A car bomb exploded on Saturday in Khaldiyah, a town west of Baghdad, killing three American soldiers and injuring six soldiers and several Iraqi civilians, the military said.

Two other American soldiers were killed earlier Saturday in a roadside bombing near Fallujah. The latest deaths raised to 512 the number of American service members who have died since the United States and its allies launched the Iraq war March 20. Most of the deaths have occurred since President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1.

Khaldiyah and Fallujah are part of the Sunni Triangle, the area in central Iraq where most of the anti-U.S. attacks by die-hard Saddam Hussein loyalists have taken place. The U.S. military says the attacks have reduced in number since Saddam's arrest on Dec. 13.

... Earlier Saturday, two American soldiers and four Iraqis were killed in separate bomb attacks, a day after two U.N. security experts arrived in the capital to study the possible return of the world body's international staff.

A second "blitz" inspection by federal drug and customs officials of medicines imported from Canada has found that nearly all of the almost 2,000 packages opened contained foreign versions of American pharmaceuticals that officials said might not be safe.

... The inspections, whose results are to be formally announced next week, form part of a coordinated push by the Bush administration to stop drug imports and defuse a budding confrontation between Washington and the states.

The city governments of Springfield, Mass., and Montgomery, Ala., are already helping buy drugs from Canada to save money for themselves and their employees. And officials in more than a dozen states and scores of towns, cities and counties have said that they may do the same.

The F.D.A. commissioner, Mark McClellan, said in an interview that the results of the inspections, which took place in November, demonstrate that drugs ordered from Canada are often manufactured in distant corners of the world. After an earlier survey, the agency announced in September that most of the imported drugs it inspected were counterfeit knockoffs. Neither round of inspections included any chemical tests on the drugs.

Asked if the pills reviewed in the latest survey were unsafe, Dr. McClellan answered, "We just don't know, because it's so hard to tell."

Governors and mayors leading the charge for Canadian drugs flatly dismiss Dr. McClellan's safety concerns. Many point out that even though the value of drug imports from Canada probably topped $700 million last year, the F.D.A. has yet to identify a single patient harmed by the trade. And they say that Health Canada, which regulates drugs in Canada, is just as rigorous as the F.D.A.

"This has little to do with health and safety and everything to do with the pharmaceutical industry," said Peter A. Clavelle, mayor of Burlington, Vt., who said he intended to have a Canadian drug purchase program up and running for city employees and their families by March 1.

Some state officials say a showdown is inevitable.

"This is all going to come to a head in 2004," said Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a Republican. "Either the F.D.A. will sue somebody or throw someone in jail over this, or the pharmaceutical companies choke off supply, or the F.D.A. comes to their senses."

What will it mean in practice?

Arrest for smoking cannabis will be discouraged and most people caught in possession of the drug will face no legal action - although there will be possibility of a custodial sentence of up to two years if the police choose to proceed through the courts and obtain a summons. The maximum penalty will be reduced from five years in jail to two.

Is this decriminalisation?

No, cannabis use will still be a criminal offence. The penalty for possession with intent to supply - dealing - is to be cut from 14 years in jail to five, but - unlike straightforward possession - police will still make arrests.

Arrest is also likely for those who smoke the drug in "public view" or near playgrounds, schools, youth clubs and other places where children are likely to be.

As a junior German economics minister noted earlier this week, an exchange rate of $1.25 is cause for concern, anything above $1.30 means real problems. France's trade minister, François Loos, is already complaining that French firms are having to slash their margins to offset the impact of the greenback's fall from grace. "It is obvious this situation cannot last forever."

... So where does that leave the G7? The Americans will favour doing nothing, the Japanese are already doing all they can, while the eurozone has a problem whatever it does. Meanwhile, a key player, China, is not even a member. The upshot is that whatever the G7 does will be wrong. So it should take the least damaging option and do nothing. That would disappoint the markets and depress the dollar. Better that, however, than raising expectations which cannot be fulfilled.

Last year Japan's central bank shelled out $187bn propping up the sagging dollar. The pace is quickening. Earlier this month it spent $38bn in one week alone.

... Just to add a little icing to the cake, all those dollars that Japan is buying on the foreign exchange market are being spent on US government bonds - keeping US interest rates down and helping to finance Mr Bush's spending plans. America's Democrats could be forgiven for wondering if the BoJ is staffed by Republicans.

For the Japanese, America's laissez-faire approach to the dollar must be worrying. Already there are those within the Japanese economic establishment who think the BoJ's policy of buying time for Japan's exporters by buying dollars may have to be reconsidered later this year.

The snag, as analysts at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein noted yesterday, is that such comments "may suggest that Japan has not thought hard about plan B so far (ie, they intervene and hope it will get better at some point)".

The unfolding story of mad cow disease follows an all-too-familiar and damning pattern. A threat to public health is discovered, the affected industries and their allies in government respond with a public relations campaign, the evidence mounts and some reforms are implemented. This is followed by more evidence and more reforms. Yet nowhere in this scenario have the federal agencies charged with protecting public health—the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—taken proactive steps to remedy the situation. Rather, they have operated in the interests of huge agriculture and food lobbies.

... To all indications, and contrary to recent news reports, an American strain of BSE has long been circulating through the food chain. In 1985, a Stentsonville, Wisconsin, mink ranch was wiped out by transmissible mink encephalopathy. The diet of the mink consisted of 5 percent horsemeat and 95 percent “downer cows”—cows so lame they fall down and are unable to get up.

A 1989 Yale University study reported similar findings. Postmortem examination of 46 patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s revealed that six (13 percent) actually had CJD. The Pittsburgh and Yale studies point to the possibility that some of the 4 million people in the United States suffering form Alzheimer’s may actually be infected with the agent that causes CJD. And that raises this question: Has an unrecognized from of BSE infected U.S. cattle and entered the human food chain?

What's more, there seems to be no shortage of domestic, as well as investment, capital. China has a remarkable savings rate of about 40% of household income, one of the highest in the world. Total household savings now amount to around 100% of GDP -- three times as much as the country's total annual import bill. Foreign direct investment –- though vast –- is dwarfed by domestic investment. More than 90% of capital formation comes from within China, as Chinese companies increasingly focus on their home market.

Still, most delegates in Davos believe the Chinese are getting a handle on these problems. The banking system is being recapitalized. Government officials are more aware of the problems caused by intellectual-property theft. The country is moving irrevocably toward a free-market economy. And although inflation moved up to 3.2% in December, Paliwal insists it isn't causing investors great concern.

"China may be different, and it may be complicated," says Chu. "But it's improving every day -- and the opportunities are too huge to overlook."

Back in the mid-70's, she earned $6 an hour in a Vermont factory that made plastic cigarette lighters and cases for Gillette razors. A quarter century later, she earned $6.80 an hour stocking shelves and working cash registers at a vast Wal-Mart superstore.

''And that's sad,'' she declared. ''I'm only making 80 cents more than I did more than 20 years ago.'' Or less, taking into account the rise in the cost of living.

Look at her. That's a proud American face, like lots of faces I've seen across the country. I know too many people who look down on people like her, who think they understand everything, but don't understand anything, about them. I know too many people who think their jobs and educational backgrounds and political views make them superior to everyone who isn't one of them. Who care in the abstract, but who wouldn't spend a single minute to find out what's going on with this one particular woman.

In my experience, people usually think their success is the result of their own hard work; unconsciously they extrapolate that poverty must result from laziness. But look around: the people whose work is hardest often make the lowest wage.

The euro climbed to a peak of $1.2775 on Friday from a low of $1.2335 on Monday, before profit-taking took it back to $1.2610.

... "The main debate appears to be whether we make new euro-dollar highs before or after these two events," said Paul Bednarczyk at 4Cast economic consultancy.

... The pound reached $1.8522 before easing to $1.821.

The dollar's slide against the yen was pronounced after a mid-week rally faded rapidly. A surprise easing of monetary policy by the Bank of Japan on Tuesday had helped the dollar to Y107.87 - a five-week high. But yen bulls took support from data showing very strong portfolio inflows into Japan in spite of suspected intervention by the BoJ, and the dollar slid to Y105.76 on Friday.

A leading Hong Kong businessman with extensive interests in China on Thursday suggested that Beijing might decide to allow the renminbi to appreciate before the end of the year.

Victor Chu, chairman of First Eastern Investment Group, said the country's currency was set for long-term appreciation and that there was a "nine-month window" in which to invest in Chinese assets.

"The time to go into China is now," he said, adding that in 2004 - the year of the monkey in the Chinese calendar - "Chinese assets will be good monkey business."

Mr Chu said the timing of a change in currency policy was still an open question, but that once China made up its mind, it did it "very quickly."

He believed the change would be achieved by pegging the renminbi against a "basket" of several currencies or by widening the bands within which the Chinese currency fluctuates.

When millions of families are suffering in the midst of what is billed as a robust recovery, we should start looking closely at the possibility that the system itself is breaking down.

This goes far beyond the issue of employment. The Times ran a front-page article on Wednesday about Gov. George Pataki's proposed state budget. The ominous subheadline read: "Plan Relies on Gambling to Aid Poorest Schools."

I wrote a story last week about the tens of thousands of low-income youngsters in Florida who are eligible for a children's health insurance program but are being put on waiting lists. State officials say they can't afford to insure the kids now. In California, an estimated 300,000 eligible children are being shunted to similar waiting lists. No one knows when they might get coverage.

President Bush got at least one thing right on Tuesday night, when he said, "Americans are proving once again to be the hardest-working people in the world." Those who are fortunate enough to be employed often have to work long hours, or string together two and three jobs to make ends meet. They are working harder and harder just to keep from falling behind.

In his "Two Americas" speech, Senator Edwards says there is: "One America that does the work, another America that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks. . . . One America — middle-class America — whose needs Washington has long forgotten. Another America — narrow-interest America — whose every wish is Washington's command."

In January 2003 thousands of us from across the world gathered in Porto Alegre in Brazil and declared--reiterated--that "Another World Is Possible." A few thousand miles north, in Washington, George W. Bush and his aides were thinking the same thing.

Our project was the World Social Forum. Theirs--to further what many call the Project for the New American Century.

In the great cities of Europe and America, where a few years ago these things would only have been whispered, now people are openly talking about the good side of imperialism and the need for a strong empire to police an unruly world. The new missionaries want order at the cost of justice. Discipline at the cost of dignity. And ascendancy at any price. Occasionally some of us are invited to "debate" the issue on "neutral" platforms provided by the corporate media. Debating imperialism is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. What can we say? That we really miss it?

In any case, New Imperialism is already upon us. It's a remodeled, streamlined version of what we once knew. For the first time in history, a single empire with an arsenal of weapons that could obliterate the world in an afternoon has complete, unipolar, economic and military hegemony. It uses different weapons to break open different markets. There isn't a country on God's earth that is not caught in the cross-hairs of the American cruise missile and the IMF checkbook. Argentina's the model if you want to be the poster boy of neoliberal capitalism, Iraq if you're the black sheep. Poor countries that are geopolitically of strategic value to Empire, or have a "market" of any size, or infrastructure that can be privatized, or, God forbid, natural resources of value--oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt, coal--must do as they're told or become military targets. Those with the greatest reserves of natural wealth are most at risk. Unless they surrender their resources willingly to the corporate machine, civil unrest will be fomented or war will be waged.

In this new age of empire, when nothing is as it appears to be, executives of concerned companies are allowed to influence foreign policy decisions. The Center for Public Integrity in Washington found that at least nine out of the thirty members of the Bush Administration's Defense Policy Board were connected to companies that were awarded military contracts for $76 billion between 2001 and 2002. George Shultz, former Secretary of State, was chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He is also on the board of directors of the Bechtel Group. When asked about a conflict of interest in the case of war in Iraq he said, "I don't know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it. But if there's work to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it. But nobody looks at it as something you benefit from." In April 2003, Bechtel signed a $680 million contract for reconstruction.

This brutal blueprint has been used over and over again across Latin America, in Africa and in Central and Southeast Asia. It has cost millions of lives. It goes without saying that every war Empire wages becomes a Just War. This, in large part, is due to the role of the corporate media. It's important to understand that the corporate media don't just support the neoliberal project. They are the neoliberal project. This is not a moral position they have chosen to take; it's structural. It's intrinsic to the economics of how the mass media work.

No individual nation can stand up to the project of corporate globalization on its own. Time and again we have seen that when it comes to the neoliberal project, the heroes of our times are suddenly diminished. Extraordinary, charismatic men, giants in the opposition, when they seize power and become heads of state, are rendered powerless on the global stage. I'm thinking here of President Lula of Brazil. Lula was the hero of the World Social Forum last year. This year he's busy implementing IMF guidelines, reducing pension benefits and purging radicals from the Workers' Party. I'm thinking also of the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Within two years of taking office in 1994, his government genuflected with hardly a caveat to the Market God. It instituted a massive program of privatization and structural adjustment that has left millions of people homeless, jobless and without water and electricity.

Why does this happen? There's little point in beating our breasts and feeling betrayed. Lula and Mandela are, by any reckoning, magnificent men. But the moment they cross the floor from the opposition into government they become hostage to a spectrum of threats--most malevolent among them the threat of capital flight, which can destroy any government overnight. To imagine that a leader's personal charisma and a c.v. of struggle will dent the corporate cartel is to have no understanding of how capitalism works or, for that matter, how power works. Radical change cannot be negotiated by governments; it can only be enforced by people.

So if we are against imperialism, shall we agree that we are against the US occupation and that we believe the United States must withdraw from Iraq and pay reparations to the Iraqi people for the damage that the war has inflicted?

How do we begin to mount our resistance? Let's start with something really small. The issue is not about supporting the resistance in Iraq against the occupation or discussing who exactly constitutes the resistance. (Are they old killer Baathists, are they Islamic fundamentalists?)

We have to become the global resistance to the occupation.

Our resistance has to begin with a refusal to accept the legitimacy of the US occupation of Iraq. It means acting to make it materially impossible for Empire to achieve its aims. It means soldiers should refuse to fight, reservists should refuse to serve, workers should refuse to load ships and aircraft with weapons. It certainly means that in countries like India and Pakistan we must block the US government's plans to have Indian and Pakistani soldiers sent to Iraq to clean up after them.

I suggest we choose by some means two of the major corporations that are profiting from the destruction of Iraq. We could then list every project they are involved in. We could locate their offices in every city and every country across the world. We could go after them. We could shut them down. It's a question of bringing our collective wisdom and experience of past struggles to bear on a single target. It's a question of the desire to win.

The Project for the New American Century seeks to perpetuate inequity and establish American hegemony at any price, even if it's apocalyptic. The World Social Forum demands justice and survival.

For these reasons, we must consider ourselves at war.

"I'm going to submit a budget to Congress next month which will include spending of $30 billion for homeland security, that's more than $30 billion — almost three times the amount that we were spending prior to Sept. 11, 2001," Mr. Bush told an audience at the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell.

Specifics of Mr. Bush's proposals were not immediately available, and it is possible that they are still being worked on in the White House. But he said he envisioned an increase of almost 10 percent on homeland security throughout the government.

"We understand our obligation in Washington," Mr. Bush said. "Our obligation is never to forget what happened on September the 11th. And our obligation is to support the homeland security people, those on the front lines, to prepare for a potential threat."

The president used those remarks to call for Congressional renewal of legislation, passed soon after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that broadens law enforcement's surveillance powers and makes it easier for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency to share information.

Critics of the legislation, called the Patriot Act by its supporters, have expressed fears that it could erode civil liberties, and that information-sharing by the C.I.A. and F.B.I.

CLN (www.clnnlc.org) is a new interfaith movement of moderate and progressive clergy who are pursuing greater political participation as an expression of an inclusive faith and a religious social conscience.

"Just as the prophet Jeremiah spoke truth to power in ancient Judah, we find ourselves compelled, out of a sense of faith and patriotism, to give voice to our concerns about the integrity and well-being of our country.

"It comes as no surprise to us that George Bush should find the state of the union so healthy. For himself and those he associates with, times have surely never been better. That is because, in spiritual terms, his Administration has been one that has coddled the wealthy and catered to the powerful at the expense of desperate and even destitute people. While this Administration seeks to aggrandize the corporation and the profiteer, millions of God's children are plagued by unmet needs: the struggle to find jobs, to shelter their families, to educate their children, and to heal their illnesses.

"We reject domestic economic policies that favor the advantaged and pander to greed. The pursuit of such policies is irreconcilable with spiritual commitments and biblical convictions. But worse, to wrap these policies in a false cloak of 'compassion' moves into the arena of cynicism and public hypocrisy.

"Tonight, President Bush also defended - and even celebrated - his violent and unnecessary war in Iraq, which has brought so much human suffering to Americans and Iraqis alike. We share the President's goal of security for all our people. But faith teaches that security realized through conquest is no security at all. Only policies that affirm human dignity, provide for basic human needs, and create global partnerships can lay fair claim to having enhanced security for us and for all nations.

"Furthermore, it is unconscionable that public resources can be found to tear down and rebuild an entire society abroad, but when it comes to pressing human priorities here in our own communities, the nation's coffers have mysteriously run dry."

Go ahead, George, and lie to me. Lie to my dog. Lie to my sister. But don't you ever lie to my kids.

Deep into your State of the Siege lecture tonight, long after sensible adults had turned off the tube or kicked in the screen, you came after our children. "By passing the No Child Left Behind Act," you said, "We are regularly testing every child ... and making sure they have better options when schools are not performing."

You said it ... and then that little tongue came out; that weird way you stick your tongue out between your lips like the little kid who knows he's fibbing. Like a snake licking a rat. I saw that snakey tongue dart out and I thought, "He knows."

And what you know, Mr. Bush, is this: you've ordered this testing to hunt down, identify and target for destruction the hopes of millions of children you find too expensive, too heavy a burden, to educate.

Here's how No Child Left Behind and your tests work in the classrooms of Houston and Chicago. Millions of 8 year olds are given lists of words and phrases. They are graded, like USDA beef: some prime, some OK, many failed.

Once the kids are stamped and sorted, the parents of the marked children ask for you to fill your tantalizing promise, to "make sure they have better options when schools are not performing."

But there is no "better option," is there, Mr. Bush? Where's the money for the better schools to take in the kids getting crushed in cash-poor districts? Where's the open door to the suburban campuses with the big green lawns for the dark kids with the test-score mark of Cain.

And if I bring up the race of the kids with the low score, don't get all snippy with me, telling me your program is color blind. We know the color of the kids left behind; and it's not the color of the kids you went to school with at Philips Andover Academy.

You know and I know that the testing is a con. There is no "better option" at the other end. The cash went to the end the inheritance tax, that special program to give every millionaire's son another million.

But you'll tell me, you took tests as a youth. I know you did. And you scored on the Air Guard flight test 25 out of 100, one point above too dumb to fly. But you zoomed past the other would-be flyboys. They were stamped, "Ready for 'Nam." And you took a test to get into Yale. And though your pet rock scored a wee bit higher than you, your grandpa on the Yale board provided the "better option" which got you in.

Here in New York City, your educational Taliban, led by Republican Mayor Bloomberg, had issued an edict to test the third-graders. Winnow out the chaff and throw them back, exactly where they started, to repeat the same failed program another year. In other words, the core edict of No Child Left Behind is that failing children will be left behind another year. And another year and another year.

You know and I know that this is not an educational opportunity program - because you offer no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding. Rather, it is the new Republican social Darwinism, educational eugenics: Identify the nation's loser-class early on. Trap them, then train them cheap. The system will provide the new worker drones that will clean the toilets at the Yale alumni club, to punch the McDonald's cash registers color-coded for illiterates, to pamper the winner-class on the higher floors of the new service economy order.

So far, observation of a few dozen people in their work environments has revealed a hodgepodge of approaches to organizing pages, and bookmarking them is not at the top of the list.

Instead, some people try to keep track of Web sites by sending themselves an e-mail message with the link and a note of why it might be useful. Others print pages or use sticky notes. Some people, the researchers found, make no attempt to save a page, counting on being able to find it again with a search engine.

When the researchers looked at how people returned to sites they had visited before, they discovered that context made all the difference. When subjects in their study had the chance to describe a site in their own words and were given the description six months later, they had little trouble finding the site again. Yet in today's typical bookmark applications, users cannot annotate sites they save.

Standard & Poor's, the US rating agency, yesterday became the latest international financial institution to receive a visit from Italian police as Parmalat prosecutors cast wider for evidence into who knew what about the true state of the food giant's finances before its spectacular collapse.

S&P stressed that magistrates had told the ratings agency that it was not under official investigation, adding that the company "obviously welcomed" the chance to co-operate with magistrates. A London-based spokeswoman reiterated that S&P had been the victim of an "apparently massive fraud" by Parmalat's former managers, based on "detailed, false information" she claimed they had supplied the agency.

S&P kept an investment grade rating for the bankrupt food multinational's debt until December, when the apparent fraud at Parmalat exploded into the open. "The information on which we based the ratings was totally untrue," the spokeswoman said.

The police search of S&P's Milan offices came a day after magistrates also seized documents from Morgan Stanley, the US investment bank, and Nextra, the fund management arm of Banca Intesa, Italy's biggest bank.

The euro continued its upward march against the dollar on Thursday after recent comments from European officials eased the market's concerns about the possitbility of direct intervention from the European Central Bank.

Following last week's sharp correction, which took the dollar to a one-month high against the euro amid growing concerns that the ECB might intervene, the language used by European finance ministers and central bank members was more defensive this week.

The monthly ECB bulletin, published on Thursday morning, the bank again expressed concern about about "excessive" exchange rate moves, but the central bank said it would "continue to monitor carefully all developments" in the market.

The absence of any mentioning of direct action left traders with the view that the ECB was not about to intervene in the market.

Meanwhile, in Davos, Jean-Philippe Cotis, the chief economist of the OECD, said a further rise in the euro could force the ECB to cut interest rates. The comments took the euro off its intraday highs, but it remained firmly above Wednesday's levels.

After rising to $1.2752 in European morning trade the single currency stood at $1.2723 in early afternoon, up from $1.262 in New York on Wednesday. The euro has risen four cents since Monday.

A day after President Bush vowed to submit an austere budget and halve the deficit in five years, conservatives in his own party said on Wednesday that they were not satisfied and stepped up their campaign to force the White House and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill to do more to hold down the growth of government spending.

Forty Republican House members gathered to hash out how to press Mr. Bush and the Congressional leadership to deal with spending increases that they say are running out of control and a deficit that is reaching alarming proportions.

Their discomfort has been echoed in recent weeks by conservative researchers and commentators who support Mr. Bush on most issues. Among them are the Heritage Foundation, the Club for Growth, a political action committee, and The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.

... "The Republican party has long been the party of small government," an aide to a senior Republican senator said, "but the era of small government has ended for the Republican Party."

Referring to Mr. Bush's call on Tuesday night for athletes to stop using performance-enhancing drugs, the aide said, "Unfortunately, the president's ban on steroids doesn't apply to the appropriators."

But an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll this month found that Democrats had nearly caught up with Republicans on the question of which party does a better job of controlling government spending. The poll found that 33 percent of respondents said Republicans did a better job, with Democrats at 31 percent.

Scottish business entered the new year on a roll and the trend looks set to continue, with optimism and orders improving, Scottish Chambers of Commerce said yesterday.

SCC director Bob Leitch made the upbeat prognosis as he unveiled the latest quarterly study of the Scottish economy. It showed a sharp upturn in orders and optimism in manufacturing, where a deep recession has dragged down the economy since 2001.

The report showed that tourism, retail, wholesale and construction had also performed well.

Leitch acknowledged that the financial services sector is enduring a difficult start to 2004. But he added:

"We’ve seen some major company announcements in the past few months [such as Abbey’s shift of jobs to Glasgow] that five to ten years ago would have caused a crisis. Nowadays, Scottish business has learned to live with these changes as a way of life.

"People are prepared to upskill, train, adapt and move on. It’s an amazing achievement in such a short space of time."

Of the survey generally, Leitch said: "It’s good news across the board. All too often in the past couple of years, this report has been disappointing. Now we’re very upbeat, and I think with good reason."

If believed, statistics cited in "Manic-Depressive Illness and Creativity," an article from the January, 1995 issue of Scientific American, establish that the incidence of clinical depression among writers and artists may be as much as ten times greater than it is in the general population.

Blair is now left crossing his fingers or praying for a US president who is against Kyoto, who has been bad on trade issues, who remains a "big oil" hawk, who despises the EU, who has implemented massive tax cuts for the rich and who has channelled spending into another huge military build-up. For all the fine words, his impact on the Middle East peace process has been zero. With the possible exception of a programme to fight Aids in Africa, there is no progressive issue in the world where he isn't on the wrong side.

And if Blair tries to turn to European allies to mitigate this, where can he now look? To the plucky Poles? To Berlusconi? As the French and Germans wonder how best to deepen the EU after the collapse of the constitutional talks, they are hardly thinking about the future of the third way. When it comes to the great question of Europe's future, they are not on the same side as Tony Blair, with his pound sterling and his closeness to Bush.

Blair himself, of course, has plenty of good personal relationships with a host of other leaders - Putin and Chirac among them. He is now a survivor in the international power game, who has outlasted every obvious rival. He has become an adept negotiator and player in summits and is respected by other leaders even when they don't agree with much that he says.

That doesn't alter the fact that after six years of trying to be at the centre of world politics, New Labour looks isolated. Blair may have wanted to be a bridge between the US and Europe, but the American superpower has gone its own way, and Europe has recoiled. Instead of being at the cutting edge, surrounded by friends and allies, Blair's third way suddenly looks like a fusty anomaly. And he would be lonelier still if the Democrats returned to power in Washington. It is more than odd, it is extraordinary, that the Democrats' dream has become Blair's nightmare.

"Mr Bush was not the only politician on Capitol Hill Tuesday night who made his views clear. As the president began his speech, a camera focused on Senator Ted Kennedy, quite distinctly rolling his eyes in contempt of the president's words. Whatever their political differences, a lawmaker of Mr Kennedy's stature owes to the president - any president - a respectful hearing free of juvenile eye-rolling.

On Monday, January 19, the finalists were announced and voting is open again to choose the winners. Voting will close at 10:00 PM EST on Saturday, January 31. The winners will be posted on Monday, March 15.

The Weblog Awards™ ceremony will be held at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival for the second time in Austin, Texas, USA on Monday, March 15 at 12:30 PM. Webloggers including previous winners and prize donators will present the certificates and prizes to those present.

Those who aren't attending may join the excitement on IRC, in #BlogIRC on irc.turlyming.com:6667. Winners will be announced live and a play-by-play of the ceremony will be given.

"Murder, though it hath no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ." -- Shakespeare, "Hamlet"

It's all out in the open now. The fact that the president of the United States and his top advisers deliberately concocted a false case for an illegal and unnecessary war -- in plain terms, that they committed cold-blooded, premeditated mass murder -- was confirmed last week by the most impeccable mainstream sources: George W. Bush's own Cabinet officials, speaking for the record in America's major media.

Remarkably, the "extremist views" and "paranoia" of the "lunatic fringe" -- those "Bush-bashers" who for months proclaimed that the Regime's lust to conquer Iraq was part of a long-planned scheme of looting and dominance that had nothing to do with September 11, 2001 or defending America from terror -- are now issuing from the mouths of the Regime's inner circle.

Secretary of State Colin Powell led the way. Powell, a pathetic bagman who began his career with a botched job of whitewashing war crimes in Vietnam (the My Lai massacre) and is ending it with a botched job of whitewashing war crimes in Iraq, admitted that there was no evidence of any past collusion between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, The New York Times reports. Although the "very real" threat of Saddam passing on his vast arsenal of technodeath to Osama bin Laden was the most effective tool in the Regime's "sales program" for war, resonating viscerally with an American public still reeling from September 11, the genial general -- who loudly trumpeted this "threat" at the UN -- now says it was never anything more than a worrisome "possibility" without any basis in fact.

As well he might. For even had the mythical alliance of Bush bogeymen actually existed, that "vast arsenal of technodeath" did not. There were no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to pass on; there were not even any active programs to develop WMD. This has long been obvious from reading between the lines of the reports of Bush's own weapon-hunters, but it was finally made manifest in an extraordinary report last week in The Washington Post.

There, leaders of Bush's CIA-directed weapons search team admitted publicly that Iraq's WMD program was shattered in the first Gulf War -- 13 years ago -- and its remnants completely dismantled in 1995. This was, of course, long-known (and oft-reported by "Bush-bashers") before the latest war -- indeed, it was even reported in the mainstream media years ago, which is where the paranoiacs on the lunatic fringe found it, in easily accessible archives and Congressional reports. But it was conveniently forgotten in the profitable, corporate-driven war fever before the invasion. Now, after the murder of thousands of innocent people, including almost 500 American soldiers, the truth re-emerges -- again from the mouths of Bush's own hirelings.

Then came the revelations of Paul O'Neill, Bush's treasury secretary until December 2002. In a nationally televised interview, O'Neill confirmed that Bush and his minions were planning the invasion of Iraq from the moment they took office -- months before 9-11. "[It was] the president saying, 'Go find me a way to do this,'" said O'Neill, whose eye-openers are featured in a new book by Ron Suskind of the archconservative Wall Street Journal.

Although the Regime's hatchet men are now desperately downplaying O'Neill's importance, questioning his sanity, even threatening to prosecute him, he was very much in the leadership loop: a member of the powerful National Security Council, privy to top-secret intelligence. He says he never saw "anything in the intelligence that I would characterize as real evidence" of an Iraqi threat -- just a muddy stream of "assertions and illusions." Suskind also unearthed early Bushist memos detailing the predators' postwar designs for Iraq, including extensive military occupation and -- in March 2001 -- plans for parceling out Iraq's oil wealth to favored corporations and foreign allies, CBSNews.com reports.

Again, this is old news for lunatic fringers. As often reported here, the Cheney-Rumsfeld pressure group, Project for the New American Century, long ago outlined its program for America's "full spectrum dominance" over the globe, with the planting of a "military footprint" throughout oil-rich Central Asia and the Middle East. Indeed, conquering Iraq was an imperative that "transcended the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein," said PNAC; whether he was there or not, whether the Iraqi people needed "liberating" or not, the invasion would go forward. PNAC, whose members now fill the Regime's upper ranks, also yearned openly for a "new Pearl Harbor," a devastating sneak attack that would "catalyze" public support for the group's "revolutionary transformation" of American society into a militarized aggressor state.

This is no "conspiracy theory." PNAC's maniacal manifesto was published in broad daylight in September 2000 -- but was ignored by that same corporatized American media that later proved so helpfully amnesiac after the "new Pearl Harbor" was launched by the CIA's old allies from the Afghan jihad, led by a scion of the Bush family's business partners, the bin Ladens. (This long-documented family connection was detailed by Republican strategist and former Nixon aide Kevin Phillips in the Los Angeles Times last week -- yet another belated mainstreaming of the "lunatic fringe.")

Thus the Regime's shifting rationales for war -- terror threats, WMD, concern for the Iraqi people -- have now been publicly exposed, by the Bushists themselves as nothing more than lies, flimsy excuses to commit murder for power and gain. Where, then, is the "fringe," that blighted place beyond the pale of reason and human decency?

Who, then, are the lunatics?

Annotations:

"Dead Cities: And Other Tales," -- Mike Davis, New Press Paperback, October 2003.

"Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper," -- Washington Post, Jan. 6, 2004.

"Powell Admits No Hard Proof Linking Iraq to al Qaeda," -- New York Times, Jan. 9, 2004.

"Saddam Ouster Planned in Early 2001," -- CBSNews.com, Jan. 9, 2004.

"The Barreling Bushes," -- Los Angeles Times, Jan. 11, 2004.

"The Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," -- Kevin Phillips interview, Buzzflash.com, Jan. 4, 2004.

"Rebuilding America's Defenses," -- Project for the New American Century, September 2000.

"Behind Colin Powell's Legend: Vietnam Lessons," -- Consortiumnews.com, Dec. 17, 2000.

"Behind Colin Powell's Legend: Saving Ronald Reagan," -- Consortiumnews.com, Dec. 20, 2000.

"Bush Decided to Remove Saddam 'On Day One,' -- The Guardian, Jan. 12, 2004.

"Bush Was Demanding Excuse to Invade Iraq in January 2001," -- The Independent, Jan. 12, 2004.

"White House Distorted Iraq Threat," -- Financial Times, Jan. 7, 2004.

"US Withdraws a Team of Weapons Hunters From Iraq," -- New York Times, Jan. 8, 2004.

"Mounting Evidence Shows Iraq Didn't Have WMD," -- Boston Globe, Jan. 9, 2004.

"Bush and Democracy Hypocrisy," -- Consortiumnews.com, Jan. 5, 2004.

"US to Saddam: WMD A-OK," -- The Nation, Dec. 30, 2003.

"Study by Army War College Criticizes Terror War's Scope," -- Washington Post, Jan. 11, 2004.

On Wednesday our darling Iraqi Puppet Council decided that secular Iraqi family law would no longer be secular- it is now going to be according to Islamic Shari'a. Shari'a is Islamic law, whether from the Quran or quotes of the Prophet or interpretations of modern Islamic law by clerics and people who have dedicated their lives to studying Islam.

The news has barely been covered by Western or even Arab media and Iraqi media certainly aren't covering it. It is too much to ask of Al-Iraqiya to debate or cover a topic like this one- it would obviously conflict with the Egyptian soap operas and songs. This latest decision is going to be catastrophic for females- we're going backwards.

Don't get me wrong- pure Islamic law according to the Quran and the Prophet gives women certain unalterable, nonnegotiable rights. The problem arises when certain clerics decide to do their own interpretations of these laws (and just about *anyone* can make themselves a cleric these days). The bigger problem is that Shari'a may be drastically different from one cleric to another. There are actually fundamental differences in Shari'a between the different Islamic factions or 'methahib'. Even in the same methahib, there are dozens of different clerics who may have opposing opinions. This is going to mean more chaos than we already have to deal with. We've come to expect chaos in the streets… but chaos in the courts and judicial system too?!

This is completely unfair to women specifically. Under the Iraqi constitution, men and women are equal. Under our past secular family law (which has been in practice since the '50s) women had unalterable divorce, marriage, inheritance, custody, and alimony rights. All of this is going to change.

(read more)

... My head has been spinning these last few days with decision No. 173 on changing Family Law to Shari'a. I've been darkly mulling over the endless possibilities. I'm not the only one- everyone I talk to is shaking their head in dismay. How is this happening? How are we caving in to fundamentalism?

Talabani was saying that the decision wasn't taken or passed because it didn't get enough votes by the GC, but all the signs say that the decision was made and might be implemented as soon as they get Bremer's signature. Nisreen Barwari, the only female minister on the cabinet, was out demonstrating with several of the women's rights parties a few days ago against the decision. Christopher Allbritton over at Back to Iraq 3.0 has written something on the subject and so has the Washington Post.

The question is, even if the personal status laws aren't going to be subjected to change now- immediately- what about the future? What does that say about 6 months from now when Bremer's signature isn't necessary?

(read more)

Women are outraged… this is going to open new doors for repression in the most advanced country on women's rights in the Arab world! Men are also against this (although they certainly have the upper-hand in the situation) because it's going to mean more confusion and conflict all around.

What happens when all the clerics agree that a hijab isn't 'preferred' but necessary? According to this new change in the 'ahwal shakhsiya' laws or 'personal circumstances' laws, all women will have to cover their heads and according to Shari'a, if a woman's husband decides that she can't continue her education or work, she'll have to remain a house-wife.

Please don't misunderstand- any oppression to women isn't a reflection on Islam. It's a reflection on certain narrow minds, ignorance and the politicization of religion. Islam is a progressive religion and no religion is clearer on the rights of women- it came during a time when women had no rights at all. During the sanctions and all the instability, we used to hear fantastic stories about certain Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar, to name a few. We heard about their luxurious lifestyles- the high monthly wages, the elegant cars, sprawling homes and malls… and while I always wanted to visit, I never once remember yearning to live there or even feeling envy. When I analyzed my feelings, it always led back to the fact that I cherished the rights I had as an Iraqi Muslim woman. During the hard times, it was always a comfort that I could drive, learn, work for equal pay, dress the way I wanted and practice Islam according to my values and beliefs, without worrying whether I was too devout or not devout enough.

I usually ignore the emails I receive telling me to 'embrace' my new-found freedom and be happy that the circumstances of all Iraqi women are going to 'improve drastically' from what we had before. They quote Bush (which in itself speaks volumes) saying things about how repressed the Iraqi women were and how, now, they are going to be able to live free lives.

The people who write those emails often lob Iraq together with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan and I shake my head at their ignorance but think to myself, "Well, they really need to believe their country has the best of intentions- I won't burst their bubble." But I'm telling everyone now- if I get any more emails about how free and liberated the Iraqi women are *now* thanks to America, they can expect a very nasty answer.

The troubled dollar, stalled trade talks and the Iraq war are top of the agenda as world leaders arrive in Davos for the annual World Economic Forum.

... "Partnering for Prosperity and Security" is this year's theme for the World Economic Forum (WEF), and it is probably more an expression of hope than a description of fact.

The forum's five-day agenda is a reflection of all the world's troubles: the aftermath of the Iraq war; the war on terror; the shaky recovery in the global economy; transatlantic tensions over trade and security; global warming; corporate governance and many others.

Debating the issues will be company bosses like Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Cisco's John Chambers, Sony's Noguyuki Idei and Sir Martin Sorrell of advertising giant WPP.

UN secretary general Kofi Annan, US attorney general John Ashcroft, Iraq administrator Paul Bremer, presidents like Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf and Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo and former US president Bill Clinton are among the politicians coming to Davos.

Campaigners come from organisations as diverse as the World Wide Fund for Nature, poverty action group Oxfam and the African Women's Development Fund.

... US commerce secretary Donald Evans, European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet, and Wolfgang Clement and Heizo Takenaka - the economy ministers of Germany and Japan respectively - are expected to discuss the sharp decline of the US dollar over the past year.

And one of the sessions in Davos will discuss "what if the dollar fell by an additional 20%", although none of the government officials is scheduled to speak at the event.

On the subject of economics, the recent conflicting data from the US will unquestionably fuel debate about the pace of recovery in leading countries around the world.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, America is not creating anywhere near the number of jobs that it should be at this stage of the economic cycle, baffling the legions of high-brow number crunchers in the process.

Economists lost for words!

Not I suspect for very much longer. Opinions about how America can continue to re-write the text and record books about its jobless economic recovery will be an abundant commodity at Davos.

Economists, well some of them, are just unable to predict an end to the jobless recovery phenomenon in the US.

Only a couple of hours out of Baghdad there's a geological fault that the Kurds say marks the end of Iraq and the start of Kurdistan.

The foothills of the Jabal Harim mountains that cross the main road north are an impressive sight looming out of the morning mist.

But the small Iraqi checkpoint, with its cheery and welcoming soldiers who waved as they ushered us past, is many miles from the current border with the area administered by the Kurdish authorities.

Iraq's Kurds have enjoyed a huge level of independence from Baghdad for more than 10 years, thanks to the American and British fighter pilots patrolling the no-fly zone which have protected them from Saddam Hussein.

Not only are they now refusing to give up their autonomy, they want a lot more.

Our first destination - just another hour up the road, is Kirkuk - a city which would be the jewel in the crown for an autonomous Kurdistan, and one the divided leaders who now seem to speak with one voice would love to control. Not least because it contains more than a third of Iraq's oil reserves.

Whose territory?

It's a city where the Kurds say they are the majority amid the Arabs, Turkomans and Assyrians who make up this ethnically diverse part of Iraq. They may well be right.

The Kurds stake a historic claim to it as being their city, but what they dub Saddam Hussein's "Arabisation" has shaken the region to its core and left a legacy that could again bring Iraq to its knees.

Almost a year after the shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry, NASA is making "uneven" progress in the steps required before it can fly another mission, and it is too soon to say when one of the three surviving shuttles could safely fly, an advisory group appointed by the agency said Tuesday.

The group characterized its interim report as positive, but said that "progress should not be mistaken for accomplishment."

The 26-member group, whose chairmen are the retired astronauts Thomas P. Stafford and Richard O. Covey, was set up by NASA in June to measure the agency's compliance with recommendations made by an outside panel, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

President Bush called last week for phasing out the shuttle program by 2010, but NASA plans to return the remaining fleet to orbit for missions to maintain and expand the International Space Station until then.

"It is still much too soon to predict either the success of implementation or the timing of the next flight," said the report.

NASA originally spoke of resuming flights this spring, and now hopes for September or October. As of Dec. 10, though, according to the advisory group, NASA had completed none of the technical responses to the recommendations.

But before NASA can consider ambitious lunar or Mars missions, it must first design and build the successor to the shuttle, a task it has repeatedly attempted and failed. Since the 1980's, the agency has produced a succession of futuristic concepts that fell short of reality.

For example, Lockheed Martin in 1996 contracted to build the chubby-finned X-33, which was to blast into space like a rocket and then glide back like the shuttle. It used innovative technologies like carbon composites for its fuel tanks to cut down on weight. But the carbon composites leaked, the project went over budget and NASA canceled it in 2001.

... To launch the exploration vehicle, NASA no longer has anything like the Saturn 5 of the Apollo program, which could lug 280,000 pounds of payload to low Earth orbit. The space shuttle, which will be retired in 2010, can lift about 60,000 pounds, and the current generation of expendable rockets lift only about 40,000 pounds.

As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize -- or do not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order.

Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations. To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, we are creating some thirteen naval task forces built around aircraft carriers whose names sum up our martial heritage -- Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Enterprise, John F. Kennedy, Nimitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John C. Stennis, Harry S. Truman, and Ronald Reagan. We operate numerous secret bases outside our territory to monitor what the people of the world, including our own citizens, are saying, faxing, or e-mailing to one another.

Our installations abroad bring profits to civilian industries, which design and manufacture weapons for the armed forces or, like the now well-publicized Kellogg, Brown & Root company, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston, undertake contract services to build and maintain our far-flung outposts. One task of such contractors is to keep uniformed members of the imperium housed in comfortable quarters, well fed, amused, and supplied with enjoyable, affordable vacation facilities. Whole sectors of the American economy have come to rely on the military for sales. On the eve of our second war on Iraq, for example, while the Defense Department was ordering up an extra ration of cruise missiles and depleted-uranium armor-piercing tank shells, it also acquired 273,000 bottles of Native Tan sunblock, almost triple its 1999 order and undoubtedly a boon to the supplier, Control Supply Company of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and its subcontractor, Sun Fun Products of Daytona Beach, Florida.

At Least Seven Hundred Foreign Bases

It's not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. Pentagon bureaucrats calculate that it would require at least $113.2 billion to replace just the foreign bases -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic product of most countries -- and an estimated $591.5 billion to replace all of them. The military high command deploys to our overseas bases some 253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employs an additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases 4,844 more.

These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The Report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11.

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force." - Ayn Rand, the Nature of Government.

The AFL-CIO is taking control of national strategy for the California supermarket strike and lockout, assigning two veterans of labor wars to turn around a battle in which employers seem to have gained the upper hand.

The campaign will be led by Richard Trumka, who played a pivotal role in resolving the West Coast port lockout, and Ron Judd, who orchestrated AFL-CIO protests at the turbulent World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.

The plan is to pressure the supermarket companies by hounding executives and directors with phone calls and visits, staging demonstrations across the country — including a pray-in outside the Northern California home of the chief executive of Safeway Inc. — and persuading major grocery-company shareholders, such as pension funds, to take stands in the union's favor.

"We have our work cut out for us," Trumka, the national labor federation's secretary-treasurer, said in an interview Monday, "but I predict that three months from now, there will be a whole different attitude out there."

United Food and Commercial Workers union officials said they welcomed the AFL-CIO's heightened participation on the tactical side, characterizing the federation's plan as an expansion of a strategy the UFCW had already set in motion.

In fact, Trumka, Judd and other top federation officials had agitated for months to become more involved in strike planning but were rebuffed until recently by national UFCW leaders, according to a national labor strategist familiar with the situation.

The dispute focuses on the supermarkets' demand that workers' health benefits be reduced and that the union agree to a lower wage and benefit scale for new hires. Whatever contract is signed is likely to affect contract negotiations across the country — a chief reason for the AFL-CIO's interest.

The supermarket chains would not comment on the AFL-CIO plan.

Burt P. Flickinger, director of Strategic Resource Group in New York and a consultant to supermarket suppliers, said that with its picketing members frustrated and running out of money, the grocery workers' union didn't have much time to turn things around. Some local unions have mortgaged their headquarters buildings to maintain strike benefits for members; for many pickets, health benefits expired in January.

But Flickinger said the supermarkets, which have lost an estimated $1 billion in sales, also were under increasing strain. "It really is crunch time," he said. "The supermarkets are holding the line because their stock prices are holding steady. As we go into 2004, that may change."

In mid-December, the UFCW offered what union officials described as substantial concessions on health-care benefits. The companies dismissed the proposal as inadequate. In early January, national and local UFCW officials met secretly in San Francisco with mid-level managers from the supermarket chains. Union participants said four days of meetings brought them no closer to a resolution.

The union negotiators "came away from that meeting scared to death," said the national labor strategist familiar with the UFCW who asked not to be identified. "Now they know — this is war."

The California strike is the longest grocery strike in the UFCW's history.

Rick Icaza, president of Local 770 in Los Angeles, said the AFL-CIO intervention came at a crucial time.

"To win this, we need an expansion nationwide, and we haven't really done that yet," he said. "I don't think you can ask any more of the members or the consumers, as far as their support goes. The only reason they [the supermarkets] are hanging in there is they've got national resources."

The Salvation Army announced Tuesday that it is receiving the largest gift ever given to a charity — a donation likely to exceed $1.5-billion (U.S.) from the estate of Joan B. Kroc, widow of the founder of McDonald's Corp.

Salvation Army officials say the exact size of the gift won't be known until administration of Ms. Kroc's estate is complete, which could take several months.

The gift is for development of community centres across the country, similar to the Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center that opened in San Diego in June 2002. The Kroc centre offers educational, recreational and cultural arts programs.

... Ms. Kroc's gift is the largest ever to a charitable organization, and ranks ninth overall in terms of gifts to nonprofit organizations. The largest ever was Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates' $6-billion donation to his own group, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The euro shrugged off verbal intervention from the eurozone finance ministers and climbed against the dollar on Tuesday even as the US currency held near recent highs against the yen following the Bank of Japan's unexpected easing of monetary policy.

The euro reached a peak of $1.2539 against the dollar as US traders reached their desks after a long weekend break.

Howeever, the statement by the eurozone ministers dominated market attention. The group, meeting in Brussels, released a joint comment on the euro, highlighting the eurozone's determination to go into next month's G7 meeting with a unified viewpoint. Read more about the meeting.

The group dropped its usual line about a "strong and stable euro," instead choosing to stress stability.

"We are concerned about excessive exchange rate moves," the group said. "We will continue to monitor the situation closely, and conduct policies supporting economic recovery in a stable macroeconomic environment."

But the euro, at $1.238 as European traders reached their desks on Tuesday, started a steep climb. Charlie McCreevy, the Irish finance minister chairing the talks, said the group had no view on contingency plans for combating renewed euro strength.

The dollar shrugged off pressure against the euro and other currencies, and rose against the yen after the Bank of Japan surprised markets with further monetary easing.

The dollar was at Y107.2 against the yen, having traded around Y106.6 a day earlier.

The Bank of Canada cut interest rates for the first time in almost five months Tuesday, citing the combined impact of a soaring loonie and weaker-than-expected demand on this country's recovering economy, and economists say the door remains wide open for more moves if the picture doesn't brighten.

The move lowers the central bank's key target for the overnight rate to 2.5 per cent, from 2.75 per cent.

... “Despite stronger global economic growth, the rapid appreciation of the Canadian dollar against the U.S. currency has cut into the overall growth of aggregate demand for Canadian goods and services through weaker exports and increased imports,” the central bank said.

The loonie gained more than 20 per cent against the U.S. dollar last year and has continued to climb early in 2004.

Despite the rate cut, the dollar continued to hold its ground in early going, suggesting that the markets had anticipated the latest move and priced in the cut. Just before it 11:30 a.m., the loonie was trading at 77.60 cents, up 0.78 of a cent.

At 9:14 a.m. EST, the dollar was trading at 77.09 cents.

The Court of Appeal has called for a halt to the prosecution of parents for murdering their babies when expert evidence points to the possibility of cot death.

Hundreds of cases involving parents convicted of killing their babies are to be urgently reviewed, following the court judgment yesterday, and the furore surrounding the use of so-called expert witnesses in cases of child abuse.

The Court of Appeal, giving reasons for its decision last month to clear Angela Cannings of murdering her two baby sons, said there should be an end to prosecutions where there was a reasonable possibility that Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or cot death, was the cause.

In a written parliamentary answer on the Cannings case, Lord Goldsmith, QC, the Attorney General, said he shared the unease expressed by the court on the dangers of relying solely on expert evidence when the cause of an unexplained death is in dispute.

... Medical science was "still at the frontiers of knowledge" about unexplained infant deaths, said Lord Justice Judge, giving the court’s reasons for its decision last month to clear Mrs Cannings of murdering her two children.

On returning home to her family, she must have felt _vindication for the years of campaigning against her conviction. She told women in a similar position: "Don’t give up hope."

Mrs Cannings, 40, a shop assistant from Salisbury, Wiltshire, was convicted by jury at Winchester Crown Court in April 2002 of smothering Jason, seven weeks old, in 1991, and Matthew, 18 weeks old, in 1999. She was not charged over the death of her first child, Gemma, who died in 1989, at the age of 13 weeks.

The euro steadied on Monday against the dollar after hitting a one-month low as investors looked to a meeting of eurozone finance ministers for clues to the scale of European disquiet with the euro's rise.

The single currency was at $1.237 against the dollar at the London close, off a low of $1.2335 - its lowest since before Christmas. Trading conditions were thin on Monday, with US investors on holiday. This left traders focused on Europe, and the eurozone finance ministers' meeting on Monday night. Currencies were expected to be on the agenda and investors were hoping to pick up any remarks that revealed the depth of politicians' concerns about the euro, following a series of comments by European central bankers last week.

"[The] meeting of eurogroup finance ministers may indeed call for an end to euro appreciation, but the market will likely need to wait for the February 6-7 G7 meeting in Florida for a broader response from other G7 nations," said Steven Saywell, senior currencies strategist at Citigroup.

Interest rate pressures helped the Canadian dollar to its lowest against its US counterpart this year. The dollar rose to C$1.3044 before settling back to $1.302. Traders said conditions were particularly thin given the market holiday over the border.

Widespread, but not unanimous, expectations of an interest rate cut by the Bank of Canada at its meeting on Tuesday are partially behind the Canadian currency's recent weakness.

The bank last year reversed two early rate rises with cuts in July and September. Since then, the rise in the currency to new 10-year highs against the US dollar, plus some disappointing growth data, have prompted speculation the BoC could lower borrowing costs on Tuesday.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- A U.S. helicopter attacked a house in a village in southern Afghanistan, killing 11 people, four of them children, Afghan officials said Monday.

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. military.

The attack occurred at around 4 a.m. Sunday, a day after U.S. forces hunting for Taliban insurgents had searched Saghatho village, where the home is located, said Abdul Rahman, chief of Char Chino district in Uruzgan province.

``They were simple villagers, they were not Taliban. I don't know why the U.S. bombed this home. We have informed our authorities,'' he told The Associated Press by telephone in the southern city of Kandahar.

Maj. Steven R. Moon, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Kabul, had no immediate comment.

The governor of Uruzgan, Jan Mohammed Khan, confirmed Rahman's account that four men, four children and three women were killed in a U.S. bombing.

He said U.S. authorities had told him they seen ammunition in their search of the village, which apparently raised suspicions. During the search, ``the people were afraid, they started running,'' Khan said.

``The Americans bombed this home,'' he said.

Rahman said the 11 victims were buried Sunday in the village, where residents were ``very afraid and very angry.''

About 100 Afghan forces and between 20 and 30 U.S. soldiers have arrested 10 suspects in an operation in the Mahmara and Saghatho areas of Char Chino district in the past two days, he said.

In regards to the meeting at the United Nations in New York today, many United Nations officials have complained that they were deliberately kept at a distance during the planning stage and are now being asked to validate a process from which they were excluded.

American officials have used the walled-off area, called the green zone, since the fall of Baghdad in April. Because the compound is so large and the gate is at its very northern perimeter, at the west end of a bridge spanning the Tigris, the attack was obviously aimed at Iraqis working for the Coalition Provisional Authority and its allies rather than at any distinct military target.

In Al Karama hospital on Sunday, Ahmed Ali, lying half-naked in a bed with a shrapnel wound to his torso, said he had been among 200 people standing at the gate, waiting to be let into the compound. "I felt as if a storm had hit," said Mr. Ali, 23, who does maintenance for water pumps in the compound. "There was a huge blast and smoke and fire everywhere. Then the Americans began shooting."

Colonel Baker disputed his account, though, saying American soldiers did not open fire.

"(W)hile it is true that the United States of America was founded on the sacred principle of religious freedom for all, that liberty was never intended to exalt other religions to the level that Christianity holds in our country's heritage. Our Founders expected that Christianity -- and no other religion -- would receive support from the government as long as that support did not violate peoples' consciences and their right to worship. They would have found utterly incredible the idea that all religions, including paganism, be treated with equal deference. As for our Hindu priest friend, the United States is a nation that has historically honored the one true God. Woe be to us on that day when we relegate him to being merely one among countless other deities in the pantheon of theologies." -- Family Research Council, Culture Facts newsletter 9/21/2000, commenting on a Hindu priest giving the opening prayer in the House of Representatives.

"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called on by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism." -- Randall Terry, The News Sentinel, (Ft. Wayne, IN.), 8/16/93.

"We are to make Bible-obeying disciples of anybody that gets in our way." -- Jay Grimstead, February 1987.

"Nobody has the right to worship on this planet any other God than Jehovah. And therefore the state does not have the responsibility to defend anybody's pseudo-right to worship an idol." -- Rev. Joseph Morecraft, Chalcedon Presbyterian Church, "Biblical Role of Civil Government" speech given 8/31/93 at Biblical Worldview and Christian Education Conference.

"This is God's world, not Satan's. Christians are the lawful heirs, not non-Christians." -- Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), p. 102.

"[W]e need a legal strategy which protects the rights of those of us who hold Christian convictions which will afford us the opportunity to contend once again for the mind of this culture." -- Keith A. Fournier, ACLJ brochure "Religious Cleansing".

"America is under the judgment of God. And if we are ever going to rebuild this country, it must be under God's law. Our goal must be simple: We must have a Christian nation built on God's law, on the Ten Commandments. No apologies." -- Randall Terry, Operation Rescue, address to "Cities of Refuge" campaign, Willoughby Hills, OH, July, 1993.

"A cult is any group that has a form of godliness, but does not recognize Jesus Christ as the unique son of God."....."One test of a cult is that it often does not strictly teach that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God who HImself is God manifested in the flesh."......"Christian-oriented cults include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), the Worldwide Church of God, Christian Science, Unity, Unitarianism, The Way International, Rosicrucian Society of America, Bahai, Hare Krishna, Scientology, the Unification Church, and the Jehovah's Witnesses." -- CBN pamphlet "Cults," 1992.

"When the Christian majority takes over this country, there will be no satanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography, no more talk of rights for homosexuals. After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil and the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil." -- Gary Potter, president of Catholics for Christian Political Action.

"If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being." -- Jerry Falwell.

"What this is coming down to is who runs the country. It's us against them. It's the good guys versus the bad guys. It's the God-fearing people against the pagans, and some of the pagans are going to church." -- Randall Terry, Operation Rescue, speech in Jackson, Miss., 4/92.

"The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church's public marks of the covenant--baptism and holy communion--must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel." -- Gary North - Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism, Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989, p. 87.

"There should be absolutely no 'Separation of Church and State' in America." -- David Barton, president of Wallbuilders, 1994 Anti-Defamation League Report.

"Most politically active Christians don't want equal time with homosexuals, abortionists, animal worshipping pagans, witches, radical feminists and pornographers. We want them silenced and mercifully disciplined according to the word of God." -- Jay Rogers reviewing Ralph Reed's Politically Incorrect in "Chalcedon Report," 2/95.

"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." -- President George Bush, August 27, 1988.

"Christianity and politics not only do mix, but for democracy as we have known it to survive, they must mix." -- Rev. Donald Wildmon, Miami Herald, (11/16/93).

"We are engaged in a social, political, and cultural war. There's a lot of talk in America about pluralism. But the bottom line is somebody's values will prevail. And the winner gets the right to teach our children what to believe." -- Gary Bauer, Family Research Council.

"We're going to bring back God and the Bible and drive the gods of secular humanism right out of the public schools of America." -- Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan addressing the anti-gay rally in Des Moines, 2-11-96.

"...If a local community provides for school prayer, and the children of that community voluntarily choose to participate in it, this collective decision allows God to intercede in the public dimension of that community. Restoring school prayer will allow God's angels to leap into action to arrest hellish energy patterns before they can sprout and spill over into the public square." -- Steven Showers, Director of The School Prayer Resource Center, Newbury Park, California, in a letter to The Simi Valley Star and Enterprise, January 1, 1995.

"One day, I hope in the next ten years, I trust that we will have more Christian day schools than there are public schools. I hope I will live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be! -- Jerry Falwell, America Can Be Saved, 1979.

"America's public schools, we consciously deny them all religious instruction, and deny them access to that primary source of morality, God's own word. The Bible is the one book from which they are expressly not allowed to be taught." -- Pat Buchanan, "The City and The Crusade", Commencement Address for Christendom College, May 6, 1996.

"The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army of dedicated teachers who can invade the public school classrooms and use them to influence the nation for Christ." -- D. James Kennedy, "Education: Public Problems and Private Solutions," Coral Ridge Ministries, 1993.

''We are completely void of anything to do with God. Teachers can't touch a child - even to hug a crying child. Young boys are on Ritalin and a lot of the problem is because we have a female-dominated educational system which tries to make little boys act like little girls.'' -- William "Bill" Murray, addressing the "God and Country II" rally, speaking about the need for prayer and Bible recitations in school.

"The public school system is damned. Let me tell you how radical I am. Christian students should be in Christian schools. If you have to sell your car, live in a smaller house, or work a night job, put your child in Christian schools. If you can't afford it home school." -- Jerry Falwell, "Trends in Christian Higher Education," Regent University, 9/22/93.

"So let us be blunt about it: We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will be get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God." -- Gary North, "The Intellectual Schizophrenia of the New Christian Right" in Christianity and Civilization: The Failure of the American Baptist Culture, No. 1 (Spring, 1982), p. 25.

"The judges need to be intimidated, they need to uphold the Constitution. If they don't behave, we're going to go after them in a big way." -- House Majority Whip Rep. Tom DeLay, The Washington Post.

"Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free." -- Pat Buchanan, speech to the Christian Coalition, Sept. 1993, as reported in ADL Report, 1994.

"The 'Owner's Manual' for the Constitution is the Bible." -- Tony Nassif, California Christian Coalition and the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools.

"A religion that doesn't discriminate wouldn't exist, because it wouldn't stand for anything." -- Janet Parshall, Family Research Council's "Washington Watch Radio Commentary," Sept. 1, 2000 - Comments about a church firing a lesbian worker.

"Only stupid parents would leave their children in the filthy, immoral, dangerous, public 'education' institutions for indoctrination by socialists ... who don't seem to care about the safety of children ... only their pay checks." -- J.M. Sutherland, Ph.D - The Christian Alert Network.

"But integration and equality are myths; they disguise a new segregation and a new equality...Every social order institutes its own program of separation or segregation. A particular faith and morality is given privileged status and all else is separated for progressive elimination." -- R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), p. 296.

"We wonder why they [students] carry guns and kill each other. Well, we've told them "You're nothing, you're a freak, you're an accident of nature. That's all'" -- Benny Proffitt, President of First Priority of America - comments on teaching evolution.

"This is our land. This is our world. This is our heritage, and with God's help, we shall reclaim this nation for Jesus Christ. And no power on earth can stop us." -- D. James Kennedy, Character and Destiny: A Nation in Search of Its Soul, 1994 (p. 85).

"The end goal of gay activism is the criminalization of Christianity." -- Robert H. Knight, Director of Cultural Studies at FRC.

"As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children." -- Anita Bryant, 1977.

"If personal safety means discrimination, then I'm all for it." -- Janet Parshall, FRC Washington Watch Radio Commentary, Sept. 21, 2000 - Comments regarding the ban on gay and bisexual men donating blood.

"I want to coin a phrase here, and I don't mind help. What would be the communication version of "ethnic cleansing?" Because that's what in particular the homosexual activists try to do." -- Dr. Laura Schlessinger, August 11, 1999.

"AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharaoh's charioteers." -- Jerry Falwell.

"Now I have learned that the radical, perverted homosexuals and lesbians are already promoting their '2000 Disney Gay Day' -- with Disney's help! And they are timing it to occur in June -- right when children out of school will be flocking to Disney-owned parks! This proves the true intent of these homosexuals: they are after our children!!" -- Bonnie Mawyer, wife of Christian Action Network founder, in a March 2000 letter blasting Disney for allowing gay groups to visit Disney World.

"God Hates Fags!" -- Rev. Fred Phelps.

"I am not ready to give this great nation over to one-world government extremists...radical, disease-carrying homosexuals...or anti-family lesbian feminists...or hate-mongering atheists who despise our religious beliefs...or the ACLU who would deny us our free speech rights...or anti-American U.N. globalists!" -- A February 2000 mailing from the Christian Action Network soliciting support to help conservatives keep control of Congress.

"We've got to have some common sense about a disease transmitted by people deliberately engaging in unnatural acts." -- Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), on why he opposed approval of the Ryan White CARE act, which funds AIDS research.

"Someone must not be afraid to say, 'moral perversion is wrong.' If we do not act now, homosexuals will 'own' America!...If you and I do not speak up now, this homosexual steamroller will literally crush all decent men, women, and children who get in its way...and our nation will pay a terrible price!" -- Jerry Falwell quoted in People for the American Way's, "Hostile Climate," 1997, p.15.

Pro-choice activists "are usually pretty big, heavyset women who look like they've been over working Oktoberfest for the last six years. You know, there's six beer mugs in each arm. All right, it's a stereotype, but I swear looking at that footage, that's what you see - a lot of people who are angry, women who have shed their femininity and adopted a masculine outlook and are fiercely protective of abortion, which is the holy sacrament of feminism." -- Robert H. Knight, Director of Cultural Studies at FRC.

"Rail as they will about 'discrimination,' women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism." -- Pat Buchanan (11/22/83).

"The real liberators of American women were not the feminist noise-makers, they were the automobile, the supermarket, the shopping center, the dishwasher, the washer-dryer, the freezer." -- Pat Buchanan, "Right from the Beginning," p. 149.

"Women have babies and men provide the support. If you don't like the way we're made you've got to take it up with God." -- Phyllis Schlafly.

"It's very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by fear of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer, or sterility, or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind or brain-damaged baby (even ten years later when she may be happily married)." -- Phyllis Schlafly, founder and leader of the Eagle Forum.

"There were no politics to polarize us then, to magnify every slight. The 'Negroes' of Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars, movie houses, playgrounds and churches; and we had ours." -- Pat Buchanan, "Right from the Beginning," (his 1988 autobiography), p. 131 - Commenting on race relations in the 1940s and 1950s.

"How, then, can the feds justify favoring sons of Hispanics over sons of white Americans who fought in World War II or Vietnam?" -- Pat Buchanan, discussing affirmative action (01/23/95).

"The god of Judaism is the devil. The Jew will not be recognized by God as one of His chosen people until he abandons his demonic religion and returns to the faith of his fathers--the faith which embraces Jesus Christ and His Gospel. " -- David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth, TX: Dominion Press, 1984), p. 127.

"The Church doesn't believe in book-burning, but it believes in restricting the use of dangerous books among those whose minds are unprepared for them." -- Francis J. Lally, American Roman Catholic Monsignor, Mike Wallace Interview, Fund for the Republic, 1958.

"The Church has through the centuries, understood that ideas are really more dangerous than other weapons. Their use should be restricted." -- Francis J. Lally, American Roman Catholic Monsignor, Mike Wallace Interview, Fund for the Republic, 1958].

"Don't let anything like trees in the Clearwater National Forest get in the way of providing jobs and fueling the economy, even if that means cutting down every last tree in the state." -- Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth R-ID during her 1994 campaign.

"Most of these feminists are radical, frustrated lesbians, many of them, and man-haters, and failures in their relationships with men, and who have declared war on the male gender. The Biblical condemnation of feminism has to do with its radical philosophy and goals. That's the bottom line." -- Jerry Falwell.

"There are so many women on the floor of Congress, it looks like a mall." -- Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), repeating a joke he heard.

"Men in the pro-choice movement are either men trapped in women's bodies...or younger guys who are like camp followers looking for easy sex." -- Rep. Bob Dornan (R-CA).

"When the temptation to masturbate is strong, yell "Stop!" to those thoughts as loudly as you can in your mind. Then recite a portion of the Bible or sing a hymn." --Mormon Guide to Self-Control.

"When I see a first-class individual who makes $80,000 a year, he's lower middle class. When I see someone who is making anywhere from $300,000 to $750,000 a year, that's middle class. When I see anyone above that, that's upper middle class." -- Rep. Fred Heineman (R-NC), explaining that his yearly income of $180,000 leaves him short of middle-class status.

"[T]he president wants even more money from the tobacco industry. He announced a new Justice Department lawsuit supposedly to recover the costs of smoking. But the government really saves money because of smoking. Many smokers die before Medicare and Social Security pays them the usual benefits." -- Janet Parshall, FRC Washington Watch Radio Commentary, Feb. 1, 1999.

"Modern U.S. Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the founders had in mind in the First Amendment of the Constitution... [W]e must fight against those radical minorities who are trying to remove God from our textbooks, Christ from our nation. We must never allow our children to forget that this is a Christian nation. We must take back what is rightfully ours." -- Jerry Falwell, March 1993 sermon.

"Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. ... Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory." -- Rev. Jimmy Swaggart.

"We are talking about Christianizing America. We are talking about the Gospel in a political context." -- Paul Weyrich, founder and president of the Free Congress Foundation.

"What Christians have got to do is take back this country, one precinct at a time, one neighborhood at a time, and one state at a time... I honestly believe that in my lifetime we will see a country once again governed by Christians..." -- Religious News Service, 5/1/1990

"Indeed, the time has come for Congress to call into question the very legitimacy of the Supreme Courts status as sole and final arbiter of what the Constitution means." -- Chuck Colson, "Whose Constitution Is It Anyway?," June 26, 1997

"When I, or people like me, are running the country, you'd better flee, because we will find you, we will try you, and we'll execute you. I mean every word of it. I will make it part of my mission to see to it that they are tried and executed." -- Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, speaking of doctors who perform abortions, in an address to the U.S. Taxpayers Alliance, 8/08/95

"We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people." -- Colonel Gerald Wellman, ROTC instructor