Global Economics-19

One of the youngest detainees held at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay will sue the United States for compensation, his lawyers say.

Mohammed Jawad was released and arrived in his native Afghanistan earlier this week. His lawyers say he was 12 at the time of his detention in 2002.

Mr Jawad had been accused of injuring two US soldiers and their interpreter by throwing a grenade at their vehicle.

Much of the case against him had been ruled inadmissible by a US military judge in 2008.

Mr Jawad's release was ordered last month by US District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle, who described the US government's case against him as "an outrage" that was "riddled with holes".

Tough cure for China web addicts

For patients at Beijing's Youth Psychology Development Centre, the day begins with the loud blast of a whistle at about 0600.

They roll out of bed and quickly change into military fatigues before lining up in the corridor, ready to start the day's activities.

The mostly male youngsters at this centre all have the same problem - they are addicted to the internet.

And through a tough programme of physical exercise, medication and counselling, this is where they hope to be cured.

There has been a lot of interest in these boot camps over recent weeks after two teenagers were beaten up at two separate camps in China. One died, the other was seriously injured. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8219768.stm>

Tech Know: Programming, meet music

It might just be the most conceptually complex way of making music that modern man has yet devised.

But that is the challenge of live coding - the process of writing computer code, in real time, to compose and play music or design animations.

"It's not just a passive process, not just someone creating sounds, which is the problem with electronic music - because people don't really see what it is that the musicians are doing," said Dave Griffiths.

Dave is a live coder and a performer in a night of live coding held in a south London pub, organised by the collective Toplap.

"Live coding brings the audience closer; they can see that you're making something in front of them."

The furious coding is also projected on a screen for the audience, making the programming as much - or more - of the performance as the music it codes for. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8221235.stm>

Japan jobless rate hits new high

Japan's jobless rate hit a record 5.7% in July and consumer prices fell at a record pace, figures released days before a general election have shown.

Companies are continuing to lay off workers even though the economy has returned to growth after the most bruising recession for decades.

Opinion polls show that the governing Liberal Democratic Party faces defeat in the election.

Toyota pulls plug on US factory

Toyota is pulling out of a production plant in the US it jointly owns with General Motors (GM), the first time it has abandoned a factory.

The world's largest carmaker will stop production at the Fremont, California-based New United Motor Manufacturing plant in March 2010.

Toyota said: "Over the mid to long-term, it just would not be economically viable to continue production."

"This is most unfortunate and we deeply regret having to take this action," the carmaker said.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said: "Today is a sad day in the history of Fremont as California joins the ranks of states adversely affected by the worldwide collapse in demand for automobiles."

Earlier this week, Toyota announced plans to suspend production for more than a year at one of its plants in Japan - another first for the company.

It also confirmed it was considering suspending one of its production lines at Burnaston in Derbyshire in the UK, but said that no decision had been taken.

Online psychotherapy on NHS urged

The NHS should offer online psychological counselling for people with depression, a leading mental health expert says.

A Lancet study of online cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) showed it more than doubled the chances of recovery.

Dr Tim Kendall, who led the drawing up of national guidelines on depression, called for online access to become part of the drive to widen access to CBT.

Much has been said in recent years about a reliance on antidepressants, with prescriptions for the drugs increasing almost two-fold in a decade, from 18,424,473 in 1998 to 35,960,500 last year.

The National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) advises that psychological therapies should be used over antidepressants in mild to moderate cases.

And even in people with severe depression, therapy such as CBT, which focuses on helping people to solve problems and overcome negative, unhelpful or false thought patterns, can help when combined with medication, it says.

In the latest study, comparing real-time online therapy sessions with normal GP care, those receiving online treatment were 2.4 times more likely to have recovered eight months later.

The results of the trial of 200 patients in Bristol, London and Warwickshire are comparable to the results seen with face-to-face therapy, said study leader Dr David Kessler.

During the online sessions, in which a time slot is pre-arranged, a therapist and the patient communicate by a form of 'instant messaging'.

It is thought some people benefit from writing down their thoughts rather than talking about them.

Dr Kessler believes the technique's use within the NHS could widen access to CBT.

The government announced a £170m investment in "talking therapies" back in 2007, after it was estimated that the NHS in England needed 10,000 extra therapists.

Dr Kendall, chair of the NICE guidelines on depression and anxiety and a psychiatrist in Sheffield, said NHS capacity for psychological therapy was improving fast but care was still patchy.

"What's really good about this study is it's finding different ways of doing therapies which might suit some people better - some people will find it a big relief not to have to face a therapist.

"One of the other big pluses is it could cater for people with different languages.

"We should be thinking about this as an alternative under the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme."

Dr Kessler, who is a researcher at Bristol University and a practising GP, agrees that online therapy should be available on the NHS.

"It's more convenient for some people and it's good for hard-to-reach people - whether because of geography or disability - and you could offer online CBT in other languages."

He added that online therapy would not be suitable for everyone and the NHS needed to offer a choice.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said trusts should provide funding for CBT services according to local need.

She said the psychological therapies programme had now rolled out to 35 primary care trusts and more than 800 CBT therapists are now in training.

"By 2011, a total of 3,600 such therapists will have been trained and people will find it much easier to get this kind of therapy than they do now." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8225567.stm>

File-sharers' TV tastes revealed

Millions of television viewers are now using illegal file-sharing services to access free and unauthorised copies of programmes, research has revealed.

US drama Heroes was the most popular illegal download this year, according to research firm Big Champagne.

Around 55 million people downloaded the show, whilst 51 million chose to access Lost, the second most popular show.

Visits to leading "torrent" sites, which index video and music files, have also nearly doubled in the last year.

The proportion of file-sharing involving films and television rather than music is continuing to rise, the research shows.

"Millions of television viewers now access free, unauthorised versions of favourite shows at least some of the time," says Eric Garland the chief executive of Big Champagne.

Spotify app approved for iPhone

Apple has approved the Spotify iPhone application, allowing users to stream music to their handsets.

The company submitted the application to Apple's iTunes App Store for its approval in July.

The application will be free, but will require the user to have a premium Spotify subscription, which costs £10.

The Swedish music streaming service is looked on as a rival to Apple's iTunes store because of its comprehensive, free library of millions of songs.

Apple currently dominates the digital music market, which led many to speculate that the app may not be approved.

However, many in the music also industry regard Spotfiy as an alternative, and a credible business model for an industry which has had difficulty adapting to the online world.

"We're not surprised but we're thrilled," founder Daniel Ek told BBC News. "We had a great dialogue with Apple from day one."

The application is designed to search for new music and will allow users to temporarily store playlists on their phone for use when there is no connection. It will also allow users to stream playlists.

The premium service, which currently costs £9.99 a month, allows users to run Spotify on their computers without adverts.

Mr Ek told BBC News that he was confident the app would bring a big surge in premium subscribers.

"We're scaling up the systems because response has been tremendous even before the app is available," he said.

The service, which launched last year, now has more than two million users in the UK, and more than six million across Europe.

It has not yet launched in the United States but says it intends to do so by the end of the year.

The company has already demonstrated an application for mobile phones running Google's Android software, though that has not been made available to the public. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8225731.stm>

Analogue appeal in a digital age

There was a time before the advent of digital technology when, if you wanted instant gratification photographically, you turned to your trusty Polaroid camera.

Its cameras were best-sellers, and in 1974 an estimated one billion "Polaroids" were taken.

But when digital photography took off, Polaroid saw its sales fall. In 2008, they decided to stop making instant film altogether.

In the cavernous rooms of one former film factory in the Dutch town of Enschede, giant assembly machines now lie dormant.

Old parts and packaging are piled high, their Polaroid rainbow logos slowly disappearing beneath layers of dust.

Talking excitedly, they diagnose problems and swap parts, and after several hours the machine comes to life, noisily injecting chemicals into small paper sachets.

Watching them is Austrian entrepreneur Florian Kaps, a director of The Impossible Project.

"It's all about reinventing and restarting the production of instant film," he said, "creating a new material to exactly meet the demands of the modern photographer that loves analogue instant photography."

The Impossible Project began last year at the closing ceremony for the old factory.

Single molecule's stunning image

The detailed chemical structure of a single molecule has been imaged for the first time, say researchers.

The physical shape of single carbon nanotubes has been outlined before, using similar techniques - but the new method even shows up chemical bonds.

Understanding molecular structure on this scale could help in the design of many things on the molecular scale, particularly electronics or even drugs.

US Afghan 'row' worries Ashdown

A senior British diplomat has said an "explosive" meeting between the US special envoy to Afghanistan and the country's president is very worrying.

US special envoy Richard Holbrooke is believed to have complained about the use of fraud in last week's election.

But Lord Ashdown, a former special envoy to Bosnia who was put forward as special envoy to Afghanistan, said foreign interference was "unhelpful".

Lord Ashdown told the BBC: "I think if there are doubts about corruption in the election, etc, it would be far better, at least in the first instance, to let the Afghan procedures with UN support run their course before jumping to conclusions."

Lord Ashdown added that undermining the election could have disastrous consequences.

"If it is the case that the Americans by some form or another have declared these elections illegitimate as it were, have undermined the legitimacy of the electoral process, then our capacity to be able to win back the support of the Pashtun tribes from the Taliban is lessened.

Mr Holbrooke is believed to have complained about the use of fraud in last week's election by some members of the president's campaign team - as well as by other candidates.

Sources report that Mr Karzai reacted very angrily to the accusations, although a spokesman for the presidential palace has denied the account of the conversation.

A spokeswoman for the US embassy in Kabul denied there had been any shouting or that Mr Holbrooke had stormed out.

There have been growing doubts over the legitimacy of the Afghan elections following reports of fraud and corruption.

An investigation by the BBC found evidence that thousands of voting cards have been offered for sale and thousands of dollars have been offered in bribes to buy votes.

There have also been concerns over low voter turnout after was revealed that in one region of about 55,000 voters, only 150 people cast their ballots.

The low turnout triggered particular controversy as it follows hard on the bloodiest month so far for British soldiers in Afghanistan, who are said to be fighting in part to secure democracy for the country.

Tough task faces new army chief

At midday General Sir Richard Dannatt will hand over his post as professional head of the British army, or Chief of the General Staff, to General Sir David Richards.

His appointment comes at one of the most testing times for the west's mission in Afghanistan, amid increasing public scepticism over whether the sacrifices being made in Helmand are worth it.

Providing the necessary military leadership will be no easy task, while the new chief of the general staff will face leadership challenges on many other fronts, too.

He will not only be fighting a growing insurgency in southern Afghanistan, but also battling for resources for the Army back in Whitehall, at a time of increasing financial strain and competition amid all three services for future spending.

The man he takes over from, General Sir Richard Dannatt, often found himself at odds with ministers, and was seen by some as too outspoken on issues ranging from soldiers' pay and accommodation to the number of British helicopters in Helmand.

Gen Dannatt, who retires after 40 years in the Army, is due to take up the post of chairman of the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, as well as becoming constable of the Tower of London.

General Sir David Richards is seen as a good communicator who is also politically astute, and perhaps more likely to fight his battles behind closed doors.

He has extensive operational experience in East Timor, Sierra Leone, and - crucially - first-hand knowledge of the challenges in Afghanistan gained as commander of Nato coalition forces there between 2006 and 2007, another key period in the battle against the insurgency.

Gen Richards, 57, has called himself "a seat-of-the-pants soldier", and has said that during his time in Afghanistan, the people and the country "entered my bloodstream".

His tour of duty there earned him an operational KCB - a knighthood - while his mission in Sierra Leone in 2000 - during which he persuaded Tony Blair and Robin Cook to allow him to return and run a bigger intervention to finish off the job successfully - saw him awarded a DSO for his leadership and 'moral courage', as well as a CBE for the operation he commanded in East Timor in 1999.

As well as trying to ensure the right resources for Britain's part in the multi-national effort in Afghanistan, Gen Richards will also have to focus on consultations in Whitehall ahead of the forthcoming strategic defence review.

The review will bring to a head difficult decisions that must be faced by all three services on equipment, capabilities and priorities for the UK's Armed Forces.

However, the long-running campaign that the new professional head of the British Army inherits in Afghanistan is likely to provide some of the greatest of his immediate challenges. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8225884.stm>

Corruption undermines Iraqi security

There was the businessman who says he bribes police checkpoints to get his trucks through without a time-consuming search.

It's telling how easy it is to find these and many similar allegations of corruption involving Iraq's US and British-trained police and army.

But after Iraqi forces failed to prevent last week's devastating truck bombings in central Baghdad, in which at least 100 people died, their shortcomings are under mounting scrutiny.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari says the security forces are partly responsible for allowing the worst attack to happen outside his ministry.

Iraqis will tell you that bribes and backhanders are just part and parcel of daily life, especially when they have to deal with any official body.

Need a passport? You can pay the official $20 (£12) and wait up to two months. But you can also get one in just two or three days, if you can afford $250 or $300.

You could argue these practices smooth things out a little, making a hard life in war-torn Iraq just a bit easier.

But there's also plenty of evidence they are undermining the effectiveness of security measures in Baghdad and other cities.

Businessman Ahmed often has to transport large quantities of equipment and materials around Iraq.

It means his trucks going through many checkpoints. Trucks are supposed to get extra attention - because of their frequent use in large-scale suicide bombings.

"The police let the trucks go without even searching them. And this is common all over the country, not just in Baghdad."

Iraq's state television channel has broadcast what it said was a confession by one of the organisers of the 19 August bombings, who spoke of paying $10,000 to get a truck laden with explosives into the centre of the capital.

Some doubt this confession. Investigations continue. But insurgents are known to have used this tactic many times before to bypass security checks.

And 11 security personnel have so far been arrested in connection with last week's attacks.

It doesn't happen here, police insisted, when we filmed a checkpoint in Baghdad.

But with the microphones off, they admitted the problem was endemic. They said one of their own commanders had been charged with regularly taking bribes.

The BBC also heard several accounts of people paying thousands of dollars to get relatives released from prison.

The Americans have now taken a back seat, after pulling out of Iraq's towns and cities two months ago. They admit some problems but defend the new police and army units they have built up.

Last week's attacks were "a total system failure" by the Iraqi security forces, says Lt Gen Frank Helmick, who oversees the continuing US training effort.

But he says Iraq is still seeing "the lowest level of violence since we started keeping the statistics" and its security forces are playing their part.

Curbs on nuclear scientist lifted

A court in Pakistan has lifted the final restrictions on controversial nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, allowing him total freedom of movement.

Dr Khan, whose work helped Pakistan become a nuclear state, spent years under house arrest after he admitted selling off nuclear weapons secrets.

In February 2009 most restrictions on him were lifted, but he still had to notify authorities of his movements.

Dr Khan confessed to transferring nuclear weapons technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran in 2004 but was later pardoned by former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

He has since said that the charges against him were false and that his confession was "forced".

The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad says that despite his confession and detention, Dr Khan remains very popular among many Pakistanis who regard him as a national hero.

But the "father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb" was placed under house arrest and not allowed to meet anyone.

This included US and IAEA experts who wanted to investigate the extent of his proliferation activities, our correspondent says.

More parents pay for appeals help

A growing number of parents in England and Wales are paying for legal advice to get children into their preferred state school, the BBC has learned.

Nearly all the legal firms contacted by the BBC said they had been inundated with requests for admissions appeal advice in recent months.

Charities said it was another example of more affluent parents gaining an unfair advantage over poorer families.

Matt Richards, of the School Appeals Services, advises families on the process and, in some cases, represents them before the appeal panel.

He said he has worked on appeals for about 250 families this year, which was a "significant increase in business".

He put the rise down to parents who could no longer afford private education but were prepared to pay for advice which might improve the chances of getting their children into the preferred state school.

However, Councillor Les Lawrence, of the Local Government Association, questioned the benefit of these services.

"With all due respect to the legal profession, there is nothing additional that they bring to the process," he said.

"And I just think that without being perhaps too provocative, there may be one or two within the legal profession that see this as an additional way of earning some extra money in a difficult financial climate."

An initial meeting with a private firm to discuss an appeal can cost more than £80.

Beyond that, some consultants and legal firms charge a flat fee of about £400 to guide families through making representations at an appeal.

Employing a solicitor throughout the entire process, including appearing before the panel, can cost as much as £2,000.

Kate Green, of Child Poverty Action Group, said it would ultimately mean better schools and better academic results for the well-off.

"Here's one more cost that will exclude some low-income families and advantage better-off families," she said.

Ron Burrows was among the growing number to decide help was needed to get his grandson into the right school.

"And both my wife and myself had heard so many horror stories as to what actually goes on at these appeals ...and if by spending money your chances are greater, you do it without thinking."

The appeal was successful and his grandson, Toby Andrew, was given a place at the school he wanted to attend.

Iceland to pay back Icesave cash

The Icelandic parliament has voted in favour of repaying more than $5bn (£3bn) to the governments of the UK and the Netherlands.

The so-called Icesave bill will reimburse funds paid by the governments to compensate those who lost money in the Icelandic online bank Icesave.

About 400,000 savers lost their money when its owner Landsbanki collapsed last year.

Olympic task to get people online

The race is on to get as many people online as possible by 2012, Martha Lane Fox has told the BBC.

The newly-appointed Digital Champion has been charged by government with finding a way of getting the six million poorest Britons online.

Speaking to the BBC's Business Editor Robert Peston, Ms Lane Fox said she wanted a virtual race to sit alongside the 2012 Olympics.

"What I'd like to try and start with is a kind of challenge to the country to hook around the Olympics because that's something that's in our national psyche," she said.

"I quite like the idea of a sort of virtual race alongside all the real races. So, I want to kind of get this idea out there of how we try and create a completely wired and online community of people by the time Britain has the Olympics hosted here," she added.

Some 17 million Britons are currently not online, either out of choice or because they cannot afford internet connectivity.

Ms Lane Fox has indicated that she wants to concentrate on the six million poorest "nonliners" first.

"The only way I think we can do that is if all of us as individuals sit down and think okay, how can I bring someone on this journey with me?"

"So I'd like to kind of raise the challenge to the country about how we could create a team of volunteers that will build a big peer-to-peer network, training and mentoring.

"Get kids training grannies, get all of us kind of plugging into our local communities to try and pull the whole country along.

'Generous pensions' row reignites

Employers would have to contribute up to 35% of a salary into an employee's pension scheme to match a public sector pension, PricewaterhouseCoopers says.

The accountancy firm suggested that the "generosity" of pensions for workers such as civil servants and NHS staff could stop people moving jobs.

The trade union Unison, however, said public sector workers' pay compared poorly with the private sector.

Snail mail gets net speed boost

The company offers a service called Swiss Post Box to customers wanting to receive their physical letters over the internet.

This system was first developed by the Seattle-based company Earth Class Mail, which has its own subscribers around the world.

For 14 euros (£12) a month, letters are redirected to a secret location in Zurich where the envelopes are scanned and an image is e-mailed out to customers.

They can then decide whether letters should be opened and scanned by vetted personnel sworn to secrecy, or simply shredded.

Frank Marthaler, executive vice president of Swiss Post, said this enables customers to spend time reading only the letters that they want.

"You will get a higher relevance of mail you really get and you want to have because the others would be shredded and recycled," he explained.

His subscriber base started with small target groups: "Those are of course expats, but obviously also consultants working across Europe or even globally, who want to be online with their home." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/8224573.stm>

Murdoch attack on 'dominant' BBC

News Corporation's James Murdoch has said that a "dominant" BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK.

The chairman of the media giant in Europe, which owns the Times and Sun, also blamed the UK government for regulating the media "with relish".

"The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision," Mr Murdoch said.

Mr Murdoch said that organisations like the BBC, funded by the licence fee, as well as Channel 4 and Ofcom made it harder for other broadcasters to survive.

"The BBC is dominant," Mr Murdoch said. "Other organisations might rise and fall but the BBC's income is guaranteed and growing."

News Corporation, which owns Sky television, lost $3.4bn (£2bn) in the year to the end of June, which his father, News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch, said had been "the most difficult in recent history".

Other media organisations are also struggling as advertising revenues have dropped during the downturn.

Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, told the BBC's World Tonight that Mr Murdoch had underplayed the importance of Sky as a competitor.

"Sky continues to grow and get stronger and stronger all the time so this is not quite a set of minnows and a great big BBC," Sir Michael said.

General Motors expands in China

General Motors has signed up to a 2bn yuan ($293m; £180m) joint venture with the Chinese state-owned carmaker FAW to make light trucks and vans.

The vehicles will initially be sold in China under the FAW brand, but could in future be exported under the GM brand.

They will be produced at existing FAW facilities in the cities of Changchun and Harbin.

GM sold 818,442 vehicles in China in the first six months of 2009, compared with 1,094,561 in the whole of 2008.

"For us in China, this is an important complement to the rest of our portfolio," said Kevin Wale, managing director of GM's Chinese operations.

"We are well established in passenger vehicles and mini commercial vehicles and we haven't had a presence in the truck segment."

GM makes Buick, Chevrolet and Cadillac vehicles in a joint venture with Chinese manufacturer SAIC Motor Corp.

It also makes minivans, pick-up trucks and the Spark compact car in a venture with SAIC and Liuzhou Wuling Automobile.

GM has recently emerged from bankruptcy protection in the US and has seen its sales fall year-on-year in most of its Western markets, so China is a key area of growth. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8229353.stm>

Afghan election fraud probe grows

Election complaints officials in Afghanistan say they are looking into more than 560 major allegations of fraud from the 20 August vote.

Full preliminary results are due next week, but the final results will not be made official until major fraud allegations are investigated.

The latest partial results give President Hamid Karzai 46% of the votes compared to Abdullah Abdullah's 31.4%.

A candidate needs 50% of votes cast to avoid a second round run-off which, if needed, would be held in October.

The independent Electoral Complaints Commission said on Sunday that of more than 2,000 allegations of fraud and intimidation during voting and vote-counting, 567 had been deemed serious enough to affect the election's outcome, if proven. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8229221.stm>

Afghanistan 'centre stage' for PM

The sheer scale of the British deaths - 38 since the beginning of July - and the rows over possible helicopter shortages have brought the war centre stage at Westminster in a way it has not been for some time.

And the questions that are being asked by the British public are being felt in Downing Street.

So this is one of the reasons why Mr Brown is here sweating with the rest of us in the midday Helmand sun, talking to troops and examining military vehicles.

This is his fourth visit to Afghanistan in the last year, proof, he believes, of his commitment to the conflict and the work of British forces.

But since the prime minister was last here in April, public anxiety has grown over casualties and equipment and the uncertainties over the election. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8228621.stm>

Help for victims of Bangladesh river erosion

The United Nations says it has developed a plan to help the thousands of Bangladeshis who lose their homes every year because of river bank erosion.

Using satellite images, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says it can predict which areas will be destroyed by rivers shifting course, so that the affected people receive assistance.

Every year it is estimated that about 100,000 people are made homeless by the unstoppable force of the country's two largest rivers - the Brahmaputra and the Ganges (which are known in Bangladesh as the Jamuna and the Padma).

Their river banks are made of nothing more than clay and sand, so thousands of hectares of land are washed away each monsoon, when the rivers run fastest.

Usually the rivers' victims receive little help, and many are forced to migrate to the slums of the overcrowded capital, Dhaka

Elderly skin 'raises cancer risk'

Older people are more at risk of skin cancer and infection because their skin is unable to mobilise the immune system to defend itself, UK research suggests.

It contradicts previous thinking that defects in a type of immune cell called a T cell were responsible for waning immunity with age.

In fact, it is the inability of the skin to attract T cells to where they are needed that seems to be at fault.

Study leader, Professor Arne Akbar from University College London, said reduced immunity in older people is well known, but why and how it happens is not.

A number of volunteers - one group of 40-year-olds and one group aged over 70 - were injected with an antigen to stimulate an immune response from T cells.

As expected, the immune response in the older group was much less than that in the younger volunteers.

But when the researchers looked at the T cells there was nothing wrong with them.

What had declined in the older group was the ability of the skin to attract T cells - effectively the signals to direct them to the right place were missing. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8226129.stm>

Peruvians bury mass grave victims

Dozens of civilian victims of a 1984 massacre in Peru have been buried, 25 years after they were murdered during a bitter Maoist insurgency.

The burials followed a two-day funeral procession for some 90 victims recovered from a mass grave last year.

The killing of more than 120 men, women and children in the highland village of Putis was the worst massacre in two decades of bitter conflict.

The two-day procession passed through Ayacucho, the Andean region which was at the centre of the violence unleashed by the Mao-inspired Shining Path rebels who sought to overthrow the state.

The response was brutal repression, and the mass grave left at Putis is Peru's largest - 92 bodies were found but only 28 of them have been identified using DNA testing.

The funeral procession began on the sixth anniversary of Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Jose Coronel, who presided over the commission in Ayacucho, said there was still little sign of reconciliation over the massacre at Putis.

"There have been no steps forward in terms of justice because the armed forces refuse to give the names of the officers who were stationed at the military base here in 1984," he said.

Peru's Defence Minister, Rafael Rey, has said there's no way of getting the records.

But Peru's human rights ombudswoman, Beatriz Merino, has called this unacceptable and says the state has an obligation to see justice is done.

Arroyo sons buy luxury US homes after House election

Presidential son and Pampanga Rep. Juan Miguel â€œMikey" Arroyo has failed to declare in his Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Networth (SALN) for the last two years a $1.32 million or P63.7 million beachfront property in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, which he bought and then transferred to his wife Angela in 2006.

Data from the San Mateo County assessorâ€™s office show that Mikey transferred and registered the house under the name of his wife, Angela Arroyo Montenegro, in August 2006 in what is called an "interfamily transfer."

The house, located at 1655 Beach Park Blvd in Foster City in San Mateo County, is now up for sale, but does not appear in Mikeyâ€™s 2007 and 2008 SALN.

Under the California Family Code, community ownership of a property acquired during marriage may be transferred or "transmuted" to one spouse by formal agreement. But even if Mikey relinquished to his wife any right to the property, guidelines for the filing of SALNs in the Philippines require public officials to declare property owned by their spouses.

The SALNs of both Mikey and his brother, Camarines Sur Rep. Diosdado Ignacio "Dato" Arroyo, show them both acquiring houses in the US, not to mention local business interests, after winning seats in Congress. <http://www.gmanews.tv/story/171108/arroyo-sons-buy-luxury-us-homes-after-house-election>

The decline of Russia's oligarchs

If you look up the word "oligarch" in the dictionary, you will find it means a member of a small group holding power in a state.

Today, though, it usually refers to the super-rich Russians who made their fortunes in the sometimes barbaric business world of their country in the 1990s.

In some cases, they sought to convert their new financial clout into political influence.

They grew even richer as oil prices and the Moscow stock markets soared in the boom years which followed.

Then, 12 months ago, as the global financial crisis reached Russia, the oligarchs got a shock.

"They have taken the biggest hit because they had the most to lose," says Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Uralsib, a banking and investment company based in Moscow.

"The stock market in the second half of last year fell almost 75%, and we've seen that reflected in the Forbes list of billionaires et cetera," Mr Weafer says.

"Just looking at the wealth of these individuals, they've taken a huge hit - hundreds of billions of dollars have been wiped from the value they had in the middle of 2008."

There is no formal oligarchs' club or association - and the way individuals have fared has varied depending on where their money was invested.

But any list of wealthy Russian businessmen would be likely to include Roman Abramovich - most famous outside Russia as owner of Chelsea football club - aluminium magnate Oleg Deripaska and Boris Berezovsky, who has become an implacable opponent of the current Russian leadership. He now lives in Britain.

In June, Mr Deripaska found himself in a piece of political theatre on Russia's biggest stage: the national television news.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrived in the northern Russian town of Pikalyevo to deliver a public reprimand to Mr Deripaska and others with a stake in the town's main factory. Workers had not been getting their wages.

Viewers saw Mr Putin call Mr Deripaska forward. He ordered him to sign an agreement to solve the problem.

It looked like a teacher telling off a pupil - especially when Mr Putin asked for his pen back.

"It's a very Russian approach. Nobody in Russia was surprised," says Zoya Trunova, an editor at the BBC's Russian Service.

"Everyone thought, 'Well, that's a fair thing to do. What else would the prime minister be doing?' And then Deripaska looked very intimidated by that, but then he would do what he was told, but obviously the state feels that oligarchs are almost their own team of people so they can tell them what to do."

This shift in power did not just come with the economic crisis. Vladimir Putin seems to have decided, as soon as he first rose to political prominence ten years ago, to rein in the oligarchs.

"He's made it very clear that he expects the oligarchs to look after the workers, to help the government in terms of the stimulus package," says Chris Weafer. "And today I think it's very, very clear who's calling the shots, and it's not the oligarchs."

The oligarchs' global fame - or notoriety - has been built on tales of extravagance.

Stewart Lansley - a co-author of the book, Londongrad, about their lives in the British capital - says their reduced spending actually fuelled the downturn in the luxury goods market in Britain. Now, he says, they're returning.

"What's happened in the last couple of months is that the Russians have been creeping back. There's evidence already that they've started looking for bargains in a number of areas, they've been reappearing in jewellery shops, they've been reappearing buying Rolls Royces and top end cars."

The oligarchs have usually excelled at reading the Russian political situation. Jonathan Eyal, from the Royal United Services Institute in London, agrees that the government currently has a political advantage - but, he argues, that does not mean that the oligarchs are finished.

"The oligarchs have many opportunities of influencing Russian political life, partly because Russian political life is itself now quite brittle," Mr Eyal says.

"We have a double-headed leadership - on the one hand, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, on the other hand President Medvedev - and in that kind of a structure the oligarchs will always find a weak point, or will always be able to divide and rule."

The dictionary definition of oligarch doesn't refer to wealth. Russia's oligarchs have definitely lost part of theirs, and, as a result, they may also lose some of the "power they hold in the state".

Given their proven ability to survive and prosper in the toughest of times, they are not about to disappear.

Arduous life in Nepal's parched hills

Nestling on the side of a forested hill in western Nepal, the village of Bhattegaun is a collection of straw and thatched huts dotted between small fields of wheat and rice.

Farming is poor. There are no irrigation channels and the villagers rely on sporadic rainwater to feed their crops, which are drying and yellowing in the intense summer heat.

As South Asian leaders meet in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, to discuss the impact of climate change on the Himalayas, the people of Bhattegaun are living out the scenario likely to be high on the agenda.

Millions of people are dependent on the rainwater that comes from the annual monsoon and rivers which flow from the Himalayas .

But an Oxfam report released earlier this week has warned that poor harvests, water shortages and extreme temperatures - the consequences of climate change - will plunge millions of rural poor in Nepal into hunger. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8226049.stm>

Yen overshadows election optimism

Japanese shares fell on Monday after rises to the yen and big stock falls in China overshadowed earlier optimism at the general election result.

The victory of Yukio Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan had earlier seen the country's main share index, the Nikkei, hit an 11-month high.

However, the yen's rise and Chinese share declines saw the Nikkei end the day's trading down 0.4% to 10,493.

Against the greenback, the yen was up 1% to a seven-week high of 92.54 yen per dollar.

Analysts said the yen was being bought as a haven purchase following the share declines in Shanghai.

This in turn dragged down the stocks of Japan's main exporters, such as Honda, as a higher yen eats into their overseas earnings.

"The election probably had an impact for about the first 30 minutes of trade, when stocks jumped, but then the stronger yen and Shanghai pushed the market lower," said Koichi Ogawa, chief portfolio manager at Daiwa SB Investments.

"Exporters, such as carmakers and tech firms, are very sensitive to the higher yen and even though the market's pretty surely bottomed out, this could still have a bad impact."

Why Bolivian baroque rocks

With the Bible in one hand and a flute in the other, Jesuit missionaries played a unique role in bringing not only Roman Catholicism to South America but also baroque music.

And in the nearly 250 years since the Jesuits were expelled from the region, it seems the tradition of baroque is still thriving.

The musical legacy is tangible in the small town of San Ignacio de Moxos, located in the middle of the Amazon rainforest where the heat is sweltering, the roads muddy and the mosquitoes are huge.

The only way to arrive is by a road that would have been a familiar to the Jesuits, who began establishing their missions across parts of what is now modern-day Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia in the 17th Century.

Today, among the shoeless children sucking on tangerines, there are indigenous youngsters carrying violins, cellos and flutes.

This place was one of the very last Jesuit missions in South America, and home to thousands of local people. As well as religion, the Jesuits also taught European music and how to make instruments, such as the cello, harp and violin.

After the Spanish expelled the Jesuits in 1767, the indigenous population preserved the music and re-wrote the scores with lyrics in their own language.

Yet it was not until a few years ago that much of this music came to wider notice, when a cache of 10,000 baroque music scores were found in a number of mission churches. They have now been restored and archived by the local music school.

"Religion and music helped each other survive to the present day. The instruments, the dances survived thanks to the path opened up by the Jesuits; it is deeply embedded among the local indigenous people," explains Raquel Maldonado, director of the San Ignacio School of Music.

"Some of the Jesuits came with a deep knowledge of musical arts and others with a more popular knowledge. All of that musical influence started to flow... mixing with local languages, dances and music," Ms Maldonado adds.

Inspired by a Basque nun, the local indigenous population has now created a school. As well as schoolrooms, there is a concert hall built with murals depicting monks playing instruments and local people copying them.

"We teach and play the music that is still alive here, 'missional baroque' as we call it," says Edgar Vela, a very talented violinist and one of the school's teachers.

"Basically, European Baroque was taken by indigenous people, who then made it their own, and it is what now identifies us."

There is a natural, joyful allure to this native Bolivian baroque and the school's San Ignacio ensemble has become famous, travelling all over Latin America and Europe.

As Celsa Callau, a soprano and soloist at the ensemble explains, it was important for the music to "go native".

"If this music managed to survive it is because we are isolated, in the middle of the jungle," she says.

"Moxos has always been off the beaten track, so we were free of slavery, of the white people. That is why this music has been preserved and why it is still alive - and we will keep it alive."

The pride in their music is evident and spans the whole ensemble, whose members are all indigenous.

"What we play is music that has been kept in the dark for a long time... we are bringing that to back life, we are bringing the language of our ancestors back to this world," explains Jesus Nuni, a young cellist, while rehearsing a piece by the 17th Century Italian composer, Arcangelo Corelli.

In Bolivia, one of Latin America's poorest countries, the indigenous people were for centuries an under-class banished to the margins of society.

In recent years, however, they appear increasingly to be finding a voice, political as well as cultural.

"This [musical] project is not about trying to colonise the indigenous people... that is a thing of the past. Also, it is not about baroque... it is about giving importance to the local music, so the local people can identify with this music," says Raquel Maldonado. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8206836.stm>

Megrahi freed: Some answers

More and more is now emerging about the efforts made the British government to secure the transfer to Libya of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.

On 24 August, I pointed out that, although the decision to release Megrahi had been taken by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds (that government being in charge of judicial affairs in Scotland), there had been an earlier plan by London to get the prisoner back to Libya in another way - by using a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.

Evidence of the plan could be seen at that time in a leaked letter from a Foreign Office minister, Ivan Lewis, to the Scottish justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill.

Mr Lewis said: "I hope... you will now feel able to consider the Libyan application in accordance with the provisions of the prisoner transfer agreement."

Part of the explaining has now come to pass, not because the British government has suddenly revealed all, but because of more leaked government letters, published by the Sunday Times.

On 26 July 2007, the British justice secretary, Jack Straw, wrote to Mr MacAskill saying that he agreed that Megrahi should not be included in a prisoner exchange agreement then being negotiated with Libya. The device proposed was to make prisoners eligible only after a certain date.

However, on 19 December 2007, Mr Straw changed his mind. "In view of the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom," he wrote, Megrahi would now not be excluded.

Mr Straw himself has had to take a break from the holiday weekend in the UK to appear in front of the TV cameras to defend his decisions.

He admitted that Libya had insisted on a standard prisoner exchange deal, not excluding anyone, of a type negotiated by the UK with many other countries.

Mr Straw strongly denied however that his change of mind was connected to a commercial agreement that BP was trying to arrange with Libya over oil exploration.

Libya had blocked this while the prisoner transfer talks were going on, yet as soon as the transfer agreement was settled, obstacles in the way of the BP deal were suddenly removed.

"There was no deal," Mr Straw said. He further justified his position by pointing out that the Scottish government had the final word on any release, whether by transfer or on compassionate grounds.

In the event, of course, the Scottish decision to release Megrahi was taken on the compassionate ground that Mr MacAskill has explained - Megrahi is terminally ill with cancer.

Megrahi had played his own part by withdrawing his appeal against conviction. Any appeal holds up a transfer. As it happens there is also an outstanding appeal by the Scottish authorities against sentence and that would have had to have been settled first.

So the British Plan A was never activated. It is ironic perhaps that a Scottish nationalist government came to the rescue of a British government. If Megrahi had died in prison, Libya would no doubt have retaliated against the UK. Perhaps there would have not been a BP agreement.

In the meantime it is quite convenient from their point of view for the Libyans to argue that an understanding had been reached with the UK as it strengthens their standing domestically and abroad as a government able to get their prisoner back home.

The background to all this is that the US and UK have made great efforts to bring Libya in from the diplomatic and commercial cold over recent years.

Libya first agreed to pay compensation for Lockerbie and to hand over Megrahi and another suspect (who was acquitted).

Then, in December 2003, Libya agreed to end a covert nuclear weapons programme it had been caught red-handed by the Americans and British trying to develop.

Russia strengthens ties with Germany

Germany's September elections have focussed attention on the country's strategic energy partnership with Russia, but as international affairs writer William Horsley discusses, other countries are nervous about those unpredictable ties with Moscow.

Chancellor Angela Merkel had an important message for German voters and the outside world when she met Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev on 14 August in Sochi.

The message was that just one year after Russian forces seized two parts of the territory of its neighbour Georgia, the "strategic partnership" between Germany and Russia was back on track and getting stronger.

Mrs Merkel's message is popular at home and could help her get re-elected for another four years. But it troubles some of Germany's neighbours.

Germany has long called for a single foreign policy among European countries, for their common good.

Now it is accused of putting its own interests first, at the expense of nations in Eastern Europe which fear they might again fall under the shadow of a domineering Russia.

And both major German political parties - Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats led by Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier - make clear there is no turning back from a close embrace of Russia. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8229150.stm>

Hatoyama faces daunting economic task

Not many incoming prime ministers would envy the task facing Yukio Hatoyama, the man who's likely to inherit responsibility for Japan's deep economic crisis after yesterday's historic election.

After more than half a century of virtually uninterrupted rule by the Liberal Democratic Party, now it is the turn of the Democratic Party of Japan to try to find a cure for the country's chronic economic malaise.

Unemployment is at a record level of 5.7%. Consumer prices fell by 2.2% last month, raising fears of a new deflationary spiral, similar to the one which paralysed Japan for much of the 1990s.

Exports, the lifeblood of the Japanese economy, have collapsed - exports to the US were down by 39.5% year-on-year in July; to China down by 26.5%, to the European Union down by 45%.

So how will the new government get the country out of the mess? The Democratic Party says it will cancel unnecessary and costly infrastructure projects, slim down the country's bloated bureaucracy and invest in areas like environmental and medical technology, which party leaders say they have identified as the growth areas of the future.

But when I met Masao Watanabe, chairman of Japan Pure Chemicals, a small but highly specialised company that develops the chemicals used to coat materials in integrated circuits, he told me he wants the new government to adopt a cautious approach.

Too much change too fast is not what the country needs, he says. Like many Japanese entrepreneurs, he is nervous of what change can mean.

Most of Japan's economic activity is in the hands of men like Mr Watanabe, who run thousands of small and medium-size companies, many of them supplying the needs of the major multi-nationals like Hitachi, Toyota and Sony.

At the electronics giant Panasonic, they are investing heavily in environmental technology, using their know-how to develop what they call an eco-house, which eventually will be able to produce and consume all the energy it needs without contributing to the emission of carbon gases. This, they say, is the future.

So Japan is changing. But the change is already leaving thousands of victims in its wake.

Men who once had jobs for life - the "salarymen" whose companies provided for their every need - are now out of work, or on short-term contracts.

I met a 48-year-old former junior manager who lost his job after 18 years with the same company.

He would no give me his name, and he would not be photographed. He has not dared tell his parents or his neighbours that he has no job. Only his wife and son know.

Labourers who built the steel-and-glass high-rise buildings that dominate the Tokyo skyline are now destitute - thousands of them are living on the streets.

At one soup kitchen alone, I saw more than 300 men waiting patiently, sitting cross-legged on the ground, for a local charity to provide their one hot meal of the day: rice and meat, served in plastic bowls.

So the challenge now for the Democratic Party is both to revive the economy and find a way to provide basic welfare benefits for the homeless and unemployed.

Japan's national debt is already approaching 200% of GDP, the highest ratio in the world; borrowing more will not be easy.

The Democratic Party has never served in government before and has yet to spell out how exactly it intends to find the cash to do all the things it has promised to do.

eBay 'reaches deal to sell Skype'

eBay had said earlier this year that it planned to spin off Skype

Online auction site eBay is poised to say it has agreed to sell internet phone company Skype, reports say.

Skype is expected to be sold to a group of private investors, including Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen and private equity firms.

EBay has been trying to sell Skype for some time, and has said that Skype had "limited synergies" with it.

When eBay bought Skype for $2.6bn (£1.6bn) in October 2005, many analysts thought the price was too high.

For sale

The New York Times said that a price has not been named, but that eBay had been seeking about $2bn for Skype.

Earlier this year, eBay had said that it planned to spin off Skype and list its shares in the first half of 2010, an announcement many took as a signal that the firm was for sale.

Skype's software lets computer and mobile phone users talk to each other for free and make cut-price calls to mobiles and landlines.

Unlike traditional mobile calls, which are transmitted over a cellular network, Skype turns your voice into data and sends it over the internet.

Since being acquired, the number of registered Skype users has risen to 405 million from 53 million, though free user-to-user calls still dominate the service. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8231072.stm>

Meeting Pakistani prostitutes

Kaneez Fatima's story is typical of how young women end up in the business of prostitution in Pakistan.

Although they are legally outlawed, the number of sex workers in the country has increased over the past few years.

Growing unemployment and inflation and the resulting rise in poverty have led many down this road.

Increasingly, young women across the country are putting their bodies up for sale in the "flesh markets".

The daughter of a poor rural farmer from the Punjab province's sub-district of Chiniot, Kaneez Fatima's only advantage was that she was able to complete her school education.

Still in her teens, she was married off as is normally the case in Pakistan's rural heartland.

"Initially it worked fine, but then my husband went out of work," she told BBC Urdu.

"The people there convinced me to join the profession. The money was better than anything I could find and I was desperate."

"I started out as one of the girls working out of the dera [or den, as a brothel is called by locals]."

The girls, as she calls them, work out of it and are handled by a man or more often a woman known simply as "aunty".

"My first dera was in Mandi Bahauddin [a town in central Punjab], where they made me in-charge soon after I joined."

She says that she kept her profession a secret from her family, but her husband managed to find out.

She has continued in the business and has now graduated to supplying girls to brothels all over Punjab.

"I get a commission ranging from an average of 5,000 to 10,000 rupees ($60 to $120) per girl. The price varies according to age and beauty."

"While most are forced into the profession due to poverty, there are some who join voluntarily because they can make more money than in a 'normal' trade."

According to her, the normal rate for a girl for two to three hours ranges between 1,000 and 1,500 rupees ($12 to $18).

"Of course if a client wants to spend the entire night then the rate rises exponentially, depending on the girl's age and looks."

The girls only get a fraction of this money as most of it goes to the aunty, she says.

"The girl will get 300 rupees ($4) if she spends a few hours, and up to 2,000 rupees ($24) for the entire night."

Kaneez says the number of girls is rising by the day, and they are often brought in by relatives such as fathers, mothers, brother and even husbands.

"Some of the girls are so young that my heart refuses to agree, but what can one do?"

Nida is a pretty and innocent looking young woman of about 20 and has been a prostitute for six years.

"My first time was when I was 14 years old and I was brought here by my mother as she had to pay off a loan of 10,000 rupees.

Nida says that she has continued in the trade as her entire family is now dependent on her for their day-to-day survival.

"I don't want to be here... I have dreams about getting married and having children, but I have no choice."

She says she would leave the trade immediately if the government or some social organisation could ensure food, clothing and shelter for her parents and siblings.

"My husband was good for nothing, and I wanted my children to get the best of everything," she says.

Maria says she has worked all over northern Pakistan, specially in Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

She says her best days were in Islamabad where she was able to make up to 100,000 rupees ($1,200) a month plus tips.

"The people were always well behaved and did not mistreat me. The clients never identified themselves, but I could tell some were powerful and important men.

Maria says she eventually left because of the rising attacks on hotels, which were her main operating places.

"I am in Lahore now, and while things are not as lucrative, at least there is more security."

Kaneez Fatima says that there are so many horror stories in the profession that she could relate them for hours.

"The most common cases are where a client makes a perverse or strange demand and the girl refuses. They either beat her black and blue, or just kill her and tell us she has run away.

'Many girls' abused by boyfriends

A third of teenage girls suffer sexual abuse in a relationship and a quarter experience violence at the hands of their boyfriends, a survey suggests.

Nearly 90% of 1,400 girls aged 13 to 17 had been in intimate relationships, the NSPCC and University of Bristol found.

Of these, one in six said they had been pressured into sexual intercourse and one in 16 said they had been raped.

The government is developing guidance for schools on gender bullying but says it is "vital" parents advise children.

One in three of the teenage girls questioned said their boyfriends had tried to pressure them into unwanted sexual activity by using physical force or by bullying them.

A quarter of the girls interviewed for the survey had suffered physical violence, including being slapped, punched or beaten.

Only one in 17 boys reported having been pressured or forced into sexual activity but almost one in five had suffered physical violence in a relationship.

Professor David Berridge, from the University of Bristol, described the findings as "appalling".

"It was shocking to find that exploitation and violence in relationships starts so young," he said.

"This is a serious issue that must be given higher priority by policymakers and professionals."

Diane Sutton, head of NSPCC policy and public affairs, said: "Boys and girls are under immense peer pressure to behave in certain ways and this can lead to disrespectful and violent relationships, with girls often bearing the brunt.

"Parents and schools can perform a vital role in teaching them about loving and safe relationships, and what to do if they are suffering from violence or abuse."

The report recommends child protection professionals consider the cases of girls who are in relationships with older boyfriends, with three-quarters in this category saying they had been victims of abuse. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8230844.stm>

Samoa road change plea rejected

Protesters in the South Pacific nation of Samoa have lost a legal bid to stop a change in road rules that will force motorists to drive on the left.

The switch has led to demonstrations and sparked fears of chaos when the changes happen in a week's time.

The new rules have survived legal challenges in the Supreme Court, while large protests have failed to convince the government to back down.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele says that church bells will help to usher in the changes in the early morning in his quiet corner of the South Pacific.

"We don't have that many cars in Samoa and we do not have that many people in Samoa too," he said.

"I would envisage at 0550 we will have a kind of speech through the television and then exactly at six the call will go out, sirens and church bells will ring."

It wants to end the importation of expensive left-hand-drive cars, particularly big, thirsty American models.

Instead it is hoped that expatriate Samoans living in Australia and New Zealand will increasingly send used right-hand-drive vehicles home to their relatives.

It has been argued that smaller cars that are cheaper to run would boost the development of poorer parts of the country, which has a population of about 180,000 people.

They have insisted the new road rules will cause mayhem and could trigger a rash of accidents. The changes will coincide with a special two-day public holiday designed to keep the confusion to a minimum. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8230936.stm>

EU bans old-fashioned light bulbs

A European Union ban on the manufacture and import of 100-watt and frosted incandescent light bulbs, in use since the 19th century, has come into force.

They are being phased out to encourage the switch to more energy-efficient fluorescent or halogen lamps, which use up to 80% less electricity.

Critics say the new bulbs are gloomy, and can trigger headaches and rashes in people with light sensitive disorders.

The less powerful clear bulbs will be progressively banned until all traditional bulbs disappear from shops across Europe in 2012.

Some consumers have been stockpiling the old-style versions over concerns about the higher cost of the long-life bulbs, or for medical and sentimental reasons.

Several nations including Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada and the Philippines have also announced plans to phase out traditional bulbs. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8230961.stm>

Engineering Earth 'is feasible'

A UK Royal Society study has concluded that many engineering proposals to reduce the impact of climate change are "technically possible".

But they also stressed that the potential of geo-engineering should not divert governments away from their efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Suggestions range from having giant mirrors in space to erecting giant CO2 scrubbers that would "clean" the air.

Such engineering projects could either remove carbon dioxide or reflect the Sun's rays away from the planet.

Ambitious as these schemes seem, the report concluded that many of them potentially had merit, and research into them should be pursued.

The authors stated, however, that some of the technology was barely formed and there were "major uncertainties regarding its effectiveness, costs and environmental impacts".

One of the technologies considered "too risky" was pouring iron filings into the ocean to grow algae which, the authors said, could cause "substantial damage" to marine life and freshwater, estuary and coastal ecosystems. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8231387.stm>

How Gypsy gangs use child thieves

Across Europe thousands of Roma (Gypsy) children are being forced onto the streets to beg and steal, and law enforcement agencies are seemingly powerless to prevent it.

Cash machines in Madrid are a particular target for street crime. The cardholder is distracted at the crucial moment by one person, allowing a child to dive in, grab the money and run off.

Thirteen-year-old Daniela says she can make 300 euros (£260) from a single successful robbery without any risk of being punished.

"It's only the police that catch us. They take the money we have on us. They take us to the day centre, and the centre lets us go.

"I give [the money] to my mother so we can go to Romania to build a house. But I hide some of it for myself. I give her 150 euros, and I keep 150."

Madrid police say that 95% of children under 14 that they pick up stealing on the streets are Roma from Romania.

Because the age of criminal responsibility in Spain is 14, there is little they can do.

More than 1,000 Romanian Roma live in just one of the many camps that lie on the outskirts of Madrid.

The conditions are appalling - rats roam freely amid the rubbish, and there is no sanitation.

Every day children from the camp head out into the city to steal and beg, and many are beaten by their minders if they do not return with money.

Nowhere in Europe has there been more controversy over crime in the Roma community than in Italy, where the government recently declared a state of emergency following various high profile crimes blamed on the Roma.

In Milan in 2007, just after Romania entered the European Union, police noticed a surge in theft and pick-pocketing carried out by Roma children.

They launched a major investigation involving phone-tapping and surveillance, which revealed that a criminal gang was using the children to generate huge profits.

"In a month period, each kid earned about 12,000 euros (£10,500). Then, 12,000 euros times by 50 kids, and if we do the maths, we reached an astronomical amount of money," says Francesco Messina, who led the police operation.

Members of the gang were jailed for up to 14 years in prison for enslaving and exploiting the children, many of whom were discovered locked in a shed when police raided the camp.

The rescued children were taken into care, but the BBC's This World programme discovered two of the boys had gone back to the streets of Milan, and were stealing again. Even this huge police operation had not saved them from a life of crime.

The roots of the problem lie in Romania, where Roma have faced discrimination and hostility for generations.

The pop star Madonna commented on the problem during a concert in Bucharest last week, and was jeered by the audience.

Poverty among the Roma is widespread. In 2007, Unicef reported that up to 70% of households had no running water.

Many Roma end up leaving the country in search of a better life in the West. Some resort to begging and stealing.

In Milan, Italy, this resulted in a strong backlash. Some Roma camps have been bulldozed and there calls are heard for all Roma immigrants to be deported.

"The right wing says that Romany Gypsies are just people that exploit their children and women for stealing for begging and maybe there is a bit of a truth in this," says Donatella DeVito, who works for a charity that tries to help integrate the Roma into Italian society.

"But the real problem is that some of the Roma actually beg and steal because that's the only chance that they have for surviving."

While some crime is driven by poverty, a worrying amount is the result of child exploitation, organised by professional criminals.

Breliante is a powerful underworld figure in the Romanian city of Craiova, where many of the Roma criminals in Milan originated.

He told the BBC many of the fabulous villas in the city were built on the proceeds of crime committed all over the world.

Gang bosses traffic people, including children, abroad to beg and steal and get fat on the profits.

But even he believes the sheer scale of the crime has gone too far and will have serious repercussions.

"The thieving is no longer a national problem. It's happening on an international scale. Our children need to study, because if they carry on like this, if the new generations which grow up now continue in the same way, no-one will have us.

"Our country won't understand us any longer, the Western countries will chase us away."

Liviu Tipurita, who has made films about Roma and child trafficking for many years, has similar fears.

"My fear is that without immediate help the Gypsy child thieves I've encountered in my journey will grow up into hardened criminals," he said. "And the cycle of abuse and exploitation will spiral out of control." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8226580.stm>

Court hearing expat pensions case

A case that could affect the pensions of 520,000 Britons who have retired abroad is being heard in the European Court of Human Rights.

A group of 13 pensioners who have moved abroad want their UK state pensions to rise in line with inflation each year.

Inflation-proofing only applies to UK pensioners who live in the European Economic Area or in 15 other countries, but not some Commonwealth states.

Engineer error knocks out Gmail

Google has issued an apology after a "miscalculation" caused a blackout of its Gmail service, affecting the "majority" of its 150 million users.

The firm described Tuesday's two hour outage as a "big deal" and said it was investigating ways to ensure it did not happen again.

The disruption was caused by an error during "routine upgrades" to the company's web servers, it said.

"We know how many people rely on Gmail for personal and professional communications, and we take it very seriously when there's a problem with the service," said the firm's Ben Treynor in a blog post.

"Thus, right up front, I'd like to apologise to all of you - today's outage was a big deal, and we're treating it as such."

He said the problem occurred when engineers took some of Gmail's servers offline to perform routine upgrades.

"This isn't in itself a problem - we do this all the time, and Gmail's web interface runs in many locations and just sends traffic to other locations when one is offline," he said.

However, said Mr Treynor, engineers "slightly underestimated" the increased load put on other parts of the system during the upgrades, causing the "widespread outage" of its webmail.

Other ways of accessing the service - such as through desktop email programs - were unaffected, the firm said.

Google's last major technical problem happened in May, with millions of people unable to use its main search page, as well as Gmail and Google News.

The free version of Gmail has been ranked as the world's third most-popular e-mail program, behind similar services provided by Microsoft and Yahoo. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8232971.stm>

Online politics reserved for rich

US civic engagement remains in the hands of the middle-class despite hopes that the internet would democratise political involvement.

Online political engagement such as contacting officials, signing petitions and making donations is skewed towards richer and better educated Americans.

The report found signs that social networks could be encouraging younger people to get involved in politics.

According to the report 35% of US adults on incomes of at least $100,000 (£62,000) participate in two or more online political activities compared to just 8% of adults on incomes of less than $20,000 (£12,000).

However there are signs that social networks such as Twitter and Facebook could be changing that.

Some 31% of US citizens with a social network profile have engaged in either political or civic activities such as joining a political group or signing up as a friend of a particular candidate.

A further 15% of online adults had contributed to websites or blogs on a political or social issue.

"There are hints that forms of civic engagement anchored in blogs and social networking sites could alter long-standing patterns that are based on socioeconomic status," said the report.

The internet is widely believed to have played a huge part in the election of Barack Obama.

It was hoped that the digital campaign would spearhead more online activism and bring poorer Americans online.

Pledge to end 'bank bonus party'

Several European finance leaders have been outlining their goal to end the culture of excessive banker bonuses.

The issue will be discussed by G20 finance ministers this weekend and will also feature in the full G20 meeting in Pittsburgh later this month.

BP in 'giant' new oil discovery

Oil giant BP says it has made a "giant" new oil discovery in its fields in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP is currently the largest producer of oil and gas in that area, with net production equivalent to more than 400,000 barrels of oil a day.

The company said it drilled the well, dubbed Tiber, to a total depth of about 35,055ft (10,685m), making it one of the deepest wells drilled to date.

Graffiti comes of age in New York

Comfortably seated in a $30,000 Louis XV-style armchair, in a luxurious room reminiscent of an 18th Century French salon, Sharp stares coolly at his latest piece of art, hung on the opposite wall.

The canvas depicts a porn star's bottom encircled by flashy pink, blue and purple sprays of paint recreating the letters of the alphabet.

Nearly 30 years after spraying his first graffiti in the subway, Sharp now sees his work on display in major galleries.

In June, an exhibition in New York called "Whole in the Wall" displayed his work, and that of dozens of other big names of the street art scene, including Lee Quinones, Blade, Banksy and Blek Le Rat.

Despite graffiti's bad reputation, the exhibition's blending of street art and French extravagant furniture showed how graffiti has spread across the world since the 1980s.

"The idea was to show that graffiti is universal and that it has become a cultural and intellectual form of art which gathers all populations and all generations," explains Chantal Helenbeck, who organised the "Whole in the Wall" show with her twin sister Brigitte.

"But graffiti is also a typically American art that started in New York, and we wanted to re-explore this movement in its historical and geographical context." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8200763.stm>

Nude plinth man sparks complaint

A complaint has been lodged after a man stood naked on a Trafalgar Square plinth as part of the ongoing One and Other art installation.

Justin Holwell stripped and posed naked on the fourth plinth during his one-hour slot from 1400 BST on Sunday.

Ex-detective Mark Williams-Thomas said his wife and children were "annoyed and upset". He complained to police but Mr Holwell was not taken off the plinth.

Artist Antony Gormley's One and Other project enables public volunteers to stand on the central London square's fourth plinth for one hour at a time.

Mr Holwell, 24, from Loughborough in Leicestershire, said he confirmed with event producer Artichoke that he would be permitted to undress while on the plinth.

Afterwards he said: "I was chatting to my mates about it, they see me as a bit of an exhibitionist, this seemed the natural way to go."

Mr Holwell, who works in a double-glazing factory, added: "It's the human form, everyone's the same, it's not like I'm showing off something that no one else has got."

But Mr Williams-Thomas, a former Surrey Police detective constable, said his three children, aged between eight and 13 years old, were "very shocked and embarrassed" by Mr Holwell's nudity.

He approached nearby police officers and asked them to intervene. However, after contacting a superintendent, the officers said they would not take any action against Mr Holwell.

Mr Williams-Thomas said: "I fully expected that the surrounding police or organisers would stop this man. To my total surprise they stood by and did nothing."

He added: "This was a public place and therefore I should be able to take my children without the fear of them having a man naked exposing himself."

Inventor urges patent law change

A major British inventor is calling for a change in the law to strengthen protection against those who try to steal ideas.

Trevor Baylis, who invented the wind-up radio, has written to the business secretary urging him to criminalise the theft of intellectual property.

The life of an inventor

The first thing is that I don't call myself an inventor. It's a humility thing. I don't think there are many who would actually call themselves an inventor.

If I had to describe myself, it would be as a "designer"'. But with that comes the possibility of creating something new, something of worth, something that would propel you into the exclusive club of being regarded as an inventor. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8233455.stm>

Keeping Google out of libraries

The proposed settlement between Google and US publishers must be resisted, argues Bill Thompson

Authors and publishers will get some money in return, and we will all benefit from the improved access to digitised books that Google will provide.

The deal sounds like a good one, but not everyone is happy with it. The Department of Justice in the US has begun an investigation to see if it is anti-competitive, and last month a number of library associations got together with Amazon, Yahoo! and Microsoft to form the Open Book Alliance which argues that it should not go forward.

The details of the settlement are complex, and it is almost impossible to be sure what would emerge from it because many of the provisions involve setting up things like a Book Rights Registry, and we don't yet know what they will look like. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8233324.stm>

Pfizer agrees record fraud fine

US drugmaker Pfizer has agreed to pay $2.3bn (£1.4bn) in the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice.

A subsidiary pleaded guilty to misbranding drugs "with the intent to defraud or mislead".

Pfizer illegally promoted four drugs and caused false claims to be submitted to government healthcare programmes for uses that were not medically accepted.

It will be subject to additional public scrutiny by requiring it to make "detailed disclosures" on its website.

Pfizer's general counsel said: "We regret certain actions taken in the past, but are proud of the action we've taken to strengthen our internal controls."

"The size and seriousness of this resolution, including the huge criminal fine, reflect the seriousness and scope of Pfizer's crimes," said Mike Loucks, acting US attorney for the District of Massachusetts.

The company faces a criminal fine of $1.195bn and a subsidiary company of Pfizer - Pharmacia & Upjohn - will forfeit $105m, totalling a criminal resolution of $1.3bn.

The remaining $1bn fine was levied to resolve the allegations under the civil False Claims Act.

The civil settlement also relates to allegations that Pfizer paid bribes to healthcare providers to induce them to prescribe four named drugs. These are Bextra, an anti-inflammatory drug, Geodon, an anti-psychotic drug, Zyvox, an antibiotic and Lyrica, an epilepsy treatment.

The investigation was trigged by allegations made by six whistleblowers. They will receive $102m of the civil fines paid by Pfizer.

"Although these types of investigations are often long and complicated and require many resources to achieve positive results, the FBI will not be deterred from continuing to ensure that pharmaceutical companies conduct business in a lawful manner," said Kevin Perkins, FBI assistant director, Criminal Investigative Division.

The pharmaceutical firm said earlier this year that it would pay the fine "to put issues that diminish trust behind us".

Pfizer reported a 90% drop in profit to $268m in the fourth quarter of 2008, because of the $2.3bn legal settlement, indicating that the company was aware they would be paying this sum before the terms of the deal with the Department of Justice were announced. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8234533.stm>

We are all mutants say scientists

Each of us has at least 100 new mutations in our DNA, according to research published in the journal Current Biology.

Scientists have been trying to get an accurate estimate of the mutation rate for over 70 years.

However, only now has it been possible to get a reliable estimate, thanks to "next generation" technology for genetic sequencing.

In 1935, one of the founders of modern genetics, JBS Haldane, studied a group of men with the blood disease haemophilia. He speculated that there would be about 150 new mutations in each of us.

Others have since looked at DNA in chimpanzees to try to produce general estimates for humans.

However, next generation sequencing technology has enabled the scientists to produce a far more direct and reliable estimate.

They looked at thousands of genes in the Y chromosomes of two Chinese men. They knew the men were distantly related, having shared a common ancestor who was born in 1805.

By looking at the number of differences between the two men, and the size of the human genome, they were able to come up with an estimate of between 100 and 200 new mutations per person.

One of the scientists, Dr Yali Xue from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire, said: "The amount of data we generated would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.

"And finding this tiny number of mutations was more difficult than finding an ant's egg in an emperor's rice store."

New mutations can occasionally lead to severe diseases like cancer. It is hoped that the findings may lead to new ways to reduce mutations and provide insights into human evolution.

Joseph Nadeau, from the Case Western Reserve University in the US, who was not involved in this study said: "New mutations are the source of inherited variation, some of which can lead to disease and dysfunction, and some of which determine the nature and pace of evolutionary change.

Bangladesh suit ban to save power

The prime minister of Bangladesh has ordered male government employees to stop wearing suits, jackets and ties to save electricity.

Sheikh Hasina told officials that doing so would minimise their use of air-conditioners.

Bangladesh suffers from daily power cuts as power plants are unable to meet the country's demand.

A senior official told the BBC the government would soon encourage businesses to follow its example.

Bangladesh's official dress code has been rewritten - after Sheikh Hasina ordered government employees to do more to ease the country's energy shortage.

During the hot months between March and November, men have been ordered to wear trousers and shirts instead, and these do not have to be tucked in any more.

Officials and ministers have also been told not to turn their air-conditioners below 24C.

In June, the government introduced daylight saving, and the clocks moved forward by one hour, in another attempt to cut energy consumption.

It has said it will also soon spend $6bn (£3.6bn) on new power plants, operated by private companies.

The current state-owned plants have not been able to keep up with Bangladesh's large population and its economy, which has been growing at about 6% annually for the past five years.

Reboot for UK's 'oldest' computer

Britain's oldest original computer, the Harwell, is being sent to the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley where it is to be restored to working order.

The computer, which was designed in 1949, first ran in 1951 and was designed to perform mathematical calculations; it lasted until 1973.

When first built the 2.4m x 5m computer was state-of-the-art, although it was superseded by transistor-based systems.

The system was built and used by staff at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell, Oxfordshire.

Speaking to BBC News, Dick Barnes, who helped build the original Harwell computer, said the research was - officially at least - for civilian nuclear power projects.

"Officially it was to help with general background atomic theory and to assist in the development of civilian power," he said.

"Of course, it [the Atomic Energy Research Establishment] had connections to the nuclear weapons programme," he added.

Although not the first computer built in the UK, the Harwell had one of the longest service lives.

Built by a team of three people, the device was capable of doing the work of six to ten people and ran for seven years until the establishment obtained their first commercial computer.

"We didn't think we were doing anything pioneering at the time," said Mr Barnes.

"We knew the Manchester Baby and Cambridge's EDSAC were already up and running. Both these projects had large teams and we felt like a poor relation.

"Looking back, hardly any of us were computer literate and it's astonishing that we managed stored computing at all," he said.

The Harwell machine is recognisably modern in that unlike some of its predecessors such as Colossus it used a single memory to store data and programs.

Kevin Murrell, director of The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, said it had some of the characteristics of contemporary machines.

"The machine was a relay-based computer using 900 Dekatron gas-filled tubes that could each hold a single digit in memory - similar to RAM in a modern computer - and paper tape for both input and program storage."

Retired from service at Harwell, the system was offered as a prize for colleges, with Wolverhampton and Staffordshire Technical College (later Wolverhampton University) taking ownership and renaming it as the WITCH (Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell). It was used in computer education until 1973.

It then went on display at Birmingham Science Museum, before being put in storage at Birmingham City Council Museums' Collection Centre.

Now it is being sent to the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley, where a team are set to restore it to working order.

Mr Barnes said the prospect of seeing the Harwell computer up and running after more than 36 years was "very exciting".

"I still don't know how they managed to find so many spare parts, but I think they have a very good chance of getting it going again," he said.

There are several significant predecessors to the Harwell computer: The Ace (parts of which are on display in London's Science Museum), the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) which was broken up, and Manchester's Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM) nicknamed Baby, which has been rebuilt but not using original parts. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8234428.stm>

Australia mulls Opera House revamp

Australia's most instantly recognisable landmark is also its most contentious building, and once again the Sydney Opera House is at the centre of a vigorous debate - this time over the cost of preserving it for future generations.

It is a building of multiple entendres. Looking up from harbour-level, it brings to mind the billowing spinnakers of a flotilla of racing yachts.

In side profile, a bowl of razor-edged oyster shells. Through the shrubbery of the neighbouring botanical gardens, the tips of its elliptical shells look like the unhatched eggs of some giant, prehistoric beast.

Because you can view it in so many different ways, the Opera House seems an especially fitting icon for post-war Australia.

Back in the mid-1950s, the New South Wales government decided to mount an international competition, which was eventually won by a relatively unknown Danish architect, Jorn Utzon.

But he was sacked well before the completion of his masterpiece, and its interior was finished by a local architect.

The Opera House was built with the help of a lot of new arrivals from southern Europe, which speak of the demographic changes which overtook Australia after the war.

It was opened by Queen Elizabeth II - a reminder of the enduring constitutional link with Britain, and was funded with the help of lottery money (a reminder of the popularity of gambling).

Now this treasured national icon is once again in the spotlight, as the Sydney Opera House tries to secure funding for what it says are much-needed renovations.

The backstage equipment is in a state of dilapidation, and the orchestra pit is so small and acoustically compromised that players have to work in rotas to safeguard their hearing.

The stage is so narrow that stage hands have to wait in the wings to catch the ballet dancers as they hurtle off stage.

Richard Evans, chief executive officer of the Sydney Opera House, showed me the cramped conditions in the orchestra pit.

"This is the percussion section, they can't even see the conductor, so they have to look at the conductor through television monitors."

There are other idiosyncrasies, he says, including the stage traps directly above the musicians' heads.

Gel hope for brain injury repair

An injectable hydrogel could aid recovery from brain injury by helping stimulate tissue growth at the site of the wound, researchers say.

Research on rats suggests the gel, made from synthetic and natural sources, may spur growth of stem cells in the brain.

The gel has been developed by Dr Ning Zhang at Clemson University, South Carolina, who presented her work to a conference on military health research.

Following a brain injury the tissues tend to swell up and this causes the loss of even more cells, compounding the damage caused by the original wound.

The standard treatments attempt to minimise this secondary damage at the site of the injury, for instance by lowering the temperature or relieving the build up of pressure.

Scientists believe that transplanting donor brain cells into the wound to repair tissue damage is potentially a more productive approach. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8233209.stm>

The year that shook the world

On 15 September 2008, one of the world's oldest and most respected investment banks, Lehman Brothers, collapsed. It led to a global financial panic that has seriously damaged the global economy.

One year on from these pivotal events, the BBC is launching the Aftershock season - a major series across TV, radio and online investigating their impact across the world.

Intel boss sees end to PC slump

The PC industry is coming out of the recession, the boss of the world's biggest chipmaker has told the BBC.

The chief executive of Intel said the industry was likely to sell as many computers in 2009 as it had in 2008.

"Considering the depth and breadth of the recession [that] is a pretty good result," said Paul Otellini.

Analysts had predicted a big fall in PC sales this year, but Mr Otellini said consumers were still buying them because they were now "indispensable".

UK misses global upturn says OECD

The global economy may recover earlier than first thought, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has said.

But it said the UK economy would shrink by 4.7% this year, compared with its earlier forecast of a 4.3% contraction.

The OECD expects both the US and the eurozone to exit recession in the third quarter, saying developments in recent months had been "mostly favourable".

However, it warned that "headwinds" such as high unemployment and house price falls meant the recovery was ''likely to be modest for some time to come''.

The OECD's latest assessment comes on the eve of a meeting of finance ministers from the G20 group in London.

Its forecast sees the US economy growing at an annual pace of 1.6% in the third quarter, while the eurozone is expected to expand by 0.3%.

"Compared with expectations a few months ago, we now have a recovery which... may be coming a little earlier and it may be slightly stronger because financial conditions have improved more rapidly than we assumed a few months ago," OECD chief economist Jorgen Elmeskov said. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8235763.stm>

Jobs at risk in Easyjet closures

Budget airline Easyjet said jobs are at risk as it plans to cut flights out of London's Luton airport.

The airline said it would consult on a reduction of the number of flight crews at its bases in Belfast, Bristol, Newcastle and London Stansted.

The decision comes amid a row over landing charges at Luton. Easyjet said it would look relocate the flights to more "profitable bases" elsewhere.

It said that costs at Luton had risen by 25% over the past three years and the base no longer made economic sense.

It plans to cut flights by up to 20% at Luton, and relocate them to profitable bases in continental Europe.

"I am deeply disappointed that [the Spanish operator of Luton] Abertis and Luton Borough Council have not taken a more far-sighted approach which would have protected jobs at Luton," Easyjet said.

"In regard to East Midlands, we cannot see a growing long term future and we have decided to move our assets to markets with better long term potential," the airline said.

Easyjet also partly blamed the upcoming rise in passenger duty for leaving the airport.

Air passenger duty on short-haul flights will increase to £11 in November, from £10 currently. It said the duty is "particularly damaging to regional airports".

YouTube lifts music video block

YouTube has lifted a block on users viewing official music videos after the website reached an agreement with songwriters' group PRS for Music.

In March, the service blocked thousands of music videos to UK users after failing to reach agreement over fees.

YouTube, owned by Google, is paying an undisclosed lump sum to PRS, backdated until January and lasting until 2012.

Adam Shaw from PRS for Music told the BBC that he was pleased that an agreement had finally been reached.

"We have 60,000 song-writer and composer members and many of them don't earn very much money at all - 90% of them earn less then £5,000 a year," he said.

YouTube's decision in March theoretically blocked all premium music video content - owned by record labels - in the UK.

However, many fan videos and official videos continued to be available on the site, including some sanctioned by the record labels themselves.

For example, EMI-owned Parlophone recently became the site's most popular UK channel of the year, with 240 million hits, despite the ban.

However, YouTube said the "tens of thousands" of videos which had disappeared "will come back over the next few days".

"The music videos are an extremely popular part of YouTube and this deal doesn't only cover the music videos but also music included in TV programmes like the X Factor and also for the inclusion of music in user videos as well," YouTube's Patrick Walker told the BBC.

The deal will also mean that new material will appear on YouTube as the site signs partnerships with other record labels and guest editors introduce their favourite videos.

In the UK, PRS for Music acts on behalf of member publishers as a collecting society for licensing fees relating to the use of music.

At the start of the row Mr Walker told the BBC that PRS was seeking a rise in fees "many, many factors" higher than the previous agreement.

He said the two were "so far apart" that YouTube had no choice but to remove content while negotiations continued.

At the time, Steve Porter, head of PRS, said he was "outraged... shocked and disappointed" by the decision.

He said the move "punishes British consumers and the songwriters whose interests we protect and represent".

The Music Publishers Association (MPA) joined PRS in urging Google to rethink, while Lord Carter, who was the UK's minister for communications, technology and broadcasting, also waded into the debate.

Giving evidence before the Business Select Committee, the minister said he suspected a degree of "commercial posturing on the part of both parties" but said the row was indicative of a wider issue.

YouTube is the world's most popular online video site but has been under increased pressure to generate more revenue since its purchase by Google for $1.65bn (then £875m) in 2006.

Pfizer whistleblower's drug fear

One of the whistleblowers in the Pfizer healthcare fraud scandal has said he felt he was "swimming upstream" when the firm was illegally promoting drugs.

"It's hard to do what's right when everyone else around you is following management sales directive," John Kopchinski told the BBC's World Today.

Pfizer is paying $2.3bn after promoting four drugs for conditions different to those for which they were approved.

Ray Kerins, a spokesman for Pfizer, said the company had a strong commitment to compliance transparency.

"We're looking towards the future and seeing what can we learn from this situation and ensure we have the best policies and practices in place," he said.

Mr Kopchinski described how Pfizer's 3,000 sales representatives were told to promote Bextra in areas of medicine where the use of the drug had not been studied.

"They tried to have orthopaedics use Bextra pre-surgery and post-surgery. Bextra hadn't been studied in that area," he said.

"If I were going into surgery I wouldn't want to use a drug that had not been studied for that cause."

He also described how they were told to push the dosage up when promoting the drug to physicians, in some cases up to eight times the recommended dosage.

"At that particular dosage you're subjecting patients to a host of side effects and other areas that have not been studied scientifically, so literally you have no idea what's going to happen," he said. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8235550.stm>

Ancient wall found in Jerusalem

A 3,700-year-old wall has been discovered in east Jerusalem, Israeli archaeologists say.

The structure was built to protect the city's water supply as part of what dig director Ronny Reich described as the region's earliest fortifications.

The 26-ft (8-m) high wall showed the Canaanite people who built it were a sophisticated civilisation, he said.

Critics say Israel uses such projects as a political tool to bolster Jewish claims to occupied Palestinian land.

Excavations at the site, known as the City of David, are in a Palestinian neighbourhood just outside the walls of Jerusalem's old city.

It is partly funded by Elad, a Jewish settler organisation that also works to settle Jews in that area.

The wall dates from a time in the Middle Bronze Age when Jerusalem was a small, fortified enclave controlled by the Canaanites, before they were conquered by the Israelites.

Its discovery demonstrated Jerusalem's inhabitants were sophisticated enough to undertake major building projects, said Mr Reich.

"The wall is enormous, and that it survived 3,700 years - this is, even for us, a long time," said Mr Reich, an archaeology professor at the University of Haifa.

The excavation team said the wall formed part of a structure that protected a passage from a hilltop fortress to a nearby spring - the area's only water source.

Russia ship mystery editor flees

A journalist has fled Russia after suggesting the Arctic Sea cargo ship that was apparently hijacked in July may have been carrying illegal weapons.

The editor of Sovfracht, an online maritime journal, fled on Wednesday, saying he may not be able to return as his life would be in danger.

Eight men, mainly from Estonia, have been charged with hijacking and piracy over the case.

The men are suspected of seizing the ship and its 15-man Russian crew after raiding it disguised as police.

Sugar rush for hyperactive Brics

The price of raw sugar is hitting highs not seen for nearly three decades - and the surge is having a sweet-and-sour effect on two of the burgeoning Bric economies.

Sugar futures reached more than 24 cents a pound this week, the dearest they have been since February 1981.

That makes it a valuable earner for the Centre-South region of Brazil, the largest sugar-cane growing area in the world.

At the same time, Brazil's position is strengthened by a collapse in production in India, the world's number two sugar producer.

The weakest monsoon rains in the Asian subcontinent for many years have led to widespread drought, hitting crops hard.

However, India remains the top consumer of sugar and is relying on Brazilian imports to make up the shortfall.

Up to one million tonnes of Brazilian sugar have been bought by India in recent weeks, according to traders' estimates - and producers are betting that prices may climb as high as 30 cents a pound before the current run peaks.

"There's still room for a further increase in prices if Indian demand remains strong," says Plinio Mario Nastari of Brazil's Datagro consultancy.

All splendid news for Brazilian sugar plantation owners, you might think. But whereas India has had a shortage of rainfall, Brazil's cane crops have been waterlogged by heavier-than-expected downpours.

Sugar-cane needs dry weather to ripen in order to maximise its sucrose content, but northern Sao Paulo state, one of the key areas of cultivation, has had its heaviest August rainfall in 60 years.

That means more customers chasing less of the sweet stuff - and those customers include not only people with a sweet tooth, but also the majority of Brazil's motorists.

In recent years, more and more Brazilian sucrose has been turned into ethanol rather than sugar, as the country's roads have seen a huge increase in the number of "flex-fuel" vehicles that run on a mixture of petrol and alcohol.

More than 90% of new cars in Brazil are adapted to accept ethanol as fuel, thanks to a state-run biofuel programme that began during the country's years of military rule as a way of reducing its dependence on oil imports.

So far, the cost of alcohol at the filling station has not reflected the 80% rise in raw sugar prices since the start of this year.

However, pump prices have started to creep up in recent weeks, and analysts expect them to rocket after the end of the sugar-cane harvest, which lasts from April to November.

"India is demanding sugar, which is priced 40% above cost, while alcohol is being sold below cost," says Arnaldo Luiz Correa of Archer Consulting in Sao Paulo.

Prescribing the prescribed drugs?

About one in every hundred people faces being diagnosed with schizophrenia at some stage in their life.

Probably the last thing they and their families want to be told is that there are questions over the quality of the treatment on offer.

But there is concern in the US that drug companies have been influencing psychiatrists over what anti-psychotic drugs to prescribe.

Dr Herbert Meltzer, who pioneered the use of clozapine in America, passionately denies such interference is the norm.

He was challenged by US medical journalist Robert Whitaker over the need for medication at all when the two debated on the BBC's World Today programme. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8233490.stm>

Microsoft wins right to sell Word

Microsoft has overturned a ban on it selling its flagship Word software, imposed after a patent dispute.

The block was imposed by a Texan court following a ruling that its use of formatting language XML in Word 2003 and 2005 infringed patents.

Under the ruling Microsoft was ordered to pay Canadian patent owner i4i $290m (£177m) damages and also told to stop sales of the relevant versions of Word.

The ruling was made on 12 August in a Texas court following a long-running dispute between i4i and Microsoft.

I4i's patent was filed in 1998 and outlines ways for "manipulating the architecture and the content of a document separately from each other" and invokes XML as a way to let people format text documents.

XML, or Extensible Markup Language, is a formatting system that preserves the structure of information, such as that in a spreadsheet, as it is passed around and handled by different programs.

Following the 12 August ruling Microsoft filed a request to stay the injunction and also asked for the case to be put on a fast track so its appeal could be heard quickly.

The US court said Microsoft had met the conditions needed to grant the stay. Arguments in Microsoft's appeal against the earlier ruling are due to be heard on 23 September.

"We are happy with the result and look forward to presenting our arguments on the main issues on September 23," said Kevin Kutz, a Microsoft spokesman, in a statement. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8237497.stm>

Boosting economy to top G20 talks

Finance officials from the Group of 20 richest nations are set to outline a commitment to boosting the global economy when they meet in London later.

While there is expected to be consensus over continuing to spend, there is some friction over the pace of spending and when to scale down stimulus efforts.

And a European proposal to curb bankers' bonuses may face opposition from the US.

Chancellor Alistair Darling told the BBC that the UK needed a robust regulatory regime and the government had to decide what was appropriate.

"If people don't like that, yes they could potentially go elsewhere," Mr Darling told the BBC.

"But... it is not actually in our interests that we get people going off to offshore jurisdictions where they're not properly regulated, which is why I would like to get international agreement, why I think we will get international agreement."

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he did not expect any major announcements to emerge from the London talks.

With Japan, France and Germany officially out of recession, minds are turning to co-ordinating the withdrawal of billions of aid and stimulus measures that were injected into countries by their governments over the past year.

And finance ministers and central bankers are set to co-ordinate plans for the eventual tapering off of government support.

Other financial reforms are up for discussion, including the US proposal for an international agreement on forcing banks to increase their capital reserves to help prevent another financial crisis. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8237219.stm>

Google books deal battle heats up

The battle over Google's effort to digitise the world's books and create a vast online library has intensified.

Authors have until Friday to opt out of the $125 million settlement the search giant made with authors and publishers.

The date for comments to the New York court overseeing the class action suit was extended from Friday to Tuesday, after the filing system went down.

As time ticks away, supporters and critics have been manning both sides of the debate to win the public case.

The settlement reached last October stemmed from a 2005 legal suit that Google faced for scanning out-of-print works without explicit permission from rights holders.

If approved by a judge, Google would create a Book Rights Registry where authors and publishers could register works and be compensated.

Ahead of Friday's opt-out for authors, Google lined up a number of professors, students and civil rights activists who support the deal.

"We see access to knowledge as a civil right," Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil rights told reporters in a conference call.

"Information enables individuals to learn, to create and to pursue their dreams. Access to knowledge defines the meaning of equal opportunity in a democratic society," said Mr Henderson.

Access was also the issue that led the United States Student Association to throw its weight behind the Google books programme.

"Today, millions of books are accessible only to the privileged few who are accepted to universities and can actually afford to attend," said Association president Gregory Cendana.

"With Google books, any student anywhere in the US will have the books in the greatest libraries of the world at their fingertips."

The most vocal critics of the deal have largely banded together to form the Open Book Alliance. It was set up by the non-profit Internet Archive, which has its own book scanning project and has to date digitised 500,000 books.

"Just as Gutenberg's invention of the printing press more than 700 years ago ushered in a new era of knowledge sharing, the mass digitisation of books promises to revolutionise how we read and discover books," said Peter Brantley of the Alliance.

"But a digital library controlled by a single company and small group of publishers would inevitably lead to higher prices and subpar services for consumers, libraries, scholars and students."

Technology giants Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon are part of the coalition along with a number of libraries and writers and journalists groups.

Amazon, which competes with Google by scanning books to sell through its electronic Kindle reader, filed its own statement against the deal this week.

"It is unfair to authors, publishers and others whose works would be the subject of a compulsory licence for the life of the copyright in favour of Google and the newly created Book Rights Registry," it stated. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8237271.stm>

Quantum computer slips onto chips

Researchers have devised a penny-sized silicon chip that uses photons to run Shor's algorithm - a well-known quantum approach - to solve a maths problem.

The algorithm computes the two numbers that multiply together to form a given figure, and has until now required laboratory-sized optical computers.

The work, reported in Science, is rudimentary but could easily be scaled up to handle more complex computing.

Shor's algorithm and the factoring of large numbers has been a particular case used to illustrate the power of quantum computing.

Quantum computers exploit the counterintuitive fact that photons or trapped atoms can exist in multiple states or "superpositions" at the same time.

For certain types of calculations, that "quantum indeterminacy" gives quantum computers a significant edge.

While traditional or "classical" computers find factoring large numbers impracticably time-consuming, for example, quantum computers can in principle crack the problem with ease.

That has important implications for encryption methods based on factoring, such as the "RSA" method that is used to make transactions on the internet more secure. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8236943.stm>

US jobless rate at 26-year high

US employers cut 216,000 jobs in August, pushing the unemployment rate up to 9.7%, a 26-year high, official figures show.

The unemployment rate rose after dipping to 9.4% in July but the Labor Department said the job loss figure was the smallest in a year.

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the economy has shed 6.9 million jobs, the department said.

Analysts had expected the unemployment rate to rise to 9.5% and job reductions to total 225,000.

Although there have been signs that the US economy is now recovering from the worst recession in 70 years, unemployment has remained high and could dampen any economic rebound.

However, Nigel Gault, chief US economist at IHS Global Insight, said that the rise in the jobless rate was not too discouraging.

"The decline last month was too good to be true, really. It's too early for the unemployment rate to be coming down, of course we're still losing jobs," he said.

"What I would take encouragement from is the fact is the trend in the rate of decline in jobs is still improving, that private sector jobs were down 198,000, that's 50,000 better than the previous month and it's almost 200,000 better than the month before that."

Most cuts were seen in the construction industry, with 65,000 jobs lost in the month.

Iran album strikes web protest note

Young Iranians, with their fondness for Western music, are not the natural market for the country's leading classical Persian musician, Mohammad Reza Shajarian.

But his latest album has caused a stir among the Iranian online community, with web users urging others to attend Mr Shajarian's concerts and to buy his album, in an apparent bid to defy the authorities.

Often referred to as Ostad Shajarian (Master Shajarian), the musician has become a focal point for those still unhappy about the disputed presidential election earlier this year.

His new-found following stems from the fact that he objected to the use of his songs to celebrate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election as president.

Now online support is growing for his album Rendan-e Mast (Drunken Libertines), which he released on 29 August before embarking on a European tour of Germany, Sweden, France and the Netherlands, set to begin on 4 September.

The words "rend" (libertine or rogue) and "mast" (drunk or intoxicated) have positive connotations in classical - especially mystic Sufi - Persian poetry.

The symbolism in the verse has a powerful impact on many Iranians, frequently leading to emotional reactions from audiences, who often shed tears when listening to classical music with its poetic lyrics.

Moreover, the lyrics resonate strongly with Iranians as many Sufi poets scorned what they believed were the orthodox clerics' obsession with the minutiae of religious observance at the expense of "true" spirituality.

'Best-selling album'

A short piece from the album found its way to YouTube and Facebook almost immediately, possibly before Rendan-e Mast's official release.

The six-minute clip showed a still of Shajarian with the artist performing Rendan-e Mast, from a poem by one of the best known medieval Sufi poets, Mawlana Jalaloddin Balkhi, who has gained popularity in the West, especially the US, under the name Rumi.

Comments in Farsi on YouTube were indicative of the mood. "Live long, Ostad," said one. "We are proud and we are Green." Green is the colour adopted by the demonstrators in Iran after the disputed presidential elections.

Others wanted to see the album become a best-seller. "Let us make this the best-selling album of the year. We will buy and listen to this album in memory of all the martyrs."

Some urged readers not to download pirated versions of the album, calling on the public to visit Mr Shajarian's official site to download the album. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8236031.stm>

Israel 'to back settlement work'

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu will approve more construction in West Bank settlements before considering a halt to building work, officials say.

The prime minister is expected to back work on hundreds of new homes next week in addition to 2,500 units already being built, a senior aide said.

He will then consider a temporary halt to settlement building, as requested by the US in a bid to restart peace talks.

Large thighs 'may protect heart'

Men and women with thighs over 60cm (23.6in) in circumference have a lower risk of heart disease and early death, a study of 3,000 people suggests.

The relationship remains even when body fat, smoking and blood cholesterol are taken into account, a Danish team says.

Those with narrow thighs may not have enough muscle mass to deal with insulin properly, raising the risk of diabetes and, in turn, heart disease, they say.

Some said it was too early to change current advice on eating and exercise for heart health, but the researchers said thigh size could be used as a marker for at-risk patients.

The study, published in the British Medical Journal, followed men and women in Denmark for more than 10 years.

They were measured for height, weight and thigh, hip and waist circumference and their overall percentage of body fat was calculated.

The thigh measurement was taken just below the gluteal fold, which is the crease caused by your buttocks.

Researchers also looked at the activity levels of the participants, whether they smoked, their blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

N Korea 'in final uranium phase'

North Korea has entered the final phase of uranium enrichment, the country's state media has reported.

"Uranium enrichment tests have been successfully carried out and that process is in the concluding stage," the North's KCNA news agency said.

Uranium enrichment would give Pyongyang a second way to make a nuclear bomb - but it also said it was continuing to reprocess and weaponise plutonium.

Both that test and an earlier nuclear test by North Korea in 2006 were understood to have been carried out with plutonium.

The worry is that uranium enrichment is a process that can be easily hidden, and in addition, North Korea has ample natural reserves of the raw material, says the BBC's John Sudworth in South Korea. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8237204.stm>

Los Angeles wildfire ruled arson

A huge wildfire which has devastated a large area north of Los Angeles was started deliberately, say the authorities in California.

A homicide investigation has been launched as two fire fighters were killed tackling the blaze, known as the Station Fire.

Dozens of homes have been destroyed and thousands of people evacuated but the fire is now 38% contained, say reports.

"After a forensic examination at the point of origin, arson investigators have concluded that the Station Fire was the result of an act of arson," said US Forest Service Commander Rita Wears.

"The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department homicide bureau has initiated a homicide investigation due to the tragic death of the two Los Angeles County firefighters as a result of this fire."

No further details have been given about the evidence for arson or whether any suspects have been identified.

The LA Times quoted Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca as saying making details public could damage attempts to find and prosecute suspected arsonists. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8237316.stm>

Google trick tracks extinctions

Google's algorithm for ranking web pages can be adapted to determine which species are critical for sustaining ecosystems, say researchers.

According to a paper in PLoS Computational Biology, "PageRank" can be applied to the study of food webs.

The scientists say their version of PageRank could be a simple way of working out which extinctions would lead to ecosystem collapse.

Every species is embedded in a complex network of relationships with others. So a single extinction can cascade into the loss of seemingly unrelated species.

Investigating when this might happen using more conventional methods is complicated as even in simple ecosystems, the number of combinations exceeds the number of atoms in the universe. So it would be impossible to try them all.

Co-author Dr Stefano Allesina realised he could apply PageRank to the problem when he stumbled across an article in a journal of applied mathematics describing the Google algorithm.

The researchers say they had to make minor changes to it to adapt it for ecology.

Dr Allesina, of the University of Chicago's department of ecology and Evolution, told BBC News: "First of all we had to reverse the definition of the algorithm.

"In PageRank, a web page is important if important pages point to it. In our approach a species is important if it points to important species."

They also had to design in a cyclical element into the food web system in order to make it applicable to the algorithm.

They did this by including what Dr Allesina terms the "detritus pool". He said: "When an organism dies it goes into the detritus pool and in turn gets cycled back into the food web through the primary producers, the plants.

"Each species points to the detritus and the detritus points only to the plants. This makes the web circular and therefore leads to the application of the algorithm."

Dr Allesina and co-author Dr Mercedes Pascual of University of Michigan have tested their method against published food webs, using it to rank species according to the damage they would cause if they were removed from the ecosystem.

They also tested algorithms already in use in computational biology to find a solution to the same problem.

They found that PageRank gave them exactly the same solution as these much more complicated algorithms.

Dr Glyn Davies, director of programmes at WWF-UK, welcomed the work. He said: "As the rate of species extinction increases, conservation organisations strive to build political support for maintaining healthy and productive ecosystems which hold a full complement of species.