it's plain to see that Obama's team has yet to become accustomed to dealing with Europe. And a worry voiced during the campaign has returned: that Obama -- who spent his childhood years in Indonesia and who has shown a lot of interest in Africa -- knows little about Europe.

Millions of Russian workers have been laid off or sacked recently amid the global economic downturn, and the government in Moscow is already facing angry protests by ordinary people.

in Pikalevo, something unusual for modern Russia is happening: the people are taking a stand against the government and its economic policies, blaming them as much as the factory-owners for their plight. The opening salvo was fired in mid-February, when thousands took to the streets holding black balloons as a sign of mourning for the jobs they have lost. Some carried placards accusing the government of being "impotent".

The local trade union, under the dynamic leadership of Svetlana Antropova, has been effective in channelling this public anger. In a particularly troubling sign for the government, she is also a member of the ruling United Russia party, led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. "Most people don't have enough to eat. Some are starving," she said. "People here don't understand why the government is supporting the oligarchs and banks instead of supporting individual workers directly."

British forces are due to begin their official withdrawal from Iraq as the UK's commander in the south of the country hands over to a US general.

Most of Britain's 4,000 troops will leave by 31 May, the official end-of-combat date. About 400 will stay after that, either in HQ roles or to train the Iraq Navy.

The Americans are also reducing their numbers, with two brigades due to leave the province of Al-Anbar, once the heartland of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. However, the bulk of US troops are not due to leave until the end of 2011.

The chief of the Pakistani Taleban, Baitullah Mehsud, has told the BBC his group was behind Monday's deadly attack on a police academy in Lahore. He said the attack was "in retaliation for the continued drone strikes by the US in collaboration with Pakistan on our people".

Baitullah Mehsud said the attacks would continue "until the Pakistan government stops supporting the Americans".

Baitullah Mehsud is the supreme commander of the Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan group (Movement of Taleban in Pakistan). He operates out of a stronghold in the Pakistani tribal region of South Waziristan and the US state department recently issued a $5m (£3.5m) reward for his capture.

The US and Japan yesterday deployed anti-missile batteries on land and sea to shoot down possible debris from an intercontinental ballistic missile North Korea is expected to test in the next few days.

South Korea also planned to dispatch its Aegis-equipped destroyer, according to a Seoul military official who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.

The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said America had no intention of shooting down the missile itself, which satellite photographs show is sitting on a launch-pad in Musudan-ri. Pyongyang says the launch is intended to put a satellite into orbit, but any such ballistic missile testing or development is banned by a 2006 United Nations resolution. Two US warships armed with Aegis anti-ballistic missiles left ports in South Korea yesterday to monitor the launch, which experts say could take place as soon as Saturday.

In December 2007, the smattering of bearded, black-turbaned, AK-47-toting gangs in FATA and NWFP announced that they would now answer to a single name, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban Movement. For decades, Pakistani jihadists have used such fancy names to declare splinter groups (many of which go unnoticed), but some analysts latched onto the TTP as gospel and postulated that, overnight, the Talibs had become disciplined and united. In the process, such analysts have overlooked important distinctions and divisions within the pro-Taliban groups operating in Pakistan.

n 1996, Mullah Mohammed Omar and his band of “Taliban” -- defined in Urdu, Pashto, and Arabic as “students” or “seekers” -- conquered Afghanistan.

Pashtuns ignore the border separating Afghanistan and Pakistan, named the Durand Line after the Englishman who drew it in 1893; the Pashtun “nation” encompasses wherever Pashtuns may live. Fighting the Americans, therefore, was seen as self-defense, even for the residents of FATA.

the Federally Administered Tribal Areas are not part of the North-West Frontier Province. The two are separate entities in almost every sense of the word. While the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) is, well, a province with an elected assembly, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are geographically separate areas governed through “political agents” who are appointed by the president and supported by the governor of NWFP (who is also a presidential appointee). Residents of NWFP technically live according to the laws drafted by the Parliament in Islamabad, while the only nontribal law applicable to residents of FATA is the Frontier Crimes Regulations, a colonial-era dictate sanctioning collective punishment for tribes and subtribes guilty of disrupting the peace. Within FATA, there are seven “agencies” and six “frontier regions.” The agencies are Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, North Waziristan and South Waziristan; the somewhat more governed frontier regions (FRs) cling like barnacles to the eastern edge of FATA and include FR Peshawar, FR Kohat, FR Bannu, FR Lakki, FR Tank, and FR Dera Ismail Khan, each of them named after the “settled” districts they border.

All residents of FATA and the vast majority of those in NWFP are ethnically Pashtuns. Pashtuns also make up the majority in Baluchistan, the vast province bordering Iran and Afghanistan, which is named after the minority Baluch. Besides NWFP and Baluchistan, there are two other provinces in Pakistan; Punjab is populated mostly by ethnic Punjabis, and Sindh was historically dominated by Sindhis until millions of Muslims migrated from India at the time of Partition and settled in Sindhi cities such as Karachi and Hyderabad. Now, Sindh is composed of ethnic Sindhis and the descendents of these migrants, known as mohajirs.

Foreigners are prohibited from entering FATA without government permission. If you see a newspaper dateline from a town inside FATA, chances are that the Pakistani Army organized a field trip for reporters. Those traveling unaccompanied into, say, South Waziristan have either a death wish or a really good rapport with the Taliban, who effectively run North and South Waziristan and large portions of the other agencies and frontier regions.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party has won local elections by a wide majority - but nevertheless suffered a significant fall in support. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) won about 39% of the vote, according to unconfirmed results - down from the 47% general election landslide of 2007.

In Sunday's elections, the governing AKP lost ground to both secularist and Kurdish rivals, who had focused on growing economic difficulties and corruption allegations.

Secularist parties made inroads into AKP support in both Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, and the capital, Ankara.

China has denied involvement in the electronic spy network which researchers say infiltrated computers in government offices around the world. The spokesman of the Chinese embassy in London said that there was no evidence to show Beijing was involved. He suggested the findings were part of a "propaganda campaign" by the Tibetan government in exile.

They said ministries of foreign affairs of Iran, Bangladesh, Latvia, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, Barbados and Bhutan appeared to have been targeted.

Polish anti-communist leader Lech Walesa has threatened to leave Poland after a second book accused him of being a communist spy as a young man.

The former president and Solidarity leader said he was tired of defending himself against claims he collaborated with the secret police in the 1970s.

Mr Walesa was cleared of earlier spying allegations by a special court in 2000. Judges concluded that former SB security service agents had forged documents in his file in a bid to prevent him receiving the Nobel Peace prize in 1983.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has stormed out of the Arab League summit in Qatar having denounced the Saudi king for his ties with the West. He disrupted the opening session by criticising King Abdullah, calling him a British product and an American ally.

Col Gaddafi's grudge against King Abdullah goes back to an Arab meeting shortly before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, when they exchanged harsh words. "Now after six years, it has [been] proved that you were the liar," said the Libyan leader. He added that he now considered their "problem" over and was ready to reconcile.

Splits among the Arab League nations have become glaring, says the BBC's Katya Adler who is in Doha, over Arab nations' differing attitudes to internal Palestinian divisions between the Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Islamist militant group Hamas. Our correspondent says Western-backed Sunni nations fear the spread of Iranian influence - in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and among marginalised Shia communities in the Gulf States - and are suspicious of those they regard as Iran's Arab friends, such as Syria and Qatar.

The Caesium-137 may be buried in a scrap yard under tonnes of metal, and local officials believe it could have been melted down. The lead ball was lost when workers at a cement plant tore down an old factory in the north-western Shaanxi Province.

Eight trucks worth of scrap were sold to local steel mills. Tongchuan city officials believe the radioactive material - and its protective container - are likely to have been melted down.

After agreeing to bury their differences and unite forces, Taliban leaders based in Pakistan have closed ranks with their Afghan comrades to ready a new offensive in Afghanistan as the United States prepares to send 17,000 more troops there this year.

A number of new, younger commanders have been preparing to step up a campaign of roadside bombings and suicide attacks to greet the Americans, the fighters said.

The refortified alliance was forged after the reclusive Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, sent emissaries to persuade Pakistani Taliban leaders to join forces and turn their attention to Afghanistan, Pakistani officials and Taliban members said.The overture by Mullah Omar is an indication that with the prospect of an American buildup, the Taliban feel the need to strengthen their own forces in Afghanistan and to redirect their Pakistani allies toward blunting the new American push.

Israeli warplanes bombed a convoy of trucks in Sudan in January that was believed to be carrying arms to be smuggled into Gaza, according to American officials.

Israeli officials refused to confirm or deny the attack, but intelligence analysts noted that the strike was consistent with other measures Israel had taken to secure its borders.

Two American officials who are privy to classified intelligence assessments said that Iran had been involved in the effort to smuggle weapons to Gaza. They also noted that there had been intelligence reports that an operative with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had gone to Sudan to coordinate the effort. But one former official said that the exact provenance of the arms that were being smuggled via Sudan was unclear.

The European Union’s crisis of leadership during the economic downturn was thrown into sharp relief on Wednesday, as the current president of the 27-nation bloc labeled President Obama’s emergency stimulus package “a way to hell” that will “undermine the stability of the global financial market.”

What made the situation even more trying for those who hope that the European Union might find a common voice in this crisis was that Mr. Topolanek’s own governing coalition collapsed on Tuesday. The Czech opposition party, which favors bigger increases in domestic spending during the slump, won a no-confidence vote on his leadership.

Despite widespread fears that European nations could prolong the current recession unless they act in concert with one another and the United States, the slump has highlighted differences over deficit spending, interest rates and possible bailouts for new union members in the East. There are few signs that the alliance is developing the political leadership to match its economic weight.Britain, like the United States, has undertaken an aggressive fiscal stimulus and slashed interest rates. But Germany and France have opposed calls for further large stimulus packages and even greater deficit spending, while the European Central Bank has kept interest rates higher than they are in the United States and Britain. Germany and even some Central European countries opposed calls by Hungary for the creation of a single rescue fund for heavily indebted countries in Eastern Europe.

North Korea has placed what is thought to be a long-range missile on a launch pad, Japanese and US officials say. North Korea had already said it would send a satellite into orbit in early April, using a long-range missile. The US, Japan and South Korea are concerned Pyongyang will test its Taepodong-2 long-range missile instead of launching a satellite.

Japanese PM Taro Aso said plans were being made to shoot down any rocket that threatened to hit the country. North Korea has said it plans to carry out the controversial launch between 4 and 8 April. The Taepodong-2 missile is capable of reaching Alaska from the Musudan-ri base in Hwadae on North Korea's north-east coast. It first tested the missile in July 2006, but it failed less than a minute after launch.

A satellite launch and a long-rang missile test would both use the Taepodong 2, analysts say. Pyongyang has already said the rocket taking its satellite into orbit will cross over Japan, dropping booster stages to its east and west.

Speaking before the European Parliament on Wednesday, Mirek Topolanek described the stimulus measures and financial bailouts passed by US President Barack Obama as the "way to hell." He warned that the massive costs of the stimulus plans and financial bailouts would "undermine the stability of the global financial market" and that Obama was merely repeating the errors of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The comments also threatened to unravel the tenuous unity reached by EU member states for a joint response to the economic crisis. Last week, EU leaders reached a carefully constructed political truce designed to bury their differences and agree on a common policy ahead of the London meeting. At last Friday's summit, they pledged an additional €75 billion to finance loans by the International Monetary Fund and to double a credit line for struggling economies of Eastern European member states.

Topolanek may have felt unburdened by diplomatic niceties after his government lost a no-confidence vote in the Czech parliament on Tuesday. The Czech prime minister submitted his resignation the same day, but will continue on as a caretaker of the EU's rotating presidency through June.

God will not intervene to prevent humanity from wreaking disastrous damage to the environment, the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned.

"I think that to suggest that God might intervene to protect us from the corporate folly of our practices is as unchristian and unbiblical as to suggest that he protects us from the results of our individual folly or sin," he said.

Without a change of heart, Dr Williams warned, the world faced a number of "doomsday scenarios" including the "ultimate tragedy" of humanity gradually "choked, drowned, or starved by its own stupidity."