The disclosure that Germany is to stay away from the games' opening ceremonies in August could encourage PRESIDENT NICOLAS SARKOZY OF FRANCE TO JOIN IN A GESTURE OF DEFIANCE AND COMPLICATE GORDON BROWN'S DETERMINATION TO ATTEND THE OLYMPICS. Brown is to meet the Tibetan spiritual leader when he visits Britain in May, but is determined to be in Beijing. "We are fully engaged in supporting the Olympics," said David Miliband, the foreign secretary. "We want to see it as a success, and I think it's right that the prime minister represents us."

China had hoped to use the games to highlight its economic development and growing openness. But it is increasingly proving an opportunity FOR CRITICS TO BASH CHINA'S ONE-PARTY POLITICAL SYSTEM, HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES, TREATMENT OF MINORITIES AND TIGHTLY CONTROLLED MEDIA. The EU foreign ministers are to discuss the China quandary at lunch in Slovenia today, with calls being made for a common European position.

"WE DON'T SUPPORT A BOYCOTT AND DON'T INTEND TO BOYCOTT THE OPENING OF THE GAMES," A BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE SPOKESMAN SAID. "None of the 27 [EU states] are calling for a boycott yet." The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has described the boycott proposal as "interesting", while Sarkozy this week hedged his bets and said his attendance depended on China's conduct.

His platform is vague, promising a "national authority" to rescue Zimbabwe from 80% unemployment and an annual inflation rate of more than 100,000% - symptoms of an economic collapse that has prompted as much as one quarter of the 13 million population to leave the country. But what, and whom, Makoni stands for are mere details; THE MOST SIGNIFICANT FACT IS THAT HE IS RUNNING AGAINST MUGABE.

"OUR VOTES MUST GO TOGETHER WITH GUNS," Mugabe said in 1976, according to biographer Martin Meredith. "After all, any vote we shall have, shall have been the product of the gun. The gun which produces the vote should remain its security officer - its guarantor." What's more, even if Mugabe were to lose, ZIMBABWE'S ARMY COMMANDER, GENERAL CONSTANTINE CHIWENGA, HAS VOWED THAT THE ARMY WILL KEEP HIM IN POWER.

Zimbabwe's ambassador to South Africa, Simon Khaya Moyo, complained in February that the West believes "the only election that can be free and fair in Zimbabwe is one in which President Mugabe is defeated," and there is some truth to that. The world will not re-engage with Zimbabwe as long as Mugabe presides over what is widely viewed as a corrupt dictatorship.

Update - HARARE (Reuters) - ZIMBABWE'S OPPOSITION CLAIMED VICTORY on Sunday based on early results from an election in which it is trying to unseat President Robert Mugabe after 28 years of power and end an economic collapse.

Companies with a lot of debt on their balance sheets could face increasing difficulty getting access to funds to expand or simply maintain their operations, WHICH WOULD ENABLE RIVALS WITH STRONGER BALANCE SHEETS LIKE WAL-MART STORES INC AND HOME DEPOT INC TO SCOOP UP MARKET SHARE. "Companies like Wal-Mart or Home Depot have strong balance sheets and can weather the storm. So, as the weaker contenders close stores, they'll be in a good position to grab that market share and increase their brand awareness," said Fred Dickson, director of retail research at D.A. Davidson & Co.

The tough economic backdrop, which makes consumers more reluctant to spend, coupled with rising cost pressures, has already prompted A NUMBER OF RETAILERS TO CLOSE STORES, AND MORE ARE LIKELY TO FOLLOW. "Many of our competitors are having substantial struggles and some are struggling to stay alive," Howard Lester, chief executive of upscale home goods retailer Williams-Sonoma Inc, said on an earnings conference call on Thursday.

"While we're sorry it's happening for them, we are seeing that as an opportunity for us to gain share. And CONSUMERS MAY BE MORE CONSCIOUS OF AVOIDING COMPANIES THAT APPEAR TO BE FACING FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES or losing business," Dickson said. "Companies on a losing streak could find it tough to turn the tide," he said.

Over the past several days, the North has lashed out at the new conservative government in Seoul and its ally the United States by test-firing missiles, expelling South Korean officials at a joint factory park in the North and threatening to slow down a nuclear disarmament deal.

"The Korean People's Army (KPA) will counter any slightest move of the south side for 'pre-emptive attack' with more rapid and more powerful pre-emptive attack of its own mode," the North's KCNA news agency quoted one of its military officials as saying.

The new chairman of the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff last week said the South would hit North Korea's nuclear weapon base to disable it if the North attacks but had no plans for a pre-emptive strike, according to the Defence Ministry. The South's Defence Ministry said it would decide whether to respond in the next few days to a North Korean threat also made in the dispatch to cut back on inter-Korean military talks.

The increase came after Egypt, a leading exporter, imposed a formal ban on selling rice abroad to keep local prices down, and the Philippines announced plans for a major purchase of the grain in the international market to boost supplies. Global rice stocks are at their lowest since 1976. On Friday the Indian government imposed further restrictions on the exports of rice to combat rising local inflation, with traders warning that the new regime would de facto stop all India's non-basmati rice sales.

"I HAVE NO IDEA HOW IMPORTING COUNTRIES WILL GET RICE, "said Chookiat Ophaswongse, president of the Thai Rice Exporters Association. He forecast that prices would rise further.

The Philippines, the world's largest buyer of the grain, said on Thursday it wanted to purchase 500,000 tonnes after it failed to buy a similar amount earlier this month. It is struggling to import 1.8m-2.1m tonnes to cover a production shortfall and on Thursday confirmed it would tap emergency stocks maintained by Vietnam and Thailand.

The former vice president and former presidential candidate talks to 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl in an interview to be broadcast this Sunday, March 30, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Gore's campaign to make the world more aware of man's role in global warming won him the Nobel Peace Prize last year. He donated the $750,000 prize money to The Alliance for Climate Protection, the non-profit organisation he started to help him on his quest.

He and his wife, Tipper, tell Stahl they not only matched the Nobel money with their own, but they are also donating to the organization the significant profits from his book and Oscar-winning documentary film about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth." The funds will help The Alliance for Climate Protection execute a new $300 million ad campaign on global warming set to start next week.

Some of the ads will feature unlikely alliances to drive home the message that people of all stripes are concerned about global warming.

Inside the Fed and out, there is a realization that those moves amounted to crossing the Rubicon, setting the stage for deeper involvement in the little-regulated markets for capital that have come to dominate the financial world.

Leaders of the central bank had no master plan when they took those actions, no long-term strategy for taking on a more assertive role regulating Wall Street. They were focused on the immediate crisis in world financial markets. But they now recognize that a broader role may be the result of the unprecedented intervention and are being forced to consider whether it makes sense to expand the scope of their formal powers over the investment industry.

"THIS WILL REDEFINE THE FED'S ROLE," said Charles Geisst, a Manhattan College finance professor who wrote a history of Wall Street. "We have to realize that CENTRAL BANKING NOW TAKES INTO ITS ORBIT EVERYTHING IN THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT, THEY'VE RECREATED THE FINANCIAL UNIVERSE."

If Congress and the administration do broaden the formal powers of the Fed, it would be the latest in a long history of financial policy made out of a crisis. The Great Depression fueled an array of stock exchange regulation. The 1987 stock market crash led to curbs on stock trades. The 2002 corporate scandals led to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. And after the panic of 1907, a National Monetary Commission was formed to figure out how to prevent such things from happening again. Its crowning achievement: The creation of the Federal Reserve.

Update - from the New York Times - The Treasury Department will propose on Monday that CONGRESS GIVE THE FEDERAL RESERVE BROAD NEW AUTHORITY TO OVERSEE FINANCIAL MARKET STABILITY, in effect allowing it TO SEND SWAT TEAMS INTO ANY CORNER OF THE INDUSTRY OR ANY INSTITUTION THAT MIGHT POSE A RISK TO THE OVERALL SYSTEM.

The proposal is part of a sweeping blueprint to overhaul the nation's hodgepodge of financial regulatory agencies, which many experts say failed to recognize rampant excesses in mortgage lending until after they set off what is now the worst financial calamity in decades

The central bank said Friday it would make $50 billion available at each of two auctions on April 7 and April 21. Through the end of March, the Fed has provided $260 billion in short-term loans to commercial banks through an innovative auction process. It also has employed Depression-era provisions to provide money to investment banks.

All the moves are designed to cope with a financial crisis that has roiled U.S. and global markets and caused the near-collapse of Bear Stearns, the nation's fifth largest investment bank.

In the twentieth century, no man did more to shape the values of family culture for good or evil than Walt Disney. As a motivator, innovator, and filmmaker, his efforts impacted millions across the globe through his movies, theme parks, and television shows. Disney taught Americans how to think about a family vacation. His work helped to define the literary and cultural sensibilities of a generation of American children and introduced enduring and iconic expressions of childhood that remain with us to this day.

BUT DISNEY'S GREAT WEAKNESS WAS THIS: Even at his best, his morality was not linked to a defined transcendent standard; HIS WORLDVIEW WAS SYNCRETISTIC, BEING A MIXTURE OF CHRISTIAN MORALISM AND MYTHIC PAGANISM.

Despite his far-reaching influence, Christians have not thoroughly evaluated the worldview and accomplishments of Walt Disney from a biblical perspective. And UNTIL RECENT DECADES, THE DISNEY LOGO WAS SYNONYMOUS WITH FAMILY VALUES. The consequence of this myopic acceptance of Disney has lead many PARENTS TO BLINDLY EXPOSE THEIR CHILDREN TO A DIVERSITY OF PROBLEMATIC MESSAGES, from the sensuality and pantheism of Pocahontas to the immodesty and rebellion of The Little Mermaid.

In an interview with the BBC Today programme, French President Nicolas Sarkozy insisted that his Government had taken on board the message sent by the 'no-votes' on the EU Constitution in France: "PEOPLE WANTED A DIFFERENT EUROPE. And we have achieved that, thanks to THE SIMPLIFIED TREATY. This treaty respects differences. No one is asking Britain to change its real identity - keep your language, your culture, your interests - that's precisely what we want here in France. Let's face it: thanks to THE SIMPLIFIED TREATY we are going to have a common immigration policy - the very first thing we are going to do is tackle a European immigration pact."

Le Monde notes that as well as looking for British support for French plans for EU defence, Paris also wants to secure Britain's support ahead of the French EU Presidency for its plan for a European pact on immigration and asylum.

In an article in Le Figaro Denis MacShane calls on Europe, the US and other democracies in the world to "promote and defend" their common values, and says "THE UK MUST BECOME A KEY PLAYER, AND NO LONGER A FOLLOWER, IN THE FIELD OF EUROPEAN SECURITY AND DEFENCE POLICY."

On American website Townhall Herb London of the Hudson Institute picks up on Open Europe's recent publication 'The EU and You'. He notes, "This is indeed an odd historical moment. A democracy that people often take for granted is challenged by A 'SOFT' AUTHORITARIANISM THAT IS BARELY RECOGNISED BY THE PUBLIC AT LARGE. If there was a referendum or several such referenda that would be one thing, but, in fact, MOST OF THE ANTICIPATED REGULATIONS WILL OCCUR BELOW THE RADAR."

The new systems, talked about for years but held up for various reasons, will respond to a missile-launch by shooting flares meant to confuse heat-seeking missiles' guidance systems.The system is already in place on Air Force aircraft and will be added to flights through Asia and Africa first. The program was initially launched after terrorists tried to shoot down an El Al plane in Mombasa, Kenya in 2002. It stalled due to the government's insistence that the airlines shoulder the cost of developing the system for commercial aircraft, but has now been embraced by the government.

According to Maariv, the government decision is tied to the increased global terror threat posed by Hizbullah and other Iranian and Syrian-backed groups in the wake of the killing of arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus. The paper reported that the flare system would be used for a few years before being replaced by a more advanced optical system.

The United States is considering installing the anti-missile systems on its commercial airliners as well.

Take the Soil Association proposals to make it harder for produce from Africa to be labelled as organic, in order to cut the amount of fruit and vegetables flown into the UK. The justification is that this will reduce "food miles" CO2 emissions and man-made global warming, and thus protect the developing world from the impact of climate change. The likely effect will be to put some of the most downtrodden farmers in the world out of work. So how do we save Africa from a possible future disaster? Apparently, by creating a real disaster in the here and now: making poor Africans even poorer. That sounds like madness - or plain badness - to me.

Air-freighted produce makes up 1 per cent of total UK organic sales - and those remain a tiny niche in the grocery market. Only a mind as sharp as an organic Kenyan banana could seriously believe that this is a big factor in Britannia's "carbon footprint". Indeed, the whole notion of "food miles" is hard to swallow. RESEARCH SUGGESTS THAT GROWING FOOD IN THE SUNSHINE OF AFRICA AND FLYING THEM TO EUROPE PRODUCES LESS CARBON - NOT TO MENTION MORE TASTE - THAN GROWING THEM UNDER GLASS AND ARTIFICIAL HEAT IN BRITAIN OR THE NETHERLANDS. Greenhouse effect, anybody?

George Orwell's Big Brother, it seems, stalks the aisles between the cornflakes and the canned dogfood. Detectives hired by Lidl - which has more than 7,000 stores worldwide, including 450 in Britain - have been monitoring romance at the cash till, visits to the lavatory and the money problems of shelf-stackers. Several hundred pages of surveillance records have been passed on to Stern magazine, causing outrage among the unions and data protection officials. Verdi, the powerful service sector union, is offering legal help to Lidl workers who want to sue the company for invasion of privacy.

No information is too trivial for the watchers. Here is Observation period 9-14 July, 2007 at a branch near Hanover: "Saturday 10.10am Ms J tells Ms L that she has never paid her television licence fees because she is still registered with her parents, even though she lives with her boyfriend. The detective's end-of-week advice to management is that Ms J is a security risk."

For Peter Schaar, the government ombudsman for data protection, the Lidl revelations are deeply disturbing. Federal data protection law, he says, is strict about surveillance in public spaces such as supermarkets. Hidden cameras like those used by the Stasi are banned. "They count as clandestine surveillance which is forbidden."

The report, commissioned by the Prime Minister in response to a growing moral panic about video games, will conclude that they can harm the development of children's beliefs and value systems and desensitise them to violence. It will also recommend that retailers who sell video games to anyone under the age rating on the box should face a hefty fine or up to five years in prison, The Times has learnt.

The report, written by Tanya Byron, the clinical psychologist and television parenting guru, is also expected to address the dangers of children's use of the internet. "Parents are afraid to let their children out," she said. "So they keep them at home, but allow them to take risks online." She will call for a massive campaign to educate parents, teachers and childcarers about how to ensure that children get maximum benefit from the digital world without being exposed to its dangers.

She also wants all games consoles to contain blocking mechanisms that would enable parents to prevent children playing unsuitable games on them.

The dramatic move means popular medicines will effectively be banned for any youngster under the age of two and parents of all children up to six will have to ask for them. It could signal a return to old-fashioned remedies such as honey and lemon drinks. Best-selling brands affected include Tixylix, Robitussin, Benylin and Calpol. The alert centres on 12 ingredients in the medicines, many of which have been used by drug firms for years.

At least five deaths of British children under two have been linked to cough and cold remedies and more than 100 serious cases of suspected adverse reactions have been reported. Today, six products directly targeted at children under two will be removed from open sale, although they may still be supplied by a pharmacist for use with older children. They include Boots Chesty Cough Syrup 1 Year Plus and Asda Children's Chesty Cough Syrup.

Another 59 products - authorised for use in children under two but not marketed at them - will also be taken off the shelf and sold only to parents whose children are older. The ingredients that will no longer be licensed for children under two are the antihistamines brompheniramine, chlorphenamine and diphenhydramine; cough suppressants dextrometorphan and pholcodine; expectorants guaifenesin and ipecacuanha and decongestants phenylephrine, pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, oxymetazoline and xylometazoline.