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An experimental program that begins today at Tulsa International Airport will test whether the $170,000 body scanners could replace $10,000 metal detectors that have screened airline passengers since 1973. Airports in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, Albuquerque and Salt Lake City will join the test in the next two months, TSA spokesman Christopher White said.

The scanners aim to close a loophole by finding non-metallic weapons such as plastic and liquid explosives, which the TSA considers a major threat. The machines raise privacy concerns because their images reveal outlines of private body parts.

“We’re getting closer and closer to a required strip-search to board an airplane,” said Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union.

White said each scanner has explanatory signs on how the machines work and posters showing the image they create.

Germany said it was not planning to extend the role of the state through the bill, which it described as a last resort and could lead to the forced nationalisation of struggling German lender Hypo Real Estate.

This was the start of Operation Diesel involving more than 700 British and Afghan troops, including the SAS, in a mission to hunt down the vast stores of narcotics which are being used to fund the Afghan insurgency.

By the time it ended, after five days of rolling combat, opium worth more than £50m had been found hidden behind high walls of |purpose-built factories and storehouses. It was one of the biggest single finds of drugs caches. The operation also highlighted the new role for British troops since Nato’s controversial decision to extend its remit to embrace counter-narcotics. It was a move opposed by many commanders concerned about creating another enemy – disgruntled poppy farmers.

However, with Afghanistan providing 92 per cent of the world’s heroin supply, and a sizeable portion of the revenue going to the Taliban, the US have been insistent that the drug trade should be directly targeted. General John Craddock, the American commander of Nato forces in Europe, has declared that troops in Afghanistan can open fire on traffickers without the need for direct evidence.

Helmand, which produces 44 per cent of the national crop, is likely to see similar missions in the future. Sangin is one of the most violent parts of the province and has become a conduit for Taliban fighters and weapons coming from across the Pakistani border, with drugs going in the other direction. What was discovered during the raid in the Sapwan Qala area showed the scale of the opium cottage industry: 1,295kg of wet |opium and the equipment needed to turn it into street-level heroin including 5,000kg of ammonium chloride, 1,025 litres of acetic anhydride, 1,000kg of salt and 300kg of calcium hydroxide. Then there was the evidence of the intrinsic link between the trade and violence – Kalashnikov assault rifles, PKM heavy-calibre machine guns, rocket- propelled grenade launchers, thousands of rounds of ammunition and motorbikes modified for carrying out suicide attacks.

One of biggest drugs caches was being guarded by attack dogs. A marine said: “One of them was a massive guard dog which has had its ears and tail cut off. We were extremely wary because, at the same time, we were looking out for mines and IEDs (improvised explosive devices)”.

As the troops moved through the villages they came across former family homes converted to process opium. There were huge vats, presses and chemicals as well as piles of burlap sacks to pack the heroin.

“In one compound we found 10 to 15 barrels of wet opium cooking away,” said Marine Jake McEndoo, of 45 Commando. “It was the most I have ever seen.”

Meanwhile, Taliban fighters, dodging in and out of the warren of alleyways, maintained a steady stream of Kalashnikov and RPG fire. Captain Olly Osborne, of 45 Commado, said they were clearing a compound when an RPG buzzed over their heads. He said: “It was fired by a guy who came out of an alleyway. Our guys opened up on him in response”. The team then came under fire from a heavy machine gun until it was silenced by cannon fire from an Apache helicopter gunship.

Brigadier Gordon Messenger, commander of British troops in Helmand, said: “The links between the Taliban and the drugs trade are well proven and we know that the revenue from narcotics production directly funds the insurgency. This was a clinical, precise strike, supported by strong intelligence, which has had a powerfully disruptive effect on known insurgent and |narcotics networks in the area.”

But in an interview with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Obama also said military means alone would not solve the problem.

U.S. officials have said Washington and its allies are not winning in Afghanistan, more than seven years after toppling the Taliban for giving sanctuary to al Qaeda leaders responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.

The extra 17,000 troops will increase the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan by more than 40 percent.

President Barack Obama.

In a court brief quietly filed Monday, Michael Hertz, Obama’s acting assistant attorney general, said it was necessary to delay an effort to force Rove to be deposed in a congressional investigation into the firing of nine US Attorneys and the alleged political prosecution of a former Alabama governor.

Hertz said an effort was underway to find a “compromise” for Rove, and requested two weeks to broker a deal before proceeding in court.

“The inauguration of a new president has altered the dynamics of this case and created new opportunities for compromise rather than litigation,” Hertz wrote in the brief released late Monday by McClatchy’s Washington, D.C. bureau. “At the same time, there is now an additional interested party — the former president — whose views should be considered.”

The House Judiciary Committee sued the Bush Administration to force Rove to testify last year, saying that Rove shouldn’t be covered by executive privilege. They won. But their case has been held up by an appeal, and Hertz’s filing was the Obama administration’s first legal weighing-in on the matter. Obama’s Justice Department has supplanted the role of Bush’s Justice Department in the case, and their position will likely inform the terms under which Rove is questioned by Congress.

Hertz’s statement mirrors a statement from Obama White House Counsel Gregory Craig published Saturday.

“The president is very sympathetic to those who want to find out what happened,” Craig told The Washington Post. “But he is also mindful as president of the United States not to do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency. So, for that reason, he is urging both sides of this to settle.”

Both Hertz’s and Craig’s statement point to an underlying challenge Obama faces with regard to Rove. Since former President Bush still claims that Rove is protected from testifying to Congress by executive privilege, even after departing office, Obama must decide whether he wants to risk diluting his own executive privilege in the future.

These statements, however, stand in contrast to Obama’s previous rhetoric.

In 2007, while in the Senate, Obama rebuked Bush’s White House as “the most secretive in modern history,” which aimed “to hide its abuse of our justice system.”

Responding to a Bush claim of executive privilege, he said, “By continuing to act as the most secretive White House in modern history, the Bush Administration has once again placed itself above the law in order to hide its abuse of our justice system from the American people. On the first day of an Obama Administration, we will launch the most sweeping ethics reform in history to shed sunlight on the decisions made by government and put the interests of the American people at the center of every decision that’s made.”

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Enormous international flows of unregulated capital have capsized the international financial system – with disastrous consequences for the real economy – in a manner akin to the effect of a roll-on, roll-off ferry shipping too much water. We can now see the cost of free-market capitalism and light-touch regulation. Iceland may provide an extreme example of the consequences of the credit crunch but it also illustrates the dangers facing the more vulnerable economies, the UK included, in a deregulated world where the market rules: a small, open economy; a large, internationally exposed banking sector; an independent currency that is not a serious global reserve currency (of which there are only three); and limited fiscal strength. These propositions have constituted the core economic beliefs – from Thatcher and Lawson to Blair and Brown – that have informed policymaking over the past three decades and without which, it was claimed ad nauseam, an economy could not succeed. Heavy-handed regulation and an overbearing state would serve only to frighten off capital and condemn a country to slow growth, stagnation and global marginality. Now we know the fallaciousness of these claims and the consequences of “letting the market decide”.

Like Iceland, albeit not as extremely, Britain has been living in a fool’s paradise. A failure to regulate the banks and other financial institutions in any meaningful fashion allowed bankers to behave in a grossly irresponsible and avaricious fashion; a boom that was made possible only by a government-enabled credit binge in which people borrowed recklessly; a bloated financial sector that grew to represent over 8 per cent of the total economy and which was found to have been built on foundations of sand; an overvalued currency that made manufacturing exports uncompetitive and thereby resulted in an unnecessary and counterproductive contraction in the manufacturing sector which must now be reversed; an absurd belief that boom and bust had been banished for ever, allowing the banks to turn a blind eye to the inflating of various asset bubbles and display a profound ignorance of the history of capitalism; a persistently chronic current account deficit that can no longer be compensated for by inward capital flows; monstrous salaries for those at the top of the financial and corporate tree, which were justified in terms of a trickle-down effect that remained a chimera, and as the reward for risk which was, in fact, a reward for greed and failure; growing inequality, which was justified in the name of a more competitive economy accompanied by declining social mobility in the cause of an open and flexible labour market; and, finally, the mushrooming of what can only be described as systemic corruption on a mega-scale as the state ignored the gargantuan abuses of those who ran the banks and other financial institutions, while regulatory authorities willingly colluded in their excesses.

This is the sad story of the New Labour era.

The automaker is already surviving on $13.4 billion in federal loans and said in a plan submitted to the Treasury Department that it would seek an additional $16.6 billion if economic conditions worsen, but it could achieve profitability in two years and fully repay its loans by 2017.

The U.S. automaker presented its turnaround plan to the Obama administration as it worked to win concessions from the United Auto Workers union and bondholders to dramatically resize the company. The UAW said it reached a tentative deal with GM, Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor Co. on contract changes but discussions were still under way about how the companies would fund union-run trust funds that will take over the companies’ retiree health care obligations starting next year.

GM said it was making progress but had not yet achieved all the concessions from union workers, debt holders, dealers and suppliers that the Bush administration sough in the loan terms provided last December.

President Barack Obama’s administration will review the plans from GM and Chrysler LLC but could pull the loans if they don’t approve the turnaround plans by March 31. The review could be extended into April, but if the government demands the money back it would force the companies into bankruptcy.

GM predicted it could run out of money before the March deadline and said it is seeking the additional funding under a worst-case-scenario projection, as U.S. sales have plummeted to a 26-year low and auto sales have fallen in other parts of the world.

In December, GM said it might need a total of $18 billion in government financing but only got a commitment of $13.4 billion, including $4 billion that the automaker received Tuesday.

GM wants to receive an additional $2 billion in March and $2.6 billion in April. The company has a $4.5 billion revolving line of credit that must be refinanced in 2011 but now believes that private funding won’t be available, so the automaker is asking the government to lend the money.

If market conditions deteriorate, GM says it may also need an additional $7.5 billion revolving line of credit to stay afloat, for a total potential request of $30 billion.

In the complaint, filed in Federal District Court in Dallas, the S.E.C. accused Mr. Stanford and two associates — James M. Davis, a director and chief financial officer of Stanford Group and the Antigua-based bank affiliate, and Laura Pendergest-Holt, the chief investment officer of both organizations — with misrepresenting the safety and liquidity of the uninsured CDs.

The CDs were sold by Stanford International Bank through the firm’s registered broker-dealer and investment adviser, which are in Houston. Both the bank, which claims $8.5 billion in assets and 30,000 clients in 131 countries, and the brokerage unit, which operates about 30 offices in the United States, were named in the S.E.C. suit. Stanford Financial asserts that it advises about $50 billion in assets.

In its complaint, the S.E.C. said it could not account for the $8 billion in assets that were housed in the Antigua bank after issuing subpoenas for bank records and to various witnesses. Most witnesses, including Mr. Stanford, Mr. Davis, and the Antigua-based bank’s president, failed to appear to testify nor did they produce documents shedding light on the assets.

Ms. Pendergest-Holt said in testimony to the S.E.C. that she could not account for the assets, asserting that Mr. Stanford and Mr. Davis were the only ones with access to the bank’s assets.

In the complaint, the S.E.C. called “improbable, if not impossible” claims by the offshore bank that it paid “significantly” higher returns on its CDs because of the high quality of its investments.

The S.E.C. accused the bank and its affiliates of falsely stating in marketing materials that client funds were placed in liquid financial instruments, when in fact they were invested in private equity funds and real estate. On Nov. 28, Stanford International Bank quoted a rate of 5.375 percent on a $100,000 three-year CD, compared with rates of less than 3.2 percent at American banks. The bank recently has offered rates of more than 10 percent on five-year CDs, the filing stated.

In the complaint, the S.E.C. requested that the defendants’ assets be frozen and that a receiver be appointed to take control of business operations. It also requested that the assets of the bank and other offshore units be repatriated. And the agency asked that Mr. Stanford and the other named executives be required to surrender their passports.

The S.E.C. has come under fire in Congress and the media for ignoring repeated warnings over a period of years about the Bernard L. Madoff, who is accused of running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme. While investigators have been looking at Mr. Stanford and his financial empire’s activities for many months, the scrutiny into the too-good-to-be-true returns on the CDs increased substantially after the Madoff case.

Oddly enough, even the Stanford operation was touched by Mr. Madoff. Despite the fact the Antigua-bank assured investors in a report in December 2008 that it had no “direct or indirect” exposure Mr. Madoff’s funds, the bank suffered an estimated $400,000 in losses, apparently through investments in so-called “feeder funds.”

Additionally, the S.E.C. accused Stanford Capital Management, another Houston-based investment advisory unit, of inflating the performance of its $1.2 billion-asset Stanford Allocation Strategy mutual fund in promoting it to prospective investors.

Pilots, navigators, and air battle managers who retired as a lieutenant colonel or below, and who are younger than 60, may apply for the program. Officers recalled under this program will be used in myriad positions including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, rated staff, and other rated requirements. Officers will be recalled for between 24 and 48 months depending upon the requirement.