So alarmed are Laotians that the communist government, which rarely explains its actions to the population, is being forced to do just that, with what passes for an unprecedented public relations campaign. The "Chinese City" is a hot topic of talk and wild rumor, much of it laced with anxiety as well as anger that the regime sealed such a momentous deal in virtual secrecy. The rumblings are being heard even among some government officials, and foreign organizations operating in Laos are being told to refer to the venture as a "New City Development Project" rather than a "Chinese city."

Deputy Prime Minister Somsavat Lengsavad insists the deal poses no threat. "This is not unusual. Almost every country in the world has a Chinatown, so why shouldn't Laos have one?" he told Laotian reporters. According to an artist's impression in state-run media, it will have a Manhattan-like skyline. There is no word on how many Chinese will live there. The figure of 50,000 families is widely speculated but Somsavat denied any such number had been agreed upon.

The idea of 50,000 newcomers to a city of 460,000 is one factor causing unease. Another is location: The complex is to go up on the That Luang marsh, an area pregnant with nationalist symbolism and also ecologically important. The area is now a mix of marshes, rice fields and creeping urbanization despite substantial international aid to preserve it as a wetland. A 2003 study by the Switzerland-based World Wide Fund for Nature said the marsh is the main runoff for flash floods, a "sewage tank" for a city with no central waste water system, and a source of edible fish and plants for the poor. "My major concern is that the new city will have an impact on these three factors," says the study's author, Pauline Gerrard.

It comes at a time when China is rapidly becoming the No. 1 foreign economic and political power in Laos. As migrants, money and influence roll across the frontier, northern areas of the country are beginning to look like a Chinese province.

The flame was being carried down a road along the Seine River amid demonstrators carrying Tibetan flags when the relay was stopped. It is not immediately clear what police plan next: despite the torch then being relit, officials have now had to put it out for a second time. The incident came one day after anti-Chinese demonstrators made its journey through London more like running the gauntlet than a journey of celebration.

About 500 protesters congregated at the Trocadero Square, which faces the Eiffel Tower, the relay's start-point. They carried signs reading "Save Tibet," and "Act fast, Tibet is dying." Across town, City Hall was draped with a banner reading, "Paris defends human rights around the world." In London on Sunday, police repeatedly scuffled with protesters. One tried to grab the torch, while another tried to snuff out the flame with what appeared to be a fire extinguisher. Thirty-seven people were arrested.

Beijing Olympic organizing committee spokesman Sun Weide denounced Sunday's protests as 'sabotage'. "A few Tibetan separatists attempted to sabotage the torch relay in London, and we strongly denounce their disgusting behavior," said Sun. The flame's round-the-world trip is the longest in Olympic history, and it is meant to shine a spotlight on China's economic and political power - though activists have seized upon it as a backdrop for their cause.

The judge even called the effort "proper," but organizers have been summoned to appear at 1 PM in the District Court after an animal rights groups filed another last-minute suit. The slaughter is planned as part of A CONFERENCE DEDICATED TO STUDYING AND RESTORING THE JEWISH OBSERVANCE OF THE KORBAN PESACH, AS IT WAS CALLED SINCE IT WAS FIRST OBSERVED IN EGYPT. At the time of the Exodus, Jews slaughtered a sheep per family group, despite its status as a deity to the Egyptian oppressors. The blood was then applied to the doorposts of the Jewish homes.

Animal rights group "Tnoo Lachayot Lichyot" ("Let the Animals Live") had argued that THE PLANNED SLAUGHTER CONSTITUTED ILLEGAL CRUELTY TO AN ANIMAL. Although the slaughter will be identical to any correctly-performed kosher slaughter, and the animal consumed in a manner resembling the popular Israeli pastime - the mangal (barbecue) - THE ANIMAL RIGHTS GROUP COMPARED IT TO DOG-FIGHTING AND OTHER SPECTATOR EVENTS PERFORMED AT THE EXPENSE OF ANIMALS' PAIN.

In her ruling, judge Hagit Mac-Kalmanovich said, "I was not convinced by the argument that the given event would cause the animal more pain and suffering than the accepted methods of slaughter in slaughterhouses." She rejected the group's comparison of the planned slaughter to illegal fights between animals, pointing out that only one animal was involved, and that it would not be harmed in any way prior to the actual slaughter. THE EVENT MUST BE ALLOWED UNDER LAWS PROTECTING FREEDOM OF RELIGION, SHE CONCLUDED.

Strong-armed tactics by Mr. Mugabe's police, threats of violence by his loyal armed militias, and an unwillingness to concede defeat in what African observers claim was a "free and fair" election are now putting the international community into a difficult spot. If Mugabe refuses to give up power, what will or can the outside world do?

"I think besides the [United Nations], the region - including members of the Southern African Development Community - is going to take an increasing role in Zimbabwe," says Chris Maroleng, a Zimbabwe expert at the Institute for Security Studies in Tshwane, as Pretoria, South Africa is now called. "[Mugabe] has lost the plot. He has always given the seeming appearance of legality in the past, but with claiming that his own ZEC has rigged the elections against him, he's overstepped himself."

For years, African leaders have told the world they can solve their own problems through regional bodies such as the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). But critics say that African leaders have been quite reluctant to confront one of their own, especially a liberation-era leader such as Mugabe, and that regional mediation efforts such as those instigated by South African President Thabo Mbeki have generally encouraged a continuation of the status quo rather than a pursuit of justice or democratic principles.

If Mugabe overturns the results of the elections to remain in power, the key test of African regional problem solving will be to see what his neighbors - all avowed proponents of democracy - will do.

"The ethical judgement of the Church on divorce and abortion is clear and well-known," he told participants in a Catholic congress on marriage and the family. "They are serious offences... which violate human dignity, inflict deep injustice on human and social relations and offend God himself, guarantor of conjugal peace and origin of life," he said. However he added that there were people who had committed such "errors" but "suffered from wounds to the soul" and "sought peace."

"The Church has the duty to be close to these people with love and delicacy," the pope added. "Divorce and abortion are choices... which sometimes develop in difficult and dramatic circumstances... and are a source of profound suffering for those who take such decisions. They also affect innocent victims, the barely-conceived and unborn infant, the children caught up in divorces."

The rise in prices - 50 per cent in two weeks - threatens upheaval and has resulted in riots and soldiers overseeing supplies in some emerging countries, where the grain is a staple food for about 3bn people.

Protests over China's human rights record began soon after the relay began at Wembley, and prompted an increasing police presence through the city. One protester tried to snatch the torch from former Blue Peter host Konnie Huq. After an unpublicised change to the route, the Chinese ambassador carried the torch through Chinatown. It later made an unscheduled move onto a bus.

A protective ring of 10 Chinese flame attendants and fluorescent-jacketed police officers surrounded the torchbearers at all times, with additional uniformed officers joining at potential flashpoints along the route.
Police decided the torch should travel along Fleet Street to St Paul's Cathedral by bus, rather than held by a runner, after it was surrounded by a large group of protesters.

Outside Downing Street there were chaotic scenes as former Olympic heptathlon gold medallist Denise Lewis took the flame to No 10. Gordon Brown greeted the torch outside Number 10 despite coming under pressure to boycott the parade and the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. However he did not hold it. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said the prime minister's involvement was "wholly inappropriate" until China opened talks with the Dalai Lama.

UBS, the country's biggest bank and once a byword for safe, reliable investments, now has the dubious distinction of being the world's biggest subprime loser after fresh writedowns this week drove its total damage to 37.4 billion dollars (24 billion euros). But politicians and senior banking officials have been at pains to stress that UBS' woes are not symptomatic of a wider malaise affecting the whole financial system.

Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz has repeatedly said in recent weeks that there is no need to panic despite the vast losses at UBS and similar -- if less extensive -- writedowns at rival Credit Suisse. Credit Suisse warned last month it could suffer a first quarter loss, citing exposure to the US subprime crisis, and said some of its traders had engaged in "intentional misconduct" and had been suspended.

"Certainly there has been a weakening of the robustness of the two institutes but one must note that our banking system as a whole has remained stable," Merz said at a speech to the Swiss Funds Association on Thursday. "With this background, one cannot speak of a banking crisis in Switzerland." But the pressure on UBS continued within hours of his speech, as former bank boss Luqman Arnold called for the sale of the troubled investment banking unit and the head of its newly installed chairman.

With riot police swooping in to arrest foreign journalists on Thursday evening, and separate police units raiding the Harare offices of the main opposition party, President Robert Mugabe seems to have signaled that he is not going to concede defeat in the March 29 elections easily. On Friday, Mr. Mugabe's key allies - veterans of the 1970s liberation war against the former white-dominated government - marched through Harare and threatened to unleash chaos if he fell from power.

Meanwhile, Mugabe met with his top Politburo advisers, as well as other supporters, such as leaders of his youth militia wing, to decide the cabal's next steps. After the five-hour meeting, his ruling ZANU-PF announced that Mugabe should contest a runoff vote against opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai if neither wins a majority in last Saturday's vote. Although official results for the presidential vote have not yet been released, most projections show that Mugabe lost the first round and would lose a fair runoff. With his hold on power so threatened, many observers expect a very difficult period ahead.

"This could be the beginning of a clampdown," says Chris Maroleng, a Zimbabwe expert at the Institute for Security Studies in Tshwane, as Pretoria, South Africa is now called. "Now that all the foreign observers have left, [Mugabe] knows he can get a lot of things done, by arresting the media, and then targeting the opposition."

"What this shows is that Mugabe is preparing for the runoff, but he will do it on his terms," says Mr. Maroleng. "If it does become a clampdown, it will be sharp and vicious." The arrests of the journalists, the raid of the MDC offices, and the threats of Mugabe's war veteran allies all fit a pattern of deliberate intimidation to scatter the strength of the opposition, both in urban and in farflung rural areas. "My guess is that [Mugabe] wants to declare a state of emergency. He wants to say that giving power to the MDC is like giving power to the British," says Dumiso Matshazi, an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second-largest city. "I think we're headed toward chaos.

The number of accidental poisonings of small children exposed to cleaning substances is about 25 percent higher during this period, and there have also been other injuries as well, such as toddlers drowning in pails in only a few centimeters of water. Two years ago, almost 500 children were injured at home in the two weeks before the holiday.

Beterem, the Israel National Center for Child Safety and Health, the Health Ministry and the National Poison Control Center at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa warned on Wednesday about carelessness in the use of potentially dangerous cleaning materials and chemicals.

Bleach, caustic chemicals such as oven cleaners, detergents, mineral deposit removers, fat removers, kerosene, and pesticides left within the reach of children, who will soon be on school vacation, pose a serious danger. In addition, mixing bleach with powdered cleansers or other combinations can cause fierce chemical reactions. Beterem said oven cleaners and other products containing caustic soda can cause serious burns if handled without gloves. If a child is injured by cleaning products, parents are advised to bring the products to the emergency room with the child so doctors will know how to treat the victim.

The latest advertising campaign by Absolut Vodka for Mexico, created by Teran|TBWA, is causing controversy online. The creative for the campaign returns the lay of the land in the Americas to what it once was. The map depicts the whole of California as still part of Mexican territory, sporting its former name of Alta California - higher California. Although the campaign caused no ripples south of the border, many in el Norte have found it offensive.

Alta California (Upper California) was formed in 1804 when the province of California, then a part of the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain, was divided in two along the line separating the Franciscan missions in the north from the Dominican missions in the south. The southern part became the territory of Baja California (Lower California). The two territories were also alternatively called Nueva California (New California; Upper California) and Vieja California (Old California; Lower California).

Mexico lost control of the territory as a result of the Mexican-American War. Absolut said the ad was designed for a Mexican audience and intended to recall "a time which the population of Mexico might feel was more ideal. As a global company, we recognize that people in different parts of the world may lend different perspectives or interpret our ads in a different way than was intended in that market, and for that we apologize."

With the latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

Cern, based near Geneva, started the grid computing project seven years ago when researchers realised the LHC would generate annual data equivalent to 56m CDs - enough to make a stack 40 miles high. This meant that scientists at Cern - where Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the web in 1989 - would no longer be able to use his creation for fear of causing a global collapse. This is because the internet has evolved by linking together a hotchpotch of cables and routing equipment, much of which was originally designed for telephone calls and therefore lacks the capacity for high-speed data transmission.

By contrast, the grid has been built with dedicated fibre optic cables and modern routing centres, meaning there are no outdated components to slow the deluge of data. The 55,000 servers already installed are expected to rise to 200,000 within the next two years. Professor Tony Doyle, technical director of the grid project, said: "We need so much processing power, there would even be an issue about getting enough electricity to run the computers if they were all at Cern. The only answer was a new network powerful enough to send the data instantly to research centres in other countries."

By December the Swiss bank was writing off another $10 BILLION and selling a 10% stake of itself to investors in Singapore and the Middle East in order to raise much-needed capital. Then on Tuesday, UBS outdid itself once again, TAKING A $19 BILLION HIT to its balance sheet, and showing chairman Marcel Ospel the door.

UBS, of course, is hardly alone. It may be the current banking leader of the write-down scorecard, but the implosion of the U.S. subprime mortgage market and general deflating of home prices has hit Wall Street all around. Merrill Lynch, which ousted CEO Stan O'Neal in October, has written down some $25 BILLION worth of assets. Citigroup, which booted CEO Chuck Prince in November, is approaching $24 BILLION. On April 1, the same day as UBS, Deutsche Bank declared another $4 BILLION write-down. ACROSS THE BOARD, BANKS ARE OUT SOME $200 BILLION SINCE THE BEGINNING OF 2007.

And despite the stock market's most fervent hopes, there are few signs that the write-downs are anywhere near finished. In a March 25 research note, Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitney predicted an additional $13 BILLION for Citigroup in the first quarter, $4 BILLION for Bank of America, nearly $3 BILLION for JP Morgan, and $1.5 BILLION for Wachovia. An April 1 report from Morgan Stanley and the consultancy OLIVER WYMAN ESTIMATED THAT INVESTMENT BANKS ALONE HAVE $60 TO $100 BILLION MORE TO GO IN 2008.

All of which raises the question: WHY IS THIS TAKING SO LONG AND WHEN WILL IT STOP?

If a congregation chooses to leave the US Episcopal organization, do they have to vacate the property and the physical church building they have been occupying? That high-stakes question will surely take many more legal battles to resolve, but the first round has been won by the secessionists, in a high-profile fight involving a famous old church.

A Virginia County Circuit Court Judge has ruled that at least according to a state statute, The Falls Church, where George Washington was once a vestryman - and which gave its name to the surrounding community - is covered under a state definition that would allow its conservative congregation to take the property into a non-Episcopal group supervised by the conservative Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria. The same goes for ten other churches in Virginia.

Their monetary value has been estimated at over $20 million, but their symbolic value is considerably greater. The most immediate part of the ruling by Judge Randy Bellows late Thursday night states that the evidence is "overwhelming" that the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia is currently in a state of "division" and that, therefore, under a Civil War era state law, control of its property sits with their congregations, not their previous mother church.

The Virginia case is one of the two most closely-watched property disputes in the bitter break-up sparked by disagreement over gay clergy (one which has affected the global Anglican communion). The other, in Long Beach, California, was originally decided in favor of the seceding group but overturned on appeal, and is headed for the California State Supreme Court. As a sizeable minority of conservative congregations leaves Episcopalianism, the struggle over who gets hundreds of millions of dollars of church property is becoming more and more intense. Passions range so high that the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts-Schori, the head of the national Episcopal body, in effect indicated during discovery in the Virginia case that she would rather see the churches sold and deconsecrated for secular purposes than passed on to the departing congregations.

Said Jim Oaks, Vice Chairman of the Anglican District of Virginia, a group of secessionist congregations, "I don't want to use the term 'joy' about this. At the risk of sounding Christianesque, we have believed very strongly and soberly that we were [seceding] in obedience to God, and we believe that He is being faithful."

The United Nations said protesters rioted in the town of Les Cayes on Thursday, burning shops, shooting at peacekeepers and looting containers at a U.N. compound. "At least four people have been killed and about 20 others wounded," said Gabriel Fortune, a senator from the southern region, who condemned the violent behavior of the demonstrators.

Food prices in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, have soared in recent months, stoking anger against the government of President Rene Preval. Preval's election in 2006 raised expectations that the country would finally start on the path to stability after decades of turbulence, culminating in the February 2004 ouster of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

"This hunger is unbearable and the government has to act now, otherwise we will burn down and destroy everything," a demonstrator shouted into a local reporter's microphone.