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For two hours, the meeting unfolded, laying bare the torments facing any Afghan Pashtuns who might be contemplating defying the Taliban — and the extraordinary difficulties facing American officers as they try to reverse the course of the war.

The meeting in Maidan Shahr, Wardak Province’s capital, tucked into the mountains about 30 miles southwest of Kabul, concerned one of the most unorthodox projects the Americans have undertaken here since the war began in 2001: to arm, with minimal training, groups of Afghan men to guard their own neighborhoods.

The military is borrowing a page from a similar program that helped bring about the recent calm to Iraq, where the Americans signed up more than 100,000 Iraqis, most of them Sunnis and many of them insurgents, to keep the peace.

North Korea said today it will boycott international talks on its atomic weapons programme in protest at the UN security council's condemnation of the country's rocket launch.

The country also said it would restart nuclear facilities it had begun to dismantle under an international deal.

"We have no choice but to further strengthen our nuclear deterrent to cope with additional military threats by hostile forces," the statement said

The US government has admitted the nation's power grid is vulnerable to cyber attack, following reports it has been infiltrated by foreign spies.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) newspaper reported that Chinese and Russian spies were behind this "pervasive" breach. It said software had been left behind that could shut down the electric grid.

"There is a pretty strong consensus in the security community that the SCADA equipment, a class of technology that is used to manage critical infrastructure, has not kept pace with the rest of the industry," said Dan Kaminsky, a cyber security analyst and director of penetration testing for IOActive.

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.

as Vice President Biden said in Munich and as President Obama made clear during his recent trip to Europe, the United States must never recognize South Ossetian and Abkhazian independence.

That said, bringing those separatist regions back under Georgian control won't happen any time soon. The hope is that Georgia, through political and economic reform, becomes an attractive place for South Ossetians and Abkhazians to some day want to join. That will take time and patience on the part of the Georgian leadership, not traits often associated with Saakashvili.

Finally, the United States has to fix the international impression that its policy is support for "Misha first, Georgia second." It would be a mistake to dump Saakashvili to support any other candidates -- that's for the Georgians themselves to decide. But America should support processes that encourage a level playing field and avoid picking favorites. To that end, the return to Georgia of former U.N. Ambassador Irakli Alasania to join the opposition against Saakashvili has increased the possibility of more effective checks and balances against the government.

China's economy is showing some signs of recovery from the global financial crisis, the country's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has said.

China has already implemented a 4tn yuan ($585bn;£399bn) stimulus package to boost economic activity. Mr Wen also said he would spend more if necessary to boost the economy.

Despite its problems, China's economy - the third biggest in the world - is forecast to grow by at least 5% this year, in stark contrast to many major global economies that are shrinking.

Moldova's president Wednesday accused Romania of involvement in a huge anti-communist protest, much of it coordinated on Facebook and Twitter, which saw government buildings ransacked and police arrest scores of demonstrators.

"Romania is involved in everything that has happened," he said, according to the RIA-Novosti news agency. "Patience also has its limits."

Moldova's ties with Romania have become increasingly strained under Voronin, who has steered his country diplomatically closer to Russia since taking power in 2005. The president has repeatedly accused Romania of wanting to absorb his country.

Russia backed Mr. Voronin

At a news briefing, a State Department spokesman, Robert A. Wood, also expressed concern about the violence, but he said policy makers in Washington had not yet assessed whether the elections had been free and fair.

Mihai Moscovici, 25, who provided updates in English all day over Twitter, painted a more nuanced picture. He said the gathering on Monday night drew only several hundred people. The protesters agreed to gather the next morning and began spreading the word through Facebook and Twitter, inventing a searchable tag for the stream of comments: #pman, which stands for Piata Marii Adunari Nationale, Chisinau’s central square. When Internet service was shut down, Mr. Moscovici said, he issued updates with his cellphone.

Barack Obama wrapped up a landmark eight-day swing through Europe with a surprise visit to Iraq today - his first as president - and told US troops that Iraqis now needed "to take responsibility for their own country".

"You have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own as a democratic country," he said. "It is time for us to transition to the Iraqis. They need to take responsibility for their country."

"I have a responsibility to make sure that as we bring troops out, that we do so in a careful enough way that we don't see a complete collapse into violence," he said. "So some people might say, wait, I thought you were opposed to the war, why don't you just get them all out right away? Well, just because I was opposed at the outset it doesn't mean that I don't have now responsibilities to make sure that we do things in a responsible fashion."

Obama had promised in the presidential campaign to ease some restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba, but insisted he would not end the trade embargo until Cuba showed progress toward democracy.

Until now, Cubans living in the United States had been allowed to travel to the island once a year and could send only $1,200 per person in cash to family members in Cuba.

Details of user e-mails and net phone calls will be stored by internet service providers (ISPs) from Monday under an EU directive.

The plans were drawn up in the wake of the London bombings in 2005.

All ISPs in the European Union will have to store the records for a year. An EU directive which requires telecoms firms to hold on to telephone records for 12 months is already in force.

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."

it all rested on a bubble: in just two months last fall, aluminum prices plunged from $3,500 a ton to $1,350. Demand also went off a cliff, with more than 10 million tons—a full quarter of RusAl's 2008 production—lying unsold.

Deripaska was dangerously exposed. In March 2008, at the very top of the metals market, he had bought 25 percent of the metals giant Norilsk Nickel for $4.5 billion from his fellow plutocrat Mikhail Pro-khorov. By late October, foreign creditors were threatening to seize Deripaska's piece of the company. National pride forced Russia's finance minister to order a $4.5 billion credit line so Deripaska could refinance his piece of Norilsk.

Putin now has two options, says Dorenko: "He can nationalize everything Deripaska used to own—or he can throw Deripaska onto the people's pitchforks, like they did with barons here in the Middle Ages." That's bad news for Deripaska: cash is too tight these days for the government to bail him out. The Kremlin's sole priority is to avoid mass layoffs, possibly by letting foreign investors step in. Medvedev seems sincere in his desire to end the culture of oligarchy, says Kirill Kabanov, head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, a Moscow-based NGO. But like it or not, the president's only choice may be to have another oligarch take over Deripaska's empire, despite the old system's flaws.

Israel's new Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has been questioned by police for at least seven hours over corruption allegations.

Police said Mr Lieberman was questioned under caution on suspicion of "bribery, money-laundering and breach of trust" as part of an ongoing investigation.

A spokesman for Mr Lieberman said it was "the same investigation that has been ongoing for the past 13 years and which he has petitioned the courts to have speeded up.

Israel's new foreign minister dismayed the international community today with a rancorous analysis of the peace process and an announcement that the new government favours aggression rather than concessions to the Palestinians.

In his first speech since taking office, the rightwinger Avigdor Lieberman dismissed the last round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, arguing that Israeli concessions made in a bid to secure peace had all been fruitless.

"Those who want peace should prepare for war and be strong," he said. "There is no country that made concessions like Israel. Since 1967 we gave up territory that is three times the size of Israel. We showed willingness. The Oslo process started back in 1993, and to this day I have not seen that we reached peace."

Big European powers had backed Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to replace Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who steps down at the end of July. But Turkey expressed opposition, based on Mr Rasmussen's stance over the publication in 2005 by a Danish newspaper of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

Earlier, President Sarkozy told French radio that although there were projects on the table, "as things stand at the moment, these projects do not suit France or Germany". The French President is due to give a joint press conference with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel later. French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has already said that France would walk away from talks if its demands for stricter financial regulation were not met.

The official also said that European leaders had been reluctant to confront Russia over the cease-fire plan. Instead, they have appeared willing to accept the cessation of open fighting and the withdrawal of Russian forces from other positions as significant steps.

The Bush administration declared that Russia was not in compliance with the cease-fire. The Obama administration, which has been exploring options for cooperation with the Kremlin, has not yet taken a clear public position.

Georgian officials have not been publicly critical of the United States. They have made clear, however, that their own ability to get Russia to comply with the agreement is essentially nonexistent.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he would be willing to accept prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which U.S. President Barack Obama has said he will close, the Venezuelan government said Thursday.

Chavez also said he hopes the United States will give Cuba back the land on which the naval base is located, the government said in a news release.

"We would not have any problem receiving a human being," the government release quoted Chavez as saying in an interview Wednesday with Al Jazeera TV.