Cliques of the ultra-violent Latin American MS-13 gang have been identified in 42 U.S. states, according to the director of an FBI task force, speaking at a conference here. Another violent group, the 18th Street Gang, is in 37 states, said Brian Truchon, director of the FBI MS-13 National Gang Task Force, or NGTF.

"One thing we figured out with the on-going cases was that Los Angeles is our starting point," Truchon stressed. "When the gang migrates throughout the U.S., there is always a road back to L.A. From L.A., there is always a road back to Central America."

The FBI has identified 13 core cities for MS-13 in the U.S.: Los Angeles, Washington, Baltimore, New York, Houston, Charlotte, Sacramento, Seattle, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Omaha, Newark and Boston.
The FBI has found foreign connectivity from MS-13 and the 18th Street Gang back to El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

"Gang members in a prison in El Salvador are able to reach out from prison and kill gang members in L.A.," he said. "We find a great deal of movement and communication between gang members in the U.S. and their counterparts in Mexico and El Salvador," Truchon said. "We believe that MS-13 controls the smuggling corridors along the Mexican border, for both drugs and weapons," Trias told the conference.

"MS 13 is not going away," Trias said. "We are seeing second generation MS-13 members and MS-13 recruitment is increasing. We also see signs of a more formal criminal structure developing within MS-13, both in the United States and in Central America."

Now die-hard supporters are renewing their push for the audacious plan -- a $65 billion highway project that would link two of the world's most inhospitable regions by burrowing under a stretch of water connecting the Pacific with the Arctic Ocean.

Russians and Americans alike made their pitch for the project in Moscow on Tuesday, at a conference titled "Megaprojects of Russia's East.""It's time to rewrite the old slogan 'Workers of the world unite!'" said Walter Hickel, a former governor of Alaska and interior secretary under U.S. President Richard Nixon. "It's time to proclaim, 'Workers -- Unite the world!'"

The proposed 110-kilometer tunnel would be the longest in the world. It would also be the linchpin for a 6,000-kilometer railroad line stretching from Yakutsk -- capital of the gold- and mineral-rich republic of Sakha, which is roughly the size of India -- through extreme northeastern Russia, in waters up to 54-meters deep and into the western coast of Alaska. Winter temperatures there routinely hit minus 70 degrees Celsius.

By comparison, the undersea tunnel that is currently the world's longest -- the Chunnel, linking Britain and France -- is only 50-kilometers long. That raises the prospect of some tantalizingly exotic routes -- train riders could catch the London-Moscow-Washington express, conference organizers suggested.

On Tuesday the number of £2 million homes reached a record high. There are a thousand up for sale this week at that price or more, and some are changing hands in only 48 hours. It is just amazing how much people are charging for homes, said one estate agent. You can almost name your price now.

On Wednesday KKR, the private equity firm, bid £11 billion for Boots. Unless every analyst has missed something, that sum is out of all proportion to the high street chemist's real value.

Is this balloon just going to keep floating up and up? All balloons eventually lose air. The only question is when. The current spate of takeovers, mergers and other deals going on in the City can be read in two ways. On the one hand, there is a lot of money around looking for a home.

The City is channelling much of the cash that is generated by Chinese growth and Russian/Middle Eastern oil, and it is gushing up through London like a giant geyser. On the other, I can't help thinking that the financiers seem to be sprinting ever faster to do ever-larger deals and rake in ever-larger management fees, in case the golden age fizzles out tomorrow.

In today's Financial Stability Report, the Bank of England finds that the UK financial system remains highly resilient. But it also says that the strong and stable economy has encouraged financial institutions to expand further their business activities and to extend their risk-taking . . . this has increased the vulnerability of the system as a whole to any abrupt change in conditions. Let's not forget a basic rule: you don't make gazillions without taking risks. That people are taking bigger and bigger risks to get a return, because everyone is doing it, should worry us all.

I will tell you how to become rich, Warren Buffett once said. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful. So do buy that flat if you can but as an insurance policy, not an investment. It may be wise to do what the rich do: hedge.

Tests will allow the couples to take the unprecedented step of selecting embryos free from a gene that carries a heightened risk of the cancer but does not always cause it. The move will reignite controversy over the ethics of embryo screening.

An application to test for the BRCA1 gene was submitted yesterday by Paul Serhal, of University College Hospital, London. It is expected to be approved within months as the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has already agreed in principle.

Opponents say that the test is unethical because it involves destroying some embryos that would never contract these conditions if allowed to develop into children. Even those that did become ill could expect many years of healthy life first. Some critics fear that the tests move society farther down a slope that will lead ultimately to the creation of designer babies chosen for looks or intelligence.

However, the first patients say that the technology will allow them to spare their children a devastating genetic inheritance. One couple in their twenties, who would only be named as Matthew and Helen, have lost three generations to breast cancer.

Last year, The Timesrevealed the conception of Britain's first"designer baby", screened as an embryo for inherited cancer. The baby has since been born healthy, free from the gene carried by her mother that would have given her a 90 per cent chance of developing retinoblastoma, an eye tumour.

I have in my hands a copy of the eagerly awaited Inter-Ministerial Committee to Re-Examine Yom Kippur Practices report. The reexamination is in response to widespread demands, led by liberals and the secular media, to loosen the Yom Kippur restrictions, which have become a major stumbling block for non-Jewish immigrants who want to convert to Judaism.

Transcripts of interviews with these immigrants reveal that many abandoned the conversion process because of the adamant attitude of the rabbinic courts. The immigrants, most of whom are Russian, were willing to accept Judaism, but balked when told about Yom Kippur.

"These restrictions are 3,500 years old. Why should I have to deny myself food and drink for 24 hours?" asked one potential convert. "This is the 21st century, not primitive times," said another. "These uncaring rabbis force things upon us, refusing to compromise. If they cared, they would not prohibit food for a full day."

OTHER IMMIGRANTS stated they were willing to go along with other unreasonable demands, such as forswearing bread and eating tasteless matza for the entire Pessah week, and even to suffer the resultant stomach problems. "We were even willing to celebrate that other festival by eating cold soup in an unheated Succa during chilly autumn nights. But these harsh Yom Kippur demands are the last straw. The rabbis obviously do not welcome us."

Others complained that though they love the benefits that Israel gives its immigrants, these religious demands are cruel and unusual. "Not only would we not be able to eat, but also not to drink. Have we left one Gulag to enter another? We pleaded with these medieval rabbis, but they would not budge. Do they not know that it is dangerous to go without water? One could become dehydrated."

Other immigrants were shocked to discover that the Yom Kippur prayers take several hours at night, and then continue from sunrise to sunset the entire next day. "Even Russian Easter services take only a fraction of that time. And one may eat on Easter!"

The event, which began on Monday, is being held under the auspices of the Arab League and brings together regional liaison officers from participating Arab countries. It marks the fourth time the boycott officers have met in the past 18 months. Ostensible US allies such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia are among the countries taking part.

This is likely to evoke irritation in Washington, as US officials have been pressing Baghdad and Riyadh to end their enforcement of the embargo, which bars trade with Israel or dealing in Israeli-made goods. As The Jerusalem Post revealed last week, the Saudis continue to implement the boycott of Israel in violation of a pledge made to the Bush Administration in November 2005. On the basis of that pledge, Washington agreed to the desert kingdom's request to accede to the World Trade Organization.

According to reports in the Syrian press, the participants at this week's conference are planning to add an undisclosed number of foreign firms to the blacklist they maintain of companies that do business with Israel.
Presiding over the meeting is Assistant Secretary-General of the Arab League Muhammad Soboh, who praised Syria in his opening remarks for playing host to the boycott office.

Although the Arab League has its headquarters in Cairo, the organization's Office for the Boycott of Israel has been based in the Syrian capital since its establishment in 1951. Various speakers at the conference underlined the importance of the embargo on Israel as a means of pressuring the Jewish state to make diplomatic concessions.

"The Arab boycott of Israel will remain an influential tool and strong backer of the Palestinian people until the establishment of their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital and the restoration of all the occupied Arab territories," Muhammad al-Ajami, director of the Syrian Office for the Boycott of Israel, told the official Syrian news agency SANA.

Other participants in this week's parley include Syria, Sudan, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Libya, Lebanon, Qatar, the Palestinian Authority, Tunisia and Yemen. Egypt and Jordan, both of which have signed peace treaties with Israel, are not participating in the meeting.

President Hu was speaking at a meeting of the Communist Party Politburo, which pledged to impose firmer propaganda controls on the net. The move is the latest in a series of crackdowns on China's estimated 137 million net users.

In January President Hu said officials must nurture a healthy online culture. "Development and administration of internet culture must stick to the direction of socialist advanced culture, and adhere to correct propaganda guidance," the Politburo meeting resolved, reported China Central Television (CCTV).

During the last week, a campaign in China's media has highlighted the negative impact of indecent internet content. CCTV has broadcast daily reports showing students and their parents protesting about the harm such content caused. The number of internet users in China grew by almost 24% last year and now one tenth of the population is thought to be online.

The drive to clean up the internet follows directives earlier this year aimed at "purifying" television broadcasts, including demands that stations reserve prime-time slots for "ethically inspiring TV dramas" and clampdowns on talent shows. The steps are seen by some as signs the party is tightening its grip on information dissemination before its sensitive 17th congress.

One is the scientist who has become a household name for his strident defence of Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution. The other is the fertility expert who has become a familiar figure on our television screens as presenter of shows on anything from the human body to making babies.

Now Richard Dawkins and Lord Winston are set to have a spectacular public clash when the IVF pioneer launches a strongly worded criticism of Professor Dawkins's attacks on religious belief. Lord Winston has condemned Professor Dawkins - nicknamed "Darwin's rottweiler" - for what he called his "patronising" and "insulting" attitude to religious faith and said he was in danger of damaging the public's trust in science.

His particular target is Professor Dawkins's latest book, The God Delusion, in which he asserts that belief in God is irrational and profoundly harmful to society. In the book - a bestseller when it was published last year - Professor Dawkins says that belief in a supernatural creator is a delusion, and quotes Robert Pirsig's dictum that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."

Lord Winston, a practising Jew, will argue for a more conciliatory approach to religion in a lecture at the University of Dundee tonight entitled The Science Delusion. "The reason I've called it The Science Delusion is because I think there is a body of scientific opinion from my scientific colleagues who seem to believe that science is the absolute truth and that religious and spiritual values are to be discounted.

"Some people, both scientists and religious people, deal with uncertainty by being certain. That is dangerous in the fundamentalists and it is dangerous in the fundamental scientists." Describing some neo-Darwinists as "extremely arrogant", he said: "I think people begin to think that scientists like to believe they can run the universe."

Internet providers like AT&T and Verizon are lobbying Congress hard to gut Network Neutrality, the Internet's First Amendment and the key to Internet freedom. Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. So Amazon doesn't have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to work more properly on your computer.

Congress must keep the Internet free and open by voting for meaningful and enforceable Network Neutrality--the Internet's First Amendment.

It is very clear that the FDA is intending to regulate and ultimately destroy the entire CAM industry (Complementary and Alternative Medicine). Based on the explanations in the FDA's own document, the following things are likely to occur:

All vitamins, nutritional supplements and functional foods will be stripped of their structure & function claims, reducing them to empty labels where virtually nothing at all is allowed to be stated.

Vegetable juice will be regulated as a drug. Raw juice retreats will be raided or shut down.

Growing and selling common garden herbs will get you arrested as a drug dealer.

Massage oils and handheld massagers will be regulated as "medical devices."

Yoga props, pilates machines and weight machines will be regulated as "medical devices" and require FDA approval before being sold or used.

Raw sprouts and other anti-cancer foods will be regulated as drugs.

Bottled water that "treats" dehydration will be regulated as a drug.

Massage therapists who use hot rocks as part of their therapy will have the ROCKS regulated as medical devices! (It's true. The FDA will actually look at a pile of rocks and declare, "Those are medical devices!")

Functional foods, supplements, vitamins and homeopathic remedies will disappear from store shelves, pending FDA "review." (The only things remaining will be processed junk foods and pharmaceuticals, which is exactly what Big Business wants.)

Therapeutic tea products, such as green tea, will be outlawed and confiscated.

Vitamin store owners will be arrested and prosecuted for "practicing medicine without a license."

Citizens owning personal inventories of "unapproved drugs" (vitamins and herbs) may have their homes raided at gunpoint and their inventories confiscated by armed law enforcement agents.

The importation of herbs and functional foods from all countries may be banned.

KEEP IN MIND THAT THE FDA IS THE SAME AGENCY THAT:-

Wants to label irradiated foods as "pasteurized."

Voted to put the deadly drug Vioxx back on the market after tens of thousands of deaths, even after its own manufacurer pulled it from pharmacies.

Raided a church at gunpoint, confiscating biofeedback machines and charging that they were "practicing medicine" by counseling church members on issues like depression.

Openly allows corrupt, "on the take" experts to vote on new drug approvals, even when those experts are taking money from the same companies impacted by their votes.

Refuses to legalize stevia, the safe, natural herbal sweetener that's used virtually everywhere else in the world. The agenda? Protect the profits of aspartame and other chemical sweeteners.

Openly allows the mass poisoning of the public with cancer-causing food additives such as sodium nitrite.

Refuses to enforce its own laws regarding unsafe chemical toxins in personal care products, allowing perfume and lotion companies to continue poisoning the public with cancer-causing chemicals that don't even have to be listed on the label, nor proven safe.

Ordered the destruction of recipe books that mentioned stevia. (A campaign to keep the public ignorant of the herb.)

Does everything in its power to protect drug company profits, including discrediting herbs, supplements and alternative medicine.

Does anyone honestly believe that this criminal organization has any capacity whatsoever to act in the public interest? Even many Senators are fed up with the FDA's unprecedented level of corruption and criminal behavior.

Everything is at stake here. If the FDA gets its way, the United States will become a medical wasteland, dominated by corporate drug company interests, where the naturopaths are imprisoned and their products destroyed. Supplements and herbs will become contraband, and gardeners who grow their own medicinal herbs may be raided and arrested by DEA agents wielding assault rifles. Simply selling dried broccoli sprouts as being "good anti-cancer foods" may land you in prison, and running a vitamin shop could result in you being arrested for "practicing medicine."

Imagine a nation where Whole Foods stores are stripped of all herbs and supplements, where vitamin shops are emptied and abandoned, where books that promote herbs are bulldozed into large piles and burned, where natural healers are rounded up and "disappeared" into incarceration centers. This is the future that will become reality if the FDA has its way. The plan has been explained to us in plain language. Any agency that openly states "vegetable juice will be regulated as a drug" has quite simply lost its marbles. We're are now clearly being regulated by clinically insane bureaucrats.

In the opening session of the Gang Enforcement Conference, El Salvador President Antonio Saca said the problem is one that should concern many nations. "Gangs like MS-13 have evolved into coordinated and well-financed criminal organizations," he said, making them an international problem.

"The immigration that we have experienced in the region, into Mexico and the United States is a theme we have to understand," Saca explained. "The same activity of the criminal gangs we experience here in this region is now being experienced in the United States. The territorial expansion of these criminal organizations is the principle menace we are facing from gangs like MS-13."

A select group of U.S. and international law enforcement officers, including representatives from Mexico and Latin America, is working on how to respond to the El Salvador-grown MS-13 gang (Mara Salvatrucha Gang), the tattooed drug-dealing criminals haunting the nightmares of FBI agents across the U.S.
WND reported as early as 1995 the gang reportedly was meeting with representatives of al-Qaida and smuggling operatives into the United States from Mexico.

Attorney James Trusty recently told a court in a case reported by the Washington Post that three leaders participated in or planned four murders over a span of only two years. Trusty told the court MS-13 gang members follow the "rape, kill and control" philosophy," using guns, knives and machetes. Robert Loosle, FBI special agent in charge in Los Angeles, told WND that a key focus of the conference is to make sure "everybody is on the same page" both within the U.S. and internationally in dealing with the growing problem of Hispanic gangs in the United States.

Frank Flores of the Los Angeles Police Department told the convention that MS-13 today is recruiting members not just from El Salvador, but from the Hispanic community at large and even from Los Angeles' African-American community.

Flores told the group that the Mexican Mafia controls the Hispanic groups in California from within the state prisons. "Gangs like MS-13 or the 18th Street Gang have a history that goes back into the 1980s," Flores explained. "The Mexican Mafia is organized as a crime hierarchy, along the model of the Sicilian Mafia.

The big money business for the Hispanic gangs still is drugs. All through Los Angeles any gang or gang member who wants to deal drugs is going to have to pay 'rent' to EME [the Mexican Mafia], or else they are out of business and most likely dead."

"In the world of Hispanic gangs," José Chávez of the LAPD told the conference, "all roads lead to LA. We are trying to exchange information with law enforcement throughout the U.S. and throughout Latin America. LA is becoming a 'fusion center' for information on Hispanic gangs." El Salvadoran law enforcement authorities echoed that theme.

Also in Gaza, an angry clan stormed the parliament building, carrying the body of a dead family member to demand the killers be brought to justice.

Today's rocket attack, which came on Israel's 59th Independence Day, did not cause any damage or injury. However, it marked the first time Hamas openly acknowledged firing shells toward Israel since agreeing to a cease-fire along the Gaza-Israel border in November. A spokesman for Hamas' armed wing said the group considered the truce to have ended.

"The cease-fire has been over for a long time, and Israel is responsible for that", spokesman Abu Obeida told the Voice of Palestine radio station. In recent months, Hamas had largely held back on attacks, particularly during its negotiations on a power-sharing agreement with the Fatah movement of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Now the Muslim militant group appears to be spoiling for a fight, especially in the absence of any progress toward the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit. Shalit was captured by Hamas-allied militants in Gaza last June.

"This is a message to the Zionist enemy that our strikes will continue," Abu Obeida said of the rocket fire. "We are ready to kidnap more and more, and kill more and more of your soldiers."

Shalit's kidnappers demand the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including veterans and those involved in killing or wounding Israelis.Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday said that freeing soldiers was important to the government, but that it would not repeat mistakes made in the past by releasing violent prisoners who then carried out more attacks against Israelis.

However, Mr Olmert said there would be "no escape in the end from making a difficult decision on trading prisoners for captured Israeli troops."

Let me give you a real-world example. Here's a question: Which is worse? Actions or words? Robbing someone or calling him a mean name? Which one deserves the greater penalty?

Before you answer, let's say the name was really mean, like being called "Four-eyes!" I played on the public school playground, used to wear glasses and have been victimized personally by such horrific verbal assaults. They hurt my feelings. And there ought to be stiff penalties for something like that. Stiff like 23 years behind bars? I don't think so. But the state of New Hampshire does.

I know what you're thinking. Can't be. We can't criminalize name calling. The public schools would be empty with everyone behind bars until their 30s. Oh, I left something out. The mean name in New Hampshire isn't "Four-eyes," targeting the visually impaired; it isn't "Fatso," shamelessly targeting the lovers of cheesecake. The only people protected from mean names with a 23-year jail sentence are homosexuals.

Just what might H.R. 1592 do on the federal level? As Rep. (and former Judge) Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, pointed out on the House Judiciary Subcommittee, if passed, H.R. 1592 is going to put pastors in prison. Pointing to Title 18 of the US Criminal Code, Section 2 (a):

(a) Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal. 18 USC Sec. 2

Pastor? Have you ever counseled from a biblical perspective or read from Roman 1? I Corinthians 6? Genesis 19? Leviticus 18 or 20? Then, if H.R. 1592 becomes law and someone who has attended your church, read your materials or heard your broadcast commits a crime such as pushing away a cross-dresser's unwelcome advances you are "punishable as a principal," as someone who "counsels" and "induces" THE NOW-ILLEGAL BELIEF THAT HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR IS A SIN

Think this is a stretch? Think again. In 1998, I oversaw the national "Truth in Love" campaign, which expressed hope for change for those struggling in homosexuality something for which I was accused of murder. Here's a sample of one of the full-page "Truth-in-Love" campaign ads that caused all the commotion. One ad pictured 850 ex-homosexuals with the headline, "We're standing for the truth that homosexuals can change." Brace yourself for "hateful," "bigoted" and "intolerant" speech said to be responsible for murder.

"We believe every human being is precious to God and is entitled to respect. But when we see great suffering among homosexuals, it's an inherent Christian calling to show compassion and concern."

With words like "precious," "respect," "compassion" and "concern," you can understand why the city of San Francisco would be prompted to accuse us of murder:

"It's not an exaggeration to say that there's a direct correlation between these acts of discrimination, like Matthew Shepard, such as when gays and lesbians are called sinful, and when major religious organizations say they can change if they try, and the horrible crimes committed against gays and lesbians." - City of San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Oct. 19, 1998.

We now have a governmental body on record connecting SPEECH AND VIOLENCE. It's not even violent speech. They are saying that the hopeful message that homosexuals can change is responsible for murder. That, my friend, is why the hate-crimes legislation is the most dangerous legislation in the country. It will lead to silencing our speech just as the city of San Francisco tried to do.

H.R. 1592 isn't about hate. It isn't about crime. It's about silencing our speech. But you don't care about speaking out on "issues" such as homosexuality? As I said in my book, "The Crimnalization of Christianity," if they can silence the truth, they WILL silence the Gospel. Look no further than Philadelphia where grandmothers were thrown in jail for the "hate crime" of sharing the Gospel.

Arlene Elshinnawy, a 75-year-old grandmother of three, held a sign before she was hauled off to jail: "TRUTH IS HATE TO THOSE WHO HATE THE TRUTH."

Or you can use your "RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT." But the House vote on H.R. 1592 is scheduled this week. Use it much longer, and those are the words you'll hear before you're put in the jail cell next to grandma for the "hate crime" of sharing the Gospel.

As the debate in Congress over supplemental funding for the war in Iraq heats up, the Department of Defense still cannot adequately account for billions of dollars, according to the Government Accountability Office. "For the past 10 consecutive years, we have been unable to certify the Financial Report of the U.S., which is prepared annually by the Treasury Department," Gary Engle, director of Financial Management and Assurance at the GAO, told WND. "Many of the material weaknesses that we found relate to the Department of Defense and their financial management problems."

"There are efforts underway over at DOD to address the problems, but the efforts are likely to be long-term projects," he said. WND asked Engle if it was fair to say DOD simply had "lost" billions of dollars allocated to the department by Congress. "We haven't reported that DOD has 'lost' billions of dollars," Engle objected. "It's hard to say, with the internal control problems DOD has and with the limited audit work on-going at DOD because of the control problems.

The real focus is to try to develop processes and controls and systems so DOD can be audited. "Nobody's done the work, to my knowledge, that would be able to verify if money were really lost at DOD," Engle explained. A Jan. 31 paper entitled "Financial Stewardship: A Critical Challenge Facing Our Nation," on the GAO website supports the statements made to WND by Engle and Irving.

This paper notes that the GAO has been unable to certify the U.S. Treasury GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Practices) accounting of the U.S. budget "because the federal government could not demonstrate the reliability of significant portions of the financial statements, especially in connection with major financial management challenges at the Department of Defense."

Lt. Col. Brian Maka, spokesman for DOD, objected to WND characterizing the GAO's criticism as identifying "problems" with DOD accounting.
"Characterizing the situation as 'problems' is probably an old, tired argument," Maka said. "You understand there are layers of appropriations laws that we are bound by. We have systems that are in place based on these laws that are not necessarily compatible with the GAAP principles we are required to live by."

In an e-mail to WND, Maka explained DOD is the "largest and most complex organization in the world."
Maka noted DOD owns more than 600,000 buildings in 146 countries across the globe.
"The department's assets and liabilities exceed those of WalMart, Exxon, Ford and IBM combined," he wrote. "Add to that an employment roster than includes 1.4 million active duty men and women; 740,000 civilians; 860,000 Guard and Reserve; 2 million retirees and families; and an operating budget in excess of $400 billion."

IF THE DEPARTMENT WERE A COUNTRY, HE SAID, IT WOULD HAVE THE WORLD'S 23RD LARGEST ECONOMY."

The rocket, a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), took off from the Sriharikota base in southern India at 1530 Indian time (1000 GMT). It is carrying a 352kg Italian satellite which will gather information about the origins of the universe, the AFP news agency reports.

India's space programme includes an unmanned mission to the Moon which is due to take place next year.

India has been working for some time on developing a low-cost launch system which could take on more established players around the world. Reports say that India is being paid $11m to launch the Italian satellite.
The rocket was due to send the satellite into orbit 23 minutes after takeoff.

The PSLV model rocket was first launched in 1994. It puts satellites into orbits where they cross above the earth's poles. At present, the PSLV rocket only has the capability of carrying relatively lighter loads of under 1,500 kilograms. But officials at India's space programme are hoping that can change with time.