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Russia today agreed to end its counterterrorist operations in Chechnya, in a move that signals the formal end of the Kremlin's war in the republic and enhances the power of Chechnya's president, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Russia's national anti-terrorist committee said military restrictions in force in Chechnya would be abolished from today. Moscow has maintained a strict security regime for a decade in Chechnya, the scene of two wars against separatist rebels.

This morning Kadyrov, a close ally of Putin, welcomed the decision to end anti-terrorist operations. "We are extremely satisfied. The modern Chechen republic is a peaceful and budding territory. The end of the counterterrorist operation will spur on economic growth in the republic," he told the Russian news agency Interfax.

This is a tough day for her and an important time for Ukraine. Later she will speak before parliament to defend controversial new budget measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in exchange for unblocking a badly needed financial rescue package. The amount at stake is relatively small, a $1.8 billion second installment of a $16.4 billion loan. But without the IMF, there is little hope Ukraine will regain enough market confidence to roll over the $40 billion in bank loans and bonds coming due this year. By mid-April, Tymoshenko needs to push pension reform and higher gas tariffs through the legislature - hardly a comfortable position for a leading candidate in the presidential elections expected on Oct. 25.

It is especially ironic that this businesswoman turned anti-Russian revolutionary is now disparaged by Yushchenko as a thinly disguised Russian pawn.

Not that dealing with Russia has gotten any easier. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin did not like Tymoshenko's recent deal with the European Union on the modernization of Ukraine's gas infrastructure, and Moscow is holding up a $5 billion loan to Ukraine to mark its dissatisfaction.

The Argentinian government is demanding a halt to construction of a controversial social "separation wall" intended to block off a well-heeled residential neighbourhood from a poor district on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, in an episode that is turning into a national scandal.

The mayor of wealthy San Isidro, Gustavo Posse, had originally agreed to raise the wall as a crime prevention measure, arguing that it would prevent thieves crossing the highway and entering San Isidro.

The erection of the Buenos Aires wall has followed similar moves in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where projects have been undertaken to seal off large areas of slums, triggering protests.

Monday's Twitter-organized student protest brought some 10,000 people to Chisinau's main square, who accused the government of rigging Sunday's vote. The protest turned violent on Tuesday, with some demonstrators throwing rocks and storming the Moldovan parliament.

Moldova's current president, Vladimir Voronin, has belittled the protests and accused neighboring Romania of organizing a coup. He even expelled Romania's ambassador on Wednesday. "When the flag of Romania was raised on state buildings, the attempts of the opposition to carry out a coup became clear," he said. "We will not allow this."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lined up behind Voronin on Thursday and described the protesters who ransacked the parliament as "pogrom-makers" bent on destroying the country.

Officials said the Security Council's five permanent members and Japan had agreed on the text of a presidential statement on the 5 April launch.

The statement is considered a weaker response than the resolution initially sought by Japan and the US. China and Russia had rejected that idea, calling on the international community to act with restraint.

I am quite aware that a distinction must be drawn between the American government and the American people. We do not hold Americans accountable for the faulty decisions of the Bush administration. They want to live in peace, like we all do.

The new US president, Barack Obama, directed a video address to the Iranian nation three weeks ago, during the Iranian New Year festival. Did you watch the speech? Ahmadinejad: Yes. Great things are happening in the United States. I believe that the Americans are in the process of initiating important developments.

Some passages were new, while some repeated well-known positions. I thought it striking that Obama attached such high value to the Iranian civilization, our history and culture. It is also positive that he stresses mutual respect and honest interactions with one another as the basis of cooperation

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has opened the country's first nuclear fuel production plant.

Mr Ahmadinejad said Iran was open to an offer of fresh talks with world powers if they were based on "justice" and "respect".

Mr Ahmadinejad also announced that Iran had tested two new types of centrifuge with higher capacities at a uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Meanwhile, nuclear chief Gholam Reza Aghazadeh says Iran has increased the number of centrifuges it is running at the plant to 7,000. In February, Iran said it had 6,000 centrifuges running.

Israel's new right-leaning government, with its Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and his warmongering outbursts, is more or less openly threatening a strike -- even without American consent. The Israelis, who have their own nuclear weapons, cite the Iranian president's irrationality as justification. They assume that Ahmadinejad is planning a nuclear attack on the Jewish state, without consideration for Israel's certain vehement retaliation.

In fact, Ahmadinejad has made no secret of his desire to see Israel wiped off the map of the Middle East. But he has also repeatedly stressed that he has no intention to attack "the Zionist entity" with armed force.

The conservative Arab nations, with their Sunni majorities, are now just as concerned about Iran's nuclear ambitions as the fact that the Iraqi government now enjoys the best of relations with its fellow Shiites in Tehran. Tehran's increasing power also strengthens its militant clients in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: Hamas and Hezbollah.

An Iranian-American journalist accused of spying in Iran went on trial this week and a verdict is expected soon, an Iranian official has said.

Ms Saberi, 31, is being held in Evin prison near Tehran. The journalist, 31, worked briefly for the BBC three years ago. She has also worked for the American public radio network NPR and the TV network Fox News. She has been in custody in Tehran since late January.

Ms Saberi originally faced the less serious accusations of buying alcohol, then working as a journalist without a valid press card, but last week Iranian prosecutors accused her of spying for the US.

In an attempt to show the continued strength of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, tens of thousands of his supporters massed in central Bangkok on Wednesday and demanded the resignation of the government.

Mr. Thaksin, a former telecommunications billionaire, was convicted last year on charges asserting he had abused his power. He left the country before his conviction — he was sentenced to two years in jail — and now lives in exile, principally in Dubai.Mr. Thaksin faces other charges in Thailand, and the courts have frozen an estimated $2 billion in his and his family’s assets. But he insists that he wants to return to Thailand — and to Thai politics.

The protesters gathered in front of the prime minister’s office and outside the home of Prem Tinsulanda, a former prime minister who is a top adviser to King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The protesters accused Mr. Prem of orchestrating a coup that ousted Mr. Thaksin in September 2006 while the prime minister was out of the country.

Interfax news agency later said Voronin had accused neighbouring Romania, with which Moldova has ethnic and linguistic links, of involvement in the protests. RIA news agency said he had declared Romania’s ambassador persona non grata.

Opposition leaders had predicted demonstrations would spread across this mainly rural nation of four million people wedged between EU member Romania and former Soviet Ukraine.

Most of Moldova was formerly part of Romania and the country is divided between those who want to continue as an independent state in a region which Russia regards as part of its sphere of influence, and those who want to reunite with Romania.

So long as Russia's oil-fueled prosperity soared, people accepted Putin's implicit bargain: government corruption and constricted civil rights in exchange for rising living standards. But today, with Russia's economy in shambles, this social contract is fraying. Ordinary Russians are already taking to the streets demanding the type of change Putin is unlikely to deliver. He epitomizes the KGB old guard who got Russia into this mess. Sooner or later, he will become the Russian financial crash's most prominent victim.

Medvedev, a lawyer by training and instinct, offers perhaps the only realistic hope of turning Russia around, but he can't operate freely while Putin is still effectively in charge. Seemingly aware of this, Medvedev has, in recent weeks, taken steps to distance himself from his mentor and might be setting the stage to force him out of government.

When Medvedev became president in May 2008, the world economic situation seemed stable. Oil was more than $140 a barrel and Russian political leaders were riding high. With living standards rising for most Russians, political elites enjoyed the luxury of not having to make hard choices.

Getting back to the relatively slim, trim days of the 1970s would help to tackle climate change, researchers say.

A "normal" adult population, where only 3.5% are classed as obese, was compared with a population where 40% are obese. These populations reflect the proportions of overweight and obese people living in the UK in the 1970s - and what is predicted for the UK in 2010, the researchers said.

Transport costs of a fatter population were also included in the International Journal of Epidemiology study.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the UN needs to take a strong position in response to North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket

"It's a provocative act that has grave implications," Mrs Clinton told reporters.

"North Korea ignored its international obligations, rejected the unequivocal calls for restraint, and further isolated itself from the community of nations."

Mr. Obama said that his administration would “reduce the role of nuclear weapons” in its national security strategy, and would urge other countries to do the same. He pointed to the agreement he reached last week with President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia to begin negotiations on reducing warheads and stockpiles, and said the two countries would try to reach an agreement by the end of the year. He also promised to aggressively pursue American ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which in the past has faced strong opposition in Congress.

“We think that what was launched is not the issue; the fact that there was a launch using ballistic missile technology is itself a clear violation,” said Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador.

China left its position ambiguous, although diplomats said that at the initial meeting it stressed that the North Koreans had a right like any other country to launch satellites. “Our position is that all countries concerned should show restraint and refrain from taking actions that might lead to increased tensions,” Yesui Zhang, the Chinese ambassador, told reporters.

North Korea failed in its highly vaunted effort to fire a satellite into orbit, military and private experts said Sunday after reviewing detailed tracking data that showed the missile and payload fell into the sea. Some said the failure undercut the North Korean campaign to come across as a fearsome adversary able to hurl deadly warheads halfway around the globe.

looking at the launching from a purely technical vantage point, space experts said the failure represented a blow that in all likelihood would seriously delay the missile’s debut.

Analysts dismissed the idea that the rocket firing could represent a furtive success, calling the failure consistent with past North Korean fumbles and suggesting it might reveal a significant quality control problem in one of the world’s most isolated nations.

En route to Ankara, Mr Obama said he supported the country's efforts to join the European Union. He said Turkey's accession would send an important signal to the Muslim world and firmly anchor it in Europe.

Before travelling to Turkey, Mr Obama participated in a Nato gathering in France, where he helped to overcome Turkey's objection to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the alliance's next leader.

Turkey had misgivings about Mr Rasmussen over his refusal to apologise for the "cartoons controversy", in which a Danish newspaper published illustrations that inflamed passions in much of the Muslim world. But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said late Sunday that Mr Obama's support had helped to resolve concerns. "He put forth a lot of positive energy," Mr Erdogan said. "We responded positively to this. We hope that the promises made are kept."

The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War.

Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up.

as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it.

Mr Lieberman's speech came a day after Mr Netanyahu offered the Palestinians self-rule in place of the statehood that had at least rhetorically been on offer in a declaration accompanying the relaunch of peace talks under the leadership of Ehud Olmert at the Annapolis conference. But Mr Lieberman said "The Israeli government never ratified Annapolis, nor did parliament."

Mr Lieberman took issue with the very idea of concessions towards the Palestinians saying that "whoever thinks that through concessions peace will be achieved is mistaken. He is only inviting pressure and more wars."

Mr Lieberman said that instead of the Annapolis process, Israel would follow the "road map", the name of a 2003 blueprint of reciprocal steps advancing to a two-state solution. But Israel's cabinet never ratified that agreement, and the government has instead used the term to refer to a cabinet decision spelling out reservations about the plan.

SPIEGEL: The economic crisis has severely damaged the economic model of finance-driven turbo-capitalism. Will this lead to a renaissance in the state economy? Stiglitz: I don't think so. The fall of the Berlin Wall really was a strong message that communism does not work as an economic system. The collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15th again showed that unbridled capitalism doesn't work either.

SPIEGEL: Could authoritarian systems like in China be the future? Stiglitz: Besides the two extremes of communism and capitalism, there are alternatives, such as Scandinavia or Germany. The Chinese model has succeeded very well for their people, but at the price of democratic rights. The German social model, however, has worked very well. It could also be a model for the US administration.

SPIEGEL: The opposition in Germany is already complaining about government stimulus funding for infrastructure in developing countries. Stiglitz: All the more reason for governments to persuade their people that it is in our own interest that all national economies grow. If banks in Eastern Europe collapse, it weakens Western European banks and then American financial institutions. If we are to learn one thing from the economic crisis, it's this: Globalization can't be stopped. It has to be managed or else the global economy won't work.