned about "younger vulnerable readers of magazines who are being targeted very heavily".

A spokesman for the Advertising Standards Authority said airbrushing was not an issue it received many complaints about.

If images had been altered to the extent they were misleading, that was when the ASA would step in, he said.

"We don't get a lot of complaints about it," he said.

"Consumers know there has been alteration in some of the images, maybe that is why consumer complaints are quite low."

But he added that the ASA would respond to complaints which were drawn to its attention. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8181499.stm>

Gary McKinnon suffers from Asperger's Syndrome

Welsh Secretary Peter Hain has suggested that British computer hacker Gary McKinnon should face trial in the UK rather than be extradited to the US.

He told the Daily Mail that the 43-year-old "was committing an offence on British soil" so his case should be "assessed in a British context".

Mr McKinnon's mother Janis Sharp said Mr Hain's words were "refreshing".

The Lib Dems said the government could not continue to claim it was "powerless to act" over the case.

Denies malice

Authorities in the US say Mr McKinnon committed the biggest ever military computer hack in 2001/02 when he accessed 97 government computers belonging to organisations such as the US Navy and Nasa.

He could face 60 years or more in prison if convicted.

Mr McKinnon, who has Asperger's Syndrome, admits hacking, but says his actions were not malicious. He also denies the allegation he caused damage costing $800,000 (£487,000).

Last week, he lost his latest appeal against extradition when two High Court judges ruled it was "a lawful and proportionate response" to his offence.

For Peter Hain to stand up and talk from the heart was so refreshing Janis Sharp Gary McKinnon's mother

Mr Hain told the Mail the law was "just following its course," but said he "would have preferred it if I had been in the position to have a say on this".

"We could then have had a position where it could have been assessed in a British context - after all, he was sitting in his bedroom by a computer, as a kind of computer geek zapping the American defence system and therefore he was committing an offence on British soil," he said.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson said last week Mr McKinnon was accused of "serious crimes... immediately following the 9/11 attacks".

But Mr McKinnon's mother told GMTV: "I was so upset when the home secretary spoke about 9/11, spoke about the people who died and mentioned Gary's name.

"It was almost like he was trying to incriminate him in some way, so for Peter Hain to stand up and talk from the heart was so refreshing."

Leading lawyers

Mr Johnson has said it would be illegal for him to intervene in Mr McKinnon's case, but the Lib Dems claim he does have the power to do so.

Peter Hain described Mr McKinnon as 'a computer geek'

Home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: "Now that leading lawyers have made it clear that they believe Alan Johnson has the power to stop the extradition of Gary McKinnon, the Home Office can't persist with its claim that he is powerless to act.

"Even Cabinet ministers like Peter Hain are concerned about the home secretary's claim.

"The Home Office must now publish the legal advice on which he is making this claim or find a different set of lawyers."

Lawyers for Mr McKinnon say his Asperger's Syndrome means the stress of extradition could result in psychosis and suicide. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8181830.stm>

Gurkhas money paid for a clocktower, schools and roads in Dharan

Sitting in the quiet surroundings of the Gurkha Army House in the Nepalese town of Dharan, 69-year-old Krishna Rai says he would like to have the chance to settle in Britain.

"I've already spent more than three years in the UK and now my only daughter is living there so I would like to go and see her," he says.

Krishna Rai served in the British Gurkhas between 1958 and 1974. Under the new British government ruling, fought for by the actress Joanna Lumley, all Gurkha ex-servicemen who have completed more than four years of service are eligible to settle in the UK.

"I've applied twice before but been rejected. But now things have changed, I'm going to apply one more time," he says.

Gurkha town

But if he and many like him go, there are fears the local Nepalese economy will suffer.

Squeezed between the green foothills of the Himalayas and Nepal's flat southern plains, Dharan is very much a Gurkha town. The British have recruited here since 1953 and about 20% of the population is made up of Gurkha ex-servicemen.

Evidence of their money is everywhere - in the clocktower in the central market place, in the asphalted roads, in the big houses, the many schools and community projects funded by British Gurkha remittance and pension money.

AG Hukpa Chongwang is one of many former Gurkhas who has used money from serving in the British army to help improve life in Dharan.

"In 1987, I retired from the British army. I've been in Nepal since then. In 1993, I established a school to provide quality education," he says. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8182252.stm>

Sicily town bets wages on lottery

Mr Ridolfo picked numbers connected to the town's patron saint

A Sicilian mayor has come up with a novel plan to resolve his town's cash-flow problems - by betting local officials' salaries on the lottery.

Italy's SuperEnalotto has not been won in weeks, and its jackpot has climbed to an unprecedented 116m euros (£98m).

Ficarra Mayor Basilio Ridolfo and his colleagues have stumped up 115 euros from their pay packet to buy tickets.

The chances of winning Tuesday's draw were higher than those of receiving funds pledged by the state, he said.

And the mayor seems to hope that a little more than luck will boost the town's chances of getting all six numbers correct in the unprecedented draw.

''We chose numbers which were connected with the town's patron saint, the Virgin Mary of the Assumption," Mr Ridolfo was quoted as saying by Ansa news agency.

"It is our hope that, with her blessing, we will hit the jackpot."

Long odds

If Ficarra does strike it lucky, Mr Ridolfo said half of the winnings would be spent on municipal projects while the rest would be divided between the town's 2,000 residents.

While the odds are long, it would be the second big windfall for Sicily in less than a year if Ficarra - which nestles on green hilltops overlooking Sicily's northern coast - were to win.

SuperEnalotto's previous record jackpot was £85m, won in October 2008 in another Sicilian town, Catania.

Winning numbers are drawn three times a week, but the jackpot has rolled over for several months as no ticket holder has correctly picked all six numbers. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8182969.stm>

The water supply is not enough for all camp residents, officials say

One of the world's largest refugee camps fails to meet even the most basic standards, the UN has admitted.

More than a quarter of a million Somalis are crowded into the Dadaab camp in eastern Kenya having fled fighting in their own country.

Chronic overcrowding makes it difficult to help those in need, officials say, and Kenya is resisting expansion calls.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, is due to visit on Tuesday to discuss additional space.

The UNHCR, the UN's refugee agency, believes that with more than 6,000 new refugees arriving every month it has no choice but to expand the camp.

Unless you get more land you will have difficulties providing enough water Bono Katandi Senior operations manager 'Exiled for life'

Dadaab is a collection of three sprawling tented cities on Kenya's sandy frontier with Somalia.

As Somalis lined up for their daily ration of food, one resident, Mohamed Shukra Shukra, told the BBC: "The problem is no water... no hospital, no food, it's a problem."

The UN said that when judged by its own standards it was clear the camp was failing. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8182753.stm>

Chansa Kabwela believes the case is political

The news editor of Zambia's largest independent newspaper has gone on trial accused of distributing obscene images.

Chansa Kabwela sent two photographs of a woman giving birth without medical help to the country's vice-president, health minister and rights groups.

She says she was highlighting issues in the healthcare system and calling for an end to a nurses' strike.

But President Rupiah Band called the pictures pornographic and demanded a police investigation. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8185221.stm>

For anyone wondering what to do with a couple of 20 euro notes stuffed in their sock drawer and no holiday in sight on the Continent, there may be a simple answer - spend them in the UK.

From the south coast of England to a Birmingham nightclub and a major high street retailer to Edinburgh's Royal Mile, substantial numbers are saying yes to the euro.

Quite where this trend began is in dispute.

Dunster, a medieval village in Exmoor, lays claim to being the first place in Britain to accept euros on a par with the pound - not a bad deal with the exchange rate hovering around 85p to a euro.

"There are no banks in the village, no bureau de change - I think we're giving them a service," says Antony Brunt, Dunster hotel owner and chairman of Exmoor Tourism Association.

Some economists may call Dunster's retailers foolish but what villagers have done is regarded by others as savvy marketing.

WHERE TO SPLASH YOUR EUROS Dunster, Somerset: Made a name for itself with a 1 Euro=£1 rate Bournemouth and Poole: 50 outlets signed up including taxi drivers, ice cream vendors and restaurateurs to accept notes only Swanage: Accepts any strong currency, including euros Rye: Starred on French TV, looking to improve local euro banking system All Marks and Spencer stores: Change given in sterling, conversion rate set weekly Gatecrasher nightclub, Birmingham: Euros accepted on the door and at the bar

The move has not gone unnoticed internationally, with Dunster (population: 860) featuring on French TV, in a leading German magazine and being visited by a Japanese news agency.

Mr Brunt thinks this interest has been piqued by people wanting to see evidence of Britain looking to the future.

"There's got to come a time when Britain adopts the euro, whether in five or 50 years' time," he suggests.

Could the seeds have been sown for a much wider unofficial movement?

Professor Iain Begg of the European Institute at the London School of Economics is doubtful.

"These are local gimmicks," he says. "If you are the tourist officer for Bournemouth and you can say 'you can pay in euros', it gives you a bit of an edge.

"But you are talking about an aggregate population of 250,000, which is less than half a percentage of Britain's population.

"It is designed to cater to tourists - it won't engage with the rest of the population," he added.

Only if the euro was adopted outside the tourism trade or by an entire city could momentum gather, he said, but that would be a "logistical nightmare".

Every cash till would need reprogramming and cash handling charges would double, he added. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8060020.stm>

Yahoo will be able to quit the deal if it misses certain targets

Yahoo will be able to quit its internet search deal with Microsoft if it fails to meet certain market share and revenue targets.

Yahoo can abandon the deal if Microsoft does not produce advertising revenue per search within a certain - undisclosed - percentage of Google's.

It can also walk away if the share of search queries falls below a certain percentage of the market.

Fresh details of the deal emerged in a regulatory filing late on Tuesday.

Microsoft will pay Yahoo $50m a year for the first three years of the deal to cover unforeseen transition costs.

Yahoo can keep 88% of the net revenues from advertisements placed on its pages for five years and between 83% and 93% of the revenue for the remaining five years.

Microsoft will hire about 400 workers from Yahoo.

Yahoo has been struggling to make profits in recent years. Last year, it rebuffed several takeover bids from Microsoft in an attempt to go it alone.

The deal, announced last month, is designed to help the two companies take on Google, its chief rival, which has a market share of about 65%.

Under the deal, Microsoft's Bing search engine will power the Yahoo website and Yahoo will in turn become the advertising sales team for Microsoft's online offering. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8185044.stm>

The leaf trick gives an exaggerated impression of the ape's body size

Wild orangutans in Borneo hold leaves to their mouths to make their voices sound deeper than they actually are, a new study shows.

The apes employ the leaf trick when they are threatened by predators, according to scientists observing them.

By holding leaves to their mouths, the orangutans lower the frequency of the sounds they produce.

This is used to ward off predators, giving them the impression the apes are a bigger target.

The international team made the discovery while observing distress calls made by the orangutans.

The apes make the sounds in response to approaches by snakes, clouded leopards, tigers or humans.

These distress calls are known as "kiss squeaks" because they involve a sharp intake of breath through pursed lips, producing a sound similar to that made during a kiss.

But by using the leaves to modify the sound that comes out, orangutans deceive predators into thinking the calls are being made by a bigger animal.

Co-author Madeleine Hardus, from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, told BBC News: "This study clearly indicates that the abilities of great ape communication have been traditionally undervalued and that there may be traces of language precursors in our closest relatives, the great apes."

She added that the findings suggest that primate calling behaviour is not purely based on instinct, but instead is socially learned. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8184015.stm>

Methane on Mars is produced and destroyed far faster than on Earth, according to analysis of recent data.

Scientists in Paris used a computer climate model for the Red Planet to simulate observations made from Earth.

It shows the gas is unevenly distributed in the Martian atmosphere and changes with the seasons.

The presence of methane on Mars is intriguing because its origin could either be life or geological activity - including volcanism.

Writing in the journal Nature, Franck Lefevre and Francois Forget from the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris describe how they used a computer model of the Martian climate to reconstruct observations made by a US team.

If the measurements are correct, we must be missing something quite important Franck Lefevre, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie

Dr Lefevre says the chemistry of the Martian atmosphere is still a mystery.

He told BBC News: "We put the dynamics and chemistry as we know it in the model and tried to match the measurements, to reproduce the uneven distribution they saw from Earth."

"The problem is if we just take into account the photochemistry as we know it on Earth and if we put it in the model, then we cannot reproduce the model and that was a surprise."

"The current chemistry as we know it is not consistent with the measurements of methane on Mars."

"There is something else going on, something that lowers the methane lifetime by a factor of 600. So if the measurements are correct, we must be missing something quite important."

MSL is Nasa's next rover mission to the Red Planet

Dr Lefevre says the work shows that if there is a much faster loss for methane on Mars there must also be a much stronger production of methane.

But he urges caution: "It's a real challenge to measure methane on Mars from Earth and we've got only one example of this uneven distribution."

The results the French team used were published in January this year in the journal Science. They were gathered by an American team using a technique called infrared spectroscopy at three different ground-based telescopes to monitor about 90% of the planet's surface.

In 2003 "plumes" of methane were identified. At one point, the primary plume of methane contained an estimated 19,000 tonnes of the gas.

Dr Michael Mumma, director of Nasa's Goddard Center for Astrobiology and lead author on the previous paper, told BBC News it was vital to understand how methane was destroyed on Mars and to explain how so much of the gas is produced and destroyed so quickly on the Red Planet.

Dr Mumma does not rule out a biological explanation for the phenomenon but says it is possible that geology alone could be responsible. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8186314.stm>

The robotic "compiler" automatically sets up the computation

A computer with DNA as its information carrier can solve classic logic conundrums, researchers say.

DNA has been used to do simple number crunching before, but a system developed by Israeli scientists can effectively answer yes or no questions.

Strands of DNA are designed to give off a green light corresponding to "yes".

In Nature Nanotechnology, the team also describes a program which bridges the gap between a computer programming language and DNA computing code.

The team, led by Tom Ran and Ehud Shapiro of the Weizmann Institute in Israel, has been developing DNA-based computation systems for a number of years, including "computers" that can diagnose and treat cancers autonomously.

But the current approach is fundamentally different, Professor Shapiro told BBC News.

"Using more sophisticated biochemistry, we were able to implement simple logic programs, which are more akin to the way people program electronic computers," he said.

Sticky proposition

The system devised by the researchers uses molecules to represent facts and rules. In this way, the team was able to use it to answer simple molecular "questions".

First, they tried the system with simple "if… then…" propositions. One of these went as follows: "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal."

Without computer robotic support to this process, we would not have finished this in our lifetime Professor Ehud Shapiro Weizmann Institute of Science

When fed a molecular rule (all men are mortal) and a molecular fact (Socrates is a man), the DNA computing system was able to answer the question "Is Socrates mortal?" correctly.

The team went on to set up more complicated queries involving multiple rules and facts. The DNA devices were able to deduce the correct answers every time.

The answer was encoded in a flash of green light. Some of the DNA strands were equipped with a naturally glowing fluorescent molecule bound to a second molecule which keeps the light covered.

A specialised enzyme, attracted to the part of the molecule representing the correct answer, would then remove this cover to let the light shine.

Life's work

Professor Shapiro said the fact this system was based on clever biochemistry meant it was no less a computer than the conventional kind.

"Of course when the examples are simple, as in today's logic program, one can pre-compute the answer with pencil and paper. But in principle there is no difference between simple and complex computer programs; they can compute only what they programmed to compute.

The results appear similar to more established DNA tests

"It is important to note that, while bio-molecular computing trails behind electronic computing - in terms of actual computing power, maturity of the technology, and sheer historical progression - at the conceptual level they stand side-by-side, without one being a more 'preferred' embodiment of the ideas of computation," he said.

To save time and effort, the researchers developed a robotic system to set up the DNA-based propositions and queries.

The system can take in facts and rules as a computer file of simple text. The robotic "compiler" can then turn those facts and rules into the DNA starting products of a logical query.

"We had to do many, many experiments to develop, debug, and calibrate the molecular computing system, and without computer robotic support to this process, we would not have finished this in our lifetime," Professor Shapiro said.

While the current work may raise the bar for programmable, molecular computing, Professor Shapiro said: "the ultimate applications are in programmable autonomous computing devices that can operate in a biological environment."

In other words, computers that go to work inside a cell. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8184033.stm>

Struggling after Egypt's pig cull

In the half-light of dawn, the new day in Cairo is greeted with the clatter of dustbins.

The Zabaleen (Egyptian Arabic for "garbage people") are beginning their rounds.

Since the age of eight, Magdi Mosaad has eked out a meagre living recycling Cairo's waste.

Each morning he scurries around the apartment blocks, emptying the contents of festering bins into the canvas bag strapped to his back. He looks like a bee storing honey.

He has done this job for 14 hours a day, for 30 years of his life.

"I am illiterate, I have no formal education," he says. "This is all I know."

But since the advent of swine flu prompted authorities to mount a cull of Egypt's entire population of pigs, his burden has just got even heavier.

Big appetites

The Zabaleen are an Egyptian community of mainly Coptic Christians - vital to Cairo's refuse collection. Around 85% cent of the rubbish they retrieve is sorted, recycled and resold. Tin, paper, glass - even bones are recycled for glue.

I sold pigs twice a year. To pay for mending the car and the school fees for our three young children. There is no way I can replace that income Magdi Mosaad Rubbish collector

In one garage we visited in the Zabaleen neighbourhood of Manshiet Nasser, they were pressing tin cans into bales, ready to be sold to the Chinese.

But this is a fragile existence in which the pigs played a crucial role.

Each month they troughed their way through 6,000 tonnes of rotting food collected on the rounds.

The fattened pigs were sold to supplement the income of the Zabaleen.

Mr Mosaad says the extra money that he raised from selling pork was vital to his family's welfare:

"I sold pigs twice a year. To pay for mending the car and the school fees for our three young children. There is no way I can replace that income."

As the H1N1 pandemic spread around the globe, Cairo was infected with outbreaks of panic and hysteria. The majority Muslim parliament voted to slaughter the entire pig population - 350,000 animals - even though they were not infected.

Riots

It is mostly the Christians that rear pigs in Egypt.

The sometimes brutal mass cull caused international concern

The government's decision would have dire financial implications. The authorities had already sought to replace the Zabaleen with the sleek machines of the more modern European contractors.

Now they were targeting one of their other main sources of income - the pigs.

In Manshiet Nasser, there were riots as the government vets began their work.

"They made their decision without any research," said Syada Greiss, one of the Christian MPs in parliament.

"Who would this affect, how many, what damage would it do to the local economy, what would they do to replace their lost income? There was no real thought for the implications for one of the city's poorest suburbs. And that's why it feels like discrimination."

The government says it has compensated the Zabaleen but those who reared pigs say they received only a fraction of what their animals were worth.

It was also a one-off payment - hardly compensation for a twice-yearly income on which men like Mr Mosaad had depended.

"If you walk around this neighbourhood they are piling up the organic waste in the streets," said Ms Greiss. "There is nowhere to put it. No pigs to eat it. It is miserable here."

On top of that there were cruel, inhumane pictures of the pigs being slaughtered that led to an international outcry.

There were live pigs fed into crushers, others doused in disinfectant and buried alive.

Health consequences

On average the Zabaleen family survives on $100 (£60) a month.

Dr Salib says his district is now afflicted by a rat infestation

But Dr Atif Salib, who runs a clinic in Manshiet Nasser, says he is now seeing cases of malnutrition and anaemia in children. Pork was the only affordable source of animal protein.

There are all manner of diseases that come with sorting rubbish by hand. Hepatitis is common.

And there is another risk. With organic waste piling up in the streets, there is plenty for hungry vermin.

"Definitely we have got a rat infestation," said Dr Salib. "I regularly have patients coming into my clinic with rat bites on their bodies."

But Dr Saad Nassar, the chief advisor to the minister for agriculture, makes no apologies for his government's drastic decision to cull all the pigs.

'Unhygienic'

The Egyptians were criticised for acting too slowly with the outbreak of bird flu - now endemic - and they are terrified that two strains of flu could one day combine to create a highly contagious strain.

"The pigs are often kept in dirty conditions, in poor areas, they are rarely seen by vets," said Dr Nassar.

"The government is afraid that if you have H1N1 and H5N1 in the same neighbourhood it could create a new dangerous strain which could be shifted to the people who live there. That would be a disaster."

The government says farmers can restock - but only if the pigs are reared in a more modern farming environment on the outskirts of the city: where pigs are kept in isolation, where they can be slaughtered in a proper way and the meat cooled ready for market.

But the Zabaleen say that involves the added cost of moving waste to the outskirts of the city - another assault on their income.

Increasingly the organic waste is left behind in the streets and that has implications for everyone in this city - not just the beleaguered minority. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8185844.stm>

Living by the runway can be noisy, dirty and smelly

Airline jobs once inspired respect and envy.

But at Los Angeles International Airport about 100 airline employees - from mechanics to pilots - are living in mobile homes parked just yards from one of the busiest runways in the world.

It is a sign of the harsh reality of an industry that once embodied glamour.

Two weeks ago, I parked my car in Lot B at LAX when departing on holiday.

For passengers like me, it offers a cheaper alternative to parking at the airport and free shuttle runs 24 hours a day to the terminals.

On the short journey, the bus passed a large cluster of trailers and mobile homes.

Frugal life

This week, I went back and found that this makeshift trailer-park is home to about 100 airline industry workers, including at least three pilots.

We end up with a lot of engine noise... there's the dirt factor... and of course the ever-present smell of burning rubber as they land David Schaeffer Mechanic

By day they man the planes, by night they sleep under them.

Some have been here for years, and say the site has grown in recent times.

In fact, Lot B has become a semi-permanent feature of an industry in flux.

I met mechanic Dana Hayes, who, each week, leaves his wife and home in Utah and lives a frugal life in a small neat trailer.

He can sleep, cook and wash with relative ease, but it is cramped, lonely and there is little to do.

"It's tough sometimes," he tells me. "It's better being home. I built a big home up in Utah... [But] it's better than paying rent... at least you can put a little money aside for retirement or something."

Faded glamour

Even at the pinnacle of the industry, some feel the squeeze.

Airline captain Bob Poster wonders if his title has lost its lustre.

"I was sitting with a friend of mine in his really nice RV [motor-home] over there last year and we were sitting there just talking and he says: 'Wow we're living the life! Two airline captains living in a parking lot!'"

Gone is the glamour of an airline career.

The fear of terrorist attacks, rising fuel costs and the deepest recession in 60 years have hit aviation hard. Airlines have shed thousands of jobs, and lost billions of pounds.

Those still employed face pay cuts and demotions. Many have to go where the work is. And that means living in places like Lot B.

At least it is cheap. It costs $60 (£35) a month to park, compared to at least 10 times that to rent a room in Los Angeles.

The commute to work is short and it is possible to get some sleep: aircraft land at a runway further away at night (pilot fatigue is a growing concern and has been implicated in recent crashes).

Lot B is far from ideal, but some say they do what they have to in uncertain times.

"We end up with a lot of engine noise... there's the dirt factor... and of course the ever-present smell of burning rubber as they land," says mechanic David Schaeffer.

"[But] it's a small price to pay. We have got ourselves a job in this environment, in this day and age that's not bad at all. I have no complaints."

 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8186690.stm>

ITV paid an initial £120m for Friends Reunited

ITV has sold Friends Reunited for £25m, despite having paid £175m for it.

The buyer is Brightsolid Limited, which is owned by DC Thomson, Dundee-based publisher of comics such as the Beano.

The announcement came with the release of half-year results, which were hit by the worst decline in UK television advertising on record.

ITV made a pre-tax loss of £105m in the period. There was no more information given on the recruitment of a new chief executive to replace Michael Grade.

Mr Grade is due to stand down by the end of 2009, following a regulatory review.

We are taking advertising share from our competitors John Cresswell, ITV chief operating officer See ITV's share price

The £105m loss compares with a £1.5bn loss in the same period of 2008, although last year's figure was hit by a £1.6bn charge, reducing the value of investments made in 2000 and 2004.

ITV's advertising revenues fell by 15%, which was slightly better than the 17% fall in the overall market.

Its chief operating officer, John Cresswell, told the BBC that advertising revenues were improving.

"We're down 15% in the first half and in the third quarter the decline is still pretty tough at -12%," he said.

"But September for us is at -7% so the direction of travel is good."

Mr Cresswell, who is thought to be among those in the running to be the new chief executive, added that "we are taking advertising share from our competitors".

The broadcaster's pension fund deficit had ballooned to £538m by 30 June, compared with £178m at the end of 2008.

ITV is in the middle of a cost-cutting programme, which aims to deliver savings of £155m this year and £285m a year by 2011.

Spare bedroom

ITV paid an initial £120m for the Friends Reunited website in 2005. It paid an additional £55m earlier this year - a sum which had been dependant on its financial performance. ITV said that the site was profitable.

The company buying it, Brightsolid, already owns findmypast.com, which operates the official 1901 and 1911 census websites.

Britain's Got Talent featuring Susan Boyle was the top-rating show

Friends Reunited was launched in July 2000 from the spare bedroom of Steve and Julie Pankhurst's home in North London.

Its model of helping people to find old friends from their old schools, colleges or clubs attracted millions of users to the site.

But more recently, it has been overtaken by social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

Mr Cresswell said that the site had been "bought by previous management with a slightly different strategy". <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8186840.stm>

Mr Murdoch has warned of possible job losses

News Corp is set to start charging online customers for news content across all its websites.

The media giant is looking for additional revenue streams after announcing big losses.

The company lost $3.4bn (£2bn) in the year to the end of June, which chief executive Rupert Murdoch said had been "the most difficult in recent history".

News Corp owns the Times and Sun newspapers in the UK and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the US.

'Revolution'

We intend to charge for all our news websites. I believe that if we are successful, we will be followed by other media Rupert Murdoch, chief executive, News Corp Send us your comments

Mr Murdoch said he was "satisfied" that the company could produce "significant revenues from the sale of digital delivery of newspaper content".

"The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution," he added.

"But it has not made content free. Accordingly, we intend to charge for all our news websites. I believe that if we are successful, we will be followed by other media.

"Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting," he said.

In order to stop readers from moving to the huge number of free news websites, Mr Murdoch said News Corp would simply make its content "better and differentiate it from other people".

Alfonso Marone, analyst and partner at Value Partners Group, told the BBC that the model could work "for well-known publications - for must-read, must-know content. The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times are already charging for content, for example," he said.

He believes that a micro-charging structure, where readers pay just 5p or 10p to access an article, might work. "This is less than the price of an SMS [text message]," he argued.

"This is definitely the way the [newspaper] industry is going," he concluded. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8186701.stm>

"You take the kid, you blindfold him, you handcuff him, he's really shaking... Sometimes you cuff his legs too. Sometimes it cuts off the circulation.

"He doesn't understand a word of what's going on around him. He doesn't know what you're going to do with him. He just knows we are soldiers with guns. That we kill people. Maybe they think we're going to kill him.

They dragged me from my home by the scruff of the neck. The more I cried the more they choked me... They pulled me along on my stomach. My knees were bleeding. They beat me with their guns and kicked me all the way to the jeep Mohammad Khawaja, 13

"A lot of the time they're peeing their pants, just sit there peeing their pants, crying. But usually they're very quiet.''

Eran Efrati is a former commander in Israel's army. He served in the occupied West Bank.

In a discreet park in Jerusalem we meet to discuss allegations that soldiers like him often mistreat Palestinian minors, suspected of throwing stones.

Mr Efrati - who left the army five months ago - says the allegations are true:

''I never arrested anyone younger than nine or 10, but 14, 13, 11 for me, they're still kids. But they're arrested like adults.

"Every soldier who was in the Occupied Territories can tell you the same story. The first months after I left the army I dreamed about kids all the time. Jewish kids. Arab kids. Screaming.

''Maybe [the kid is] blindfolded for him not to see the base and how we're working... But I believe maybe we put the blindfold because we don't want to see his eyes. You don't want him to look at us - you know, beg us to stop, or cry in front of us. It's a lot easier if we don't see his eyes.

''When the kid is sitting there in the base, I didn't do it, but nobody is thinking of him as a kid, you know - if there is someone blindfolded and handcuffed, he's probably done something really bad. It's OK to slap him, it's OK to spit on him, it's OK to kick him sometimes. It doesn't really matter.''

Young Palestinians are mostly arrested for throwing stones at Jewish settlers or Israeli soldiers.

This, they say, is their only means of venting their frustration at Israel's military occupation of their home, the West Bank.

Every week in the West Bank village of Bilin, Palestinians organise a demonstration against Israel's West Bank barrier.

Israel says it needs the barrier to stop attacks on its citizens. Palestinians call it a land grab. They say it makes their daily life even tougher. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8186905.stm>

Hugo Chavez denied claims that Venezuela sold arms to Farc rebels

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced trade measures against Colombia, amid a growing diplomatic row between the two nations.

Mr Chavez said he would halt the import of 10,000 cars from Colombia and ban a Colombian energy firm from exploring Venezuela's oil-rich Orinoco region.

Last week, Mr Chavez recalled his envoy from Bogota over accusations Venezuela had provided arms to Colombian rebels.

He is also angry at plans to allow US troops to use Colombian military bases.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is currently touring South America to try to reassure fellow leaders over the planned accord with Washington to allow US troops to use several bases.

A number of South American nations - including Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia - have expressed concerns over Bogota's plans.

These bases could be the start of a war in South America - we're talking about the Yankees, the most aggressive nation in human history Hugo Chavez Venezuelan President Colombia's rocky regional relations Uribe tours region over US pact

However, Peru has expressed support for Mr Uribe, while Chile and Paraguay have said the accord is an internal matter for Colombia.

Washington wants use Colombia as a regional hub for operations to counter drug-trafficking and terrorism.

The US has been forced to look for a new location after the Ecuadorean government refused to renew the lease on its Manta base that the US military was using.

Speaking at a news conference in Caracas, Mr Chavez said the Venezuelan government would halt the import of 10,000 vehicles from neighbouring Colombia.

He also said Colombia's Ecopetrol company would be barred from taking part in an auction to develop the heavy crude in Venezuela's Orinoco region.

Mr Chavez went on to say Venezuela would seek to buy "several battalions of Russian tanks" during his visit to Russia in September.

"These bases could be the start of a war in South America," Mr Chavez told reporters. "We're talking about the Yankees, the most aggressive nation in human history." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8186767.stm>

The team hope their work will pave the way to new treatments

Scientists say they have decoded the entire genetic structure of HIV-1 - the main cause of Aids in humans.

They hope this will pave the way to a greater understanding of how the virus operates, and potentially accelerate the development of drug treatments.

HIV carries its genetic information in more complicated structures than some other viruses.

The US research, published in Nature, may allow scientists the chance to look at the information buried inside.

HIV, like the viruses which cause influenza, hepatitis C and polio, carries its genetic information as single-stranded RNA rather than double-stranded DNA.

The information enclosed in DNA is encoded in a relatively simple way, but in RNA this is more complex.

We are also beginning to understand tricks the genome uses to help the virus escape detection by the human host Ron Swanstrom study author

RNA is able to fold into intricate patterns and structures. Therefore decoding a full genome opens up genetic information that was not previously accessible, and may hold answers to why the virus acts as it does.

The team from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said they planned to use the information to see if they could make tiny changes to the virus.

"If it doesn't grow as well when you disrupt the virus with mutations, then you know you've mutated or affected something that was important to the virus," says Ron Swanstrom, professor of microbiology and immunology.

"We are also beginning to understand tricks the genome uses to help the virus escape detection by the human host." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8186263.stm>

Facebook ws not completely taken offline by the attack

Micro-blogging service Twitter and social networking site Facebook have been severely disrupted by hackers.

Twitter was taken offline for more than two hours whilst Facebook's service was "degraded", according to the firms.

The popular sites were subject to so-called denial-of-service attacks on Thursday, the companies believe.

Denial-of-service (DOS) attacks take various forms but often involve a company's servers being flooded with data in an effort to disable them.

"Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users," said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone on the company's blog.

The service was restored shortly after the blog post, but the companies have had to continue to fend off the attack.

Facebook said its service was reduced but not taken offline.

"No user data was at risk and we have restored full access to the site for most users," spokeswoman Brandee Barker told the AFP news agency.

"We're continuing to monitor the situation to ensure that users have the fast and reliable experience they've come to expect from Facebook."

Poster Child

Both sites have previously been targeted by hackers.

For example, in January this year Twitter announced that 33 accounts had been hacked, including those belonging to US President Barack Obama and singer Britney Spears.

The latest attacks are what is known as a denial-of-service. These often use networks of computers - known as botnets -under the control of hackers.

The strategy is often employed by protestors against, for example, government websites, said Roger Thompson, chief research officer at security firm AVG.

"Twitter has become a poster-child for our always-connected, always-on internet culture," he told BBC News.

"With the eyes of the world's media all trained on Twitter at the moment, those behind this latest attack may be using it as a means of highlighting the vulnerability of the sites we take for granted.

"There is no profit to be made from DOS and those who do carry out an attack like this will lose their botnet, showing there is no gain to be had."

Both sites now have millions of users worldwide.

Facebook claims more than 250m active users whilst a ComScore study suggests that Twitter had around 45 million users worldwide as of June 2009.

However, as many users interact with the service through mobile phones or third-party software, the actual number of users is likely to be higher.

The sites recently garnered worldwide attention when they were used by Iranians to co-ordinate demonstrations following the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president.

Many protestors believed there was electoral fraud and opposition leader Mir Hussein Mousavi should have won.

Twitter chose to delay upgrade work during the protests to allow communication to continue.

In a BBC interview, co-founder Evan Williams denied the move had not been a response to a US State Department request. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8188201.stm>

A human bone found in Devon with tool-cuts thought to have been made during a ritual ceremony 9,000 years ago may be evidence of cannibalism.

Torquay Museum staff identified the arm bone as they documented animal remains discovered in Kents Cavern in Torquay.

The bone's marks are thought to have been made by stone tools and could indicate a ritual - or that the victim was devoured by other people.

The caves are the oldest Scheduled Ancient Monument in Britain.

The bone was first unearthed in 1866 by archaeologist William Pengelly, who spent 15 years excavating the cavern.

Some archaeologists have interpreted [similar] marks as evidence of cannibalism Torquay Museum

It was put into storage in the museum and "rediscovered" in December 2008.

It was found as part of a cataloguing programme, which has been examining about 15,000 animal bones excavated from the cavern that had been housed in the museum's store.

The museum's researchers found the butchered bone in June, and, working with the University of Oxford's School of Archaeology and Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, identified it as a fragment of human arm bone.

It was then radiocarbon dated to 8,185 years BP [Before Present, an archaeological term meaning before 1950].

'Ritual burial'

Tom Higham, from the radiocarbon unit, said: "The bone was particularly well preserved and the result is seen as very reliable."

Dr Rick Schulting, of the University of Oxford's School of Archaeology, said: "Finds like this highlight the complexity of mortuary practices in the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), many thousands of years before the appearance of farming, which is more usually associated with complex funerary behaviour."

The museum said only one other site in Britain had yielded similar human remains with cut marks of this age - Gough's Cave at Cheddar Gorge.

"Some archaeologists have interpreted these marks as evidence of cannibalism, but ritual burial practice or dismemberment for transportation has not been ruled out," a museum spokesman said.

Archaeological digs there have unearthed a 37,000-year-old human jawbone and stone tools that were more than 40,000 years old. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/8188406.stm>

One of Aesop's fables may have been based on fact, scientists report.

In the tale, written more than 2,000 years ago, a crow uses stones to raise the water level in a pitcher so it can reach the liquid to quench its thirst.

Now a study published in Current Biology reveals that rooks, a relative of crows, do just the same when presented with a similar situation.

The team says the study shows rooks are innovative tool-users, even though they do not use tools in the wild.

Another paper, published in the journal Plos One, shows that New Caledonian crows - which like rooks, are a member of the corvid group, along with ravens, jackdaws, magpies and jays - can use three tools in succession to reach a treat.

Floating feast

The crow and the pitcher fable was used by Aesop to illustrate that necessity is the mother of invention. But until now, the morality tale was not thought to have a grounding in fact.

Nowadays, we've had so many startling findings that the rooks just don't surprise me that much any more. You almost expect them to do the cleverest thing Nathan Emery, QMUL

To investigate further, a team from the University of Cambridge and Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL) presented four captive rooks with a set-up analogous to the fable.

The birds were shown a clear tube containing a small amount of water. Floating upon it was an out-of-reach worm. And a pile of stones were positioned nearby.

Dr Nathan Emery, co-author of the paper, from QMUL, said: "The rooks have to put multiple stones in the tube until the worm floats to the top."

And the four birds did just that. Two, called Cook and Fry, raised the water-level enough to grab the floating feast the very first time that they were presented with the test, while Connelly and Monroe were successful on their second attempt.

Footage of the experiments shows the rooks first assessing the water level by peering at the tube from above and from the side, before picking up and dropping the stones into the water.

The birds were extremely accurate, using the exact number of stones needed to raise the worm to a height where they could reach it. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8181233.stm>

You might not think you know much about Malawian music, but chances are you have heard it, or at least musicians influenced by it.

African music in general first came to international attention in the 1950s with the popularity of "kwela" in the urban townships of Johannesburg.

Outside Malawi you never hear the words 'music' and 'Malawi' next to each other Kenny Gilmore

South Africa claims kwela for its own, but Kenny Gilmore, the director of a documentary that charts the history of Malawian music, says kwela was actually popularised in South Africa by Malawian musicians.

"The founding fathers of kwela kwela, a lot, not all of them, were Malawian, Malawi's never been that famous so nobody hears about them," he told the BBC World Service.

"Then they take a holiday down to South Africa, play some music, then, boom, the kwela kwela revolution [happens] and everybody thinks its South African."

Even a capella made famous by groups like Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and more contemporary styles like Afro-jazz, both owe much of their distinct style to Malawian musicians according to Mr Gilmore.

Melting pot

Malawi has nine tribal and linguistic groups, each possessing its own traditional dances and indigenous rhythms.

Traditional dance forms of basis for Malawi's music

"True African music all comes from a traditional dance somewhere... and Malawi has got unique dances with unique rhythms," he says.

He cites dances such as the Chewa's masked "Gule Wamkulu" (the big dance); the Ngoni's "Ingoma" war dance; the Beni military dance; and the healing "Vimbuza" spirit dance of the Tumbuka.

But sadly only a handful of these were recorded in the 1940s and 1950s.

Inspired by the late musical archivist Alan Lomax's famous journey to collect early blues recordings in the deep American South, for six weeks last year Mr Gilmore and his team travelled to villages across Malawi hoping to document and record some of this musical heritage, both past and present.

He hoped to record as much as possible of what is left of these traditions before the memories and the music are gone forever.

"Outside Malawi you never hear the words 'music' and 'Malawi' next to each other. I went to Cape Town record shops, nothing, London, nothing, America, New York, nothing.

These country boundaries actually mean nothing in cultural terms... we've got a unique musical melting pot Kenny Gilmore

"I'm on a mission to change it, I think the world needs to hear music and Malawi in the same sentence."

Using a portable studio, musicians from Malawi's most rural and remote areas were given the opportunity to record, promote and preserve their musical heritage.

What the team got was a mix of individual musicians, small groups and cultural dance troupes, some of it purely traditional, some of it more of a fusion of traditional with contemporary and jazz influences.

"Sometimes you get these places in the world when you get these really interesting melting pots of cultures," says Mr Gilmore.

"You have the Congolese influence just above Malawi, you've got the Zambian influence to the west, you've got Zimbabwe to the east and you've got South Africa to the south.

"These country boundaries actually mean nothing in cultural terms - so all these great influences come into Malawi, mixing - we've got a unique musical melting pot." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8185971.stm>

Shoppers are losing out when trying to get money back

A watchdog has called for more protection for shoppers who pay for goods in advance but lose their money when a business collapses.

One in 10 consumers who paid upfront during the last two years have not received their order, a poll of 16,010 people for Consumer Focus found.

Just under half of those did not get any money back, losing an average of £242 each, the group said.

In the UK, 24.5 million prepayment transactions are made each year.

Investigation

The watchdog decided to research pre-payments after the high-profile collapse of businesses such as Christmas hamper firm Farepak and wedding gift list operator Wrapit.

As with many things during a recession, it is the poorest that will be hit hardest Steve Brooker, Consumer Focus

Newlyweds without their presents were told they would receive little or no refund after Wrapit collapsed in August 2008.

Consumer Focus said that retailers and suppliers going bust was the main reason for consumers missing out on goods and refunds.

Top of the list of goods failing to arrive were electrical goods, books, music, clothing, furniture and non-package holidays.

"Consumers are losing out in the fight to reclaim money from bankrupt businesses," said Steve Brooker of Consumer Focus.

"The problem looks to worsen, given the dramatic rise in companies going under this year. As with many things during a recession, it is the poorest that will be hit hardest."

Card protection

Debit cards were used in 45% of pre-payment transactions and Mr Brooker said the protection for these people should be stepped up. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8187826.stm>

Some content is harder to charge for

In recent years, we have grown accustomed to the idea that news is free.

Distributors of free newspapers thrust their product upon you on the street, and much newspaper content is freely available online.

But Rupert Murdoch's latest move could mark a bold change.

The media tycoon has said his News Corp will charge online customers for news content across all its websites.

Alfonso Marone, analyst and partner at Value Partners Group summarises the problem: "Online advertising is not working, so [News Corp] is basically asking itself, 'What can we do'."

Business model

"The challenge with digital media is how to monetise it," says Mathew Horsman, an analyst at Mediatique. A new pricing model has to be developed, he explains.

Analysts cite the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal - which is owned by New Corp - as successful models.

In its recent earnings report, the Financial Times said it was seeking to rely less on advertising revenue - which has fallen significantly during the recession - and more on subscriptions.

But Douglas McCabe, an analyst at Enders, says these websites both fit "very firmly" in the business content category - not the general news model.

They provide specialist news and charge for premium content.

"Businesses [which tend to subscribe the the FT or Wall Street Journal] are used to digitally delivered newswires, they are familiar with paying for news," says Mr McCabe.

But for other types of news, this is not the case. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8187762.stm>

Picking his way past the ranks of riot police and the barricaded factory gates, it was Ssangyong's chief financial officer who came out to break the news to the waiting journalists.

"The 77-day strike is over," he said.

"Are you relieved?" I asked.

"It may have come a bit late," he replied, "but we're glad it has ended peacefully."

Medieval battle

At times over the past few weeks, the Ssangyong Motor plant has looked less like the venue of a labour dispute and more like the scene of medieval battle.

Police used helicopters to douse fires set by the workers

And a peaceful outcome was far from assured.

Hundreds of workers had holed themselves up in the company paint shop, a building packed with flammable material.

They were defending their position using giant homemade catapults, firebombs and, if needed, sticks and fists in hand-to-hand combat with the riot police.

The police, in turn, were quite literally trying to flush the strikers out with tear gas, dropping it by the gallon from helicopters hovering above the building.

So just how did it come to this and what does it tell us about the state of South Korea's labour relations?

In one sense Ssangyong's troubles are unique.

It is the smallest of South Korea's car makers, and it specialises in making gas-guzzling sports-utility vehicles, including a car often cruelly championed by reviewers for its ugliness, the Rodius.

Its niche did not make it best-placed to ride out the global recession.

Earlier this year Ssangyong's Chinese backer, the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp, gave up management control and it went into receivership.

Union militancy

The court-appointed managers insisted that for the company to survive they needed to lay off more than 2,500 staff, a third of the total workforce.

Parts of the labour movement really do need to change... but the government also needs to be more open Professor Park Young-bum Korea's Hansung University

And that is when the real trouble began.

Many workers did choose temporary redundancy, but 600 of those earmarked for the sack took to the barricades.

I spoke to one of them by telephone just before the strike ended.

"It is bad management and their bad decisions that have caused the problems, but only the workers who are facing the consequences," he said.

The management had attempted to reach a compromise, promising to guarantee 40% of the strikers' jobs in return for their surrender, but the union stuck to its demand for all jobs to be saved.

In the end, the deal they are reported to have accepted does not look all that different to the one on offer earlier.

Does South Korea have more militant unions than other developed economies?

National bargain

Surveys have shown that, among foreign investors, the country does have a reputation for union militancy which sometimes puts them off.

Nearly 100 people were injured in the clashes

The umbrella labour group involved in the Ssangyong dispute, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), is often singled out for blame.

"Parts of the labour movement really do need to change," Professor Park Young-bum, of Korea's Hansung University says.

"Too often they try to solve problems by using their physical strength, but the government also needs to be more open, they need a better dialogue with the unions."

Perhaps things are changing.

A "national bargain" of sorts was struck earlier this year as state-run firms and a number of large conglomerates agreed to sign up to a government-backed scheme to save jobs.

Managers took pay cuts and workers began job-sharing, or agreed to cuts in hours, in an effort to keep everyone on the payroll.

And a number of unions have severed their affiliation with the KCTU, saying it is too focused on political battles, including the union at the giant telecoms company, KT.

'Simple truth'

There will be no jobs or unions unless there are companies Federation of Korean Industries statement

But some observers point out that South Korea's trade union movement needs to be so strong because the welfare system is so weak compared with other wealthy economies.

Jobs, the argument goes, are worth fighting for.

But few people believe the scenes at Ssangyong over the past few weeks have been in anyone's interest, least of all the thousands of workers who were not facing the sack and wanted to get the production lines running again.

The dispute, the company says, has cost it more than $250m (£150m), and its future was already far from assured.

"There will be no jobs or unions unless there are companies," the Federation of Korean Industries said in a statement this week.

"Labour unions need to understand this simple truth." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8188767.stm>

Alvaro Uribe (L) and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva held two hours of talks

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has received tacit support from Brazil for his plans to allow US troops to use Colombian military bases.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said it considered the agreement to be a sovereign Colombian matter.

Peru also expressed support, while Chile and Paraguay said the accord was a matter for Colombia. Ecuador, Bolivia and Uruguay expressed disapproval.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has cut ties with Colombia over the plan.

Mr Chavez has said he fears the move amounts to preparation for an invasion of his country by US forces.

President Uribe has visited several of his South American neighbours over the past three days in a bid to calm fears over his decision to open seven military bases to US forces.

We reiterated the agreement with the United States is something naturally for Colombia's sovereignty Celso Amorim Brazilian Foreign Minister Chavez fumes at Colombia

Washington wants to use Colombia as a regional hub for operations to counter drug-trafficking and terrorism.

The US has been forced to look for a new base for such operations after Ecuador refused to renew the lease on its Manta base, which the US military was using.

"We reiterated that the agreement with the United States, which is limited to Colombian territory, is something naturally for Colombia's sovereignty," Brazil's foreign minister said after Thursday's talks.

But during his two-hour meeting with Mr Uribe, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the matter could have been handled more transparently, according to Brazilian media. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8188915.stm>

A virtual reality exhibit is giving visitors the extreme ranges of sight and hearing that many animals have.

The so-called "immersive" exhibit shows what it might be like to see with birds' ultraviolet vision or hear with whales' ultra-low frequency hearing.

The researchers say the project aims to demonstrate for the public all the sensing ranges animals experience that are described in scientific literature.

The exhibit is on display at the annual Siggraph conference in New Orleans, US.

The light that humans can see and sounds they can hear are just a small sliver of the total range of those experienced by animals.

Many creatures can both make and perceive sounds at higher and lower ranges than we can hear - dogs' perception of ultrasound is a well-known example.

Several animal species are known to be able to perceive light at extreme ranges; birds can see ultraviolet light and their plumage is often highly reflective in this range.

We hope this will generate greater interest in what's out there in one's own back yard Carol LaFayette Texas A&M University

Predators such as rattlesnakes, on the other hand, are sensitive to infrared light, seeing the "heat" given off by their prey.

Carol LaFayette of Texas A&M University's visualisation department and her team wanted to make those senses available to the public.

"If you were walking through the woods and you had the ability to see in ultraviolet, for instance, things like birds or fungi might stand out in very colourful ways," she told BBC News.

"These species aren't very exotic, they're all over the place.

"There is a wealth of information out there in scientific research that is difficult to access and present. Our project makes these fascinating stories accessible to a wider range of people."

The team consulted a number of researchers, gathering together a candidate list of species and even some infra- and ultrasound recordings of animals in the wild. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8188070.stm>

Nitrates seem to be the key ingredient in beetroot

Drinking beetroot juice boosts stamina and could help people exercise for up to 16% longer, a UK study suggests.

A University of Exeter team found nitrate contained in the vegetable leads to a reduction in oxygen uptake - making exercise less tiring.

The small Journal of Applied Physiology study suggests the effect is greater than that which can be achieved by regular training.

Beetroot juice has previously been shown to reduce blood pressure.

We were amazed by the effects of beetroot juice Professor Andy Jones University of Exeter

The researchers believe their findings could help people with cardiovascular, respiratory or metabolic diseases - and endurance athletes.

They focused on eight men aged 19-38, who were given 500ml per day of organic beetroot juice for six consecutive days before completing a series of tests, involving cycling on an exercise bike.

On another occasion, they were given a placebo of blackcurrant cordial for six consecutive days before completing the same cycling tests.

After drinking beetroot juice the group was able to cycle for an average of 11.25 minutes - 92 seconds longer than when they were given the placebo.

This would translate into an approximate 2% reduction in the time taken to cover a set distance.

The group that had consumed the beetroot juice also had lower resting blood pressure. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8186947.stm>

The figures were better than feared, but still depressing for those affected

The US economy lost 247,000 jobs in July, far less than analysts had expected, official figures show.

With fewer workers being laid off, the unemployment rate fell to 9.4%, down from 9.5% in the previous month, the first drop since April 2008.

The unexpected drop is likely to fuel hopes that the economic recovery is gaining ground.

Since the recession began in December 2007, about 6.7 million jobs have been lost, the Labor Department said.

Revisions

Analysts had expected non-farm payrolls to drop by 320,000 in July and the unemployment rate to rise to 9.6%.

CASE STUDY Caroline Hepker, BBC business correspondent, New York As the US recession enters its 20th month, the grand old library in New York is offering help for the growing numbers of Americans out of work. Debra Edwards says the facilities at the library have been helpful in her job search, but she has not yet found the office job she wants. Rodneyse Bichotte describes herself as a "go-getter". She was laid off from banking giant JP Morgan Chase and has been out of work for a year: "The toughest part is competing with everybody else. When I look into different industries, like media or a non-profit, they look at my resume and see financial services. I have to point out how [my skills] are be transferable." Ms Bichotte is worried about the summer lull when employers go on holiday but she is confident of finding work. But most economists and even US Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, do not expect unemployment to peak until the second half of 2010.

Job losses were spread across all sectors, though just 52,000 jobs were lost in manufacturing, the first time since September that manufacturing losses were less than 100,000.

Jobs continued to be added in the education and health services, with 17,000 more posts for the sector during the month.

The construction industry saw 76,000 fewer jobs for July, though the drop was less than predicted.

Analysts attributed the lower rate of contraction to the government's stimulus package, which helped boost infrastructure schemes.

Revised data also showed fewer job were lost in June and May than had been thought. Employers cut 303,000 positions in May, less than the 322,000 previously estimated. And in June 443,000 jobs were cut, revised from an earlier figure of 467,000.

"Because layoffs in auto manufacturing already had been so large, fewer workers than usual were laid off for seasonal shutdowns in July," Labor Commissioner Keith Hall said.

The average working week rose to 33.1 hours in July from June's level of 33 hrs. In the manufacturing sector, the average working week climbed to 39.8 hours from 39.5 hours in the month before.

The month saw average hourly earnings rise to $18.56 from $18.53. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8189506.stm>

Debunking a YouTube hit

This seven-and-a-half minute video "Muslim Demographics" uses slick graphics, punctuated with dramatic music, to make some surprising claims, asserting that much of Europe will be majority Muslim in just a few decades. It says that in the past two decades, 90% of all population growth in Europe has been Muslim immigration.

FIND OUT MORE... More or Less is on BBC Radio 4 on Fridays at 1330 BST Listen to the programme here

In France, it says 30% of those aged 20 and younger are Muslim, with the birth rate for Muslim families massively exceeding that across all families. It says France will be an Islamic Republic within 39 years.

In the UK it says the Muslim population has risen 30-fold since the beginning of the 1980s.

But are any of the video's statistics true?

Of the video's claims that 90% of Europe's population growth since 1990 is due Islamic immigration, only a fragment is true. Immigration is the main driver of population growth according to EU statistics and in some exceptional years, 90% of population growth has been down to net inward migration.

But that includes all immigrants coming into the EU, not just Muslims.

It is the claims made about individual countries that are most striking. The video says that a typical French family has 1.8 children but that French Muslim families have 8.1 children.

MUSLIM DEMOGRAPHICS VIDEO Watched 10 million times Authorship unknown Posted by inactive account 'friendofmuslim' How we check the figures

No source is given for this information and the French government doesn't collect statistics by religion. So it is impossible to say what the precise fertility rates among different religious groups in France are.

But no country on earth has such a high fertility rate and in Algeria and Morocco, the two nations which send the largest numbers of Muslim immigrants to France, the fertility rate is 2.38, according to the UN's 2008 figures.

In the Netherlands, according to the video, half of all newborns are Muslim, and in 15 years half the population will be Muslim.

But the Dutch office of statistics estimates that Muslims make up only 5% of the population. For Dutch Muslim women to produce half the nation's babies, they would have to be giving birth at at least 14 times the rate of their non-Muslim neighbours.

The Muslim population of Europe has risen, but not as fast as alleged

Is 25% of the Belgian population Muslim, as the video asserts? No. The Belgian office of statistics points to a 2008 study which suggests the real figure is just 6%. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8189231.stm>

Some scientists favour a genetically modified solution

The world's food production needs to double by 2050 to feed the world's growing population.

But over this period, climate change, reduced access to water and changing land use are likely to make growing crops harder rather than easier.

Scientists are trying to find new ways of using fewer resources to produce more food.

Dr Chris Atkinson, head of science at East Malling Research in Kent, UK, said that in the next few years the UK would not be able to rely on imports of cheap food.

"A number of places where the UK sources food, like southern Spain, Greece and Italy, are going to find it very difficult in the next 50 years to continue to produce the levels of food they currently do," he said.

"That's in part due to the predictions of the scarcity of water in those parts of Europe."

The work at East Malling Research has focused on refining traditional agricultural techniques. But Dr Atkinson believes that GM technology will eventually be needed to produce enough food to feed the world.

"The concept of using tools like GM to improve water use efficiency are a reality. It is a matter of whether people want to accept that technology," he explained.

Currently, many people refuse to accept the technology - particularly in Europe, where it is effectively banned.

Professor Bob Watson, chief scientist at the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), believes that food production has to be doubled over the next fifty years.

That can only be done by developing all relevant technologies - including GM.

"We need science and technology to fund ways to double food production over the next 50 years in a way that is environmentally sound," he said.

Professor Watson said there were a number of key issues which needed to be tackled.

One of the most important was how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farming, such as methane from rice production and nitrogen oxide from use of fertilisers.

He added that thought also needed to be given to how agricultural systems should be adapted to a changing climate.

The government's chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, has set up a food strategy task force to answer these very questions.

He has also commissioned a "foresight study" into food and farming, due out later this year.

BBC News understands it will highlight concerns that the UK's agricultural research has been cut back by 70% since the 1980s. Professor Ian Crute, the former director of Rothamsted Research, is among those involved in producing the report.

"Over the last 20 years or so, we have been extremely complacent. We have really eroded our capability in research and development focused on agriculture and food," he said.

"Having wound it down over the last 20 years, we have to really begin to wind it back up again. We have to invest in skills, our research and development.

"If we are to get this increase in efficiency we just have to make these investments. I think it is quite urgent." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8192628.stm>

Opium trafficking provides the Taliban with much of its income

The US has put 50 Afghans suspected to be drug traffickers with Taliban links on a list of people to be "captured or killed", the New York Times reports.

Two American generals have told the US Congress that the policy is legal under the military's rules of engagement and international law, the paper says.

In a report, yet to be released, it was described as a key strategy to disrupt the flow of drug money to the Taliban.

The move is a major shift in America's counter-narcotics drive in Afghanistan.

In interviews with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is due to release the report later this week, two American generals serving in Afghanistan said that major traffickers with proven links to the insurgency have been put on the "joint integrated prioritised target list", the New York Times reported.

That means they have been given the same target status as insurgent leaders, and can be captured or killed at any time.

It quoted one of the generals as telling the committee: "We have a list of 367 'kill or capture' targets, including 50 nexus targets who link drugs and the insurgency."

The generals were not identified in the Senate report, the paper said.

Poppy destruction

For many years, US policy in Afghanistan had focused on destroying poppy crops.

But in March Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy to the region, said that US efforts to eradicate opium poppy crops in Afghanistan have been "wasteful and ineffective".

He said efforts to eradicate poppy cultivation had failed to make an impact on the Taliban insurgents' ability to raise money from the drugs trade.

Mobile phones get cyborg vision

New Google 'puts Bing in shade'

Brazil TV host 'ordered killings'

Cleaner Seine hosts salmon again

'Alien scene' of tadpoles' feast

Hunt on for 'hijacked cargo ship'

'Facebook Lite' gets public debut

Fed says worst of recession over

Judge bans Microsoft Word sales

France and Germany exit recession

'Tipping point' for pension plans