ZIMBABWE LAUNCHES $200,000 NOTE !

Food shortages have become common in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is to start circulating a new 200,000 Zimbabwe dollar note, in a bid to tackle the country's inflation, the highest in the world. The new note, issued by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe from Wednesday, can buy 1kg (2.2lb) of sugar. Food and fuel shortages have become common as the government relies more heavily on imports, pushing prices to new heights. The official annual rate of inflation in Zimbabwe is nearing 5,000%. In practice, this means the price of a loaf of bread costs 50 times more in cash than it did a year ago.

The new note is worth US$13 at the official exchange rate or $1 on the black market. Zimbabwe's government has created a commission to find a way to control soaring living costs. But correspondents say that as long as Zimbabwe has a shortage of staple foods, including maize, food shortages are likely to continue. Critics have blamed President Robert Mugabe's policies, especially the seizure of white-owned farms, for ordinary Zimbabweans' hardship.

For his part, President Mugabe has accused foreign governments of trying to interfere in Zimbabwe's affairs. The new banknote comes after International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts that by the end of 2007, prices will be 1,000 times higher than they were a year earlier, Reuters news agency reports. "Price controls that are being enforced are likely to exacerbate shortages and ultimately fuel further inflation," said Bio Tchane, director of the IMF's Africa department, who described Zimbabwe's prospects as "bleak".

BBC NEWS REPORT.

HURRICANE BOOST 'DUE TO WARM SEA' !

By Matt McGrath - BBC environmental reporter.

Hurricanes have become more frequent over the past century. A new analysis of Atlantic hurricanes says their numbers have doubled over the last century. The study says that warmer sea surface temperatures and changes in wind patterns caused by climate change are fuelling much of the increase.

Some researchers say hurricanes are cyclical and the increase is just a reflection of a natural pattern. But the authors of this study say it is not just nature - they say the frequency has risen across the century.

Hurricanes are a spinning vortex of winds that swirl around an eye of low pressure. Thunder clouds surround the edges of these storms and they can wreak devastation on people and property when they hit land - most famously in the case of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. Scientific analyses in recent years suggest hurricane numbers have increased since the mid-1980s.

This new study, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in London, looks at the frequency of these storms from 1900 to the present and it says about twice as many form each year now compared to 100 years ago. The authors say that man-made climate change, which has increased the temperature of the sea surface, is the major factor behind the increase in numbers.

"Over the period we've had natural variability in the frequency of storms, which has contributed less than 50% of the actual increase in our view," said Dr Greg Holland from the United States National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, who authored the report. "Approximately 60%, and possibly even 70% of what we are seeing in the last decade can be attributed directly to greenhouse warming," he said.

Experts say that 2007 will be a very active season with nine hurricanes forecast, of which five are expected to be intense.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

CHINA RAIN STORMS CLAIM 650 LIVES !

The Yangtze is one of several rivers to have burst its banks. More than 650 people have been killed during weeks of flash flooding and landslides triggered by heavy rains, Chinese media reports.
The violent summer downpours have affected 119 million people, destroyed 450,000 homes and nearly eight million hectares of crops, Xinhua said.
Seventeen people were killed across four provinces this weekend alone.
The Red Cross has launched a $7.7m appeal, calling it some of the worst flooding to hit China for a decade.
"There's an urgent need for rice, clean drinking water, shelter, clothing, medical services and disinfectant," said Gu Qinghui, of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
"It's the rural poor who are suffering the most, including many farmers."
More heavy rain is forecast for the south-west, north-west and north-east parts of China in coming days, according to Xinhua.
Annual problem
Over the weekend, fierce storms claimed the lives of 10 people in the central province of Hubei, where water levels on China's biggest river, the Yangtze, have reached some of their highest levels so far this year.

Five people died in north-west Shaanxi province while one person was killed in a lightning strike in the south-west province of Sichuan, Xinhua reported.
One person was also killed in eastern Anhui province, where millions of people have been affected by the swollen Huai River.
Deadly flooding is an annual problem in China, with millions of people in central and southern parts of the country living on reclaimed farmland in the flood plains of rivers.
Last year some 2,704 people died in flooding and typhoons in China, according to the country's Meteorological Administration.
But experts are warning that global warming will fuel more intense and frequent storms.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

"SAYINGS "

"WORK IS OFTEN THE FATHER OF PLEASURE " !

MASS PURGE OF NIGERIAN GENERALS !

A military spokesman said there was nothing abnormal. Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has ordered the retirement of 40 of the army's most senior generals. They include the commanders of the five divisions of the Nigerian army.
Nigeria has been ruled by the military for 30 of the 47 years since independence but the army denied the move was linked to fears of a coup.
Mr Yar'Adua was sworn in in May - the first time one elected leader had handed power to another but the elections were widely condemned.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered a similar purge of the army shortly after his inauguration in 1999.
Mr Obasanjo, himself a beneficiary of a 1975 coup, said he wanted to rid Nigerian military of its penchant for plotting coups.
But the military says Mr Yar'Adua's motives for approving the retirement of 40 top generals are different this time.
"We are now following due process and trying to go back to the best military traditions," Nigerian defence spokesman Col MD Yusuf told the BBC News website.
"There is nothing abnormal about that number of officers being retired. If they joined the army at the same time, isn't it normal that they'd attain retirement age at the same time too?"
Mr Obasanjo became Nigeria's first democratically elected president after 16 years of military rule in 1999.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

SHOCK AT SEX CRIMES IN DR CONGO

Many rapes go unreported in DR Congo. A UN human rights expert has said she is shocked at the scale and brutality of sexual violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Yakin Erturk said the situation in South Kivu province was the worst she had seen in four years as special UN investigator on violence against women.
She said women had been tortured, forced to eat human flesh and men had been forced to rape relatives.
She said rebels, soldiers and police were responsible.
Last year's UN-supervised elections were supposed to end years of conflict in DR Congo but violence continues, especially in the east.
Over the weekend, Humanitarian Affairs Minister Jean Claude Muyambu said that some six million people had fled their homes because of the fighting.
Rape as punishment
"The atrocities perpetrated by these armed groups are of an unimaginable brutality that goes far beyond rape," she said in a statement after visiting the region.
"Women are brutally gang raped, often in front of their families and communities."

Rape as a weapon of war

Ms Erturk said some 4,500 cases of rape had been reported in South Kivu this year - with many more cases believed to have gone unreported.
"Most victims live in inaccessible areas [and] are afraid to report or did not survive the violence," she said.
She called on the international community to do more to protect Congolese women - there are some 16,000 UN peacekeepers in the country.
She also said no action had been taken against security forces who had raped civilians.
"There seems to be a pattern of using rape as a planned reprisal to punish communities suspected of supporting opposition groups," she told the BBC's Network Africa programme.
She also warned that sexual violence was becoming common outside areas of conflict.
"Violence against women seems to be perceived by large sectors of society to be normal."

BBC NEWS REPORT.

AIDS AND POVERTY FOCUS FOR BROWN !

Ban Ki-moon made his first official visit to the UK last month. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to call for a greater international effort to combat Aids and poverty in a speech at the UN.
Mr Brown wants world leaders to live up to their Millennium promises made seven years ago to tackle a range of issues.
He is also due to meet UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to discuss issues such as Sudan's Darfur conflict.
On Monday, Mr Brown concluded his first formal talks with President George Bush at Camp David, near Washington.
During the talks, Mr Bush and Mr Brown renewed pledges to fight terrorism and seek progress in Iraq.
Ambitious goals
Mr Ban and Mr Brown will be expected to discuss ways of dealing with the situation in the Sudanese region of Darfur where 200,000 people have been killed.
Later on Tuesday morning, an invited audience will hear the prime minister's address at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Aides said he will focus on trying to find practical ways of meeting the ambitious goals set by world leaders in 2000.
Goals include eradicating extreme poverty, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, cutting child deaths and combating diseases.
'Common struggle'
The speech comes a day after Mr Brown's first official meeting as prime minister with President Bush.
Our aim, like the United States is, step-by-step, to move control to the Iraqi authorities -Gordon Brown. He said both nations had duties and responsibilities in Iraq, and that he would seek military advice before announcing any changes in policy.
The president spoke warmly of the "special relationship" with the UK and said he found Mr Brown a warm, humorous man.
But the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson, at Camp David, said Mr Brown did nothing to return those personal compliments - even referring to their meetings as full and frank, which is normal diplomatic code for an argument.
On the issue of Iraq, Mr Brown said: "Our aim, like the United States is, step-by-step, to move control to the Iraqi authorities."
He also denied suggestions that his view of terrorism differed greatly from that of Mr Bush.
Mr Brown added: "We know we are in a common struggle, we know we have to work together, and we know we have to deal with it."

BBC NEWS REPORT.

UGANDA REBELS WANT $2m FOR TALKS !

Thousands still live in displaced camps. Uganda's rebels are demanding $2m from donors, or they say they will not return to peace talks in South Sudan.
Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) technical adviser David Nyekorach told the BBC the money was needed for consultations with its various groups.
Talks between the Ugandan government and the LRA rebels were expected to resume this week.
Some 2m people have fled their homes and thousands of children have been abducted during the 20-year conflict
In January, the LRA refused to resume talks after Sudan's president accused them of committing atrocities in South Sudan and threatened to evict them.
They however returned following a meeting between UN peace envoy Joachim Chissano and LRA leader Joseph Kony.
Promises
Mr Nyekorach said their technical team has been unable to travel to the affected areas to solicit the views of its people due to lack of funding.

Peace talks bring change

"The talks are on course but we cannot return to the table without suggestions from the people, so this money is important," Mr Nyekorach told the BBC.
He said donors had failed to pay the money they had promised.
Uganda's government has also indicated that it is not ready to resume talks aimed at achieving peace in the north of the country.
Mr Nyekorach said they hope that the funding would be released to enable the peace talks to resume at the end of August.
LRA leader Joseph Kony and three of his top commanders are wanted for war crimes at the International Criminal Court and have indicated that no deal will be signed while the warrants for their arrest are still in place.
But last month, the two sides agreed to use Ugandan justice to address human rights abuses.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

ICC ASKED TO PROBE NUJOMA 'ABUSE' !

Sam Nujoma is seen as Namibia's founding father. The International Criminal Court has been asked to investigate the role of former Namibian President Sam Nujoma, in the deaths of thousands of people.
The Namibian Society of Human Rights lodged a submission with the ICC, accusing Mr Nujoma and other officials of instigating the deaths of Namibians.
Some were allegedly killed after being accused of spying for South Africa.
Mr Nujoma, 78, led Namibia's struggle for independence from South Africa and became its president in 1990.
He stepped down in 2005 after serving three terms in office.
The NSHR said it had evidence that bodies were pushed down a deep crevasse near the border with Angola.
The petition calls for Mr Nujoma and three others to be investigated for "instigation, planning, supervision, abetting, aiding, defending and or perpetuating" the disappearances of some 4,200 people.
The ruling South West Africa People's Organisation (Swapo) has denied having any role in the deaths.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

"SAYINGS "

"ALL MEN ARE OF THE SAME MOULD,

BUT SOME ARE MOULDIER THAN OTHERS."

MEDICI WRITERS EXHUMED IN ITALY !

Researchers hope to solve the mystery of the men's deaths. The bodies of two famous Italian literary figures from the 15th Century have been exhumed from St Mark's Basilica in Florence.
Scientists want to learn more about their lives and find out what caused their deaths.
Pico della Mirandola, a humanist philosopher, and the scholar and poet Angelo Ambrosini, known as Poliziano, both died in Florence in 1494.
They belonged to the court of the powerful Medici family.
Pico della Mirandola is believed to have been poisoned, but this has never been confirmed.
Now, DNA analysis of his bones could establish beyond doubt whether this story is true or not.
Poliziano - who was believed to have been one of Pico della Mirandola's lovers - is also a possible poison victim. But another theory is that he died from syphilis, which killed thousands of people all over Europe in an outbreak at the end of the 15th Century.
'Archive of information'
Giorgio Gruppioni, a professor of anthropology from Bologna who is in charge of the project, said modern biomolecular technology and scanning might clear up doubts that have persisted for centuries.

The exhumations will be the subject of a TV documentary. "Bodies are an archive of information surrounding the life and death of a person," Mr Gruppioni told the Associated Press news agency.
"With today's technology, we can clear up various doubts that have been passed down for centuries and we can provide answers that could not been discovered years ago."
Mr Gruppioni said analysis using the latest technology would also be able to establish what the two men looked like.
"We have already noticed that the structure of Pico's skeleton shows he had quite a robust figure, whereas most paintings show a more slender, feminine stature," he said.
The exhumations have been filmed and will be the subject of a TV documentary when scientists have completed their work.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

ANC LAUNCHES LEADERSHIP SELECTION !

By Martin Plaut BBC Africa analyst.

Thabo Mbeki wants to influence the choice of his successor. South Africa's ruling ANC party has signalled the start of a process that will almost certainly see the selection of the country's next president.
The African National Congresss has called on its branches to begin internal talks on who the party's candidate should be.
This is the starting gun for candidates to succeed President Thabo Mbeki to declare their hand.
The ANC will decide on its candidate at conference in December.
Whoever wins the party's nomination is almost certain to become the next president, as the ANC won nearly 70% of all votes in the last election in 2004.
Selection race

Mr Zuma has the support of the left in the ANC and the party's youth. Until now most candidates have kept a low profile. Only the ANC deputy president, Jacob Zuma, has declared he is willing to stand.
His supporters have been criss-crossing the country, trying to drum up support. But so too have President Mbeki's men.
Although Mr Mbeki cannot seek re-election as the country's president he wants to stay on as leader of his party - and influence his successor.
A leading Sunday newspaper says the president will back Joel Netshitenzhe, the head of the government's information service, and a key ally.
But other names are also in the frame. There is Tokyo Sexwale and Cyril Ramaphosa - two of the country's richest men - and the ANC's secretary general, Kgalema Motlanthe.
The selection race has begun, and promises to be the most seriously contested political event since the ANC came to power at the end of apartheid.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

RAMBLINGS !

"A FOOL THROWS A STONE INTO THE SEA AND A

HUNDRED WISE MEN CANNOT PULL IT OUT."

LIBYA DETAILS MEDIC RELEASE DEAL !

Libya's PM gave details of the agreement signed with the EU. Libya has given details about the deal that led to the release of six foreign medics found guilty of deliberately infecting 438 children with HIV/Aids.
It said backing for a fund for the victims had come mainly from the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Qatar.
Libya's prime minister has condemned Bulgaria for pardoning the medics - who always protested their innocence - as soon as they arrived in the country.
The six were freed last week after Libya reached a deal with the EU.
There has been much speculation about who contributed to the Benghazi International Fund, which provided $1m (500,000) for each of the infected children.

Profiles: The medics
Q&A: Libya medics' trial
'An eight-year ordeal'

At a news conference, Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi said the Libyan government had not contributed, saying the money had primarily come from Qatar, Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. He did not specify the size of the contributions.
He said France had promised to provide equipment for the Benghazi hospital, where the infections took place, and provide training for Libyan medical staff over five years.
Visa rules
Earlier this month, Libya commuted to life imprisonment the death sentences imposed on the five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian-born doctor after the families of the infected children agreed to the compensation deal.
The medics' release to Bulgaria was made possible by a deal struck in Tripoli on improving Libya-EU ties, following years of negotiations.
The BBC's Rana Jawad in Tripoli says that as part of the deal the EU is set to significantly ease restrictions on visas for citizens, which could see Libyans obtain them within 48 hours.
But Bulgaria's decision to pardon the medics has angered the Libyans. Libyan officials said on Saturday they had sent a memo to the Arab League calling for action against Sofia as well as a protest to the EU.
The authorities said Bulgaria was in violation of international law and their bilateral agreement with Libya on prisoner exchange.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

Cathy Buckle's Weekly Letter From Zimbabwe !

Clear as mud
Saturday 28th July 2007.

Dear Family and Friends,

There is a different feeling in the air this week - the stirring of dusty leaves on thirsty trees, a clearer colour to the sky and the calls of birds not heard for the last few months. The changing season at least brings a feeling of hope and a tantalizing promise of sanity to a time of utter madness which many people are saying may well be the final straw for them. In the fourth week of government ordered price-cuts, it would be absurd to list the things we cannot get because they are now too numerous and include most foodstuffs and basic toiletries.

Almost everyone is living entirely off their pantries and gardens, on food parcels sent from people outside the country or simply going without the bare essentials required for every day nutrition and existence.

It has become almost impossible to keep up with the changing statements coming from the government and things are as a clear as mud. It makes you dizzy trying to follow the announcements: close, open, banned, unbanned, allowed, forbidden, can import, can't import. The rules, lists and regulations have reached ludicrous proportions and, as it was with the farms, there does not seem to be a master plan at all except perhaps the desire of the government to control, absolutely and completely, every facet of life in Zimbabwe.

Shops, supermarkets and businesses that we all thought would close down have not done so because of the government threat to take over companies that folded. Shop workers know their jobs are hanging by a thread and they have the look of fear and resignation in their eyes. It is the same look that invaded farmers, evicted farm workers and then independent journalists had in their eyes as their lives and livelihoods collapsed. It is the same look that we saw on the faces of people whose homes were bulldozed by government two winters ago.

As each of the last seven winters have come to an end and the promise of warmth and renewal has returned, it has been hard to believe that season after season has been squandered and food supplies have got less and less. Politics, farming and food supplies is where this all began and must surely be where it will all end too.

Until next week, thanks for reading,
love cathy.

LETTER FROM THE DIASPORA !

Friday 27th July 2007
Dear Friends.

Someone who knows I come from Zimbabwe said to me just yesterday, 'I don't know if it's my imagination but I think there's increased coverage of the situation in Zimbabwe over the last few weeks'. He was referring to the UK media, of course, and - as if to prove his point - the BBC's flagship news programme Newsnight covered the opening of parliament in Harare this week with a commentary to the effect that while Robert Mugabe rode in a Rolls Royce with all the pomp and ceremony befitting a Head of State, albeit a failed state, the Zimbabwean people were suffering shortages of even the most basic means of survival. That report was on Tuesday the 24th July 2007. The same story was covered in The Times and The Telegraph but, that apart, there has been a steady drip of news coming out for the last couple of weeks. Papers like The Guardian and The Independent, not noted for their coverage of Zimbabwe, have both carried stories about Zimbabwe and the steadily deteriorating situation in the country.

For three or four weeks now the media in this country has been concerned with the floods; the heaviest rains since records began with major rivers breaking their banks and thousands of people flooded out of their homes, without fresh drinking water or power. It was major news so it was quite a surprise that any other story should make it into the headlines but last night it was ITV who turned the spotlight on Zimbabwe in their 10.30 News broadcast that is watched by millions. Using a hidden camera ITV showed horrific pictures of the men and women beaten by the police for taking part in NCA demos up and down the country. We saw the demonstrators running, literally running down what looked like Samora Machel Avenue only to be set upon minutes later by the police and hauled away. The film then moved to the private clinics where the people were being treated. There were dozens of them and we saw them lying on the floor, too exhausted even to stand, while they waited to be treated for broken limbs, bruises and lacerations. There were men and women of all ages, ordinary people, many of them deeply traumatized by the experience. Their faces told the story, their eyes wide with shock at what had been done to them by brutal men with baton sticks, fists and heavy black boots.

I read today that the mothers were ordered to leave their babies at one end of the room at the police station while they lay face down on the floor and the police took it in turns to beat them and even to walk all over them while they lay there. For five hours it went on and the children wailed and screamed in terror as they saw their mothers being beaten and trampled on by men in uniform, men who are themselves husbands, brothers, fathers and uncles. And what was the reason for this savage brutality? These brave and wonderful ordinary Zimbabweans, armed with nothing more that their banners, had dared to demonstrate for a new constitution. They demonstrated not just in Harare but up and down the country they took to the streets in their hundreds to demonstrate the will of the people, zvido zvevanhu.

Watching the ITV coverage, I felt a deep sense of shame, a) that I was not there with my brothers and sisters sharing their pain and b) that I had ever doubted the courage of the ordinary people to bring about change in Zimbabwe. Time and time again it is the ordinary men and women of Woza and the NCA who have risked life and limb for what they believe in only to be beaten back by a ruthless regime armed with all the crushing apparatus of the state machine. But a machine needs men to operate it and it is those same men who are prepared to beat, torture and even kill their own people in order to keep Robert Mugabe in power. How do they sleep at night? How do they go home at the end of the day and look into the eyes of their own innocent children and answer the question Maswera sei baba? How was your day, Daddy?

Political analysts and learned academics may drone on and on, week after week, about the causes for all this mayhem; they may give us learned analyses of the political ramifications of this or that policy but the truth is that until they too find the courage to get out on the streets with the people this nightmare of repression and brutality in Zimbabwe will never end. We all know that the end will not come because of Thabo Mbeki's intervention; it will not come because of SADC's mealy-mouthed platitudes or the West's passive outrage or the AU's continuing inaction. The end will come when the people of Zimbabwe stand together, united in courage and determination to tell the dictator what sort of future they want for their children. Last night the British people saw that courage demonstrated by the brave men and women of the NCA. Of course, in Zimbabwe, the likes of Tafataona Mahosa and ZTV will ensure that ordinary Zimbabweans don't see the same footage but you can be very sure, the world is watching.

Ndini shamwari yenyu. PH

10 THINGS !

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. There is an itch gene.
More details

2. More pop stars have been called Paul than any other name.
More details

3. One-day strikes now account for 55% of industrial stoppages.
More details

4. Naming an MP is how the speaker of the House of Commons disciplines a member – as happened to George Galloway this week .

5. Only six countries have no scouts - Cuba, Burma, Laos, China, North Korea and Andorra.
More details

6. Instead of paying inheritance tax, people can donate to museums.
More details

7. The $100 laptop costs $176.
More details

8. People who suffer from epilepsy cannot swallow their tongue, despite perceptions to the contrary.More details

9. Jerusalem has only one female, Muslim taxi driver.
More details

10. Obesity is "contagious" - that is people who put on weight lead those around them to think it is OK to be bigger.
More details

BBC MAGAZINE

PRESS VIEWS : THE SIMPSON MOVIE !

Film critics review The Simpsons Movie, as America's favourite dsyfunctional family hit the big screen for the first time.

BEWARE: film reviews may include spoilers.

THE GUARDIAN - Peter Bradshaw
The long-awaited movie has an environmental theme
So many movies promise what they could never deliver in a million years. The Simpsons movie gives you everything you could possibly want, and maybe it's a victim of its own gargantuan accomplishment.
85 minutes is not long enough to do justice to 17 years of comedy genius. It's still great stuff. Like Homer with his nachos, I could gobble it up until nightfall.

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH - Tim Robey
The Simpsons Movie feels like a celebration of the show's sheer longevity, but it's a shame that it's not more of a cause for celebration in itself. This is a slick, crowd-pleasing escapade with lots of scattershot sight gags, and a damp squib of a suggestion at the end that, if all goes according to plan, we might be in line for a sequel.

THE TIMES - Kevin Maher
The Simpsons Movie is funny, clever and at times even hilarious (Bart skate-boarding naked through Springfield has to be the sight-gag of the summer). But sadly, it's also a minor movie and never more inspiring than the sum of its admittedly witty parts.
THE SUN - 'The Sneak'
Watching this fantastic movie is a completely different experience to just watching three Simpsons TV episodes back-to-back.
The cinema is filled with collective, infectious joy (apart from the bloke in front of The Sneak). If you want to re-live The Simpsons mass hysteria of the Nineties, go and watch this movie.

THE DAILY MIRROR
An extensive range of merchandise has already been produced
After 400 episodes, everyone's favourite yellow family finally show up for their first big screen outing. Having been with us for 20 years on the telly, it's been a long time coming. Alas, not long enough.
There's a great half-hour show rattling around in here somewhere, but the rest is padding at its very dullest. Given the anticipation - not to mention the hype - surrounding The Simpsons Movie, this has to be the most disappointing film of the year.
Still, it beats Transformers. Just.

THE INDEPENDENT - Anthony Quinn
In all honesty, it isn't quite the knockout we hoped for. The last third in particular feels sluggish, at least in comparison with the vivid rat-tat-tat rhythm of gags in the first 20 minutes.
Perhaps it's inevitable that when a show has set the bar so high, one will demand something more from a supersize incarnation.
Better to think of it as a restatement of classic Simpsons virtues - superb dialogue, inspired slapstick, quickfire wit - rather than reaching for higher peaks of comedy greatness. It's just fine, even if you do have to pay for it.

THE LA TIMES - Carina Chocano
In some ways, it reminded me of the final Seinfeld episode. As much as I laughed throughout, I kept wondering what was with all the emotional lessons. Strangest of all was Homer's retreat to the cave (or igloo, in this case), where he experiences an epiphany and sees himself clearly for the very first time.
In fact, The Simpsons Movie is basically a conversion narrative, in which Homer's eyes are finally opened to the error of his ways. The turnaround feels like the end of something - like, say, the series. Because where do you go from an (albeit briefly) enlightened Homer and sensitive Bart?
The only place I can think of is off into the sunset.

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER - Kirk Honeycutt
Laughs come in all sizes - large, medium, small and failed, the latter happening only seldom. While little has been gained in bringing The Simpsons to the screen, other than a bigger canvas requiring a much larger army of animators, it's still fun to enjoy the crew in this new setting.

WASHINGTON POST - Stephen Hunter
The genius is in the writing and in keeping all gambits created by the individual writers in sync... the piece has a tonal consistency and a narrative flow. A lost art in Hollywood? It's really one of the best movies of the year.
The Simpsons Movie is on general release in the UK and US.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

CAN PETS SENSE ILLNESS?

WHO, WHAT, WHY? The Magazine answers...

A cat has apparently "predicted" the deaths of 25 residents in a nursing home in the US. It seems fanciful but can pets detect illness or even death?

Oscar displayed sudden affection for dying residents. The residents of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre in Rhode Island would be forgiven for getting a little anxious if Oscar was to curl up next to them.
Not generally friendly to patients, this show of affection has been used to warn families that their loved one has not long to go.
Sounds far-fetched? Animal behaviour experts in the US say Oscar is probably smelling a chemical given off by the body.

THE ANSWER
Yes, dogs can sense cancer and epilepsy. And Jacqueline Pritchard, an expert in animal behaviour in the UK, agrees the explanation is biochemical, rather than psychic.
"I don't doubt that the cat in this case is sensing death approaching. There's little we really know about it but as the body is shutting down, I would hypothesise that the cat is sensing and smelling the organs shutting down."
But there could also be a more simple explanation for Oscar's "ability", she says.

WHO, WHAT, WHY?
A regular feature in the BBC News Magazine - aiming to answer some of the questions behind the headlines"We change our behaviour when we know someone is dying, so animals will pick that up."
Dogs with an acute sense of smell and awareness are known to detect cancer and predict epileptic seizures.
A ground-breaking study by Dr John Church, published in 2004, claimed to prove in principle that dogs could detect bladder cancer in urine. Since then a pilot study at a charity in Buckinghamshire has continued the research.
There is also anecdotal evidence of dogs scenting a wide range of cancers such as lung, breast and skin, ahead of conventional diagnosis.
Housebound
A woman in Wiltshire said her Chihuahua detected her breast cancer on three occasions, while a Dalmatian kept smelling a freckle that the owner discovered was a malignant tumour.
He doesn't get a crystal ball and headscarf and say 'I predict you will have one three weeks on Tuesday'
Tony Brown-Griffin on Ajay. The work of dogs in epilepsy is more advanced. The charity Support Dogs has provided 45 seizure alert dogs to epileptics such as Tony Brown-Griffin, 35, from Kent.
Twelve years ago, prior to her getting her first alert dog, she was suffering 12 major seizures a week and countless minor ones, so was housebound and childless. Now she is independent and a mother of two.
Ajay, a golden retriever, licks her left hand 40 minutes before a major seizure, which only happens twice a week now, so she can get herself out of harm's way.

Seizure alert dogs accompany epileptics. "It's a major stress reduction. I don't have to worry about epilepsy at all unless my dog alerts me. Before I was thinking 'Do I have time to cross the road, will I have a seizure?'"
But neither Tony nor her husband knows exactly how Ajay is doing it, because the slight changes in Tony's behaviour prior to a seizure are imperceptible to them.
"He doesn't get a crystal ball and headscarf and say 'I predict you will have one three weeks on Tuesday' but whether it's a change in blood pressure or body temperature or whether I sweat or smell differently, or a combination of things.
"In the early days it was very difficult to go with the dog because I would feel so well but he was 100% accurate, 100% of the time."
Despite the persuasive evidence of dogs' prowess in these areas, the case of Oscar the cat is still a bit of a mystery, says animal psychologist Roger Mugford. Although they can detect illness, he has never known of pets picking up on impending death, and cats would be unlikely candidates to behave like this if they could.

DOGS AND EPILEPTICS

45 provided by Support Dogs
Training can take between 12 and 18 months
During that time a client is matched with a dog
There is no preference for particular breeds
The way they warn owners varies
Facial expression, certain movement, a smell or pupil dilation are the kinds of changes they can pick up on
Source: Support Dogs

Cat 'predicts patients' deaths'

The question is what motivates a cat to engage in this behaviour. Dogs being trained to detect cancer are trained with a pay-off of play if they do the right thing and if it's your own dog they have a familiar affectionate relationship and will pick the site of the tumour. But a cat in a nursing home?
"Dogs are very good at picking up on emotional changes and when people are depressed and inactive they are very good at comforting people in these circumstances. Elephants show the same altruistic tendencies, but not cats, they are very much more selfish, solitary creatures."
One theory about how dogs have evolved this capacity is that their wolf ancestors developed an ability to tell when one of the pack was sick.
But it is not just in health that the heightened senses of animals have proved to be more advanced than humans'.
Scientists remarked at how few wild animals died in the Asian tsunami in 2004, because they were able to sense the disaster and move to higher ground.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

CLUB FLOOD VICTIM WAS 'LYNCHPIN' !

A 64-year-old man who died with his son as they cleared up flood damage at a Gloucestershire rugby club has been described as a community "lynchpin". Bram and Chris Lane were clearing up at Tewkesbury RFC on Wednesday. They were found dead the next morning. It is not known if they were overcome by fumes from a pump they were using to clear the flood water or electrocuted.
One resident said of Bram Lane, a former player and the club's treasurer and director: "The club was his life."
Mr Lane and his son, who was in his 20s, were working in the cellar of the club and decided to carry on trying to pump out flood water when everyone else went home.
Mr Lane senior had played for the team in his youth.
'Well known bloke'
Local resident Mandy Masters said: "He was just the sort of man who would go down there to sort things out - the club was his life.
"He was the real lynchpin. It is going to be a massive loss as he kept it all going tickety-boo.
"He was a very well known bloke, he had been at the club for donkeys' years.
"He looked after the bar and the social scene and watched the matches."
She said about 12 volunteers had gathered at the club in the Vineyard fields to help clear up the mess.
Les Adams, a member of the rugby club, said the centre had been damaged by the water surge.
"The problem was in the cellar, that was still flooded. They wanted to get it cleaned out and for the club to get going again," he said.
He described Mr Lane senior, who was a founder member, as the heart and soul of the club.
Charlie Corderoy, 21, who had played for Tewkesbury Rugby Club for the past two years, said Mr Lane's death would be a huge loss to the club.
"He was a very, very genuine guy.
"He would be the first to open the club and the last to leave it.
"All the players are really shocked. When we found out it was Bram I thought 'Oh no, what a loss'.
"It's going to be very difficult but I think we want to pick up the mood for him and to make sure we never forget him and Chris."
Safety warning
Chief fire officer Terry Standing said the deaths were a "tragedy" and urged people to think about safety before using pumps.
Tewkesbury was cut off in the flooding, with hundreds of homes left without power.
Attempts are under way to restore water to 10,000 homes in the town using a temporary supply.
Severn Trent Water issued a strict "do not drink" warning for anyone about to be connected to this supply even when it has been boiled, but said the water could be used for baths, showers and flushing toilets.
Some 140,000 households in Gloucestershire remain without water after a treatment plant flooded, and health and sanitation fears persist.

A phone line has been set for anyone requiring the fire service to help them remove flood water: 01452 729340
BBC NEWS REPORT.

ELEVEN KILLED IN RED MOSQUE BLAST !

Reports suggest the bomb was aimed at police officers.At least eleven people have been killed in a suspected suicide bombing near Pakistan's Red Mosque, following clashes between Islamists and police.
"Most of the dead were policemen," a security official said. More than 40 people were injured.
Torn police uniforms lay about the scene in Islamabad while blood stained the streets, a BBC correspondent said.
The mosque was the scene of a bloody siege that ended earlier in July with the deaths of more than 100 people.
A protest grew on Friday as students demanded the return of the mosque's surviving pro-Taleban cleric, Abdul Aziz, who is in detention.
Security forces initially stood by as the protest began, but later dozens of police officers in full riot gear were deployed.
Armoured riot vehicles confronted the protesters, some of whom carried wooden staves or hurled rocks at police. Tear gas was fired in return.
Cleric rejected
The protesters defaced the mosque, which had been repainted in pale colours by the authorities after the end of the siege.

They wrote "Red Mosque" in large Urdu script on the dome of the building. They also raised a black flag with two crossed swords - meant to symbolise jihad, or holy war.
Earlier protesters had prevented a government-appointed cleric from leading Friday prayers at what was supposed to be the peaceful re-opening of the mosque.
"I was told everything would be peaceful. I was never interested in taking up this job and after today I will never do it," Mohammad Ashfaq told AFP news agency as he left the mosque with a police escort.
The explosion took place soon after the protests were subdued by police, said the BBC's Dan Isaacs, who was only a short distance away.
It appeared to be targeted at the police cordon arranged round the mosque, where dozens of officers were lined up, he said.
A security official told the AFP news agency the bomb was set off by a suicide attacker, although our correspondent was unable to confirm this.
"A man detonated explosives strapped to his body among two rows of Punjab police constabulary members who were there on duty because of the unrest at the Red Mosque," he said.
One official said seven police officers were among the dead.
Centre of radicalism
Such a high-profile attack in the heart of the Pakistani capital will be extremely worrying for Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, who is under increasing political pressure and facing rising violence by militants, our correspondent says.
Less than three weeks ago, troops stormed the mosque after its clerics and students waged an increasingly aggressive campaign to enforce strict Sharia law in Islamabad.
The mosque had become a centre of radical Islamic learning and housed several thousand male and female students in adjacent seminaries.

Protesters daubed the mosque with graffiti.
The chief of Dyala prison in Rawalpindi told Pakistan's Supreme Court that 567 of the 620 students detained during the siege and 36-hour battle had been freed. Of those still being held, three are women.
A legal aid committee says it has received 58 complaints from relatives about men who are said to be missing following the siege.
More than 100 people were killed in the siege including 11 soldiers and an as yet unknown number of extremists and their hostages.
The attack on the mosque was the fiercest battle fought by security forces in mainland Pakistan since President Musharraf vowed to dismantle the militant jihadi network in the country in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

GERMANS ATTACK LIBYA NUCLEAR DEAL !

Libya has emerged from its pariah status in recent years. German leaders have attacked French President Nicolas Sarkozy over a deal to provide Libya with a nuclear reactor for desalinating sea water.
Deputy Foreign Minister Gernot Erler said "politically this business is problematic", adding: "German interests are directly affected".
He told the German business daily Handelsblatt that the French and German governments should discuss the matter.
Germany's Siemens has a 34% stake in a subsidiary of French atomic firm Areva.
President Sarkozy clinched the deal on a visit to Tripoli on Wednesday, during which he held talks with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The nuclear energy project is aimed at turning sea water into clean drinking water.
Mr Gaddafi gave up Libya's nuclear weapons programme in 2003, ending decades of international isolation.
Sarkozy 'show'
Mr Sarkozy's deal was condemned by other German politicians, including Greens leader Reinhard Buetikofer, who called it "highly questionable in security policy terms".
"I would not be surprised if [President Sarkozy] soon got up to say: 'Gaddafi is a flawless democrat'," he told the daily Passauer Neuen Presse.
He accused Mr Sarkozy of "reckless, nationalistic activism".
A senior Social Democrat (SPD) deputy, Ulrich Kelber, said Mr Sarkozy's Libya trip was "all about show and the primitive pursuit of his own interests".
The Gaddafi-Sarkozy meeting was seen as a sign of the normalisation of ties between Libya and the EU following the release of six Bulgarian medics, who had been jailed in Libya for more than eight years, accused of deliberately infecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood.
The EU and the United States had made it clear to Mr Gaddafi that resolving the medics' situation was key to improving relations.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

SPIELBERG 'MAY QUIT OLYMPIC ROLE' !

Spielberg is waiting for a response from the Chinese government. Film-maker Steven Spielberg may quit as artistic director of the Beijing Olympics unless China takes a tougher stance against Sudan, reports ABC News.
China, a major investor in Sudan's oil industry, has been criticised for not sending UN peacekeepers to the country's troubled Darfur region.
"Steven will make a determination in the next few weeks regarding his work with the Chinese," his spokesman said.
"Our main interest is ending the genocide," Andy Spahn told abcnews.com.
"No one is clear on the best way to do this."
Does Mr Spielberg really want to go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games?
Actress Mia Farrow, writing in the Wall Street Journal in May
Human rights groups have accused China of selling weapons to Sudan that have ended up in Darfur.
"Steven is one (of) many advisers to the Beijing Games and he is trying to use the games to engage the Chinese on this issue," said Mr Spahn.
He added that the two parties were engaged in "private dialogue" and that Spielberg expected to hear from the Chinese government "sometime soon, very soon".
Colonialist claims
The film-maker wrote to Chinese president Hu Jintao in May, calling on China to pressure Sudan into accepting UN peacekeepers, but this is the first time he has said he is considering leaving his Olympic role.
His letter followed criticism from actress Mia Farrow, who attacked his involvement in the 2008 Olympics in an article in the Wall Street Journal in March.
"Does Mr Spielberg really want to go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games?" she wrote, comparing the director to the Nazi-backed filmmaker who chronicled the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
Last month China announced plans to launch a $1bn (£500m) fund to increase trade and investment in Africa, but the move prompted accusations of modern day colonialism.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

FRANCE TO HELP TRY CHAD EX-LEADER !

Hissene Habre's regime is accused of widespread murder and torture. France has promised to facilitate the trial of Chad's ex-President Hissene Habre, who lives in exile in Senegal.
"We have to help Senegal financially, technically, legally to deal with the case," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on a visit to Senegal.
Mr Habre, dubbed "Africa's Pinochet", faces charges of human rights abuses during eight years in office.
He fled to Senegal in 1990. Last year the African Union (AU) asked for him to be prosecuted there.
Mr Habre, who is in his 60s, was deposed in an uprising led by the current President, Idriss Deby, and denies knowledge of the alleged murder and torture of political opponents.
A commission of inquiry said his government was responsible for some 40,000 politically motivated murders and 200,000 cases of torture in the eight years he was in power.
Partnership
"That a dictator is brought to trial to answer for his actions is already good news," French radio quotes Mr Sarkozy saying at a press conference with his Senegalese counterpart Abdoulaye Wade.

New scramble for influence?

"That the court in charge of the trial will be made up of Africans and will take place in Africa is another piece of good news."
Mr Wade acknowledged France's pledge and called for more international help, AFP news agency reports.
"This trial will cost a lot of money, I think that it should be the international community which should see to its financing," he said.
Mr Sarkozy is on his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa since becoming president in May and is due to go to oil-rich Gabon on Friday.
Correspondents say he is trying to encourage support for his idea of what he has called a "EurAfrican" partnership for Europe and Africa: urging the two continents to find a new way of working together, free from much of the colonial baggage of the past.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

MANN SEEKS TO PREVENT EXTRADITION !

Simon Mann, the British leader of a group of alleged mercenaries, has asked the Zimbabwe High Court to stop his extradition to Equatorial Guinea.
Mann's lawyers said he would not have a fair trial in Equatorial Guinea and would face torture there.
He was arrested in 2004 when his plane landed in Zimbabwe. He was accused of trying to fetch arms for a coup in Equatorial Guinea, and jailed.
The High Court hearing on Thursday ended without a ruling.
Mann, a former SAS officer, was due for early release in May for good behaviour.
Appeal
Also in May, a Zimbabwean magistrate's court agreed to a request by Equatorial Guinea that Mann be extradited to stand trial there.
This prompted Mann's appeal to the High Court. He is to remain in custody until the court rules on his appeal.
More than 60 men arrested with him - most of them South African citizens of Angolan origin - were released in 2005 after serving a year's sentence in Zimbabwe.
Sir Mark Thatcher, son of former UK Prime Minister now Baroness Thatcher, was fined and received a suspended sentence in South Africa for his involvement in the affair.
The relatives of other plot suspects who are being held in Equatorial Guinea have complained of abuse and unfair treatment.
One suspect, a German, died in prison after what Amnesty International said was torture.
Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony, has been ruled by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema since he seized power from his uncle in a coup in 1979.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

S. AFRICAN MINERS VOTE TO STRIKE !

De Beers is the latest group to be hit by strikes in South Africa. South African workers for the world's biggest diamond producer, De Beers, have voted to go on strike over pay.
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said about 11,000 of its members would down tools from 31 July to demand an 11% wage increase.
De Beers, which is 45%-owned by mining giant Anglo American, said contingency plans would be in place to operate the mines during the indefinite strike.
The planned strike is the latest union unrest that has rocked South Africa.
'Double-digits is the route'
The NUM has demanded an 11% pay offer and has said it is still open to negotiations. De Beers has offered 8%.
"Workers have told us in no uncertain terms that double-digits is the route," said Peter Bailey, the NUM's negotiator at De Beers.
De Beers told the AFP news agency: "In the event of a strike, contingency plans are in place to operate the mines.
"However, the company would prefer to settle this without disruption to its normal operations or to employees."
More than a quarter of a million engineering and metal workers walked out in protest over pay disputes earlier this month in a strike expected to bring 9,000 companies to a standstill.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

CONCERN OVER GORILLA 'EXECUTIONS' !

Some readers may find the enlarged image upsetting.

Enlarge Image

Conservationists have expressed concern over the "senseless and tragic" killing of four mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The bodies of three females and one male were discovered by rangers earlier this week in the Virunga National Park.
Officials said the "executions" were not the work of poachers because they would have taken the bodies.
Since January, seven of the large apes in the region have been shot dead.
"This is a senseless and tragic loss of some of the world's most endangered and beloved animals," said Deo Kujirakwinja of the Wildlife Conservation Society's (WCS) Congo programme.
"This area must be immediately secured or we stand to lose an entire population of these animals," he added.
'Scare tactics'
The four animals belonged to a group of 12 gorillas, known to researchers as the Rugendo family, which was often visited by tourists.

Because poachers would have sold the bodies as food or trophies, conservationists think the apes were killed by a group that was trying to scare wardens out of the park.
The IWC said the protected area was coming under increasing pressure from "outside exploitation", including the charcoal trade.
"Whatever the motive underlying this tragedy, the gorillas are helpless pawns in a feud between individuals," said Mark Rose, chief executive of Fauna and Flora International.
"We are deeply concerned about this incident, which follows more than 20 years of successful collaboration for mountain gorilla conservation."
A census carried out in 2004 estimated that 380 gorillas, more than half of the world's population, lived in the national park and surrounding Virunga volcanoes region.
The latest killings take the number of shootings in the area to seven. Earlier this year, two silverback male gorillas were shot dead in the same area of the park, while a female was killed in May.
E-mail this to a friend
Printable version

BBC NEWS REPORT.

DE KLERK DENIES APARTHEID ABUSES !

By Peter Biles BBC Southern Africa correspondent.

FW De Klerk started dismantling apartheid in 1990. The former South African President, FW De Klerk, has denied any involvement in crimes or human rights abuses committed during the apartheid era.
At a news conference in Cape Town, he said he had been falsely accused of being implicated in an attempt on the life of Rev Frank Chikane.
Mr Chikane was a prominent anti-apartheid activist in the 1980s.
Mr De Klerk became president in 1989 and started to dismantle the apartheid regime, which ended five years later.
He said there was no basis to these accusations, and he wanted to clear the air.
The former South African leader is back in the limelight because a former law and order minister, Adriaan Vlok, is to go on trial next month, charged with trying to assassinate Mr Chikane in 1989.
I have, on these issues, a clear conscience
FW De Klerk
Mr De Klerk said he had not been president at that time, and had had no security portfolio in the government.
He said he was not guilty of any crime whatsoever.
Truth and reconciliation
"I'm not standing here to defend myself today. I have, on these issues, a clear conscience", Mr De Klerk said.
"I'm standing here to state my case, not in a defensive spirit, but in a spirit that I am owed a fair deal in my own country"

Frank Chikane was nearly killed 18 years ago.
The former president said reconciliation in South Africa was more advanced than was generally acknowledged, but there was a small element who wanted retribution and the relegation of the white minority to the position of second class citizens.
He stressed this was not the approach of President Thabo Mbeki or the ANC government, but - said Mr De Klerk - fires were being stoked by some malevolent activists.
He said the state had the right to prosecute anyone who had failed to get amnesty from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but a witch-hunt should be avoided.
Last year, Adriaan Vlok, the former minister, made an extraordinary apology to Mr Chikane - who is now Director General of the president's office.
He washed the feet of the man whom the apartheid government had once tried to poison.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

TIMES ARE NOT SO BAD AFTER ALL !!!

According to Richard Morrison -

There are Reasons to be Cheerful !

1. Tewkesbury would make a very nice seaside resort. All it needs is a bit of lateral thinging, and a decent ferry service from the mainland.

2. All those 'lost rivers of England' lamented by gloomy environmentalists over the past few years have now been found. Often in easily observable places, such as people's living rooms.

3. We could halve the budget for the 2012 Olympics by holding all the swimming and rowing events on the M5.

4. In the interests of agricultural diversity, the West Midlands needs more paddy fields.

5. The hardship isn't confined to the regions, you know. Some very rich people in London have had their wine cellars flooded too.

6. Politicians look even more ridiculous than usual when wading through waist-high sludge, while trying to appear statesmanlike.

7. The Government has now ended the hosepipe ban. So no more parched lawns.

8. Worse things happened in the 14th century.


He will never know how much laughter this gave me when I read it, and for which I am truly grateful. I too needed some cheering up.

Timesonline.co.uk/richardmorrison

A DAY WITH BRITAIN'S MAN AT THE U.N.

Sir Emyr Jones Parry is Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, a man at the centre of decisions which can make peace and war. He has held the job since 2003 and is due to retire next month. The BBC's UN correspondent Laura Trevelyan spends a day with him.

"Premium economy?" asks Sir Emyr Jones Parry peering at an entry in the monthly travel bill for the UK mission. Sir Emyr Jones Parry's days are long and intense."Not club class," Mike Balmer, the head of management, assures him.
It is 0745 and Sir Emyr Jones Parry is carrying out one of his less high-profile duties - going through the accounts.
Not only is he at the centre of ongoing negotiations on getting peacekeepers into Darfur, but he is also, in foreign office jargon, the "sub-accounting officer".
It all adds up to a 16-hour day.
Global hotspots
The ambassador's morning begins at 0700 when he reads through the diplomatic telegrams, which include instructions from London, and situation reports from the world's hotspots.
This particular day, Darfur, and the upcoming meeting of the Middle East quartet at which Tony Blair debuts as an envoy, are featuring heavily.
Sir Emyr is to introduce a revised draft of a resolution authorising the deployment of a joint African Union/UN peacekeeping force in Darfur to the Security Council later in the morning.
The UN can be frustrating, period. Some people describe it as wading through treacle
Sir Emyr Jones Parry

Profile: the UN

The initial draft was opposed by some members of the Council - and the Sudanese government - because it threatened sanctions if Khartoum did not allow the peacekeepers in.
This latest text has been "modified" - as diplomats like to refer to watering down - so it is more conciliatory, as the ambassador later tells reporters.
At just after 0800, Karen Pierce, the number two at the UK mission, Paul Johnston, the political counsellor, and Justin McKenzie Smith, the first secretary, join Sir Emyr to discuss the day ahead.
The four mull over possible names for the leader of the European Union effort on Kosovo.
The factors affecting the timing of a vote on the Darfur resolution are weighed up.
Are the South Africans on board for the Darfur resolution? Sir Emyr's assistant gets South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalu on the phone.
It seems he is broadly supportive.
Then it is off to a European Union meeting, where the ambassadors from the 27 EU countries at the UN meet to discuss what is coming up.
That ends with a round of applause for Sir Emyr and his French counterpart, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, both of whom are retiring soon.
Next, a brisk walk to UN headquarters, where the Security Council is about to meet.
Frustration
Darfur will be discussed a situation that the ambassador has first-hand knowledge of after visiting the refugee camps in Sudan and neighbouring Chad in 2006.
"We were always very determined to try and bring peace to Darfur. Actually going to the camps is a humbling experience - actually seeing people line up, applauding, hoping, expecting.
Britain helped choose the new UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon
"In terms of what we have not done for the people of Chad, which is to provide them with real security, I'm very disappointed with that. Twelve months on we're still working very hard on that."
I ask whether the extraordinarily slow progress on getting peacekeepers into Darfur, four years after the killings began frustrating.
"The UN can be frustrating, period," comes the reply.
"Some people describe it as wading through treacle. But the challenge in the UN is to try and analyse what needs to be done in a certain situation.
"To then mobilise people to reach agreement, and then when you've got agreement, ensure that implementation happens."
This, he acknowledges, can seem like a never-ending process.
Whatever the frustrations though, the ambassador is a firm supporter of the UN, describing it as "remarkably effective" in dealing with global problems.
Although, he adds, "within New York, trying to get reform, trying to shake up the UN structures to make them more appropriate for the 21st Century, that's very difficult."
Inside the Security Council, the revised Darfur resolution is introduced.
Outside, the Sudanese Ambassador to the UN, Abdelmahmoud Abdalhaleen, tells reporters the text is "awful", and warns that Khartoum will say "no" unless changes are made.
The Sudanese have a problem with the mandate of the 24,000 AU-UN peacekeeping force to be deployed.
Sir Emyr goes from the council to a farewell lunch in his honour, being given by Caricom, the economic grouping of Caribbean countries.
After the Caesar salad, the crab cakes and the tribute, there are more meetings.
Then comes a lengthy encounter with the Sudanese ambassador - an hour and a half.
"He's calmed down a lot," says Sir Emyr afterwards.
'Making a difference'
That finishes just 20 minutes before the ambassador is due to be on parade for the garden party he is hosting to mark his departure.
The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is present. Britain, as a permanent member of the Security Council, helped select him.
So how does the retiring ambassador view the world's chief diplomat?
"In terms of the way he's settled into the job, the position he's taken on key issues like the Middle East, climate change, Darfur, I can't fault him at all.
"I think he's adjusting to the difficulty of getting things through the UN system. And that is an art form."
The day is drawing to a close. A telegram must be sent to London, containing the developments on Darfur.
Sir Emyr Jones Parry is about to leave this world behind when he retires in a few weeks.
What is the worst part of this job? I ask him.
"Having an idea of what needs to be done and having difficulty getting agreement."
And the best part?
"Knowing something you've done will make a difference to people's lives."

BBC NEWS REPORT.

RASMUSSEN 'BROKEN' BY TOUR EXIT !

Michael Rasmussen again protested his innocence as the crisis-hit Tour de France continued on Thursday after two traumatic days of scandal. The Danish race leader was sacked and withdrawn from the Tour for lying to his Rabobank team about his whereabouts in the build-up to the event. Rasmussen told a Dutch newspaper that team boss Theo de Rooy was "desperate" and "at the end of his nerves". He added that the withdrawal had left him "broken and destroyed".

Interview: David Millar
Interview: UCI president Pat McQuaid

Erik Dekker, a member of Rabobank's management team, added that the incident had been a "disaster". "The guys were riding for the yellow jersey," he told Five Live. "On Wednesday it was pretty clear we were going to win the Tour de France.

"The guys were working for that and were really proud to be riding for Michael. They came back to the hotel and they heard it's over. This morning we woke up and everyone was hoping it was a dream." Rasmussen is the third rider withdrawal from this year's race.

Pre-race favourite Alexandre Vinokourov failed a doping test on Tuesday and his whole Astana team pulled out while Bradley Wiggins' Cofidis team quit the race on Wednesday after their rider Cristian Moreni failed a test. The loss of the riders and two teams has cast a long shadow over a sport still reeling from last year's Tour, which saw eventual winner Floyd Landis fail a doping test during the race.

Before the start of Thursday's 17th stage, a defiant Tour director Christian Prudhomme expressed his delight with Rasmussen's dismissal and insisted the race will not be cancelled. "Rasmussen's exit is the best thing that can happen to the Tour. The race will start without him and the yellow jersey will be given out after the stage," he said.

606: COMMENT
Most of the riders we have spoken to are sick of being tainted by association

BBC Sport's Phil Sheehan
"The race will go on for the rest of the riders and we believe it would be an insult to them to stop the race. We believe the general classification is much better now than it was." Shell-shocked riders at the start of Thursday's stage expressed their support for the withdrawals of Rasmussen, Vinokourov and Moreni. "The decision regarding Rasmussen was quite right," said Fabian Cancellara, who led the race in the first week. "The teams should all work the way we are now working, fighting against doping. "The majority of us want a clean sport and each rider has to take responsibility. "It reflects very badly on the tour when riders cheat and it is good for cycling if we treat riders strictly. I hope everybody else will get the message."

And Quickstep's Cedric Vasseur, winner of the 10th stage, added: "People were once saying that the tests were useless but now the cheats are being caught. It's good for cycling that we find out who these people are." The French media reacted strongly to the latest news with the Liberation newspaper calling for the Tour to be stopped while L'Equipe said the blow was an opportunity for organisers to clean up the event.

The crisis of the last few days is the latest in a long line of scandals that have rocked the sport this year.

24 May: Erik Zabel and Rolf Aldag admit to using banned blood booster EPO in the mid-1990s
25 May: Bjarne Riis, who won the Tour in 1996, admits to using performance-enhancing drugs and is later struck off the list of winners
15 June: Ivan Basso banned for two years for his role in a Spanish doping scandal
7 July: Tour begins in London without a confirmation of the 2006 winner as Landis' hearing continues in Malibu
18 July: German cycling federation reveals that Patrik Sinkewitz tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone before the race
24 July: Vinokourov tests positive for blood doping after winning the stage 13 time-trial; Alessandro Petacchi cleared of any blame in regard to his failed doping test at the Giro d'Italia
25 July: Moreni tests positive for testosterone; Rasmussen sacked by Rabobank and withdrawn from Tour.

International cycling boss Pat McQuaid said teams must take more responsibility for the integrity of their riders in the wake of the crisis. "The teams are the ones who have to control the riders," he told BBC Radio Five Live. "They need to guarantee the riders are clean and riding fairly. They are the ones that need to clean out the riders who are iffy." McQuaid praised Rabobank for the way they have dealt with the Rasmussen situation, saying: "He was thrown out by his team because they received evidence he had lied to them. He told them he was in Mexico but he was seen in Italy at the same time.

"It was a straightforward lie and they threw him out which was a very responsible decision. Aspersions will be cast on him and they weren't prepared to accept that." But McQuaid insisted the sport was doing all it could to beat the drugs cheats and was confident the battle could be won. "We have brought in a completely new out-of-competition test control system this year and we are doing more of it," he said. "We already test to the maximum, with blood tests in the morning and normal anti-doping in the afternoon. "It's the older riders who have been beating the system but there's new testing all the time. The tests do work.

"Cycling is working very hard and we need to weed out the bad apples of the sport. "I would hope next year we'll have a Tour de France with no positive tests. We've had two bad years and we can't afford another."

BBC SPORTS REPORT.

TALEBAN COMMANDER WAS 'SHOT DEAD' !

By Abdul Hai Kakar BBC Urdu service, Peshawar

Abdullah Mehsud was detained, then freed, by US forces. Taleban commander Abdullah Mehsud was killed by Pakistani soldiers and did not commit suicide, one of the owners of the house in which he died says. The man, Shaikh Alam Mandokhel, said that Mehsud was shot in the stomach.
Pakistani police had said Mehsud blew himself up to evade arrest after being surrounded in Balochistan province. Mehsud, a Taleban veteran who the US freed from custody at Guantanamo Bay, became one of Pakistan's most wanted Islamic militant leaders. He was buried in his home village in the South Waziristan tribal area on Wednesday.

Knock on the door
Shaikh Alam told the BBC Urdu service the militant arrived at his house in the town of Zhob on Monday night. He said that neither he nor his cousin, Shaikh Ayub Mandokhel, had been at home at the time. The militant and his companion told the boy who opened the door they had been sent to spend the night by an Islamic priest, Shaikh Alam said. He said the boy opened the guest quarters for them, served them dinner and went back to his computer in another room. "We keep receiving guests from the city or the villages. We have been hosts to government and intelligence officials too on several occasions. This is part of the Pashtun tradition," Shaikh Alam said.

At 5:30 on Tuesday morning, there was another knock on the door. Shaikh Alam says this time another boy answered the door and was arrested by security forces who had surrounded the house. The boy's father, who followed his son to the door, was also arrested. Shaikh Alam says Abdullah Mehsud was killed in the intense firing by the security forces which then followed.

"If he had blown himself up, his body would have been in pieces. But he only had bullet wounds to his stomach," he says. Shaikh Alam said it was Mehsud's first stay at their house, and that he had never spent a night there before.

His account differs from the official version. An interior ministry spokesman said on Tuesday that Mehsud's movements had been monitored for three days, and he blew himself up with a grenade to avoid arrest when the house was raided. Correspondents say Mehsud was an important figure who had a fearsome reputation among pro-Taleban militants.

Mehsud, whose real name was Noor Alam, was a Pashtun, the same ethnic group as the Taleban of Afghanistan. He lost a leg in a landmine explosion as the Taleban fought to take over the Afghan capital Kabul in 1996, and was eventually captured and handed over to the Americans in 2001. Released from Guantanamo in 2004, he quickly resumed his militant role and was involved in the kidnap of two Chinese workers, one of whom died during a rescue bid by Pakistani forces in South Waziristan later that year.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

SUMMER WEATHER - WETTEST ON RECORD !

Oxford has been one of the places affected by flooding. The early summer has been the wettest since records began more than 240 years ago, the Met Office has confirmed.
Figures covering three months up to 23 July show more than 387mm (15.2in) of rain fell in England and Wales.
That is more than double the average of 186mm (7.3in) for the period, resulting in two bouts of devastating floods in parts of England in June and July.
The previous biggest summer deluge since records started in 1766 came in 1789 when almost 350mm (13.8in) fell.

The UK summer in facts and figures

This year some places had almost three times their expected rainfall.
In contrast, parts of the west coast of Scotland experienced less rain than expected.
Severe floods have hit areas such as Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire since Friday.
Rising waters have affected electricity and running water supplies and rail services.
Dry April
In June, people in South Yorkshire, Humberside and Lincolnshire were among those struck by extreme flooding.
The month of April, however, saw record breaking high temperatures, sunshine and virtually no rain in some areas.
Rainfall was generally well below average across the UK, with south east England and East Anglia seeing less than 3mm.
The statistics show it was the driest April since 1980 and the fourth driest since records began.
All regions set records for maximum and mean temperatures, with a high of 26.5C recorded at Herstmonceux in East Sussex on 15 April.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

ANGER AT S.A. WOMAN TROUSER 'BAN' !

It is not unusual for women to wear trousers in South African cities. Moves by men to stop women wearing trousers in a South African township have been condemned by politicians and civil rights groups.
Earlier this week, a woman in Umlazi township, near Durban, was stripped naked and her shack burnt down.
Men in the township are demanding that all women wear skirts or dresses.
South Africa's Gender and Equality Commission told the BBC that this was the first time something like this had happened in the country.
"It is extreme and the issue around this matter is being investigated by the police," the commission's Mfanozelwe Shozi told the BBC Network Africa programme.
He said it was not uncommon for women to wear trousers in and around Durban.
Correspondents say men in conservative rural communities in southern Africa sometimes harass women for wearing trousers and short skirts.
Conflict of values
Describing the incident on Sunday, he said the men tore off a woman's trousers.
"Unfortunately she did not wear any underpants; and they also burnt the woman's shack where she was living, just because she was wearing trousers," he said.
The incident happened in an area of Umlazi called T section which is a hostelry for men.
"Only men are supposed to stay there - emanating from the apartheid era when people were segregated in terms of areas.
"It's a place where men live from the rural areas so that they can be nearer their work environment."
According to South Africa's Mercury paper, after this a community meeting decided to ban women in the area wearing trousers.
Social anthropologist Prof Anand Singh told the paper the incident was a conflict of values.
"If one looks at South African societies, they are all patriarchal and it is difficult for people who assume authoritative roles in homes to adjust to women assuming their own roles and status within society," he said.
The Gender and Equality Commission and local politicians have condemned the actions.
"I was shocked when I learnt of the incident, because I wear pants myself and am not ashamed to do so. It is also not forbidden by our party," the paper quotes Theresa Nzuza from the Inkatha Freedom Party as saying.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

18TH CENTURY CONVICTS GO ONLINE !

The first convicts were sent to Australia in 1788. The records of tens of thousands of British convicts sent to Australia from the end of the 18th Century have been put online for the first time. Subscribers can browse names, date of conviction, the length of sentence and which penal colony they went to. Ancestry.co.uk features records of 160,000 convicts transported to Australia between 1788 and 1868. It is estimated two million Britons and 22% of Australians will have a convict ancestor listed in the records.

Minor offences
The journey to Australia by boat took eight months, six of which were spent at sea and two in ports where supplies were picked up. The majority of the convicts were men and although a small number had been found guilty of serious crimes such as murder and assault, most had committed minor offences. Some of the crimes they were punished for included stealing from a pond or river and setting fire to undergrowth.

CONVICTS' CRIMES
Stealing fish from pond or river
Thefts under one shilling
Embezzling naval stores
Setting fire to underwood

Sentenced for stealing sheep

One convict of note was the father of Ned Kelly, Australia's famous bush ranger. His Irish father, Red, was sentenced to seven years for stealing two pigs and sent to Tasmania. The first female convict to set foot in Australia was Elizabeth Thackery, sentenced to seven years for the theft of five handkerchiefs.
Overcrowded prisons
Transportation of convicts to Australia began as British prisons were becoming overcrowded in the late 18th Century and crime in cities increased following the industrial revolution. The first 780 British convicts arrived in 11 ships at Botany Bay, in New South Wales, in January 1788. However, the area was deemed unsuitable for settlement so they sailed north to Port Jackson. Convict deportation reached a peak in 1833 when 36 ships transported nearly 7,000 people to the colonial outpost.

Penal colonies were also established in what are now Tasmania, Victoria and Queensland. After serving out their sentence many convicts remained in Australia, becoming government officials and settlers. Many Australians are said to consider a convict in their family tree is a badge of honour and 22% are direct descendents of these convicts.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

AFRICAN MIGRANT CHILDREN 'BEATEN' !

Last year 30,000 Africans were caught trying to reach the Canaries. Hundreds of African migrant children in the Canary Islands are at risk of abuse, a human rights group has said.
Children are being beaten and left to go hungry by staff in overcrowded government emergency centres, Human Rights Watch said in a report.
More than 900 unaccompanied children have arrived in the Spanish territory after dangerous journeys in makeshift boats in an attempt to reach the EU
In 2006, about 30,000 immigrants were caught trying to reach the islands.
'Abuse ignored'
In the report, "Unwelcome Responsibilities: Spain's Failure to Protect the Rights of Unaccompanied Migrant Children in the Canary Islands", Human Rights Watch says the children - mostly boys from Senegal and Morocco - are detained indefinitely in the migrant centres.

Read the HRW report

Children held at four centres told Human Rights Watch they had seen staff violently abusing other children on several occasions. They also said staff ignored violence between detainees.
The group urged Canary Islands officials to close the emergency centres, which it opened a year ago, and provide alternative accommodation and care for the children either on the islands or in Spain.
It also called for a full investigation into the children's claims of abuse.
"These children should be protected by the Spanish authorities, not left to suffer beatings and abuse," said Human Rights Watch spokeswoman Simone Troller.
"The Canary Islands government should close these centres and arrange better care for the children."
Under new agreements between Europe and African countries, many children are returned to their home countries, but face a life without family around them.
Those who do make it to Europe often grow up to contribute to the economies of their host country, says the BBC's Africa editor David Bamford.
But with large numbers of adult migrants desperate for a new life in Europe free of poverty the emphasis is on containment, and so far the authorities have been losing that battle, our correspondent says.
Earlier this month, Spanish officials called off a search for 50 African migrants missing after a boat capsized near the Canary Islands. Forty-eight people were rescued and several bodies recovered.
Most African migrants seeking to enter the EU sail from the west African coast in crowded open boats, many dying en route.
BBC NEWS REPORT.

US PROFESSOR SHOT IN NIGER DELTA !

Delta militants have carried out a series of attacks and abductions. Unknown gunmen on motorcycles shot and wounded an American professor and a security guard in Nigeria's oil city, Port Harcourt officials say. The American had arrived in Port Harcourt to attend an awards ceremony at a local newspaper office.
In another oil city, Yenagoa, the mother of a local state legislator was kidnapped on Tuesday night and a Nigerian oil worker shot dead.
The oil worker was shot dead in his home, also in Rivers State, say police.
Details of the shooting are still quite patchy, spokesperson Irejua Barasua told the BBC.
The US embassy in Abuja says it is aware of the shooting.

Ibiba Donpedro, the journalist for whom the ceremony had been organized, said the gunmen arrived at the newspaper office on at least two motorcycles.
"The next thing, we heard shots all over. Young men came in, shot the (professor) on the hand, ransacked the offices, shot up the windows, shot the security guy on the leg, and left," she said.
"They were saying, 'Where's the white man? Where's the money from the bank?'" she says.
She could not say whether the attack, in which the office was destroyed and two laptops were stolen, was a simple armed robbery or linked to the paper's recent investigation of alleged links between local politicians and criminal gangs.
The gunmen who kidnapped the mother of the Bayelsa State local assembly speaker in Yenagoa arrived in two boats on Tuesday night, a local vigilante group leader said.
The kidnapping was the third attack on officials - or those close to them - this week in the volatile oil-rich Niger Delta.
A politician from neighbouring Delta state was found dead on Monday.
On the same day, gunmen in Port Harcourt stormed the house of a newly appointed energy official and killed two family members.
More than 150 foreigners - mostly oil workers - and many Nigerians have been kidnapped in the region so far this year.
The hostages are usually released unharmed after ransom payments that are always denied by the Nigerian authorities and the oil companies concerned.
Despite being Africa's top oil producer and the sixth largest exporter crude to the US, the Niger Delta remains heavily impoverished.
Attacks on oil installations have cut Nigeria's oil daily production by about 25%, helping to drive up world oil prices.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

ARISTOCRAT HAS 'CASE TO ANSWER' !

Old Etonian Mr Cholmondeley could face the death penalty if convicted. A British aristocrat accused of murdering a man who had been poaching on his Kenyan estate has a case to answer, a court has ruled.
Thomas Cholmondeley, 38, a descendant of white settler Lord Delamere, denies the murder of 37-year-old Robert Njoya.
The court has heard from 38 prosecution witnesses since it opened in September.
Under the Kenyan system judges can end the trial if they decide there is insufficient evidence, but in this case have ruled the defence should go ahead.
Defence lawyers for Mr Cholmondley, who faces the death penalty if convicted, are due to call seven witnesses.
He has already said he shot the poacher in self-defence.
It is the second murder charge divorced father-of-two Mr Cholmondeley has faced.
In 2005 he admitted shooting Maasai ranger Samson Ole Sisina but said he acted in self-defence, mistaking the warden for an armed robber.
The case was dropped due to insufficient evidence and his release prompted national outrage and mass protests from Maasais.
The case highlighted the security fears of landowners and the resentment of the local Maasai population in the Rift Valley region.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

FACEBOOK SITE FACES FRAUD CLAIM !

Facebook has seen rapid growth. Networking website Facebook is to face legal action on Wednesday in a suit brought by a rival site's founders. Three founders of ConnectU say Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for the site while at Harvard.
Facebook has become a global phenomenon with about 31 million users, compared with ConnectU's 70,000.
A Federal case accuses Mr Zuckerberg of fraud and misappropriation of trade secrets, and asks for ConnectU to be given ownership of Facebook.
Last year, Facebook turned down a $1bn offer from Yahoo.
Facebook has asked a judge at a Boston district court to dismiss the case.
Copying claim
The ConnectU founders claim that while at college Mr Zuckerberg agreed to finish writing computer code for them, but that he stalled and eventually created Facebook using their ideas.
In court documents, Facebook's lawyers say that ConnectU's "broad brush allegations" had no evidence to support them.
"Each of them had different interests and activities," they said.
"Only one of them had an idea significant enough to build a great company. That one person was Mark Zuckerberg."
Like Facebook, ConnectU is designed to connect people online. Users create profiles and can post pictures and messages.
The legal action alleges that ConnectU founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narenda began developing a networking site in 2002.
They asked Mr Zuckerberg to help finish the code, which he agreed to, they claim.
"Such statements were false," the court documents allege.
"Zuckerberg never intended to provide the code and instead intended to breach his promise... and intended to steal the idea."

BBC NEWS REPORT.

FEARS AS FLOODS LOOM IN NEW AREAS !

Oxford residents have been using their boats to get around.
Oxford aerial video

Fresh floods have hit Oxford while residents further along the River Thames have been warned that water levels are likely to peak later.
Homes were evacuated in Oxford overnight while places including Reading, Henley and Caversham are braced for similar flooding.
About 350,000 people in Gloucestershire without tap water are getting supplies, but could be cut off for up to 14 days.
The prime minister said flood-hit councils would receive £46m.
Gordon Brown also told the House of Commons he would push insurance firms to make payouts.
Refused to move
The Environment Agency still has six severe flood warnings in place - three on the Severn - in Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Worcester - two on the Thames around Oxford, and one on the Ock, near Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
BBC weather forecasters said flood-hit areas would see heavy rain of 10mm to 15mm on Thursday.
These levels are not expected to make the flooding worse but could slow the speed at which waters recede.
Water levels in the Thames around Oxford rose throughout the night and are expected to peak later.

See map of severe flood warnings

Flooding is predicted to start in Henley on Wednesday afternoon and in Reading and Caversham in the evening.
Waters are also predicted to peak at Pangbourne, Purley-on-Thames and Mapledurham on Wednesday evening, with residents braced for floods.

Please extend my sympathy to all the many people whose homes have been damaged, livelihoods threatened, or who have been affected by the water and power shortages.
The Queen's message of support.

It is predicted Windsor, Eton and Maidenhead will escape flooding while Marlow, Cookham, and Staines will see limited flooding later this week.
Responding to questions in the House of Commons Mr Brown said all councils affected by the floods would receive 100% compensation.
He said that £46m had been made available by the government in the immediate future and spending on flood protection would rise to £800m.
Of those evacuated in Oxford, about 30 people went to a shelter set up at Oxford United Football Club's Kassam stadium while another 250 decided to stay with family and friends.
Those who stayed in their homes told how water began flowing in at about 0300 BST.
Angela MacKeith, 61, said: "We are under 2ft of water throughout the house.
"The awful thing is that this time last year we were in the same situation after a flash flood.
"It appeared to be bubbling straight up from the water table."

Water covered the pitch at Abingdon Town FC in Oxfordshire.

Floods: At-a-glance
Water operation nerve centre
New alert in Cambridgeshire
Oxford homes flooded
Pumping continues in Glos

The Environment Agency's Robert Runcie said it was not the Thames itself causing the problems in Oxford, but the tributaries flowing into it and creating the higher levels.
There had been concerns about Osney Mead substation, which supplies power to Oxford city centre, but this has now receded, according to the county council.
In Gloucestershire, water supplies have been cut off after a treatment plant flooded.
Severn Trent Water is supplying water tankers known as bowsers, while the Army is delivering three million bottles of water a day from a base Cheltenham racecourse.
But Gloucestershire's Chief Constable Tim Brain said there had been instances of people "behaving most selfishly", using "very large receptacles" to empty bowsers and trying to resell water at inflated prices.
"That is simply theft and it is being treated as theft," he said.
'War-time spirit'
Long queues formed in supermarket car parks on Wednesday as people waited to collect their daily ration of six two-litre bottles of water.
At the Tesco in Quedgeley residents said the crisis had fostered a war-time spirit.
Reginald Davies, 91, who fought during the Second World War, said: "I did five days without water in Burma.
"I've seen men go mad from thirst. This is nothing. The worst thing is getting out of bed in the morning at 91 to get water."
Dr Brain said it could take seven to 14 days to restore supplies, but advised people to remain calm as there was enough water for everyone.
Gloucestershire County Council's chief executive Peter Bungard said the council had received 10,000 calls for help and advice since Monday morning.
He said there were about 25,000 elderly and vulnerable adults in the county and that 1,400 portable toilets had been ordered for those most in need.
Gloucestershire Police said teenager Mitchell Taylor, 19, who has not been seen since the height of the floods was still missing.
He disappeared after leaving a bar in Tewkesbury in the early hours of Saturday. It is not known if his disappearance is related to the floods.

RAIL DISRUPTION
Central Trains - services between Great Malvern and Hereford suspended
First Great Western - services suspended between Oxford and Didcot, and Oxford and Worcester
Virgin trains - services between Oxford and Reading suspended.

Latest from BBC Travel

There have been calls for the government to seek money from the EU to help cover costs arising from the floods.
Conservative MEP for the South West Neil Parish said: "There is a solidarity fund that is set up for disasters and of course many countries including Greece and Sweden in 2005 had 82m euros from the fund.
"There's money available to restore the infrastructure for drinking water, transport, telecommunications, health and education."
Environment Agency floodline: 0845 988 1188

SEVERE FLOOD WARNINGS IN PLACE

The Severn: Severe warnings for Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Worcester
The Thames: Severe warnings affecting Eynsham to Sandford Lock and also Little Wittenham
The Ock: Severe warnings from Charney Bassett to Abingdon

BBC NEWS REPORT.

SUDANESE GANGS AFFLICT CAIRO STREETS !

By Heather Sharp - BBC News, Cairo.

Maliah Bekam, 24, came to Egypt to escape the civil war in southern Sudan, but he died in a pool of his own blood in a Cairo street.
The fatal machete blows came from members of his own community. The crowning irony is that the attack happened outside an event marking World Refugee Day.
Rap music is popular among many Sudanese youth. Maliah is the latest casualty of violence between rival street gangs from Cairo's Sudanese community.
Unofficially (there is no official figure), the death toll is at least four in the last 18 months.
Deng, 22, says he has witnessed two killings. Like others associated with the gangs, he did not want his real name published. "They fight about nothing. They use knives and sticks. Sometimes you'll see more than 10 people injured," he says.

Clad in silky tank tops, trainers and baseball caps, the Lost Boys, Outlaws and other gangs base their loyalties not on tribe or religion, but on territorial claims to areas of the Cairo. Members are usually in their late teens or twenties, love rap music, often live together in shared flats and socialise at parties and picnics.

SUDANESE IN EGYPT
Exact number not known
Labour ministry estimate 2m-5m
Majority from mainly Christian/animist South
UN responsible for deciding refugee status applications
Approx 13,400 recognised as refugees*
Approx 60,000 applied for refugee status 1996-2005*
*UNHCR 2005

Q&A: Sudan ceasefire

But they also rob fellow Sudanese, attack other gangs and beat up youths in their area who refuse to join.
Teacher David Awo Farajalla, 30, has scars on his head and shoulder from when he was mugged by gang members on his way home from church. "I just heard a sound in my head, and then started seeing the blood. They took the money and ran away."
Aywel Jonathan, 20, says he was targeted for refusing to join a gang: "I was on the street, they attacked, cut me on my hand and beat me. It was a very big knife."

But why have so many young Sudanese turned on each other?
Many Sudanese came to Egypt hoping to be resettled in the West, but that can take years and successful applications have plummeted since the January 2005 peace agreement between Khartoum and the southern rebels, although few southerners feel it is secure enough to return.

David Awo Farajalla bears the scars of an unprovoked gang attack. While Egypt has long had an open door policy for Sudanese, work permits can be difficult to obtain, discrimination is a fact of life and the labour market is already overcrowded. Sudanese also have limited access to state education, which leaves them reliant on unaccredited church-run schools.
"They lost their country and their identity," said Dominic, who maintains relations with the gangs and has attempted to mediate between them. "They are marginalised, missing out on education and employment opportunities. They don't have anything to believe in, so they created these gangs to belong to."
The breakdown of community and family relationships is also considered a factor, with many fathers dead or absent and mothers often working as live-in maids away from their children.
Deng's experience may also offer a clue: "When I was 10 I went back to southern Sudan, but fighting broke out and I saw my cousin killed in front of me.
Sudanese refugees staged a sit-in calling for asylum rights abroad.
"Most of the guys in the gang have seen something really bad."
The love of rap - among gang and non-gang Sudanese youth alike - may also be telling: "It's about tragedy, having trouble in your life. It's like there's something you want to bring out of your heart. It's talking through your pain," says Deng.

Many see a link between the rise of gangs and an incident in December 2005 that made international headlines when Egyptian security forces killed at least 27 Sudanese as they broke up a sit-in. Researchers from the American University of Cairo (AUC) believe "new depths of frustration and hopelessness" after the event fed into the gangs' behaviour.
Government policy The AUC report suggests the incident resulted in police adopting a "hands-off" policy - an accusation levelled by many Sudanese who say the police are failing to investigate gang crimes and round up leaders.

The government said at the time that it was "saddened" by the deaths and had handled the sit-in with "patience and flexibility". It says it has taken steps to improve living conditions for Sudanese, but did not respond to requests for a statement on policing policy.

Deng says most new gang members join either to avoid getting beaten up by - or to avenge injuries received from - another gang. To become a gang member, he says, you have to take part in a new attack. "Of course when someone dies, members of the gang that did it don't feel happy. But they don't blame themselves - they just say it was his problem, he shouldn't have been fighting against us," he says.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

TOUR BOSS DEMANDS DOPING OVERHAUL !

Vinokourov won two stages within three days this week. Tour director Christian Prudhomme says professional cycling needs a complete overhaul in the wake of the latest drugs scandal to rock the sport.
Kazakh rider Alexandre Vinokourov tested positive for blood doping after winning Saturday's time-trial stage.
And Prudhomme said: "This has to change now. The re-conquering of cycling has to be done with the Tour de France.
"I started this job believing that we could change this system but it's not enough: there has to be a revolution."

606: DEBATE
It's a disgrace but it's a good thing that they are being caught - it's the only way to clean up the sportk1gannon

Team Astana withdrew from the race following Vinokourov's positive test for a banned blood transfusion.
The 33-year-old, who won Saturday's time trial in Albi, reportedly had two different kinds of red blood cells, indicating he has taken blood from someone of a compatible group.
Wednesday's 16th stage suffered a minor delayed when members of eight teams protested.
Six French teams, plus German outfits Gerolsteiner and T-Mobile have formed a Movement for a Credible Cycling, asking for all teams to abide by their good behaviour charter of 2005.

BLOOD DOPING EXPLAINED
What is it?

Administration of red blood cells to increase the blood's oxygen-carrying capacity

How is it done?

Injection with someone else's red blood cells; removing own blood, storing it and returning it once body has replaced it

Why do it?

The better the blood's oxygen-carrying capacity, the greater one's enduranceSide effects: Blood clots, overload of circulatory system, kidney damage, transmission of infectious diseases such as HIV.

Chances of being caught:

Test can only detect it if the blood comes from a donor.

Under the charter, teams are requested to avoid fielding riders implicated in doping affairs.
Even before Tuesday's bombshell, Tour leader Michael Rasmussen was battling suspicions for missing pre-tour doping tests, although he still seems likely to claim victory in Paris on Sunday.
And it comes on top of 2006 champion Floyd Landis being prevented from defending his crown for failing a drugs test during last year's Tour while Giro d'Italia winner Danilo di Luca is also being investigated.
In addition, 2006 Giro winner Ivan Basso was recently handed a two-year ban and 1996 Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis admitted using performance-enhancing drugs, as did former Telekom team-mates Eric Zabel, Udo Boelts, Bert Dietz, Christian Henn and Rolf Aldag.
Prudhomme expressed his disappointment over the latest setback and urged riders to remain clean for the good of the sport.
"The start in London was a formidable occasion to re-conquer," he said. "But there has been an absolute failure of the system.
"The riders have to understand that they are playing a game of Russian roulette if they are doping.
Everyone has been suspicious of the Astana team - Bradley Wiggins"They have to realise that we will never give up the war against doping in which we are involved.
"Doping ruins our childhood dreams. Vinokourov has cheated and the only possible answer was - leave."
Britain's Olympic track champion Bradley Wiggins revealed he had suspicions over Vinokourov's performance in Saturday's time trial.
"I know that to put two minutes into me what power Vino would need and the effort he would have had to make and it didn't add up," he told the Guardian.

Prudhomme is demanding action after the latest drugs scandal"At the time I was frightened of what I might say. I didn't want to accuse people because they had beaten me outright.
"But when you saw him limping the week before you couldn't help thinking about it. I think everyone has been suspicious of the Astana team.
"It is a disaster for the sport. There will be no cycling in 10 years if this goes on."
Fellow Briton David Millar, who has been an outspoken campaigner against doping since serving a two-year ban for using erythropoietin, believes cycling would take "five to 10 years" to get out its drugs problem.
He said: "The bottom line is it is, it is finally good because the controls work, but I'm gutted as Vinokourov was one of my favourite riders."
Vinokourov was hotly tipped for this year's title but lost time in a bad crash on stage five and slipped further back in the stages in the Alps.
But he looked back to his best in a dominant time trial on Saturday and, although he dropped out of overall contention with a disastrous display on Sunday, he won another tough mountain stage on Monday.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

THE SPY FILES TORMENTING POLAND !

By Julia Rooke Producer, Poland: Spies, Secrets and Lies.

Two decades after the collapse of communism, government plans to throw open the secret police archives could, say some Poles, turn into a witch hunt.

Since the twins came to power there has been a series of outings."They said you'll die in jail, you animal, and your family will starve to death, and then I agreed to work with them."
The middle-aged man blubbers almost uncontrollably as he admits on Polish prime-time TV how he was once blackmailed by the secret police into betraying his closest friends.
"They led me like a dog on a chain, and I didn't have the courage or the strength to break free," he says.
This is Stanislaw Filosek, a leader of the opposition trade union Solidarity at the giant Lenin steel mill in the southern town of Nova Huta. After the imposition of martial law in 1981, he and his friends went underground.
But their leader was uncovered by the police and jailed.
"I always suspected betrayal," says Mr Filosek's friend, Edward Novak.
Earlier this year Mr Novak got permission to see his secret police file. What he discovered made his blood run cold.
The files are like dynamite and they can explode, they can ruin people's life today
Jan Molka, Solidarity activist turned informer
"It was Filosek," he says.
"A trusted friend, a regular in our house. He was being paid to inform on us. When I saw his name, I wept."
The old friends forced Mr Filosek to go public. Otherwise they say they would have outed him themselves.
It is the absence of a proper legal framework for dealing with the past that has led to a series of ugly outings.
In East Germany many informers were exposed and the majority of civil servants were purged by the West German state which stepped in to help. Poland had no such partner.
Solidarity came to power following a negotiated settlement with the communists.
Lech Walesa, Solidarity's most famous leader and former Polish president, says that although Solidarity won the 1989 elections, the ministries of the interior and defence were still in communist hands. Outing informers would have been too dangerous then.
"The communists were so strong," he adds.
"We could not start vetting people. A frontal attack on the communists would have ended tragically."
Two years ago, Poland's ruling Law and Justice Party came to power with a promise to morally cleanse the country and expose former collaborators.
Mr Walesa said Solidarity could not start vetting people.
According to Wojciech Roszkowsi, a Law and Justice MEP, today people feel betrayed.
He argues that the Polish transformation was little more than a deal to divide the spoils of power unfairly between some Solidarity leaders and communists.
"The communist nomenklatura were given a chance to appropriate state assets," he says.
"The biggest fortunes were made by former military intelligence officers."
Solidarity's greatest heroes strongly deny these claims.
They in turn accuse the identical twins who now run Poland, President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, of unleashing a modern-day witch hunt to punish their political rivals.
The centrepiece of their moral cleansing campaign was declared illegal by the Constitutional Court this spring.
The proposed law demanded that people in positions of public responsibility fill in self-vetting forms or be sacked.
However, since the Kaczynski twins came to power there has been a series of informer outings in the popular press.
Maciej Damiecki is a veteran comic actor. He stars in a long-running and much loved soap opera called the Vicarage (Parafia). This spring his world fell apart.
"A young man came to visit me," he recalls.
"He said he wanted to talk about my past as a communist informer. He had a copy of my secret police file with him. It was a terrible shock."
After 40 years, Mr Damiecki's dark secret was out. Splashed all over the newspaper were extracts from his file in which he allegedly denounced fellow thespians.
His story is familiar to those who once lived in a police state. He admits guilt and explains how back in the 1970s he had been caught drink-driving by the police.
"They proposed a deal and in return they'll give me back licence," he says.
"They began blackmailing me. They said I'll be fired from theatre unless I agreed to inform on my colleagues."
Because he was deemed "guilty", he was not allowed to see his own file. Finally he did obtain a copy and says that only two of the reports were written by him. The rest, he insists, were fabricated.
The secret police were known for their ability to sow misinformation. Yet ironically, today's government and its supporters seem to set great store by them.
Now the government - backed by most political parties - are calling for the files to be opened up to wider public scrutiny. But where will all this end?
Jan Molka is a Solidarity activist who turned informer.
He joined the secret police and was rapidly promoted, informing on his then Solidarity colleagues, among them the Kaczynski twins.
If the files are opened, he warns, Poland will go through "hell":
"The files are like dynamite and they can explode, they can ruin people's lives today," he says.
"People are frightened. They implicated millions."

Poland: Spies, Secret and Lies is on Radio 4, Wednesday 25 July, 1100 BST.
BBC NEWS REPORT.

BURST OIL PIPE SPRAYS VANCOUVER !

A major oil pipeline has burst in a suburb of Vancouver, Canada, causing homes to be evacuated and threatening the city's port.
Witnesses described crude oil shooting out of the burst pipe. The oil then ran downhill and into an ocean inlet before the pipeline's flow was shut off.
A roadwork crew ruptured the pipe, said Derek Corrigan, the mayor of Burnaby.
Officials for the port of Vancouver said they were working to contain the spill away from the busy harbour.
At least 50 homes were evacuated as crude oil shot out of the burst pipe, raining down on houses and coating a road.
Environmental assessment
It is not yet known exactly how much oil has entered Burrard Inlet, but Mayor Corrigan said "thousands of litres" had been spilt.
Witnesses described a geyser of oil which lasted at least 20 minutes.
Government officials are on the scene to assess damage to the environment.
A spokesman for the pipe's owner, Kinder Morgan Canada, said the pipeline was adequately marked and it was the roadcrew's fault for digging into it.
The crew that dug into the line said it was improperly marked.
The pipeline carries crude oil from the province of Alberta to a storage and transfer facility on the shore of Burrard Inlet.
Afternoon traffic was disrupted with a major road connecting central Vancouver and the eastern suburbs closed and delays on a suburban rail line.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

E-MAILS FROM ZIMBABWE !

Zimbabweans share e-mails that they have written to their friends and family outside the country, over the past week, painting a picture of their daily trials and tribulations to find food and fuel.
President Robert Mugabe said on Tuesday that the current strict price controls will continue in an effort to turn around the country's ailing economy.

Click on the links below to read their e-mails.

Tapiwa, 28Teacher, Harare
If I can't make enough selling some things then I am going to skip the country
James, 27Businessman, Marondera
Service stations are pumping air and my generator is idle
Esther, 28Professional, Harare
All you hear about supermarket shelves are not an exaggeration
Gift, 30Executive, Harare
Think of us in our city where everything, even beer, is scarce
Sister MaryLibrarian, Harare
We are constantly on the look-out for anything edible
Nyika, 40Consultant, Harare
The time I waste looking for fuel... And as you know, time is money

All names have been changed or removed to protect the contributors' and the recipients' identities.

TAPIWA, 28, HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER, HARARE
Hello from a harsh Harare...
I have to resign from my teaching position because my life is unsustainable. I am in a big deficit.

Tapiwa cannot afford to commute to work anymore.
I only earn about 3.5m Zimbabwean dollars (equivalent to $22 at current black market exchange rate).
I live in a high density area about 25kms from city centre. Everyday I have to commute to work and I use about 200,000 Zimbabwean dollars ($1.25) per journey so this translates for me in a month, on transport alone, my whole salary.
I'm a lodger and altogether pay 1.5m Zimbabwean dollars ($9) on rent. So you can see already, it is really difficult to live in such a situation.
Where I stay, there are constant sewage breakdowns and so there is always raw sewage flowing around. I have to jump over these "streams". No-one comes to collect the waste anymore.
And we are actually living in darkness. For the past two weeks there has been no power - day or night.
A small bundle of firewood costs 50,000 Zimbabwean dollars ($0.31) For a month's firewood you would need 2m Zimbabwean dollars ($12.50).
I will look for an informal job (there are no proper ones anymore) - selling some things to try raise some money to fend for myself and my wife and my kid, and my parents in the rural area.
I am forking out more than I have. Even though there is virtually nothing in the shops - to get anything one must scramble for it.
If I can't make enough selling some things then I am going to skip the country. I know that with my qualifications, I can get well remunerated in South Africa or Botswana.
And luckily, I have a passport and so it will not be difficult.
Pray for me, my friends,Tapiwa
Click to return

JAMES, 27, SMALL BUSINESS OWNER, MARONDERA
Hello from Zimbabwe
It took me a long time to respond to your mail because of power cuts. It just shows how serious the economic problems are here. It has became a norm to have electricity for only six hours a day - from 11pm to 5am.
We now dearly depend on firewood for cooking and candles for light and the situation is becoming worse each day. I guess you are wondering where I got the electricity to power this computer..?
Electricity is available 24 hours a day to some sections, such as hospitals and the government's intelligence officers (CIO) and so I'm sending this mail from a friend of mine who stays close to the provincial hospital.

James dropped out of university as he could no longer afford the fees
Anyway let me continue, I had to drop out of my studies in 2005 as I couldn't afford to pay the fees.
To make ends meet I opened my own company specialising in photocopying, typing and stationery. During my first year of business, my company grew and became a force to be reckoned with.
But come 2007, things are going down.
The economy is down on its knees.
Lack of electricity is forcing me out of business. As mentioned before, we rarely get power during the day and to make things worse I can't carry out our kind of business at night since most of the documents we handle are "private and confidential".
I bought a generator last year when we were first warned about imminent power shortages but even it is no help these days - there is no fuel... except for the black market but it is so expensive.
Service stations are pumping air and my generator is lying idle. How we make a living still remains a mystery. No-one outside Zim can understand our style.
I now sell anything legal that I can. This means my office is still open, for now anyway.
Remember us please? We still need your prayers and whatever assistance you can offer to make things better this side.
Bye for now!James
Click to return

ESTHER, 28, PROFESSIONAL, HARARE
Hi my sisters
All the news reports that you hear about supermarket shelves are not an exaggeration. It is really true.

Some friends and I have started going to South Africa to do our grocery shopping - to buy toilet paper, potatoes, carrots, eggs... basically everything
Esther, Harare
Things are bad.
I am getting used to the way things are. It's basically more of the same except for these latest price slashes. I can't buy meat and there's nothing left in the freezer and so, like many others, I've been forced to become a vegetarian.
You know the walls I was having built round my house...well now no-one can buy cement and so the job is just half done... I don't know if it will ever be finished.
Life is so expensive and it has gone from bad to worse.
Things have disappeared from the shelves. Some friends and I have started going to South Africa to do our grocery shopping - to buy toilet paper, potatoes, carrots, eggs... basically everything. You cannot walk into a supermarket with your trolley like you used, now you have to queue up for everything.
Life is one long queue... rumours come round about a certain supermarket getting margarine and so everyone rushes there to wait and see - totally ridiculous!
That has been my life over the last two weeks but faith in God keeps me going. I hope you are OK too.
Your sister,Esther
Click to return

GIFT, 30, EXECUTIVE, HARARE
Hi!
I was fortunate enough to have fuel to drive around at the weekend since I got fuel coupons to fill up. I say fortunately as my beer drinking habit has forced me and my friends to drive from one beer outlet to the other in search of beer, which has also joined the scarce commodities group.
Meat is very difficult to come by in Zimbabwe.
Worse still, our normal braais [bbqs] of beef, pork etc, are long since gone. It's like finding gold if you happen to bump into them. I haven't eaten beef for over three weeks now.
Whilst driving round on our search for beer, we would enter supermarkets with empty shelves and lengths and lengths of people snaking around and outside the shop, either in a queue for bread or fresh milk or sour milk etc, the basic commodities.
At one point I bumped into a bread truck just about to offload loaves and so was very lucky to be the first one to buy some bread.
Think of us in our city of empty shelves where everything, even beer, is scarce.
Regards,Gift
Click to return

SISTER MARY, NUN AND LIBRARIAN, HARARE.
My dear friend,
Thanks so much for your email - amidst the chaos of the floods of Britain! At least in Zim we have the sunshine - usually!
Most shelves in Zimbabwean shops are empty.
The costs of trying to get our library staff to work now is almost impossible since the bus drivers are charging excessively high fares and government seems unable to prevent it.
It is now difficult to find any food to buy so we are constantly on the look-out for anything edible. Salaries go nowhere so we have to use our own initiative to bail our staff out on a daily basis.
Our library and rehab dept is serving all the blind of Zimbabwe so if we close; none of them, old and young, black and white, student and retiree, will have books nor equipment nor anything.
We are still desperately trying to raise a further $40,000 (£20,000) to buy a house near the library to accommodate our librarian, Chisamba, and his wife, Sakina, and son, Patrick, (a keen Arsenal fan! Where he gets the info I have no idea), as well as blind adults. There is a big garden where they would be able to grow food. It would mean the salvation of our library, and enable us to keep going during these very difficult times.
Many people have helped but we just need this last final lap before Rotary can organise the purchase.
We do believe there is a future but we have to prepare for that future now, we cannot give up and keep looking for a sign of hope for this truly wonderful country and its people.
Love and God blessSister Mary
Click to return

NYIKA, 40, BUSINESS CONSULTANT, HARARE
Hi Chucks,
Since my last email to you, can you imagine that at the moment I'm really grounded in terms of business opportunities and basic foodstuffs?

It is hard to find fuel for cooking and for cars.
At the moment it is quite hard to get any consultancy work and when I am paid I only manage to buy not even a quarter of what I could've bought when I initially wrote the job's invoice. Although I have a BSC Hons in Financial Services and work as a consultant, I can barely feed myself.
At the moment there is hardly any work coming by because of the high interest rates and the general slump in business activity.
So as you can see I can hardly make any ends meet at the moment. A litre of fuel costs me almost 385 Zimbabwean dollars and when you consider that $1 on the black market is about 150 Zimbabwean dollars, you can see the people who we get the fuel from are really milking us. So any amount that you manage to make, you spend it on fuel and as you know my business depends on a lot of travelling.
It is quite hard at the moment for any form of business because of the high operating costs. And also the time you waste looking for fuel and basic commodities. And as you know in consultancy, time is money.
So as you can see my friend, you better start looking for some work for me in the UK because it is now untenable over here.
With regards,Nyika

You can watch a special report on the situation in Zimbabwe on BBC ONE at 2200 BST on Tuesday 24 July 2007.

ZIMBABWE'S WOMEN 'FACE BRUTALITY' !

Protesters have been vocal about Zimbabwe's economic woes. Women who oppose Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe are suffering increasing violence and repression, a study says.
Amnesty International claims that female demonstrators can be subjected to arbitrary arrest, beatings and in some cases torture in police custody.
The human rights group, which interviewed dozens of activists, urged the country's authorities to "stamp out any discrimination against women".
Zimbabwe is in the grip of a severe economic crisis.
Shops are running out of even the most basic items and inflation is approaching 5,000%.
Men live on average for 37 years but life expectancy for women is worse at just 34 years - among the lowest in the world.
'Important resource'
Male protesters do face widespread human rights abuses, but female activists quoted in Amnesty's report, Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Women Human Rights Defenders at Risk, described receiving brutal treatment at the hands of the police.
"Detained women human rights defenders have been subjected to sexist verbal attacks, and denied access to food, medical care and access to lawyers," the report said.

ZIMBABWE CRISIS
Inflation: approaching 5,000%
Unemployment: 80%
4m need food aid
Life expectancy: 37 (men), 34 (women)

Mugabe in economy vow

"Some have been severely beaten while in police custody, in some instances amounting to torture."
An activist called Irene, from the group Women of Zimbabwe Arise, told Amnesty's researchers how she had been arrested eight times.
During a protest in 2006 she said a police officer kicked her in the stomach while she was two months pregnant, causing a miscarriage.
Amnesty's secretary general, Irene Khan, said female activists were an "important resource for the development of Zimbabwe".
"They play a pivotal role in addressing the many human rights challenges the country is facing," she said.
"The government must acknowledge the legitimacy of their work and stamp out any discrimination against women."
African leaders are due to gather in August for the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) summit in Zimbabwe.
Ms Khan called on them to "redouble their efforts" to end human rights violations in Zimbabwe.
"SADC leaders should insist that President Mugabe immediately stop the intimidation, ill-treatment, torture and harassment of critics of government policies."

BBC NEWS REPORT.

ISRAELI PLANES STRIKE GAZA STRIP !

Palestinians inspect the damage from the Israeli strike. Israel has carried out an air strike on Gaza, damaging a block of flats.
Reports said the target was a local leader of the militant group, Islamic Jihad, who had been travelling past the building in a car. He was unhurt.
The Israeli military confirmed that it had carried out an air attack on Gaza City, but gave no further details.
In the West Bank, the Israeli military detained what it says were 15 suspected Palestinian militants in overnight raids across the West Bank.
Reports said raids were carried out in Bethlehem, Nablus, Qalqilya and Ramallah.
The raid in Nablus was also reported by the official Palestinian news agency.
The agency said Israeli troops had ordered a number of people out of their homes, before searching the buildings and taking six men away.
The agency also said there had been raids in Hebron, and that a member of the Palestinian presidential guard who lived in the city had been detained at a checkpoint while returning from his work in Jericho.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

COMPANIES 'LOOTING' A CONTINENT !

By Fran Abrams BBC File On 4.

The Kenyan government says some flower companies under reported profits.Gordon Brown has signalled he wants to see poor countries develop through trade rather than aid. The new Prime Minister has even appointed a minister with joint responsibility for the two areas.
But charities are planning a major campaign that they believe will expose a flaw in the plan.
While major British companies are investing in the developing world, much of their profit is still banked elsewhere.
'Capital flight'
BBC Radio 4's File on 4 has learned that almost £100bn a year is taken out of Africa through accounting practices - several times what the continent receives in aid.
Charles Abugre, head of policy and advocacy for Christian Aid, said this capital flight amounted to "the looting of the continent".
"If we can't deal with it, there's no way we can conceive of poor countries detaching themselves from aid dependency," he said.
"The issue is slowly coming to the fore. It is the missing link in the whole of international development campaigning."
Reporting from Kenya on the activities of foreign companies there, File on 4 has discovered evidence of questionable accounting practices - both legal and illegal.
Because of the way Kenyan tax laws have evolved, foreign companies can quite lawfully contribute very little in the way of taxes to the country's economy.
And some other international companies have been found to have acted illegally in falsely declaring amounts of tea that are being exported to the UK.
'Under-reporting'
In Mombasa, Kenya's main port town, the tea board has an official working with customs officials to investigate some startling discrepancies.
Kenya's official export statistics say almost 50 million kilos of tea left there in 2005 bound for Britain.
But the British import statistics showed 75 million kilos - one and a half times as much - arriving here from Kenya.
A former head of domestic tax for Kenya, Jack Ranguma, told the programme he believed the mismatch was created by customs fraud.
In short, companies shipping tea to the UK were under-reporting exports in order to avoid paying tax, he said.
"This shows two things," he said. "One, there is a great deal of corruption in Kenya, which is why they are able to prepare documentation which are not consistent with the figures. But more importantly, the companies involved are transferring income.
"In bald terms what they are doing is to deny Kenya that tax revenue."
'Dishonourable mischief'
And the country's Minister for Trade and Industry, Mukhisa Kituyi, called on developed countries to put pressure on companies to behave.
"We want our sisters to stop their corporate citizens who may not be paying their due taxes here," he said. "That that's one of the ways of enhancing our bilateral friendship."
He also said Kenya was trying to increase its capacity to prevent these practices from depleting his government's resources.
"I think we'll catch up with them if that's what's happening," he said. "If we find any dishonourable mischief we'll be heading towards it."
Task force
But Mr Ranguma, who retired a year ago, expressed doubts about whether the Kenyan government had the commitment and the resources to tackle illegal trade practices.
He told the programme he had also discovered widespread under-reporting of profits by flower companies, many of which are owned by Europeans.
"I formed a task force to audit the flower companies and it did come up with some preliminary results that pointed towards suppression of income," he said.
Matters about tax are a matter for the Kenyan government
Ray KylesActing British High Commissioner
"If you do not declare the full value of income that you have earned as a business, it means you are underpaying taxes. But I left office before I concluded the investigation and I understand a number of people have since been moved from it."
What Mr Ranguma had uncovered was the illegal use in Kenya of a legitimate practice known as "transfer pricing" - the means by which firms value their goods for tax purposes when they move them across international borders.
In effect, this allows companies to undervalue their products when they leave Kenya and to place their profits elsewhere.
British exports
When asked what had happened to the investigation, Mr Kituyi promised to raise it with the finance minister.
But File on 4 found there were also perfectly legal accounting practices which allowed British firms to register their profits outside Kenya.
Britain's acting High Commissioner to Kenya, Ray Kyles, said it was not the job of foreign governments to encourage their corporate investors to pay tax.
"Matters about tax are a matter for the Kenyan government," he said. "Our role here is to recognise the advantages to Britain of increasing its exports and in helping British companies look for opportunities overseas.
"We think there's a win here."

Learn more about this story on File on 4, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 24 July 2007 at 2000 BST and again on Sunday 29 July 2007 at 1700 BST.
BBC NEWS REPORT.

TRIAL OF DAVID HICKS 'A CHARADE' !

David Hicks spent more than five years in Guantanamo Bay. The trial of Australian national David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay was a charade that served to corrode the rule of law, Australia's top legal body has said.
The Law Council of Australia called government support for the US military tribunal process shameful.
In a report on the issue, the council drew a parallel with the case of detained Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef.
Both cases had an "Alice in Wonderland quality" to them, Law Council President Tim Bugg said.
David Hicks was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 and spent more than five years in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
At a military tribunal earlier this year he admitted supporting terrorism and, under a plea deal agreed with prosecutors, was jailed for seven years.
All but nine months of the sentence were suspended and he has now been returned to Australia.
Prime Minister John Howard's government had faced mounting public criticism over its failure to secure his release.
'Veneer of due process'
According to the report prepared by lawyer Lex Lasry, aspects of Hicks' plea agreement appeared "an attempt to protect the credibility and interests of the US government".
The deal also meant that his tribunal became "a contrived affair played out for the benefit of the media and the public".
It was "designed to lay a veneer of due process over a political and pragmatic bargain", the report said.
Mr Lasry called the Howard government's support for the tribunal process "shameful" and said Australia's moral authority had been diminished by it.
"Ultimately there has been no benefit from this process; only a corrosion of the rule of law," he wrote.

Haneef was arrested under new anti-terrorism laws in Brisbane.
Law Council President Tim Bugg, releasing the report, also highlighted the case of detained Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef.
Dr Haneef has been charged with providing "reckless support" for a terrorist organisation in connection with last month's suspected failed bomb attacks in the UK.
A Brisbane court awarded him bail, but the Australian government then revoked his work visa in order to keep him in detention under immigration laws, prompting outcry from civil liberties groups.
"There's an 'Alice in Wonderland' quality to both these cases - 'First the sentence, then the verdict'," Mr Bugg said.
"Mr Hicks and Mr Haneef both know what that feels like," he said.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

MAY LOOKS TO SKY TO COMPLETE PhD !

May recently co-authored a book with Sir Patrick Moore. Guitarist Brian May is to spend two days studying the night sky in the Canary Islands as he completes the PhD he abandoned in 1971 to join Queen.
May is going to La Palma to observe the formation of "zodiacal dust clouds".
The subject forms the basis of a thesis for London's Imperial College, where he had been studying before deciding to pursue a career with the rock group.
The 60-year-old recently published a book on astronomy with The Sky at Night presenter Sir Patrick Moore.
May is basing himself at the Observatory of the Roque de Los Muchachos on the island of La Palma.
A statement issued on behalf of the facility said he had chosen this location because of the "quality of the sky" and the opportunity to use a 3.6-metre optical telescope, "which allows astronomers to study extremely faint objects".
May is also preparing a concert to mark the inauguration of another telescope at the observatory.
He will present his thesis, which he has been preparing for across much of the past year, to Imperial College "within a fortnight".
A number of academics will question him about his work before any doctorate is awarded, a spokeswoman said.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

END TRADE BARRIERS SAYS CAMERON !

Mr Cameron is unveiling the report to the Rwandan parliament. Tory leader David Cameron has called for an end to trade barriers that put developing countries at an "unfair disadvantage", during a trip to Rwanda.
He said all rich countries should end trade tariffs unilaterally and British aid spending should be speeded up.
Launching a policy group's report on global poverty, he said trade rules were "immoral".
The group's proposals, which may or may not be adopted as Tory policy, include making aid spending more "transparent".
In a speech in Kigali, Mr Cameron called for an immediate end to trade barriers, saying: "Forget the endless tortuous negotiations about getting something in return.
"Just do it. We can afford it, Africa needs it, and we will all benefit from it."
'In it together'
He also defended his decision to go to Rwanda, while his own West Oxfordshire constituency is among those badly affected by flooding and he faces some criticism within his own party.
He told the audience: "There are some people in Britain who told me not to come. They said I should stay at home and worry about domestic concerns.
"Well let me tell them and let me tell you, that in the 21st Century, a century of global trade, global migration and yes, of global terrorism, there is no domestic and foreign any more. In this world, we are all in it together."
I'm just sending warning signals from the back ranks ... 'look chum, we need to do some re-thinking'
Lord KalmsTory donor
The Conservative policy group, headed by former minister Peter Lilley, published its report, saying aid distribution to poor countries needs to be better scrutinised and more efficient to help them overcome poverty.
It calls for Britain to do more to "empower" people in developing countries.
In his foreword Mr Lilley said: "It is vital to help promote economic growth which alone can fund their social spending on a sustainable basis.
"Hence our call for renewed emphasis on assistance geared to promoting economic growth - through support for physical and commercial infrastructure and for agriculture on which the majority of poor people depend."
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he welcomed UN aid targets but said it was important to make sure aid was not "wasted", either by donors or by corruption.
Other recommendations include:
Increasing the proportion of aid money allocated to infrastructure and trade
Publishing individual aid entitlements of individual hospitals, schools etc - to help them scrutinise the way it is being spent
A curtailment of NHS recruitment of doctors and nurses from the developing world - which leaves some countries short of medics
The British government should help train medical staff and meet part of their salaries where necessary
The World Bank should track corruption which hampers progress in the developing world
Aid distribution should be simplified under a single agency
Mr Cameron has brushed off reports of discontentment within his party over his determination to move it to the "centre ground", saying there would be no return to the "comfort zone" favoured by Tory traditionalists.
On Tuesday Lord Kalms, a major party donor and former Treasurer, was reported as telling the Financial Times he was "disillusioned to a substantial degree" with Mr Cameron.
Traditional issues
He later told the BBC he was supportive of Mr Cameron, but felt he was not giving the party the confidence it needed to win the next general election.
Mr Cameron needed to signal that he was concerned about the issues that mattered to Tory traditionalists like Europe, social cohesion, taxation and smaller government.
"Too many areas of policy are being left aside not to be discussed in detail and we seem to be chasing rather less substantive policies," he said.
"I'm just sending warning signals from the back ranks ... 'look chum, we need to do some re-thinking'," he added.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

ONE BULGARIAN'S LIBYAN ORDEAL !

By Patrick Jackson BBC News.

Zdravko Georgiev is the husband of one of the six Bulgarian medics imprisoned in Libya for infecting children with HIV. He too was held in Libya, and was released with his wife and her colleagues. Shortly before the seven of them were flown to Sofia, Dr Georgiev spoke to the BBC News website about his eight-year wait for freedom.

Dr Georgiev flashed a victory sign on returning to Bulgaria. Dr Georgiev did not come to Libya to swim in the Mediterranean or read the novels of Dickens and Dumas.
But having survived the horrors of the Libyan prison system, that is how he spent much of the last three years.
He had arrived in 1991 along with his wife, nurse Kristina Valcheva, to practise medicine and earn a living.
Arrested in 1999, he was accused with other Bulgarians of deliberately infecting children at a hospital with HIV.
The charge against him was dropped, but he spent five years in detention before being convicted in 2004 of currency speculation - "another fabrication", he says. His sentence was cancelled out against time already served, and he was released.
Nonetheless, he was denied permission to leave Libya, and so he lived at the Bulgarian embassy in Tripoli, doing what he could for the Bulgarians who were convicted and sentenced to death in what he insists was a gross miscarriage of justice.
The disappeared
Back in 1999, he was working in the Sahara Desert, far away from Benghazi, where his wife and other Bulgarian nurses were working at a kidney hospital.
"Then I got a call from a friend, who told me that she (his wife) and the others had vanished, and nobody knew where they were," he recalls.
After travelling to Benghazi, he began a frantic search. It was only later that he found out the nurses had been seized, blindfolded and gagged, beaten and taken to the capital, Tripoli.
"Within a week, the police arrested me too," Dr Georgiev says.
"I had been searching for the Bulgarian nurses all over Benghazi, and they understood I was a dangerous man. I was not afraid of them, because I had done nothing wrong in Libya and I just thought there had been some mistake.
"They said we were agents of the CIA and Mossad but if I had been an agent, why did I not try to escape back then?"
Into the cauldron
Speaking of his prison experiences, the doctor says he lived for two years in filth with only salty water to drink, sharing a cell measuring 1.9m (6ft) by 1.7m (5.5ft) by 3m (9.8ft) with up to eight people at a time.
"Even with three people, it was horrible in there," he says.
"I could not lie down to sleep for two years - I could only sit. You cannot imagine it. In the summer it got so hot, people were passing out."
He never met another European in jail. His fellow prisoners were from all over Africa, most of them murderers or drug-traffickers.
He says he was beaten up by guards, and had four teeth knocked out when investigators attacked him with clubs.
But that was nothing compared to the electric shocks given to the nurses, he says.
"They tortured and treated them like animals - in fact, you would not treat animals like that."
Torture charges were brought against nine policemen and a Libyan doctor, but they were acquitted.
Passing time
Dr Georgiev says the dropping in May 2004 of the HIV charge against him was "stage-managed".
Dr Georgiev was able to visit his wife once a week.
"The police investigators who beat and tortured us decided they wanted to show how fair Libyan justice was so I was declared innocent and the nurses were declared guilty," he says.
After his release, he was denied an exit visa without ever being given a reason, and moved into the Bulgarian embassy.
Allowed to visit the nurses only once every Thursday, he would spend his time doing shopping for them.
Otherwise, unable to practise medicine, he would divide his time between swimming in the Mediterranean, fishing, reading novels, watching TV and meeting friends.
"Many ordinary people in Tripoli know me and I have no problem with them," he says.
"They didn't believe this stupid case and they were really good to me."
'We were hostages'
Dr Georgiev believes his government waited too long to help the medics, and that the big change only came when Bulgaria gained the clout of the European Union after joining the bloc this year.
He speaks of his hurt at how, by his account, Libyan police poisoned the minds of the families of the HIV children against the Bulgarians.
"You know, I worked as a paediatrician for 25 years and I loved my job," he says.
"I never had a problem with ordinary Libyans. We are very good doctors and nurses. Libyans trusted us and liked us because Bulgarian medics had been coming to their country for more than 30 years.
"We came here only for money because the situation in our own country was very bad. It was to make some money - nothing else.
"The Libyan government kidnapped us because it knew we were a very weak country at that time.
"We feel very bad. We have been humiliated. We are innocent people who have been treated very badly for eight years. We have been hostages and that is the truth."

BBC NEWS REPORT.

ROGUE GENERAL THREATENS DRC PEACE !

Forces allied to renegade General Laurent Nkunda pose a serious threat to stability in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN says.
UN peacekeeping head Jean-Marie Guehenno has called for international pressure to help end the violence.
Gen Nkunda has been leading a rebellion in the east against the government.
Some 165,000 people have fled clashes between government forces and rebels since Gen Nkunda agreed to integrate his forces into the army in January.
Last year's historic elections, which saw Joseph Kabila elected president, were supposed to mark the end of years of conflict and mismanagement in DR Congo.
There is concentration of armed forces from both sides but what is true is that Mr Nkunda?s forces are the single most serious threat to stability in the DR Congo, Mr Guehenno told Reuters news agency.
The dissident army general who belonged to the Rwandan-backed RCD rebel group, claims the government is promoting ethnic hatred.
Gen Nkunda and his troops say they are protecting the Banyamulenge - ethnic Tutsis who live in DR Congo.
The UN Security Council called on armed groups to stop fighting and recruiting soldiers, in a public statement read by China's ambassador Wang Guangya.
Rebels, who include suspects accused of participating in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, operate freely in the east of DR Congo.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

MUGABE VOWS TO SAVE SICK ECONOMY !

Robert Mugabe aims to give more ownership to indigenous people. President Robert Mugabe has said at the opening of parliament that strict price controls will continue as Zimbabwe tries to turn around an ailing economy.
The country, once the bread-basket of the region, is suffering crippling food shortages and rampant inflation.
Mr Mugabe blamed droughts and sanctions for their economic woes and said they faced continued hostility from the UK and her Western allies.
A bill to nationalise foreign firms, including banks and mines, is planned.
The parliamentary session is the last ahead of elections due by March 2008.
President Mugabe said the government had been forced to intervene with price controls last month after an "astronomical" rise in the price of basic goods, and would remain committed to them to try and stabilise the economy.
Inflation is approaching 5,000% and shops in Zimbabwe are running out of the most basic commodities.
"Our economy continues to face challenges arising from the illegal sanctions imposed by our enemies," he told MPs.
All this had led to shortages of foreign currency, as well as erratic energy supplies, he said.
New measures
On Monday, the former head of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, spoke of a downward spiral of events in Zimbabwe, which he said was "intolerable and unsustainable".

ZIMBABWE CRISIS
Inflation: approaching 5,000%
Unemployment: 80%
4m need food aid
Life expectancy: 37 (men), 34 (women)

Mobiles to beat fuel queues

Economic refugees are arriving in neighbouring states like South Africa at a rate of around 3,000 a day.
Talks between the ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition MDC to find a political solution appear to have stalled, our reporter says.
The MDC wants a new constitution, but the only amendment on the parliamentary agenda could extend the president's term to 2010.
The constitutional bill will seek to combine parliamentary and presidential elections and a clause will also give MPs power to elect a new president if a vacancy occurs between elections.
The proposed empowerment bill stipulates that no company restructuring, merger or acquisition can be approved unless 51% of the firm goes to indigenous Zimbabweans.
It says "indigenous Zimbabwean" is anyone disadvantaged by unfair discrimination on race grounds before independence in 1980.
Tendai Biti, secretary general of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), says that Zimbabweans have become wary about nationalisation.
"Zanu-PF took 11m hectares of land from members of the white community, but what did they do with it?
"They distributed it among themselves, so the land reform programme became a vehicle for personal aggrandisement. So everyone in Zimbabwe is sceptical," he told the BBC's Network Africa programme.
Some firms dually listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange and London Securities Exchange include Old Mutual, NMB bank and Hwange.
Multi-national firms that may be affected by the new policy include Barclays Bank, Bindura Nickel Corporation and mining company Rio Zim.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

LIBYA 'WANTS EU TIES FOR MEDICS' !

The imprisonment of the medics caused an international outcry. Libya wants renewed ties with the EU as part of any deal to free six medics convicted of infecting hundreds of children with HIV, diplomats say.
An EU delegation is in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, aiming to broker a deal to free the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor.
The six, who have always denied the charges, had death sentences commuted to life in prison last week.
Libya is also said to be seeking more funds to treat the infected children.
The government in Bulgaria wants the medics to be allowed to return home.
But the EU is reported to be unwilling to agree any compensation deal that appears to gives the impression that it accepts the six medics are guilty.
'Very tough'
Cecilia Sarkozy, the wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, is in Tripoli accompanying the EU's external relations commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner. She is said to have met Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Sunday evening. Mr Sarkozy was also reported to be closely involved in efforts to free the six, despite some criticism from domestic opponents, who accused him of effectively hijacking years of patient work by other EU nations.
"What I know is that it's very tough. This has been going on for eight-and-a-half years," Mr Sarkozy said in France.
But Bulgaria's Foreign Minister, Ivailo Kalfin, speaking in Brussels, told the AFP news agency that the decision on whether to free the six was now "purely political".
"If the Libyans show goodwill enough, the transfer can be done very quickly."
Bulgaria has granted citizenship to the Palestinian doctor so that he may also benefit from any deal to transfer the medics to Bulgaria.
The six have been imprisoned in Libya since 1999, after being accused and then convicted of deliberately spreading HIV in a children's hospital. They say torture was used to extract their confessions.
Foreign experts say the infections started before the medics arrived at the hospital, and are more likely to have been a result of poor hygiene.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

EGYPT WORKERS DEMAND RAISES AND RIGHTS !

By Heather Sharp BBC News, Cairo.

Protests over low wages have taken a political edge. Hidden away in a concrete loading bay around the side of a major Cairo postal office, about 100 workers in their 20s and 30s gather among a forest of placards.
Following a trail blazed by a succession of Egyptian textile workers, concrete makers, train drivers and others in recent months, they say they will stay put until their demands are met.
In a country where political opposition is heavily stifled and largely left to a small intellectual elite, the current series of strikes, sit-ins and protests is an unusually broad-based protest among a population normally associated with political indifference.
For all that Kifaya did do, the social base was for the most part limited to urban intellectuals.
Joel Beinin, head of Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo, says proponents of democratic reform in Egypt should be "more excited" by the wave of labour unrest than they were by the emergence of anti-government street protests by the opposition Kifaya (Enough) group in 2005.
Underlying most of the strikes are demands for wage rises in an economy where it is not unusual even for professionals to hold down two jobs to feed their families.
But some strikes have taken on a political edge as workers protest against privatisations under President Hosni Mubarak's sweeping economic reform programme.
And a few workers have begun calling for something Egypt has not had for decades - independent trade unions.
Strikes spread
Mohammad Attar is a textile worker in the Nile Delta town of Mahalla, and was an organiser in one of most successful strikes.
Some 20,000 workers downed tools and occupied their factory last December, inspiring a series of copycat strikes as their demands for an unpaid bonus promised to all labourers nationally were eventually met.

Egyptians discuss the wave of industrial unrest in their country
In pictures

The father of three is in jubilant mood as we speak on the phone.
Recent threats to strike further have just earned him and his co-workers a raise - boosting his monthly salary of 320 Egyptian pounds (US$56) by 50 Egyptian pounds (US$9), with 7% annual increases promised.
He says his activities have resulted in several summonses from the security forces.
But, for the first time, he says he is not afraid: "I stand in front of them and we are equal. In fact we are even better than them - we are in the production sector but they are just in the service sector. We are the backbone of the national economy."
Within four months of the Mahalla strike, workers at three other large textile factories and two cement factories had held stoppages and railway employees had briefly blockaded the Cairo-Alexandria train line backed by a go-slow by Cairo metro drivers.
And the sit-in by the postal workers, who are calling for fixed term contracts, is one among hundreds of other smaller-scale actions by workers ranging from rubbish collectors to bakers and poultry workers to Suez Canal employees which have also been reported in the Egyptian media.
Privatization fears
In some cases workers fear that privatisation will bring job cuts and the loss of fringe benefits.
The government points to the fruits of its reforms - increased economic growth and foreign investment - and stresses that training workers and creating new jobs are priorities.

But with inflation at 12.3%, according to the IMF, and the gap between rich and poor growing, many at the bottom of the financial heap say they are yet to feel the benefits.
The Mahalla workers have also turned their sights on the General Federation of Trade Unions - a body which is dominated by the ruling National Democratic Party and which is supposed to represent the interests of Egypt's labourers.
Angered by its refusal to back their strike action, they submitted their resignations to the organisation and began calling for an independent union.
But the body's General Secretary, Ibrahim al-Azhary, dismisses the criticisms: "This labour union is from every party - Wafd, Tagammu, leftist, everybody - it's not a government thing. But if we want to negotiate with the government we have to have a good relationship with them."
'Wide social base'
However, Mr Beinin, a historian with a specialism in Egyptian labour issues, says that the General Federation of Trade Unions plays a key role in mobilising workers' support for the government - for example by bussing them to polling stations on election days.
Opposition to it is therefore "an important political challenge to the regime", he says.
Although riot police surrounded some of the bigger strikes and prevented Mahalla workers from boarding a train to join a protest in Cairo - and a small-scale workers' rights NGO has been closed down - strikes have not been broken up by force.
This is in stark contrast to the sometimes heavy-handed treatment of pro-democracy protesters from the Kifaya movement.
Their protests have waned in the last year as government crackdowns against opposition leaders, dwindling US pressure for reform and the passing of constitutional reforms condemned by human rights groups have taken their toll.
"For all that Kifaya did do, the social base was for the most part limited to urban intellectuals. That's just not enough to make any big change in Egypt," says Mr Beinin.
But the labour protests are different, he says.
"Nobody can say that these people are influenced by some foreign agenda, human rights or other ideas the regime doesn't like. These are people who are as Egyptian as you get, they are the salt of the earth."

BBC NEWS REPORT.

FLOOD CRISIS GROWS AS RIVERS RISE !

The flooding crisis in central and western England continues with thousands of homes losing water and electricity supplies.
Up to 350,000 people in Gloucestershire will be left without water within the next 15 hours, as the River Severn and the Thames threaten to overflow.
The Environment Agency has warned water levels are expected to exceed those of the devastating floods of 1947.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he would set up a review of the crisis.
Mr Brown flew by helicopter over Gloucestershire, the worst-affected county, before heading to the police headquarters where the emergency response is being co-ordinated.
He said the government would set up a review focusing on drainage and how Britain could protect itself against further flooding.

See map of severe flood warnings

Extra funding would also be given to local authorities to help pay for essential emergency work in the aftermath of the crisis, he said.

Your pictures of UK floods
Floods: At-a-glance

The Environment Agency said water levels on the River Severn and Thames could reach a "critical" level in some areas.
Severe flood warnings are in place for the Midlands, Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire.
A spokesman for the agency said the River Severn and the Thames would continue to swell until Tuesday and that levels on both rivers could increase beyond those of 60 years ago.
In March 1947, millions of pounds of damage was caused in the south of England, the Midlands, East Anglia and North Yorkshire when many of the country's rivers burst their banks.
Other main developments include:
Environment Agency chief executive Baroness Young told the BBC that about £1bn a year was needed to improve flood defences.
Environment Secretary Hilary Benn defended the government's flood response, saying there are lessons to be learned but denying flood defences had not been maintained properly.
Meanwhile, the Association of British Insurers has said the total bill for the June and July floods could reach £2bn.
Sir John Harman, the chairman of the Environment Agency, warned summer floods could become more frequent in the future.
Severn Trent Water said 150,000 homes in Gloucestershire were without water after a treatment works was flooded.
But it warned all residents in Gloucester, Cheltenham and Tewkesbury - an estimated 350,000 people - they would lose their supply within the next 15 hours.
The situation is expected to last several days, it said.
People were being urged not to panic buy and to do all they could to conserve water.
No electricity
Peter Bungard from Gloucestershire County Council told BBC Five Live bottled water was being provided and a number of water bowsers being deployed to the area, he said.
Elsewhere in Gloucestershire, 15,000 homes were left without power after a major electricity substation was turned off because of the rising water.

ENGLAND FLOODED
Gloucester tap water out
Severe warning on Ouse
Worcester residents affected
More fears for Oxfordshire
West Midlands travel chaos
Clean-up in Lincolnshire

A spokesman for the Central Networks Castlemeads substation said areas of Gloucester, parts of Cheltenham and some homes across the county border in Herefordshire had been affected.
The county council has appealed to builders merchants to supply "dumpy bags" - giant sandbags - to help the operation.
Electricity supplier Central Networks has advised customers to ring 0800 328 1111 to report loss of supply.
BBC Radio Gloucestershire visited residents in Tewkesbury, one of the worst affected areas of Gloucestershire, and described a jovial mood among those cut off by flood waters.
One resident from a block of flats whose car park was covered in water said people were "laughing" and taking events in their stride.

Over the border, parts of Worcestershire were under 6ft of water and the Army has been deployed to help emergency services provide supplies to people in Upton-upon-Severn.
Warwickshire and Berkshire have also been badly affected and severe warnings remain in place for Oxfordshire.
Residents at risk of flooding in Oxford have been told to leave their homes as water levels are expected to rise.
Some homes in Oxford, Abingdon, Kidlington and Bladon have already been flooded and conditions are expected to deteriorate.

Meanwhile, the government is expected to announce on Monday that it is rejecting calls to stop building houses on flood plains, despite the recent extensive flooding.
A draft of the Housing Green Paper, which was obtained by the BBC, says it is "not realistic" to rule out new developments in areas at risk of flooding.

The Environment Agency has issued nine severe flood warnings and says the situation is "critical". There are five in the Midlands for the River Avon and River Severn between Evesham, Tewkesbury and Gloucester. Three severe flood warnings are in place for Oxfordshire, from Eynsham to Abingdon, and one has been issued for River Great Ouse from Turvey to Sharnbrook in Bedfordshire.

BBC forecaster Chris Fawkes said the heaviest rain was due to fall in southern England in an area between the Isle of Wight and Suffolk, where an inch of rain could fall on Monday. He also said Gloucestershire and Worcestershire could see 10 or 15 millimetres of rainfall.

Environment Agency floodline: 0845 988 1188

SEVERE FLOOD WARNINGS IN PLACE

The Severn: Severe Warnings for Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Worcester
The Thames: Severe warnings affecting Eynsham to Sandford Lock and also Little Wittenham
The Ock: Severe warnings from Charney Bassett to Abingdon
The Great Ouse: Severe warnings from Turvey to Sharnbrook
The Avon: Severe warnings at Evesham

BBC NEWS REPORT.

WORLD 'LOSING FIGHT AGAINST AIDS' !

Dr Fauci says there must be greater effort to boost prevention. US President George W Bush's top adviser on HIV/Aids has said the world is losing the battle against the virus. Dr Anthony Fauci told a conference in Sydney that progress had been made, but more people were being infected with HIV than were being treated. "For every one person that you put in therapy, six new people get infected. So we're losing that game, the numbers game," he said. Dr Fauci was speaking at a gathering of the world's leading HIV/Aids experts.

Three years ago, fewer than 300,000 people in the developing world had access to the anti-retroviral drugs that help treat the deadly virus. Last year, the figure had risen to 2.2 million, but new infections continue to outpace the global effort to treat and educate patients. The HIV epidemic is essentially uncontrolled, uncontrolled in Africa, uncontrolled completely in Asia right now

Dr Brian Gazzard, British HIV Association"Although we are making major improvements in the access to drugs, clearly prevention must be addressed in a very forceful way," said Dr Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But in many parts of the developing world, effective prevention strategies like condoms and sterile syringes are available to less than 15% of the population. "The proven prevention modalities are not accessible to any substantial proportion of the people who need them," Dr Fauci said.

Dr Fauci's warning was echoed by Dr Brian Gazzard, chairman of the British HIV Association, who said that while advances were being made in extending access to anti-retroviral drugs, the disease was running out of control in parts of Asia and Africa. "The HIV epidemic is essentially uncontrolled, uncontrolled in Africa, uncontrolled completely in Asia right now," he said. Only a quarter of the people needing treatment were receiving it, meaning the other three-quarters would continue to spread the epidemic, which was still in its exponential growth stage, Dr Gazzard said.

The Australian conference's 5,000 delegates are drawn from more than 130 countries. Participants at the forum are being urged to sign a declaration, aimed at boosting HIV research, which proposes that HIV programmes should devote at least 10% of spending on research. The so-called Sydney Declaration's central message is that governments need to dedicate more resources to HIV research if the world is to effectively combat the Aids pandemic.

The document says this will help speed up the implementation of new drugs and technologies to prevent, diagnose and treat an infection which has already killed 25 million people.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

PAKISTAN REJECTS 'BIN LADEN RAID' !

The US says it remains determined to capture or kill Bin Laden. Pakistan has responded angrily to suggestions from the United States that American forces might be sent into Pakistan to strike at Osama Bin Laden.
A senior US official has said he believed the architect of the 2001 suicide attacks on New York and Washington was in northern Pakistan.
Pakistani FM Khurshid Kasuri said Bin Laden was not in the country.
A recent US intelligence report says al-Qaeda is intensifying efforts to put operatives into the US.
The report says the nation is at a heightened risk of attack.
Analysts warn that al-Qaeda's leaders have found a "safe haven" in Pakistani tribal areas which has allowed them to regroup.
All options available
US director of national intelligence Mike McConnell said recently he believed Bin Laden was in northern Pakistan, near the Afghan border.
President Bush's homeland security adviser Frances Townsend said that in the pursuit of Bin Laden, no options were off the table.
Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri said he did not believe that the al-Qaeda leader was in Pakistan - and in any case, if the US shared its intelligence, Pakistan's army could do a better job.
Pakistan Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said: "Our stance is that Osama Bin Laden is not present in Pakistan.
"If anyone has the information he should give it to us, so that we can apprehend him," he was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
President Pervez Musharraf last week vowed to root out extremists "from every corner of the country".

BBC NEWS REPORT.

SOMALIS FLEE AS ATTACKS ESCALATE !

Soldiers are on high alert outside the peace talks. At least 10,000 people have fled fresh violence in Somalia's capital Mogadishu in the past week, the UN says. A report by the UN refugee agency says violence has surged since the launch of national reconciliation talks recently and has prompted the fresh exodus.

On Sunday, four civilians were killed following a series of explosions at Mogadishu's main Bakara market. Mogadishu has seen a series of blasts targeting interim government officials since Islamists were ousted last year. Somalia has been without a functioning government for the past 16 years. The BBC's Mohammed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu says the civilians were killed after government soldiers opened fire indiscriminately when grenades were aimed at their convoy.

President Yusuf said a nuclear bomb would not stop the talks.
Government troops have been searching for weapons at the main Bakara market for the past 18 days and are facing great resistance. "No soldier was killed and they did not target civilians following the explosions. They only fired in self defence," said army commander Col Farah Abdulle.

Figures compiled by the UNHCR indicate that nearly 21,000 people have fled Mogadishu between June and July and the pace is rising. Some 125,000 out of the estimated 400,000 people who fled the capital during clashes between Ethiopian-backed government troops and Hawiye clan fighters between February and May, have returned to Mogadishu, the report says.
The UN refugee agency says attacks launched by anti-government elements wound and kill civilians daily and the prospect of still another round of heavy fighting has driven people onto the road once more.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

LETTERS FROM THE DIASPORA !

Friday 20th July 2007

Dear Friends,

In 1966 the great African writer Chinua Achebe published his superb comic novel A Man of the People. I'm re-reading it at the moment and I'm struck by the similarities between Nigeria then and Zimbabwe today, twenty seven years after independence. Achebe is of course writing about his own country, Nigeria, which gained its independence in 1960.
In Achebe's novel there is an election in the offing and suddenly the country is faced with an economic crisis, world coffee prices have collapsed. The coffee farmers are the backbone of the economy and are predominantly ruling party supporters. The Minister of Finance who has a Ph.D in economics gives the leader a detailed plan on exactly how to deal with the problem and his solution includes lowering the price paid to producers. Of course, that advice is rejected and the next day the Minister along with all those who supported him are sacked as 'conspirators and traitors who had teamed up with foreign saboteurs to destroy the new nation' Instead of following an economically sound and sensible policy the leader orders the national Bank to print millions of new notes.
The message surely is that politics and economics don't mix; once you start mixing in populist electoral gimmicks then sound economic principles go out the window. Zimbabwe has seen that fatal combination at work for years and particularly over the last three weeks. Looking at the situation from the outside what I see is Murambatsvina by another name. Once again it is the poorest members of Zimbabwean society who suffer. The real beneficiaries of Operation Dzikisa Mitengo are the people who have money, the middle classes and the Zanu PF heavyweights, the businessman and the wheeler-dealers who snap up goods at half price only to sell them on to the black market which is controlled by the Big Boys in the army and ruling party.
With elections just eight months away this Operation is yet another shameless attempt to bribe the voters back to the ruling party. The combination of bribery and violence once again demonstrates Mugabe's cynical contempt for his own people. He is so sure they will fall for this ploy and give him and the ruling party the mandate to rule for another five years. He has 'tamed' inflation he can claim; (it was surely no coincidence, by the way that the inflation figures had not been published for two months) he has seen off the foreigners who want to bring about regime change via the economy and he has shown himself once again, he believes, as A Man of the People whose only concern is his people's welfare.
Are the people fooled? On the face of it, the answer seems to be Yes! It looks as if the entire population has been taken in by this electoral con as the whole country goes on one gigantic shopping spree. But a phonecall last Sunday from my old hometown, right out on the edge of the rural areas in Mash East, gave me hope that perhaps there's more resistance than we hear about. My friend told me how the price enforcers were in action there too. It's a small place, no more than a 'growth point' really, but it has two or three supermarkets and the usual collection of small trading stores. It also boasts a Bata shoe shop and last week the slip-slops and 'ma tennis' were all half price after the Gezi Boys and cops beat the hell out of everyone in sight and the shop's entire stock sold for half the price it cost to produce! Result: One rural Bata shop closed perhaps never to reopen. And having finished there the Price Police moved on to the musika and the banana sellers. They didn't have quite such an easy job there; these banana ladies are tough cookies! They spend their every cent travelling to buy the bananas to sell at the musika; it's their only means of earning cash. Apparently the ladies gave as good as they got! One small step… It was the same in a little local butchery. The proprietor had used his own money, his own transport to travel out to the rurals to buy a beast. He had slaughtered it, jointed it and was selling it in his little shop when the Price Police arrived and ordered him to reduce the selling price by half. My informant, who was there in the shop at the time, tells me there was one very angry butcher telling the cops and Gezi boys to go to hell. ' Ah, so you're political' they replied with that strange Zanu PF logic which reckons that anyone who doesn't blindly agree with them must be the 'enemy', ' You must belong to the opposition' The butcher, absolutely enraged by this time snatched up an axe and threatened the lot of them. 'Politics be damned,' he said - or words to that effect - 'I'm a businessman. I bought the beast with my own money. I butchered the beast and I'm selling the beast at the price I determine and no one is going to stop me…so - off'! And they did, they left.In the middle of all this buying frenzy came the 'News' of the good Archbishop's alleged adultery. Double page spreads in all the government owned papers and so-called pictorial evidence of his adultery with a secretary. Since when does African culture resort to such vulgarity? It was the presence of the TV cameras at the Archbishop's church that gave the game away for me. Their slogan is 'When it happens we'll be there' and when they are there you can be sure the government is behind it. I was reminded of the so-called 'discovery' of the murdered war vet's body. Zimbabweans will remember the story. The ruling party claimed the war vet had been murdered by the MDC and we were shown the body being disinterred by the police while the TV cameras whirred. That case ended two years later with an acquittal and some very harsh remarks from an honest judge - there are still a few of them left - about the disgraceful behaviour of the police.
Perhaps we will never know the truth about the good Archbishop's case but speaking for myself, his innocence or guilt makes not the slightest difference. To me, a sexual misdemeanour is a very trivial offence compared to the crimes committed by Robert Mugabe and his government which the good Archbishop so bravely brings to the world's attention.

Ndini shamwari yenyu. PH

Friday 13th july 2007

Dear Friends,

'It's like a lunatic asylum where the inmates have taken over'. This was one of the descriptions I read of the situation in Zimbabwe as the economic madness unfolds. Any Zimbabwean following the news from home this last two weeks from the safety of the diaspora must have wept and shaken their heads in utter disbelief at what they were hearing and reading. Gangs of armed police and Gezi Boys roaming around the towns and cities and forcing shop owners, often at gunpoint, to reduce their prices by 50%; top businessmen arrested for failing to comply and companies being threatened by the President with the words, 'Produce or we'll take you over'. I read somewhere that a lawyer acting for the businessmen and company directors said his phone was ringing every thirty minutes with desperate calls for help.
Of course, goods leapt off the shelves as the inevitable happened and the public descended on the retail outlets like a swarm of locusts, snapping up everything in sight convinced they were getting bargains whereas in reality they were being taken in by one enormous con trick. With absolutely no regard for basic common sense, the government had directed that goods must be sold at less than the cost of production. It was all beyond belief. My local Asian newsagent here has a cousin-brother who is a businessman in Zim and we often talk about things back home. I told him it would be like someone coming into his shop and ordering him to halve the prices on everything. He stared back at me, his face a study in disbelief, unable to comprehend what I was telling him but he should have remembered the ways of dictators: his wife's family had all been thrown out of Uganda by Idi Amin.The contrast between what is happening back in Zimbabwe and the 'normal' life we live here in the diaspora could not be more marked. As chaos engulfed the streets of Harare and Bulawayo and the other towns and cities, I sat in the summer sunshine at an open-air cafe drinking a cappuccino and chatting with my daughter who is visiting me for a few days. She was born and grew up in Zimbabwe though she hasn't been back for thirteen years. Like my newsagent friend she can hardly believe what I'm telling her. She has an MBA and runs a large organization so she knows about how businesses work in a 'normal' society. ' It's madness' she keeps saying, 'It can never work' but then you don't need an MBA to realise that, it's not rocket science as a one-time Zanu politician used to say!As we sit there in the sunshine drinking our coffee and reading our newspapers, people walk past doing normal things like going to the shops or meeting friends for lunch and we are both remembering how life used to be back home when things were 'normal'. Now, everything has been turned upside down; all the things we used to take for granted have gone. In Zimbabwe, the abnormal has become the normal, a life of incredible hardship and suffering where every day is a struggle just to survive as Mugabe's government quite deliberately reduces the population to Stone Age scavengers.
Why is he doing it, why is Mugabe destroying the country he took over in 1980? The country that was described as 'the jewel of Africa' whose people had the highest literacy rate, the best qualified workforce and the brightest prospects on the continent? Can he who likes to be thought of as the father of the nation not see the suffering of his people, can he not hear the cries of the children? I think about it as I sit with my daughter thousands of miles away from home and I wonder if life will ever be 'normal' enough to attract the millions of people in the diaspora to return to the beloved homeland. For myself, I know that when I left two years ago, I said I would never return while Mugabe and Zanu PF were still in power. I suspect it's the same for many of us in the diaspora. We count the months and the years and we wait while an octogenarian clings onto power and drags the whole country down with him, like a terrible vengeful spirit bent on destroying what he cannot have and leaving only ruin and desolation any future leader.
How long can Zimbabwe's agony last? How long before the pent-up fury of the Zimbabwean people bursts out in a storm of rage that will destroy everyone and everything in its path? Perhaps only then will Thabo Mbeki and the African Union finally understand that they should have listened to the cries of the suffering people instead of the serpent words of Zimbabwe's dictator.

Ndini shamwari yenyu. PH.

Sunday 8th July 2007

Dear Friends.

'Only Connect' said EM Forster the writer. He was talking about relationships and the need to reach out and make connections with different people, different races and cultures. By extension, I take that to encompass events in different countries and continents; it's all about making connections. Mugabe's regime would rather we didn't make those connections; he keeps the journalists out so that the world will not hear what's happening inside Zimbabwe but in these days of instant communications he cannot silence the flow of information. And once people know what's going on, they begin to compare and they make connections.
On July 4th, American Independence Day, Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist was released from his 16 weeks of captivity in Gaza. Johnston had chosen to live and work in one of the most dangerous places in the world, Gaza City.He had been held in solitary confinement by a group calling itself the Army of Islam. No one quite knew why he had been taken or whether he would come out alive but after 16 long weeks he was released. There had been demonstrations all over the world calling for his freedom, not least by the people of Gaza itself where Johnston was held in high esteem.The absolute dignity and compassion of Alan Johnston's first words struck a very particular chord for people all over the world who are held in captivity for unnamed crimes, victims of power-hungry dictators and unjust systems of government. ' You have to have been a prisoner to know how good freedom is, he said.' And later he remarked that it was ' as extraordinary a fourth of July as I could imagine.'Far away in Zimbabwe, officials at the American Embassy were also celebrating the Fourth of July. As is customary, members of the diplomatic community gathered to celebrate America's National Day. This year though, there was a difference; the host country Zimbabwe was not invited. Ambassador Dell, you see, had dared to speak out very bluntly about the causes for the economic crisis engulfing Zimbabwe and had even predicted total economic collapse by the end of the year. As a consequence, President Mugabe with his usual cheap, populist rhetoric had nicknamed the Ambassador, 'Go to hell Dell'. The Ambassador had become Public Enemy No.1 and to show the regime's displeasure with him he had not been invited to Zimbabwe's Independence Celebrations back in April.Undeterred by the lack of an invitation to the American Embassy, an official from Zimbabwe's Foreign Ministry gate-crashed the Fourth of July celebrations saying that he simply wanted an opportunity to respond to Dell's criticisms. The official commented 'It is always fair to have balance.' Coming from a government that has banned every source of balanced news reporting and comment in the country his comment must have raised some wry smiles among the hundred or so guests. The official went on to argue that if Dell was able to predict so specifically the time frame for Zimbabwe's collapse, then ' this leaves the impression that the meltdown is being engineered from outside Zimbabwe'. As I have said before, logic is not Zanu PF's strong suit! But the Ambassador had the last word; explaining why he let the Foreign Ministry official take the microphone at a US function in US embassy grounds Dell said it was because democracies believed in the historic adage, ' I may disagree with everything you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.'Hardly an adage Mugabe would have much connection with!It took the UK Financial Times to make a connection even further back in history this week. The FT comments on economies around the world- those that are doing well and those that are spectacularly failing. Describing the absolute chaos that has engulfed the Zimbabwean economy this week following the government's decision to order the prices of staple food items to be halved in the shops, the FT takes us back to ancient Rome for the connection! The year is AD 301 and a certain Emperor Diocletian renowned, says the FT, for his persecution of the Christan minority is in power. Rome is suffering hyperinflation so the Emperor orders all prices to be slashed by half. He sets minimum prices for all basic goods but in the meantime he keeps on minting coins and the population is reduced to bartering and scavenging as goods disappear.The connection with ancient Rome is so close that it's uncanny. Zimbabweans will remember how Mugabe boasted that no one could have run the economy better than he had. Even now he is not admitting that any of the economic chaos is of his making. It's all being engineered by foreigners Mugabe claims; the Brits, the Americans or anyone else who dares to tell him he's making a terrible mess of things and his people are worse off than they've ever been. Mugabe doesn't want to acknowledge cause and effect; he doesn't want to see the connections.It would be good to tell you that the Roman Emperor came to a nasty end after all the suffering he inflicted on his people. Sad to say, the FT reports that Diocletian survived the economic chaos he had created for another twenty one years and retired in his old age to grow cabbages in some distant outpost of the Roman Empire. President Mugabe hasn't got an empire but he has his 'Look East' friends. Maybe there's a connection with his ancient Roman exemplar after all. Picture it, Mugabe in a toga, sweating and slaving over his makabichi on some distant Malaysian or Chinese field while Amai Mugabe struggles to cook sadza on a smoky fire for her 104 year old husband! Punishment enough would you say?

Ndini shamwari yenyu. PH.

'LOW TURNOUT' IN CAMEROON VOTING

The president's supporters wear garments adorned with his face. Voters in Cameroon have gone to the polls to elect a new parliament amid opposition claims of widespread fraud.
Reports suggested a low turnout and no queues were seen at most booths in the capital, Yaounde.
Opposition to President Paul Biya, who has been in power for 25 years, is limited and only 5.5m of the 18m population has signed up to vote.
Mr Biya's Democratic Rally of the Cameroonian People party holds 149 of the 180 seats in parliament.
Indelible ink
"The campaign took place in a calm, serene and peaceful atmosphere. I hope things will continue in this manner throughout the electoral process and people will accept the verdict of the polls," President Biya said after casting his vote in Yaounde, news agency Reuters reported.
President Biya's term in office is due to come to an end in 2011.
We have learnt that Biya wants to modify the constitution to run for a third term. This we cannot allow to happen
Opposition MP John Fru Ndi
BBC correspondents say there are reports he wants to maintain his big majority to enact legislation allowing an extension of his rule.
The opposition says indelible ink used to mark those who have already voted easily washes off and that some people have been refused ballot papers.
"These are all indications that the election is being rigged already," John Fru Ndi, chairman of the main opposition SDF party, told the Reuters news agency.
He added: "We have learnt that Biya wants to modify the constitution to run for a third term. This we cannot allow to happen."
Mr Biya's critics say he has presided over a repressive system. They say there was also widespread fraud in earlier ballots.
But his supporters say he has held Cameroon together and in peace.
The country is composed of many ethnic groups and divided between English and French-speaking areas.
Cameroon's borders have been closed and businesses shut for the election.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

HALLOWS BE THY NAME !

ByNeil Hallows.

The title of JK Rowling's final boy wizard book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, has long been a source of excited debate among fans. What exactly are hallows?
"Hallows be thy name!" went the playground chant.
At school, I encouraged harmless nicknames as a distraction from those involving skinny legs. A pun based on the Lord's Prayer was not the cruellest thing they could have said.
It didn't last anyway. The children who understood it got bored of explaining it to the ones who didn't. And 30 years have passed almost without a pun - it's just not worth the bother when there are names like Hank Wangford in the world.
But one day last December, I was suddenly back in the playground.
Any clarification of the meaning of 'Hallows' would give away too much of the story - it would, wouldn't it? Being the title and all
JK Rowling
A stream of texts arrived that read like bad cryptic crossword clues, all involving the word "deathly". Posters in bookshops announced my name, although not in the way I would have liked. Fake book covers were lovingly mocked up and e-mailed by friends with quiet jobs and good software. Why did you do it, JK Rowling, why?
Don't expect an answer from the author before the book is published on 21 July. On her official website, she says: "Any clarification of the meaning of 'Hallows' would give away too much of the story - well, it would, wouldn't it? Being the title and all. So I'm afraid I'm not answering."
As no doubt she intended, fans have been speculating since the title was announced six months ago.
Angels of death
Contributors to one fans' site thought it was connected to Godric's Hollow, where Harry's parents James and Lily were killed. I don't think so, but I like that idea because my name may have come from the family once having lived in a hollow, or valley (rather than being especially holy).

Security remains very tightI am guessing like everyone else, because no Hallows, deathly or otherwise, was consulted on the book. But if you take what the word means, there seem to be two possibilities.
Rowling might just be looking for another way to say "holy" or "saint". The word is best known from All Hallows' Day, otherwise known as All Saints' Day, celebrated on 1 November although with less enthusiasm than the day before, Halloween.
"Deathly saints" are hard to imagine, but think of them as angels of death, and you might just have identified Hogwarts' latest unwelcome boarders.
But I prefer another possibility, which delves into Arthurian legend. Perceval, The Story of the Grail, was written by the French poet Chrétien de Troyes in the late 12th Century.
Perceval, one of King Arthur's knights, visits the castle of the wounded and mysterious Fisher King. There he is shown a "Grail" decorated with jewels.
It is the earliest reference we have of the Grail but Chrétien is tantalisingly short on detail. Among later writers a tradition emerged that it was the cup from which Jesus drank at the last supper.
Perceval was shown other objects too - a sword, a platter, and a lance with a drop of blood falling from the tip. They often appear together in the medieval stories, and were described a century ago as the "Hallows" by Arthur Waite, a writer with an interest in the occult.
Celtic myth
Waite's writing makes The Da Vinci Code seem modest and cautious. "Each of the Hallows has its implied enigma... they are both declared and undeclared", he wrote in a curious book of 1909 where he describes the "Hallow-in-chief" - the Grail itself, and the "lesser Hallows".
Yeats, Eliot, Rowling. You don't often list them in the same sentence This was at the time when it first became popular to look for hidden meanings in the Grail stories. In 1888, the folklore expert Alfred Nutt wrote a highly influential book where he argued the Grail stories were a way of telling an older, pagan, Celtic myth. He linked them to a people called the Tuatha Dé Danann, who are said to have brought four magical treasures to Ireland; a cauldron, spear, stone and sword.
Juliette Wood, a lecturer at Cardiff University and expert on the Grail, says there is insufficient evidence to make the link, as the treasures are sometimes more than four and not always the same.
But it led to something of a craze with books "decoding" Arthurian characters to reveal their supposedly pagan roots. Waite linked the treasures, the four Hallows of the Grail romances, and the suits of the Tarot. So did Jessie Weston, an Arthurian scholar who in 1920 went a stage further and linked them to an ancient fertility ritual.

The Holy Grail could link the two books. Such theories owed more to the imagination of Waite and Weston and interest in the occult than to historical evidence, says Dr Wood. But their influence was undeniable.
There is still a very healthy industry in finding secret meanings to the Grail. And Waite and Weston have influenced at least two of our greatest authors, although there is still debate as to the extent.
WB Yeats belonged to the same occultist order as Waite, and used tarot imagery in his writing. TS Eliot also alluded to the Tarot, in The Waste Land, and took the title from Weston's description of the Fisher King's barren and sterile territory.
Yeats, Eliot, Rowling. You don't often list them in the same sentence. But the author may well be drawing from the same legend and the sometimes bizarre connections that have been made from it. After all, she is no stranger to ancient myth. Argus, Hermes, Nimbus, Sybill - her books read like a classicist's in-joke, replete with characters who share traits with their Greek or Roman counterparts.
Clue
And the four Hallows connection is all the more likely because the final Harry Potter book is likely to focus on the search for magical relics.

Does King Arthur hold the key?In the previous book, Harry's late headmaster Albus Dumbledore told Harry about horcruxes, objects in which Lord Voldemort had hidden a portion of his soul. Harry has to find and destroy them. Two have already surfaced but there are four mystery objects still to be located, probably related to the founders of Hogwarts.
A big clue came from Rowling's alternative title for the book, for the benefit of a Swedish translator struggling with the word "hallows" - Harry Potter and the Relics of Death.
So if that's not the answer, I'll eat my sorting hat.
If only Arthurian legend could reveal the biggest question of them all, namely whether Potter gets potted.
My nephews (different surname, lucky lads) have promised to tell me if Harry still has a pulse as soon as they reach the end of the 608 pages, which will be a few hours after the book's publication.
Good luck Harry, and don't let the Hallows get you.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

ENVOYS IN TALKS TO FREE KOREANS !

Anti-war protesters in Seoul have called for the group's release. Intensive efforts are under way to negotiate the release of 23 South Korean hostages being held by Taleban rebels in Afghanistan.
Afghan troops have surrounded the area in central Ghazni province where the hostages are being held.
South Korean envoys are in Kabul and an Afghan minister in Ghazni says he is optimistic the captives will be freed.
Meanwhile police have found the body of a German man kidnapped a day earlier, but it is still not clear how he died.
Troop withdrawal
The BBC's Charles Haviland in Kabul says delicate diplomacy, not military muscle, is at the forefront of efforts to get the South Koreans out safely.
Deputy Interior Minister Gen Munir Mangal told the BBC he was at the site along with elders, MPs and provincial council members.

He said that the local Pashtuns were hospitable people and he hoped the Taleban would respect their Korean guests.
An official in Ghazni said the local Taleban had reported the hostages in good health but the rebels have said they will kill their captives if there is any attempt to free them by force or if the government fails to release a number of Taleban prisoners soon.
The Taleban have also said they want South Korea's 200 troops to leave, although Seoul already plans to take its troops out by the end of the year.
The South Koreans were abducted from a bus travelling from Kandahar to Kabul on Thursday.
They are reportedly Christians on an evangelical and aid mission. At least 15 are said to be women.
An eight-strong South Korean delegation, including a presidential envoy, is in Kabul to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai and negotiate for the hostages' release.
The seizure is the largest-scale abduction of foreigners since the fall of the Taleban regime in 2001.
German captives.
Meanwhile, police in Wardak province said they had found the body of one of two German hostages kidnapped last Wednesday.
We must assume that one of the kidnapped Germans died in captivity
Frank-Walter Steinmeier,German foreign minister
The Germans, whose identity has not been revealed, were seized with a number of Afghans in Wardak, where they had been working on a dam project.
A Taleban spokesman had said both men were killed on Saturday because Germany refused demands to withdraw its 3,000-strong force from the country.
But Berlin said it believed one hostage was still alive and the other died of a heart attack or stress.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said: "We must assume that one of the kidnapped Germans died in captivity.
"Nothing points to murder, all signs tell us that he fell victim to the strain to which his kidnappers subjected him."
One Afghan provincial official said the German who died was a diabetic who had no access to insulin.
The fate of the Afghans captured with the Germans is unknown.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

MAJOR AIDS FORUM OPENS IN SYDNEY !

By Nick Bryant BBC News, Sydney.

The conference wants a significant portion of funding to go on research. The world's largest conference on HIV/Aids is getting under way in the Australian city of Sydney.
More than 5,000 delegates will be presented with research confirming that male circumcision can reduce HIV infection rates by 60%.
The participants are also being urged to sign a declaration, which is aimed at boosting HIV research.
The document's main proposal is that HIV programmes should devote at least 10% of spending on research.
'Powerful tool'
It has long been known that HIV rates among Muslim men in sub-Saharan Africa were lower than non-Muslims, but it was not clear whether this was because they were circumcised or whether they had fewer sexual partners.

Foreskin cells are thought to be more vulnerable to HIV infection.
New evidence gathered in Kenya and Uganda confirms the findings of a previous study in South Africa - that male circumcision in young men can reduce the risk of HIV infection by 60%.
The trials in Kenya and Uganda each involved 2,000 heterosexual men, half of whom were circumcised.
In some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, infection rates are up to 40% of the adult population - so male circumcision could be a powerful tool.
But experts are stressing the procedure needs to be carried out by experienced surgeons and accompanied by an education programme.
Access to drugs
The conference's delegates from more than 130 countries are also being urged to sign what is being called the Sydney Declaration.
Its central message is that governments need to dedicate more resources to HIV research if the world is to effectively combat the Aids pandemic.
The declaration says this will help speed up the implementation of new drugs and technologies to prevent, diagnose and treat an infection which has already killed 25 million people.
The forum will also hear that although a large majority of people who need anti-retroviral therapy in poor countries still do not receive these drugs, access has steadily improved in recent years.
In sub-Saharan Africa, more than one million people were receiving the drugs by June 2006 - a 10-fold increase since 2003.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

OPTIMISM ON NIGERIA'S WAR ON POVERTY !

Nigeria has been the source of more bad news than good recently. But our correspondent Mark Doyle says meeting two very impressive Nigerians in the last week has put him in a much better mood.

Nigeria is one of the world's largest oil producers. Let's be honest, Nigeria has a poor image. Most outsiders think of it as an oil-rich, corrupt place where there are regular kidnappings and outbreaks of religious violence.
All of that's true, up to a point. But Nigeria is also a place that can surprise and delight.
I was asked recently to find out what progress Nigeria was making in meeting United Nations anti-poverty targets - targets like reducing the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day, and improving education for poor children.
I was ready, frankly, to be disappointed by what I was going to learn.
And I was all geared up to be sceptical when I made an appointment to talk on the subject with an official from the Nigerian Presidency, Mrs Amina Ibrahim. She recently stepped down from her job as poverty advisor to the president but, I was told, retains great influence behind the scenes.
My first shock, when Mrs Ibrahim stepped out of her car and walked into the hotel lobby where we met, was her demeanour.
There was no protocol and none of the usual demands for questions in advance so she could prepare for the tricky ones. It was just a brisk "Good afternoon" from a poised woman in a smart African dress; "Nice to meet you, where do we do this?"
She then went on to be disarmingly honest, including about Nigeria's education system, which was, she said, in an "abysmal state" when she first started evaluating it.
She should know. Amina Ibrahim has spent the past three years spending the lion's share of $1bn worth of foreign debt relief that Nigeria negotiated with countries like Britain in exchange for promising to spend the proceeds on the poor.
So what had she been doing with the money?
I expected vague answers, but there was precision. "Spend, spend, spend," she answered with a smile.

Nigeria's recent elections were flawed according to the opposition. "We've given in-service teacher training to 145,000 teachers, for example, and we've upgraded six major teacher training centres with new infrastructure and IT systems."
The big question I had was, does Mrs Ibrahim think Nigeria will meet the United Nations poverty-busting targets?
The answer? Another surprise that made me sit up: "Yes, she replied, if we keep at it and scale up the projects to a much higher level, yes, I do think we'll meet those targets".
It is difficult to emphasise how refreshing for me this conversation was.
Man-made poverty
I have got so used to speaking to Nigerian - and other government officials around the world - who are vague, clearly lying or just plain incompetent, that this frank and intelligent woman was like a breath of fresh air.
I do not know if everything she said was true, of course, but I am prepared to bet that most of it was.
So I was in a good mood when I went to meet my next interviewee, another expert on poverty in Nigeria, the country boss of the international charity, Action Aid.
I was not sure of the man's name when I went to meet him - just that he was the boss in Nigeria of the charity.
So when a tall Nigerian chap in traditional dress walked confidently into the waiting room where I was sitting, I greeted him politely but assumed he was another visitor.
Then he looked at me and I looked at him. And then I realised this Nigerian WAS the boss.
Of course, I'd been expecting a white man.
All international aid agency bosses - or 95% of them anyway - are white Westerners.
Otive Igbuzor is the exception, a Nigerian now working day after day at the tough coal face of poverty reduction.
When I asked him why, in an oil-rich country, over half of all Nigerians, or more than 60 million people, lived in abject poverty, he replied in a clear, powerful voice.
Poverty in Nigeria is man-made, he said, it was not due to any lack of resources.
Clear, confident analysis
The causes, not necessarily in order, were, one, colonialism, two, exploitative capitalism and, three, the failure of Nigerian politicians who were often the local collaborators of multinational corporations.
It sounded like textbook left-wing theory, and I said so, but he shot back that it was not about labels, left or right. It was about the reality of life for most poor Nigerians.
Government policies, Otive Igbuzor said firmly, would have to change.
Privatisation, for example, which only benefits the rich and the middle classes, had to end.

The pace of change might not be what we wish, but we are definitely moving forward.
Otive IgbuzorHe had all my attention by now - not because I agreed or disagreed with him, but because aid agency bosses just do not speak like this normally - not even comfortably-off white Western ones, who know they can probably get another nicely paid job if they upset the politicians above them.
This man's analysis was crystal clear, his confidence in it infectious.
But back to my central question. Did Otive Igbuzor think the fight against poverty in Nigeria could work?
And remember, this is NOT a politician answering, but a practical aid agency boss who sees poverty all the time.
"We are moving forward", he said. "There are some decent people working on it in government and some decent people in the private sector. The pace of change might not be what we wish, but we are definitely moving forward, I can assure you of that."
So there you have it. Two hugely impressive Nigerians.
You do not have to agree with them, of course. But I would defy you not to respect them.
Perhaps you'll remember them the next time you hear nothing but bad news coming from Nigeria.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

IRAQ 'FOOTBALL' GUNFIRE KILLS TWO !

Hundreds of Iraqi fans celebrated the victory in Baghdad. At least two people have been killed in Baghdad by gunshots fired to celebrate the Iraqi football team's quarter-final victory in the Asian Cup, police say.
At least 15 people were wounded when football fans fired weapons in the air across the Iraqi capital after their team beat Vietnam 2-0 in Bangkok.
Hundreds of people swarmed out of their houses after the match, dancing in the streets and waving national flags.
Iraqi leaders congratulated the team on a "glorious victory".
Many Iraqis - who face almost daily violent attacks - have taken great delight in revelling in the progress of their national team in the Asian Cup.
It is the second time that Iraq have reached the semi-final stage at the competition.
They will now play the winner of the Iran-South Korea quarter-final.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

CAR FEARS SPILLOVER FROM DARFUR !

By Karen Allen BBC News, Sam Ouanja camp, Central African Republic.

Dalil's wife gave birth to twins soon after arriving in the refugee camp. When Sudanese Antinov planes came and attacked the town of Darffak, in south Darfur, Dalil Saboun Bruma did not think his wife would make it across the border. She was heavily pregnant with twins but, mercifully, she did not go into labour until she reached Sam Ouanja camp in the Central African Republic. This is now home for Dalil and his family, along with nearly 3,000 other Darfuri refugees from Darffak and surrounding areas.

Many who opted to head for the border - just under half the population of the town - did not survive the journey on foot. Even now, in the safety of the camp, men, women and children continue to die every day. It took Dalil 15 days to arrive in Sam Ouanja, hiding in the dense forests that separate Darfur from this former French colony.

"We had no time to prepare when we ran away... we left everything behind - the house, my businesses, everything," he said. "We didn't even have mosquito nets when we arrived here." These are the first refugees from Darfur to arrive in the Central African Republic. Up until now, most of the refugees have descended on Chad - at least 200,000 of them to date.
But trailing behind the refugees in the Central African Republic are rebels which the Sudanese government has been hunting down as part of a conflict that has lasted more than four years.

The Janjaweed are accused of "ethnic cleansing".

It is not clear how many are lurking along the border, but it is enough to cause nervousness among senior government officials in the town of Sam Ouanja. They fear that this country, fractured by its own internal rebellion, is being dragged into the Darfur conflict because of an accident of geography. Toby Lanzer, the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator based in Central African Republic, said this remote country had seen a "disturbing change" in the past few months.
Back in April, in the town of Birao, north of where the refugees have sought sanctuary, there was a major security incident which has echoes of the type seen in Darfur. "People who looked like Janjaweed were sighted and apparently slaughtered over 116 civilian villagers in the town of Birao," he says. "We had another incident when people from a humanitarian organisation were attacked by men on camels and on horsebacks - they were fortunate not to be killed." The deaths are hard to verify in this remote and desolate country.

But what is clear is that among the refugees there are former Darfuri rebels who have not ruled out the possibility of taking up arms again and mounting attacks from a foreign land. It has already happened in neighbouring Chad, where the government has been accused of giving sanctuary to rebel groups, but not yet in the Central African Republic.

Adam Yahiye Adam claims to be an ex-fighter from one of more than 15 rebel groups operating in Darfur. He handed in his weapons in exchange for food when he reached the border of the Central African Republic in May, but he says there are many rebels holding back some 50 miles (80km) away, biding their time. The prospect of a regional conflict involving Darfur looks terrifying... this is fertile territory for guerrilla warfare

Country profile: Central African Republic
Janjaweed roam free

I ask him if he would he go back and this young man in his late 20s, with sharp eyes and a warm smile, is unequivocal - he would. "Yes, I would be willing to go back and fight... If there is still no agreement between the government and rebel groups I would return to Darfur and fight."

Senior figures from the FACA - the national army of the Central African Republic - are already twitchy at the thought of foreign rebels on their territory. In the past few months, a deal has been struck by two of Central African Republic's own rebel groups, and the prospect of a regional conflict involving Darfur looks terrifying. Not least because this is fertile territory for guerrilla warfare. Central African Republic is about the size of France, has virtually no roads and a government that has little control beyond the capital.

Thousands of miles away from the isolated camp in Sam Ouanja where aid agencies are trying to distribute food, cooking pots and water, diplomats are trying to come up with a security plan to protect Central African Republic and its neighbour, Chad, from the spillover effects from Darfur.
Pressure has been mounting for a multi-national peacekeeping force made up of civilian police backed up by troops. The French military may already be present in the north-east, as part of a long-term defence pact with its former colony and there is now a push for the Central African Republic to get a fully-fledged UN force, to try and protect both its people and its porous borders.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

NEW FLOOD ALERTS AS WATERS RISE !

Flooding has affected Maidenhead in Berkshire badly. Oxford, Berkshire and parts of London will be at "serious risk of flooding" on Sunday, says the Environment Agency. There are eight severe flood warnings in place for Sunday, with seven for the Midlands and one for part of the River Thames in Oxfordshire.
More than 750 people stranded in cars, caravans, houses and boats were rescued from flooding in Worcestershire. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has praised the emergency services and promised money and help for residents. Around 100 people in Worcestershire had to be airlifted to safety by the Royal Air Force, while more than a thousand spent the night in emergency rest centres.
John Parry of Oxfordshire County Council said people should "consider moving upstairs, or consider staying with family or friends". Despite the heightened risk of flooding to central and southern England, the Met Office does not have any severe weather warnings in place.
BBC forecaster Chris Fawkes said that parts of the country will experience scattered showers on Sunday, but there will be plenty of sunshine, and patchy rain will appear in Wales during the morning. There will be also outbreaks of rain across the north east of Scotland, which could lead to heavier bursts.

Your images of flooding from around the country

The Association of British Insurers (ABI) said the final bill for damage and disruption was expected to run into "hundreds of millions".
Kelly Ostler of the ABI told the BBC that reports of householders not being able to get insurance unless they protected their homes against flooding were inaccurate.
"We have - the industry that is - has a statement of principles with the government that says any home that has insurance at the moment, household and buildings insurance, for flooding and they have maintained flood defences by the government in the area, then they will always have flood cover."
Emergency rescues
Hereford and Worcester Fire Service, which received more than 2,000 calls and rescued more than 750 people, said by Saturday evening things had begun to calm down. Elsewhere, Gloucestershire Police appealed to people not to go into the centres of Gloucester and Cheltenham on Saturday evening for their own safety.
The Highways Agency said by Saturday evening motorways and trunk roads were no longer affected by flood-related incidents. However, many rail services have been cancelled and some smaller roads remain closed.

HAVE YOUR SAY
No wonder there's so much flooding. The roadside drains are simply not cleaned out until people actually complain to their councils.
Craig, Bradford

Send us your experiences
Lincoln flood warnings

Police in Worcestershire and Herefordshire have warned holidaymakers against travel through the counties for at least 24 hours. Prime Minister Gordon Brown praised the "superb" efforts of the emergency services and "huge contribution" of the Armed Forces to the rescue effort. He also said the flooding had been "an emergency that no-one could have predicted".

The main developments include:
Lifeboat crews rescued holidaymakers stranded on top of their caravans in Droitwich, Kidderminster, Wick, Pershore and Hawford
Lincolnshire County Council said the flooding was worse on Saturday than on Friday, with widespread road flooding across the county, including Louth and Horncastle
About 70 homes and shops in Buckingham have been flooded following rising levels on the River Ouse. More than 2,500 sandbags have been used to try to limit the damage to property.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

PAINTING MEETS ITS FEMME FATALE

The kiss left a red stain on the pristine canvas. A woman who says she was so overcome with passion for a valuable painting on display in France, has been charged with criminal damage after kissing it.
The immaculate white canvas so attracted Sam Rindy she smudged it with her lipstick, saying later she had wanted to make it even more beautiful.
The 3x2m (9x6-foot) painting by US artist Cy Twombly is valued at more than $2m (£970,000).
Ms Rindy, herself an artist, is due to appear in court on 16 August.
-Staff at the Collection Lambert museum in the southern French city of Avignon alerted police after the incident on Thursday afternoon and she was arrested as she was walking out.
"I left a kiss," she told La Provence newspaper on leaving the police station.
"A red stain remained on the canvas... This red stain is testimony to this moment, to the power of art."
Speaking to French news agency AFP, she said the artist had "left this white" for her.
The museum is hosting an exhibition of works by Twombly entitled Blooming.
The artist was born in Lexington, Virginia, in 1928 and has been living in Italy for nearly half a century.
He won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the 2001 Venice Biennale.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

FIRST FEMALE PRESIDENT FOR INDIA !

Mrs Patil's backers say her election will be a boost to women. Pratibha Patil is to become India's first woman president after winning a comprehensive election victory, Indian officials say. Mrs Patil, 72, won nearly two-thirds of votes cast in state assemblies and in India's parliament, they said. The former governor of the northern Indian state of Rajasthan described her win as "a victory of the people". Mrs Patil's supporters say her election to the largely ceremonial role will be a boost to millions of Indian women.

The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder, in Delhi, says that while some see her victory as an important step towards gender equality in India, many view it as only a symbolic gesture. Millions of women in India face discrimination and poverty often linked to age-old traditions which require the parents of a bride to pay a large dowry to the family of her eventual husband.

Mrs Patil emerged as a surprise, last-minute candidate after left-wing parties in the Congress-led coalition opposed the Congress Party's first choice. She was backed by Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, but was mocked by opponents and by some sections of India's media. This is a victory for the principles which our Indian people uphold -Pratibha Patil.

Profile: Pratibha Patil

But Mrs Gandhi, the Congress Party leader, hailed her candidate's win. "In the 60th year of our independence, for the first time we have a woman president," she said. "I am grateful to the people of India and the men and women of India and this is a victory for the principles which our Indian people uphold," the Reuters news agency quoted Mrs Patil as saying after his victory was confirmed.

There was also support at a hostel Mrs Patil established in Mumbai, in her home state of Maharashtra. "It is encouraging for other women who want to step out of their homes and make something out of their careers or do something in the world," said one resident, Priya Mehra.

Mrs Patil has courted controversy, recently telling a Muslim congregation that the veil was introduced to protect their women from Mughal invaders, a comment she later retracted. She also faced allegations that a bank she helped set up gave out cheap loans to her relatives before it folded up.

The Congress Party has rejected those allegations and was highly critical of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led opposition candidate, Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, an 83-year-old party veteran. The presidency is largely a ceremonial post, but plays a key role with a fragmented electorate often throwing up precariously placed coalition governments. Around 4,500 MPs and state legislators were eligible to vote in the election. Mrs Patil will succeed A P J Abdul Kalam, a popular missile scientist, as president.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

SPAIN ENDS SEARCH FOR IMMIGRANTS !

The boat overturned on Thursday as a Spanish vessel drew near. Spanish maritime rescue services have called off the search for 50 African migrants missing after a boat capsized near the Canary Islands.
The boat was overturned by a wave on Thursday as a Spanish coast guard vessel drew near to it, about 150km (90 miles) south of Tenerife.
Forty-eight people were rescued and several bodies recovered.
The capsizing is believed to be one of the worst losses of life this year among Africans trying to reach the EU.
A Spanish spokesman said there was almost no chance of finding anyone else alive. Those on board were said to include people from Ghana, Guinea Bissau and Liberia.
Flights by maritime patrol aircraft were ended on Friday night. Searches by a tugboat and a patrol vessel were also called off on Saturday morning.
Spanish officials have said that in the incident off the Canaries rescuers tried to stabilise the vessel packed with migrants.
They began ushering those on board to safety, but during the operation the fishing boat capsized, plunging dozens of migrants into the sea.
In 2006 an estimated 30,000 immigrants were caught trying to reach the Canary Islands.
The vast majority sailed from west Africa in crowded open boats, many dying en route.
On Wednesday at least four people died when two fishing boats carrying migrants sank between Italy and Libya.
Italian coastguards said 36 people were rescued in the incident, some 64km (40 miles) from the tiny island of Lampedusa.
An EU agency, Frontex, has begun operations to help Spain, Italy and Malta intercept migrant boats, but EU officials say it needs more resources.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

KENYA 'LOO' FILM GETS GLOBAL DEAL !

By Kevin Mwachiro BBC News, Nairobi.

The characters explore their stereotypes while locked in a loo. A Kenyan film about two people stuck in a toilet has secured a deal for international release.
The film, Malooned, is a romantic drama about two people from different tribes who have to resolve their prejudices when they become locked in a washroom.
The title is a play on the word marooned, with "loo" inserted to highlight the film's main location.
The deal for international release was secured after the film won two awards at the Zanzibar film festival.
Producer Bob Nyanja says he was inspired by a true story about a university professor who was locked in a toilet for several hours.
The film was produced for less than a third of the $2.5m deal signed with Pretty Pictures International.
Let's get out of our prejudiced toilets and work as a nation
Bob NyanjaMalooned producer
"This is a fantastic opportunity through Pretty Pictures International to showcase what Kenyans with limited resources can do," Mr Nyanja said.
The producer says that to surmount the challenges of logistics and limited budgets, Kenyan film makers have to be more creative in seeking out fresh ideas and talent.
Ethnic politics
In the film, a married man and a young woman are locked in a toilet. They develop a relationship through their enforced enclosure.
"People always love to watch movies about love stories and I used this inclination to set my film," Mr Nyanja explained.

The film's producer aims to break down deeply-held prejudices. Malooned highlights the prejudices and stereotypes that exist between different ethnic groups in Kenya.
The prejudices depicted in the movie also touch on the ethnic nature of Kenyan politics.
Mr Nyanja hopes that the movie will foster a spirit of reconciliation among Kenyans.
"Let's get out of our prejudiced toilets and work as a nation," he says.
"By talking, we will discover we like one another even more than we know."
Funding and distribution are some of the major challenges facing the country's fledgling movie industry.
The producers are hoping that by making the Malooned available in all major film outlets and supermarkets, that they will overcome the logistics of distribution.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

CRUISE SHOOTS CONTROVERSIAL MOVIE !

Filming has begun on Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie despite crew being banned from a Berlin location where an army colonel was executed during World War II. Scientologist Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who was executed after plotting against Hitler. Rumours circulated that the crew were banned from the former German general staff quarters because of the country's hostility towards Scientology.

But a government spokesman said it was to preserve the building's "dignity". The building, known as the Bendler Block, is now a memorial for Third Reich resistance fighters. "We granted all permissions but the one, for the Bendler Block because the dignity of this place should not be violated," said government spokesman Torsten Albig. "These circumstances show that the religious beliefs of the actor are without relevance," he said.

Stauffenberg and the other plotters of the July 1944 assassination attempt were caught and executed after Hitler survived the explosion at his headquarters in what was then East Prussia.
Valkyrie - named after Operation Valkyrie, the plot's codename - is directed by Bryan Singer and also stars Kenneth Branagh. It is due for release next year.

"I can't imagine shooting it anywhere else but on location in Germany, and I'm thrilled that we were able to get Tom Cruise to play Colonel Stauffenberg," said Singer in a statement.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

10 THINGS !

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. Enoch Powell studied Urdu at university.

2. School children in England and Wales have the shortest summer holidays in Europe.
More details

3. People in residential care homes can only keep £20 per week. The rest has to cover their accommodation costs.
More details

4. Some cars on the market can park themselves, or keep to their lane on the motorway.
More details

5. One-third of front gardens are paved over in some regions.
More details

6. The first virus for personal computers was called Elk Cloner, and was created and distributed on an Apple II computer in 1982.
More details

7. Just 11% of the night sky over the UK is totally dark now.

8. There are "fattening rooms" in Nigeria where the wealthy go to stack on the pounds, as being fat remains a symbol of status and power.
More details

9. Seven-year-olds have proms.
More details

10. There are 500 billion billion possible draughts positions. But that's fewer than there are in chess.
More details
BBC MAGAZINE

U.N. PROBES 'ABUSE' IN IVORY COAST !

The UN has faced a string of abuse allegations against peacekeepers. The United Nations is investigating allegations of widespread sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers serving in Ivory Coast. The UN said a unit of its contingent in Bouake, a northern rebel stronghold, had been confined to base. It would not give the nationalities of those troops under investigation.

Claims of sexual abuse have been made against UN troops on various missions, prompting ex UN chief Kofi Annan to declare a "zero tolerance" policy. 'Utterly immoral' "There have been crimes such as rape, paedophilia and human trafficking," he said in December 2006, shortly before leaving office.

He said sexual exploitation and abuse were "utterly immoral" and at odds with the UN mission, and would be punished. Sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeeping personnel hit the headlines in 2004 after a UN report detailed widespread abuse in the DR Congo involving UN troops. More than 300 members of UN peacekeeping missions around the world have been investigated for sexual exploitation and abuse since 2004, including some stationed in Congo, Cambodia and Haiti. A UN statement said the latest allegations had been uncovered by an internal inquiry, and a full investigation was now under way. "But due to the serious nature of the allegations, the United Nations has taken the decision to suspend all activities of the contingent and has cantoned the unit within its base," it said.

UN SEXUAL ABUSE SCANDALS.
2003 - Nepalese troops accused of sexual abuse while serving in DR Congo. Six are later jailed
2004 - Two UN peacekeepers repatriated after being accused of abuse in Burundi
2005 - UN troops accused of rape and sexual abuse in Sudan
2006 - UN personnel accused of rape and exploitation on missions is Haiti and Liberia
2007 - UN launches probe into sexual abuse claims in Ivory Coast.

The exact nature of the alleged offences has not been officially disclosed, but they are believed to involve sex with underage girls. About 9,000 troops serve under the UN in Ivory Coast, which has been split between areas controlled by government and rebel forces. The UN Security Council this week voted to extend the mission until January, in the hope that it can help create the conditions for elections, that have repeatedly been delayed. According to the UN website, troops in Bouake come from Morocco, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Ghana. It is not known which country's troops are under suspicion but, in an unusual move, the UN has confined its entire force in the town to barracks.

It is a sign of how seriously the UN is taking these latest accusations, says the BBC's Peter Miles.
BBC NEWS REPORT.

TWO HELD OVER RWANDAN MASSACRES !

More than 800,000 people died in the 1994 massacre. Two Rwandan men wanted for their alleged role in the 1994 genocide have been arrested in France, police there have said.
Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, a Catholic priest, and Laurent Bucyibaruta, an ex-civil servant, were held on warrants issued in Tanzania last month.
The arrests have been welcomed by the Rwandan government, which has accused France of failing to cooperate fully.
More than 800,000 people died in 1994 massacre of Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Warrants for the arrests had been issued by the United Nations-backed International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Tanzania.
'Murder and rape'
The two suspects will now face possible extradition to Tanzania.
Father Munyeshyaka was arrested at Gisors, to the west of Paris, and Mr Bucyibaruta near Troyes, east of the capital.
Father Munyeshyaka, 49, is accused of murdering three young Tutsis in his Holy Family parish in the capital Kigali, news agency AFP reported.
He is also accused of raping four young Tutsi women between April and June 1994 and calling for the extremist Hutu Interahamwe militia to commit rape.
Mr Bucyibaruta has been accused of "direct and public incitement to commit genocide" by the ICTR.
Rwanda broke off diplomatic ties with Paris last year in a row over a French inquiry related to the 1994 genocide.
The investigating judge said Rwandan President Paul Kagame was complicit in the assassination of former President Juvenal Habyarimana in 1994, which sparked off the killings.
Mr Kagame has always accused Hutu extremists of killing Habyarimana, a moderate Hutu, in order to provide a pretext for the genocide.
The killings ended 100 days later when the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front took power.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

THE LURE OF PLENTIFUL SOUTH AFRICA !

By Peter Biles BBC News, South Africa.

The economic crisis in Zimbabwe is having a severe impact on its neighbour, South Africa. An estimated three million Zimbabweans are thought to have fled to South Africa to escape the chaos and they continue to flood across the border at Beit Bridge.

The original Beit Bridge was erected in 1929 and a new one built in 1995. The Limpopo River, famously described by Kipling as "great, grey-green and greasy", forms the border between Zimbabwe and South Africa - two close neighbours, but now a world apart. Zimbabwe is on its knees. Its people are starving and desperate. South Africa is seen as the land of opportunity. And the bright lights of this economic giant beckon.
Old barriers
It is winter here now and this is the dry season. That is good news for the thousands of mainly young Zimbabwean men prepared to take the risk of crossing the Limpopo. They come down to the river bank on the Zimbabwean side, sometimes in large groups. Then they disperse. They are able to wade across, but they need to keep a look-out for crocodiles in the shallow water.
When they reach the South African side, they dry themselves down and edge nervously towards South Africa's triple-layer border fence. This is a barrier that was put up in the days of apartheid - when the country's white rulers tried to stop the guerrillas of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, from infiltrating from Zimbabwe.

Border jumpers
But these days, the security is not as formidable as it looks. Peter Biles examines the gaps and holes in the wire mesh. The illegal migrants from Zimbabwe approach the first fence and cut the wire mesh or burrow in the sandy soil to open a gap underneath. Then, using their bolt-cutters, they make their way through rolls of razor wire. And finally, they penetrate another layer of fencing.
By this stage, one of the Zimbabweans is probably leading the way as a scout. But the "border jumpers" are rarely deterred. In daylight, with my car parked on a quiet narrow road that runs along the border, a man suddenly appears. He leaps over the nearest fence with unexpected agility and vanishes into the South African bush. All this happens within a few hundred metres of the Beit Bridge border post, the only official crossing point between Zimbabwe and South Africa. Under the noses of the South African police and soldiers, this is as brazen as it gets.
I carry on watching with fascination.

Donald, a workman, says he repairs about 100 holes a day.
A few minutes later, a group of six men come surging over the security fence. They look left and right to see if there is any approaching traffic, cross the road and dart out of sight. A little further along the border, I meet a workman in red overalls. Donald's job is to repair the holes cut in the fence by the Zimbabweans. "Sometimes, I have to fix 100 a day," he says. "The situation is getting worse and worse. Our army isn't patrolling enough." "Perhaps what we need," suggests Donald, "is for Robert Mugabe to put up a fence on his side of the border."

Zimbabwean motorists who cross the border legally are short of petrol. I make my way back to the petrol station at Beit Bridge. This is the first stop for Zimbabwean motorists who have crossed the border legally and need to fill up their empty tanks. There is precious little fuel in Zimbabwe these days. But in the car park, it is not long before I run across some of those who have come across the border by less orthodox means.

"Yes," says 23 year old Tony, "I swam the Limpopo. We have no food, no money and no jobs in Zimbabwe."
Promise is also 23. He is from Harare and has come to South Africa to look for a job in an attempt to support his family.
He thinks he might find some work on a local farm, but many have made the same journey ahead of him and a record number of Zimbabweans are now being picked up by the South African police and deported. It is thought that about 1,000 Zimbabweans are being arrested in South Africa every day and sent home, but as many as 3,000 a day may be coming into the country. So that means plenty appear to be slipping through the net.
Some of the more circumspect Zimbabwean migrants enter South Africa under the cover of darkness.
Most want to head south to the big cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria.
All this is the consequence of what is happening in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe
As the early morning mist begins to burn off, a teenager approaches me and asks for a lift.
Others are hitching on the main road, the N1 highway.
The local farmers are getting more than a little jittery about this influx.
They are hardly enamoured with large groups of poor, hungry and determined young men, traipsing across their land.
Game farmer Gideon Meiring sees himself living on a frontline.
He says the police can not cope, so with military precision, Gideon now runs his own patrols and tells me he comes across Zimbabweans on his property almost every day.
All this is the consequence of what is happening in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, a country that was once a jewel of Africa.
And from all the Zimbabweans I meet at the border, there is just one simple refrain: "We are suffering."

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 21 July, 2007 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.

Cathy Buckle's Weekly Letter From Zimbabwe !

311 DAYS OF LEAVE A YEAR !

Dear Family and Friends,

The big luxury cars and their nouveau riche occupants have gone from our town now. The men in big jackets whose multiple pockets were overflowing with banknotes have also disappeared from view this week. These vultures who came hot on the heels of the price cutting army and youth brigade have picked the carcass clean and now just the bare bones are left : our shops are as good as empty. Most supermarkets have given up all pretence of trying to make it look as if they've got things left to sell and there are just line after line of empty shelves. Bottled water, however, is still abundant - surely a relief to the participants of the endless government workshops who seem to use so much of it.

Our streets have grown dramatically quieter this week as fuel supplies have dried up and yesterday came another nail in the price control coffin. The all powerful 'Task Force' on price cuts announced that fuel paid for in foreign currency and issued by a coupon system has now been banned. Holders of coupons have 2 weeks to redeem their fuel from private importers and that's the end of another life line. It wasn't one that many ordinary people could access but still it kept some individuals, church organizations, donor agencies and diplomats on the road. Day by day the ways that people outside the country can help their families left behind are being cut off and so the reality of aloneness and oppression grows.

It's taken three weeks of madness but at last people are beginning to ask questions about the price cuts. The first one is why the maximum amount of money people can withdraw from their own bank accounts suddenly and dramatically increased from one and a half to ten million dollars just a few days after price cuts began. Coincidental? You have to wonder, as most ordinary Zimbabweans lucky enough to have jobs don't earn anywhere near ten million dollars a month. The government stipulated wage for a domestic house worker, for example is less than a hundred thousand dollars a month - for sure none of them benefited from price cuts or from being able to withdraw ten million dollars a day.

People are openly asking where the resupplies of food and fuel are going to come from now that the cupboard is bare. Everyone is asking where, when and how this is going to end. And everyone is asking why it happened. Many say its been done to win voter support but 8 months before elections are due and with empty shelves already, it makes little sense. Perhaps answers will come in the next week as Parliament re-opens for the 7th session but we are not holding our breath. The statistics just released about the 6th session of parliament leave much to be desired. In the year long 6th session the House of Assembly sat for business for just 54 days. Imagine 311 days of paid annual leave at the expense of tax payers! The mind boggles.

Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Copyright cathy buckle 21st July2007.www.cathybuckle.com
My books: "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears" are available from:orders@africabookcentre.com

NET CRIMINALS SHUN VIRUS ATTACKS !

By Mark Ward Technology Correspondent, BBC News website.

Windows PCs are favoured by hi-tech criminals. Hi-tech criminals have found novel ways to carry out web-based attacks that are much harder to spot and stop, warn security experts. Some cyber criminals have exploited file-sharing networks and popular webpages to attack targets. The malicious hackers have turned to these methods instead of going to the trouble of hijacking home PCs. Using these methods the hi-tech criminals have staged some of the biggest attacks security experts have ever seen.

Attack pattern.
For some time the tool of choice for hi-tech criminals has been a botnets of hijacked home PCs. Botnets are collections of computers under the remote control of a hi-tech criminal. Botnets are used to relay junk e-mail or spam and as a resource to mine for saleable information such as logins or credit card numbers. Many botnets are also used to attack other computers in denial of service attacks which try to overwhelm the target server with huge amounts of data.

Computers, usually Windows machines, get enrolled in a botnet when their owners open an e-mail bearing a virus or visit a booby-trapped webpage. But, said Paul Sop, chief technology officer of security firm Prolexic, some creative criminals have found a way to mount denial of service attacks without hijacking any PCs.

Gambling sites were the first targets of web extortionists. One attack seen by Prolexic in May exploited a popular peer-to-peer or file-sharing network. Many file-sharing systems use hubs or servers that point people to the right place to download the movies, music and other media they are interested in.

"If a hub was going down for maintenance it would tell people to connect to another one," said Mr Sop. By exploiting this administrative foible, an attacker was able to bombard a server with traffic from tens of thousands of file-sharers none of whom knew they were taking part in the denial of service attack. "There's no malware on any of those computers," said Mr Sop which meant the attacks were hard to stop and to defend against. He added that the file-sharing network attack was one of the biggest and involved gigabits of traffic every second.

Prolexic had also seen attacks that exploit the popularity of a webpage to attack another site or server. On the popular page attackers placed a chunk of Javascript code which told the computers of visitors to bounce data off the target site. Again, said Mr Sop, no virus or worm was involved but a target site could be saturated with the traffic.

Andre' M. Di Mino, administrator for the Shadowserver Foundation which tracks botnets, said the development was one of many it had seen as malicious hackers sought innovative ways to set up botnets or mount attacks. "The topologies are varying as we see more P2P and http nets each day," he said. "This is a very growing and troubling trend."

The Shadowserver group had also seen increasing attacks on servers so attackers can booby-trap them to catch out visitors. "As the servers themselves are compromised, even the most careful end-user is now more vulnerable for infection," he said.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

ISRAEL ROW OVER HARRY POTTER SALE !

Many Israelis have placed advance orders for the new Potter book. The worldwide launch of the latest Harry Potter is provoking religious controversy in Israel.
Bookstores will be opening on the Sabbath, the Jewish holy day, to sell the final instalment to eager fans.
Most shops are normally closed for trade on the Sabbath, which runs from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday.
Religious politicians are accusing the bookstores of putting profits ahead of religious sensitivities for agreeing to open their shops.
The Israeli Industry and Trade Minister, Eli Yishai, has threatened to fine any store that opens on Saturday.
Israeli law forbids businesses to force their employees to work on the Sabbath.
Advance orders
"I think it's a little chutzpah [audacious] of them to open the stores just to make money," Associated Press news agency quoted Israeli member of parliament Avraham Ravitz as saying.
But the booksellers remain unrepentant.
Steimatzky, part of Israel's biggest bookstore chain, is hosting a gala event in Tel Aviv to launch the book.
The chain says that it has received ten of thousands of advance orders for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and has no plans to cancel or postpone its event.
"We are required by the publishers to start selling the books at this time," said store buyer Nancy Ayalon.
The Harry Potter books have sold more than 325 million copies worldwide and have been translated into at least 64 languages, including Hebrew.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

EGYPT POLICE MOVE TO GAZA BORDER !

The Palestinians stranded in Sinai have complained of poor conditions. Egypt has sent police reinforcements to its border in Sinai with the Gaza Strip to stop Palestinians stranded in Egypt from crossing back over.
About 4,000 Palestinians have been stuck in northern Sinai since the Rafah border crossing was closed last month.
The crossing was closed after the Palestinian faction Hamas seized Gaza from its Fatah rivals.
Egypt said it had also sent medical and food aid to the Palestinians, who have complained of poor living conditions.
On Tuesday, about 100 Palestinians detained at the el-Arish airport in Sinai clashed with police, smashing windows and doors before they were subdued.
The governor of North Sinai said he had funds to feed 3,000 Palestinians for three days and the Egyptian Red Crescent has promised food aid for a further 10 days, the French news agency reported.
Many of the Palestinians have no money to pay for food or lodging and are staying in mosques or sleeping in the open.
The Rafah crossing is the only way in or out of Gaza that does not pass through Israel - although when it is open the Israeli authorities monitor traffic electronically.
Israel has said another crossing into Gaza from its territory could be used, but Hamas has said it will treat that crossing as a military target if it is used.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

ETHIOPIA RELEASES PROTEST LEADERS !

The group had reportedly confessed and asked for a pardon. Thirty Ethiopian opposition leaders have been pardoned and freed from prison just days after being given life sentences over election protests.
Three minibuses left the prison, while the group's supporters whistled and shouted for joy outside.
The group always said the trial was political and refused to enter a plea, leading to the men's conviction.
Ethiopia came under strong international pressure over the trial, and some donors cut aid.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said the right to vote and contest elections would be restored to those pardoned.
But he said the MPs had boycotted parliament for two years and so may be unable to reclaim their seats.

PROTEST SENTENCES
In court:
Life in jail: 30 opposition leaders
15-18 years: 6 young men for rioting
1-3 years: 2 journalists
In absentia:
Life in jail: 5

Democracy on trial

Among those freed are Coalition for Unity and Democracy leader Hailu Shawel, the mayor-elect of the Addis Ababa Berhanu Nega and several other MPs and local councillors from the capital.
Mr Meles denied that he was following US orders to free the 30 CUD leaders and eight others convicted over the protests.
Five others were convicted in absentia.
"The Ethiopian government isn't willing and is unable to be run like a banana republic from Capitol Hill. Some individuals appear to be entertaining such illusions," he said.
He also said that some of the international pressure on his government had been "shameful".
'Orange revolution'
The prime minister said the pardon showed the government had "no sense of revenge".
"We believe that the sorry saga of the orange revolution is fully behind us," Mr Meles said.

Most of those who died were protesters. The government said the 30 had confessed to their crimes and had asked President Girma Woldegiorgis for a pardon.
The head of the European Union 2005 election observers in Ethiopia had condemned the life sentences as "farcical" and "inhumane".
After the state prosecutor called for the death penalty, the US urged the government to "promote reconciliation" in the final sentence.
The government always said it could not interfere in the case until the legal process had finished.
Some 193 people died after thousands of people protested against the election results.
Most of those were protesters, killed by the security forces.
Tens of thousands of people were arrested.
The government denied charges of ballot-rigging and points out that it introduced multi-party elections to Ethiopia.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

ANCIENT DARFUR LAKE 'IS DRIED UP' !

Lack of resources has been blamed for causing the conflict. A vast underground lake that scientists hoped could help to end violence in Sudan's Darfur region probably dried up thousands of years ago, an expert says.
Alain Gachet, who used satellite images and radar in his research, said the area received too little rain and had the wrong rock types for water storage.
But the French geologist said there was enough water elsewhere in Darfur to end the fighting and rebuild the economy.
Analysts say competition for resources such as water is behind the unrest.
More than 200,000 Darfuris have died and two million fled their homes since 2003.
UN backing
On Wednesday, Boston University's Farouk El-Baz said he had received the backing of Sudan's government to begin drilling for water in the newly-discovered lake, in North Darfur.

Radar finds water for refugees

He said radar studies had revealed a depression the size of Lake Erie in North America - the 10th largest lake in the world.
But Mr Gachet, who has worked on mineral and water exploration in Africa for 20 years, said the depression identified by the Boston researchers was probably full of water 5,000 to 25,000 years ago.
"This lake was at the bottom of a broad watershed feeding the Nile above Khartoum," he said.
"This watershed is completely dry today on the southern border of Egypt, Libya and north-western border of Sudan - one of the worst areas in the world."
He accepted that the Boston researchers had a slim chance of being right, but he said he was not optimistic.
'Root cause'
Further south, in the rebel-controlled Jebel Mara area of Darfur, Mr Gachet said he was helping a UN-backed project to drill for water.
"There is enough water within these aquifers to bring peace in Darfur... and even more - enough to reconstruct the economy of Darfur."
Earlier in the week Hafiz Muhamad, from the lobby group Justice Africa, told the BBC the "root cause" of the conflict was lack of resources.
He said "drought and desertification" in North Darfur had led the Arab nomads to move south, where they came into conflict with black African farmers.
Last month, the UN Environmental Programme (Unep) said there was little prospect of peace in Darfur unless the issues of environmental destruction were addressed.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

THE POTTER LOCKDOWN !

By Clare Davidson Business reporter, BBC News.

Grocers are not usually candidates for a top-level security operation - except, of course, for the vans carrying the takings to the bank.
Thousands of Potter fans have already preordered the book.
Asda, though, is reportedly at the centre of just such a vast, shadowy and high-cost system involving codes, security cameras, satellite tracking systems and specially-trained guards.
Not to protect its food, that is.
Instead, this is the latest twist in the Harry Potter phenomenon: one that requires the next and final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, to arrive at Asda stores shrouded in the utmost secrecy.
Costs
Anyone would think - judging by the nervous voice adopted by Asda's press officer - that one was asking about something highly illegal, poisonous, libellous or possibly all three, rather than a highly popular children's book.
But Asda, which has ordered 1.5 million copies of the book is far from alone.
Amazon UK, for its part, has preordered some 2 million copies, and has also adopted carefully-crafted plans to make sure its fans do not have access to the 608-page tome before midnight on Friday.
In fact, some estimates put the cost of keeping the seventh tome in the Potter series away from prying eyes ahead of its official release at £10m.
Part of that cost covers the arrangements for dedicated warehousing, involving 24-hour protection and even guard dogs.
In the dark
Neither Amazon, nor Asda - nor the book's UK publisher, Bloomsbury - would say when the books would actually arrive at different sites.
Neither would they say where from, though distribution via specially-outfitted trucks is said to have started as early as Tuesday.

Images of the book have allegedly been online before the launch.
But anecdotes in the press have highlighted the lengths to which the publisher, Bloomsbury, has apparently gone to make sure the release date stays sacrosanct.
Apocryphal, perhaps - but reports have said that in Germany the publishers have been ordered to work in the semi-dark, so that no-one can be lured into dipping into the book ahead of time.
And in the UK, printing employees have been warned that they could be jobless if they reveal any details.
"The publisher has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect the content," said Tim Godfray, chief executive of the Booksellers Association, adding that he had never seen such a level of secrecy around a book.
US breach
But despite the worldwide security operations, some 1,200 readers in the US have been sent the books early - by mistake.
According to UK book industry site thebookseller.com, US publisher Scholastic has confirmed that Levy Home Entertainment and DeepDiscount.com had both sent out the book before they were meant to.
Till now, of course, the publishers have had at their disposal the ultimate weapon: the threat that anyone who broke the embargo might not get the next Potter blockbuster.
Obviously, that sanction no longer applies.
But author JK Rowling has said she plans to continue writing - albeit not about Harry, Hogwarts and the like - so booksellers may not want to take any risks.
And the fans are likely to forgive all the cloak-and-dagger surrounding the supply chain, so long as they get this final fix on time.

BBC NEWS REPORT

DARFUR CRISIS 'SPILLING INTO CAR' !

By Karen Allen BBC News, Central African Republic.

Map of Darfur conflict zones

The crisis in Darfur is spilling over from Sudan into a second African country, prompting fears that instability could worsen in the region.
The Central African Republic has now seen nearly 3,000 refugees arriving in the past few months following air strikes in south Darfur.
There are fears that the Darfur conflict is being fought on foreign soil, UN officials in the region say.
The neighbouring Chad already has more than 200,000 refugees from Darfur.
Arab militia 'sightings'
Central African Republic, a former French colony roughly the size of France, is already bruised by its own internal conflicts.
Now it is playing host to nearly 3,000 refugees from across the border in Sudan.
Men, women and children made for the border when the town of Dafak in south Darfur was the scene of a heavy aerial bombardment by Sudanese forces back in May.
Darfur's rebels have amassed along the border, and senior UN officials based in Central African Republic say sightings of what appear to be Arab militia here on foreign soil constitutes a disturbing development.
Efforts are under way to establish a multinational peacekeeping force along Sudan's borders, mostly close to the boundary with Chad.
But with rebels and refugees now in Central African Republic, this remote and embattled country will be pressing for a security force of at least 500 to keep its borders free from attack.

BBC NEWS REPORT

ARRESTS OVER LIBERIA 'COUP PLOT' !

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf took power last year after winning elections. A former Liberian army commander has been arrested for "subversive activities" - the first such arrests since landmark elections in 2005.
Gen Charles Julu headed the presidential guard under former leader Samuel Doe and led a 1994 coup attempt.
"There is hard evidence that this man was trying to plan a coup," Information Minister Laurence Bropleh told the BBC.
President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf took power in 2006 after a 14-year war.
The BBC's Jonathan Paye-Layleh in the capital, Monrovia, says people are shocked at the possibility of renewed unrest in the country.
The United Nations has some 15,000 peacekeepers in Liberia - the second largest deployment in the world.
Mr Bropleh said there was video proof of the coup pot, which the authorities in neighbouring Ivory Coast had helped investigate.
Fighters from the two countries have been involved in conflicts on both sides of the border in recent years.
"The Liberian public should remain calm. There is no immediate threat to the state," he told Reuters news agency.
Student groups from Doe's Krahn ethnic group have condemned the arrests and called for the release of Gen Julu and the other former officer also arrested.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

BECKHAM IN MISSION UNNECESSARY !

By John May.

A famous American once said: "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." Former United States president John F Kennedy's patriotic plea seems tailor-made to adapt for David Beckham's mission statement: Ask not what football can do for me but what I can do for football.

After all, Beckham is coming to America to save football. Isn't he? Well, actually, probably not. The perception is that Beckham will do for soccer what Pele could not do and put it right at the heart of sport in the United States. But the Major League Soccer that greets Beckham is a far different beast than the North American Soccer League that Pele and George Best desperately tried to promote. Soccer now is far more deeply entrenched in American sport than we might think.

Consider a few facts to dispel the myth that US sports fans do not give a fig about soccer.
The 2006 World Cup final attracted more television viewers than baseball's 2005 World Series pulled in on any single night. Soccer is the most popular recreational sport for boys and girls in the US. More young people play it than any other sport.
The MLS is the 12th most attended Premier League in the world.
So, Americans do like soccer and the MLS has tapped into the market, having learned from the mistakes of the NASL.

German legend Franz Beckenbauer trots out for NY Cosmos.
The NASL came into existence in 1968 but almost immediately lost its vital television contract with CBS because of poor ratings. Any sport wanting to gain a foothold in America needs a strong television presence and back then soccer was effectively trying to wean Americans off mom's apple pie to feed them fish and chips.
The New York Cosmos epitomised the NASL's brash razzamatazz style - with Pele as the poster-child, they averaged gates of 40,000 and topped 70,000 in the Meadowlands stadium they shared with the Giants and Jets of gridiron's NFL.
But elsewhere, the national average was 15,000 and some clubs struggled to pull in 5,000.

In the US, soccer is the sport of the future, and it always will be
BG

Amid spiralling wages, too quick an expansion and young American players with whom the public might have associated being left on the bench, the NASL folded in 1984.
It might have been different had Fifa awarded the 1986 World Cup to the USA instead of Mexico but, like a Fourth of July firework, the NASL took off, had its moment of glory as it exploded, only to fizzle out.
With that, soccer slipped back into obscurity, kicking around in the novelty emporium of various indoor formats.
In 1986, Fifa rectified its mistake by awarding the 1994 World Cup to the USA, with the stipulation that a proper professional league be founded. The Americans' love of a big event ensured the World Cup would be a success. The problem was always going to be what happened when the show left town.
MLS began in 1994 and was a sickly child whose chances of survival looked slim. It was not helped by the USA's poor showing at the 1998 World Cup, which only gave fuel to the naysayers and doom-mongers.
A revival came about on the back of committed owners like Lamar Hunt and Phil Anschutz, who through his AEG (Anschutz Entertainment Group) owns LA Galaxy, Chicago Fire and Houston Dynamo, and the building of soccer-specific stadiums.

Home Depot is where the heart is for Los Angeles Galaxy.
Slowly and unassumingly - two qualities not normally found in American sport - a new generation of players developed and the USA's romp to the 2002 World Cup quarter-finals rekindled interest at just the right time.
The irony was that US players turned their backs on the league that developed them and left for Europe to improve their game.
The MLS's structure also started to pay dividends, with teams controlled by the league and shared income and player contracts negotiated by the league keeping costs in check, while making clubs more appealing to owners and investors prepared to pay the $30m franchise fee.
Crucially, television is now interested. Every MLS match this season will be screened live, the majority of them on national networks.
Although Sportsweek magazine estimates that since its inception MLS's losses have totalled $350m, soccer in the US has turned a corner.
LA Galaxy made a profit in 2003 in its first season at the Home Depot Centre, way before England midfielder Beckham galloped over the horizon from Real Madrid.
FC Dallas are also in profit and MLS commissioner Dan Garber expects all clubs to be profitable by 2010 as more build their own, soccer-specific stadiums.
So at the risk of raining on Beckham's tickertape parade, this Hollywood plotline does not involve our hero riding to the rescue of soccer in the States.
But if he can build on what is already there, he might turn the Little House on the Prairie into a mansion.

BBC SPORTS REPORT.

BANNED FROM WORKING WAS FRUSTRATING !

Dear friend...

An exiled Zimbabwean journalist recounts his experiences settling in the UK, through letters home to a friend. Innocent Sithole came to the UK in 2004 as a scholarship student at Leicester University. He intended to return to his job as the editor of the Sunday Mirror newspaper in Zimbabwe, but his plans fell apart when his colleagues advised him not to return for his own safety.

Below are extracts from letters he wrote to a close friend in Harare, which follow his eventful journey from student to asylum seeker.

SEPT 2004
Dear, Tafadzwa, A big hello from your old friend and now scholarship student, Innocent. It's all-go here on my MA course. Last week I moved into one of the newest halls of residence at Leicester University, complete with telephone and broadband internet. There's large mix of local and international students on campus giving it an impressively cosmopolitan feel. My own housemates are from England, Greece, India and China!
This is a hard letter for me to write, but I want to tell you in my own words why I've taken a rather major decision Off campus Leicester is much more multicultural than I expected. There are even a few Zimbabwean corner shops and a few Zimbabwean-owned pubs as well. When I feel a little homesick I'll head down to one of them to relax and dance to some Zimbabwean music.
You know, it's funny but I don't miss my old newspaper editing job. As much as I enjoyed the thrill of getting the latest edition of the Sunday Mirror, out on to the street, for the moment, I'm loving having more time to develop my thoughts. I'm sure I'll be restless to be writing articles before my study year's finished.

JAN 2005
Dear Tafadzwa, Just a quick note, but I had to let someone know, I've just come back from Highbury Stadium in London where I saw my first live football match in the English Premiership! I know it wasn't Manchester United and you don't care about football but it was the Premier League. I never thought I'd ever see those guys play.

MARCH 2006
Hi Tafadzwa, This is a hard letter for me to write, but I want to tell you in my own words why I've taken a rather major decision. I know you've been following the story of the government's intelligence authority's secret takeover of my newspapers. I remember the e-mail you sent telling me how frightened you were by reports in the press saying the authorities didn't want me to return to the papers even though I was still the editor.
I suppose it didn't help me that while here I've become a regular political commentator on the Voice of America's programme on Zimbabwe: Studio 7. Mugabe views those guys at the radio station as subversive.
Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that it's no longer safe for me to return to Zimbabwe. So, today I formerly applied for asylum in the UK.
You can imagine how livid my Mum is: she always warned me to stop my political commentary, but you know me, I can't be true to myself and stay silent.

NOV 2006
Hey Tafadzwa, How's the business? Me? I'm not so great. It's not easy living as an asylum seeker. Firstly, you don't get any choice where you live. I've been moved from my friend's house in London to Leeds. I'm in a house with four other guys, though sometimes the numbers swell, as friends who've had their asylum claims rejected come to stay. Although it puts a strain on the house, you'd rather your brothers were inside than out on the street.
I'm right at the top and I've a padlock on my door to keep out any unwanted guests. In the corner I've got a wardrobe on its side where I store all my food. One good thing is I can get the maize meal we all love from a store down the road: so at least I can cook myself some proper comfort food.
It's in here that I read my politics books and when I've had enough of that, pump iron. No surprise there, I'm still into weight training. I've shrunk a bit since you last saw me as there aren't many gyms around here, only football pitches.

JUNE 2007
Dear Tafadzwa, How are you? I've just come back from my volunteering shift at the refugee centre. I'm tired but the most exasperating thing about this experience is living with uncertainty. I have been waiting for an initial decision on my application for over a year. Meanwhile, I can't make any major plans about my life whatsoever. I feel stuck, trapped in a system. I even applied to work, which you're allowed to do after a year's waiting time but guess what? I've yet to hear back on that decision as well.
No-one talks to you on the bus. People listen to their i-Pods or read the paper What really bugs me is that each day I read more and more about the growing chaos at home and I can do nothing about it. I can't work in the papers over here. I'm forced into inactivity which drives me up the walls. It's really crushing to my sense of self-worth as I love to work but until the British government decides on my case, I'm banned from doing so. It's maddening.
When I feel like I'm beginning to lose it, I head into town. Being on the bus reminds me how much I miss the sociability of home. No-one talks to you on the bus. People listen to their iPods or read the paper. I miss the raucous debates you get in the taxis in Harare: 16 people crammed into a minivan, all pitching in with their comment about the events of the day. Here you're left to your own thoughts and the drone of the bus engine: it really emphasises your loneliness.

The letters reveal his observations on UK life. There is something that will make you smile though. When I get really down, do you know where I go? Church. When everything material is taken out of your control, it's amazing how important the spiritual becomes.
I can hear you laughing. I can count the number of times I went to church in Harare on the fingers of one hand. Well, these days I'm the first in the pew. It's because of this, coupled with my continued faith in the British sense of fairness, that I believe all will be well with me, ultimately.
There is something else that keeps me going. James, my friend from uni days, is in Leeds doing an MA. It's great to hang out with James. But although he makes me laugh, it's hard to see him moving on whilst I remain in limbo.
I'm lucky having the room at the top. I get to daydream looking out over the tightly packed "train houses" as you and I would call them. You know the rows and rows of British-style houses all joined together in a line so that their windows look like those of train carriages.
I often find myself looking wistfully out on to this landscape and imagining myself relaxing on the balcony of my flat back in Harare's jacaranda-lined avenues.
I miss you and my home. I'd love to come back and take up my old job but for now, with the threats journalists suffer at home, I'm staying here.
My dream is to return home and become a writer and I am determined to make this a reality but for now it's out of my hands.

Letters Home is a five-part series on Radio 4 at 0930BST Thursdays from 19 July. Hear the latest episode at Radio 4's Listen again page.
BBC NEWS REPORT.

NIGERIAN CLASH OVER CLERIC DEATH !

Sokoto is the spiritual home of Nigeria's Muslims. Clashes have broken out in the northern Nigerian city of Sokoto after a high profile Muslim preacher was shot dead.
Members of Sunni and Shia sects have fought a pitched battle with one of the three suspected gunmen beaten to death.
The Sunni preacher was shot on Wednesday night while travelling home by motorbike taxi from taking prayers.
The sultan of Sokoto, the spiritual head of Nigeria's Muslims, said Mallam Umaru Dan-Maishiye, died after being shot in the head. He appealed for calm.
"Do not take the law into your own hands... the security agencies are investigating," Sultan Mohammadu Sa'ad Abubakar said on local radio stations.

Sokoto police spokesman Mohammed Umar Dakingari told the BBC that two suspects were being held in connection with the shooting of the cleric.
There has been regular friction between Sunnis and Shias in northern Nigeria, and civic leaders are meeting on how to calm tensions.
In April, the killing of a militant cleric in the city of Kano led to fighting between Islamist militants and the army.
But the BBC's reporter in Sokoto, Hassan Sahabi Sanyinnawal, says this is the first time that something of this nature has happened in Sokoto.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

MBEKI FILM SCREENED IN SOUTH AFRICA !

SABC denies being biased in favour of Mr Mbeki's government. South Africa's national broadcaster, SABC, has dropped a court action to halt the screenings of a documentary about President Thabo Mbeki.
The latest screening of the documentary then went ahead on Wednesday evening in Johannesburg followed by a discussion.
SABC originally commissioned the film but had not broadcast it on editorial grounds. It now says it will broadcast the film at a future date.
The controversial documentary is called Unauthorised: Thabo Mbeki.
Last year, SABC was accused of being biased in favour of the government - charges it strongly denied.
Despite cancelling the screening twice, SABC rejects accusations that it has been practising self-censorship.
The film has already been screened a few times but was due to be shown more widely later this month.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

MAN QUESTIONED OVER TYCOON 'PLOT' !

Mr Berezovsky says he was warned by sources in Russia and the UK. A man has been questioned in connection with an alleged attempt to assassinate Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky.
Scotland Yard said the man was arrested in central London on 21 June on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.
He was released without charge two days later into the custody of the immigration service.
Police released the information after the exiled Russian billionaire claimed UK intelligence officers had thwarted a plot to kill him.
Mr Berezovsky, 61, a critic of the Russian government, told the BBC earlier on Wednesday that he had been warned about the alleged plot by sources in Russia and Scotland Yard.
The Sun had reported that a Russian hitman had been hired to execute him at a London hotel. Russia's ambassador to the UK said he was not aware of any such plot.

Analysis: Will the spat widen?
Russian media annoyed
Russia-UK disputes

The claims emerged as UK-Russian relations are strained in a row over a suspect in the Alexander Litvinenko murder case.
Mr Berezovsky, who lives in London, told BBC Radio Five Live he was told that "someone who you know will come to Britain, he will try to connect to you and when you meet him, he will just kill you and will not try to hide".
The killer would then say the murder was "just because of business reasons", Mr Berezovsky said.
"And in this case he will get 20 years, he will spend just 10 years in jail, he will be released, his family will be paid, he will be paid and so on," he added.
Mr Berezovsky later said he had been informed of the alleged plot by visiting friends from Russia and then by Scotland Yard three weeks ago. He claims the police advised him to leave the country for a week.
The Sun claims Britain's security services, MI5 and MI6, intercepted intelligence about the plot and detained a man.
Russia's ambassador to the UK, Yuri Fedotov, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there was "nothing that could confirm" the plot.

Russian views on the diplomatic row with the UK.
In pictures

Mr Fedotov later told the BBC that Britain's decision to halt contact with Russia's Federal Security Service would harm its fight against terror.
The Foreign Office would not confirm or deny links
Earlier this week, Britain expelled four Russian diplomats in the escalating row over the murder of ex-KGB agent Mr Litvinenko, who died in London last November.
Moscow has refused to hand over the man suspected of the murder - Andrei Lugovoi, another former KGB agent. Mr Lugovoi denies involvement.

KEY EVENTS IN CASE

1 November 2006: Alexander Litvinenko meets Andrei Lugovoi and another Russian at a London hotel
23 November 2006: Litvinenko dies in a London hospital
24 November 2006: A Litvinenko statement accuses Russian President Vladimir Putin of involvement in his death. Experts say Litvinenko was poisoned
6 December 2006: UK police say they are treating the death as murder
22 May 2007: Lugovoi should be charged with Litvinenko's murder, British prosecutors say
28 May 2007: UK makes formal request for Lugovoi's extradition from Russia

Full timeline of events
Send us your reaction

Russia says it is planning a "targeted and appropriate" response to the expulsions, adding that its constitution prevents it from extraditing its citizens to face trial in another country.
Mr Berezovsky, a Kremlin insider during the rule of Boris Yeltsin and who openly confesses that he is on a mission to bring down President Vladimir Putin by means of a bloodless revolution, blames Mr Putin for the murder of Mr Litvinenko, with whom he was friends.
Mr Berezovsky has survived numerous assassination attempts and has been a wanted man in Russia, charged with fraud and political corruption, since 2001.
Mr Litvinenko died of exposure to radioactive polonium-210 in London in November 2006.
The radioactive isotope used to poison him was found in several places that Mr Lugovoi had visited in London.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

WISH FOR RAIN TO WASH AWAY HOMER !

There is debate about the age of the Cerne Abbas Giant.

Pagans have pledged to perform "rain magic" to wash away a cartoon character painted next to their famous fertility symbol - the Cerne Abbas giant.
A doughnut-brandishing Homer Simpson was painted next to the giant on the hill above Cerne Abbas, Dorset, to promote the new Simpsons film.
Many believe the ancient chalk outline of the naked, sexually aroused giant to be a symbol of ancient spirituality.
Many couples also believe the 180ft carving aids fertility.
The painted Simpsons character has been painted with water-based biodegradable paint which will wash away as soon as it rains.
Ann Bryn-Evans, joint Wessex district manager for The Pagan Federation, said: "We were hoping for some dry weather but I think I have changed my mind.
"We'll be doing some rain magic to bring the rain and wash it away."
She added: "I'm amazed they got permission to do something so ridiculous. It's an area of scientific interest."
'Different and unusual'
It is not the first time the giant has been used to advertise products. He has been used to promote items as diverse as condoms, jeans and bicycles.
Mike Webb, landlord of the New Inn in Cerne Abbas, said his staff were amused by the temporary addition to the village.
"I think it is different and unusual," he said. "We've not heard any complaints here so far, but I'm not sure many of the local people will know who Homer Simpson is."
During World War II, the Cerne giant was disguised to prevent the Germans from using him as an aerial landmark.
Since then he has always been visible, receiving regular grass trimming and a full re-chalking every 25 years.
There is debate among experts about when the giant was created varying from thousands of years ago to as recently as the 17th Century.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

US CAPTURES 'TOP IRAQI INSURGENT' !

US forces say they have arrested a senior member of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the group accused of being behind some of Iraq's deadliest violence.
The man was named as Khaled Mashhadani. He was captured earlier in July in the northern city of Mosul, officials said.
US military officials said he had told interrogators that the group's supposed leader, Omar al-Baghdadi, was a front.
They added Mashhadani was a "conduit" between its real Egypt-born leader in Iraq and top al-Qaeda figures globally.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

WATER FIND 'MAY END DARFUR WAR' !

Getting enough water is a major struggle in Darfur. A huge underground lake has been found in Sudan's Darfur region, scientists say, which they believe could help end the conflict in the arid region.
Some 1,000 wells will be drilled in the region, with the agreement of Sudan's government, the Boston University researchers say.
Analysts say competition for resources between Darfur's Arab nomads and black African farmers is behind the conflict.
More than 200,000 Darfuris have died and 2m fled their homes since 2003.
"Much of the unrest in Darfur and the misery is due to water shortages," said geologist Farouk El-Baz, director of the Boston University Center for Remote Sensing, according to the AP news agency.
"Access to fresh water is essential for refugee survival, will help the peace process, and provides the necessary resources for the much needed economic development in Darfur," he said.
Climate change
The team used radar data to find the ancient lake, which was 30,750 km2 - the size of Lake Erie in the US - the 10th largest lake in the world.

Radar finds water for refugees

A similar discovery was made in Sudan's neighbour Egypt, where wells have been used to irrigate 150,000 acres of farmland, the researchers say.
French researcher Alain Gachet has also been using satellite images to look for new water resources in Darfur.
Last month, the UN Environmental Programme (Unep) said there was little prospect of peace in Darfur unless the issues of environmental destruction were addressed.
It said deserts had increased by an average of 100 km in the last 40 years, while almost 12% of forest cover had been lost in 15 years.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said climate change was partly to blame for the conflict in Darfur in an editorial for US newspaper The Washington Post in June.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

CHINA'S FUTURE DISCUSSED IN SECRET !

By Michael Bristow BBC News, Beijing.

Most decisions will be made well before the congress later this year. Chinese leaders are currently in discussions that will decide the fate of the country over the next five years and beyond.
In debates taking place mostly behind closed doors, they are deciding the shape of the Chinese Communist Party's 17th National Congress.
At the congress gathering, scheduled for later this year, new policies will be unveiled and changes in the party's senior leadership revealed.
Analysts expect these changes will show that President Hu Jintao has strengthened his grip over China's ruling elite.
New line-up
The National Congress gathers together about 2,000 senior party leaders from across the country every five years.
Held in Beijing, it is the most important public event in Chinese politics.
The new line-up for the politburo, the highest decision-making body in China, will emerge at the congress and in meetings held immediately afterwards.
We haven't been told anything. Only people higher up know what's happening
Communist Party member, on the forthcoming congress meeting. "Right now is a crucial period of time. Party leaders are arguing about who's in and who's out," said Professor Zheng Yongnian, of Nottingham University in the UK.
One of the key figures to watch is Li Keqiang, the party secretary for Liaoning Province and a long-time protege of President Hu.
Leadership changes will not be quite as dramatic as they were at the last congress in 2002, when former President Jiang Zemin stepped down as the party's general secretary, paving the way for Hu Jintao to take over as president the following year.
But China's next president - Mr Hu is expected to retire in five years' time - will probably emerge from the rising stars promoted this time round.
In order to make sure his chosen men are given top jobs, Mr Hu has been busy behind the scenes, according to experts.

Mr Hu is expected to make changes to strengthen his grip on power. Last year's sacking of Shanghai's party chief and politburo member Chen Liangyu, following allegations of corruption, was as much about getting rid of a rival as cleaning up politics.
Mr Hu has also been promoting men who have come up through his power base in the Chinese Communist Youth League.
China, much more than in the West, is a nation ruled by men rather than laws, and leaders have to surround themselves with supporters in order to survive.
Key goals
On the policy front, the next five years will see Mr Hu continue along the road he started when he first took over the top job.
He has concentrated on problems of immediate interest to ordinary people, such as health, education and employment.
At a recent keynote speech given at the party's central school, he gave a sneak preview of the themes that will feature in his "political report" at this year's congress.
In front of officials from across the country, Mr Hu said "social harmony" and building a "well-off society" are key goals.

A new generation of leaders could be chosen ahead of this meeting. Making sure everyone benefits from China's unprecedented economic growth has become the main feature of Mr Hu's presidency.
It differs from the approach of his predecessor. President Jiang was more interested in wooing the country's emerging group of affluent business people.
But whatever comes out of this year's party congress, one thing is certain - the Chinese population will have little inkling about what is going on before the big event.
They are told little of the discussions taking place - no-one has even told them exactly when the week-long congress will be held.
The party-run People's Daily could only say last week that it was "slated for [the] coming October".
Even ordinary party members - there are about 70 million of them - know little about what is going on.
"We haven't been told anything," said one, who did not want to be identified. "Only people higher up know what's happening."
Like everyone else across the world, Chinese people will just have to wait and see.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

JAPAN ADMITS GREATER NUCLEAR LEAK !

Experts are examining whether the plant lies on a fault line. A radioactive leak at a major nuclear plant in Japan damaged by an earthquake on Monday was worse than previously thought, the plant's operators say.
Owner Tokyo Electric Power company said 50% more radiation was discharged into the sea, following the magnitude 6.8 quake, than was earlier reported.
But the firm insisted the leak was still well below danger levels.
The mayor of nearby Kashiwazaki City has ordered the plant to remain closed indefinitely.
Hiroshi Aida said the plant could not reopen until its safety had been verified.
Meanwhile, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN's atomic agency, has called on Japan to investigate the incident to "make sure that we learn the necessary lesson from the earthquake".
Exceeded expectations
In a statement, the Tokyo Electric Power company (Tepco) said there had been a mistake calculating the radioactive level of water that leaked into the sea.
It was 50% more radioactive than had been announced, the company said.

"But the corrected radioactivity is also below the legal limits and does not affect the environment," Tepco said.
Despite Tepco's reassurances, the incident has triggered public concern and criticism of the company.
The seven-reactor plant suffered more than 50 malfunctions as a result of Monday's earthquake.
As well as the leak, a small amount of radioactive gas was emitted into the atmosphere.
There was also a fire at an electrical transformer, and a number of drums containing low level nuclear waste came open after falling over.
Tepco President Tsunehisa Katsumata has apologised for the incidents.
"I think we can say the size of the earthquake was beyond our expectations," he said as he visited the plant.
"We regret what happened and will strive to make this a power plant that is safe," he said.
The plant is located close to the epicentre of Monday's earthquake, which killed nine people, injured hundreds and flattened scores of homes.
Officials at Japan's Meteorological Agency said that they were examining whether a fault line could stretch underneath the plant.
"We cannot deny the possibility" the plant sat on a fault, the French news agency AFP quoted the agency's.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

BULGARIA SEEKS HIV MEDICS' RETURN !

The imprisonment of the medics has caused an international outcry. Bulgaria is expected to begin moves to secure the transfer from Libya of six Bulgarian medics convicted of infecting Libyan children with HIV.
Death sentences on the six - five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who holds Bulgarian citizenship - have been commuted to life in prison.
The decision came on Tuesday after the families of the 438 children agreed a compensation deal.
The medics, who were convicted in 2004, maintain their innocence.
Libya and Bulgaria have a bilateral agreement on prisoner exchange.
A Bulgarian judiciary official said diplomats would now start taking all necessary steps to enable the medical workers to travel home.

Case highlights Libyan reform

Their main Libyan defence lawyer, Osman al-Bizant, told the al-Jazeera television network that their deportation would depend on whether there was the possibility of carrying out the punishment in Bulgaria.
But Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin, when asked whether it was possible that the medics would be pardoned after returning home, replied: "All judicial options are real."
The Libyan Foreign Minister, Abdel-Rahman Shalqam, said Tripoli was willing to consider the medics' transfer to Bulgaria.
"In return, improving the conditions of the infected children and their families should be taken into account," he told the Associated Press news agency.
Libya's Supreme Court last week upheld the death sentences, placing the medics' fate with the High Judicial Council.
The council, a semi-political body with the power to commute sentences or issue pardons, ruled that the six should instead receive life sentences.
At the weekend the medics signed a letter of request for pardon and mercy, as well as a document ruling out any further legal action against the Libyan state over the prison time they have so far served.
The compensation deal agreed by the parents of the infected children is reportedly worth $1m (£500,000) per child.
The payout is reportedly coming from an international fund which the Libyan government, the European Union and other organisations are contributing to.
'Poor hygiene'
The medics were convicted of deliberately injecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood. Fifty-six of them have since died.

TRIAL IN DATES
1999: 19 Bulgarian medics and a Palestinian doctor are arrested at a Benghazi hospital after an outbreak of HIV/Aids among children. 13 are later freed
May 2004: Libya convicts and sentences five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor for infecting children with HIV. A Bulgarian doctor is freed
Dec 2005: Libyan Supreme Court overturns the convictions and orders a retrial
Dec 2006: Medics sentenced to death a second time
Feb 2007: Medics appeal to the Libyan Supreme Court
June 2007: Top EU officials hold talks in Libya to try to secure medics' release
11 July 2007: Libya's Supreme Court upholds death sentences.

Profile of the medics
Timeline: Medics trial

The six, who have been in prison since 1999, say they were tortured to confess.
Foreign experts say the infections started before the medics arrived at the hospital, and are more likely to have been a result of poor hygiene.
Bulgaria, its allies in the European Union, and the United States say Libya has used the case to deflect criticism from its run-down health service.
They have also suggested that not freeing the nurses could carry a diplomatic price for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who is seeking to emerge from more than three decades of diplomatic isolation.
The Palestinian doctor has been granted Bulgarian citizenship to allow him to benefit from any transfer deal.

THE UN'S ALL PERSUASIVE ROLE IN AFRICA !

By Martin Plaut BBC Africa analyst.

Is the United Nations re-colonising Africa?

UN peacekeepers have helped rebuild Liberia. Founded at the end of World War II, one of the UN's aim's was to end colonialism, but its presence in the African continent is today so all-pervasive that it is increasingly difficult to resist the suggestion that the process has gone into reverse.
The UN has nearly 50,000 troops attempting to keep the peace in seven African states.
From the 28 soldiers patrolling the lonely sands of the Western Sahara to the 16,593 troops, 728 military observers and 1,036 police in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations now has vast responsibilities across the continent.
Some, like the operations in Liberia or Sierra Leone are managing the consequences of previous disputes.
Others, like the UN troops on the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea, are attempting to prevent a resumption of war.
Expansion
And there are plans for further operations.

World peacekeeping map

Somalia could have a UN force despatched to it. So could the Central African Republic.
And the UN peacekeepers in South Sudan could be joined by a 20,000-strong hybrid UN - African Union force in Darfur.
While the African Union would like to play a major role in resolving all these conflicts it has too few resources to meet such different and pressing needs.
This leaves the international community to pick up the pieces, while African leaders attempt to find political answers to the continent's intractable disputes.
The UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations runs these operations, as well as six of what are termed "political and peacebuilding" missions in Africa.
Some are tiny and obscure. How many people have ever heard of the work of UNOGBIS, the 23-strong mission to Guinea-Bissau, which has been in operation since March 1999?
But the UN is doing far more in Africa than just keep the peace.
Other jobs
Its refugee agency, the UNHCR, looks after nearly 2.5 million Africans.
Some refugee camps have been in existence for years, like those housing nearly half a million people in Tanzania, who are only now gradually returning to DR Congo and Burundi.

The UN steps in when governments fail.
Others, like those in the deserts of eastern Chad housing the women and children of Darfur, are in the news quite regularly.
Food is brought for them by the UN's World Food Programme via the port in Cameroon and then from Niamey all the way across Chad to arrive at the camps along the Sudanese border in the east.
During the rainy season trucks make their way across the Sahara from Libya.
It is an extraordinary logistical operation, at times running the risk of attacks from bandits and rebels and sometimes supplemented by airdrops.
And it is not just Africa's refugees who rely on the UN.
Its children are vaccinated by the World Health Organization. Its crops are assessed and improved by the Food and Agricultural Organisation. Its cities are planned and maintained with the help of UN Habitat.
The list is endless.
Driving round many African cities one is constantly struck by the blue and white of the UN flags and logos. Its white 4 x 4 vehicles are to be found in the most remote corners of the rural areas.
Frequently one is left with the impression that UN officials know at least as much, if not more, about countries than government ministers, many of whom spend more time nursing their political careers than their constituents.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that if Africa is not being re-colonised by the UN, then it is certainly being run at least as much from New York as it is from most of the continent's capitals.
Return to the top of the page

WORLD PEACEKEEPING MAP

United Nations missions
1 Middle East (Untso, Jerusalem)

2 Kashmir (Unmogip)

3 Cyprus (Unficyp)

4 Golan Heights (Undof)

5 Lebanon (Unifil)

6 Western Sahara (Minurso)

7 DR Congo (Monuc)
8 Ethiopia/Eritrea (Unmee)

9 Liberia (Unmil)

10 Ivory Coast (Unoci)

11 Haiti (Minustah)

12 Sudan (Unmis)

13 Sierra Leone (Uniosil)

14 Burundi (Binub)
Mixed

15 Afghanistan (Unama and Nato-led Isaf)

16 Kosovo (Unmik and Nato-led K-For)

17 East Timor (Unmit and Australian-led force)

18 Georgia (Unomig and Russian-led CIS force)Non-UN

19 Darfur (African Union force)

20 Somalia (African Union force)

21 Sinai Peninsula (mainly US force)

22 Bosnia (EU - Eufor)

23 Tajikistan (Russian-led CIS border force)

24 Trans-Dniester (Russian force)

BBC NEWS REPORT.

FIREWORKS FROM GALLOWAY !

Analysis By Nick Assinder, Political correspondent, BBC News website.

Mr Galloway was contemptuous of those judging him. Defiant, dismissive and contemptuous - a fired-up George Galloway was all these as he rejected the punishment delivered to him by Parliament's standards watchdog.
In characteristic style, the anti-war Respect MP in effect refused to recognise the court of "Sir Humphrey, or Sir Bufton or Sir Tufton or whatever he is called".
Flashing his anger and lack of respect for the individuals who censured him and the institution of which he is a member, he said it was probably no surprise a pro-war parliament had attacked the leader of the anti-war party.
The standards committee had criticised him for "concealing the true source of Iraqi funding" to a charity he set up and failing to co-operate with the parliamentary commissioner for standards.
But, standing on the green opposite the Palace of Westminster, the MP gestured behind him to thunder: "Those behind me are the last people on earth who have the right to criticise anyone for the way they fund a political campaign."
Donors to parties sitting in Parliament had been shown to be "convicted fraudsters, thieves and a even a convicted rapist".
He was, he said, not going to stand there as a punchbag. He would be fighting back.
War criminal
That fight back will come in a Commons debate on the report during which, he warned or promised, depending on your take, he intended to speak "for a long time".
And if anyone can do it, George Galloway can. Book your seats now for the statement which he said had no time limit on it.
He would be putting the war on trial and highlighting the irony of the same people who had given a standing ovation to a war criminal (Tony Blair) then censuring him, the man who had always warned against it.
They should be giving him a medal for his opposition to the war on Iraq, not attacking him, he declared.
It was classic, gripping Galloway and promised a riveting Commons performance to compare with the roasting he gave US politicians when he appeared before a senate committee two years ago.
People's verdict
If he is nothing else, this controversial, much-criticised MP is a performer who gives great value for money.
Needless to say, many will greet his performance with a wry smile and claim that, like others before it, it was just that - theatre designed to obscure fact with rhetoric and declamation.
He has few admirers in the Commons and he will certainly see his suspension confirmed by MPs.
He does not care, indeed he is bound to use the ensuing publicity to argue for his cause.
He only cares about "the verdict of the people" and they, he suggested, were behind him.
He was more in touch with ordinary voters than those sitting in Westminster, and the word on the lips of most of those voters when considering their elected representatives was "contempt".
He may be wrong, and his critics right. But in the current political climate - the one Gordon Brown insists he is determined to change - it is a message many will hear with some sympathy.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

NUCLEAR SAFETY FEARS AFTER QUAKE!

The Kashiwazaki nuclear power is closed for further inspections. Officials at a Japanese nuclear power plant have reported 50 malfunctions caused by Monday's strong earthquake near the town of Kashiwazaki.
In addition to a fire, there were leaks of radioactive water and gas and drums containing nuclear waste burst open.
The company running the plant has said none of the leaks are harmful to people or the environment.
But the industry's safety is being questioned and PM Shinzo Abe said the problems were not reported soon enough.
Mr Abe said "nuclear power plants can only be operated with the trust of the people".
"For this, if something happens they need to report on it thoroughly and quickly," he told reporters in Tokyo.
Army help
The magnitude 6.8 earthquake killed nine people and flattened hundreds of homes in the coastal town of Kashiwazaki in Niigata prefecture.
Large parts of Kashiwazaki remain without power and water and about 10,000 people are spending a second night in evacuation centres.
"I can't sleep here because I can't feel at ease, because this is different from home," Katsuro Iida, 73, told Reuters news agency.
Fresh water has been delivered to the town by lorry and soldiers are helping prepare food at the evacuation centres.
Safety concerns
Although four of the seven reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant that were operating when the quake hit were shut down automatically, it is now emerging that there were a series of malfunctions.
A small fire broke out at an electrical transformer at the power plant sending black clouds of smoke into the sky.
Officials from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said on Monday that 1,200 litres of water containing small amounts of radioactive material had leaked and been diverted into the sea.

In pictures: Quake aftermath

On Tuesday, Tepco said 100 barrels containing radioactive waste had been knocked over and burst open and that major exhaust pipes had been knocked out of place.
Small amounts of gas containing radioactive cobalt-60 and chromium-51 were emitted into the atmosphere.
"They raised the alert too late," said Mr Abe. "I have sent stern instructions that such alerts must be raised seriously and swiftly."
Officials at the plant are keeping all seven of its reactors closed while further inspections are carried out.
There have long been concerns about the safety of Japan's nuclear power plants, which many fear are vulnerable in earthquakes.
The country is heavily reliant on the industry - it provides about a third of Japan's electricity needs.
The government requires nuclear reactors to be able to withstand earthquakes of up to magnitude 6.5 - weaker than Monday's quake.
Other businesses are also beginning to count the cost of the earthquake.
Riken Corp, which makes car parts for companies such as Honda and Toyota, says its is unsure when it will be able to resume production at its factory in Kashiwazaki after the quake injured some of its employees and damaged equipment.
Fuji Xerox has also had to halt production at its Kashiwazaki plant, which mainly assembles printers, because it is without power and there has been some damage to the building.

BBC NEWS REPORT.

LEGENDS MEET MANDELA !

Pele is one of 50 stars who will honour Nelson Mandela's birthday. Three-time African Footballer of the Year Samuel Eto'o of Cameroon and Brazilian great Pele delivered a special birthday gift to Nelson Mandela.
The two players are among 50 past and present international stars taking part in a football match - "90 Minutes for Mandela" - to mark the former South African president's 89th birthday on Wednesday.
A smiling Mandela received an official shirt for the match with his name and number 89 on the back.
"I am deeply honoured to receive this tribute ... but it must always be remembered that I was one of many who fought for freedom from tyranny and racism," Mandela said.
The match, to be played in Cape Town, will pit an Africa side against a rest of the world team.
"I have met a lot of great personalities in my life but Nelson Mandela is an extraordinary person," Pele said.
"I am really touched and honoured to lead the Rest of the World team in his birthday match. I am a big admirer of what this man has achieved in his life."
Mandela praised football's world governing body, Fifa, for honouring the Makana Football Association, which was formed by political prisoners on R