The Czech Republic has taken over the rotating presidency of the European Union from France. Despite its Eurosceptic president, the country will hold the EU leadership for six months. Slovakia becomes the latest country to adopt the euro, as the single currency celebrates its tenth birthday.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy assured Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek his "total support" in a telephone call on Wednesday, ahead of France handing over the presidency to the Czech Republic on Thursday.

Tensions between the two countries came under strain earlier in 2008 when French government aides suggested Sarkozy could retain some influence after France's six-month term expired.

"In a period of crisis that the world has not seen for some time, I tried to change Europe," Sarkozy said in his annual New Year's Eve message, claiming that the last six months showed the need for a "strong, independent" Europe.

Russia has stopped all gas supplies to Ukraine after the collapse of talks to end a row over unpaid bills and prices.

Russia's gas giant Gazprom said it turned off the taps at 0700 GMT, when its contract to supply Ukraine ended.

Ukraine insists it has paid off its debts to Gazprom, but Russia contests this. The two countries have also failed to agree on a price for 2009.

The EU urged Russia and Ukraine to resume negotiations and not to let the dispute disrupt supplies to Europe.

NEW YORK, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) said it has completed its roughly $12.7 billion purchase of Wachovia Corp, a big bet that it properly assessed the risks in Wachovia's huge book of mortgage and real estate loans.

The merger closed on Wednesday and more than doubles the size of Wells Fargo, creating the fourth-largest U.S. bank by assets. Wells Fargo also has the nation's largest branch network, with more than 6,600 offices in 39 states and Washington, D.C., and one of its largest retail brokerages.

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo agreed on Oct. 3 to buy Wachovia, beating out a smaller bid by Citigroup Inc (C.N) for part of Wachovia. Citigroup's bid included government backing, while Wells Fargo's did not. Wells Fargo said Wachovia branches will keep their brand name at least for the "near future."

Jan. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Treasuries recorded their biggest annual gain since 1995 as falling stocks and frozen credit markets drove investors to the relative safety of U.S. government debt.

Yields of all maturities touched record lows as financial firms' losses in the credit crisis exceeded $1 trillion and policy makers made unprecedented moves to rescue the country from recession. Foreign companies and institutions increased their stake in U.S. government debt by 29 percent in the first 10 months of the year, Treasury Department data shows.

"It's one heck of a run for 2008," said George Goncalves, chief Treasury and agency strategist with Morgan Stanley, one of 17 primary dealers that trade with the Fed. "The capital markets are going to be about the Treasury market next year."

Jan. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Commodity prices in 2008 plunged the most in five decades as demand for energy, metals and grains tumbled in the second half because of the recession.

From July to December, the slumping economy drove crude oil, gasoline, copper, corn, and wheat down from records in the first half. In 2008, the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index of 19 raw materials fell 36 percent, the most since the gauge debuted in 1956, to 229.54. It rose to a record 473.97 on July 3. On Dec. 5, the measure dropped to the lowest since August 2002.

The worldwide economy crumbled last year. Home prices plummeted, investment banks collapsed and credit froze. U.S. consumer spending plunged, pushing the nation's automakers to the brink of bankruptcy. Growth in China and other emerging markets withered.

"Macroeconomically, we're in a free fall," said John Brynjolfsson, the managing director and chief investment officer at hedge fund Armored Wolf LLC in Aliso Viejo, California. "That's a complete destruction in industrial production and demand, and this is likely to keep pressure on the commodity sector in general."

In 2008, 15 prices dropped in the CRB, led by gasoline and nickel. Only four climbed, paced by cocoa.

Investors pulled a net $320bn from mutual funds in 2008, a record in both dollar terms and as a percentage of assets, in one of the biggest flights to safety the industry has seen.

The move out of what were previously regarded as safe and stable investments followed a record year of investor inflows in 2007.

However, it appears that outflows stabilised and even reversed in the final weeks of the year. Investors put a net $23bn into equity funds during December and withdrew only $3.5bn from bond funds, less than in earlier months.

Prime mortgage borrowers are struggling to keep up their payments - the proportion of top-quality loans held in asset-backed securities that are at least one month in arrears has risen 50 per cent.

A report on Monday by Standard & Poor's notes that, at 3.24 per cent, the percentage of delinquent loans to prime borrowers at the end of September compared with a year earlier is at its highest since the ratings agency developed its index in 2000.

"Delinquencies are an indication of future defaults and the current increases in combination with falling house prices will start to put pressure on ratings for the first time," S&P said.

So far, UK residential mortgage-backed securities backed by prime mortgages have not been downgraded as a result of losses on underlying collateral.

Any downgrades of credit ratings are likely to hit lower-rated tranches first rather than the AAA-rated top layer that banks have provided to the Bank of England as collateral for government securities. Downgrades of credit ratings would force banks holding the securities to set aside more reserves for losses, making it harder to extend new loans.

PARIS -- After a catastrophic year for global markets, dazed investors are emerging from their shelters to ask if 2009 will be any better. The consensus among professionals? Do not expect the big rebound that usually follows a sharp downturn.

Stocks lost 42 percent of their value in 2008, as calculated by the MSCI world index, erasing more than $29 trillion in value and all of the gains made since 2003. Just about the only assets to prosper were government bonds of developed countries and gold, where prices rose as investors ran for cover.

The year began with a shock, but only a previously lonely group of bears predicted the disaster to come. When Société Générale lost 4.9 billion euros ($6.8 billion) in January on the unauthorized positions taken by a low-level trader, it seemed the year might already have its biggest financial news.

But that loss would prove trivial compared with what happened afterward. The bad news never seemed to let up: Bear Stearns in the spring, then after a bit of a summer lull, the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in mid-September, the takeover of Merrill Lynch, the bailout of American International Group, the collapse of Bernard L. Madoff's business, the near-bankruptcy of General Motors. The names say it all for one of the most memorable years in financial history.

The steel industry, having entered the recession in the best of health, is emerging as a leading indicator of what lies ahead. As steel production goes -- and it is now in collapse -- so will go the national economy.

That maxim once applied to Detroit's Big Three car companies, when they dominated American manufacturing. Now they are losing ground in good times and bad, and steel has replaced autos as the industry to watch for an early sign that a severe recession is beginning to lift.

The industry itself is turning to government for orders that, until the September collapse, had come from manufacturers and builders. Its executives are waiting anxiously for details of President-elect Barack Obama's stimulus plan, and adding their voices to pleas for a huge public investment program -- up to $1 trillion over two years -- intended to lift demand for steel to build highways, bridges, electric power grids, schools, hospitals, water treatment plants and rapid transit.

"What we are asking," said Daniel R. DiMicco, chairman and chief executive of the Nucor Corporation, a giant steel maker, "is that our government deal with the worst economic slowdown in our lifetime through a recovery program that has in every provision a `buy America' clause."

Israel has carried out further air strikes on Gaza, while Palestinian rockets have continued to hit Israel. This map details the latest developments on the ground.

BAGHDAD -- Three Iraqi police officers and two others were killed in violence across Iraq on Thursday as the Iraqi government took formal control of Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

 In a second symbolically significant New Year's Day handover, the Iraqi government accepted security and administrative duties at the main airport in the southern city of Basra. The airport had been used by British forces since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The three police officers were killed in the northern city of Mosul on Thursday. Mosul, a city of about 1.7 million people in Nineveh Province, has been one of the most violent places in Iraq in recent months.

The provincial capital, located about 250 miles north of Baghdad, is in a region contested by Sunni Arabs and Kurds, and where Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is led by foreigners, has been active.

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba on Thursday celebrated the 50th anniversary of a 1959 revolution whose leader Fidel Castro transformed the island into a communist state that has survived despite long years of opposition from the nearby United States and the collapse of its Cold War benefactors.

The revolution's landmark anniversary comes at a time when the era of Fidel Castro, now 82 and ailing, is winding down and uncertainty hangs over the future of the Cuba he built into an improbable world player admired for its social gains but criticized for its human rights record.

A celebration that had been expected to be a major event has been subdued in a nation mired in economic problems and divided on what the revolution has wrought.

President Raul Castro, who officially replaced ailing older brother Fidel Castro in February, was to speak on Thursday evening in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba from the same balcony which the elder Castro proclaimed victory after U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista fled on January 1, 1959.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia  ... I had heard about torture chambers under the brothels but had never seen one, so a few days ago Sina took me to the red-light district here where she once was imprisoned. A brothel had been torn down, revealing a warren of dungeons underneath.

"I was in a room just like those," she said, pointing. "There must be many girls who died in those rooms." She grew distressed and added: "I'm cold and afraid. Tonight I won't sleep."

"Photograph quickly," she added, and pointed to brothels lining the street. "It's not safe to stay here long." <...>

Sex trafficking is truly the 21st century's version of slavery. One of the differences from 19th-century slavery is that many of these modern slaves will die of AIDS by their late 20s.

Whenever I report on sex trafficking, I come away less depressed by the atrocities than inspired by the courage of modern abolitionists like Somaly and Sina. They are risking their lives to help others still locked up in the brothels, and they have the credibility and experience to lead this fight. In my next column, I'll introduce a girl that Sina is now helping to recover from mind-boggling torture in a brothel -- and Sina's own story gives hope to the girl in a way that an army of psychologists couldn't.

I hope that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will recognize slavery as unfinished business on the foreign policy agenda. ...

Iraq plans to close a camp for Iranian dissidents who used to cross into Iran to mount assassinations and sabotage - a decision that has sharpened political differences between Baghdad and Washington.

Camp Ashraf, about 80 miles north of Baghdad, came under Iraqi control yesterday in a broad security handover that forms part of the US withdrawal agreement concluded late last year.

Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, led a delegation of defence and interior ministry officials to the camp last weekend, warning its 2,500 male and 1,000 female inmates that "staying in Iraq is not an option". The Iraqi government said it "is keen to execute its plans to close the camp and send its inhabitants to their country or other countries in a non-forcible manner".

US troops disarmed the opposition group known as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) after the 2003 invasion. They removed hundreds of armoured vehicles donated by Saddam Hussein but kept the camp intact because some Bush administration officials allegedly saw the MEK as a potential tool for regime change in Iran.

The Shia-led government in Baghdad has forged close relations with fellow Shias in Tehran and rejects such ambitions. It insisted that the US/Iraq security agreement contain a promise that Iraq would not be used for attacks on Iran or any other country

KABUL, Afghanistan -- When it comes to governing this violent, fractious land, everything, it seems, has its price.

Want to be a provincial police chief? It will cost you $100,000.

Want to drive a convoy of trucks loaded with fuel across the country? Be prepared to pay $6,000 per truck, so the police will not tip off the Taliban.

Need to settle a lawsuit over the ownership of your house? About $25,000, depending on the judge.

"It is very shameful, but probably I will pay the bribe," Mohammed Naim, a young English teacher, said as he stood in front of the Secondary Courthouse in Kabul. His brother had been arrested a week before, and the police were demanding $4,000 for his release. "Everything is possible in this country now. Everything."

Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic policeman to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.

FORT CARSON, Colo. -- For the past several years, as this Army installation in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains became a busy way station for soldiers cycling in and out of Iraq, the number of servicemen implicated in violent crimes has raised alarm.

Nine current or former members of Fort Carson's Fourth Brigade Combat Team have killed someone or were charged with killings in the last three years after returning from Iraq. Five of the slayings took place last year alone. In addition, charges of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault have risen sharply.

Prodded by Senator Ken Salazar, Democrat of Colorado, the base commander began an investigation of the soldiers accused of homicide. An Army task force is reviewing their recruitment, medical and service records, as well as their personal histories, to determine if the military could have done something to prevent the violence. The inquiry was recently expanded to include other serious violent crimes.

Now the secretary of the Army, Peter Geren, says he is considering conducting an Army-wide review of all soldiers "involved in violent crimes since returning" from Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a letter sent to Mr. Salazar in December. Mr. Geren wrote that the Fort Carson task force had yet to find a specific factor underlying the killings, but that the inquiry was continuing.

CAPE TOWN, Dec 29 (IPS) - A few years ago 66-year-old grandmother Regina Fhiceka and her family of five ate vegetables only once a week. They would survive on maize and bread the rest of the time -- the cheapest food available in the poor township of Philippi, just 15 minutes from the affluent business district of Cape Town.

But then Fhiceka got to hear about a municipal project where people were encouraged to get together to establish community gardens.

"I knew a few of the other women in the community who had started their own backyard gardens where we were growing small amounts of vegetables. We asked the local social worker to help us obtain a bigger piece of land. We filled out the necessary application documents and the local department of agriculture made a piece of municipal land available to us."

Fhiceka and five other women were given land on the outskirts of Philippi where 150,000 people live in squalid conditions. After a few months, Fhiceka's group had an abundance of vegetables, including tomatoes, cabbage, carrots and beans, and they started selling the surplus.

"I had no choice. I had to start farming because I had no money to buy vegetables from the shops. I also realized that if we farmed as a group, we would have more than enough food to eat and that we could generate an income from selling the rest."

AMARELEJA, Portugal, Dec 30 (IPS) - The most ambitious and innovative solar power project in the world kicked off Monday in this white-walled village in the southern Portuguese municipality of Moura, one of the most impoverished areas in the European Union.

The Acciona Energy S.A. company has put into service the Amareleja photovoltaic power plant, located 150 km south of Lisbon, which is capable of producing enough energy to supply 30,000 households in the south-central region of Alentejo.

Almost simultaneously, the mayor of Moura, José María Prazeres Pós-de-Mina, was selected as one of the ten finalists for the prestigious 2008 People of the Year award granted by OneWorld, a non-governmental news network that is one of the most highly-respected international organisations devoted to raising environmental awareness and promoting change.

The only requirement for nomination was that the candidates embody the values of OneWorld, which include human rights for all, fair distribution of the world's natural and economic resources, simple and sustainable ways of life, the right of every individual to inform and be informed, participation and transparency in decision-making, and social, cultural, and linguistic diversity.

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) -- A federal conservation program originally designed to help small farmers is now disproportionately benefiting industrial livestock operations, according to a new report by a family farm advocacy group.

The Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment examined five years worth of payments through the federal Environmental Quality Incentives Program, known as EQIP.

Nationally, industrial hog operations accounted for 37 percent of all EQIP payments, the group determined, even though such businesses account for less than 11 percent of that industry. Industrial dairies received 54 percent of all EQIP dairy contracts. Such businesses represent only 3.9 percent of all dairy operations.

The study found similar disparities on the state level in Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri.

"This report demonstrates what family farmers have known for years: This corporate-controlled, industrial model of livestock production can't survive without taxpayer support," said Rhonda Perry, a Howard County livestock farmer and program director of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center.

Grounding planes after the 11 September attacks may not have caused unusual temperature effects.

When all commercial air traffic in the United States was grounded after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, scientists got an unexpected opportunity to test ideas about the climate effects of the condensation trails left behind by jets.

A study in 2002 suggested that these contrails could have a significant effect on daily temperature patterns (see 'Air-traffic moratorium opened window on contrails and climate'). But a new analysis now claims that altered US temperature patterns during the three flight-free days can be explained by natural variations in cloud cover, rather than the absence of planes.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 1, 2009) -- A team of scientists from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has reported a rapid recovery of coral reefs in areas of Indonesia, following the tsunami that devastated coastal regions throughout the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004.

The WCS team, working in conjunction with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (ARCCoERS) along with government, community and non-government partners, has documented high densities of "baby corals" in areas that were severely impacted by the tsunami.

The team, which has surveyed the region's coral reefs since the December 26, 2004 tsunami, looked at 60 sites along 800 kilometers (497 miles) of coastline in Aceh, Indonesia. The researchers attribute the recovery to natural colonization by resilient coral species, along with the reduction of destructive fishing practices by local communities.

"On the 4th anniversary of the tsunami, this is a great story of ecosystem resilience and recovery," said Dr, Stuart Campbell, coordinator of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Indonesia Marine Program. "Our scientific monitoring is showing rapid growth of young corals in areas where the tsunami caused damage, and also the return of new generations of corals in areas previously damaged by destructive fishing. These findings provide new insights into coral recovery processes that can help us manage coral reefs in the face of climate change."

Do you know how wi-fi works? No, me neither. You sort of plonk your computer down in a coffee shop and switch it on. And then there's a sort of magic box thingy somewhere in the vicinity and it connects, I think, in some kind of magical invisible sort of way with, er, whatever's inside your computer. And then, bingo, off you go. You can write this morning's Facebook update without ever plugging anything in. Amazing.

My main concern with all of this always used to be that your typing might be broadcasting itself to anyone who had the time, energy and idle curiosity to eavesdrop. The people of Glastonbury, however, have devoted themselves to the question, and have produced a completely new set of worries. What happens if all those invisible ray jobbies are broadcasting straight into your chakras? Mightn't they mess with your inner balance?

Helen Suzman, a celebrated South African MP and anti-apartheid campaigner, has died at the age of 91.

Mrs Suzman, a member of parliament first for the opposition United Party and later the Progressive Party, was an outspoken critic of apartheid.

For 13 years, Mrs Suzman, the daughter of Jewish Lithuanian immigrants, was the only MP to openly condemn South Africa's whites-only apartheid regime.

She was made an honorary dame by the Queen in 1989.

She was also twice-nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.