Base US attacked in Afghanistan

Two shells have struck the main US base in Afghanistan, killing two soldiers, US and Afghan officials say.
A US military spokeswoman said that six other people had been wounded by the mortar fire, including four military personnel and two civilians.
The Bagram base is just 50km from the capital, Kabul.
The attack occurred in the early hours of Sunday. The nationalities of the dead have not been released.
A Nato spokesman said the mortar rounds landed inside the base. It is the first time US soldiers have been killed by hostile fire inside the base since troops came to Afghanistan in 2001 to overthrow the country's Taliban government.
tv s correspondent in Kabul, David Chater, reported: "It could have been long-range mortars. There are so many targets there it is not surprising there were these deaths and injuries.
"The base is surrounded by a high mountain range and flat desert. There are plenty of areas where whoever launched this attack could have launched the rocket fire or mortars from.
"But it's very rare to have these kind of attacks. We don't know yet who has carried it out.
"In a way it's saying to the US forces and international troops 'we can reach you wherever you are, even in your most heavily defended base'."
Afghan elections
Campaigning began last Tuesday in Afghanistan's presidential election, due to be held on August 20.
Forty-one candidates are standing for the five-year term, including the incumbent president Hamid Karzai.
Chater reported that there had been a rise in violence since the official launch of campaigning.
"Just about all around Afghanistan we are getting reports of Taliban attacks. They are reaching the highest level we have seen since the invasion in 2001, so this is a great concern for the election."

The Lung-on-a-chip could replace countless lab rats

"MICROLUNGS" grown from human tissue might one day help to replace the vast numbers of rats used to check the safety of drugs, cosmetics and other chemicals. The work is part of a growing drive to develop toxicology tests based on human cells as a replacement for animal testing.
Such efforts are made partly for ethical concerns, and partly because animal testing is so time-consuming and expensive. For example, the European Union's REACH regulations require about 30,000 chemicals to be tested for toxicity over the next decade. Yet testing the effects of inhaling a single dose of a particular chemical typically requires more than 200 rats, while testing the chronic effects of breathing it in over time can take more than 3000. Meanwhile the EU Cosmetics Directive - which covers items from deodorants and perfume to air-fresheners - seeks to ban all tests of cosmetics on animals by 2013.
The obvious alternative is to test chemicals on human cells grown in the lab. The difficulty, however, lies in enticing those cells to form complex tissue that responds as our organs do.
Cell biologist Kelly BéruBé at the University of Cardiff, UK, has managed to grow human lung cells into flat differentiated layers that resemble the inner lining of the lungs. Her method is already being used for drug testing by companies such as Unilever and AstraZeneca. But when allowed to grow in three dimensions, as in the body, cells arrange themselves very differently, and this can change how they respond to chemical stimuli. "We need to move from something flat to 3D structures," says BéruBé.
A popular approach is to seed plastic scaffolds with stem cells to grow artificial "organs", but BéruBé and her colleagues have found an alternative which could allow thousands of drugs to be screened at once.
Instead of large scaffolds, BéruBé has grown lung cells on the surface of plastic spheres half a millimetre in diameter (see image), essentially producing a tiny inside-out lung around each bead (see image). The ultimate aim is to develop a chip on which thousands of microlungs can be grown then tested simultaneously, she told the Cheltenham Festival of Science in the UK last week

African farms becoming too hot to handle

African farmers will soon face growing seasons hotter than any in their experience. To cope with this rapid climate change, they – and the plant breeders who supply their crops – will need to make big changes, and soon.
Agricultural experts have predicted for some time that farmers are likely to face problems as climates become hotter and drier than they are today. Indeed, some farmers in South Africa are already reporting difficulties (pdf).
To see how fast, and how broadly, this will strike, Marshall Burke, an agricultural economist at Stanford University, and colleagues, averaged the results from 18 global climate models to forecast likely temperature and rainfall conditions in 2025, 2050 and 2075 in regions of Africa where maize, millet and sorghum are grown today. Then, assuming that year-to-year variability would remain the same as today – perhaps a conservative assumption – they asked how much these future climates would overlap with existing climates.
They found that farmers in Africa will face average temperatures outside the current range of experience in their locality in 42% of years by 2025 – and 97% by 2075. Since temperature strongly affects crop yields, farmers will need to find new varieties adapted to these higher temperatures, Burke says. Future rainfall showed more overlap with current conditions, largely because rainfall already varies more from year to year.
Maize trap
The researchers then looked to see whether the warmer temperatures forecast for 2050 can be found anywhere in Africa today. If so, they reasoned, these analogous conditions might yield crop varieties already adapted for the future conditions. A few lucky countries, such as Tanzania, Ethiopia and South Africa, have diverse enough climates today that they can find climates analogous to the potential conditions of 2050 within their own borders today, Burke's team found.
At the opposite extreme, Sahelian countries such as Chad, Mali and Niger may have nowhere to turn. "By 2050, they're going to be hotter than any current growing season in any maize country in the world," says Burke. Most countries, however, will be able to find analogous climates in other countries today.
That would be good news, except that plant breeders have done very little collecting of locally adapted varieties from some of the most likely analog countries, such as Cameroon, Sudan and Nigeria, Burke's team found. To cope with future climates, genetic prospectors must sample much more of the genetic diversity of crops in these countries – and those nations must then do a better job of sharing these genetic resources, says Burke.
"We've got to do something serious about agriculture and we've got to start now," agrees Gerald Nelson, an agricultural economist who heads research on agriculture and climate change at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC.

PANDA LOVE CALLS COULD HELP CONSERVATION EFFORTS

When a female giant panda's thoughts briefly turn to love each year, her ears perk up. The solitary animals can discern the love calls of different suitors, new research suggests.

This skill could help females, who are fertile only two or three days out of the year, decide which males to mate with, says Ben Charlton, a biologist at Zoo Atlanta, who led the new study. Gaining a better understanding of how females pick their mates might, in turn, help zoos breed the notoriously picky and endangered animals.
Previous research suggested that scent plays a critical role in female choice. But the male's bleat may also be involved in panda mating rituals, since males produce them far more frequently during breeding season and females often respond back with chirps of their own

Mystery males

Working with captive animals at China's Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda, Charlton's team played audio recordings of bleats of different males to females.
To determine whether females could tell one bleat from another, Charlton played six consecutive calls from one male, followed by the call of a second male, then another call from the first male.
After each successive call, females tended to spend less and less time looking for the male suitor. But when a different male's call blared out, females' ears perked up and they spent significantly more time looking toward an audio speaker 20 metres away, compared to the previous call. Critically, a repeat of the first panda's call again elicited less interest.
Because females showed renewed interest in the novel bleat, this indicates that females could tell the difference between the calls of two males, Charlton says.
The pitch the calls, however, didn't seem to make a difference for female pandas. When Charlton digitally modified the bleats to the same pitch, females still perked up to the new sound. Not so, when Charlton eliminated another vocal feature called amplitude modulation, where pandas rapidly raise and lower the volume of their bleats, producing a whinnying sound.

Staying in touch

Charlton hasn't yet proven that females use these bleats to choose their mate, but showing that females can tell one bleat from another is a first step.
In anticipation of a female's fleeting fertility, males will often trail a single female for the preceding month, bleating all the while. The ability to discriminate calls could help females avoid Johnny-come-latelys who haven't paid their dues, Charlton says. "I think there's also female preference for more familiar males because they are likely to be of higher quality given that they have out-competed other males."
Mimicking this familiarity in zoos could also encourage unwilling pairs of pandas to mate, Charlton says. After researchers discovered that scent plays an important role in panda mating, zoos began exposing pandas to the smells of their partners-to-be.

Soothing sound

Devra Kleiman, a behavioural ecologist who has worked with the pandas at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, DC, says "I firmly believe that pandas can distinguish individuals they know."
After a series of unsuccessful matings between the zoo's first pandas, a female named Ling-Ling and a male named Hsing-Hsing, the zoo brought in another male from London to mate with Ling-Ling, Kleiman recalls. "They got into a horrible fight and he really injured her seriously. The next day she was almost in a catatonic state."
Kleiman then played Ling-Ling a recording of Hsing-Hsing's bleat. "She just started bleating in response," Kleiman says. "I was astounded."

Allen Stanford charged over $8bn fraud

THE billionaire Allen Stanford has been charged with fraud and obstruction over what US prosecutors say was an $8 billion scheme to defraud investors.
Stanford, three executives from his Antigua bank and an Antigua regulator are set to appear a Virginia court later on Friday, the US Justice Department said.
The 59-year-old, who denies any wrongdoing, had surrendered to FBI agents in the US state of Virginia on Thursday.
The indictment charges Stanford and other executives at Stanford Financial Group of being responsible for "the movement of millions of dollars of fraudulently obtained investors' funds from and among bank accounts".
Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said on Friday the indictments were in response to the alleged "outsized greed" that had robbed millions of people of their savings and created "part of a culture that led us to parts of the economic disaster that we've seen in this country".
However Dick DeGuerin, Stanford's lawyer, said his client was "confident that a fair jury will find him not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing."
'Massive Ponzi scheme'
US authorities allege in the indictment that the firm would give money to some investors "to perpetuate the false appearance that (Stanford's business) was financially sound."
The charges related to an alleged scam dating back to September 1999 which continued until about February 17 this year, when Stanford's banking empire collapsed.
A grand jury in Houston, Texas has been investigating Stanford Financial Group, whose headquarters in the city were raided in February by federal authorities when the sprawling financial empire collapsed.
The company's assets were also frozen, along with the flamboyant cricket mogul's personal accounts.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged that Stanford operated a "massive Ponzi scheme" by paying investors returns on deposit certificates using money from other investors rather than any investment gains.

China's economic growth this year

World Bank has said China's economic growth this year may be stronger than previously expected.The bank raised its growth forecast from 6.5 per cent to 7.2 per cent on Thursday, crediting China's stimulus-driven investment boom.
But it also cautioned that it was too soon to say whether a sustained recovery was on the way.
Beijing's four trillion yuan ($586bn) stimulus programme, that pumps money into the economy mostly through higher public works spending, will "strongly support growth", the bank said in a quarterly report.
"Growth in China should remain respectable this year and next, although it is too early to say a robust, sustained recovery is on the way,'' Ardo Hansson, the bank's lead economist for China, said.
China's economy grew 6.1 per cent in the first quarter from the same time last year, below the government's 2009 target of eight per cent and far from 2007's explosive 13 per cent, but the strongest rate of any major country.
Limits to growth
But the bank cautioned that there was a limit to how much China could buck global trends through stimulus spending while exports are weak. "There are limits to how much and how long China's growth can diverge from global growth based on government-influenced spending," the bank report said.
It forecast that trade and private investment would remain weak, consumption would slow and a fully-fledged recovery would have to wait for the global economy and demand for exports to rebound.
Thursday was the first time the bank has raised its outlook for China since November, when it slashed its 2009 forecast from 9.2 per cent to 7.5 per cent. The bank cut that again in March to 6.5 per cent.
The bank predicted growth in 2010 would rise to 7.7 per cent

Barack Obama unveils finance reform plans

Obama, the US president, has revealed landmark new plans for wide-ranging financial regulation reforms including the creation of a national bank regulator and wider powers for the US Federal Reserve.
The plans, revealed at a news conference on Wednesday, aim to combat a US economic recession sparked by the nation's sub-prime mortage crisis and the collapse of several high profile US banks.
"My administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the financial regulatory system, a transformation on a scale not seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression," Obama said.
"We did not choose how this crisis began. But we do have a choice in the legacy this crisis leaves behind."
Timothy Geithner, the US treasury secretary, members of congress, regulators and representatives from the financial industry and consumer groups also attended the event.
Extending powers
The plans propose a Financial Services Oversight Council, led by the treasury department, to oversee supervision of the financial system.
Obama also called for the establishment of an independent consumer financial products watchdog agency, and for requiring financial firms to hold more capital so they can better survive tough times.

The plans would impose more transparency and accountability for more exotic financial markets that in recent years expanded far beyond the government's ability to keep track of them.
The government would also be given the power to seize and dismantle large, troubled companies that are not banks, much as the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation does at present.
The administration will also urge curbing markets for securitised debt and over-the-counter derivatives, as well as more regulation of money market mutual funds, credit rating agencies and hedge funds.
There are also plans to urge changes in corporate governance that could give shareholders more power to restrain executive compensation.
The US Office of Thrift Supervision - a federal bank regulator and superviser - will be abolished under the reform proposals, US officials also said.
The agency was heavily criticised following the near collapse of insurance AIG, the US insurance giant, which was bailed out by the government for $180bn; the failure of Washington Mutual, the biggest bank to fail in US history; and the collapse of investment banking giant Lehman Brothers last September

'Cleaning up'
Following the announcement the proposals will be debated in US congress.
Already committees of both the senate and the House of Representatives have scheduled more than a dozen hearings on regulatory reform between now and mid-July.
Republicans in the House, meanwhile, have already offered their own rival plan.
Obama earlier rejected criticism that the proposals meant excessive government interference in the business world, saying he would still see a "relatively light touch".
"[It is] puzzling to hear the standard conservative critique of what we're doing, when essentially every step we're taking involves cleaning up the mess that we found when we arrived here at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue [the White House]," he told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

THE F1 teams form breakaway series

In a massive blow to Max Mosley and the FIA, Formula One's biggest teams have begun preparations for a breakaway series after failing to resolve their dispute with motor sport's governing body over financial constraints.
The Formula One Teams' Association (Fota) announced it would not compromise on the quality of the series by signing up unconditionally for the 2010 F1 season under the FIA's radical new plans for cost-cutting.
Fota also criticised the FIA's "uncompromising'' stance and attempts, along with the commercial rights holder, to divide its member teams.
Drastic action
FIA president Max Mosley was insistent on introducing a voluntary $60 million budget cap for teams to curtail a "financial arms race'' in F1.
Those that don't agree to the cap would have more technical restrictions, something Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo had called "fundamentally unfair.''
Now the Italian team, which has competed in every F1 race since 1950, along with championship leader Brawn GP, McLaren, Renault, Toyota, BMW Sauber, Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso are set to be lost from F1 after Fota said it could not agree to the FIA's conditions.
"The teams cannot continue to compromise on the fundamental values of the sport and have declined to alter their original conditional entries to the 2010 world championship,'' Fota said after a meeting near Silverstone ahead of Sunday's British Grand Prix. "These teams, therefore, have no alternative other than to commence the preparation for a new championship which reflects the values of its participants and partners.
"This series will have transparent governance, one set of regulations, encourage more entrants and listen to the wishes of the fans, including offering lower prices for spectators worldwide, partners and other important stakeholders. "The major drivers, stars, brands, sponsors, promoters and companies historically associated with the highest level of motorsport will all feature in this new series.''
Negotiation efforts
Fota said its efforts to remain part of Mosley's series had been hampered by the FIA's approach to negotiations.
"Following these efforts, all the teams have confirmed to the FIA and the commercial rights holder that they are willing to commit until the end of 2012,'' Fota said.

The FIA and the commercial rights holder have campaigned to divide Fota. The wishes of the majority of the teams are ignored.
"Furthermore, tens of millions of dollars have been withheld from many teams by the commercial rights holder, going back as far as 2006.
"Despite this, and the uncompromising environment, Fota has genuinely sought compromise.''
Cost cutting
Amid the global economic downturn, Fota said it has already embarked on substantial cost-cutting.
The independent Brawn GP team only rose from the ashes of Honda after the Japanese automaker pulled out of F1 late last year as it was forced to focus on its core business. Yet now Brawn's Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello occupy the top two spots in the drivers' standings going into Sunday's race.
"Fota is proud that it has achieved the most substantial measures to reduce costs in the history of our sport,'' the statement said. "In particular, the manufacturer teams have provided assistance to the independent teams, a number of which would probably not be in the sport today without the Fota initiatives. "The Fota teams have further agreed upon a substantial voluntary cost reduction that provides a sustainable model for the future.''
The drivers had already been preparing for radical developments to emerge from Thursday's Fota talks.
Two-time world champion Fernando Alonso made it clear in the paddock on Thursday that he would leave F1 if his Renault team pulled out of F1.
"For me the new Formula One would be unattractive, with the small teams and no drivers,'' Alonso said. "We want to compete with the best teams in the world, the maximum technology: We all want to compete with the best drivers.
"If this is not what Formula One is about next year, then it will be another category with that. I won't retire, I will drive for another championship.''

Egypt stun Italy in Confed Cup

It was a magical night in Johannesburg for Egypt as they scored their greatest ever victory with a thoroughly deserved 1-0 win over world champions Italy who had never previously lost to an African team.
The shock result means Group B in the Confederations Cup hangs in the balance with all four teams still able to progress to next week's semi-finals.
Mohamed Hommos's goal five minutes before half-time clinched the first points of the tournament for the African champions, who narrowly lost 4-3 to Brazil in their opening game.
Most of the Egyptians and coach Hassan Shehata shed tears of joy at the final whistle as they became the first African side in 15 attempts to beat the Italians.
Key second half saves from veteran goalkeeper Essam Al Hadari, who had an inspired match, kept the Italians at bay while Vincenzo Iaquinta hit the crossbar with just minutes remaining as Egypt weathered a late onslaught.
Dream night
"All the teams today are very good. You always have to be at your best," said Italy coach Marcello Lippi. "We tried some different things. It didn't go very well.
"We didn't do the things we'd prepared and wanted to do. We played a bad first half. "We did very well in the second. Their keeper made three or four very difficult saves."
Brazil, who beat the United States in Pretoria earlier on Thursday, lead the standings with six points while Italy and Egypt have three.
Brazil and Italy meet in Pretoria on Sunday while the Egyptians play the Americans, who have yet to pick up a point, in Rustenburg at the same time.
Despite losing both games the US still have a remote chance of getting through to the last four.
Lippi made five changes to the team that started against the US on Monday, with the return of fit-again captain Fabio Cannavaro, winning his 124th cap - two short of Paolo Maldini's all-time Italian record of 126.
Cannavaro, typically, added steel to the Italian defence, while Giuseppe Rossi, who came on as a substitute and scored twice against the US, added youthful zest to the attack.
Both teams enjoyed plenty of possession in their first meeting since Italy beat Egypt 5-1 in a World Cup qualifier 55 years ago, but it was a still a real surprise when the Egyptians took the lead five minutes before the break.

Heading home
Italy only had themselves to blame, leaving Hommos unmarked to score with a powerful header from Mohamed Aboutrika's perfect inswinging corner.
The Italians had also trailed the US 1-0 at the break in their opening match, before coming back strongly to win.
But Egypt held their nerve and their ground despite Italy bringing in attacking reinforcements Luca Toni, Simone Pepe and Riccardo Montolivo in the second half.
They might have known it was not to be their night when Al Hadari made two fine stops in two minutes in the first half from Iaquinta after 24 minutes and Rossi, who forced the keeper into another fine save when he palmed the ball over the bar.
Egypt, despite winning only once in their last five matches and getting off to a poor start in their final World Cup qualifying group, never looked overawed by the Italians.
Mohamed Shawky and Sayed Moawad gave as good as they got in the midfield battle for supremacy, with Italy's Gennaro Gattuso, De Rossi and Andrea Pirlo battling to cope with the inventiveness of the African champions' approach play.
Both teams threatened after the break, and Al Hadari made another excellent save from Montolivo after 74 minutes to keep Egypt in the lead.
Iaquinta almost equalised for Italy five minutes from time, only to see his long range curling shot hit the bar and Italy's hopes of winning the game bounce away with it.

Policeman killed in Basque blast

A bomb blast that killed a Spanish policeman in the Basque Country town of Arrigorriaga, near Bilbao, has been blamed by officials on Eta, the Basque separatist group.
A regional police spokesman named the victim as Eduardo Pulles Garcia, a 49-year-old inspector, whose car exploded when he started it in a car park at about 9am [0700 GMT] on Friday.
A witness quoted by local media said the trapped officer pleaded for help as the flames engulfed him before he was overcome.
There was no immediate claim for responsibility but Patxi Lopez, the head of the regional Basque government, pointed the finger at Eta in remarks to the Basque parliament in Vitoria, the regional capital.
'Dastardly' act
Lopez said: "In these difficult and trying times, I wish to express to the family of the deceased policeman our affection and that of the majority of Basque society which no longer tolerates the murderous and dastardly Eta."
Deputies observed a minute's silence in the parliament.
If confirmed, it would be the first deadly attack by Eta since December and its first action since regional elections on March 1 ousted a moderate nationalist Basque government in favour of the Socialists.
Arrogorriaga municipal authorities called a protest gathering against the attack for later in the day while Lopez called for a mass demonstration for Saturday evening in Bilbao.
Lopez said protestors should "utter a new cry from the Basque Country against Eta and in favour of peace and freedom".
"We are going to finish with them by applying all the force of the rule of law. They have shown us the way of grief, we will show them the way to prison," he said.
Unlike his predecessor, Juan Jose Ibarretxe of the Basque Nationalist Party, Lopez rejects any negotiations with Eta, who are blamed for the deaths of 825 people in its 40-year campaign to carve a Basque homeland out of northern Spain and southwestern France.

THE US boosts defences against N Korea

US defence secretary says steps are being taken to protect against a possible North Korean missile launch across the Pacific.
Robert Gates said on Thursday that the US had positioned more missile defences around the state of Hawaii.
The news comes as US officials also said they were monitoring a North Korean ship for the first time under new United Nations sanctions imposed after its nuclear test and missile launches last month.
Gates told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that he had sent the military's ground-based mobile missile system to Hawaii, and positioned a radar system nearby following "some concerns" of a new test.
"Well, we are obviously watching the situation in the North with respect to missile launches very closely and we do have some concerns if they were to launch a missile to the west in the direction of Hawaii," he said.
US and Japanese sources have said that North Korea could fire its most advanced ballistic missile towards Hawaii around the July 4 Independence day holiday in the US.
Tensions on the Korean peninsula have been rising after the North conducted a nuclear test and several missile tests in May.
It has also recently warned ships to stay away from waters off its eastern city of Wonsan for the remainder of June, according to a Japan coast guard spokesman.
Ship being tracked
Meanwhile US officials said a North Korean-based vessel called the Kang Nam was being monitored as "a subject of interest" after leaving a North Korean port on Wednesday.
Officials say they think the cargo vessel is carrying weapons, with media reports saying the ship appeared to be heading for Singapore.
The ship, which may be carrying illicit weapons, was in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of China on Thursday, US officials told the Associated Press news agency.
The UN Security Council earlier this month voted in favour of imposing further sanctions following the May nuclear test, including banning weapons exports from North Korea and most arms imports into the country.
It also authorised UN member states to inspect North Korean sea, air and land cargo, allowing them to seize and destroy shipped goods that violate the sanctions.
North Korea responded to the latest UN sanctions by announcing it would start a uranium enrichment programme, which experts said could give it a second route to an atomic bomb, and that it would weaponise all its plutonium.
Analysts say the North's recent moves are aimed at rallying support domestically for Kim Jong-il, its 67-year-old leader, who appears to be laying the foundation for his youngest son to take over.

Khamenei: Vote protests must end

Iran's supreme leader,Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,has backed the outcome of the country's presidential elections and warned protests against it must stop.
"Street actions are being done to put pressure on leaders, but we will not bow in front of them," he said in a sermon during Friday prayers at Tehran University.
"I want to tell everyone these [protests] must finish."
He said that any doubts concerning the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the president after the June 12 election would be investigated through legal channels.
If the supporters of defeated candidates fail to halt the protests "they will be responsible for its consequences, and consequences of any chaos," he said.
The speech was a rare public address by Khamenei, who usually only speaks in public at the end of Ramadan and the anniversary of the Iranian revolution, which brought the theocracy to power

Anger over UK probe into Iraq war

Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, has been accused of staging a cover-up after he ruled that an inquiry into the UK's involvement in the US-led invasion of Iraq would be held in private.
Nick Clegg, the leader of the opposition Liberal Democrat party, said on Monday the war had been the "biggest foreign policy mistake this country has made in generations" and that Brown was "covering up the path" that led to it.
Addressing the country's lower house of parliament, Brown earlier announced the investigation would "unprecedented" and "fully independent".
He also said it would would take a year to complete - taking it beyond the date the prime minister must hold a general election.
Public opinion 'ignored'
There had been increasing pressure from the public, opposition politicians and members of the ruling Labour party for an investigation into the war which was launched in March 2003.
Many politicians and some relatives of UK soldiers killed in Iraq had called for the inquiry to take place in public.
Lindsey German, from the Stop the War Coalition which protested against the war, told Al Jazeera: "There is no reason this shouldn't be a public inquiry.
"It's carried out by the privy council which is part of the establishment and therefore won't be genuinely independent of the government.
"We have to have an inquiry which asks what Tony Blair and George Bush discussed a year before they took us to war when they met at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
She said people needed to know "why they drew up a dossier that turned out to be false, as there were no weapons of mass destruction [and] why Tony Blair thought it permissable to ignore British public opinion which demonstrated on a mass scale against this war."
'Lessons learned'
Rose Gentle, whose 19-year-old son Gordon was killed serving in Iraq in 2004, said: "My family and most of the families who lost loved ones just want a simple answer to a simple question - why did we go in to Iraq in the first place?''

David Cameron, the leader of the main opposition Conservative Party, said some of the evidence should be held in public and that "if mistakes were made, we need to know who made them and why they were made".
The investigation will be chaired by Sir John Chilcot, 70, a former permanent under-secretary of state at the Northern Ireland Office.
Chilcot has been chairman of Britain's Police Federation since 2001 and sat on the Butler inquiry, which reported into the intelligence which the UK government had about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.
Brown, who cited national security issue for not holding the investigation in public, said: "The primary objective of the committee will be to identify lessons learned.
Unpopular war
"The committee will not set out to apportion blame or consider issues of civil or criminal liability.
"It [the inquiry] will consider the period from summer 2001 before military operations began in March 2003 and our subsequent involvement in Iraq right until the end of July this year."
The war was deeply unpopular in Britain, prompting some of the country's largest-ever protest marches, including a rally which drew an estimated two million demonstrators onto the streets of central London.
Tony Blair, who was prime Minister at the time, was badly tarnished by his decision to join the war and widely lampooned as being a "poodle" of George Bush, the then-US president.
A total of 179 British military personnel have died since March 2003 while serving in Iraq.

Swine flu kills in europe

first death from H1N1 flu has recorded in europe with Scottish health officials saying a patient with the disease had died.The news on Sunday comes just days after the World Health Organisation labelled the outbreak a pandemic.
"The patient had underlying health conditions," Scotland's health ministry said on Sunday, but declined to give further details.
Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish health minister, said the risk to the public remained low.
"Tragic though today's death is, I would like to emphasise that the vast majority of those who have H1N1 are suffering from relatively mild symptoms," she said.
Scotland has confirmed 498 H1N1 cases out of a British total of 1,261 - the highest in Europe.
"Long-term battle"
The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared an influenza pandemic on Thursday and advised governments to prepare for a long-term battle against the virus.
The WHO said last week that the virus has not become any more lethal, but is now unstoppable with health authorities expecting to see more cases and deaths worldwide.

However, H1N1 appears to be a relatively mild virus, and most people who have contracted it have not need treatment to get better.
About half the people who have died from the flu virus have had other health conditions including pregnancy, obesity, diabetes, or asthma.
Hugh Pennington, a bacteriologist at Aberdeen University in Scotland, said the underlying conditions were likely to have been a "significant factor'' in the death in Scotland because they raise the odds that the patient will have difficulties.
"It makes it more likely that they will get the serious form of the virus in the first place,'' he said.
"If your lungs are already only working at half capacity when the virus kicks in and takes half of what is left, you will be left teetering on the edge.''
Pennington said that while the death was unfortunate, it was "quite unremarkable'' given the number of reported cases and compared favorably to ordinary seasonal flu.
Most of the global flu deaths have occurred in Mexico, where the virus was first detected, while the United States has the highest number of cases with more than 13,000 people infected.

China should not count on a turnaround of external demand to bring about its recovery"

Foreign investment in China has fallen sharply in the first five months of the year, the government has said amid warnings that the economy was still some way off from recovery.
The Chinese commerce ministry said on Monday that the $34.05bn in foreign direct investment (FDI) China had drawn was 20.4 per cent less than in the same period last year.
In May, China attracted $6.38bn in FDI, down 17.8 per cent from a year earlier and the eighth straight month that FDI inflows had fallen year-on-year.
But the drop was less steep than in April, when it fell 22.5 per cent from a year earlier.
China attracted a record $92.4bn in non-financial FDI in 2008, an increase of 23.6 per cent from 2007.
Inflows surged in the years after the country joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001, but have weakened in recent months as the global economic slowdown has hit.
No rapid recovery
The latest data comes as an influential Chinese economist predicted that the economy will not experience a rapid recovery because it will take time to find a new growth engine to replace sagging exports.

"China should not count on a turnaround of external demand to bring about its recovery," Li Yang, a former adviser to the People's Bank of China, China's central bank, was quoted by the Shanghai Securities News as saying on Monday.
Li, the director of the finance institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that he expected the world economy to take five years to get over the recession completely.
He also said he expected China's recovery to be W-shaped, meaning that growth would falter once current fiscal and monetary stimulus wears off, before regaining momentum.
Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, also struck a note of caution over the weekend, restating his government's view that the foundation for economic recovery was not solid.
Speaking in Hunan province, Wen said Beijing would stick to its relaxed monetary stance and fully implement its 4 trillion yuan ($585bn) fiscal stimulus.
He said that the government would beef up the stimulus package if needed, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The Authenticity and Modernity Party wins Morocco local polls

New party led by a politician close to the monarchy has won the most seats in Morocco’s local elections, while an Islamic party registered a modest score, the interior minister has said.
Around 30 parties stood in Friday's polls to elect nearly 28,000 members to 1,500 municipal councils.
The Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) was formed last June by Fouad Ali el-Himma, a close friend of King Mohammed VI, the Moroccan monarch.
Late last month, PAM pulled out of the country's governing coalition ahead of the local elections and aligned itself with the opposition.
It won 6,015 seats, giving it 21.7 per cent of the national vote, ahead of the governing Istiqlal (Independence) party with 5,292 seats and 19.1 per cent, Chakib Benmoussa said on Saturday.
The local elections were seen as a test for the government of Abbas el-Fassi, the prime minister.
His Istiqlal party's second place finish meant a certain reaffirmation of the government, which had been accused of not having a solid programme despite the Moroccan economy having weathered the global crisis fairly well.
The moderate Islamic Justice and Development Party (PJD), which scored its best result in 2007, picked up only 1,513 seats, putting it in sixth place.
The national turnout was 52.4 per cent, below the 54 per cent recorded in 2003 local elections but well above the 37 per cent figure for legislative polls in 2007.
Morocco's next parliamentary election is due in 2012.

The Palestinians reject Israeli terms

Palestinian officials have condemned a major policy speech by Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, saying it had "closed the door" on moves to reach an agreement between the two sides.In his address, Netanyahu gave the slightest of nods to the creation of a Palestinian state, an issue he has avoided since taking power in April, but with a host of conditions attached.
"Netanyahu's speech closed the door to permanent status negotiations,'' Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians' senior negotiator, said.
"We ask the world not to be fooled by his use of the term Palestinian state because he qualified it. He declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, said refugees would not be negotiated and that settlements would remain."
"The peace process has been moving at the speed of a turtle. Tonight, Netanyahu has flipped it over on its back," he said.
Netanyahu speech
Netanyahu told an audience at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv on Sunday that he would require international guarantees that any Palestinian state would have no army or control of its airspace and borders, and would recognise Israel as a Jewish state.
If we receive this guarantee ... then we will be ready in a future peace agreement to reach a solution where a demilitarised Palestinian state exists alongside the Jewish state," he said.
"Israel needs defensible borders, and Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel with continued religious freedom for all faiths."The so-called "road map" towards a two-state solution, which was agreed by the two sides in 2003, talks of a sovereign Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders, which would include the east Jerusalem as well as the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Mustafa Barghouti, an independent Palestinian MP, told Al Jazeera that by applying the conditions, Netanyahu had effectively refused the formation of a Palestinian state.
"He wants to substitute a Palestinian state for a ghetto with no sovereignty, with no control of its land, of its resources, of its passage, of its roads, of its airspace, of its borders," he said.
"This is a game, he just used the word state to mislead the world." The United States and European Union - both members of the so-called Quartet of Middle East mediators - gave a cautious welcome to Netanyahu's speech.Robert Gibbs, a White House spokesman, said that Netanyahu had made "an important step forward" and reiterated Washington's committment to a Palestinian state "in the historic homeland of both peoples".Jan Kohout, the Czech foreign minister, who's country holds the rotating presidency of the EU, said that speech was "a step in the right direction".
"Of course, there are a number of other elements which need to be analysed, but the acceptance of the Palestinian state is there," he said.
Settlements issue
However, Netanyahu refused to concede to US demands for a complete halt to all settlement expansion, as set out in the "road map". "We have no intention of building new settlements or of expropriating additional land for existing settlements," he said.
"But there is a need to enable the residents to live normal lives, to allow mothers and fathers to raise their children like families elsewhere." The Israeli prime minister also urged the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank to re-establish "the rule of law" over the rival Hamas movement, which seized full control of the Gaza Strip two years ago. "The Palestinians must decide between the path of peace and the path of Hamas," he said.
"Israel will not sit at the negotiating table with terrorists who seek their destruction."
Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, dismissed Netanyahu's comments and said that the Palestinians would continue to fight for their rights."His racist speech and his policy on the ground - the extention of Jewish influence in Jerusalem, settlements in the West Bank and the siege in Gaza - proves he is lying about his desire for peace," he said."He will never trick us and we will continue to demand our rights and our Palestinian lands."Israel and the Palestinians relaunched peace negotiations at the Annapolis conference in the US in November 2007, but the talks made little progress and were suspended during Israel's war on Gaza last December and January.
The Palestinians have said that they will not restart negotiations unless Netanyahu publicly backs a two-state solution and stops the building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.

US swimmer Michael Phelps back in business

Michael Phelps held off a late charge by his rivals to win the 400-metre freestyle at the Santa Clara International Grand Prix in California.
Phelps cruised to an early lead but he had to dig in over the final 100 metres to win in 3 minutes, 48.05 seconds under sunny, windy conditions at the outdoor pool.
It was his second victory of the meet, having won the 200 butterfly by a margin of 5.67 seconds on Friday.
Ryan Cochrane of Canada pushed Phelps in the closing metres only to settle for second in 3:48.40. Robert Hurley of Australia was third in 3:48.49.
Feeling good
"I felt awesome the first 250, then I turned with 150 to go and I was second-guessing why I ever asked to swim that event,'' he said.
Phelps has rarely swum the event over the years, and he did not advance to the 400 free final at the 2005 world championships in Montreal, a failure that still bothers him.
"I don't think I've ever hurt that bad after a race. I'm not in enough shape to swim a good 400,'' he said. "That's more of a wake-up call than Bob (Bowman, coach) telling me.''
Wearing a long black body suit, the 14-time Olympic gold medallist owned an easy lead until the last two laps.
Cochrane, who won a bronze medal in the 1,500 free in Beijing, came edging up on Phelps, who was breathing on his right and didn't see the Canadian on his left.
But he got to the wall 0.35 seconds ahead of Cochrane.
"That's how not to swim a 400 free,'' Phelps said. "Bob said go out after it and see what happens. I went out after it and barely hung on.''
Being challenged
Bowman enjoyed seeing Phelps challenged.
"It's good for him,'' he said."It reminds him it's not easy to win races. That's a race where he really pushed himself to the limit.''
Phelps rested on the yellow lane line as the nearly full grandstand exploded in cheers.
Later, with his suit peeled down to his hips, he strolled to the podium to accept his winner's medal trailed by two security guards.
When it was announced Phelps would sign autographs after his warm down, a long line of adults and kids quickly formed and snaked its way nearly halfway down the grandstand.
He will compete next weekend in Montreal, his third meet since returning from a three-month suspension handed down by USA Swimming after a photo of Phelps using a marijuana pipe surfaced.

Lochte win
Phelps' Olympic teammate Ryan Lochte had an easier time. The Olympic and world record-holder won the 200 backstroke over Aussie Ashley Delaney by 1.77 seconds. Lochte touched in 1:56.83 and Delaney in 1:58.60, making them the only men in the nine-swimmer field under 2 minutes.
Lochte finished second to Masayuki Kishida of Japan in the 100 butterfly by 0.41 seconds.
Kishida won in 52.43 seconds. Lochte clocked 52.84 a night after he won the 400 individual medley.
Phelps and Lochte will go head-to-head twice on the final day Sunday in the 100 backstroke and 100 freestyle.
Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe swam to two victories.
She scored a dominating victory in the 400 individual medley, winning by 3.87 seconds over rising American teenager Dagny Knutson.
Coventry's time of 4:32.15 lowered last year's meet record of 4:36.75 set by 16-year-old Olympian Elizabeth Beisel, who finished third this year.
Coventry earned $100 for the record. Knutson also went under the old meet record, clocking 4:36.02.
Those three beat Olympic champion Stephanie Rice of Australia, who finished fourth, well off her world record of 4:29.45 set in Beijing.
Coventry returned later to win the 100 backstroke in 1:00.68, not even close to her world-record time of 58.77 set at the Beijing Olympics, where she took silver behind American Natalie Coughlin.
Leisel Jones of Australia, the Olympic champion and world record-holder, completed a sweep of the breaststroke events, winning the 100 in 1:07.11 to go with her 200 title on Friday. She defeated Kasey Carlson by 1.22 seconds in the shorter race.
Dana Vollmer, who failed to make the US Olympic team last year, earned her third win of the meet in the 200 free. She won in 1:57.46 adding to her victories in the 100 free and 100 fly on Friday.

THE WIN IN GREECE RALLY;Mikko Hirvonen

Mikko Hirvonen won the 56th Acropolis Rally of Greece in Athens, with a comfortable win over Sebastian Ogier.
The 28-year-old Ford driver sealed his eighth World Rally Championship (WRC) victory by finishing the final stage one minute 12.9 seconds ahead of Frenchman Ogier, who had the best result of his career.
The win allowed the Finn to close the gap on WRC leader Sebastien Loeb, who crashed out on Saturday, to seven points in the overall standings ahead of the eighth round of the WRC, the Rally of Poland, which starts on June 26.
Hirvonen's team mate Jari-Matti Latvala took third place in the rally after finishing 32.1 seconds behind Ogier, completing a remarkable recovery after going off the road on Friday's opening day and allowing Ford to earn a maximum 18 points in the manufacturers' championship.
Back in the game
"I drove cleverly, no punctures, no mistakes, it was fantastic," said Hirvonen. "If you get through a difficult rally like this without suffering problems, you are the winner. Now we are back in the fight (for the championship)."
Hirvonen began the final day holding a commanding lead of 1:40 over Ogier and the Finn's cautious but trouble-free drive in the difficult gravel conditions earned him victory.
After four second-place finishes this year, the win reinvigorated his battle with Loeb, who has won the last five WRC titles and was 17 points ahead before the Greece Rally.
Loeb escaped unhurt on Saturday when his car careered off the track and rolled over several times after he hit a rock. His Citroen team mate Dani Sordo was also forced to retire when he broke a rear wheel on a rock.
On Sunday, Ogier's car sustained front-end damage when it hit a cow on the Aghii Theodori 14th stage but the Frenchman was able to continue.
The penultimate stage of the event was cancelled on safety grounds because of the unexpectedly large number of spectators along the 8.98-km route.

ZIDAN reveals Ribery talks

Former three-time World Player of the Year, Zinedine Zidane, has spoken to France midfielder Franck Ribery to try and convince him to move to the Spanish capital from Bayern Munich.
Zidane, an advisor to Real Madrid president Florentino Perez told French newspaper Le Dauphine Libere that he was 'in talks' with Franck.
Zidane, who was a Real Madrid player from 2001 to 2006, praised the midfielder.
"He is a fantastic player who has his place at Real. "And playing in this team is a career opportunity, which, to me, you do not refuse.
"It would be a nice opportunity for Franck. It is up to him."
Ronaldo bid
Zidane lauded Real Madrid's record-breaking acquisition of Portuguese winger Cristiano Ronaldo.
Zidane was a World Cup winner in 1998 and held the record for the world's highest transfer fee after his 105 million dollar move from Juventus to Real in 2001, only for Ronaldo's 132 million dollar switch from English side Manchester United to eclipse his deal.
"I finally lose this record, which was pretty heavy to bear," said Zidane.
Real are on the verge of signing Cristiano Ronaldo after Manchester United accepted the bid for the Portuguese forward earlier this week.
Brazil playmaker Kaka has already joined from AC Milan for a reported fee of $94.27 million, while Ribery is likely to cost around the same amount, if reported bids for the 26-year-old are anything to go by.
"Bringing together the best players in the world has a cost," said Zidane.
"It's true that, with Kaka and Ronaldo, Madrid wanted to make a big statement. "It was the will of the new president, Florentino Perez.
"This man wants more than just making a name for himself, he wants to give the club the chance to return to the highest level and fight on an equal footing with teams like Barcelona, for example.
"As to whether or not it's reasonable, that's open to debate. But me, I don't have the answer."
Future plans
Zidane himself has set out his own plans for his future.
"Currently, things are going well with Florentino.
"He took me into his team because I know the Real changing room well," said the 36-year-old Frenchman, who retired after the 2006 World Cup.
"For the time being, I'm there to learn, to see how things work outside the changing room.
"Next year, we'll see what might interest me, in order to find something more precise at the club.
"I think I could really become part of the management team at the club and maybe take charge of its destiny."

Haze over Malaysia 'set to stay'

WHOSE living in Malaysia and other parts of south-east Asia have been warned that a thick haze filling their skies could last until the end of August.
The pollution is being blamed on smoke from forest fires on Indonesia's Sumatra island and, without rain, the number of fires is rising, officials have said.
Blucer Dolok Saribu, head of a meteorology, climatology and geophysics agency in Indonesia, said: "There is a potential for the number of fire spots to rise and haze conditions to worsen if there is no rain."
The fires happen every year in the dry season, but have worsened in the past decade with timber and plantation firms often being blamed for starting fires to clear land.
Mismanagement of land
One environment campaigner told Al Jazeera on Saturday that "serious action" needs to be taken before billions of dollars worth of damage is caused.
Faizal Parish, director of the Malaysia-based Global Environment Centre, said: "We have a phenomenon called the El Nino effect which occurs roughly every seven years.
"This leads to very long droughts that can last up to six or even nine months. [However] El Nino just gives the dry conditions. The root causes of the fires are 100 per cent due to human activity - mismanagement of land."
Parish said fire prevention efforts need to be tripled.
"If we do not take serious action now, we will be in a situation like in 1997-98 when we had massive clouds of smoke that caused an estimated $10bn worth of damage.
"Although times may be hard, there needs to be rapid investment to prevent fires through better management.
"Particularly in peat areas which can burn for up to six months, where 90 per cent of the smoke haze is coming from," he said.
Abnormal temperatures
An Indonesian official said 47 hotspots had been recorded in Riau province in Sumatra by Thursday and temperatures were abnormally high at 35C.
In Malaysia, the haze had reduced visibility to in some areas surrounding Kuala Lumpur, the capital.
"We are monitoring the situation. We will decide later if any action should be taken," Rosnani Ibrahim, the department of the environment's director-general, said.
The ministry said it was working with police and private airlines to detect blazes through aerial surveillance.
Indonesia said it lacks the money and technical expertise to control the fires in the vast archipelago nation.

The Group of Eight industrial nations prepares for economic crisis end

G7+1 have discussed how to prepare for an economic recovery and how to roll back rescue measures when the global financial crisis eventually is over.
Concluding a two-day meeting in the Italian city of Lecce, ministers said that although the global economy is still weak, so-called exit strategies from stimulus measures such as tax cuts and lower interest rates are "essential to promote a sustainable recovery over the long term".
The G8 - the US, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia - said in a statement on Saturday that it had asked the International Monetary Fund to study ways to unwind hefty stimulus packages.
However, the group said that the outlook for the world economy remain uncertain.
"There are signs of stabilisation in our economies ... but the situation remains uncertain and significant risks remain to economic and financial stability."
Forecast revised
The IMF has raised its forecast for global growth in 2010 to 2.4 per cent.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF chief, said the increase in the forecast was due to "improvement in the United States, in Asia and particularly in Japan".
However, he cautioned that the situation in emerging economies is "very concerning".

"We have to stay very careful, recovery is weak ... we have to think about exit strategies but before the exit strategy we have to exit the crisis," Strauss-Kahn said.
He also said global unemployment would peak in 2011.
Timothy Geithner, the US treasury secretary, said: "I don't think we're at the point yet where we can say we have a recovery in place.
"It's too early to shift towards policy restraint."
He said the global economy was still "well below potential" and encouraging growth should still be "the main focus of policy" for world powers.
While US and Britain want the G8 to stay committed to stimulus packages, some European countries like Germany are urging the preparation of exit strategies to prevent inflation and to cut the massive debts which bailouts have brought.
Peer Steinbrueck, the German finance minister, said that rescue measures for economies hit by the crisis must "increasingly be combined with a credible exit strategy."
"This means we must now think about how will go about it once we are getting out of this hole, this valley."

the Israeli prime minister to deliver policy speech

the Israeli prime minister,Binyamin Netanyahu is due to deliver a major policy speech outlining his vision of how to advance the peace process with the Palestinians and the Arab world.
The speech on Sunday comes as Israel is facing pressure from the US, its main ally, to end settlement expansion and accept the establishment of a Palestinian state.
"The prime minister intends to articulate a clear view as to how he wants to move forward in the peace process with the Palestinians," Mark Regev, Netanyahu's spokesman, said on Saturday.
"His vision is to move forward towards a historic reconciliation, and it is clear that all parties must play a role if this process is to succeed."
But Netanyahu has been at odds with Barack Obama, the US president, who has repeatedly called for an end to settlement expansion, in part to improve US relations with the Muslim world, which were damaged by the policies of George Bush, his predecessor.

US-Israeli divide
Netanyahu's government has said construction in existing Jewish settlements would continue to accomodate growing families, despite Obama calling for a comprehensive freeze.Netanyahu has also refused to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state, a cornerstone of US Middle East policy.

"I don't think that Netanyahu will use the expression 'two states for two people'," Ofir Akonis, an MP in Netanyahu's Likud party, told Israel Radio.
Netanyahu briefed George Mitchell, US special envoy to the Middle East, and other senior diplomats this week on his planned speech.
But the steps which Netanyahu outlined to Mitchell were "not adequate" to satisfy Washington, a US official told a meeting of the Quartet of Middle East mediators.
Gil Hoffman, chief political correspondent for the Jerusalem Post newspaper, told Al Jazeera that Netanyahu's speech would be a step forward.
"I think that he is going to talks about Israel is willing to take a lot of steps to help out the Palestinian people ... that he would be willing to make withdrawals in the future if the Palestinians have the kind of leadership with both the will and the way to help their own people," he said. "Chances are he will refer to a Palestinian state with some kind of euphemism, whether its endorsing the road map or endorsing some other kind of programme."
Past agreements with the Palestinians bind Netanyahu to a 2003 "road map" that sets out conditions to establish a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu, instead, has attempted to move the focus in talks with the Palestinians from territorial issues to initiatives to improve economic, security and political relations.
"There is no doubt that Netanyahu wants peace and he wants to have a real negotiation for peace and if we will have a true partner we could advance in a real process," Eli Yishai, an Israeli cabinet minister and head of the Shas party, said on Sunday.
"Unfortunately I can't see that the other side wants peace," he said before a cabinet meeting.

Palestinian pessimism

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has said negotiations will be useless unless Netanyahu commits to working towards Palestinian statehood and freezes settlement growth.
Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Gaza City, said that there was very little focus on Netanyahu's speech in the Palestinian territory.
"Most ordinary people did not know that the Israeli prime minister was going to make a speech ... and when asked say they want concrete steps to lift the siege of the Gaza Strip," he said.
"There was an [newspaper] article today ahead of this speech ... none of the Palestinian factions interviewed for that article showed any kind of optimism that Netanyahu is going to make any kind of significant moves towards the Palestinian people."
Netanyahu,is also set to discuss Iran during Sunday's speech, Israeli officials said, whose nuclear aspirations Tel Aviv perceives as a potential threat.

korea defiant after new sanctions

North Korea has warned that it will increase its nuclear activities and could launch military action against the US and allies after the UN Security Council announced new sanctions over last month's atomic test.
North Korea's foreign ministry said it will regard any attempts to impose a blockade against it as an "act of war", the state-run KCNA news agency reported on Saturday.
"We'll take firm military action if the United States and its allies try to isolate us," the unnamed foreign ministry spokesman was quoted as saying.The UN resolution, passed on Friday, banned all weapons exports from North Korea and authorised member states to inspect sea, air and land cargo, requiring them to seize and destroy goods that violate the sanctions.
The UN resolution was passed as media reports suggested that North Korea could be planning a third nuclear test.
Enrichment programme
But North Korea remained defiant, pledging to start a uranium enrichment programme for a light-water nuclear reactor.
The foreign ministry spokesman also warned that the North would "weaponise all plutonium [in its possession]" and had "reprocessed more than one-third of our spent nuclear fuel rods."
Alexander Neill, the head of the Asia security programme at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies in the UK, told Al Jazeera that while the warning is "bluster", it is also a serious threat.
"This [threat of enrichment] is not a new phenomenon," Neill said.
"It would take a long time and sophisticated technology to convert plutonium to missile-grade material, but it is a gesture with a lot of teeth behind it.
"When it comes to the international reaction, the only option is for the UN security council resolution.
"It is almost certain that the US and Japan will enforce a blockade which will put a pincer movement around any of the sea trade going in and out of North Korea.
"The question is whether it will have any result inside North Korea. The regime has proved resilient to sanctions in the past," he said.
'Deeply regrettable'
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said on Saturday: "The North Koreans' continuing provocative actions are deeply regrettable'.
"They have now been denounced by everyone, they have become further isolated, and it is not in the interest of the people of North Korea for that kind of isolation to be continued."
North Korea's nuclear test in May defied a previous Security Council resolution adopted after the North's first underground nuclear test in October 2006.Zhang Yesui, China's UN ambassador, said the resolution showed the "firm opposition" of the international community to North Korea's nuclear ambitions.The backing of China, one of North Korea's key trading partners and regional allies, and Russia for the resolution gave greater weight to the new sanctions as they have been reluctant to act in the past."To a certain extent, China has been happy to leave North Korea to its own devices," Al Jazeera's Tony Cheng, reporting from Beijing, said. "Now China is profoundly concerned about the regime in Pyongyang, which seems increasingly unstable and seems increasingly not to follow Beijing's lead."Japan is expected to impose its own sanctions on North Korea, including suspending all trade, in a largely symbolic demonstration of its opposition to the test, the Kyodo news agency reported.
'Tightening sanctions'
an expert said that it was difficult to judge what effect the new sanctions would have on the already impoverished state.
"This is really just tightening sanctions that already exist on North Korea, but they do target it in specific areas," he said.
"I think that one area that will hurt quite a lot will be the ban on conventional weapons arms sales and the possibility of stopping ships going to and from North Korea ... that is a business that could earn Pyongyang as much as $100m."Jamie Metzl, the executive vice-president of the Asia Society, said North Korea had exported arms to about 20 countries in the past, including Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Sudan.
"Their finances are in big trouble. They have almost nothing that anybody else wants to buy but these arms," Metzl said.The UN vote comes amid continuing tensions on the Korean peninsula after North Korea on Thursday demanded a 3,000 per cent increase in rent and a 400 per cent increase in wages for 40,000 workers employed by South Korean companies at an industrial park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong.
North Korean state media issued a statement on Thursday saying that relations between the two countries had reached the "phase of catastrophe" and that the Kaesong complex had been "thrown into a serious crisis".

The H1N1 flu virus has infected around 28,000 people in 74 countries around the world

pandemic of swine flu begin.

The UN health agency is due to hold a news conference in Geneva at 1600 GMT on Thursday where it is expected to make the announcement following an emergency meeting of flu experts in the Swiss city.
Diplomatic sources told the AFP news agency that the WHO had already informed member states that it would declare a H1N1 pandemic by raising its alert to the maximum level, six.
If confirmed, it would be the first flu pandemic in 41 years, since the Hong Kong flu of 1968.

Widespread

Since the H1N1 flu first emerged in Mexico and the US in April, it has spread to 74 countries around the world.

The latest tally by the WHO records 27,737 cases out of which 141 people have died Most cases have been mild and required no treatment but .
Thursday's meeting came after Australia announced that five people with the virus had been admitted to hospital intensive care units in recent days.
Australia now has more than 1,200 cases of the illness but has had no deaths.
The WHO pandemic alert has been at phase 5 since May 1, meaning a global outbreak was imminent.
Moving to phase six, the highest level, would acknowledge that a pandemic had begun, obliging drug companies to speed up the production of a swine flu vaccine.
It could also put pressure on countries to activate their own pandemic preparedness plans if they had not already done so, possibly devoting more money to health services or imposing measures such as quarantines, school closures, travel bans and trade restrictions.
Questions over delay

But the declaration of a pandemic would also likely trigger fresh questions about why the step was delayed for weeks as the virus continued to spread.
According to WHO's pandemic criteria, a global outbreak means a new flu virus is spreading in at least two world regions.

But with thousands of cases in North America, more than a thousand in Australia and hundreds in Japan and Europe, many experts say that threshold has already been reached and that the UN agency has held off on making the pandemic call for political reasons.
Michael Osterholm, a flu expert at the University of Minnesota who has advised the US government on pandemic preparations, said "if you look at the science, we were at phase 6 weeks ago".
"What's happening right now is not about public health surveillance and science - it's about politics and risk communication," he told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Osterholm said WHO's delayed decision has cost the agency credibility.
"As soon as you try to incorporate risk messaging into science, you are on a slippery slope," he said. "WHO has exacerbated the issue by dancing around it."
One flu expert said WHO's pandemic declaration would mean little in terms of how countries were responding to the outbreak.
"The writing has been on the wall for weeks," said Chris Smith, a flu virologist at Cambridge University, adding he did not know why WHO had waited so long to declare a pandemic.
"WHO probably doesn't want people to panic, but the virus is now unstoppable."
In May, several countries urged WHO not to declare a pandemic, fearing it would spark mass panic.
The agency appeared to cave in to the requests, saying it would rewrite its definition of a global outbreak so that it would not have to declare one right away for H1N1.
But WHO officials have been concerned in recent days after seeing media reports and health experts discussing more cases than were being reported by the countries themselves.
WHO said declaring a pandemic would not mean the situation was worsening, since no mutations have been detected in the virus to show it is getting more deadly.

reformist groups

The political chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guard has warned reformists in the country against seeking what he called a "velvet revolution", vowing that it would be "nipped in the bud".
Yadollah Javani's comments appeared aimed at Mir Hossein Mousavi, a reformist candidate in the country's presidential elections and followed another day of bitter exchanges between Mousavi and his rival and current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The Revolutionary Guard is one of the pillars of the Iranian establishment and controls large military forces as well as a nationwide network of militia.
In a statement on its website, Javani drew parallels between Mousavi's campaign and the "velvet revolution'' that led to the 1989 overthrow of the communist government in then Czechoslovakia.
"There are many indications that some extremist [reformist] groups, have designed a colourful revolution ... using a specific colour for the first time in an election," the statement said.
Calling that a "sign of kicking off a velvet revolution project in the presidential elections", Javani vowed that any "attempt for velvet revolution will be nipped in the bud".
Javani also accused the reformists of planning to claim vote rigging and provoke street violence if Mousavi loses.
Ahmadinejad, the president, is believed to have wide support in the Revolutionary Guard and among Iran's ruling clerics, though neither have given public endorsements in the presidential race.

Trading barbs
In the final hours of campaigning before the election on Friday, candidates traded bitter accusations.
Ahmadinejad accused his rivals of using Hitler-style smear tactics and said they could face jail for insulting the president.
"Such insults and accusations against the government are a return to Hitler's methods, to repeat lies and accusations ... until everyone believes those lies," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
Insulting senior officials is a crime in Iran punishable by a maximum of two years in prison.
Mousavi, a reformist and former prime minister, accused Ahmadinejad of isolating Iran with his vitriolic attacks on the US and said he lied about the country's economy.
All campaigning was banned from Thursday morning and cars plastered with pictures and campaign material would be stopped and seized, state television reported.
But even after the official end of campaigning, tens of thousands of Mousavi supporters remained in the streets, dancing on cars, waving green flags and passing out pro-Mousavi fliers.

'Unpredictable' election
Mahdi Karroubi, a reformist and former parliamentary speaker, and Mohsen Rezai, a former commander of the Revolutionary Guard, are also standing in Friday's election.

Trita Parsi, the president of the Iranian-American Council, told Al Jazeera that Ahmadinejad's attacks on Mousavi "seems to have backfired and may have motivated the youth to come out and vote, supporting Mousavi's platform of change".
Afshin Molavi of the New America Foundation told Al Jazeera that accusations against Ahmadinejad and the ruling elites of corruption and fat cat insider dealings "will continue to hang in the air long after these elections, and many Iranians know this about the ruling elites".
He said that while Iran has traditionally had high voter turnout, "when we're seeing so many voters than previous polls, it tends to reflect a switch to reformist candidates".

Iran's reformists are hoping that a high turnout on Friday will help them oust the conservative Ahmadinejad, whom they accuse of increasing the country's international isolation and compounding its economic difficulties.
Mousavi's campaign appears to have motivated the youth in a country where one-third of the electorate is under 30 and born after the time of the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
"I believe it is a new beginning and I want to take part in it," Parastou Pazhoutan, a 26-year-old Mousavi supporter, said.
"A month ago, I would have said Ahmadinejad was a sure bet,'' Sharif Emam Jomeh, a political analyst, said.
"There was apathy especially with the youth. But now, until 3am, they are out in numbers and they care ... Below the surface, something was boiling."

interim borders plan

Peres has said that Israel and the Palestinians should agree on a Palestinian state with temporary borders as a first step towards ending the Middle East conflict.
"The roadmap outlines a clear path and (the sides) should implement the second stage ... declaring a Palestinian state with temporary borders," the Israeli president was quoted as telling Javier Solana, the visiting European Union foreign policy chief, on Thursday.

Israel and the Palestinians should further make "a clear commitment that the borders will become permanent within a limited period." Peres told Solana, who is on a three-day visit to Israel and the occupied territories of Palestine.
The proposal was flatly rejected by the Palestinian Authority.
"We categorically reject Peres's proposal which takes us back to square one," Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, said.
Solana told Al Jazeera that it is still visible to have peace between Arabs and Israel based on pre 1967 border line.
"I think it is visible and doable. I think we have to keep working together --the EU, the United States and a group of Arab countries-- in the same wave length to really move it on and do it a reality of those promises of the the past."

No endorsement

The roadmap drafted in 2003 by the US, the EU, Russia and the UN, outlines steps toward establishing a viable Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel.
Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, has refused to publicly endorse a two-state solution or to halt settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, two key requirements of the roadmap.
Netanyahu is due to outline his government's policies on the peace process at a speech on Sunday in a bid to ease tensions with Israel's chief ally, the United States.
Mark Regev, Netanyahu's spokesman, declined to comment on Peres's offer.

'britain terrorism suspects' win appeal

Britain's highest court has ruled against the government over the use of secret evidence to justify imposing home curfews on people accused of "terrorism".
Nine judges unanimously upheld an appeal by three men on Wednesday, who argued it was against their human rights to be subject to "control orders" - a form of house arrest based on secret evidence they are not privy to and cannot challenge in court.
The cases of the three men, two foreign nationals and a joint British-Libyan national, will now return to the country's high court, a lower court than the House of Lords which made the ruling, for further consideration.
The decision does not overturn the use of control orders, introduced by the government in 2005 and which allow "terrorism" suspects to be kept under curfew for up to 16 hours a day, but it does call into question a central element of the policy.

Presumed guilt
Eric Metcalfe of Justice, a British legal and human rights organisation, said: "One thing is clear from this judgment, it's going to be much more difficult for the government to sustain the use of control orders when they have to disclose the evidence to the suspects.
"Parliament and government have to decide whether they are going to limp on with using secret evidence in control orders or whether they can actually take the bold step of getting rid of it once and for all."
The orders have been used to restrict the movements of individuals the authorities suspect of involvement in "terrorism", but against whom they lack sufficient evidence to mount a trial.
Human rights and justice organisations say they violate fundamental rights and freedoms, running the risk of turning Britain into a police state, with suspects placed under tight surveillance without knowing what they have done wrong.
Because the orders rely on secret information collected by the security services that cannot be made public, they also presume guilt without evidence being presented and without it being able to be challenged in court.
'Protecting public'
It is the second time the House of Lords has ruled against elements of control orders, 17 of which are now in force in Britain.
Alan Johnson, Britain's interior minister, said: "All control orders will remain in force for the time being and we will continue to seek to uphold them in the courts.
"Protecting the public is my top priority and this judgment makes that task harder.
"We introduced control orders to limit the risk posed by suspected terrorists whom we can neither prosecute nor deport."
Since their introduction, a total of 38 people have been subjected to them, seven of whom absconded while under watch.
Rights campaigners said the judges' decision could mark a turning point in the use of secret evidence in control orders.

China is home to the world's largest online population

the government of china directive requiring all new computers to be fitted with sophisticated internet filtering software could expose Chinese users to government-controlled spyware
"I think it is highly suspicious from the point of view of the user," Charles Mok, chairman of the Hong Kong chapter of the Internet Society, said.
On Monday the Wall Street Journal reported that the Chinese government had ordered that all computers sold after July 1 be fitted with the software known as "Green Dam-Youth Escort".
The directive has been sent to all computer manufacturers selling their product in China.
The programme uses a centralised database to update individual computers with a list of banned content.
Chinese officials have said it is designed to filter out pornography and protect children, but computer experts have warned that the software could be used to collect private data or personal information, and to monitor for potential online dissent.
'Great Firewall'
Mok said that China already operates a sophisticated internet screening at the server level – dubbed the Great Firewall of China – but he said that implementing screening measures at the PC level was unique.
He said the directive had generated considerable discussion in online Chinese forums, with many noting that the software can be uninstalled by users.
"But I think the vast majority of users would not bother or not have the knowledge of how to do that," Mok said.
"If any other company tried to say that I want to install a piece of software onto your system, people would worry that it's a piece of spyware. But now it comes from the government, so what do you call that?"
He said that in essence the software, after it was installed on a computer, "could still be operating as a piece of spyware".
"The system would have a centralised database and collect information about which websites people have been using and going to and so on," Mok said.
Dissidents
"From any point of view this is a piece of software that is very close to and is functionality-wise a piece of spyware."
China has a sophisticated system for monitoring the internet and blocking access to sites, chatrooms or services that authorities deem to be undesirable.
Companies such as Yahoo have been ordered by the government to hand over information that has then been used to prosecute political dissidents over material they have posted online or used in private emails.
Mok said he doubted however that the Green Dam software would enable authorities to have total control over the online environment.
"Whether or not this initiative will be sustainable is very doubtful because of the many technical operational complexities that will be involved if you're looking at the hundreds of millions of computers operating in China," he said.
"But the whole thing is about the message that is being sent – that 'you’d better watch out, I'm still continuing to watch you in one way or another'. And I think that psychological message is important."