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ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. – Turns out there's nothing wrong with Randy Moss or the New England Patriots that facing their perennial patsy, the Buffalo Bills, can't fix. Doesn't mean it was pretty.
A week after being accused of quitting by Carolina Panthers defenders, Moss bounced back with five catches for 70 yards and a touchdown in a 17-10 win Sunday. Tully Banta-Cain had three of New England's six sacks to anchor a banged-up defense.
The Patriots (9-5) won their first road game on this side of the Atlantic this season by beating their AFC East rival for the 13th straight time and 18th time in 19 meetings. Better still, the Patriots inched closer to clinching the division title after Miami and the New York Jets lost to drop their records to 7-7.
The Bills (5-9) were undone by 11 penalties for 124 yards, including a pair of pass-interference calls that set up New England's first two scores.
Buffalo's 104 yards in penalties in the first half were the most by an NFL team in an opening half this season.
The loss mathematically eliminated the Bills from playoff contention, capping a decade of futility. They'll miss the playoffs for a 10th straight season, tied with Detroit for the longest active drought.
It wasn't a pretty performance by either team. Tom Brady went 11 of 23 for a season-worst 115 yards, with a 13-yard yard touchdown to Moss and an interception.
Moss had his most yards receiving in five games. And his score marked the ninth 10-touchdown season of his career, matching the NFL record set by Jerry Rice.
It came a week after Moss fumbled after registering his only catch for 16 yards in a 20-10 win over Carolina.
Credit the Patriots defense, which limited the Bills to 241 yards — and only 94 in the second half — while playing without defensive line starters Vince Wilfork and Ty Warren.
The Bills fell behind 17-3 before squandering several opportunities to get back into the game.
Lee Evans scored on an 11-yard touchdown pass from Ryan Fitzpatrick with 3:02 remaining. Buffalo then recovered the ensuing onside kickoff, but the play was negated by — what else? — an offside penalty against rookie Aaron Maybin.
Down 3-0, the Patriots took control with two touchdown drives in the first half.
Brady hit Moss in the end zone to put New England up 7-3. The score was set up after the Bills' Donte Whitner was called for pass interference for slapping at Moss' hands in the end zone on an underthrown deep pass.
Laurence Maroney then scored on a 1-yard rush off right tackle in the final minute of the half. That touchdown was set up after Bills cornerback Reggie Corner pushed down Wes Welker in the end zone.
Fitzpatrick finished 17 of 25 for 178 yards and was briefly benched early in the fourth quarter. Trent Edwards took over and didn't prove to be any better in making his first appearance in five games. He went 1 of 2 for minus-1 yard and was sacked for a 9-yard loss during his first series.
Edwards hurt his right ankle upon being sacked, forcing Fitzpatrick to return on Buffalo's next possession.
Terrell Owens was limited to two catches for 20 yards, leaving him two receptions short of becoming the sixth NFL player to hit the 1,000 mark.

PHILADELPHIA – Eagles wide receiver Jeremy Maclin and running back Brian Westbrook are both inactive for Sunday's game against San Francisco.
Westbrook has missed the last five games and seven of the last eight with a concussion. He practiced on the scout team this week, but the two-time Pro Bowler has not been medically cleared to play in a game.
Maclin left last week's win over the Giants with a torn plantar fascia, tissue at the bottom of his left foot. Maclin may return for the Dec. 27 matchup with Denver.
Wide receiver Isaac Bruce and cornerback Nate Clements are among the 49ers' inactives.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama plans to deal with a Dec. 31 deadline that automatically would declassify secrets in more than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents by ordering government-wide changes that could sharply curb the number of new and old government records hidden from the public.
In an executive order the president is likely to sign before year's end, Obama will create a National Declassification Center to clear up the backlog of Cold War documents. But the order also will give everyone more time to process the 400 million pages rather than flinging them open at year's end without a second glance.
The order aimed at eliminating unnecessary secrecy also is expected to direct all agencies to revise their classification guides — the more than 2,000 separate and unique manuals used by federal agencies to determine what information should be classified and what no longer needs that protection. The manuals form the foundation of the government's classification system.
Two of every three such guides haven't been updated in the past five years, according to the 2008 annual report of the Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees the government's security classification.
The anticipated timing of Obama's order was disclosed by a government official familiar with the planning who requested anonymity in order to discuss the order before its release. A draft of the order leaked last summer.
The still-classified Cold War records would provide a wealth of data on U.S.-Soviet relations, including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall, diplomacy and espionage. A Soviet spy ring in the Navy led by John Walker headlined 1985, which became known as "The Year of the Spy."
It took 19 years and a lawsuit for the National Security Archive, a private group that obtains and analyzes once-secret government records, to get documents on the 1959 crisis when the United States and the Soviet Union faced off over control of West Berlin. For nearly two decades, the contested documents were shuttled back and forth among various offices in the Defense Department, then on to the State Department and an unnamed intelligence agency, each conducting a separate declassification review, before the government finally gave some of them up.
Obama's executive order will follow on the president's inauguration day initiatives on open government. On his first day in office, Obama instructed federal agencies to be more responsive to requests for records under the Freedom of Information Act and he overturned an order by President George W. Bush that would have enabled former presidents and vice presidents to block release of sensitive records of their time in the White House.
William J. Bosanko, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, says the classification policies in place under executive orders signed by Bush and President Bill Clinton have protected national security and enabled increased declassification.
But Obama's review is necessary to enhance security and increase declassification "to a level that our open society expects and deserves," Bosanko said.
Obama's executive order "is an experiment, but it just might work," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. "By changing the rules about what gets classified, this could lead to a dramatic reduction in secrecy throughout the government." Aftergood obtained a leaked copy of an early draft of the executive order last summer.
The government spent more than $8.21 billion last year to create and safeguard classified information, and $43 million to declassify it, according to the oversight office, part of the National Archives and Records Administration. The figures don't include data from the principal intelligence agencies, which is classified.
"What we're seeking to do is come up with a system that refocuses the finite resources available," says Bosanko.
"Serial reviews" are among the requirements causing declassification delays that can take years to resolve. When a classified document contains secrets from multiple agencies, each agency must review its part, a process that can add years to the declassification process.
In 2000, Clinton gave agencies a three-year extension to complete a review of multiple-agency classified records. When it became clear that the deadline wouldn't be met, Bush in 2003 gave federal agencies a six-year extension.
Declassification spending was cut from an average of $224 million annually in the last four years of the Clinton administration to only $47 million a year during the last four years of the Bush administration.
Today, the problem is not much closer to being solved than it was in the 1990s. Under the terms of Bush's extension, sensitive information in hundreds of millions of pages of historical documents will declassified automatically on Dec. 31 unless Obama acts.
"If the agencies haven't found the sensitive old documents after nine years, that's some indication those records don't deserve being secret anymore," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive.

Obama's order probably will centralize the review process for old records, having all agencies look at the same classified documents at the same time through the new National Declassification Center. Michael Kurtz, who has been with the National Archives for the past 35 years, has been chosen as the center's acting director.

Much of the work of a National Declassification Center probably would be conducted at the National Archives facility in College Park, Md., where many of the documents are housed and many of the agency declassifiers already spend a great deal of time.

Critics say Obama should do more than the upcoming executive order is likely to. They note that Clinton ordered a "bulk declassification" of millions of records from World War II and before; they want Obama to do the same with Cold War-era records.

The premise of bulk declassification is that "we're not going to spend taxpayer dollars to go through these records one by one," said William Leonard, Bosanko's predecessor as Information Security Oversight Office director.

And the planned National Declassification Center, said Leonard, should have authority to decide the status of millions of classified records on its own.

"We shouldn't need multiple opinions from multiple agencies," said Leonard.

But intelligence agencies have resisted surrendering their authority over secrets to an interagency group.

___

On the Net:

Information Security Oversight Office: http://www.archives.gov/isoo/

Project on Government Secrecy: http://www.fas.org/sgp/

National Security Archive: http://tinyurl.com/a8dwh

White House background: http://tinyurl.com/ylap898

Another type of vehicle modified for multiple passenger use is the motorized stage, applied to the same tasks as the earlier stagecoach. It is not considered a true limousine but rather in its design and application is between a sedan and a bus. While a bus will have a central interior aisle for access to seating, a stage has multiple doors that allow access to transverse forward facing seats. Examples of the type were constructed not only from sedans (e.g., Chrysler New Yorker, Cadillac DeVille), but also from station wagons; many of the station wagon conversions sported a large rack, running the length of the roof, for carrying the passengers' baggage.

Sometimes a coach builder or car designer will develop the "ultimate" stretch limo, adding amenities that are somewhat impractical but which make a significant design statement. One such design includes double rear axles to support the weight of an operational hot tub.

Phoenix Airport Car Service

WASHINGTON – A Palestinian shopkeeper and father portrayed as a terrorist in the movie "Bruno" is suing film star Sacha Baron Cohen, talk show host David Letterman and others for libel and slander.
The lawsuit filed last week by Ayman Abu Aita in U.S. federal court seeks $110 million in damages.
The director and film distributor NBC Universal are named. So are CBS and Letterman's company Worldwide Pants for an interview in which Letterman and Cohen discussed Bruno's encounter with Abu Aita, who is called a terrorist.
In the movie, Cohen plays a gay Austrian fashionista trying to make it big in the United States. To achieve fame, Bruno travels to the Middle East to make peace.
Universal Studios and a Letterman spokesman declined comment.

Other important technical innovations of this era included changes to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.

They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve a reasonable keyboard height.

Beginner Piano Lessons

FRANKFURT (AFP) –
The German trade surplus, a pillar of the eurozone economy, climbed to 13.6 billion euros (20 billion dollars) in October, figures released on Wednesday by the national statistics office showed.

In September, the biggest European economy and one of the world's leading exporters had posted a surplus of 10.4 billion euros.

German exports gained 2.5 percent from September to 74.6 billion euros, the Destatis service said.

Germany, one of the world's leading exporters, has begun to rebound from its worst recession since World War II, thanks in part to renewed foreign demand for the country's industrial goods and chemicals.

Destatis also cited German central bank figures which showed the current account of the balance of payments had a surplus of 11.0 billion euros in October.

The current account is an overall measure of all current payments into and out of a country or region.

News of the country's rebounding economy comes as official figures show that inflation is slowly regaining a foothold in the European nation.

The inflation rate in November was 0.4 percent compared to the previous year, the Federal Statistics Office said, the first time it has been positive since June 2009.

The rate was revised slightly higher from the 0.3 percent preliminary figure published in late November.

Falling energy prices are still keeping a lid on inflation in Germany, however, with prices for household gas nearly a fifth of their price a year ago during the oil price spike.

If energy were stripped out of the calculation, inflation in Germany would be 0.7 percent, the statistics office said.

http://www.gracedigitalaudio.com/vinylwriter-usb-turnable-records-to-pc-or-mac-avpusb01s-p-9.html

The T.90 comes bundled with two programs, Audacity and Cakewalk Pyro 5. Audacity is a free, open-source audio recording and editing program available for both Mac and Windows. It has a powerful set of features but it's not designed for novices. Users looking for the shortest route to recording their vinyl will want to install Cakewalk's Pyro 5 software (Windows only). Pyro is both intuitive and streamlined specifically to users looking to archive LPs, CDs, cassettes, and DVDs.

The sound quality was as good as can be expected from old, scratchy records. The built-in audio card records 16-bit at 44.1khz (which you can upscale to 48khz). Because the Stanton T.90 doubles as both a recording and a playback interface for your computer's audio, you can instantly play back the results of your digitally recorded vinyl through the T.90's RCA outputs--but there's more. The T.90 will even allow you to simultaneously mix your computer's audio and your turntable's audio into the same output--bridging both the analog and digital worlds. What DJs do with this feature is up to their imaginations.

MELBOURNE (AFP) –
Australian doctors successfully separated joined-at-the-head Bangladeshi twins after more than 24 hours of surgery on Tuesday, describing the moment as "surreal".

Two-year-old Trishna and Krishna, rescued from certain death in a Dhaka orphanage, were said to be "very well" after leaving the operating theatre in induced comas and unattached for the first time.

"The moment of separation was a rather surreal moment," Leo Donnan, chief of surgery at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital, told reporters.

"There was relief but I think everyone realised there was still a long way to go and that the girls have a very difficult time ahead of them."

Doctors worked through the night to prise apart the twins' brain tissue at about 11:00 am (0000 GMT) before reconstruction experts closed up their heads using bone and skin tissue, some 32 hours after they were wheeled into the operating room.

"The girls have now come out of the theatre and they're in intensive care," Donnan said.

"Everything's gone very well. They're in great shape which is fantastic... they're both in good condition and healthy. I think they're better than we thought they'd be."

The girls will spend the next few days sedated, on ventilators and under close monitoring before being gradually woken up, Donnan said, adding they faced myriad possible dangers.

"They've got a long process to go through and it will be many days before we know how well it's gone," he said.

Related article: Aid worker tells of Bangladesh twins' miraculous journey "There's still considerable risks they've got to face, like any child who's been through a major procedure. They've got a long recovery ahead of them -- there are many unknowns after this sort of surgery."

Moira Kelly, the girls' legal guardian who brought them to Australia from Bangladesh, was said to be overcome by the day's dramatic developments.

"I think she's overwhelmed this has come to fruition," said Margaret Smith, her colleague at the Children First Foundation charity. "She's just so grateful to the team here that they've been able to pull this off."

Some 16 specialists worked through the night, taking occasional food and rest breaks and listening to pop music in the operating theatre to stay alert, as the operation ran hours past its scheduled midnight finish.

Donnan said there was quiet elation among the surgeons when they finally separated the girls after more than 24 hours of painstaking work.

"The moment of separation was a rather surreal moment ... Everyone has known these girls as one with their individual personalities, so to see them as separate human beings is a pretty amazing moment," he said.

The girls were brought to Australia in November 2007 after aid workers became alarmed at their fading health in Dhaka, where doctors said they were powerless to help.

But they were nursed back to health, developing a unique system of crawling on their backs and a love of Australian children's band "The Wiggles", as they underwent a series of preparatory operations.

"These are once-in-a-lifetime operations that teams would do. For the hospital it's a historic moment, for the girls it's an even more historic moment," Donnan said.

Separating conjoined twins is a notoriously difficult procedure, with attempts in Britain and Bangladesh both failing over the past year, although Saudi doctors successfully divided a pair of Egyptian brothers in February.

In one of the best known cases, Singapore doctors in 2003 made a vain attempt to separate adult twins -- Iranian law graduates Laleh and Ladan Bijani, 29 -- who died from severe blood loss after 52 hours of surgery.

LONDON (Reuters) –
Manjit Singh, a 59-year-old security consultant from Leicester, England known as the "Ironman," on Thursday pulled a double-decker bus weighing more than eight metric tons over a distance of 21.2 meters with his hair.

The new record was set in central London to coincide with the fifth annual Guinness World Records Day, which organizers said prompted thousands of people around the world to set some bizarre benchmarks of their own.

For Singh, his latest achievement makes up for the disappointment of 2007, when he failed to break the record for the furthest distance to pull a double-decker bus with the ears.

"I will never be discouraged by defeat, because I know that success can be waiting around the next corner," he said. "The only way to get there is to try again and stay positive."

Also in London, 112 commuters put aside their English rush-hour reserve to set a record for the most people hugging for a minute, while Shaun Jones won the title for the fastest hot water bottle burst at 18.81 seconds.

In Italy, a new fastest time was set for eating a bowl of pasta (one minute 30 seconds) and in Norway the largest ever gingerbread man was made weighing 651 kg (1,435 lb). In Finland, people from 76 nationalities fitted into a single sauna.

Not everyone was successful, however. In Australia, 228 people were not enough to break the largest bikini parade record. Guinness World Records is considered the authority on world records, and its book has sold over 100 million copies.

(Writing by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

BEIJING (AFP) –
China and the United States on Tuesday pledged to resolve their lingering trade disputes and combat protectionism, as visiting US President Barack Obama called on Beijing to let the yuan rise.

Comments by Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao to reporters after their summit however gave no further specifics on how the two economic giants planned to defuse mounting trade rancour marked by a series of tit-for-tat actions.

The two sides said in a joint statement that they "recognise the importance of open trade and investment to their domestic economies and to the global economy, and are committed to jointly fight protectionism".

Hu said they would "continue to have consultations on an equal footing to properly resolve economic and trade frictions in a joint effort to uphold the sound and steady growth of their business ties and trade."

In his comments, Obama raised the two countries' central trade dispute -- accusations that China keeps its currency undervalued to boost exports at the expense of those of other countries -- but tread softly.

"I was pleased to note the Chinese commitment, made in past statements, to move toward a more market-oriented exchange rate over time," Obama said as Hu looked on.

"I emphasised in our discussions, as have others in the region, that doing so based on economic fundamentals would make an essential contribution to the global (economic) rebalancing effort."

China has come under increasing pressure to loosen its grip on the yuan, with Asia-Pacific finance ministers last week complaining about it at a regional summit in Singapore.

International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, during a visit to Beijing on Tuesday, urged China to let the yuan rise "sooner rather than later", saying it would benefit both the Chinese and global economies.

On the yuan, Hu noted merely that "the two sides reiterated that they will continue to increase dialogue and cooperation in macroeconomic and financial policies."

The world's number-one and number-three economies have swapped a series of accusations of dumping and other unfair trade practices since September, when the Obama administration announced it would slap duties on Chinese-made tyres.

Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming raised the temperature on Friday at the Asia-Pacific summit in Singapore, lashing out at what he called an "unprecedented" number of trade measures aimed at China this year.

"These measures have bad and profound implications for free international trade," Chen told reporters, while not specifically naming the United States.

In what appeared to be a reference to such disputes, Hu said, "I stressed to President Obama that under the current circumstances, our two countries need to more strongly oppose and reject protectionism in all its manifestations."

Obama praised China for its four-trillion-yuan (585-billion-dollar) economic stimulus plan, which he said had helped the global recovery effort.

"So far China's partnership has proved critical in our effort to pull ourselves out of the worst recession in generations," he said.

But he repeated a call he made in Singapore for a rebalancing of the global economic order under which the United States would not be relied upon to bear the overwhelming burden of global consumption.

The US government, which runs a massive trade deficit with China, has pressured Beijing to spur domestic consumption in its fast-growing economy as a way of addressing this imbalance.

Hu did not address such demands in his remarks, but a joint statement said: "China will continue to implement policies to adjust economic structure, raise household incomes, and expand domestic demand to increase the contribution of consumption to GDP growth."

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) –
Taliban militants blew up a girls' school in Pakistan's Khyber district on Tuesday, the third such attack in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan so far this month, officials said.

An intelligence official in the area said Taliban attacked the government-run school overnight when no one was at the property.

"The girls' middle school was badly damaged because of the explosion, now the school building is almost out of use. The classrooms, desks and chairs were also damaged," Farooq Khan, a local administrative official told AFP.

The incident took place at Yousaf Kely village near Bara town, around 20 kilometres (13 miles) south of Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province which has been hit by five suicide attacks in the last eight days.

Islamist militants have destroyed hundreds of schools, mostly for girls, in the northwest of the country in recent years.

Nearly 200 schools were destroyed in the Swat valley alone during a two-year Taliban uprising to enforce sharia law in a district once favoured by Western tourists for its ski slopes and mountain air.

Following up a similar offensive in Swat this summer, Pakistan has been fighting against homegrown militants in Khyber and pressing a major assault designed to crush Taliban sanctuaries in South Waziristan.

Authorities last month shut schools across Pakistan following a suicide attack on a university campus in Islamabad, although most have since reopened.

KABUL (AFP) –
Afghan President Hamid Karzai vowed Tuesday that his new government would eradicate corruption and unite the country after months of political chaos as he offered an olive branch to Taliban insurgents.

Under pressure from US President Barack Obama to wipe out corruption after a turbulent election process steeped in fraud, Karzai used his first appearance since electoral authorities declared him president to pledge a cleaner rule.

"Afghanistan's image has been tainted by corruption. Our government's image has been tainted by corruption," Karzai told a press conference flanked by vice-president Mohammad Qasim Fahim, who is widely accused of rights abuses.

"We will strive, by any means possible, to eradicate this stain."

Karzai was declared president for another five years after the election commission, whose chief he appointed, cancelled a run-off ballot following the withdrawal of his only challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.

Karzai has been urged by a number of world leaders to ensure his next government can command the support of all Afghans as Obama mulls whether to pour tens of thousands more US troops into battle against the Taliban.

"The future government will be a government that reflects all the people of Afghanistan... We hope that no-one feels themselves isolated from this future government," he said.

The 51-year-old president, whose warm relations with the West have cooled over corruption and spiralling insecurity, also urged his Taliban "brothers" "to come home and embrace their land".

The Taliban insurgency is now at its deadliest, contributing to record US fatalities eight years since the militia was driven out of Kabul by a US-led invasion, paving the way for Karzai to take power.

The Islamists ridiculed Karzai as a "puppet" president of the West, however, and snubbed his offer of an olive branch.

"We do not attach any value to these offers of peace by Karzai as we know they are empty words," Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, told AFP.

Obama and UN chief Ban Ki-moon led world powers in congratulating Karzai, but the US president called for "a much more serious effort to eradicate corruption" and a "new chapter" in cooperation between the two countries.

"This has to be (the) point in time in which we begin to write a new chapter based on improved governance," Obama said he told Karzai by telephone.

"The truth is not going to be in words, it's going to be in deeds," added the US president.

The New York Times reported the Obama administration was pressing Karzai to set up an anti-corruption commission, which would establish "strict accountability" for national and provincial government officials.

US and European officials are also seeking the arrests of what one US envoy termed "the more blatantly corrupt" people in government, the paper added.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose country has the second largest contingent of troops in Afghanistan, urged Karzai "to take immediate action against corruption".

Abdullah quit the contest on Sunday, saying there were no safeguards against a repeat of widespread fraud that resulted in the rejection of nearly a quarter of votes cast in August.

Karzai's anointment by the Independent Election Commission sought to draw a line under two months of political chaos in the conflict-ridden nation, where 100,000 NATO and US troops are fighting the Taliban.

Ban met Karzai and Abdullah amid a concerted diplomatic push to bring a quick end to the paralysis, which has undermined Western efforts to cultivate democracy in Afghanistan.

IEC chief Azizullah Ludin, a Karzai appointee who oversaw the fraud-riddled first round, said the decision had been made in line with the provisions of Afghan law and was "consistent with the high interest of the Afghan people".

There had been widespread unease about staging the November 7 run-off poll.

First-round turnout was as low as five percent in areas and the Taliban had threatened fresh attacks.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is hosting a summit with European Union leaders on a range of issues, including climate change, economic management and the NATO operation in Afghanistan.
Vice President Joe Biden will hold a welcoming lunch Tuesday for the European leaders ahead of the meetings with Obama.
The EU will be represented by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso as well as the prime minister and foreign minister of Sweden.
The two sides are expected to reveal a new EU-US Energy Council to explore cooperation on energy security and efficiency.
The gathering comes a month ahead of a global meeting on climate change as world leaders negotiate a follow-on agreement to the Kyoto Protocol.

PRISTINA, Kosovo – Thousands of ethnic Albanians braved low temperatures and a cold wind in Kosovo's capital Pristina to welcome former President Bill Clinton on Sunday as he attended the unveiling of an 11-foot (3.5-meter) statue of himself on a key boulevard that also bears his name.
Clinton is celebrated as a hero by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority for launching NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 that stopped the brutal Serb forces' crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.
This is his first visit to Kosovo since it declared independence from Serbia last year.
Many waved American, Albanian and Kosovo flags and chanted "USA!" as the former president climbed on top of a podium with his poster in the background reading "Kosovo honors a hero."
Some peeked out of balconies and leaned on window sills to get a better view of Clinton from their apartment blocks.
To thunderous applause Clinton waved to the crowd as the red cover was pulled off from the statue.
The statue is placed on top of a white-tiled base, in the middle of a tiny square, surrounded by communist-era buildings.
"I never expected that anywhere, someone would make such a big statue of me," Clinton said of the gold-sprayed statue weighing a ton (900 kilograms).
He also addressed Kosovo's 120-seat assembly, encouraging them to forgive and move on from the violence of the past.
The statue portrays Clinton with his left arm raised and holding a portfolio bearing his name and the date when NATO started bombing Yugoslavia, on March. 24, 1999.
An estimated 10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed during the Kosovo crackdown and about 800,000 were forced out of their homes. They returned home after NATO-led peacekeepers moved in following 78 days of bombing.
Leta Krasniqi, an ethnic Albanian, said the statue was the best way to express the ethnic Albanians' gratitude for Clinton's role in making Kosovo a state.
"This is a big day," Krasniqi, 25 said. "I live nearby and I'm really excited that I will be able to see the statue of such a big friend of ours every day."
Clinton last visited Kosovo in 2003 when he received an honorary university degree. His first visit was in 1999 — months after some 6,000 U.S. troops were deployed in the NATO-led peacekeeping mission here.
Some 1,000 American soldiers are still based in Kosovo as part of NATO's 14,000-strong peacekeeping force.
Police in Kosovo upped security measures ahead of Bill Clinton's arrival by adding deploying more traffic police and special police.
NATO officials said the peacekeepers were also on alert, although no additional security measures were taken.

MADRID – The European Union has launched an investigation into a prized Spanish wetland that has turned bone dry through mismanagement of water resources and is now on fire underground, white smoke now rising from areas where fish once swam.
The EU wants the Spanish government to explain how it plans to save Las Tablas de Daimiel National Park in the central Castilla-La Mancha region, European Commission spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The park, one of Spain's few wetlands, is classified as a UNESCO biosphere site and an EU-protected area because of its birdlife.
But it has been drying up for decades, largely because of wells dug by farmers on the edges of the park to tap an aquifer that feeds the wetland's lagoons. Many of the wells are illegal. Environmentalists call this case a particularly glaring example of how a natural resource can be abused.
In August, intense summer heat and parched soil caused the peat just under the surface of the soil to spontaneously ignite. Now, several areas of the park are on fire underground and white smoke seeps out of deep cracks in the parched soil.
"We have seen a situation where there is continuous degradation of territory," Helfferich said from Brussels.
The EU told the Spanish government about its investigation last week and Spain has 10 weeks to explain how it plans to respond to the crisis, Helfferich said.
"Underground fires at the moment cannot be extinguished," she said, adding that the 27-nation bloc has asked Spain how it plans to deal with it.
In a worst-case scenario, the EU could punish Spain with a hefty fine if it deems that the government's management of the wetlands was insufficient.
Josep Puxeau, the Environment Ministry's top official on water issues, said the government has an emergency plan to pump in torrents of water from a river to put out the fires and restore the acquifer.
It will also continue with a policy of buying up land and farms outside the park to halt water being drawn from wells, he told reporters.
The park lies 90 miles (150 kilometers) south of Madrid. Not all of it is wetland. The area capable of holding water covers about 4,500 acres (1,800 hectares) but less than 1 percent of that actually has water.
Park ranger Jesus Garcia Consuegra, who grew up in the area, remembers lusher times. He would go fishing there as a boy, venturing out at night in a rowboat equipped with a lantern to draw fish to the surface.
"It was so clear you could see to the bottom. You could see the fish there. You could watch them and it was simply marvelous," he said in a documentary on the park's Web site.
Jose Manuel Hernandez, spokesman for the environmental group Ecologists in Action, placed the blame for the wetland's demise squarely on excessive use of underground water tables for irrigation. He said climate change has nothing to do with the problem because La Mancha is dry anyway and rain levels have not dropped that much.
Rather, the culprit is a government policy over the past 20 years that allowed farmers to shift from non-irrigated crops like olive groves and wheat to thirsty ones like grapes and melons, he told the AP.
The Guadiana River, for instance, which once flowed through La Mancha, has essentially vanished for this reason and peat fires like the ones in Las Tablas de Daimiel have been common in that riverbed for years.
"The Guadiana has been burning for 20 years," Hernandez said. "People are just waking up now because the fires have cropped up in a national park."

He called the idea of bringing in huge amounts of water to put out the fires and restore the acquifer a pointless stopgap measure: the land is so dry and the water table now so low that water brought in from outside will simply get sucked up by the soil and not reach the acquifer.

It is artificial to try to save a wetland this way, and better to manage the existing water more efficiently by cutting down on use of wells, Hernandez said.

"What we need to do is recover the dynamics of the ecosystem."

LIBREVILLE (AFP) –
More than 4,500 people have fled attacks by the Ugandan rebel group Lord's Resistance Army in the Central African Republic, the Red Cross said in a statement received by AFP Thursday.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) violence in the south-east of the CAR had led thousands to make for the town of Obo.

"Over recent months, the lack of security in the area around Obo and M'Boki, in the Upper Mbomou prefecture, have prompted the movement of a large part of the population towards the town of Obo," the statement said.

"There are more than 4,500 internally displaced people and 1,400 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo," which neighbours CAR and where the LRA has rear bases, according to the ICRC and Centrafrican Red Cross.

"Most of the medical centres in the villages around Obo and M'Boki have been looted and sometimes destroyed in recent months."

Led by Joseph Kony, the brutal LRA began its activities in Uganda in 1988, and in 2005 its fighters moved to bases in the far north-east of Congo.

LRA attacks in the eastern part of the CAR have increased in recent months.

In August the Ugandan army was deployed in the CAR, with Bangui's approval, and month said it had captured one of Kony's top bodyguards.

The ICRC statement came as African leaders met in the Ugandan capital Kampala for a summit to improve the plight of the continent's refugees and displaced people.

NEW YORK (Reuters) –
Twitter has been kind to a motley crew of actors, TV personalities and pop stars whose fame online outstrips that of the outside world. And it's all about getting personal.

Ashton Kutcher is the most popular user with more than 3 million Twitter followers, and LeVar Burton of Star Trek fame is more popular than pop star Lady Gaga. Cellist Zoe Keating has 200,000 more followers than mega-star Justin Timberlake.

"Name recognition only takes you so far," said Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group consultants.

The social networking and blogging service that limits messages to 140 characters has a different hierarchy of who is most popular. And crowding the top are those who adopted Twitter early in its 3 1/2-year history.

Simply being a celebrity does not guarantee a following, analysts say. A loyal following, said Owyang, involves creating a dialogue with users that is personal, not self-promoting.

"If they talk about Christmas, or what they're doing this weekend," said Owyang, then a conversation is begun.

Kutcher is followed closely in popularity by Ellen DeGeneres and Britney Spears.

"Unlikely stars like LeVar Burton or MC Hammer" participate actively in Twitter and interact with users, said Rohit Bhargava, senior vice president at Ogilvy.

These celebrities seem to genuinely care about Twitter, Bhargava said, "rather than just a celebrity trying out the latest fad their assistant or PR person tells them about.

"That credibility is huge when it comes to who to follow."

There is also an age factor.

Twitter has been pretty much ignored by users under 25, according to a Nielsen study, which affects popularity.

"It could also explain why Oprah Winfrey is so popular even though she doesn't update her Twitter account that often." said Mark Evans of Sysomos, a media analytics firm.

Many celebrities benefited from joining early, and doing so with fanfare. Kutcher did that, then created enough momentum to stay on top, said Pete Cashmore who runs the blog Mashable.

If Kutcher joined Twitter today, he said, "you wouldn't hear about it."

Twitter had nearly 21 million unique visitors last month according to comScore and, according to eMarketer, has over 18 million members, though the majority does not post actively. It is the third largest social networking site in the United States, after Facebook and MySpace.

(Editing by Doina Chiacu and Daniel Trotta)

The composition of a perfume typically begins with a brief by the perfumer's employer or an outside customer. The customers to the perfumer or their employers, are typically fashion houses or large corporations of various industries. The perfumer will then go through the process of blending multiple perfume mixtures and sell the formulation to the customer, often with modifications of the composition of the perfume.

Reverse engineering of best-selling perfumes in the market is a very common practice in the fragrance industry due to the relative simplicity of operating GC equipment, the pressure to produce marketable fragrances, and the highly lucrative nature of perfume market.

Solid Perfume

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – A school of glimmering, silvery-white fish wriggle high above a downtown river. A few blocks away on a Michigan sidewalk, four stark red piranhas have taken large bites out of a running man's briefcase and rear end. A purple, 10-foot-tall jelly bean stands outside a nearby castle.
As the first ArtPrize art competition is set to begin next week in Grand Rapids, works of every imaginable size, shape, color and medium are popping up at 159 venues throughout the downtown area. More than 1,200 artists from two dozen countries are competing for a total of $449,000, including $250,000 for first place — one of the world's largest awards for an art competition.
"I think this is amazing to have this much artwork all throughout downtown," said Sarah Joseph, director of exhibitions at Kendall College of Art and Design. "It's great that it's everywhere."
If it's not everywhere just yet, it soon will be.
Colorful oils, acrylics and sketches are at Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital. Rocky's Bar and Grill will have a hodgepodge of paintings, including one of a clown, and photographs of various Michigan locales. The Thomas M. Cooley Law School will offer have a steel-and-polyurethane sculpture of a human figure.
As Judy Johnson walked past the four red piranhas Monday, she said she believes the 18-day event that kicks off Sept. 23 will give a boost to the state's second-largest city.
"I think it'll be fantastic," said Johnson, 57, an administrator for Grand Rapids Public Schools. "It will get people downtown and be something to put Grand Rapids on the map, hopefully."
She plans to bring in friends and family members to "see as many (works) as we can."
People who register for the event will determine the top 10 artworks, including the winner, by voting at ArtPrize's Web site, or through text messaging or an iPhone application. Prizes will be awarded Oct. 8, two days before the competition ends to give people time to see the winning pieces.
"The point of ArtPrize is the conversation," said Rick DeVos, 27, who created the competition. "That's why it's a public vote ... to give a reason for people to talk to each other about what they like, what they don't like, why you should like this, why you shouldn't like that."
The response from artists and venue officials has been remarkable, he said.
"When we announced this in April, we figured, kind of internally, that if we had 300 artists that matched with venues, that would be success for the first year," DeVos said. "We're at 1,262 — so about four times that — and it kind of blows us away, but it's really cool and I think speaks to the hospitality of the community."
In 2006, DeVos established Spout.com, a social-networking site for film buffs. His grandfather, Rich, co-founded direct-sales giant Amway Corp., and his father, Dick, is a former president of the company.
The Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation is fronting the prize money. ArtPrize will return next year for sure and Rick DeVos hopes it will become an annual competition, but that all depends on how self-sufficient the event can become.
Celeste Adams, director of the Grand Rapids Art Museum said the competition "is really about young people embracing the arts."
Several hundred artists asked to display their works at the museum, but just two were chosen because they suited the museum's available space. One is a short black-and-white film that will be shown in a continuous loop on an outside wall of the building and the other consists of several sharp, digitally created images of largely urban scenes.
What's likely to be one of the most visible ArtPrize entries is Grand Rapids photographer and artist David Lubbers' kinetic, metal sculpture that's on a tiny island in the middle of the Grand River.
"The Grand Dance" looks like a large mobile with its 16 white figures that resemble fish that turn with the wind. It stands about 35 feet tall, 30 feet wide and 30 feet long. At night, two spotlights will shine on the piece so that it appears to be hovering over the water.

"It seemed like a perfect place for a sculpture," he said.

___

On the Net:

ArtPrize: http://www.artprize.org

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) –
Some of the largest U.S. banks will remain caught in the government's financial bailout program for months, as officials do not expect to grant the next wave of exit approvals until near the end of the year, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Banks such as Citigroup (C.N) and Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) have been chafing under the government's reins and want to exit the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which delivered capital infusions to banks along with limits on pay, share repurchases and dividends.

Citigroup has been in preliminary talks with U.S. officials on how to repay part of government funds but the process could take at least a couple quarters, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Regulators want to see that firms have fully taken advantage of the more open credit markets to raise significant capital buffers before they remove the government leash from more of the largest banks.

The U.S. Treasury Department first started releasing the big banks from the financial bailout after the government conducted an intensive "stress test" earlier this year of the firms' loan portfolios, earnings prospects and capital positions.

Ten banks received approvals in June to repay $68 billion in federal bailout funds. Since then, there have been few clues about when the other large banks would be allowed to exit the program and if those approvals would come piecemeal or as another group.

"We will see another wave of repayments," the source said, speaking anonymously because the approach has not been announced publicly.

A Treasury spokesman declined to comment.

There is intense investor interest in which banks will be released, and the government is aware that granting individual approvals for the biggest banks to repay TARP could put immense pressure on the other institutions, the source said.

The large banks still locked in TARP include: Wells Fargo (WFC.N), Fifth Third (FITB.O), GMAC, KeyCorp (KEY.N), Bank of America, PNC Financial (PNC.N), Regions Financial (RF.N), SunTrust (STI.N), and Citigroup (C.N).

Some of these institutions demonstrated on Tuesday just how eager they are to exit TARP. Appearing at the Barclays Global Financial Services Conference in New York, leaders at SunTrust, Regions Financial and Bank of America all spoke out about how they want to repay, and do it as soon as possible.

"It is very desirable to get out from under this," said Michael Holland, president of money manager Holland & Co in New York. "This is a crisis situation that one would hope is now behind us. The longer they are in it, the more we are being told by the feds that this isn't behind us."

(Reporting by Karey Wutkowski in Washington and Steve Eder in New York with additional reporting by Dan Wilchins and Joe Rauch; editing by John Wallace and Matthew Lewis)

A wallet generally has one or more currency pockets; in some cases, there may also be a money clip. Wallets usually have one or more pockets for storing credit card or identification cards, which may be oriented vertically or horizontally.

Some wallets are attached to metal chains which are then clipped onto a belt, as a way of preventing loss or theft by pickpockets. Some travellers replace wallets with money belts, which are belts with a hidden money compartment.
Other types of small bags can also serve as wallets, such as this golf tee bag which is used to hold credit cards and money

Wallets

TORONTO (Reuters) –
British star Clive Owen has specialized in playing macho men in two decades of movies and television: tough, taciturn and unshaven, with long stares from smoldering gray-green eyes.

But Owen, nominated for an Oscar for his role in the 2004 drama "Closer," is trying on a new persona in his latest film, "The Boys are Back," playing an inept father who suddenly finds himself a grieving single parent to an equally grieving son.

"I haven't done a film like this before and parenting is a big part of my life. It was a challenge to explore, and something that I thought was very well written -- the ups and downs of parenting," Owen said in an interview.

The movie, which was featured at the Toronto International Film Festival and opens in U.S. theaters on September 25, includes a lot of shots of Owen looking lost, and a lot more where he is clearly clueless about coping with a 7-year-old whose mother has just died.

Set in Australia and Britain, it follows a period in the life of sportswriter Joe Warr, whose ranch house fast turns into a pigsty as Warr brings his "just say yes" philosophy of life to the caring of his young son.

The two are joined by Joe's older boy from England, and what plays out on screen is an exploration of parenting and father/son relationships that Owen said is more true to real life that what audiences tend to see on film.

"Very often when you see families it's all perfect and neat, and parenting isn't like that. You do have constant negotiations. Things are ever developing and ever changing, and you constantly have to evaluate how you deal with your kids."

Owen has two daughters, aged 10 and 12, with his wife, Sarah-Jane Fenton, and he said this was one of the first of his movies they've been able to see. His other films like "Closer," or Spike Lee's popular "Inside Man" were not quite suitable.

"They feel very part of this one because they were in Australia for a few weeks," he said.

The star, who has played a range of characters from the adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" to man-on-the-run Theo Faron in science fiction film "Children of Men," is not immediately turning back to those tough roles.

In fact, he said his next venture will be another family movie, but a darker, different one. "It's a very upsetting family drama," he said, without giving details.

Meanwhile, a sequel to the 2006 box office hit "Inside Man" is also in the works, he said.

That film, set in New York, stars Owen as the robber who plans the perfect bank heist, with Denzel Washington and fellow Brit Chitiwel Ejiofor as the cops who try to outwit him.

(Edited by Bob Tourtellotte and Doina Chiacu)

WASHINGTON – More American troops likely will be needed to win the war in Afghanistan, the top U.S. military officer told skeptical Democrats on Tuesday as he cited a need to prove U.S. commitment in the battle-ravaged region.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that a proper effort to counter the Taliban insurgency correctly "probably means more forces."
Mullen spoke during a hearing on his nomination for a second term as the president's senior military adviser. The influential chairman of the panel, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., used the session to underscore his opposition to additional forces, at least until the United States takes bolder action to expand Afghanistan's own armed forces.
"Providing the resources needed for the Afghan Army and Afghan police to become self-sufficient would demonstrate our commitment to the success of a mission that is in our national security interest, while avoiding the risks associated with a further increase in U.S. ground combat troops," Levin said.
Levin is one of several leading Democrats who have expressed skepticism in recent days about adding more American troops. Levin first wants to make sure larger numbers of Afghan security forces are trained and deployed on the battlefield and in Afghan communities.
Mullen told the senators that "it's very clear to me that we will need more resources," to carry out the revamped counterinsurgency strategy Obama laid out earlier this year.
Mullen said he did not know how many more troops would likely be requested by the commanding general in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal. A debate over the right mix of forces and other resources will be held in the coming weeks, Mullen told the panel.
Levinis Republican counterpart, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said committing too few forces to the war would invite a rerun of mistakes the U.S. made in Iraq. "I've seen that movie before," said McCain, the committee's ranking Republican.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., said Afghans will get the wrong message if the U.S. is only willing to commit additional training specialists instead of combat troops.
"They're essentially going to decide we're on our way out," Lieberman said.
Mullen agreed that Afghans and Pakistanis are "waiting on the sidelines to see how committed we are."
However, "it's not as simple as trainers. It's not as simple as combat troops," Mullen said.
Mullen said he has made no recommendations to the White House about how many more forces might be needed. He said McChrystal will submit his request very soon.
Mullen has been sounding increasingly glum about the prospects for the war, which will enter its ninth year this fall. On Tuesday he said the war would continue to deteriorate without a renewed U.S. commitment, and he said Gen. McChrystal found conditions worse than he had expected when he took the job this summer.
The United States has about 65,000 troops in Afghanistan now, with a few thousand additional trainers due by the end of this year.

Photo Books

Books for recording periodic entries by the user, such as daily information about a journey, are called logbooks or simply logs. A similar book for writing daily the owner's private personal events, information, and ideas is called a diary or personal journal.

Albums are books for holding collections of memorabilia, pictures or photographs. They are often made so that the pages are removable. Stamp albums hold collections of stamps.

The imagery surrounding Halloween is largely an amalgamation of the Halloween season itself, nearly a century of work from American filmmakers and graphic artists, and a rather commercialized take on the dark and mysterious. Halloween imagery tends to involve death, magic, or mythical monsters. Traditional characters include ghosts, ghouls, witches, vampires, bats, owls, crows, vultures, pumpkin-men, black cats, spiders, goblins, zombies, mummies, skeletons, and demons.

At lunch-time (midday meal, sometimes called "dinner" in Ireland), a traditional Halloween meal Colcannon is eaten, often with coins wrapped in grease-proof paper mixed in. In recent decades the practice of midday dinners in the home has declined and with it this traditional Halloween ritual. Irish children typically have a week-long Mid-term break from school that coincides with Halloween which falls on the 31st of October.

Adult Halloween Costumes

Ancient Egyptians had developed writing on papyrus scrolls when scribes used thin reed brushes or reed pens from the Juncus Maritimus or sea rush . In his book A History of Writing, Steven Roger Fischer suggests that on the basis of finds at Saqqara, the reed pen might well have been used for writing on parchment as long ago as the First Dynasty or about 3000 BC. Reed pens continued to be used until the Middle Ages although they were slowly replaced by quills from about the seventh century.

The first patent on a ballpoint pen was issued on October 30, 1888, to John J Loud. In 1938, László Bíró, a Hungarian newspaper editor, with the help of his brother George, a chemist, began to work on designing new types of pens including one with a tiny ball in its tip that was free to turn in a socket. As the pen moved along the paper, the ball rotated, picking up ink from the ink cartridge and leaving it on the paper.

Personalized Pens

BRUSSELS (AFP) –
Talks next month between Iran and six world powers on Tehran's nuclear programme will probably be held in Turkey, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Tuesday.

The talks from October 1 will "very likely" be held in Turkey, Solana told reporters in Brussels ahead of EU foreign ministers' talks.

The five UN Security Council permanent members -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- plus Germany are due to take part in the talks with Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.

"At this point in time, we are going to try to enter into a negotiation," said Solana, stressing the "double-track approach," -- the carrot and stick of trade, aid and sanctions.

It will be the first high-level meeting since the Obama administration took over in the United States and initiated its more open policy towards Tehran, a European diplomatic source said.

The last encounter, with the United States taking part, was in July 2008 in Geneva.

The meeting comes after Iran submitted a document to world powers laying out its position on resolving several global security problems. The text said the Islamic republic was ready to enter into negotiations on a number of issues.

Western nations are calling on Iran to halt its uranium enrichment drive which they suspect is for making atomic weapons.

Tehran denies the charges and says its nuclear programme has peaceful goals.

The United States has said the new offers from Iran are "not really responsive" to concerns about its nuclear programme, dampening hopes for new talks aimed at breaking a three-year impasse.

Tehran is already under three sets of UN sanctions and European diplomats said Friday that the EU could consider introducing more unilateral sanctions if the UN Security Council cannot agree to do so.

Europe and others envisage adopting fresh sanctions if the impasse persists, but are aware that reluctance from veto-wielding UN Security Council nations Russia and China could limit their effectiveness.

http://www.pictureprettykites.com

A kite is a flying tethered object that depends upon the tension of a tethering system. The necessary lift that makes the kite wing fly is generated when air (or in some cases water ) flows over and under the kite's wing, producing low pressure above the wing and high pressure below it. This deflection also generates horizontal drag along the direction of the wind. The resultant force vector from the lift and drag force components is opposed by the tension of the one or more lines or tethers. The anchor point of the kite line may be static or moving (e.g., the towing of a kite by a running person, boat, or vehicle ).

Tails are used for some single-line kite designs to keep the kite's nose pointing into the wind. Spinners and spinsocks can be attached to the flying line for visual effect. There are rotating wind socks which spin like a turbine. On large display kites these tails, spinners and spinsocks can be 50 feet (15m) long or more.

KABUL (AFP) –
Afghans are awaiting the latest tranche of results from key elections amid concerns that investigations into vote-rigging claims could drag on, creating a dangerous political vacuum.

Up to 99 percent of the laborious ballot count from the August 20 poll is expected to be announced around 5:00pm (1230 GMT), but the winner will not be officially declared until all electoral fraud allegations are resolved.

The final result was originally scheduled for September 17, but with the Independent Election Commission (IEC) warning up to 500,000 ballots could be quarantined, naming Afghanistan's new president still looks weeks away.

The UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) has already ordered thousands of votes thrown out from 83 polling stations in three provinces, but there is no time-scale for investigations in the rest of the country.

The IEC had hoped to announce preliminary results Saturday, but spokesman Noor Mohammad Noor told AFP the count was not complete, in yet another delay to the arduous process.

"We will announce around 99 percent today," he told AFP. "One percent is not processed, it has not been entered into the system."

He was unable to give a time-scale for the full result.

Fraud concerns raised by the ECC include suspiciously high turnout in provinces where Taliban intimidation kept people away from the polling centres, and inordinately high votes for one candidate -- indications of ballot stuffing.

"We are not sure when the fraud allegations will be reviewed, so we are probably heading for another couple of months of this political crisis," said Haroun Mir of Afghanistan's Centre for Research and Policy Studies.

The IEC has been releasing the results piecemeal, with the last batch released a week ago showing incumbent Hamid Karzai with 54 percent of the votes announced so far.

His main rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, trails with less than 30 percent and has alleged massive state-engineered fraud in favour of a second five-year term for Western-backed Karzai.

Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told the BBC on Friday that any delays could create an unstable environment in a nation where Islamist insurgents are waging a bloody battle against the government.

"The beneficiary of any delays of the sort you're talking about would be the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and everybody understands that," he said.

But Nader Nadery, of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, said the ECC must be given time and resources to do its job.

"The process needs to be worked out. If it is taking a longer time, we should not rush," he said.

The IEC's Noor has said that 447 polling stations, or 200,000 ballot papers, have already been quarantined for investigation by the ECC, with that number expected to rise to 660 polling stations -- up to 500,000 ballot papers.

The presidential and provincial council elections were seen as a key test of Western-backed efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan eight years after a US-led invasion overthrew the Taliban regime.

But instead of emerging from decades of war, increasing attacks by the regrouped Taliban have hobbled development, while about 100,000 US and NATO troops are in the country backing up government forces.

Military commanders are expected to ask President Barak Obama for more troops in Afghanistan, though senior lawmakers in Washington have warned that opposition to a fresh military build-up is growing.

On Friday, seven Afghan police were killed in a Taliban raid on their post in northern Kunduz province, the local governor said.

A roadside bomb also killed six civilians in southern Kandahar on Friday, while two children were killed and two others wounded in a similar blast in eastern Khost province, police and local officials said.