Later in the evening, opposition leaders and supporters gathered outside parliament for a rally, as they have daily since 9 April.

The latest unrest comes as Georgia hosts a series of Nato training exercises amid angry condemnation from Russia. They are taking place close to areas where Russian troops are stationed in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia. Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev said the drills, involving more than 1,000 soldiers from 18 countries, were "an overt provocation".

During a National Security Council meeting in March on Mr. Obama’s new Afghanistan strategy, General Jones, although seated next to the president, seldom voiced his own opinions, according to officials in the room. Instead, he preferred to go around the table collecting the views of others.He has also kept a low profile with the news media; he first addressed a White House news conference on Wednesday.

General Jones’s style suits Mr. Obama, close aides and friends of the president said. To the general’s credit, there has so far been no evidence of serious clashes on a team that includes not only Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton but also Robert M. Gates, the defense secretary, and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., both national security experts in their own right

The Czech President Vaclav Klaus said he would not ratify the Lisbon Treaty after it was approved by the senate yesterday, raising a new obstacle to plans to reform the EU. Mr Klaus explained that he would not sign the treaty because of its rejection by Irish voters last year and an expected court challenge in the Czech Republic. "The Lisbon Treaty is dead for this moment," said President Klaus. "It is dead because it was rejected in a referendum in one member state. Therefore, a decision on ratification of this treaty is not on the agenda at this point."

Ireland plans to hold a new vote later this year on the EU's charter for reform. Yesterday the Czech senate voted 54-20 to ratify the treaty

The Israeli military occupation around Bethlehem is severely restricting its growth, undermining its economy and compromising its future, according to a UN report.The combined effect of Israeli annexation, the West Bank barrier, settlements, settler bypass roads, closed military zones and Israeli nature reserves, has left only 13% of the 660 sq km Bethlehem governorate available for Palestinian use, the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs says.

While there are about 175,000 Palestinians living in the Bethlehem area, there are now at least 86,000 Israelis also living there in 19 settlements, and their number is growing, even though settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law. Two-thirds of the governorate is under full Israeli security and administrative control.

The barrier around the Bethlehem area, part concrete, part steel, is still being built, but when finished will seal off the city itself from east Jerusalem and prevent growth to the north and west. On the western side of the barrier about 64 sq km will be isolated, home to 21,000 Palestinians living in some of the most fertile agricultural land in the area. The Palestinians there will face reduced access to trading markets and health and education services.

US congressional leaders and the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in the US are attempting to forestall a significant shift in the White House's Middle East policy.The move comes amid growing signs that the US president, Barack Obama, intends to press for urgent efforts to be made towards the creation of a Palestinian state.

he Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is visiting Washington later this month amid growing expectations that Obama is preparing to take a tougher line over Israel's reluctance to actively seek a two-state solution to its conflict with the Palestinians.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) this week sent hundreds of lobbyists to urge members of Congress to sign a letter to Obama.The letter, written by two House of Representatives leaders, calls for Israel to be allowed to set the pace of negotiations.

China is ready to abandon its resistance to limits on its carbon emissions and wants to reach an international deal to fight global warming, the Guardian has learned.According to Britain's climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, who met senior officials in Beijing this week, China is ready to "do business" with developed countries to reach an agreement to replace the Kyoto treaty.

China's official negotiating position is unchanged, but the government is understood to be preparing a set of targets up to and beyond 2020 to lower the country's "carbon intensity". This translates to cutting the emissions needed to produce each unit of economic growth.

The shift in the Chinese position significantly improves the chances of an agreement being reached when world leaders meet in Copenhagen in December to negotiate a deal that scientists say is critical if dangerous warming is to be avoided.

In Afghanistan on Tuesday, dozens of civilians are thought to have died in US air strikes on Taleban targets

Former Bush administration officials have launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to urge Justice Department leaders to soften an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with the efforts.

Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge, and Yoo, now a law professor in California

A draft report of more than 200 pages, prepared in January before Bush's departure, recommends disciplinary action, rather than criminal prosecution, by state bar associations against Yoo and Bybee, former attorneys in the department's Office of Legal Counsel, for their work in preparing and signing the interrogation memos. State bar associations have the power to suspend a lawyer's license to practice or impose other penalties.

The Red Cross says air strikes by US forces in Afghanistan on Tuesday are now thought to have killed dozens of civilians including women and children.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in the US for talks with President Barack Obama, has ordered an investigation. Civilian deaths will be high on the agenda at the White House, where talks will also include Pakistan's president.

Mr Zardari arrives in Washington facing a growing crisis in his own country amid a new outbreak of fighting between the army and Taleban rebels in the Swat Valley region. Thousands of residents there are reported to be fleeing their homes as a peace deal between the government and Taleban militants appears close to collapse. Fighting flared overnight in Mingora, the main town in Swat, and continued into Wednesday, reports said.

Four people who were plotting to sabotage one of the largest hydro-electric dams in Africa have been arrested in Mozambique, police say. The detained were foreigners caught with materials designed to damage the Cahora Bassa dam in north-western Mozambique, according to state media.

The online generation thinks: If the news is that important, it will find me. My son who has never subscribed to a print newspaper, gets his news from Facebook, Twitter or from friends. He no longer treats traditional media as a magnet. People now get their messages by relying on other people they trust.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So what role, in your opinion, can newspapers still play?

arvis: They certainly no longer want to be in the paper business because that is dying out. The information business might be fine but there is no scarcity of information and news online. They could, however, be very effective in the collection business -- just find the best of the stuff that is out there online. They could also use their strong brands to compete in the business of elegant organization by creating information platforms or venturing into new markets. The New York Times has just started a new local program in New York enlisting my journalism students to collaborate online with them to report on their communities. That is the right approach. News outlets need to think distributed, they must collaborate with bloggers or social networking sites. On my blog, I have links to Google News or Google Maps. Innovative newspapers like the Guardian in Britain are equally open to cooperation. They make all their content available free online, they link to all sorts of sites, and in turn they receive more links in return.

SPIEGEL: The Taliban is increasingly calling on the poor to follow them and to chase away the landlords and feudal lords. Are the Islamists in the process of transforming themselves into a social movement that pits Pakistan's underprivileged against the rich elite, who have opposed land reform? Zardari: I don't see that. In regions of the northwest border provinces, there is no feudalism because there is no land available that would be sufficient for agriculture -- it is all mountainous terrain. There are old families and there is a tribal chief system that relies on tribal laws that has been indigenous for centuries. The Taliban have superiority of numbers and arms and are more aggressive, so they sometimes overpower the local authority.

It would be a great gesture if Osama bin Laden were to come out into the open in order to give us a chance of catching him. The question right now is whether he is alive or dead. The Americans have told me they don't know. They are much better informed and they have been looking for him for a much longer time. They have got more equipment, more intelligence, more satellite eavesdropping equipment and more resources on the ground in Afghanistan, and they say they have no trace of him. Our own intelligence is of the same opinion. Presumably, he does not exist anymore, but that has not been confirmed.

SPIEGEL: Why do you leave the elimination of top terrorists in the Pakistani tribal areas to the Americans, whose drone attacks are extremely unpopular amongst the populace? Why don't you handle this yourselves? Zardari: If we had the drone technology, then we would. It would be a plus. We have always said that we don't appreciate the way the Americans are handling it. We think it is counterproductive. But it is mostly happening in the border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan -- for all intents and purposes no man's land.

Nato today began a series of controversial military exercises in Georgia following an apparent failed uprising at a Georgian army base yesterday and Moscow's expulsion of two Nato diplomats this morning.

Russia said it was expelling Isabelle Francois, the Canadian head of Nato's Moscow information office, and a worker at her office.The move was in retaliation for last week's expulsion of two Russian diplomats, who had been accused of spying, from Nato's Brussels HQ, Russia's foreign ministry said.

Yesterday, Saakashvili claimed to have thwarted a Russian-backed mutiny at the Mukhrovani army base near the capital, Tbilisi.Russia dismissed the claim as "absurd" and suggested Saakashvili "send for a doctor".

Russia has expelled two Canadian diplomats working for Nato's Moscow office in response to an "unfriendly act" by the military alliance. Last week Nato expelled two Russian envoys from its headquarters in Brussels, reportedly due to spying.

The diplomatic spat comes as Nato begins military exercises in Georgia, seen by Russia as a "provocation"

This latest round of tit-for-tat expulsions stems from a spy scandal in Estonia in which thousands of pages of sensitive data were handed to Russian agents.

A US teenager has successfully won a lawsuit against a teacher who described creationism as "superstitious nonsense".Chad Farnan, a devout Christian studying at California's Capistrano Valley high school, persuaded a judge that his European history teacher, James Corbett, violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which courts interpret as banning government employees from promoting, or displaying hostility towards, religion.

Farnan claimed Corbett made comments that were "derogatory, disparaging and belittling regarding religion and Christianity in particular". In legal documents submitted to the US district court, he said he was uncomfortable going to class and felt as though Corbett had created an atmosphere in which he could not effectively learn "both because and regardless of his religious beliefs".

Farnan's lawyer, Jennifer Monk, who works for a not-for-profit Christian law firm, Advocates for Faith and Freedom, told the Guardian yesterday that Farnan's victory was the first of its kind, proving that the establishment clause applied equally to the disapproval of religion as it did to the promotion of religion."It is the first case of its kind where a court has held a teacher responsible for the disapproval of Christianity. It's common for lawsuits to be brought against teachers promoting religion. In general, for years, religion has been taken out of the classroom. I don't agree with that, but if it's going to be taken out, at the very minimum you can't go to the other extreme.

The White House meetings with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai are likely to be cagey affairs -- both visitors have been heavily criticized by Obama's administration and are also wary of each other. Equally, Obama's new strategy for defeating al Qaeda and Taliban militants operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan has not been universally welcomed in either country.

As it seeks reliable allies in the region, the United States, which has funneled $10 billion in aid to Islamabad over the past eight years, can sometimes give conflicting signals. At times it has praised Pakistan's military and at others accused it and its powerful spy agency of helping al Qaeda.

"Some have raised concern that elements within the Pakistani military and intelligence services may be sympathetic to militant groups, leading to caution on our part," Obama's undersecretary of defense for policy, Michele Flournoy, told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee last week.

The United States should not put conditions on an expected substantial increase in U.S. aid to its ally Pakistan, Pakistan's prime minister told visiting U.S. Senator John Kerry on Monday.

Pakistan is struggling to stem surging Islamist violence and put back on track an economy being kept afloat with the help of a $7.6 billion International Monetary Fund loan. Pakistan is due to make its case for help to allies and donors at meetings in Tokyo on Friday, where it hopes to win $4 billion in aid over the next two years to fill a financing gap.

The United States is expected to make a pledge of substantial help although U.S. President Barack Obama has said the release of additional aid would depend on how Pakistan tackled terrorism. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told Kerry, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that Pakistan needed unconditional help. "The U.S. should not attach conditionalities to the assistance," Gilani's office quoted him as saying. "Aid with strings attached would fail to generate the desired goodwill and results."

Among all other international organizations, there are none stronger than the relationships of NATO.

You've got to share information and coordinate action. Though there are also bilateral relationships, which are preferred by the intelligence community. There are some NATO partners who don't get the same level of candor and detail as others.

It's also a major force for stabilizing Eastern Europe, which is still dominated by fears—some founded, some unfounded—of inappropriate influence by Russia.

Was President Bush's membership push for Georgia and Ukraine productive?The idea that you bring these countries into NATO and then there's no problem doesn't make sense. … One of the problems we saw [in the Bush years] was the overmilitarization of U.S. foreign policy and too much focus on just the areas where there was an imminent national security threat.

What does NATO do now that the U.S. has stepped up ownership in Afghanistan? When the U.S. gave this mission to NATO, it didn't deliver a success strategy. It was more like, "Take the mission. We'll leave a few forces there just in case, and good luck!" In terms of development, you can't simply corral villagers when they don't have a livelihood. You can't limit yourself to poppies just because the Taliban makes money from poppies. So do villagers! … NATO is not really able to deal with economic developments.

If the U.S. resets relations with Russia, does it still need a missile shield in Poland?It's really about Iran. If there's a way to assure Russia of our intent, we should.

s Pakistani forces continue to battle an advancing Taliban, the leading senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee introduced legislation Monday tripling aid to the country.

The Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009, introduced by Sens. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, and Dick Lugar, R-Indiana, authorizes $7.5 billion in non-military aid to Pakistan over the next five years to foster economic growth and development, and another $7.5 billion for the following five years.

The $1.5 billion per year would triple U.S. non-military aid levels, currently at $500 million per year. The legislation also would separate military from non-military aid, promising that economic aid "is no longer the poor cousin to military aid."