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The nation’s sales of passenger cars, buses and trucks rose to 13.6 million, the fastest pace in at least 10 years, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. In the U.S., sales slumped 21 percent to 10.4 million, the fewest since 1982, according to Autodata Corp.

China’s vehicle sales have surged since 1999 as economic growth averaging more than 9 percent a year has helped automakers including General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG compensate for slumping demand in the U.S. and Europe. The market will likely remain the world’s largest, even as sales slow this year on a reduction in tax cuts, according to Booz & Co.

“China is becoming the center stage of development for the 21st century global auto industry,” said Bill Russo, a Beijing- based senior adviser at Booz & Co., which advises automakers. “Economic growth has directly translated into growth in automobile sales.”

The magazine reported that after 9/11, the CIA used one of Prince’s homes in Virginia as a covert training facility for hit teams that would hunt Al Qaeda suspects globally. Their job was find, fix and finish: “Find the designated target, fix the person’s routine, and, if necessary, finish him off,” as the magazine put it.

According to Vanity Fair, one of the team’s targets was Mamoun Darkazanli, a naturalized German citizen originally from Syria. Darkazanli has been accused by Spain of being an Al Qaeda supporter with close ties to the alleged 9/11 plotters who lived in Hamburg. The Blackwater/CIA team “supposedly went in ‘dark,’ meaning they did not notify their own station–much less the German government–of their presence,” according to Vanity Fair. “They then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down.” Authorities in Washington, however, “chose not to pull the trigger.”

This week, a senior lawmaker in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union called on Washington to provide an explanation. “If this commando really existed and the US government knew about it but didn’t notify our government then this would be a very grave incident,” said the lawmaker, Wolfgang Bosbach.

His concerns were echoed in the US by Representative Jan Schakowsky, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “This really is part of an ongoing investigation that I can’t talk about, but even the fact that there is that allegation, I think, gives one a picture of the degree to which Blackwater has been completely enmeshed in these secret operations,” Schahowsky said. “And, you know, at least the allegation that they are, I think is disturbing enough. And there is an investigation going on around activities like that.”

“This morning, we set a new all-time record peak load on the electrical system, with customers drawing more than 23,500 megawatt-hours of power,” said Sarah Marmion, FPL spokeswoman. “This breaks FPL’s previous peak record, which occurred on Aug. 17, 2005.”

But there’s no denying that to the earthbound back in the jet-set era half a century ago – when Pan Am’s “Clippers” ruled the air lanes and service was modelled on transatlantic ocean liners – pilots were regarded with an awe just short of that accorded to astronauts.

The exotic blend of international travel, the authority of commanding the ever larger and faster airliners, and those dashing uniforms turned heads, drew autograph hunters and attracted groupies. Pilots also made a lot of money.

Today it is different. Captain Dave Ryter earned so little when he was a co-pilot for a major airline that he lived in a gang area of Los Angeles, commuted for hours to work and made less money than a bus driver.

“I was standing at a gate waiting to commute a few years ago. I was in uniform and a passenger walks over to me and strikes up a conversation as people often do. He said: where’s your second home? I looked at him, thinking he was making a joke. He was serious. I said: actually, it’s my parents’,” said Ryter. “I was living in a very small town home in a gang area and my wife also worked for the two of us to support our family.”

Anyone waiting for their underpants to be checked knows that the glamour went out of flying years ago. But nowhere has the cachet fallen so far as in the US, where pilots on commuter airlines responsible for more than half the country’s flights now earn pitifully low salaries for long, unsocial hours.

Cachet

Many are forced to fly half way around the country before they even begin work. Others sleep in trailers at the back of Los Angeles airport, in airline lounges across the country or even on the floors of their own planes. Some co-pilots, who typically take home about $20,000 (£12,500) a year, hold down second jobs to make ends meet.

Unless they have come through the military, many pilots also start their first jobs deeply in debt. “Many of them come to these jobs with $150,000 of debt for a $15,000-$20,000 starting job,” said Ryter. “It’s hard to make the economics of that work out. But there’s a theory that one day they’ll make a lot more money than that. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But the problem is they are in, for a number of years, quite a hard haul and there’s certainly no glamour. That’s long since gone.”

It is not widely commented on outside of business circles, but the deepening bilateral relationship between New Zealand and the United States would not have occurred by this juncture without the assistance of the mainly Washington-based “friends of New Zealand” – Fonz for short.

They are the US business people and former administration players who have helped drive the quest in Washington for the US and New Zealand to put the 1980s anti-nuclear stoush to one side.

This year, US billionaire Julian Robertson and high-profile Washington lawyer John Mullen were the latest Fonz members to be formally honoured by the New Zealand Government for their contributions.

Robertson provided financial backing and important Washington contacts for NZ’s quest for a bilateral free-trade deal in the early 2000s, when Labour’s Helen Clark made it a priority for her government.

He owns Kauri Cliffs and other lodges, and is a significant art donor. Mullen is the president of the influential US NZ Council, which hosted a successful third Partnership Forum in October, attended by nearly 60 of New Zealand’s most influential politicians and business people.

Robertson was made an honorary knight for his services to business and philanthropy and Mullen an honorary officer of the NZ Order of Merit for services to New Zealand-US relations.

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Other US citizens to be similarly honoured two years ago include Mullen’s predecessor at the council, Fred Benson, and ex-pat Peter Watson, who was a member of the National Security Council under the first Bush administration and later served as chair of the US International Trade Commission and Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

Watson, who was born and raised in Auckland, was also honoured by the Woodrow Wilson foundation as an important bridge between the US and New Zealand.

Gordon Brown, who will chair a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee early this week to discuss the freeze, was today forced to reassure the country that it would not run out of gas or grit for its roads during the coldest weather in 30 years.

Police confirmedtoday that the weather-related death toll had risen to 26. A 90-year-old woman froze to death in her garden near Barnsley after falling in the snow. Widow Mary Priestland was discovered when her neighbour called round to make her tea. A 42-year-old Newcastle woman died after being found lying in the snow this morning. She had told her family she was going for a walk at 7pm on Friday.

Concerns have now switched to food supply. Sub-zero temperatures have made it impossible to extract some vegetables from the ground. Producers of brussels sprouts and cabbages are all reporting problems with harvesting. Cauliflowers are said to have turned to “mush” in the sustained frost, with the result that only imported ones are available – at more than £2 each.

“Food is selling fast and there is a problem with replenishing it,” said Stephen Alambritis of the Federation of Small Businesses. “One business I spoke to said it was like Christmas Eve, with people rushing to buy up food. This will inevitably have an impact on food prices.”

Food prices had already started to edge up after a sustained period of low inflation. Food inflation increased by 3.7% in December, up from 2.8% in November, said the British Retail Consortium.

In Ireland, 6,000 acres of potatoes remains unharvested and there are claims that up to three-quarters of the crop may be ruined. Potato growers in Northern Ireland say they are facing some of the biggest losses in recent history because of frost damage.

Meanwhile, greengrocers in some of the worst-hit areas are reporting shortages, with the price of carrots and parsnips reportedly rising by 30% in some small shops. A spokesman for the National Farmers’ Union said: “There are isolated examples of farms struggling to get milk supplies out, but so far the majority of farmers, although finding it difficult, are getting on with the job.” Milk suppliers in Somerset said they feared they may have to dump 100,000 litres of organic milk because tankers could not get through.

In a move that underscores the severity of the situation, on Monday the government will permit an emergency relaxation of European laws regulating the driving hours for hauliers involved in the distribution of animal feed. Under the temporary rules, the hauliers will be allowed to drive for 10 hours rather than the EU maximum of nine. There will also be a reduction in their mandatory daily rest requirements, from 11 to nine hours.

Today, the prime minister insisted gas supplies were not running out, despite record levels of demand. In a podcast from Downing Street, Brown said: “I can assure you: supplies are not running out. We’ve got plenty of gas in our own backyard – the North Sea – and we also have access to the large reserves in Norway and Netherlands.”

Last week, nearly 100 large businesses were forced to stop using gas in an attempt to conserve supplies.

Brown also tried to allay concerns over salt stocks. “Working with the suppliers and the highway authorities, we are making sure stocks of salt to grit roads and pavements get to where they’re most needed,” he said.

On Friday, a government emergency planning committee met to discuss the UK’s state of preparation if the cold weather continues. The committee heard the country has a stockpile of 320,000 tonnes of gritting salt, but transport sources suggest the UK is getting through 60,000 tonnes a day, more than four times the amount produced.

Further supplies are due to arrive from Spain and the US later this month. However, some have questioned how the UK will cope if these supplies prove insufficient and the cold snap returns. “The government has failed to build up a strategic Highways Agency reserve and ministers have sat on their hands,” said the Conservatives’ local government spokeswoman, Caroline Spelman.