World traffic engaged twelve percent in 2009: WTOs Lamy

BRUSSELS Wed Feb 24, 2010 5:36am EST Related News WTO"s Lamy: world trade contracted 12 pct in 2009Wed, Feb 24 2010Trade ministers gloomy on WTO prospectsSat, Jan 30 2010Business pleads for 2010 trade deal amid skepticismThu, Jan 28 2010Business pleads for 2010 trade deal amid skepticismThu, Jan 28 2010

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Global trade contracted by about 12 percent in 2009 but has started to pick up, the head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) said on Wednesday.

WTO Director General Pascal Lamy said the Organization had revised its previous estimate of a contraction of about 10 percent in 2009 but gave no forecast for 2010.

"World trade has also been a casualty of this (global economic) crisis, contracting ... by about 12 percent in 2009," Lamy said during a visit to Brussels, calling it a huge drop and the sharpest decline since the end of World War Two.

Asked about world trade in 2010, he declined to give any figure but said:

"Certainly there is a pick-up. Whether this pick-up is short term ... or whether this is sustainable ... is difficult to say but we certainly are picking up."

Lamy told a meeting organized by the European Policy Center think-tank that opening global trade offered a way out of the crisis and that it was "economically imperative" to conclude the Doha round of talks on a new global commerce pact.

He caused gloom at the WTO this week by saying there were too many gaps and uncertainties in negotiations to bring in ministers at the end of March to take stock of whether the eight-year-old trade round can be concluded this year.

Nuclear and breeze energy will be at heart of Alistair Darlings Budget (contains video)

Roland Watson, Political Editor & , : {}

Alistair Darling will place nuclear and wind power today at the heart of efforts to lead Britain into sustained growth as he sets out the choices voters face in the coming election.

The Chancellor will use the Budget to try to unlock private sector investment to boost jobs and help to harness the energy sources of the future. He will seek to use government support for private companies as a key election dividing line, portraying Labour as safe custodians of a recovery that is as yet too fragile to trust to the Conservatives.

One of the main thrusts of Mr Darlings pre-election statement will be to promise a range of inducements where government will act as a catalyst for private sector projects.

In one the Treasury will plough 1 billion from asset sales into a green investment bank, to be matched by a similar sum from the private sector. The bank would act as a key investor in important infrastructure projects such as nuclear power stations and wind farms as Britain seeks to replace 50 per cent of its power generation over the coming 20 years. Small and medium-sized businesses are also expected to be offered a range of inducements to help them to expand.

Related LinksOn a BudgetThis is a phoney Budget. Bring on the real oneBusiness Editors budget briefingMultimediaLIVE: Budget 2010, minute-by-minute IN FULL: Budget 2010

Mr Darling is expected to say that in the heat of the financial crisis the Government made the correct choices, to let borrowing rise and bail out the banks. Labour would also make the right choice about the recovery, he will say, delaying cuts until next year, unlike the Tories.

Mr Darling received a pre-Budget boost yesterday when a survey showed that the public are more optimistic about the economic recovery and are more willing to give the Government credit for its handling of the economy.

The research, for the PoliticsHome website, showed that 45 per cent of voters think the economy has turned or is turning a corner, compared with 34 per cent in January. Forty-one per cent now credit the Government for its handling of the economy, compared with 36 per cent in January.

Mr Darling, in a pre-Budget statement placed on YouTube, set the tone for what could be his final Budget. The economy was at a crossroads, he said, suggesting that it might take the wrong turning if it was placed in Conservative hands. The role of government in helping to pull the country into sustained recovery was vital, he said.

In a forerunner of what is expected to be a key theme of Labours manifesto and election campaign, the Chancellor said: Government can make a difference to the future of our country for the next ten or 20 years. We need to make sure that we work with private companies to build the businesses of the future and my Budget will contain measures to get that growth going.

With Britains public finances in the red at record levels, the Chancellor has none of the room for manoeuvre for pre-Budget giveaways that his predecessor, Gordon Brown, enjoyed in 2001 and 2005. Indeed, Mr Darling returned to the quote that, when he first used it, had unleashed the forces of Hell from Downing Street against him: Britain was experiencing the most difficult circumstances for well in excess of 60 years, he said.

The Treasury has tried to make a virtue of a necessarily workmanlike Budget that ministers have suggested will include no new tax rises nor details of the 19 billion worth of spending cuts that the Government has budgeted for in order to halve the deficit over four years.

Mr Darling is expected to be able to announce that some of the lower than expected spending on unemployment benefits will allow him to cut the deficit from 178 billion to nearer 170 billion.Other unexpected revenue will go into business-friendly schemes.

He received a boost from latest inflation figures yesterday, which fell from a 14-month high of 3.5 per cent in January to 3 per cent last month, official figures showed.

Falls in the prices of games and toys and lower utility bills helped to push annual inflation down, according to the Office of National Statistics.

The figures raise hopes that inflation, that spiked with the return of VAT to 17.5 per cent in January, has peaked and will eventually drop back close to the Bank of Englands target of 2 per cent.

The Tories will warn today that the soaring cost of paying interest on the national debt threatens Britain with a Greek-style crisis. The Treasury is paying 35 billion a year on debt interest, a figure that will rise by 2014-15 to 71 billion. The Tories warned that the figure could rise to more than 100 billion if the markets lost confidence in the Governments ability to service its debts.

A poster to be launched by the Tories today pictures Mr Brown in dinner jacket and Mr Darling as his bride next to the parodied film title: My Big Fat Greek Debt.

Barack Obama postpones Asian debate to conflict for health reform

Giles Whittell, Washington & , : {}

President Obama has deferred a big Asian discuss at slightest until Jun so that he can be in Washington for the consequential last days of the discuss on health reform.

The outing was to have enclosed a state revisit to Indonesia, where Mr Obama grew up and where members of his lengthened family were pronounced to be unhappy with the ultimate postponement. The President was additionally due to residence the Australian Parliament on the 70th anniversary of central USAustralian relations.

Passage of healthcare remodel is of peerless significance and the President is dynamic to see this conflict through, his orator pronounced yesterday. A opinion in the House of Representatives is right away scheduled for Sunday, with amendments approaching to be introduced in the Senate early subsequent week.

Mr Obama had already deferred the outing by 3 days in the goal of signing a Bill prior to leaving, but with the denunciation of the potentially ancestral legislation still being polished late on Wednesday, White House schedulers worked by the night to goal for the Australian and Indonesian governments for what will fundamentally be seen as a rubbish of months of organisation.

Related LinksObama battles to win over DemocratsDoes Obama give a damn about us?

The preference was voiced as Democrats one after another their efforts to convince about ten of their own moderates to behind the Bill on that the rest of Mr Obamas bulletin could depend. American analysts disturbed that the move would send a summary to the universe that the President is at the forgiveness of a little class in his own party. It will additionally meant Mr Obama will be in Washington as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visits to residence a pro-Israel conference, ten days after Vice-President Joe Biden was flustered in Jerusalem by the proclamation of new Jewish settlements.

In serve explanation of the high stakes trustworthy to health reform, Mr Obama certified that the routine Democrats goal to make use of to pass his elite Bill is ugly, whilst insisting it is the right thing to do.

Interrupted twenty-one times in the march of a 20-minute talk by Bret Baier on the Fox News Channel, Mr Obama attempted to brush in reserve questions about settlement and hold and pass dual procedural inclination that have murderous conservatives but might be used to force by the reforms.

I dont outlay a lot of time worrying about what the procedural manners are in the House or Senate, Mr Obama said. What I can discuss it you is that the opinion thats taken in the House will be a opinion for healthcare remodel and I dont think we should fake otherwise.

Mr Obama wants the House of Representatives to authorize a Bill already upheld by the Senate, and the Senate to pass a package of amendments afterwards. The reforms would cost $940 billion (617 billion) over ten years.

hair wig

Reality bites at Portsmouth as bar are forced to lay off 85 staff Portsmouth

Nick Szczepanik & , : {}

It will be small joy to the 85 Portsmouth employees done surplus yesterday that Peter Storrie, the arch executive, has concluded to take a compensate cut.

When the sacked secretaries and ticket-sellers work out that he will still be creation about 480,000 per annum, they competence consternation either the right people have been targeted in the pursuit cuts voiced yesterday by Andrew Andronikou, the joint- administrator.

Storrie has supposed a 40 per cent rebate in his simple income of about 800,000 and nonetheless he has pronounced that he will step down once the bar have been sold, that could take months.

However, Andronikou hinted that Storrie competence go earlier, saying: He is still arch senior manager today, but that competence really well change.

Related LinksFA prepares to hold on to Portsmouth bountyPortsmouth keep semi-final placeJerome gives Grant falling feeling

Other employees have concluded to take cuts or deferrals to their wages, but nonetheless Andronikou pronounced that one or dual players had talked about an vague compensate reduction, on the total the players are really infancy stable by the PFA and I am incompetent to have personification cuts, nor would I wish to. They are the emporium window and will capture buyers to the club.

The players will notice a tightening of purse strings, though, with Andronikou earnest that each penny is being counted at the Premier League club, who are some-more than 80 million in debt.

Their await staff have been cut and there will no overnight stay prior to or after Monday evening"s compare afar to Liverpool. Moreover, half of the 500-mile spin trip, that would routinely be done by air, will right afar be done by coach.

Andronikou has nonetheless to put a figure on the assets completed by the pursuit losses, but if it is less than 8,000 a week, it does not take a maths sorceress to work out that one singular senior manager or personification staff excess competence have kept them all in work. What I"m on, a little of the players consequence in 3 days, Mark Crawford, who lost his pursuit as a warehouseman, said. I cant see that they"re saving a lot of income sacking me.

Mark Jacob, the senior manager director, has left, but his on all sides was unpaid. The others to go worked in the media department, PFC TV, marketing, sheet sales, reception, the precision belligerent and hospitality.

Retail jobs have left with the closure of bar shops. About twenty have been cut from between the 166 full-time staff, a series that includes players, and the rest from 154 part-time employees. However, those numbers discuss it their own story. Birmingham City, Portsmouths infancy new opponents, conduct on a infancy not as big payroll. They occupy 70 to 80 full-time staff, with a part-time strength of about 30.

Ive seen far worse, Andronikou said. It [the situation] was driven by emotions and the need to contest with alternative clubs, and financially the association lost the focus. But if we are relegated, we will have to examination the incident again. The income streams in the Championship wouldnt await this spin of staffing.

Andronikou pronounced that there would be no some-more redundancies and The Times has learnt that Revenue Customs will accept that his administration department is current after reception papers requested at a High Court conference last week.

With assurances from the FA that esteem income and alternative revenues from their FA Cup run will not be withheld, and a monetary pledge from Balram Chainrai, the owner, that the bar will do their fixtures this season, his courtesy can right afar spin to anticipating a buyer.

Two parties have already supposing explanation of funds, but either they will cruise the thirty million asking cost a great understanding for a bar expected to be in the Coca-Cola Championship subsequent deteriorate stays to be seen. There will be a buyer, Andronikou said. I usually need to have certain the the right buyer.

SOS Pompey, a supporters" movement group, has called on Storrie to do the decent thing and travel away. "It leaves a really green ambience in the mouths of most fans that the usually executive to lose his on all sides with the bar was operative for nothing," a matter from the organisation read.

"Peter Storrie not long ago told us that if the fans longed for him to leave he would do so. A accumulation of polls on multiform forums and internal air wave demonstrated that the infancy of fans did in truth wish him to go.

"Storrie has mostly cited the owners as being obliged for damaged promises. This is one guarantee Mr Storrie can keep in any case of any owner. We ask him to renounce rught away and present any separation compensate he receives to the workers who have lost their jobs today."

hair wig

TV presenter Kristian Digby found passed in his flat

David Sanderson & , : {}

The BBC radio presenter Kristian Digby was found passed yesterday in unexplained resources at his easterly London flat.

Mr Digby, who presented a fibre of skill shows together with BBC 1s To Buy Or Not to Buy, was found passed in his West Ham prosaic at 7.45am yesterday.

Scotland Yard conspicuous that Newham CID were questioning the unexplained death.

Tributes were paid last night to Mr Digby, 32, who additionally destined drive-in theatre and radio programmes.

Related LinksKristian Digby

A BBC orator said: Kristian was a much-loved and gifted presenter for BBC Daytime. He brought a genuine clarity of appetite and regard to all the shows he presented for us and will be sorely missed. Our thoughts are with his family at this really formidable time.

His representative Jo Wander said: I am ravaged by the loss. He was a poetic man and a really gifted presenter and director. I will miss him hugely and my thoughts at this time are with his family and his majority friends. He will be sorely missed.

During his career he presented ITVs Nightlife, That Gay Show on BBC Choice, The Holiday Show on BBC as well as being array executive on The Million Pound Property Experiment.

He was maybe majority important for his purpose on To Buy Or Not To Buy.

In an talk with The Sunday Times last August, he explained how he had built his own residence on land in Stratford. The son of skill developers he showed a aptitude for privately doing pattern projects, the likes of that he followed on his BBC skill show.

Ater following a parsimonious bill he certified he had left funny on a �6,000 lounge and spending �18,000 on a Vi-Spring bed.

A Scotland Yard orator conspicuous last night: Police were called to reports of a physique of a man in his 30s found at an residence in Richford Road, E15.

Ambulance services attended and hold up was conspicuous extinct. Next of family were sensitive and we await grave identification.

There will be a autopsy at twelve noon at East Ham mortuary.

Newham CID are questioning the unexplained circumstances, a military source added.

Wayne Rooney hopes to be fit to begin for England Football

Wayne Rooney hopes to be fit for England"s accessible on Wednesday after scoring the winning idea in Sunday"s Carling Cup final. Photograph: Tom Jenkins

Wayne Rooney has pronounced that he hopes to be fit to begin England"s compare opposite Egypt on Wednesday night and expects to sight with the patrol tomorrow. The Manchester United brazen has had a indicate currently after feeling annoy in his knee during the Carling Cup last but it suggested zero some-more critical than bruising. Rooney says he is dynamic to fool around if he comes by Tuesday"s event and that he "always wants to fool around for my country".

Asked regularly for his opinions on John Terry being nude of the England captaincy, Rooney pronounced usually that he felt the Chelsea centre-half was a "great player". However, he did ask the Wembley throng not to spin on the former captain. "It"ll be the same as usual, we hope," he said. "For home fans to disapprove the home players it doesn"t send a great summary so hopefully he won"t be booed."

The striker pronounced he has seen no justification of intrusion in the patrol and the issue of Terry"s purported event with Vanessa Perroncel has not been referred to nor have the players been given warnings by Fabio Capello about their control afar from the field.

"There"s been no disproportion in the group given the patrol met up last night," he said. "Since we"ve been here we"ve had no meetings – it"s been the same as a common England squad."

He refused to be drawn on his thoughts about Wayne Bridge"s early retirement from general football but did compensate reverence to the left-back, saying: "He"s a great player and will be longed for for us."

Looking far some-more loose when the questions returned to quite football matters, Rooney pronounced the compare opposite Egypt was a consequential piece of England"s World Cup planning. "It"s a big diversion for us," he said. "We wish to win the diversion so hopefully we can do that. It"s some-more about credentials for the World Cup than about the patrol fastening together. "Egypt are a clever group and formidable to fool around against. It will be difficult and hopefully we can get a great result. I"ll only try my most appropriate and try and give my all."

Test disinfectant in the lab not in the justice (contains video)

Raymond Tallis & , : {}

A whilst back, I wrote a square arguing that the retired, such as myself, had a shortcoming to verbalise fearlessly about what we saw to be the law and to take without a friend stands on formidable issues. After all, we no longer had any goal of enrichment and the curse of ill-informed, instinctive or self-interested opponents could not hold us. Recent events have awoken my asleep timidity to subject this bravado. Speaking out on a little things competence meant that Mrs Tallis and I could finish the days on the parish, spotless out by a incriminating justice conflict with people or institutions with deeper pockets than us. The defame box brought opposite Simon Singh is one such event.

Singh is one of the majority brilliant, correct and courteous scholarship writers of his generation. In 2008 he wrote a square in The Guardian to happen at the same time with Chiropractic Awareness Week severe claims that spinal strategy could be utilitarian for treating childhood conditions such as asthma and ear infections. (Yes, ear infections I child you not!) The British Chiropractic Association (BCA) protested that he had defamed the repute and in jeopardy to sue for libel. The Guardian offering the BCA a 500-word reply and an entrance in the Corrections and Clarifications column. This was rejected, The Guardian chose not to rivet in a potentially dear battle, and Singh was on his own. He courageously motionless to quarrel on, since of the beliefs at stake.

At a rough conference in May 2009, Sir David Eady motionless that the essay was actuality not criticism (although it appeared in The Guardian Comment pages), that it contained the plainest claim of dishonesty, and that in law it accuses them [the BCA] of entirely dishonourable conduct. Eady resolved that there was a box to answer. Singh is currently delectable opposite this judgment. He is upheld by organisations such as Sense About Science, but faces outrageous intensity costs even if he wins.

It would be formidable to elaborate the significance of this case. It is not simply about the law about the claims of chiropractic, homeopathy, Reiki care or fanning with a prohibited towel to the receptive to advice of primal screams to provide critical illness. It is about the right to competition these claims on the basement of evidence. If you sell a device that presumably cures cancer utilizing laser beams deflected from Mars, I should be means to scream from the rooftops that this is deluded, forward and dangerous if there were no strong justification to behind up your claims. If, in the process, I have it solid that I think your control is disreputable, so be it. Historically, majority lives have been put at risk from snake-oil salesmen punishment pick remedies majority quite in new times for Aids, malaria and TB in building countries. Thabo Mbekis rejecting of approved Aids treatments was obliged for the deaths of about 300,000 people, according to the Harvard School of Public Health.

BACKGROUNDEnglands defame laws wisecrack me and blindfold youNo spectacle heal for junk scienceSex-addicted? No, the Getting Caught SyndromeDont let auld familiarity be forgot

The issues lifted by the Singh event go over pick healing practitioners who make use of lawyers rather than justification to urge their practice. This is transparent from the box of Dr Peter Wilmshurst, a expert cardiologist being sued by the US association NMT Medical for criticising a little of the claims about interpretation from the hearing of a device to close holes in the heart. Here it is Big Pharma, rather than border medicine, wielding the authorised arms to competition judgments done on the basement of systematic scrutiny.

Something has left terribly wrong if egghead benefactors of mankind, such as those who plea what they understand to be critical and dangerous errors, are rewarded not with commend but the awaiting of ruin, even if there is no justification on the basement of evidence. This is quite poignant in the box of medicine.

Evidence-based systematic disinfectant represents not usually a delight over inlet but additionally over human inlet in the really place where the enticement to mistreat others and ones self is overwhelming. After all, hold up and death, goal and despondency are in contention. And it is this feat that is underneath attack. The border to that settling systematic disputes by chance to the law has proposed to repairs the health of scholarship is formidable to judge. But it is chilling to note that multiform editors of systematic journals have stopped withdrawing published studies that they think are injured or even fake since this movement could be judged defamatory.

Beneath the formidable arguments in the High Court, something really obsolete is happening: a retrogression to an progressing approach of settling differences. It would be no good allege if systematic law were to be motionless by the contractor with the deepest slot than if it were dynamic by the priest, the shaman, the commissar or by the alpha masculine with the majority absolute fists. Human swell has depended on rejecting justification by energy and management in foster of the interest to evidence. The hired guns of the authorised contention and their clients could criticise that emperor principle, that is a make a difference not only of methodology but of ethics.

If things go really bad for Singh, and the systematic village is quiet by the law, it will be a black day for all of us. Tested in justice by the majority absolute lawyers is not an just calming matter on the studious report leaflet. And people similar to me, with the typical reduction of timidity and bravery, might think twice prior to floating the whistle. As for chiropractic in the suggestion of comment, not actuality I wish to jot down my regard that, irrespective of the effect of the claims to be of good in ear infections, the authorised movement of the deputy physique could severely repairs the health.

In short, be afraid, be really afraid.

Raymond Talliss ultimate book is Michelangelos Finger. He is a signatory to the National Petition for Libel Reform www.libelreform.org