Medvedev had more than 70 percent of the vote with 97 percent of the precincts counted, according to the Central Election Commission. He is expected to rule in concert with his mentor, an arrangement that could see Putin calling the shots despite his constitutionally subordinate position as Russia's prime minister.

Medvedev, 42, the youngest Russian ruler since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, is expected to heed Putin's advice, continue his assertive course with the West, maintain state control over Russia's mineral riches and freeze out real opposition movements. "We will increase stability, improve the quality of life and move forward on the path we have chosen," Medvedev said Sunday, appearing alongside Putin at a celebration at the Red Square outside the Kremlin. "We will be able to preserve the course of President Putin."

Putin said Medvedev "has taken a firm lead" and congratulated his protege. "Such a victory carries a lot of obligations," Putin said. "This victory will serve as a guarantee that the course we have chosen, the successful course we have been following over the past eight years, will be continued."

Prince Alois, who once acknowledged he led a boring life, had been seen as conciliatory, distant or even timid. But his reaction to Germany's crackdown on secretive bank accounts in his principality has dramatically raised his profile. The 39-year-old prince lacks many of the fiery traits that make his father Hans-Adam II a controversial figure, but his 35,000 subjects have warmed to him as he grapples with one of Liechtenstein's worst recent crises.

"People had criticized him for being too cautious. Now he has shown he can act differently, and people liked it," said Kornelia Pfeiffer, a journalist at the Liechtensteiner Volksblatt daily newspaper. He accused Germany of violating the law by purchasing information on suspected tax dodgers from an informant the principality views as a criminal. "It is surely a crisis when one is shot at in this way by such a big country," the prince told a news conference in the capital Vaduz.

"Germany would be better off using its tax revenues to get its own tax system in order instead of paying millions for stolen data."

A US official confirmed launching a strike against "suspected terrorists". The US bombed the area a year ago and residents say it was the same plane. Six people were killed in the air strikes on Dhoble town and 20 wounded. Somalia's Islamist insurgents seized the town last week and one of their leaders Hassan Turki was reportedly in the area over the weekend.

Islamist spokesman Sheikh Mukhtar Robow said the US was trying to hit Islamist hideouts in the area. "The Americans bombed the town and hit civilian targets, thinking that they were Islamist hideouts. They used an AC-130 plane," he told the AFP news agency.

The US accused the Somali Islamists of harbouring those responsible for the 1998 attacks on its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Islamists denied this, as well as reports they had links to al-Qaeda. Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991.

BUT ITS ANNUAL PROFITS STILL ROSE 10% TO $24.2BN (£12.2BN), UP FROM $22.08BN THE YEAR BEFORE. The write-down is the largest of the big-five UK banks because HSBC has large operations in the US. The bank said the global financial system had come under "extraordinary strain" in 2007. "The outlook for the rest of 2008 is uncertain," said HSBC chairman Stephen Green.

HSBC has a branch network in the US, where business, it says, is "challenging". Profitability is declining because of the decline in the housing market and increasing unemployment. The bank said it was actively trying to mitigate losses in the US, where defaults on mortgages and credit card payments are increasing. It has restructured its US operation, closing about 400 branches, and has reduced the amount of credit it extends.

HSBC shares rose in early trading - one of the few companies to see its shares rise in a falling market. By 0945 GMT its shares were up 1p at 767p. "HSBC has fared better than many of its competitors in shedding just 14% of its share price in the last year," said Richard Hunter from stockbrokers Hargreaves Lansdown. "However, it continues to be held back by the spectre of POTENTIAL FURTHER WRITE-DOWNS WITH, IN PARTICULAR, ITS EXPOSURE TO THE US MARKET HAVING UNNERVED MANY INVESTORS," he said.

"Until yesterday, I never would have believed that I would see the things I saw," said Rachel Shimoni, 66, as she stood amid shards of glass, blown out of the front window of her clothing store. "ALL OF A SUDDEN, THE REALITY HAS CHANGED."

Palestinian militants fire rockets nearly daily at Sderot and other Israeli border towns near Gaza. BUT BY REACHING ASHKELON, A CITY OF 120,000 PEOPLE ABOUT 11 MILES NORTH OF GAZA, HAMAS RAISED THE STAKES CONSIDERABLY. It is one of the largest cities in southern Israel, home to Mediterranean beaches, a college and strategic installations like an electric plant and a water purification plant. Gaza militants have managed to hit the outskirts of Ashkelon in rare instances in the past, but the latest fighting was the first time they've been able to do it on a regular basis.

Ashkelon's mayor said he would not accept the rockets becoming a normal reality. "THIS IS A STATE OF WAR, I know no other definition for it," said Roni Mahatzri, from his makeshift office in an underground bunker. "If it lasts a week or two, we can handle that, but WE HAVE NO INTENTION OF ALLOWING THIS TO BECOME PART OF OUR DAILY ROUTINE."

Ephraim Kam, a research associate at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank, said HITTING ASHKELON SIMPLY BROUGHT TOO MANY CIVILIANS INTO ROCKET RANGE AND WAS UNACCEPTABLE TO ISRAEL'S LEADERS. "Ashkelon is much more significant than the places that have been hit so far," he said.

Speaking on his weekly television show, President Chavez also said Venezuela's embassy in Colombia would close. Mr Chavez said Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was a "criminal". He said the killing of Raul Reyes, a top commander of the left-wing Farc rebels, just inside Ecuador on Saturday was a "cowardly murder".

Mr Chavez has been mediating with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - or Farc - to secure the release of hostages the rebels hold, and six have so far been freed under this initiative. But he lamented the killing of Reyes - whom he called a "good revolutionary" - and at least 16 other Farc rebels when he spoke on his show, "Alo, President".

While Mr Chavez is a vociferous critic of the US, Colombia's government has received billions of dollars in aid from Washington to fight the guerrillas - the US, along with the EU, views Farc as a terrorist organisation.

The suspension came amid demonstrations in Gaza and fresh clashes with Israeli troops in the West Bank. Israeli PM Ehud Olmert vowed to carry on the assault, which came in response to militant rocket attacks on Israel. The violence intensified on Saturday, when nearly 70 people were killed in one of Gaza's bloodiest days in years.

Local doctors said at least 13 of the Palestinians were civilians, including eight children. The fighting has drawn international calls for restraint, with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the US urging both sides to halt the violence. But Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said his country needed to prepare for an escalation of its air and ground operations in Gaza.

Rocket attacks on Israel have continued despite the assault on Gaza. Uri Bar Lev, police chief in southern Israel, told the BBC that the border town of Sderot had been targeted by 15 rockets on Sunday. He added that about 50 rockets were falling on the town each day. One Israeli died in an attack earlier this week. Palestinian rockets have reached as far as the Israeli town Ashkelon, 16km (10 miles) from the Gaza Strip.

Britain is throwing away half of all the food produced on farms, according to the starkest estimate yet of the amount of edible produce we waste. About 20m tons of food is thrown out each year: equivalent to half of the food import needs for the whole of Africa. Some 16m tons of this is wasted in homes, shops, restaurants, hotels and food manufacturing. Much of the rest is thought to be destroyed between the farm field and the shop shelf.

The total bill to the nation is estimated to be more than £20bn. The issue has come to the fore as supermarkets fight off criticism over billions of plastic carrier bags handed out free each year. Lord Haskins of Skidby, a former government adviser on rural affairs and chairman of Northern Foods, said yesterday that tackling the mountain of food wasted in this country every year would help to preserve the environment and go some way towards feeding an expanding global population in the face of unprecedented food shortages.

Lord Haskins, whose former employer is one of Britain's largest food suppliers, urged governments to press their citizens to help "avoid disaster by dramatically reducing the ... unacceptable levels of food waste, which are a shameful feature of most modern consumer societies". He called recent controversy over supermarkets' free distribution of plastic bags "a red herring".

Instead, it was a nation in crisis. "Britain is in a very, very uncomfortable place," he said. In a wide-ranging speech on the country's "broken society", the Ugandan-born archbishop called for Britain to regain the values of "mission and enterprise" that had made it so effective when it had an empire. His comments follow weeks of debate between political and religious leaders over the impact of multiculturalism on Britain, which has centred on claims from fellow senior bishops that the country has no-go areas for non-Muslims and will adopt aspects of Islamic sharia law in due course.

Speaking at Cambridge University, the archbishop accused the Government of trying to put a positive spin on the impact of its policies when, in fact, Britain had lost its standing abroad and was in crisis domestically because it no longer had a "vision for coherence or purpose".

"The loss of purpose has led to a crisis in Britain and a crisis for Christianity," he said. "At the heart of the empire was very strong mission and enterprise. British goods used to be very good, but not any more. Something has gone wrong. Britain needs a bigger vision." He stressed the importance of Britain not losing its Christian heritage which, he said, could be a "medicine" for the nation's ills.

Without an agreement, the Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies will begin implementing a water-sharing plan of their own, Kempthorne said in a letter to the governors."Regrettably, it will necessarily be a solution being directed to the states instead of our much hoped for solution coming from the states," he wrote in the letter, released Saturday. Kempthorne said the talks, which began last fall, yielded more progress in three months than at any time during the last 18 years.

But he said the negotiators could not reach a comprehensive agreement and called it "unfortunate" that the states are moving forward with ongoing litigation."It is our hope that developments in the courts will not frustrate further progress in resolving the remaining technical issues we face together," he said.

The three states have been feuding for nearly two decades over water rights in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint and the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa river basins, which run south through Georgia into Alabama and the Florida panhandle. Georgia is fighting to hold back more water in federal reservoirs around Atlanta to serve its growing population. Florida and Alabama argue that Georgia hasn't adequately planned for growth. The extra withdrawals, they argue, would damage the environment and dry up river flows into their states that support smaller municipalities, power plants, commercial fisheries and industrial users like paper mills.

With a record drought creating a critical water shortage last fall, President Bush dispatched Kempthorne to try to settle the dispute. But the talks appeared doomed from the start, with Florida almost immediately backing away from an initial agreement to allow Georgia to temporarily hold back more water in Lake Lanier outside Atlanta as the governors worked toward a longer-term pact by Feb. 15. Then Georgia lost a major court ruling in a case that raised questions about whether the federal government can allocate the state more water from the river basins without first getting approval from Congress or the U.S. Supreme Court.

After a series of meetings, the governors missed the Feb. 15 deadline but said they would continue talking until March 1. The talks appeared to unravel further in recent days, with Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue saying the water problems facing Florida and Alabama are not as critical as Georgia's and accusing the other states of approaching the talks without the same urgency as Georgia.

The visit gives Ahmadinejad a chance to highlight the improved relationship his nation has with post-Saddam Hussein Iraq while also serving as an act of defiance toward the U.S., which accuses Iran of aiding Shiite extremists in Iraq.

Among the delegation of Iraqi officials gathered at Baghdad international airport was Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who told The Associated Press that Ahmadinejad plans to leave Monday morning. Upon Ahmadinejad's arrival, the group piled into a military convoy headed for a meeting at Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's residence.

Security was tight along the airport road, once among the most dangerous in this war-torn city, with Iraqi army patrols stationed every 100 yards or so. The U.S. has said it would not be involved in providing security for Ahmadinejad's visit. Iran and Iraq are both led by Shiite Muslims. The two countries were hostile to each other during Saddam's regime and fought a long and destructive war during most of the 1980s. But Ahmadinejad sought to reassure Iraqis ahead of the trip that Iran is not fueling violence in Iraq.

Dr Muawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza emergency medical services, told AFP at least 61 people were killed as a "great number of rockets fired by Israeli planes" slammed into the northern Gaza Strip. At least seven civilians were among the dead and about 100 people were wounded, several of them critically, he said. Two Israeli soldiers were also killed on Saturday in Gaza, the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera news channel reported, but there was no immediate confirmation from the army.

Tanks supported by helicopters moved into the area in and around the crowded town and refugee camp of Jabaliya and nearby Tufah in northern Gaza just after midnight, witnesses said. By midday troops had pushed nearly three kilometres (two miles) inside the Gaza Strip, according to witnesses. The urban battlefields were littered with debris as frightened residents hid inside their homes and imams read Koranic verses over mosque loudspeakers.

"We are in the middle of a total war. We hear the rockets and the explosions everywhere - we cannot leave our homes," Jabaliya resident Abu Alaa, 40, told AFP by telephone as he and his children took cover. Since the talks were formally revived at least 275 people have been killed, the vast majority of them militants in Gaza, where Abbas no longer has any power, according to an AFP tally. The latest deaths brought to at least 6,236 the total number of people killed in Israeli-Palestinian violence since 2000, most of them Palestinians, according to an AFP count.

New advice to teachers will also give them the green light to tell children about homosexuality as part of Sex and Relationship Education lessons. Ministers are attempting to canvass pupils' views on sex education as part of a national review of the subject at primary and secondary level.

THE DEPARTMENT FOR CHILDREN, SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES' TEENAGE PREGNANCY UNIT HAS FUNDED A BOOKLET, KNOWN AS A "TOOLKIT", WHICH IS AIMED AT SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS. It was developed by the Sex Education Forum, which represents 50 organisations including children's and parents' groups. The forum is run by the National Children's Bureau, a children's rights charity that receives state funding.

Pupils are supposed to make up their own minds but the document also provides teachers with the answers ministers believe are correct. These answers should be read aloud to pupils after they have finished the exercise, the document states.

They include:
- Homosexuality can be discussed as part of school lessons. Agree.
- You don't have to be married to have a strong and supportive relationship. Agree.
- Schools should only teach Christian values. Disagree.
- Schools should tell young people not to have sex. Disagree.

Critics yesterday attacked the publication, claiming that it promotes the view that there are "no rights and wrongs" when it comes to sexual relationships. They have already warned that the review is an underhand attempt to bring in compulsory sex education for primary pupils. These fears were compounded by a Times Educational Supplement survey yesterday, which revealed that two thirds of primary teachers support compulsory sex education. Many want it for seven-year-olds.

Norman Wells, director of Family and Youth Concern, accused the forum of trying to manipulate impressionable youngsters. "It's verging on brainwashing," he said. "The forum is committed to promoting the view that there are no rights and wrongs when it comes to sexual relationships. The authors of this toolkit are clearly aiming to steer children away from a belief in moral absolutes and encouraging them to think everything is relative. The only truly safe and healthy choice is to follow a clear moral code that keeps sexual intimacy within the context of a faithful and lifelong marriage."

The ruling came in a case brought against Jonathan and Mary Long over the education being provided to two of their eight children. They are considering an appeal to the state Supreme Court, because they have homeschooled all of their children, the oldest now 29, because of various anti-Christian influences in California's public schools. The decision from the 2nd Appellate Court in Los Angeles granted a special petition brought by lawyers appointed to represent the two youngest children after the family's homeschooling was brought to the attention of child advocates.

The father, Jonathan Long, said the family is working on ways to appeal to the state Supreme Court, because he won't allow the pro-homosexual, pro-bisexual, pro-transgender agenda of California's public schools, on which WND previously has reported, to indoctrinate his children. "We just don't want them teaching our children," he told WND. "They teach things that are totally contrary to what we believe. They put questions in our children's minds we don't feel they're ready for. When they are much more mature, they can deal with these issues, alternative lifestyles, and such, or whether they came from primordial slop. At the present time it's my job to teach them the correct way of thinking," he said.

Two Al Qaeda-affiliated websites are calling on jihadists to "slaughter" the third in line to the throne. There will now be an urgent review of his security and the prince may have to curb his fondness for nightclubs. Taliban insurgents were already vowing to step up attacks on British forces. The prince was said to be bitterly disappointed that his posting to Helmand had to be cut short after a U.S. website broke an international media agreement not to reveal it. Security sources said the terrorist threats against Harry were being taken seriously.

Concerns about Harry's safety were deepened when firebrand preacher Anjem Choudhary, of the extremist Al Muhajiroun group, accused him of endorsing an "illegal war". He said: "I think it is inevitable that anyone who engages in these activities is going to draw attention to themselves. He will be seen as part of the enemy and so he is a target. For Harry to participate has absolutely no justification. For people to say he is being brave and doing his job is simply wrong. Many wiser and braver men have decided not to participate and have objected and demonstrated against these wars. They should be the ones declared as heroes."

In their first public reaction, the Taliban said Harry's presence in Helmand meant the Royal Family had joined the "aggression against Muslims" and encouraged their fighters to launch more attacks.