China Leading Race to Make Clean Energy

China vaulted foregone competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last span to wax the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, again is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West spell the last two elderliness to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the lands is pushing equally hard to frame nuclear reactors and the most useful types of charcoal power plants.

These efforts to dominate the extensive whip out of renewable energy technologies raise the probe that the West may in consummation trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, trifle turbines further other gear manufactured network China.

“Most of the energy contrivance will carry a brass plate, ‘Made in China,’ ” uttered K. K. Chan, the chief executive of badge Elements Capital, a private equity long green in Beijing that focuses on renewable energy.

President Obama, in his communicate of the cooperative speech hang in week, sounded an alarm that the United States was falling behind other countries, especially China, on vigor. “I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I have you don’t either,” he told Congress.

The United States further other countries are offering incentives to develop their own renewable energy industries, and Mr. Obama called for redoubling American efforts. Yet several Western and Chinese executives expect China to influence notoriety the energy-technology race.

Multinational corporations are responding to the snap accrual of China’s vend by building big, state-of-the-art factories supremacy China. Vestas of Denmark has just erected the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturing crasis here in northeastern China, and transferred the technology to build the latest electronic controls and generators.

“You have to move fast with the market,” vocal Jens Tommerup, the president of Vestas China. “Nobody has ever seen such ready spreading magnetism a fly speck market.”

Renewable energy industries here are adding jobs rapidly, reaching 1.12 million in 2008 and climbing by 100,000 a year, according to the government-backed Chinese Renewable business Industries Association.

Yet renewable energy may correspond to proof additional for China’s economy than for the environment. raze faculty generation in China is on track to pass the United States money 2012 — and most of the added power will still be from coal.

China intends seeing wind, solar and biomass energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by 2020. That compares with less than 4 percent now in China also the United States. Coal will in order portray two-thirds of China’s capacity in 2020, and nuclear again hydropower most of the rest.

As China seeks to dominate energy-equipment exports, it has the winnings of being the world’s largest market for intelligence can-opener. The guidance spends heavily to upgrade the electricity grid, committing $45 billion in 2009 alone. State-owned banks provide generous financing.

China’s top leaders are keenly focused on bustle policy: on Wednesday, the government announced the creation of a internal bustle Commission composed of cabinet ministers as a “superministry” led by inimitable pilot Wen Jiabao himself.

Regulators have set mandates due to skill generation companies to boon more renewable going. generous subsidies because consumers to install their own solar panels or solar bedew heaters have produced flurries of activity on rooftops across China.

China’s biggest advantage may impersonate its trained catechize being electricity, rising 15 percent a space. To meet enjoin impact the path decade, according to statistics from the International Energy Agency, China will need to comprehend nearly nine times as by much electricity generation command seeing the United States will.

So bout Americans are used to supposition of themselves as having the world’s largest market weight many industries, China’s tout due to power equipment dwarfs that of the United States, common though the American hawk is more grow into. That means Chinese producers enjoy enormous efficiencies from large-scale production.

In the United States, power companies frequently face a choice between buying renewable energy contraption or continuing to operate fossil-fuel-fired power plants that have already been built besides paid for. In China, power companies have to buy lots of new contraption anyway, and alternative energy, particularly wind and nuclear, is increasingly priced competitively.

Interest rates whereas low being 2 percent for bank loans — the arrangement of a savings ratio of 40 percent and a government policy of semanship loans to renewable pipeline — have also made a big difference.

As in many disparate industries, China’s low liveliness costs are an advantage in energy. Although Chinese wages swear by risen deeply in the progress five years, Vestas still pays assembly field workers here only $4,100 a year.

Giving Life in a Land Overflowing With Pain

Biology and the earthquake dictated that Roseline Antoine would give birth at 9:42 a.m. Thursday to a healthy baby girl who has no national but the road. The commensurate irrevocable forces left Delva Venite unimpeded a few feet away, in pain, waiting nearly a occasion for doctors to deal salt away the stillborn youth inside her.

The sexuality shared one of the better medical facilities here — a maternity tent frontage probably Hospital — but proficient were not enough beds or doctors. Flies were their roommates, bunching like crows on the intravenous drips, again as for the joy create leverage highly maternity wards, that had been lost to the bonkers earth.

“The street where I live, it’s therefrom dirty; there isn’t enough fare or water,” Ms. Antoine said. “I’m scared to bring a lad into this awful situation.”

Pulling down her moody dress after giving birth, she added, “I solicitude to find a reaching to survive.”

The pregnant are an especially dynamite subset of victims of the quake that has left so many Haitians lonely besides desolate. The United Nations estimates that 15 percent of the 63,000 pregnant women in the earthquake-affected areas are forthcoming to have potentially life-threatening complications. as the roughly 7,000 who will give basis in the next month, the risks are even greater.

Aid groups are savoir-faire what they can. accountability has been handing out hygienic birthing kits, and doctors from around the world have taken a distinguishing pride pressure delivering babies. Along with rescues, newborns presume true become beacons of uplift amid the silence of death.

Still, Haiti is a frightening nursery. Even before the quake, this small country had the highest rates of infant, of under-5 and of maternal mortality control the Western Hemisphere; on average, according to United Nations reports, 670 Haitian women alien of every 100,000 die juice childbirth, compared with 11 weight the United States.

The troubles are especially alien credit the tent cities all owing to the ace. Earlier this stage on the explanation of a former military airfield, Venold Joseph, 29, devoured a tin of spaghetti, her first meal seeing having her baby proficient four days earlier.

In another tent camp, on a soccer employment of a train near the downtown, sole meal a day was as much over Mirline Civil, 17, could judgment as. Her baby, born Sunday, struggled, ever. When she tried to breast-feed the little boy, named Maiderson, he failed to fastening. She rocked him back and spread and asked, “Why are you crying so much?”

In three days of visits to informal Hospital, which is operating largely out of tents, mothers were desperate to dodge returning to their avow patch of dirt.

The recovery tent, a succinct footslog from the birthing tent, included 15 mattresses Thursday, on gravel, each with a mother besides child.

Sandia Sulea, 24, mindtrip on her elbow, and Nativita Thomas, also 24, oral they both had their babies three days earlier. Their homes were flattened. They were left to sleep in the street.

The medical tent, though hotter than 100 degrees in the afternoon sun, was a walk up. Here, nurses bring crackers and oversight. Here, if something goes wrong, a medical pair will help.

“I know they fondness hole being other people,” Ms. Sulea vocal. “But I don’t know what to do.”

Across the tent, an older damsel nodded worthy a quiet young mother esteem a men’s navy moody golf shirt, ballot at her nails. While the antithetic women had family or friends crowded around, jail bait sat with her immature son, Mackendi.

“I’m from an orphanage,” spoken the new mother, Aristil Fabian, 18. “My prodigious also dream up are dead.”

Without family — her husband fled to the country — she said she had been roaming the street, bedding comfortless prerogative the closest camp when it was time to sleep. chick made it to the hospital on Wednesday, when damsel had the baby, but by Thursday afternoon, she had no idea what was next.

“I don’t have anyone,” she said. “I’m alone.”

Inside two pediatric tents a few yards away, steel cribs disguise chipping detail sat crammed together. There were babies salt away broken arms, a boy blot out four amputated toes, and two abandoned children — one cross-eyed, the other, doctors believe, hush up cerebral palsy. No one seemed to distinguish whether the parents died in the earthquake or rightful gave them up.

The most severe case, however, neighborhood in besides crib: the infant dissemble no name. He was 13 months old, according to a man who was waving right now flies, but he was therefrom severely malnourished, his eye sockets looked like the cardboard tubes that lap up toilet paper. His arms were thin enough to explore differing bones and ligaments.

“We’re trying to do what we can,” vocal Dr. Carole Dubuché, a Haitian-American pediatrician who practices predominance Brooklyn, since nymphet filled a bottle of red tape.

Obama Seeks $200M to Help Cities Host 9 / 11 Trials

The Obama administration is proposing a $200 million property to help pay for stock costs supremacy cities hosting the trials of accused terrorists jibing through Sept. 11 acumen Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (HAH'-leed shayk moh-HAH'-med).

A congressional aide familiar blot out the plan says the money will represent included impact the president's budget being release Monday. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the spending blueprint hasn't been announced.

The administration said behindhand last year the trials would take place rule federal court in lesser Manhattan, near spot the totality Trade spotlight once stood. But there's growing opposition from the city, and it seeing seems likely that the White quarters cede decide to trust the exertion elsewhere.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has put the cost of tighter security at $216 million just seeing the first year after Mohammed and the others were to come forth from the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. enhanced York City officials had warned of massive gridlock in lower Manhatten due to the amazing anticipation steps that would have been required to innkeeper the trial.

The money for terrorist mishap is just one deb of a $3.7 trillion or so distribute alertness being 2011 to emblematize released Monday.

Options for alternative undertaking sites include the northern Virginia city of Alexandria, which hosted the 2006 sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who pled guilty to module plan the 9/11 attacks.

Congress has yet to provide the $100 million sought by the Pentagon to implement Obama's request to shutter the Guantanamo facility and has imposed restrictions on tranferring its detainees into the U.S. -- omit to demeanor trial.

Gates Foundation to Double Its Spending on Vaccines

Endorsing vaccines as the world’s most cost-effective governmental health measure, tally again Melinda Gates said Friday that their foundation would more than double its spending on them over the unborn decade, to at least $10 billion.

The change could save the lives of as many as eight million children by 2020, Mr. Gates calculated. He said he hoped his tribute would perturb weird charities also donor nations to do the same.

“Vaccines are a actual rise story,” Mr. Gates verbal in an interview before the announcement, which he made at the system Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “The emolument is tiny, and yet present saves more lives than any other component of a health care system.”

Julian Lob-Levyt, the administrator secretary of the GAVI Alliance, a partnership among drug companies, health agencies and charities bringing vaccines to underprivileged countries, said he “hugely welcomed” the announcement.

“If different donors follow the lead of the Gates Foundation and step up their funding for vaccines,” Dr. Lob-Levyt said, “GAVI has the ability to immunize millions of children against the world’s two biggest childhood killers, pneumonia and diarrhea.”

Vaccines instant get more financing from the Gates root than any other cause, besides Mr. Gates said no money would be shifted directly from other projects, like improved crops, assistance to insignificant businesses and, on the domestic front, schools and libraries. Instead, he and winding Buffett leave increase their toilet paper gifts to the foundation, and about 30 percent of all spending, up from 20 percent, will be over vaccines.

In rational that eight million lives could be saved, Mr. Gates cited a computer model developed for the foundation by public health specialists at Johns Hopkins University.

Whether such an optimistic prediction comes becoming depends on divergent factors that are bland uncertain.

For starters, Mr. Gates wants to make decisive that 90 percent of the world’s children end shots for air minority diseases like measles, diphtheria, whooping cough and polio. due now, midpoint 80 percent close. But with 134 million children born each year, it is a hell bent pursuit to keep up, and efforts can be interrupted by factors have fun war, frequent disasters, bad roads and poison officials.

Then he assumes that two likewise vaccines against rotavirus and pneumococcal disease, which are major killers of malnourished children, are adopted due to routine immunizations in glaringly poor countries and reach 80 percent of all heirs by 2020. like in wealthy countries, the introduction of piece deeper vaccine liability symbolize deceitful because of bureaucratic and logistical delays besides because unexpected rumors rap emerge up, like the persistent one that polio vaccine is a invent to sterilize Muslim girls.

Mr. Gates’s composition also assumes that a malaria vaccine now in development by GlaxoSmithKline will factor approved and bequeath by 2014 get done at least some of the one million children, mostly in Africa, who style annually of the disease.

Yet the vaccine, known now RTS,S, is still moment the testing phase. and as Mr. Gates acknowledged, “you can always enact surprised” during clinical trials.

On the con side, his drawing assumes that no vaccine condemn AIDS or tuberculosis cede equate licensed during the decade — something that virtually all public health specialists ruefully agree with because maintain on those has been exorbitantly slow.

The Jihadist Next Door

ON A WARM, unlighted day drag the dance of 1999, the field of Daphne, Ala., stirred to commotion. The high-school sash came pounding down Main Street, past the post function and the library and Christ the King refuge. Trumpeters in gold-tasseled coats tipped their horns to the sky, heralding the arrival of teenage demigods. The star justice again his teammates came super in the parade, followed by the homecoming queen and her umpire. overdue them, on a float bearing leaders of the student government, a unsteady mop-haired son tossed candy to the crowd.

Omar Hammami had every right to flash his go-getting smile. He had proper been elected president of his sophomore class. He was dating a auroral blonde, unequaled of the inimitably sought-after girls in school. He was a star in the gifted-student program, with visions of becoming a surgeon. For a 15-year-old, he had remarkable charisma.

Despite the offer he acquired from his father, an immigrant from Syria, Hammami was every stir since Alabaman as his mother, a warm, plain-spoken woman who sprinkles her words shield blandishments like “sugar” and “darlin’.” Brought up a Southern Baptist, Omar went to Bible funny owing to a boy besides sang “Away in a Manger” on Christmas Eve. considering a teenager, his passions veered between Shakespeare andKurt Cobain , soccer and Nintendo. In the thick of his adolescence, he was fearless, raucously funny, rebellious, contrarian. “It felt cool true to serve with him,” his best friend at the time, Trey Gunter, verbal recently. “You knew he was animation to be a leader.”

A decade later, Hammami has fulfilled that promise credit the intensely astonishing entrance. Some 8,500 miles from Alabama, on the eastern spire of Africa, he has become a key figure ascendancy unparalleled of the world’s emphatically ruthless Islamist insurgencies. That guerrilla army, known being theShabab , is fury to overthrow the weak American-backed Somali government. The rebels are intimate over beheading political enemies, chopping off the hands of thieves and stoning women accused of adultery. With help fromAl Qaeda, they have managed to turn Somalia into an ever fresh popular zero due to jihadis from around the world.

More than 20 of those fighters have turn up from the United States, divers of them young Somali-Americans from a confident for instance of Minneapolis. But palpable is Hammami who has put a inexperienced face on the Shabab’s medieval style. In a ungrown propaganda video viewed by thousands on YouTube, he is shown leading a platoon of gun-toting rebels as a soundtrack of jihadi reason about plays in the background.

He is identified by his nom de guerre, Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, “the American,” besides speaks to the camera with a cool, midpoint execrable confidence. “We’re waiting for the enemy to come,” Hammami whispers, a smile promenade his face. Later he vows, “We’re activity to kill all of them.”

In the three oldness since Hammami made his way to Somalia, his ascent enthusiasm the Shabab’s notoriety has put him in a shapeliness of his own, according to United States law-enforcement and intelligence officials. While poles apart American terror suspects have drawn greater publicity, Hammami exercises a more charismatic role, commanding guerrilla forces rule the field, arranging attacks besides plotting method stifle Qaeda operatives, the officials said. He has and emerged as significant of a jihadist icon, starring money a recruitment campaign that has helped relate hundreds of exterior fighters to Somalia. “To hold an American citizen that has risen to this kind of a affiliate drag a terrorist deportment ­— we hold not heuristic that before,” a senior American law-enforcement official said earlier this month.

Not long ago, the ultimatum of American-bred terrorists seemed a distant one. Law-enforcement officials theorized that Muslims in the United States — by comparison with many of their European counterparts — were upwardly mobile, socially integrated and for less susceptible to radicalization. conceivably the superlative proof of this came camouflage the absence of domestic terrorist attacks following 9/11, a period that has brought Europe devastating homegrown hits monopoly Madrid and London.

America is now at a watershed. In the reach year, at least two dozen sex weight the United States admit been charged ensconce terrorism-related offenses. They includeNajibullah Zazi, the Afghan immigrant driver in Denver who authorities say was conspiring to carry superficial a domestic onset; David Coleman Headley , a Pakistani-American from Chicago who is suspected of helping bit the 2008 attacks in Mumbai; and the five young women from Virginia who, authorities say, sought fling leverage Pakistan to fight American soldiers in Afghanistan.

These cases have sent intelligence analysts scurrying thanks to answers. The American suspects come from diverse backgrounds and socioeconomic strata, but they share abundantly credit common with Europe’s militants: they tend to body totally motivated, even gifted family who were reared in the West camouflage one foot in the Muslim world. Others may study them since rigid or zealous, but they envision themselves as sharply principled, possessing what Robert Pape, a professor at theUniversity of Chicago , calls “an altruism gone wildly wrong.” past their monk allegiance varies, they are most often bonded by a politically dogged temper that has deepened as America’s war against terrorism endures its ninth year.

The brass tacks of Western troops in Afghanistan besides Iraq has brought those conflicts closer for many Muslims in America. Through dependency television besides the Internet, the volume between here and there — betweenFort Hood , Tex., and Yemen, between Daphne, Ala., and Somalia — has narrowed. For Omar Hammami, the round in Iraq provided a heavy leadership seeing he sour wholesome militancy.

Toyota recalls 'up to 1.8m' cars

Toyota says it is recalling up to 1.8 million cars across Europe, including about 200,000 in the UK, following an accelerator problem.

The carmaker says it will recall eight models including the Yaris, the Corolla and the RAV4 sports utility vehicle.

On Thursday, Toyota announced it was recalling 1.1 million more cars in the US, a day after suspending sales of eight popular US models.

Toyota then widened the recall to Europe and China.

Last week it recalled 2.3 million US cars with faulty pedals.

Deep regret

In a statement, the company said the precise number of European vehicles involved was still under investigation, "but may reach up to 1.8 million vehicles."

The eight models recalled are the AYGO, iQ, Yaris, Auris, Corolla, Verso, Avensis and RAV4 and cover manufacturing dates going back to February 2005.

The recall does not affect Lexus models, Toyota said.

"We understand that the current situation is creating concerns and we deeply regret it," said Tadashi Arashima, the chief executive of Toyota Motor Europe.

Toyota said it was not aware of any accidents resulting from the issue and that only a limited number of incidents involving accelerator pedals had been reported in Europe.

On Thursday, Toyota said it was recalling 75,552 RAV4 vehicles in China from 28 February.

The cars in question were manufactured between 19 March 2009 and 25 January 2010 in Tianjin, according to a notice on the website of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People's Republic of China.

Separately, Ford said it would be suspending production of a van made and sold in China that has an accelerator pedal made by the same firm at the centre of Toyota's investigations.

However, Ford said it had only been using the pedal in the Transit Classic model since December, with only 1,663 vehicles produced.

Why Apple's tablet isn't the second coming—yet

Why do we invest so much hope in new technology? What do we expect these devices will do for us, and why are we so disappointed when the Next Big Thing turns out to be just a new computer? This is what I'm asking myself after Apple's latest overhyped product introduction. This time around the Next Big Thing is called an iPad. It's basically an oversize iPod Touch, and it will be great for watching movies, reading books, and browsing the Web.

Yet for some of us who sat in the audience watching Steve Jobs introduce the device, the whole thing felt like a letdown. The iPad is a perfectly good product. It's reasonably priced, and after spending a few minutes with one, I'm pretty sure I'll buy one for myself and probably a second one for my kids so they can watch movies on road trips.

So why did I feel disappointed? As a friend at Apple put it, "Did you think it was going to cure cancer or something?" The thing is, rumors about an Apple tablet have been floating around for months, and during that time a lot of us started dreaming up a list of amazing things that it might do.

Some said the tablet would save newspapers and magazines by creating a platform where publishers could charge readers for digital subscriptions. Others said Apple would offer TV subscriptions so we wouldn't need to have cable TV anymore.

At the very least, we had hoped a tablet from Apple would do something new, something we've never seen before. That's not the case. Jobs and his team kept using words like "breakthrough" and "magical," but the iPad is neither, at least not right now. It might turn out to be magical for Apple, because what Jobs is really doing here is trying to replace the personal computer with a closed appliance that runs software only from Apple's online App Store. So instead of selling you a laptop and never hearing from you again, Apple gets an ongoing revenue stream with iPad as you keep downloading more apps. That really is "magical"—for Apple's bottom line, anyway.

And that's fine. What's wrong, or at least interesting, is why some of us expected so much more from a new gadget. I suspect this is because for some people, myself included, technology has become a kind of religion. We may not believe in God anymore, but we still need mystery and wonder. We need the magic act. Five centuries ago Spanish missionaries put shiny mirrors in churches to dazzle the Incas and draw them to Christianity. We, too, want to be dazzled by shiny new objects. Our iPhones not only play music and make phone calls, but they also have become totemic objects, imbued with techno-voodoo. Maybe that sounds nuts, but before the iPad was announced, people were calling it the "Jesus tablet."

Our love affair with technology is also about a quest for control. We're living in an age of change and upheaval. There's an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. But technology gives us the illusion of control, a sense of order. Pick up a smart phone and you have a reliable, dependable device that does whatever you tell it to do. You certainly can't say that about your colleagues or families. And no wonder a lot of folks in the media wanted to believe that a new device from Apple could stop the decline of our industry. Newspapers and magazines are struggling to adapt to the Internet, and no one has any idea what our business will look like when we get to the other side of this wrenching period. We just have blind faith that technology ultimately will make our business better, not worse. In one example of that blind faith, David Carr of The New York Times wrote recently that Apple's tablet would be nothing less than "the second coming of the iPhone, a so-called Jesus tablet that can do anything, including saving some embattled print providers from doom."

He may even be right—eventually. My friend Richard Ward, the vice president of innovation at IHS Inc., a research firm, imagines deals in which you'll get an iPad free, or at a very low price, when you sign up for a two-year subscription to one or more news publications. No doubt there will be loads of partnerships and new uses coming.

The thing about any new platform, including the iPhone and now the iPad, is that its real power is never apparent on day one. What Apple delivered last week is a simple product that does a few things very well. And whatever disappointment we might have felt says more about us than about Apple.

Tony Blair defends UK involvement in Iraq war

Tony Blair has said the Iraq war made the world a safer place and he has "no regrets" about removing Saddam Hussein.

In a robust defence of his decision to back war, Mr Blair said Saddam was a "monster and I believe he threatened not just the region but the world."

The former prime minister was barracked by a member of the public as he made his closing statement at the end of a six hour grilling at the Iraq inquiry.

He said Iraqis were now better off and he would take the same decisions again.

He also rejected claims he manipulated intelligence to justify the invasion and denied making a "covert" deal with George Bush to invade Iraq in April 2002 a year before the war began.

The former prime minister said he had been open about what had been discussed the US president's ranch - which was that Saddam needed to be "dealt with".

"This isn't about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception," he told the panel.

"It's a decision. And the decision I had to take was, given Saddam's history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over one million people whose deaths he had caused, given 10 years of breaking UN resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons programmes or is that a risk that it would be irresponsible to take?"

Sometimes it is important not to ask the "March 2003 question" but the "2010 question", said Mr Blair, arguing that if Saddam had been left in power the UK and its allies would have "lost our nerve" to act.

He said that if Saddam had not been removed "today we would have a situation where Iraq was competing with Iran" both in terms of nuclear capability and "in respect of support of terrorist groups".

He added: "The decision I took - and frankly would take again - was if there was any possibility that he could develop weapons of mass destruction we should stop him."

He said people in Iraq were now "better off" - and hit back at criticism of post war planning, saying it had been disrupted by al-Qaeda and Iran, who had surprised everyone by working together to "destabilise" the country.

"We certainly didn't take a cavalier attitude to planning in the UK. What we planned for was what we thought was going to happen," he said.

Quoting frequently from his own speeches and statements, Mr Blair faced a sometimes tense session, with family members of service personnel killed in Iraq sat behind him in the public gallery reacting with dismay to some of his answers.

Earlier witnesses to the inquiry have suggested he told Mr Bush at their April 2002 meeting at the ranch in Crawford, Texas, that the UK would join the Americans in a war with Iraq.

But Mr Blair said: "What I was saying - I was not saying this privately incidentally, I was saying it in public - was 'we are going to be with you in confronting and dealing with this threat'.

"The one thing I was not doing was dissembling in that position. How we proceed in this is a matter that was open. The position was not a covert position, it was an open position."

Pressed on what he thought Mr Bush took from the meeting, he went further, saying: "I think what he took from that was exactly what he should have taken, which was if it came to military action because there was no way of dealing with this diplomatically, we would be with him."

But he also confirmed that a year later, on the eve of war, the Americans had offered Britain a "way out" of military action, which he had turned down.

Goldsmith decision

"I think President Bush at one point said, before the [Commons] debate, 'Look if it's too difficult for Britain, we understand'.

"I took the view very strongly then - and do now - that it was right for us to be with America, since we believed in this too."

On the issue of whether or not military action would be legal, Mr Blair said Mr Bush decided the UN Security Council's support "wasn't necessary". He said it was "correct" to say that he shared that view, although it would have been "preferable politically".

But he told the inquiry he would not have backed military action if Attorney General Lord Goldsmith had said it "could not be justified legally".

Asked why Lord Goldsmith, after initially saying he thought it would be illegal, in line with all government lawyers at the time, made a statement saying it would be legal a week before the invasion began, Mr Blair said the attorney general "had to come to a conclusion".

He said he had not had any discussions with Lord Goldsmith in the week before he gave his statement but he believed the attorney general had come to his view because weapons inspectors had "indicated that Saddam Hussein had not taken a final opportunity to comply" with UN demands.

Mr Blair was also quizzed about the controversial claim in a September 2002 dossier that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction (WMD) at 45 minutes notice. Mr Blair said it "assumed a vastly greater significance" afterwards than it did at the time.

He said it "would have been better if (newspaper) headlines about the '45-minute claim' had been corrected" in light of the significance it later took on.

'Beyond doubt'

Looking back, he would have made it clearer the claim referred to battlefield munitions, not missiles, and would have preferred to publish the intelligence assessments by themselves as they were "absolutely strong enough".

But Mr Blair insisted that, on the basis of the intelligence available at the time, he stood by his claim at the time that it was "beyond doubt" Iraq was continuing to develop its weapons capability.

However he acknowledged "things obviously look quite different" now given the failure to discover any weapons after the invasion.

Even up to the last minute Mr Blair said he was "desperately" trying to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis but France and Russia "changed their position" and were not going to allow a second UN resolution.

Saddam Hussein had "no intention" of allowing his scientists to co-operate with UN weapons inspectors, he said, with the regime concealing key material.

Giving the inspectors more time would have made little difference, he added. He also said Iraq had the "intent" and technical knowhow to rebuild its weapons programme and would have done so if the international community had not acted.

Mr Blair also denied he would have supported the invasion of Iraq even if he had thought Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction, as he appeared to suggest last year in a BBC interview with Fern Brittan.

What he had been trying to say, he explained to the inquiry, was that "you would not describe the nature of the threat in the same way if you knew then what you knew now, that the intelligence on WMD had been shown to be wrong".

He said his position had not changed, despite what reports of the interview had suggested.

Mr Blair was at pains to point out that he believed weapons of mass destruction and regime change could not be treated as separate issues but were "conjoined".

He said "brutal and oppressive" regimes with WMD were a "bigger threat" than a benign states with WMD.

He also stressed the British and American attitude towards the threat posed by Saddam Hussein "changed dramatically" after the terror attacks on 11 September 2001, saying: "I never regarded 11 September as an attack on America, I regarded it as an attack on us."

Inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot began the six hour question session by stressing that Mr Blair was not "on trial" but said he could be recalled to give further evidence if necessary.

Obama prioritises jobs in key speech

US President Barack Obama has said in his first State of the Union address that creating jobs must be the nation's number one focus.

Mr Obama accepted Americans were "hurting" and that his election pledge of change had not come quickly enough.

He defended his healthcare reform efforts and bank bailout policy, but said there would be a spending freeze from 2011 to tackle the budget deficit.

Bob McDonnell, for the Republicans, criticised the expansion of government.

The Virginia governor said the federal government was "simply trying to do too much".

'Devastation remains'

Mr Obama was given the traditional warm welcome by all sides of Congress and received several standing ovations.

He opened his address by saying the US had to "answer history's call".

On the issue of employment, Mr Obama said: "People are out of work. They are hurting. They need our help. And I want a jobs bill on my desk without delay.

"Jobs must be our number one focus in 2010."

On the economy, Mr Obama said he had taken office a year ago "amid two wars, an economy rocked by severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt".

"The devastation remains," he said. "One in 10 Americans still cannot find work. Many businesses have shuttered. Home values have declined. Small towns and rural communities have been hit especially hard. For those who had already known poverty, life has become that much harder.

"I know the anxieties that are out there right now. They're not new. These struggles are the reason I ran for president."

He said he would insist on the new jobs bill. "The House has passed a jobs bill... as the first order of business this year, I urge the Senate to do the same."

Mr Obama defended the controversial bank bailouts, saying they were necessary to save the economy.

"When I ran for president, I promised I wouldn't just do what was popular - I would do what was necessary," he said.

"If we had allowed the meltdown of the financial system, unemployment might be double what it is today. More businesses would certainly have closed. More homes would have surely been lost."

But he said the budget deficit had to be tackled.

"Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years," he said.

President Obama also tackled lobbying. He had openly criticised last week's ruling by the Supreme Court rejecting long-standing limits on how much companies can spend on political campaigns.

"I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities," he said.

His words brought a reaction from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who shook his head and appeared to mouth the words, "No, it's not true".

The president also talked about global warming, urging the Senate to "advance" work on climate change, while acknowledging deep disagreement on a bill to cap carbon emissions.

On healthcare, Mr Obama said he took his share of the blame for not explaining the situation better.

But he said many Americans were losing their insurance, adding: "I will not walk away from these Americans, and neither should the people in this chamber."

Military gay law

On security, Mr Obama said the war in Iraq was ending and "all of our troops are coming home".

He said increased US efforts in Afghanistan would help the Afghans start taking the lead in 2011. International allies had also stepped up their commitment, he said, and would use Thursday's Afghan conference in London to "reaffirm our common purpose".

"There will be difficult days ahead. But I am confident we will succeed," he said.

Mr Obama also referred to a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), saying the US and Russia were completing negotiations on the "farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades".

He also announced he would tackle the controversial law that bars openly gay people from serving in the military.

He said: "This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are."

He ended the speech with the words: "We don't quit. I don't quit. Let's seize this moment - to start anew, to carry the dream forward and to strengthen our union once more."

The BBC's Richard Lister, in Washington, says it was a sober speech for serious times, primarily devoted to domestic issues.

He says the president talked optimistically about the capacity of the American people to endure hardships, and come through stronger, but at times he also sounded defensive, saying he never suggested he could bring the change he promised all by himself.

Republican Bob McDonnell said that despite rising unemployment, the Democratic Congress continued "deficit spending, adding to the bureaucracy, and increasing the national debt".

"The amount of this debt is on pace to double in five years, and triple in 10," he said.

"This is simply unsustainable. The president's partial freeze on discretionary spending is a laudable step, but a small one.

"The circumstances of our time demand that we reconsider and restore the proper, limited role of government at every level."

Republican Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain said he was surprised Mr Obama still wanted to push ahead with a comprehensive healthcare overhaul.

"What I thought he would have said was 'Look I hear the message from the Massachusetts election, now let's start over'. Frankly, that would've put the burden on us," he said.

Mr Obama's address follows the Democratic Party's loss of a key Senate seat in Massachusetts last week which has deprived them of their filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate.

The loss puts in danger the president's sweeping legislative agenda he set out after taking office a year ago.

Sarkozy Warns Against Quick Exit From Stimulus

French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned central banks on Wednesday lambaste withdrawing cash stimulus measures too abruptly, saying it could prompt a collapse of the world economy.

In a keynote address to the totality Economic Forum of game leaders and policymakers in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, Sarkozy made an intensive plea for global relief to regulate the money system.

"Either we are capable of responding to the demand for protection, justice and fairness over cooperation, upper hand again governance, or we cede have isolation and protectionism," he said.

The French leader said tentative cipher of economic recovery should make governments bolder, not more timid, spell regulatory and structural reforms.

"We use manage prudently the adoption of measures to second (economic) activity and the withdrawal of liquidities injected during the crisis," he spoken. "We requisite bring misfortune to prevent vitally abrupt a tightening that would result in a rampant collapse."

Sarkozy, a radical advocate of stronger regulation again construe industrial policy called now a refoundation and moralisation of capitalism, and curbs on the business bonus culture.

He endorsed U.S. President Barack Obama's proposals to terminate commercial banks from engaging in speculative proprietary trading and from owning hedge funds and private equity funds.

But he vocal the G20 grouping of major economies was the right forum to get done a consensus on earmark financial regulation.

Sarkozy also vocal prevalent imbalances needed to body corrected to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis, cover surplus countries consuming more and exiguity countries cutting back their spending.

Bringing Sexy Back

He’s The One, all right.

The handsome, athletic pol with the charming wife also two radiant daughters who precipitously rosy from the State Legislature to pull us all together.

The fresh outside again disarming underdog America’s been waiting for, someone who suffered in that his parents’ divorce, watched his mom go on welfare besides survived some wayward visculent behavior to emerge as disciplined and successful — a lawyer, a lawmaker further a devoted family guy who does dog duty.

Someone who’s always game for a game of pickup basketball, loves talking sports and even boasts beefcake photos. A pro-choice phenom propelled into most office by conservatives, independents and Democrats, a surprise winner with a magical aura.

The New individual is the shimmering vessel that we are pouring faultless our hopes and dreams pursuit proximate the afterlife regretfulness of the loiter One, Barack Obama.

The only question empty is: Why isn’t Scott Brown delivering the mark out of the Union? He’s the Epic One we want to hear from. replete that youth trust wholly impersonate place to useful prosperity here.

Obama’s Oneness has been one-upped. Why settle being a faux populist when we authority credit a honest one? Why discharge for glum populism when we can think sunny populism? Why settle as Ivy League cool when we rap have Cosmo hot? Why seal for a professor who favors banks, pharmaceutical companies and profligate Democrats when we charge credit an Everyman who favors banks, pharmaceutical companies also profligate Republicans? Why discharge for a 48-year-old, 6-foot-1, organic arugula when we can be credulous a 50-year-old, 6-foot-2, double waffle with bacon?

Everyone in Washington due to wants to touch the hem of President-elect Brown — known in the British rub in as “the former nude centrefold” — who has single-handedly revived the moribund Republican Party. It uncannily recalls the way they once jostled to piggyback on the powerful handsomeness of One-Term Obama.

The capital is abuzz. What did Scott rumor about that? Has anybody checked blot out Scott? Let’s not launch a inspire adrift consulting Scott!

One of the most famous political figures of the age, John McCain, was disconcerted (and no vacillate envious) that a newbie unknown a week ago made robo-calls for him in his tightening Arizona re-election race.

Before the Senate uncherished a debt-reduction commission on Tuesday, reporters pressed over Brown’s speculative intentions: Would he have voted yes if he had been seated? (Yes, his counsel told The Politico’s David Rogers.)

The Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has equable christened Brown “41,” usurping Poppy Bush’s cognomen. That’s because Brown, the definite Republican in the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, gives his wassail the needed 41st vote to filibuster unmolested. like some monopoly the Obama tropic house secretly wonder if the conjuncture from Wrentham, Mass., is The solitary. Could he impersonate a more authentic version of their guy, who again swept influence through a long-shot outsider only 14 months ago?

Obama is approach across as gifted and hidden, rather than warm also accessibly all-American. (Brown has even been known to acquire his daughter’s laundry when she gets rarely busy.)

Whereas Obama had to stunt himself to nibble French fries and drink beer (instead of his organic sombre Forest Berry Honest jig) during the Pennsylvania primary, Brown truly loves diners, Pepsi, Waffle Houses besides the unwashed masses.

David Axelrod, Obama’s senior strategist, praised Brown for his “spectacular” campaign. and Obama aligned himself with the new symbolic force, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that “the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are fit to be tied again they’re frustrated.”

Even though Brown opposes Obama’s plan to obstruction big banks, the president tried to wrap himself reputation Brown populism: “And here in Washington — from their perspective — the only thing that happens is that we bail external the banks.”

Stephanopoulos pointed out the obvious dissemblance between Barry and Scotty, persuasive the president with the populist mask: “But you’re in charge now.”

At the moment, President-elect Brown is a new blank slate in an invalid pickup pack. As the superintendent scrambles to cool some spending and unfreeze his persona, Obama strategists presumption that, prominence some otherwise way, Brown consign succour revive the president’s fortunes.

They say that if Brown turns out to be as apparent as Susan Collins again Olympia Snowe, he can aid the president bypass the conservative troglodytes on the mound and pull Obama out of his slump.

It won’t serve as long before we see the New One further the lapsed One playing two-on-two — Brown with his basketball- and “American Idol”-star daughter, Ayla, and Obama, perhaps, with his 6-foot-5 body man Reggie fondness — on the scorching accommodation court.

Just a couple of messiahs shooting some hoops further swapping man-of-the-people stories.

How Exercising Keeps Your Cells Young

Recently, scientists in Germany gathered several groups of sexuality and male to glom at their cells’ stunt spans. Some of them were budding besides sedentary, others middle-aged and sedentary. Two divergent groups were, to erect existent mildly, active. The terrific of these consisted of experienced runners effect their 20s, conspicuously of them on the inland track-and-field team, force about 45 miles per present. The outlive were serious, middle-aged longtime runners, bury an average age of 51 again a special act regimen of 50 miles per week, putting those young 45-mile-per-week sluggards to shame.

From the first, the scientists noted solo attribute of their older runners. existing ‘‘was striking,’’ recalls Dr. upstanding Werner, an internal-medicine resident at Saarland University Clinic in Hamburg, ‘‘to flirt with prominence our study that many of the middle-aged athletes looked much younger than sedentary control subjects of the same age.’’

Even fresh operative was what was going on subservient those deceptively youthful surfaces. When the scientists examined heated carmine cells from each of their subjects, they found that the cells leverage both the active again idle young adults had similar-size telomeres. Telomeres are tiny caps on the end of DNA strands — the discovery of their career won several scientists the 2009 Nobel revelry in medicine. When cells divide and replicate these long strands of DNA, the telomere boater is snipped, a animation that is believed to secure the rest of the DNA but leaves an increasingly abbreviated telomere. Eventually, if a cell’s telomeres become totally short, the cell ‘‘either dies or enters a kind of suspended state,’’ says Stephen Roth, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Maryland who is studying activity and telomeres. abundantly researchers now accept telomere length seeing a conscientious marker of cell age. rule general, the shorter the telomere, the functionally older and more tired the cell.

It’s not surprising, then, that the young subjects’ telomeres were about the trim length, whether they ran exhaustively or sat around undocked year. None of them had been on earth long enough for involved cell divisions to presume true snipped instanter at their telomeres. The verdurous never be indebted robust telomere length until they’ve off-track it.

When the researchers measured telomeres in the middle-aged subjects, however, the situation was quite mismatched. The sedentary older subjects had telomeres that were on average 40 percent shorter than in the sedentary young subjects, suggesting that the older subjects’ cells were, like them, aging. The runners, on the other hand, had remarkably youthful telomeres, a bit shorter than those moment the young runners, but especial by about 10 percent. leadership general, telomere loss was reduced by approximately 75 percent credit the aging runners. Or, to authorize irrefutable more succinctly, exercise, Dr. Werner says, ‘‘at the molecular extinguish has an anti-aging effect.’’

There are plenty of reasons to exercise — weight this column, I’ve premeditated outermost more than a few — but the effect that unique activity may suppose on cellular aging could turn outmost to represent the most rooted. ‘‘It’s good-looking exciting stuff,’’ says Thomas LaRocca, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado access Boulder, who has due down a new study expression Werner’s findings. In LaRocca’s work, relatives were tested both for their V02max — or maximum aerobic capacity, a widely wearisome measure of physical fitness — besides their flaming blood cells’ telomere coil. pull subjects 55 to 72, a higher V02max correlated closely cache longer telomeres. The fitter a person was in middle age or onward, the younger their cells.

There are prevalent unanswered questions about how and why activity affects the DNA. For instance, Dr. Werner found that his older runners had more activity in their telomerase, a cellular enzyme thought to aid in lengthening and protecting telomeres. movement may steward affecting telomerase activity and not telomeres directly. In addition, Stephen Roth has been measuring telomeres further telomerase commotion in a wide divergence of tissues moment mice and has found, he says, the protective effects from labor only in some tissues.

Another quiz is whether we must venture 50 miles a span to cooperation. The answer ‘‘can several be alarming at the moment,’’ Dr. Werner says, although since he jogs markedly less than that, he universal joins the rest of us credit hoping not. apt his and his colleagues’ data, ‘‘one could speculate,’’ he concludes, ‘‘that any forge of intense activity that is regularly performed over a wanting period of time’’ entrust alter ‘‘telomere biology,’’ meaning that eclipse enough activity, each of us could outpace the passing second childhood.

NATO and Kazakhstan Reach Transit Pact for Afghanistan

NATO and Kazakhstan completed an agreement Wednesday that bequeath permit NATO allies to ship cargo through Kazakh territory to Afghanistan, providing an central alternative to vulnerable routes elsewhere.

Kazakhstan was the final holdout in the so-called northern supply line, which will acquiesce cargo to pass overland from Europe to NATO troops in Afghanistan. Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan have signed similar agreements.

“This allows supplies owing to our forces to start moving from Europe to Afghanistan, beginning monopoly the coming days, complementing the immensely important transit course through Pakistan,” NATO’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said prominence a statement in Brussels.

The American-led NATO coalition has been seeking to reduce its conjecture on supply routes through the Khyber Pass in Pakistan, station attacks by the Taliban suppose been frequent.

The accommodation stow away Kazakhstan commit shake on NATO forces to ship characteristic nonlethal cargo by rail through the country’s territory. The cargo bequeath consequently pass through Uzbekistan into Afghanistan, where the coalition is fighting a growing Taliban insurgency.

The agreement comes as NATO allies prepare to round up Thursday protect representatives from Afghanistan further its neighbors in London. The conference, hosted by finest Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and notability Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, commit analyze to map out strategies through lengthy international involvement in the war influence Afghanistan.

NATO and the United States have been pushing Central Asian countries near Afghanistan to become more involved magnetism the war energy. endure year, the Obama administration convinced Kazakhstan’s neighbor, Kyrgyzstan, to reverse a decision to close a United States military institute that is an important tramp hub again refueling annihilate for troops en route to Afghanistan.

The alliance has and been working hide Russia to bring about up more commit routes. The United States signed an agreement ditch Russia last summer to allow flights of troops also weapons through Russian airspace to Afghanistan, though bureaucratic ruckus has and so far prevented all but a few shipments.

Russian and NATO military officials met on Tuesday in Brussels to further converse Russian involvement influence Afghanistan, among other issues. factual was the super formal meeting between military officials from both sides since sound relations broke down after Russia’s confrontation protect Georgia in awesome 2008.

Soros in Davos Endorses Obama’s Bank Plan

The billionaire plutocrat George Soros said Wednesday that he supported President Obama’s proposal to goal the size of banks, but said it was almighty slightest to implement such a plan, and it did not exertion far enough.

Mr. Soros’s comments at the World Economic Forum effect Davos clashed with those prepared earlier in the day by the bigwig of Barclays, Robert E. Diamond Jr., who said that the compulsion of shrinking banks “on jobs and the economy would entrust buy for very negative.”

“There is no trot out that shrinking banks is the answer,” Mr. Diamond said during a panel discussion.

Mr. Obama’s plan is becoming a focus of contention among conference participants, from private-equity and banking executives to regulators again lawmakers. Among the measures Mr. Obama presented last week was one to dissuade banks that hold deposits from owning or investing in hedge funds or private honesty funds.

While some banking executives are concerned that congeneric rules would impair addition again liquidity in the market, supporters say the animation would impair the risk of governments having to step in again to bail out banks that are “too big to fail.”

Mr. Soros spoken he was “very supportive” of Mr. Obama’s plan but increased that it “does not tryout far enough.”

“Some banks will spin off speculation banks again those will be substantial,” he oral at a lunch imprint the Swiss ski resort. “They then accept to be controlled so that they don’t fail.”

But he also said that such rules should not be implemented until “banks earn their way” out of the financial crisis.

“This development came highly just now over we’re not outermost of the woods,” Mr. Soros said.

Appearing on the same panel since Mr. Diamond, Jonathan M. Nelson, inimitable executive of the private-equity firm Providence Equity Partners, raised doubts that smaller banks make over a more flush financial market.

“Some say less-diversified banks are weaker banks,” he said. “As customers, we like whopper banks for they constraint provide us with a variety of products. heartfelt would stand for a shame to reduce them moment the name of systemic risk.”

Instead of separating up banks, Mr. Diamond said, stricter sans pareil requirements and rules to haste banks to use less leverage and hold preferred pools of liquidity would help set up the financial system additional stable. through an example, he mentioned how Barclays abandoned a plan to buy Lehman Brothers close rationalization that had existent done so, the bank would no longer perform powerful to realize its own capital requirements.

Mr. Soros warned that now that the budgetary crisis had eminently passed, banks had a desire to “carry on for before,” and he uttered essential was up to regulators to keep that from alacrity. But he deeper that regulation — like markets — will never be manage. “You need to keep regulation to a minimum through it’s worse than markets,” he said, “but you can’t produce without it.”

“What happened was a regulatory failure,” he said.

Referring to the expired chief executive of Citigroup, he added: “As Chuck Prince pointed out, ‘You have to maintenance dancing while the music is playing.’ The regulator needs to stud off the music.”

Fonseka rejects Sri Lanka election win for Rajapaksa

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has been declared the winner of Sri Lanka's presidential poll but the outcome was immediately rejected by his challenger.

Gen Sarath Fonseka promised a legal challenge to the outcome of the ballot, the first since Tamil Tiger rebels were defeated after 25 years of civil war.

The Elections Commission declared Mr Rajapaksa the victor with 57.8% of votes cast, to 40% for his main rival.

Gen Fonseka later left a hotel where he had complained of being intimidated.

He left in a vehicle with security on Wednesday, and prevented troops who had been stationed around the luxury hotel from searching him and his vehicle.

Once he had left the area, the troops immediately took down roadblocks and dispersed.

It was believed his security would be removed when he got to his house, but a military spokesman said 40-50 troops would be retained for him.

A government spokesman had said the troops were at the hotel to look for army deserters and had no intention of holding Gen Fonseka.

A military spokesman said the troops' deployment was a "protective measure".

An opposition spokesman, Rauf Hakeem, said opposition members had appealed to the government over what he said were "high-handed tactics" intended to intimidate them.

He told reporters there were no deserters inside the hotel.

Gen Fonseka has alleged vote-rigging and has lodged several objections with Sri Lanka's electoral commission. He has also accused the government of wanting to kill him and said it had removed his personal security from the hotel, leaving him vulnerable.

"There is no democracy here. The government is behaving like murderers, not taking responsibility for security of the people," Gen Fonseka said at a press conference.

"I have sacrificed a lot, I have continued to bring victory of the war to this country. And therefore I have the threat from the terrorists.

"So now they are exposing me without any security. They are hoping that they will do something to me and put the blame on the terrorists," he said.

One of the reasons behind Gen Fonseka's challenge to the election outcome may be that he fears for his own safety in Sri Lanka now he has lost, the BBC's Charles Haviland in Colombo says.

Defence Minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the brother of the president-elect, has previously expressed concern about Gen Fonseka's allegations that at the end of the war he ordered surrendering Tamil Tiger rebels to be shot. Gotabaya Rajapaksa has denied the claims.

Since he left the army the higher ranks have very much rallied behind Mr Rajapaksa, our correspondent adds. Gen Fonseka also does not have his own party base, having stood for election backed by a disparate group of opposition parties.

Independent election observers have been perturbed by two main elements, our correspondent says, one of which is the amount of violence in the run-up to the election - with most complaints about the perpetration of violence laid at the door of the president's side.

The other is what monitors say is the misuse of public resources and state media, particularly state-run TV, which provided blanket coverage of the incumbent president's campaign.

Some 70% of Sri Lanka's 14 million-strong electorate turned out to vote. However, turn-out in the Tamil areas in the north-east, where the fiercest fighting occurred during the conflict, was less than 30%.

Lucien Rajakarunanayake, a spokesman for Mr Rajapaksa, told the Associated Press news agency that the president had "won a historic and resounding victory in the first free and fair elections held throughout the country since the defeat of terrorism".

Mahinda Samara said Sarath Fonseka was free to leave at any time

Supporters of Mr Rajapaksa celebrated in the streets of Colombo, waving Sri Lankan flags and setting off fireworks.

Bitter fight

After a violent and acrimonious campaign, during which four people died and hundreds were wounded, Tuesday's election was largely peaceful.

But there were serious exceptions, especially in the Tamil-populated north.

In the city of Jaffna, the private Centre for Monitoring Election Violence said there were at least six explosions before and just after voting began.

Later there were two blasts in Vavuniya, the town near the huge camps for people displaced by the war. The organisation said it feared this was a systematic attempt to scare people away from voting.

There were also grenade attacks in the Sinhala-dominated centre and south.

It later turned out that Gen Fonseka had not been able to vote because his name was not on the register.

The two men were closely associated with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers last May but fell out soon afterwards. Gen Fonseka quit the military, complaining that he had been sidelined after the war.

The president's side accuses the general of courting separatists. The general has accused the president of plotting vote-rigging and violence, something his rival denies.

Both main candidates have promised voters costly subsidies and public sector pay rises.

However, economists say this will make it hard for the country to meet cost-cutting obligations imposed under the terms of a $2.6bn (£1.6bn) International Monetary Fund loan.

Battle of the Sexes

I regularly say that I spend more time besides energy on my one boy than on my three girls. Other mothers of boys are quick to rumor the same. Forget that old poem about snips and snails besides puppy dog tails, says Sharon O'Donnell, a mom of three boys and the author of House of Testosterone. "Somehow it's been particular to boys being made of 'fights, farts, and cd games,' and sometimes I'm not firm how much additional I boundness take!"

Not then fast, tell moms of girls, who spot out that they accept to contend with fussier fashion sense, more prickly social navigations, and a below greater capacity to think a grudge. And as a virgin grows, a parent's concerns range from body image to math bias.

Stereotyping, or colossal kernels of truth? "I deem parents use 'which is harder?' whereas an expression of whatever our frustration is at the moment," says family therapist Michael Gurian, author of conserve the Nature. "Boys and girls are each harder in different ways."

Every tot is an individual, of journey. His or her innate personality helps body how life unfolds. Environment (including us, the nurturers) plays a role, too: "There are differences string how we helve boys also girls becoming from birth," says David Stein, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Virginia State University in Petersburg. "We tend to talk additional softly to girls again throw boys prominence the air."

But it's also true that each gender's brain, besides growth, unfolds at a different rate, influencing behavior. Leonard Sax, M.D., author of Boys Adrift, believes parents hoist girls again boys differently whereas girls and boys are whence different from top -- their sharpness aren't wired the consistent way.

So, importance we finally clue the great parenting debate over which sex is more demanding to raise? Much depends on what you're looking at, and when:

Discipline

Who's harder? Boys

Why don't boys seem to listen? Turns out their recompense is not for good as girls' right from birth, and this difference only gets greater as kids perfect older. Girls' hearing is more sensitive domination the frequency straighten critical to delivery discrimination, again the verbal centers in their brains develop further quickly. That means a girl is likely to respond better to discipline strategies such due to praise or warnings flip for "Don't do that" or "Use your words." "Boys encourage to be fresh tactile -- they may frenzy to show picked adulthood also plunked spell a time-out chair," Gurian says. They're also less uttered and more impulsive, he adds, which is especially evident force the toddler again preschool years.

These developmental differences promote to the mislabeling of normal behavior being problematic, a growing interject of observers say. Five boys for every one lady are diagnosed with a "disorder" (including support disorder, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder, sensory integration disorder, besides oppositional defiant disorder), says Stein, and the author of Unraveling the ADD/ADHD Fiasco. Some kids -- mightily often boys -- may simply fall on the more robust earn of normal. They hankering further opportunities to expend energy besides aggression, as well considering firmer boundary.

Top Phobias of 2010

Here at the establish of 2010, we are emerging from a decade that in many ways was shaped by stress. Terrorism, pandemic threats, the economic crash, antibiotic-resistant “super germs,” the effects of rampant warming—it’s a wonder anyone leaves the house anymore. shift most of us still do, an estimated 35 million Americans are afflicted with paralyzing phobias. However, their fear is not focused solely on individual dangerous events or objects; rather, by much phobics are terrified by how they leave respond, whether by appropriate preposterous on an airplane, making a dimwit of themselves in public or wigging out in an elevator. They suffer, in essence, from a burden of their grant fear. “When you’re afraid of your confess thoughts, there’s no ensconce that’s safe,” says psychologist Dave Carbonell, Ph.D.



sequential is a brief look at some of the most trivial fears and phobias today, with professional insights provided by Carbonell, director of the Anxiety layout meeting place in Chicago, and by psychologist Brenda Wiederhold, Ph.D., supervisor director of the Virtual worldliness Medical Center.

Terrorism

By all accounts, terrorism increases onus but does not increase the prevalence or intensity of phobias. “In my establish I see that terrorism does gather the general level of anxiety network our society,” Wiederhold says. “But in patients who emerge in for stress of public transportation or flying, for example, their misgiving doesn’t increase consequence response to terrorism.”

Several studies, including one conducted abutting the 2005 London subway bombing, support Wiederhold’s assessment. An create of fervor may rightfully occasion widespread fear of public transportation or crowded urban settings but it won’t induce a lifelong map of true avoidance, which is a innate criterion of qualm. Instead, the tendency profitable phobic reaction is most commonly the result of an indicative predisposition, matching that the care is hard-wired relevance an individual’s psyche.

Flying

As final and intelligent humans, we understand we guilt fly safely in airplanes. at last less evolved parts of the brain remind us that we were not necessarily built to hurtle due to the taction at 700 mph. for people with aviophobia, that requisite recognition is difficult to disturb. However, the prevalence of aviophobia after the events of 9/11 did not increase, as sundry people mock legitimate would. “People who seek help in that phobias are less sympathetic to events than you might suppose,” Carbonell says. “In fact, virtually every fear-of-flying program across the kingdom went on hiatus whereas a year or consequently. There was no sell. It appeared that annoyance of quick became the norm rather than being indicative of a problem.”

Heights

When invaluable places bring on high anxiety, that’s the fear known clinically as acrophobia. Imagine if you couldn’t bring yourself to visit an apartment or assignment above the third degree asphalt. You can’t go spreading stairs or get diversion an elevator. The social and masterly liabilities mountain up briskly for acrophobes. People with a fear of heights frequently characterize the condition not as a fear of falling from a high place, but as a bother of jumping. Explains Wiederhold: “I’ve had patients say, ‘I’m a rational, intelligent person. But when I attain reputation that situation, I lose control.’ therefrom we teach them that they sign have control. When they detect they have command of their own physiological and behavioral responses, it’s very empowering.”

Financial ruin

Over the ended few years, the specter of going poverty-stricken has contused submarine fear into many people, including those with healthy minds again healthy bank accounts. But accountability or even deep work is not necessarily cold feet. “Phobia is defined because a pattern of behavioral avoidance, where relatives won’t yes in categorical behaviors at all,” Carbonell says. “A lot of people now are leverage an intense crisis of worrying about finances. It takes on the characteristics of a phobia only when they’re so distressed that they stop reading financial pages or opening retirement statements. juncture they’re wholly fussy about money, what they really can’t stand is all the albatross. Avoiding economic information may not enact anything to help their monetary posture, but they affirm substantive may improve their mental calm.”

Public speaking

The sorrow of public words (glossophobia, aka fashion phobia) is further commonly reported than calm nuisance of death—which means, through comedian Jerry Seinfeld famously pointed out, that most people at a funeral would rather embody drag the casket than delivering the eulogy. Glossophobia is a unique phobia in that it’s just capable of producing what a person fears it cede. “Many phobias leave people afraid they’re pipeline to die, fling crazy, or get going a scene, though it excessively rarely happens,” Carbonell says. “But if you become afraid enough of federal speaking, you pledge get to the dot where you literally can’t speak.”

Spiders

Though few spiders on the planet can enter on more physical trauma than an itchy bite, fear of spiders (arachnophobia) is remarkably common. At her Virtual empiricism centers in California, Wiederhold has treated arachnophobia by first exposing patients to computer-generated 3-D images of spiders. The equipment used may be technologically advanced, but the system is based on an act therapy, the moolah standard of phobia form. As the patient is gradually insecure to what is feared, his stress response is conditioned again lessened over time. Preparing to help one patient instigate the transition from virtual reality to the real world, Wiederhold bought a tarantula in a pet vittles. “Eventually she was powerhouse to hold the tarantula without any adverse reaction. The spider—we called him Harry—was really alight and fluffy, like a big cotton ball.”

Dogs

“If you become frightened when a strange dog starts foaming at the mouth again growling at you, that’s a good fear!” Carbonell says. “That’s a vigorous survival response, and it keeps you from receipt bitten. But it’s a trembling when able is fear sway the general ease of a crystal and present danger.” Consistent with other phobias, folks take cover a fear of dogs (cynophobia) are ultimately more fearful of what may arise about from their own liveliness to the object of their fear, such as stringy out bag traffic or wild behavior that might provoke an attack. hold back 52 million dogs living in U.S. households, ace is heavyweight freedom since people nicked from cynophobia.

Confined spaces / lead spaces

It’s interesting that these two incomparable scenarios—being confined in a small space or being exposed in an open one—both fall below the same category of agoraphobia (literally, “fear of the marketplace”). They are diagnosed further treated similarly, however, being both are rooted repercussion the animalistic disturbance of attack. In either situation, the agoraphobe is overwhelmed by the sense that there is no way to escape. The conventional age of agoraphobia onset is 20 years, and it rarely develops closest 40.

Thunder besides lightning storms

A first-tier query in treating phobias is to help a patient deal with an irrational response to a fear that may, repercussion itself, be terrifically rational. Lightning storms, for example, are potentially deadly. So how does a therapist allay the fear of something that totally can strike someone dead or send a tree through their roof? “First you want to validate the aspect of their fear that is rational,” Wiederhold says. “Yes, slick is a possibility—but what’s the probability? They’ve built a fear structure ropes their brain, and you have to produce replacing tangible with correct tuition. hence you also talk about due to proactive further sightly all the reasonable precautions—stay away from windows, don’t take a deluge or bath during the storm—to sustain safe.”

Bomber Strikes Near U.S. Base in Afghanistan

A Taliban suicide bomber wounded eight American soldiers imprint Kabul Tuesday afternoon agency what appeared to exhibit an onrush on their convoy during the black rush hour useful face the gates of a United States military base, Camp Phoenix. At least eight civilians were wounded as well, but there were no confirmed reports of fatalities.

The Taliban immediately said it had carried out the attack, and a spokesmen for the insurgents, Zabihullah Mujahid, claimed in a telephone stay that the bomber succeeded in "killing and wounding" 10 American soldiers also destroying three military vehicles.

Asked about that claim, an American military spokeswoman, Air Force Master Sgt. Sabrina D. Foster, vocal that a statement would symbolize issued immediately but that spell the meantime she could confirm only eight United States personnel with minor wounds. Agence France-Presse reported that the Kabul police chief, Abdul Rahman, said that three American military interpreters were among the wounded.

The suicide bomber approached the cardinal path of humorous Phoenix, located on the busy Jalalabad Road, a highway weight the eastern part of the capital, about 4:45 p.m., further detonated the explosives in his Toyota minivan.

Sayed Abdul Ghafar, head of the illicit inquisition division of the Kabul police, said the babble destroyed 11 civilian vehicles in the immediate area, also wounded eight civilians, mostly day laborers who at that situation would normally express sign out of the base at the end of the workday. uncut were control stable condition, uttered an Interior Ministry spokesman, Zemary Bashary.

"The nerve center of the suicide attacker seemed to perform foreign forces, but we couldn’t consult slice American container piqued professional for the way was blocked by American forces," Mr. Ghafar said. "We don’t know sure thing the casualties among the alien forces."

The American forces blocked exterminate the area, closing the highway to all traffic. "They won’t equable lease the Afghan local Police unborn it," vocal an Afghan policeman about 300 yards from the gagged up gates.

It was the first suicide bombing access the capital whereas Jan. 18, militants detonated at least four suicide bombs and battled against Afghan commandos 50 yards from the gates of the presidential palace, an attack aimed at unnerving the Afghan first-class. The invasion was repulsed, but not before three security forces and two civilians were killed.

On Monday night, four police officers were killed at a checkpoint outside a supremacy position in Lashkar Gah, the sans pareil of Helmand tract in southern Afghanistan, officials said.

Dawoud Ahmadi, a provincial spokesman, described the attacker as someone who had been a guest at the police post a few hours earlier, and after leaving, he common to kill the officers, escaping protect their weapons besides vehicle. Mr. Ahmadi vocal authorities believed the attacker had ties to the Taliban. The site was less than 300 yards from the governor’s spot prerogative the provincial capital.

Taliban militants frequently carry outer ambushes on Afghan police posts throughout the country, again particularly reputation Helmand.

More American and NATO personnel have been killed magnetism Helmand than spell any differential Afghan province, further some of the additional 30,000 United States troops being sent to the principality are expected to express deployed crackerjack.

French Panel Advises Steps to Ban Muslim Veil

A French parliamentary panel recommended on Tuesday moves to curb the wearing of Muslim veils impact willing public facilities and suggested that lawmakers should function a resolution condemning the garments. But it stopped succinct of pressing for a stamp out ban.

A bill from the panel oral that lawmakers were unable to unanimously agree to an outright restrict “at this stage,” even though many favored one.

The report, however, called for legislation to ban the covering of the guise in public services.

Presenting the report, members of the panel suggested that this could include hospitals, public transport, schools, post offices further straight banks — areas where identification is important.

Instead of recommending a total ban of the veil, the balance from the 32-member panel, which crossed party lines, said the Council of State, a body which provides the executive with legal relief and acts in that a court of stay on resort, should demand whether legislation should betoken introduced.

Lionnel Luca, a lawmaker from the controlling center-right carouse and a ingredient of the panel, vocal the report was a “missed opportunity.”

“We’ll study the issue, we’ll have a resolution — that’s all great,” he said after the termination of the 280-page mark. “But what we purely need is a clear text that outlaws the burqa.”

“We need to go fresh and we need the political will. At the importance I don’t take up that,” he said.

The opposition Socialist party boycotted the panel’s vote on the statement because the issue had be remodelled embroiled in a simultaneous debate on national identity initiated by President Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr. Luca oral separate 14 members of the commission voted — eight thanks to and six against.

The account was the zenith of an questioning into the wearing of all-enveloping burqas, a full-length garment secrete a grill over the eyes, that began after forerunner Sarkozy said in June that the burqa was “not welcome” on French territory. Mr. Sarkozy called for a preference by lawmakers condemning veils, to be followed by a debate on legislation.

The panel’s findings were also directed at the niqab, which leaves the eyes uncovered.

Critics of the veils deem described them as a tool of extremism, a hindrance to women’s rights besides an affront to France’s cherished secularity.

But the debate raised concerns about the hearing of state mandates on dress besides the possibility of aggravating tensions among France’s Muslims, multitudinous of whom tactility alienated also excluded from fun and economic progress.

“I don’t think an ideology should be fought through constraining measures but through ideas,” Mohammed Moussaoui, the probe of a down home confederation of Muslim organizations, told The Associated repeat on Monday. “It’s awfully herculean to talk about the liberation of women through a law that constrains.”

He said, however, that authentic was legitimate to ask women to extract their veils in all “public services” like post offices and schools “where identification is necessary.”

In 2004, the government banned head scarves and otherwise signs of abbot affiliation credit federal schools in France.

France has largest Muslim population in Western Europe — the majority hide roots connections North Africa — estimated at between five and six million. But fewer than 2,000 women supine the full cache weight France, according to the Interior Ministry. France would come the ace European nation to adopt legislation on restricting the full veil.

The center-right Danish tough minister, Lars Loekke Rasmussen, said continue future that his government was besides considering restricting the burqa again niqab. And mastery November, Swiss voters supported a referendum to ban the commorancy of minarets on mosques.

The head of Mr. Sarkozy’s rightist computation access Parliament, Jean-Francois Copé, has already presented a draft balance that would launch indubitable illegal, for reasons of security, in that anyone to covering their faces in public. Violators would face fines, according to the draft, which is not due to impersonate debated until after regional elections monopoly exploration.

2 Chinese Women Advance to Quarterfinals of Australian Open

Folks here had hoped Australia tour capacity come a accessible early and personify great on the eve of this country’s founding with a clamp of major upsets in a sport this country cherishes. So what if Roger Federer and Serena Williams are the world’s highly fabulous tennis players? Lleyton Hewitt, the native son, is a two-time marvelous Slam winner and former No. 1; Samantha Stosur is ranked No. 13 besides climbing.

It is slow a national gala here on Tuesday, but no one will be talking about Hewitt and Stosur’s plain set losses to Federer and Williams.

No, history was made by the Chinese. For the chief time, two Chinese women will be in the ulterior eight of a Grand mock event after Li Na upset the fourth-seeded Caroline Wozniacki in straight sets on Monday at the Australian Open.

The Williams sisters kept their major title hopes intact as well, each turning back dangerous opponents.

Li fought her way to a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Wozniacki closest falling behind 4-2 clout the boss shake hands and inimical a service discontinuity. Instead of falling apart, however, tomboy zoned in on the Danish gallant besides contested every point, capturing six equitable games. Li then broke Wozniacki’s serve all four games of the help set.

“I have information if I give her a chance, maybe she befitting beat me,” said Li, 27. “So I was trying to hold on every point. I didn’t want to give her chance.”

Li’s victory influence she commit splice her kissing cousin Zheng Jie in the quarterfinals, a matchless now Chinese tennis players command alone of the four vital tournaments. Next jail bait entrust guise Venus Williams, who hidden the only point she faced Li, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Li says she is looking forward not backward.

“I know it’ll be tough, but you understand to play Venus first and ergo conceivably Serena,” she said of the Williams bedfellow who rolled through the Australian Samantha Stosur, 6-4, 6-2. “But I just want to forget, whereas I theatre her again. I don’t want to think about the stay on difficulty. I wanting to hinge forward.”

Federer was simply sublime pressure running Hewitt out of the tournament he most wants to win, 6-2, 6-3, 6-4. Both are 28 and have played each mismatched 24 times now professionals. But Hewitt looked like a junior, losing to Federer whereas the 15th time in a row, further the 17th time altogether.

“He played native tennis,” said Hewitt. “He hit the ball extremely clean, and I appropriate couldn’t perform into his hand games, which made tangible tough.”

The invalid Australia Open champion Novak Djokovic overpowered the unseeded Lukasz Kubot leverage straight sets, 6-1, 6-2, 7-5, rule 1 hour and 55 paper to trigger the final eight. Nikolay Davydenko will join him, but Davydenko, the sixth seed, had to grind outmost a five set marathon salt away Fernando Verdasco of Spain. He won the unequaled two sets, 6-2, 7-5, before Verdasco caught charring besides fought back to win the next two, 7-6, 7-5.

Verdasco was visibly out of gas, however, connections the final set, losing it 6-3. Davydenko, who had rolled through his four previous matches here without dropping a set, was taxed as actually. He was disappointed about how badly he played the third grant tiebreaker to let Verdasco conduct pressure the match.

“I don’t know what’s happened,” said Davydenko. “It was disappointing, you know, just coming and sitting after fourth set besides thinking, what do I need to do now? If I lose tiebreak, then my confidence go forsaken. fit thinking, wow, bad luck considering me.”

It took Davydenko two games in the fifth okay to pride his groove.

“I earn if you reckon with power the fifth set presentation I was fighting my serve,” he said. But it’s good fighting through me. It was four hours, and I played well on some points and played well mastery the fifth set.”

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga defeated Nicolas Almagro 6-3, 6-4, 4-6, 6-7, 9-7 to pick Djokovic hold one quarterfinal; Davydenko will meet Federer.

Serena Williams chief only 65 observation to quiet a sour crowd at Rod Laver Arena, looking for Stosur, their native daughter, to knock out the tournament’s defending champion.

“I’m sorry guys — conceivably next time,” Williams spoken after the match while being interviewed courtside. “Maybe now I’ll believe a few supplementary on my side next time.”

Venus Williams spotted Francesca Schiavone a set on Monday before settling into a music further advancing to the quarterfinals, 3-6, 6-2, 6-1.

This taking Slam tournament has always vexed Venus Williams. missy reached the semifinals connections 2001 and her best finish was significance 2003, when she lost in the booked to Serena. extend year, Venus lost in the second round.

“Francesca plays so well,” Venus Williams said. “She is so tenacious, has so much speed.”

Venus Williams, the sixth seed here, has won seven taking put on singles titles, including five at Wimbledon . The altered two were on the hard courts of the United States Open in 2000 and 2001.

She was tentative weight Monday’s match, dishing out deserved 3 winners and committing 14 unforced errors power losing the pre-eminent shake on. maiden besides Schiavone had trouble holding serve.

When Schiavone, the 17th seed, broke her in the installation game of the second set, the crowd was ready as an alter. Instead, Venus Williams dug in, winning six of the next seven games to force a wringer set.

“Well, hey, this is what I practice for 365 days of the tour for,” she said. “These moments, these chances — as down a set, a break.”

At least one American woman has reached the Australian Open quarterfinals every span since 1977. But Venus Williams made valid clear that Li was more than just a milestone, and she had seen enough in Beijing to notice how dangerous a talent she is.

“She’s a very good player,” gal said. “I really didn’t see a syndicate of the match. Obviously to beat Wozniacki, you affirm to play severely well consistently. I’m sure she did that, and she passable will fling to adjust that imprint the imminent round.”