The Bush administration considers the UAE an important ally in the fight against terrorism since the suicide hijackings and is not objecting to Dubai Ports World's purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co.

The $6.8 billion sale is expected to be approved Monday. The British company is the fourth largest ports company in the world and its sale would affect commercial U.S. port operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

DP World said it won approval from a secretive U.S. government panel that considers security risks of foreign companies buying or investing in American industry.

The U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States "thoroughly reviewed the potential transaction and concluded they had no objection," the company said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The committee earlier agreed to consider concerns about the deal as expressed by a Miami-based company, Eller & Co., according to Eller's lawyer, Michael Kreitzer. Eller is a business partner with the British shipping giant but was not in the running to buy the ports company.

The committee, which could have recommended that President Bush block the purchase, includes representatives from the departments of Treasury, Defense, Justice, Commerce, State and Homeland Security.

The State Department describes the UAE as a vital partner in the fight against terrorism. But the UAE, a loose federation of seven emirates on the Saudi peninsula, was an important operational and financial base for the hijackers who carried out the attacks against New York and Washington, the FBI concluded.

Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat whose district includes the New York port, urged the administration to consider the sale carefully.

"America's busiest ports are vital to our economy and to the international economy, and that is why they remain top terrorist targets," Schumer said. "Just as we would not outsource military operations or law enforcement duties, we should be very careful before we outsource such sensitive homeland security duties."

Last month, the White House appointed a senior DP World executive, David C. Sanborn of Virginia, to be the new administrator of the Maritime Administration of the Transportation Department. Sanborn worked as DP World's director of operations for Europe and Latin America.

Critics of the proposed purchase said a port operator complicit in smuggling or terrorism could manipulate manifests and other records to frustrate Homeland Security's already limited scrutiny of shipping containers and slip contraband past U.S. Customs inspectors.

"When you have a foreign government involved, you are injecting foreign national interests," Kreitzer said. "A country that may be a friend of ours today may not be on the same side tomorrow. You don't know in advance what the politics of that country will be in the future."

Shipping experts noted that many of the world's largest port companies are not based in the U.S., and they pointed to DP World's strong economic interest in operating ports securely and efficiently.

"Does this pose a national security risk? I think that's pushing the envelope," said Stephen E. Flynn, who studies maritime security at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. "It's not impossible to imagine one could develop an internal conspiracy, but I'd have to assign it a very low probability."

Changing management over the U.S. ports "doesn't offer al-Qaida any opportunities it doesn't have now," said James Lewis, who worked with the U.S. committee at the State and Commerce departments. "It's in Dubai's interest to make sure this runs well. There is strong economic incentive to be sure these worries never materialize."

Flynn and others said even under foreign control, U.S. ports will continue to be run by unionized American employees. "You're not going have a bunch of UAE citizens working the docks," Flynn said. "They're longshoremen, vested in high-paying jobs. Most of them are Archie Bunker-kind of Americans."

Peninsular and Oriental and DP World set approval by the U.S. security committee as a condition for the sale. In regulatory papers, the companies said either the committee must agree not to formally investigate the purchase or Bush must not move to block the sale for national security purposes.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI has said the money for the strikes was transferred to the hijackers primarily through the UAE's banking system, and much of the operational planning for the attacks took place inside the UAE.

Many of the hijackers traveled to the U.S. through the UAE. Also, the hijacker who steered United Airlines flight into the World Trade Center's south tower, Marwan al-Shehhi, was born in the UAE.

After the attacks, U.S. Treasury Department officials complained about a lack of cooperation by the UAE and other Arab countries trying to track Osama bin Laden's bank accounts

The Iranian government has repeatedly stated that its NUCLEAR PROGRAME is solely intended at peaceful purposes, simply generating electricity, not warheads. But the West, lead by Washington's efforts, claim, although they fail to put too fine a point on it, that these are not the true intentions of Tehran, viewed as a security challenge for Western powers.

"Iran poses the single largest foreign policy challenge," said Ilan Berman, the vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council and an expert on regional security in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Russian Federation, arguing "they pose a direct challenge to our goals in the WAR ON TERRORISM."

Also in a private meeting with European diplomats that was held last week, a former senior U.S. official suggested launching a dozen B2 bombers in an air raid aimed at a key Iranian nuclear facilities.

But the official's suggestion comes in contradiction with what the U.S. and the European Union keep boasting about; using diplomacy to resolve the world's standoff over Iran's nukes. "Iran's radical president has said he would spread this technology as far as he can," "It would be a tragedy if we prolonged the life of this regime unnecessarily. Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb would do that," Berman added.

But Phil Giraldi, a former CIA staff officer, disagrees with Berman's shallow warning of Iran's alleged threat to the world. "I do not believe it constitutes a major threat to the U.S. specifically. Last year, undoubtedly, speakers here (at the Conservative Political Action Conference) promoted the war in Iraq," Giraldi said. "All were wrong. Iraq was no threat ? Now we're hearing the same things about Iran."

Giraldi, who served 16 years as staff officer before becoming the chief of base in Barcelona, Spain, was also involved in gathering intelligence across the Middle East and Europe.
If Iran used the bomb, they would face hundreds of Israeli NUCLEAR WARHEADS, and thousands in the U.S.," Giraldi, who writes for The American Conservative, a print magazine that contends the conservative movement, further states.

"Iran would be annihilated and would cease to exist. They know this."

Prior to Iraq war, Giraldi said, he warned that attacking the country was "neither realistic nor practical", and could eventually lead to major unintended consequences. However, the former CIA officer warned that Iran could make the situation in Iraq "untenable" for the Americans and that by aiding the Shia fighters there. To Iran, Giraldi said

He also suggests that Tehran might consider transferring cruise missiles obtained from Ukraine and Shahab missiles with biological and chemical payloads, targeting the U.S. occupation bases in Iraq, Israel, Qatar, Bahrain and elsewhere.

At the same time Giraldi said that shutting down the Strait of Hormuz could send oil skyrocketing to as much as $300 a barrel.

Giraldi says: "is this all worth it? No". "It's not good policy to go to war on a basis of a 'what if' situation," he said.

"The Soviet Union was contained for 40 years." "Ronald Reagan was able to destroy it without firing a single shot."

It marks the first time that the World Council will hold its assembly in Latin America. The theme of the event is "God, in Your Grace, Transform the World." More than 700 official delegates from 340 member churches of the World Council will participate.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, will attend the opening session of the assembly, and convey a message of greeting from Benedict XVI.

Bishop Brian Farrell, secretary of the pontifical council, will head an official Catholic delegation of 18 delegated observers. The members of the delegation are drawn from the Roman Curia, bishops' conferences, representatives of superiors general based in Rome, and lay movements.

The Catholic Church is not a member of the World Council of Churches, but cooperates with it in various ways.

While some have been applauded for defending freedom of speech, others have been fired, arrested or received death threats. Since the drawings appeared in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten newspaper last September, they have been republished in more than 60 newspapers. They have been greeted by protests from Muslims around the world.

The Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said it was very concerned at the arrests of journalists and the closure of a number of newspapers. The responses pointed to a serious deterioration of press freedoms, spokesman Jean-Francois Julliard said. "We do not think it is the solution to try to scare every publication that published these cartoons," he said.

Cartoon ban

On Friday, the editor of the Peta newspaper in Indonesia was reportedly charged with blasphemy for reprinting the cartoons. In Denmark, the culture editor of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper who first commissioned the cartoons was sent on indefinite leave after suggesting he would print Iranian cartoons of the Holocaust.

A day before, a Malaysian newspaper, the Sarawak Tribune, was shut indefinitely for reprinting the cartoons, on the ground that the government had banned possession of the images. Earlier, the editors of two weekly newspapers in Jordan were arrested after they published the drawings.

Hashem al-Khalidi of al-Mehwar newspaper and Jihad Momani of Shihan newspaper - who was also fired - are both reported to be under police guard in hospital because of stress. Two Yemeni newspapers have also been shut down, and the government has placed their editors under investigation.

Police guard

At the beginning of the month, the managing editor of France Soir, Jacques Lefranc, was fired by the newspaper's Franco-Egyptian owner after the French paper published all of the original cartoons.

The editor of Magazinet, a small Norwegian Christian newspaper that published the cartoons on 10 January, received death threats and has been under police protection. In South Africa, the editor of the Mail and Guardian, Ferial Haffajee, said she received abusive letters and text messages after reprinting one of the drawings.

The cartoonists have not fared better.

One of the artists, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they had received threats and that Danish police had warned them against public comment. "Right now, focus is on Jyllands-Posten and the government? We benefit from that in terms of security. The police have advised us against talking to the media in order not to change this," he was quoted as saying. The editor-in-chief, Carsten Juste, has told the newspaper's website that it had received threats from as far away as Pakistan and offers of bounties on the heads of the illustrators.

Circulation boost

But some newspapers have reaped benefits from the row.
The satirical French weekly, Charlie Hebdo, republished the cartoons on Wednesday, along with cartoons caricaturing Christianity and Judaism, leading some staff to be placed under police protection. However, journalists at the paper told the Reuters news agency that the weekly had boosted its usual print run of 100,000 up to 320,000.

France Soir increased its sales by 40% when it published the cartoons, and circulation director Philippe Soing said that the paper's image could benefit. "It shows we're capable of running scoops - and leading a battle for freedom of the press," he told the Associated Press news agency.

The first steps in a move to charge for every e mail sent have already been taken. Under the pretext of eliminating spam, Bill Gates and other industry chieftains have proposed Internet users buy credit stamps which denote how many e mails they will be able to send. This of course is the death knell f or political newsletters and mailing lists.

The New York Times reports that "America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely."

The end game is a system similar to China, whereby no websites even mildly critical of the government will be authorized.

The Pentagon admitted that they would engage in psychological warfare and cyber attacks on 'enemy' Internet websites in an attempt to shut them down. The fact that the NSA surveillance program spied on 5,000 Americans tells us that the enemy is the alternative media and that it will be targeted for elimination. Court cases are pending after the Bush administration demanded the Google search terms of American citizens.

The first wave will simply attempt to price people out of using the conventional Internet and force people over to Internet 2, a state regulated hub where permission will need to be obtained directly from an FCC or government bureau to set up a website.

The original Internet will then be turned into a mass surveillance database and marketing tool. The Nation magazine reported last week, "Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency.

According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets--corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers--would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out."

We see a move to demonize the Internet and tar its reputation. AOL is running ads equating Internet users with terrorists. In the next few years we may see a staged Internet shutdown which is blamed on cyber terrorists.

For the aspiring dictator, the Internet is a dangerous tool that has been seized by the enemy. We have come a long way since 1969, when the ARPANET was created solely for US government use. The Internet is freedom's best friend and the bane of control freaks. Its eradication is one of the short-term goals of those that seek to centralize power and subjugate the world under a global surveillance panopticon prison.

Mr Blair told Michael Parkinson, in an interview being screened on Saturday, how he had struggled with his conscience when making decisions about a potential war in Iraq.

"When you're faced with a decision like that, some of those decisions have been very, very difficult, most of all because you know these are people's lives and, in some case, their deaths," he said.

"The only way you can take a decision like that is to do the right thing according to your conscience."

He added: "In the end, there is a judgement that, I think if you have faith about these things, you realise that judgement is made by other people."

Asked to explain what he meant, Mr Blair replied: "If you believe in God, it's made by God as well."

Red Caps killed

Mr Keys, who stood in the 2005 General Election as an anti-war candidate in Mr Blair's constituency of Sedgefield, said going to war had been a "catastrophic political blunder".

Mr Keys' son, Lance Corporal Tom Keys, was one of six Red Caps killed by an Iraqi mob in Majar Al-Kabir in June 2003.

"War should be the final option that a prime minister takes when all avenues have failed. In my view those other avenues hadn't failed," said Mr Keys, the founder of campaign group Military Families Against The War.

"God doesn't come into this at all. We want to believe that our... loved ones... died for a justified cause, not some delusional religious cause."

He accused Mr Blair of "jumping on the same bandwagon" as US President George W Bush.

"Are we really seeing over 100 coffins coming back [to the UK] because God told him [Mr Blair] to go to war?"

Rose Gentle, whose son Gordon was killed in Basra in 2004, said: "A good Christian wouldn't be for this war.

"I'm actually quite disgusted by the comments. It's a joke."

Dr Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat MP and honorary associate of the National Secular Society, said Mr Blair's comments were "bizarre" and warned against politicians making "references to deity" in public life.

However, Mr Pound told BBC Two's Newsnight that Mr Blair was being "painfully honest" and, as he would not be seeking re-election as prime minister, his comments should be taken as apolitical.

"If this was anything to do with trying to appeal to the electorate, he wouldn't be so excruciatingly honest," he said.

"If he was trying to go that awful American route of guns, gods and gays and try to link politics to religion, then he wouldn't be doing it this way."

Few political parties more fully deserved to lose a democratic election than Fatah, the corrupt, ramshackle Palestinian faction that has held a virtual monopoly on power since the Palestinian territories won a measure of self-government. Fatah's comprehensive defeat at the hands of Hamas, in elections that all international monitors agreed were fair, reflect the anger and frustration of 1.3 million Palestinian voters at the feuding, mismanagement and corruption of the late Yassir Arafat's cronies who have dominated the Fatah-led governments in the West Bank and Gaza. The electors have seen the ministerial villas amid the Gaza slums. They have suffered from the lawlessness. And they have seen huge sums donated from abroad squandered while the Palestinian economy stagnated. This is Arafat's true legacy.

Little wonder, therefore, that voters turned instead to Hamas, the Islamic militant group committed to the destruction of Israel. Swiftly learning the populist tricks of electioneering, Hamas ran an effective campaign. It played down its militant philosophy and played up its role in providing schools, clinics and welfare support for Gaza's slum-dwellers. Despite clashes with rival factions, it exercised restraint on polling day to win more than half the seats in the 132-member parliament in a turnout of 78 per cent. Ahmad Qureia, the Prime Minister, and his Cabinet promptly resigned.

The Hamas win is, nevertheless, a huge blow to the peace process, arguably far more serious than the incapacitating stroke of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister. Israel, the US and Europe have said that they will have nothing to do with Hamas unless it renounces violence and recognises Israel's right to exist. But effective government by the Palestinian Authority (PA) is impossible without a myriad of daily interactions with the Israelis. It is not only water supplies, fiscal stability, trade and movement that are intertwined with Israel; but Palestinians' chances of working inside Israel, getting through security barriers or leaving the country are wholly dependent on the overall security relationship.

Hamas may hope to concentrate at first on cleaner, more transparent government. It will soon find that without Israeli co-operation it can deliver almost nothing. Even if it no longer sponsors suicide bombings ­ it has carried out nearly 60 such attacks since 2000 ­ Hamas risks Israeli military retaliation and international isolation if it makes no effort to halt terrorist operations by its supporters or, crucially, by Islamic Jihad, the rival organisation that boycotted the elections. Much depends on its security policy and on whom it appoints to office.

How should the world react? Arab governments forecast, lamely, that Hamas will become more moderate and should be treated as any election winner. The West, which has long urged greater democracy in the region, accepts that an election verdict, however uncomfortable, must be accepted ­ but not, as Condoleezza Rice said yesterday, if Hamas has one foot in politics and one in terror. Europe must not settle for a messy verbal compromise on relations with Israel.

As the largest provider of funds for the PA, the European Union has, for too long, turned a blind eye to embezzlement. If Hamas can provide cleaner government while abjuring violence, Europe can continue support. If it does neither, both funding and acceptance should be promptly withdrawn. The EU funded Arafat's corruption. It must not finance Hamas terrorism.

"We're not talking about just surgical strikes against an array of targets inside Iran. We're talking about clearing a path to the targets" by taking out much of the Iranian Air Force, Kilo submarines, anti-ship missiles that could target commerce or U.S. warships in the Gulf, and maybe even Iran's ballistic missile capability, White said.

"I'm much more worried about the consequences of a U.S. or Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear infrastructure," which would prompt vigorous Iranian retaliation, he said, than civil war in Iraq, which could be confined to that country.President George W. Bush has stressed he is seeking a diplomatic solution to the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.

But he has not taken the military option off the table and his recent rhetoric, plus tougher financial sanctions and actions against Iranian involvement in Iraq, has revived talk in Washington about a possible U.S. attack on Iran.
The Bush administration and many of its Gulf allies have expressed growing concern about Iran's rising influence in the region and the prospect of it acquiring a nuclear weapon.

There were fresh calls for a European Union tax as MEPs rejected the budget deal painstakingly won by Tony Blair. The Prime Minister faced fierce criticism when he surrendered 7 billion pounds of Britain's annual rebate to get agreement last month. But the package signed up to by EU leaders was embarrassingly rejected by MEPs who said it did not meet Europe's needs.

Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, who succeeded Mr Blair as EU President, suggested the EU should now become self-financing to avoid such wrangling. Speaking to Euro MEPs through an interpreter, the Chancellor conceded the idea was not popular everywhere. But Mr Schuessel said it was his job as EU President to make necessary proposals even if they were unpopular.

That will infuriate the UK Government, particularly Chancellor Gordon Brown. Gary Titley, leader of the British Labour MEPs, rejected the idea but suggested a "levy" system could be adopted across the EU. "There is an argument for saying instead of having this rather unsavoury argument every year where member states say 'we will give that, but want that back etc' there is a more rational system of financing," he said. "A European tax is not acceptable. It would have to be agreed unanimously and I can't see that would be agreed unanimously."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is visiting South America, said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo that Israel and its allies would not dare attack his country.

The remarks were made after Ahmadinejad was asked to refer to a British report that Israel plans to strike sites related to Iran 's nuclear program.
"They are aware of Iran's strength. I believe they will not do such a stupid thing, and its masters won't as well? Everyone knows that the Zionist regime has nuclear weapons while Iran abides by the international laws," the Iranian president said.

"This regime wants to hurt the Iranian people," Ahmadinejad added. "They have many dreams but they are not so strong." Ahmadinejad was asked in the interview whether he wants to see Israel destroyed, but failed to provide a direct answer. He referred in his answer to things he said in the past about Israel being wiped off the map "like the Soviet Union was wiped off the map." Where is the Soviet Union? It vanished," the president said. "We are not interested in war, we are only trying to solve the problem called the Zionist regime, which is the source of hatred."

In the interview, Ahmadinejad once again expressed his doubts over the Holocaust's existence. "If the Holocaust indeed took place, where did it take place? Why are the Palestinians to blame?" He said, reiterating his stance that what Europe's Jews went through during World War II did not justify the theft of Palestinian lands by Israel.

Despite the large number of casualties at the time, doctors had no way to preserve tissue samples taken from infected patients, so researchers used an ingenious method to overcome this. The preserved body of a flu victim buried in Alaskan permafrost was exhumed, and they painstakingly extracted the genetic material needed to work out the structure of the H1N1 virus. Then, in a maximum "biosafety" facility at Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory they reconstructed a fully functioning virus, and infected macaque monkeys to see what would happen.

Writing in the journal Nature, they reported that the results were startling. Symptoms appeared within 24 hours of exposure to the virus, and the subsequent destruction of lung tissue was so widespread that, had the monkeys not been put to sleep a few days later, they would literally have drowned in their own blood. The results match those seen when mice were infected in an earlier study and are very similar to those described in human patients at the time the virus was at its height.

Darwyn Kobasa, a research scientist with the Public Health Agency of Canada, and lead author of the research, defended the decision to recreate one of the most dangerous viruses in history. He said: "This research provides an important piece in the puzzle of the 1918 virus, helping us to better understand influenza viruses and their potential to cause pandemics." However, it is not the virus that is directly causing the damage to the lungs - it is the body's own response to infection.

Immune system proteins that can damage infected tissue were found at much higher levels following H1N1 infection compared with other viral infections. Analysis at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (UW) revealed that a key component of the immune system, a gene called RIG-1 appeared to be involved. Levels of the protein produced by the gene were lower in tissue infected with the 1918 virus, suggesting it had a method of switching it off, causing immune defences to run wild.

This ability to alter the body's immune response is shared with the most recent candidate for mutation into a pandemic strain, the H5N1 avian flu. Experts are worried that if the virus changes so that it can infect humans easily, it could again be far more lethal than normal seasonal flu. "What we see with the 1918 virus in infected monkeys is also what we see with H5N1 viruses," said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, who led the analysis at UW. "Things may be happening at an early time point (in infection), but we may be able to step in and stop that reaction."

Dr Ronald Cutler, an infectious diseases researcher at the University of East London, said: "Knowing how that over stimulation takes place could lead to the development of new methods to treat these diseases so we are better prepared for any future pandemic." Dr Jim Robertson from the UK's National Institute for Biological Standards and Control, said the decision to recreate the virus was justified. "Many influenza virologists remain nervous about creating and experimenting with a reconstructed 1918 Spanish flu virus, an extremely dangerous virus which disappeared from the world long ago.

The emir was the 13th ruler of a 245-year-old dynasty that has ruled Kuwait since the Anaiza tribe, to which the al-Sabahs belonged, migrated from the Arabian hinterland. Since the fall of Saddam in 2003 and US calls for change in the Middle East, the ruling family had come under intense pressure from both Islamists and pro-Western liberals to loosen its grip on the government and share power.

The ruling family had also been under pressure from parliament and elders within its ranks to break with tradition and replace the ailing crown prince. The succession process alternates between the two branches of the ruling family - al-Jabers and al-Salems.

Kuwait, a founder OPEC member, enjoys one of the world's highest standards of living, despite its reliance on oil exports, unpredictable oil income and huge losses from the 1990-1991 Iraq occupation. It hosts up to 30,000 US troops and some 13,000 US citizens live in the country. Kuwait has cracked down on Islamists opposing the US military presence in the country. Diplomats say radical Islam is taking hold among Kuwaiti youth.

In December, a Kuwaiti court sentenced to death six suspected militants linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda for bloody attacks in the country. The six were among 37 Islamists on trial as members of the "Peninsula Lions" group believed to be linked to al Qaeda in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Kuwaitis are mainly Sunni Muslims and about a third of them are Shi'ites, many of them of Iranian descent

China has resolved to shift some of its foreign exchange reserves - now in excess of $800 billion - away from the US dollar and into other world currencies in a move likely to push down the value of the greenback, a high-level state economist who advises the nation's economic policymakers said in an interview Monday.

As China's manufacturing industries flood the world with cheap goods, the Chinese central bank has invested roughly three-fourths of its growing foreign currency reserves in US Treasury bills and other dollar-denominated assets. The new policy reflects China's fears that too much of its savings is tied up in the dollar, a currency widely expected to drop in value as the US trade and fiscal deficits climb.

China now boasts the world's second-largest cache of foreign exchange - behind only Japan - and is on pace to see its reserves climb past $1 trillion later this year. Even a slight diminishing of the dollar as a percentage of those holdings could exert significant pressure on the US currency, many economists assert.

"The general trend for the US dollar is continuously weakening," Yu said, speaking to reporters at a conference in Beijing last month. "Countries with huge foreign-exchange reserves will have their assets shrunken."

Even if a Chinese shift away from the dollar weakened the currency, that would probably not soothe tensions with those in Washington calling for an increase in the value of the yuan to help US manufacturers. Unless China severs the link between the value of its currency and the dollar - a move Beijing says could destabilize its economy - then a weaker dollar would simply mean a weaker yuan as well, leaving in place the current debate over whether China's export earnings are being netted unfairly.

Dr Hwang's landmark claim to have cloned human embryonic stem cells was false, a university panel concluded. But the panel, which last month rejected other research by Dr Hwang, has accepted that he did create the world's first cloned dog.

Dr Hwang has admitted errors, but claims his work was sabotaged. State prosecutors are now expected to look into the case. The BBC correspondent in Seoul, Charles Scanlon, says the conclusion of the university's investigation completes the disgrace of Dr Hwang, who was South Korea's most celebrated scientist.

Dr Hwang claimed in a 2004 paper published in the US journal Science that his team had produced a line of stem cells from a cloned human embryo. The achievement was judged to be a major scientific breakthrough in the search for cures for a range of degenerative diseases including diabetes and Parkinson's.

But the nine-member Seoul University panel, which spent a month examining Dr Hwang's work, said in a statement on Tuesday: "The 2004 paper was written on fabricated data to show that the stem cells match the DNA of the provider although they didn't."

The South Korean team "did not have any proof to show that cloned embryonic stem cells were ever created," the panel concluded. The same panel revealed last month that a later paper which seemed to take Mr Hwang's cloning work even further was also faked.

The shaming of Dr Hwang has come as a profound shock to South Koreans, many of whom saw the cloning pioneer as a national hero. Some analysts are describing his fall from grace as one of the biggest cases of scientific fraud in recent history.

Dr Hwang has not made any public appearances since saying he would resign his faculty position last month, and his current whereabouts are unknown. But there was some positive news for the beleaguered scientist on Tuesday.

The university panel ruled that an experiment last year in which Dr Hwang's team claimed to have cloned a dog was genuine. A three-year-old Afghan hound called Snuppy - short for Seoul National University puppy - was genetically identical to his father according to DNA tests, the panel found.

Somalia has not had a proper government for 16 years. Instead, warlords have been fighting for control of territory. Local Islamic courts were set up by businessmen who wanted someone to catch and punish thieves and people who do not respect their contracts.

Some of these courts joined to form the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) and their small groups of gunmen became Somalia's strongest fighting force.
The UIC is divided between moderates and hardliners.

They all say they want to restore stability and law and order to Somalia.
Hardliners also want to curb foreign influences, which they say are immoral. They have closed down cinemas showing foreign films and football matches.

Some radio stations have also been told not to play foreign music or local love songs but other radio stations and cinemas have been left alone. The UIC have also staged public executions and floggings of people they have found guilty of crimes such as murder and selling drugs.
After years of lawlessness, many Somalis are happy to have some kind of law and order.

The prices of many basic foods have fallen because gunmen no longer extort money from lorries taking goods to markets. Almost all Somalis are Muslim but some are wary of the hardline elements. They do not like the harsh punishments and do not want to be cut off from the rest of the world.