US President George W. Bush, who leaves Argentina for Brazil overnight, won little progress on his free trade agenda and got no relief from his political woes at an Americas summit here.

At the same time, one of his senior aides warned Latin America not to follow Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, using language vaguely reminiscent of US criticisms that Iran and Syria are "out of step" with their neighbours.

Mr Bush's first visit to Argentina drew tens of thousands of protesters, some of whom clashed with police, verbal broadsides from President Chavez, and even Argentine football hero Diego Maradona calling him "human rubbish."

"It's not easy to host all these countries. It's particularly not easy to host, perhaps, me," Mr Bush quipped to Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, who did not react but struck a defiant tone in later remarks about Washington.

Half a world away from the White House, Mr Bush's first question and answer session with reporters in a week focused largely on his slumping poll numbers amid the unpopular war in Iraq and a damaging CIA leak investigation.

See also The peoples Summit and Bush visits Argentina - protests and riots ensue
here on ET.

IT IS so sad to see a city like Paris undergoing the strains of violence and arson, as is the case in the past few days. How can a city of many charms bear with such reckless behaviour?

Dear readers, my Comments do not take sides. They tell the truth and stand by what is right. I do not go by feelings of race or religion and do not support people when they are wrong, whoever they be. And, here is a strange situation. Immigrants are up in arms against the government, the systems and the people, in the aftermath of the death of two teenagers by electrocution during a police chase in Paris. The immigrants may have a grievance or two, but should they go this length, and disrupt life this way?

France has all along helped the millions of immigrants there to live their lives with dignity. That's why more and more people from Africa have been moving in and settling down there. These immigrants must be thankful to the government and the native people there for their hospitality. It is likely that there was some mistake on the part of the security apparatus there, which often works under stressful situations. Security men have to act on the spur of the moment, as difficult situations develop without advance notice to anyone. It is likely that they err. But, for a mistake or two, no one must punish a country like this-especially a country that has been kind to Africans from the North and the West, regions which were once under the control of France.

People from the continent who have settled down in Paris and elsewhere are looked after well by the Western community in the past. Those who have due regard to such hospitality cannot go berserk over one or two mistakes that might have happened in the course of maintenance of law and order. On the other hand, if the long arm of the law maltreats people, that is bad too, as it can lead to ugly situations; and extremist elements would be quick to make capital out of such situations.

See also Europe and racism and Swords on belts and Will France riots cross borders? and Crisis of French society - and the left here on ET.

BERLIN - The German government has reportedly issued a warning that Iranian and Syrian weapons makers are using cutting-edge German technology poached by Russian criminals.

Berlin has circulated an alert about the scam to several German firms, Focus magazine reports in its Monday edition.

"Leading-edge (German) technology sold in a completely legal fashion to Russian enterprises and research institutes has been transmitted immediately to Iranian and Syrian workshops manufacturing missiles," the magazine said, quoting from a warning letter to "numerous German enterprises".

An auditing board sponsored by the United Nations recommended yesterday that the United States repay as much as $208 million to the Iraqi government for contracting work in 2003 and 2004 assigned to Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary.

 The work was paid for with Iraqi oil proceeds, but the board said it was either carried out at inflated prices or done poorly. The board did not, however, give examples of poor work.

Some of the work involved postwar fuel imports carried out by K.B.R. that previous audits had criticized as grossly overpriced. But this is the first time that an international auditing group has suggested that the United States repay some of that money to Iraq. The group, known as the International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq, compiled reports from an array of Pentagon, United States government and private auditors to carry out its analysis.

A spokeswoman for Halliburton, Cathy Mann, said the questions raised in the military audits, carried out in a Pentagon office called the Defense Contract Auditing Agency, had largely focused on issues of paperwork and documentation and alleged nothing about the quality of the work done by K.B.R. The monitoring board relied heavily on the Pentagon audits in drawing its conclusions.

"The auditors have raised questions about the support and the documentation rather than questioning the fact that we have incurred the costs," Ms. Mann said in an e-mail response to questions. "Therefore, it would be completely wrong to say or imply that any of these costs that were incurred at the client's direction for its benefit are 'overcharges.' "

Hans Christian Andersen understood bad rulers. "The Emperor's New Suit" doesn't end with everyone acclaiming the little boy for telling the truth. It ends with the emperor and his officials refusing to admit their mistake.

    I've laid my hands on additional material, which Andersen failed to publish, describing what happened after the imperial procession was over.

    The talk-show host Bill O'Reilly yelled, "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" at the little boy. Calling the boy a nut, he threatened to go to the boy's house and "surprise" him.

    Fox News repeatedly played up possible finds of imperial clothing, then buried reports discrediting these stories. Months after the naked procession, a poll found that many of those getting most of their news from Fox believed that the emperor had in fact been clothed.

    Imperial officials eventually admitted that they couldn't find any evidence that the suit ever existed, or that there had even been an effort to produce a suit. They insisted, however, that they had found evidence of wardrobe-manufacturing-and-distribution-related program activities.

BELFAST (AFP) -- Power-sharing government between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland could be restored by the end of next year, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said Thursday in Belfast.

Ahern insisted use of violence in attempts to unite Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic was "a thing of the past".

"There should be no undue delay," he told the Northern Irish Institute of Directors. "I have made no secret of my wish to see the devolved institutions restored as soon as practicable in 2006."

The semi-autonomous, cross-community Northern Irish Assembly was introduced by the 1998 Good Friday peace accords, but was suspended in 2002 amid a breakdown in trust.

However, given that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) renounced violence in July and dismantled its arsenal in September, Ahern is confident that the peace process will be reinvigorated in the new year.

omewhere in the world, deep beneath the waves, a British nuclear submarine is on patrol. There is always one moving silently through the depths, ready to fire. If the command comes today, a hatch will open and a Trident ballistic missile will be propelled upwards, through the waves and into the sky. Covering thousands of kilometres at great speed, it will read the stars to find a position from which each of its four warheads can fall independently to their targets.

The warheads will explode without warning among men, women and children, each one with a power five times greater than the bomb that devastated Hiroshima in 1945. Hundreds of thousands of people will die immediately. The environmental devastation will be vast. Many more deaths will follow as a result, in the target nation and across the world. Meanwhile the submarine will continue its underwater patrol, the crew barely able to imagine the mayhem unleashed above the surface as fallout spreads and retaliation is ordered.

But surely nobody would ever risk such an apocalypse, would they? Britain has the Trident system - 200 nuclear warheads carried in four submarines - so that anyone who threatens this country knows they will suffer greatly in return. Trident is a deterrent. That is the theory, anyway: a theory forged in the days when two superpowers stood nose to nose, East versus West. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction was, literally, MAD.

But the world has changed. The Soviet empire was crumbling even as Trident was being planned. So who are those missiles aimed at now? Is their doomsday force any protection from the rogue states and terrorists that threaten us? Is it worth spending the estimated £25bn it will cost to replace Trident before the end of its working life in 2024?

Israeli officials say they have discovered what may be the oldest Christian Church in the Holy Land - on the site of a maximum security prison.

Israel's Antiquities Authority said the church at the Megiddo jail dated back to the third or fourth century AD and was "a once in a lifetime find".

It contained a mosaic bearing the name of Jesus Christ in ancient Greek, fish murals and an altar, officials said.

The dig took place near the biblical site of Armageddon in northern Israel.

Removing white lines and painting roads different colours can trick motorists into safety, say researchers

First came the dreaded speed hump and other obstacles to make drivers slow down. Now local authorities are to be allowed to use more subtle and psychological tricks to get motorists to take their foot off the accelerator.

A major report for the Department for Transport reveals that 'psychological' traffic calming works. Painting the road different colours, taking out white lines or planting things in the way of sight-lines on corners can be used to make roads look narrower, or bumpy or windy. Drivers then feel less safe and drive more slowly - a principle adopted most radically in one town in the Netherlands which abolished all signs and road markings.

The four-year study by the Transport Research Laboratory found that many optical tricks were successful in slowing speeds: in simulator tests all speeds fell when the measures were introduced, some by an average of more than 4mph; and in one test in Latton, Norfolk, average speeds fell by up to 8 mph, and the speeds of faster drivers by even more.

The most successful measures, likely to be used in future, were using red bricks to make the road look narrower and small areas 'built out' into the road with trees, shrubs or wooden posts, said the report.

For many Britons, "union militancy" recalls flying pickets, mass rallies at Longbridge and bodies left unburied in the Winter of Discontent. In Brussels things are very different. The Belgian capital has just suffered its second general strike in a month - and very much enjoyed it.

Banner-waving union demonstrations often block the Schuman roundabout in the heart of the EU district. But the pragmatic Belgians make these disruptive events as tolerable as possible by concentrating demos in the agreeable summer months, enabling the protesters, after half an hour of chanting and whistle-blowing, to move off to cafés and bars.

Strikes invariably take place on Mondays or Fridays, allowing the capital's population to indulge in one of its favourite activities.

To faire le pont (literally, make a bridge) is to extend a weekend by taking off an intervening day, even if it is a normal working day. The inhabitants of Brussels frequently do this without official excuse. For example, as last Tuesday was All Saints' Day and a public holiday it made Monday a prime target to faire le pont all the way through to Wednesday. The previous Friday's strike was an additional godsend to craftier residents of the capital who, claiming they would be unable to get into work, extended the weekend into a five-day break.

Leaked letter shows minister privately contacted sleaze watchdog in attempt to pre-empt revelations over DNA job

David Blunkett made a last-ditch attempt to save his ministerial career, writing to a government sleaze watchdog in an attempt to pre-empt investigations into his business interests, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

Mr Blunkett's letter, marked "Private and confidential", went to the head of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointmentsdays before this newspaper reported that he had broken the rules on ministerial conduct.

The disclosures appear to contradict both Mr Blunkett's claim in his resignation statement that he was "guilty of a mistake" that he had wished he had "spotted earlier" and Tony Blair's assertion that his close political ally had not been guilty of any "wrongdoing" .

Mr Blunkett was fully aware that he had breached the code. In his letter, Mr Blunkett set out his version of events surrounding his appointment to a DNA testing firm in an apparent attempt to dodge political fallout

Terrified Britons came under fire from machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades yesterday when pirates tried to hijack one of the world's most luxurious cruise liners.
Holidaymakers on the Seabourn Spirit watched in disbelief as the armed bandits blew a hole in the side of the vast ship and hit a passenger cabin during their failed attempt to board.

Norman Fisher, one of 22 Britons on the vessel as it cruised in the Indian Ocean, 100 miles off the coast of Somalia, said the first that many passengers knew of the raid was when captain Sven Erik Pedersen said over the PA system: 'Stay inside, we're under attack.'

Frightened passengers were told to go to the restaurant as the sound of the grenades and gunfire from two 25ft speedboats filled the air.

'I was doing some work when I heard what sounded like a crack from outside at 5.50am,' said Fisher, 55, a solicitor from Hampstead Garden Suburb in north London. 'I looked out of the window and saw a small boat with about five people in it about 20 yards away.

'One of them had a rifle. Later I realised that two others had rifles and one had some kind of rocket launcher. They were firing the rifle and then fired the rocket launcher twice. One of the rockets hit the ship - it went through the side of the liner into a passenger's suite.

LONDON -- Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged Saturday that his governing Labour Party was facing a crisis over some of his policies, while his predecessor, John Major, said the government was tainted by "sleaze."

Blair spoke of his party's problems in an interview with The Guardian newspaper published Saturday, three days after the Labour government narrowly avoided defeat in a vote on planned new anti-terrorism laws when several Labour lawmakers revolted.

"This is a very tough and critical moment for the Labour Party, I do not doubt that at all," Blair said.

The revolt raised serious questions about Blair's authority. The resignation a day earlier of Cabinet minister David Blunkett cost him a key ally.

Blunkett acknowledged his business dealings had breached ministerial guidelines, and he quit for the second time in less than a year in a big embarrassment for Blair.

The Labour Party came to power in 1997 after a landslide election victory over Major's Conservatives, who had ruled since 1979 and were embroiled in a series of scandals.

Major said in his own interview broadcast Sunday that Blair's government was more tainted by scandal than his own had been.