Son of disgraced financier Bernard Madoff found dead on anniversary

Mark Madoff, 46, was discovered hanging from the ceiling of his apartment in the fashionable SoHo district of Manhattan on Saturday morning by his father-in-law.

Law enforcement officials told the Associated Press that Madoff was found hanging from a ceiling pipe in the living room of his loft apartment as his two-year-old son slept in a nearby bedroom.

Mr Madoff and his brother Andrew turned their father in to the US authorities in Dec 2008 after he told them he was running a $50 billion Ponzi fraud scheme.

The two sons had senior positions in the business but insisted that they had no knowledge of the fraud for which their father is now serving 150 years in prison.

Mr Madoff's two-year-old son was reportedly in his SoHo apartment with him while his four-year-old child is in Florida with his wife Stephanie.

No suicide note was found but Mrs Madoff had asked her father to check on her husband after the two exchanged emails that raised her alarm.

Mark and Andrew were sued this week by Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee recovering assets for the victims swindled by their father.

The Wall Street Journal also reported this month that they are the subject of criminal tax-fraud cases by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. The two helped run the firm's market-making division, which was separate from the investment arm where their father perpetrated his multibillion-dollar crimes.

Martin Flumenbaum, Mark Madoff's lawyer, said: "This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy.

"Mark was an innocent victim of his father's monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo."

A lawyer for his mother, Ruth Madoff, said she was "heartbroken".

Police link honeymoon murder of Anni Dewani to 2007 killing

Dr Raghavjee was also murdered in a carjacking near his home in King William's Town, 650 miles from Cape Town. Police at the time ruled out robbery as a motive because neither his car nor valuables were taken.

Following the murder of Mrs Dewani, Heather Raghavjee, the doctor's widow, flew to Cape Town to offer comfort to Mr Dewani and his father Prakash. Police appear to have seized upon this as they attempt to build a case against Mr Dewani.

Max Clifford, who has been hired as Mr Dewani's spokesman, said yesterday: "The South African police are orchestrating a politically-motivated smear campaign to protect their tourism industry. It's a total fabrication. How flimsy and ridiculous this whole thing is. If it wasn't so tragic it would be a farce, a comedy."

Mr Clifford said Mrs Raghavjee had never met Mr Dewani prior to the honeymoon murder, and had made the journey to Cape Town only at the request of her daughter-in-law, Alvita Raghavjee, who lives in the Bristol area and knows the Dewani family.

He insisted that Mr Dewani, released from prison last week after a High Court hearing on £250,000 bail, had never previously travelled to South Africa until his honeymoon, and that his passport proved that. He is now "petrified" of being forced to return to South Africa where he is convinced he will not receive a fair trial. Mr Dewani has not been charged with any offence.

Mr Dewani, who runs a care home, has been implicated by Zola Tongo, the taxi driver who drove the newly-weds to the township of Gugulethu, where they were carjacked. Tongo was jailed for 18 years last week for arranging the murder. His sentence was reduced from 25 years after he entered a plea bargain in which he accused Mr Dewani of instigating the killing.

Mrs Dewani was found dead in the back of Tongo's abandoned taxi with a single bullet wound to her neck on Nov 13. Mr Dewani and Tongo escaped unscathed.

Heather Raghavjee confirmed on Saturday she had visited the grieving Dewanis in Cape Town because she felt she could offer them support. She said: "We went through a lot when my husband was murdered and we asked the question 'Why us?'. But I got a lot of support from family members and people from all walks of life. We came to Cape Town to give support to the widower and his parents."

Gen Cele has already sparked controversy in the case, calling Mr Dewani a "monkey". He is a career ANC politician, who had no policing experience prior to being appointed National Commissioner when his predecessor was charged with corruption.

General Cele's spokesman said on Saturday: "The investigation is ongoing even if it means linking Mr Dewani to other cases."

She confirmed a report that the Commissioner had said police were investigating a link between Mr Dewani and a murder in Eastern Cape province three years ago. The Commissioner told South African TV: "We are continuing investigations. There are new revelations about the Eastern Cape, so let's see what's going on."

Captain Thozama Solani, King William's Town police spokesman, confirmed that Dr Raghavjee's case was being looked at afresh.

"We can confirm that the investigations are on again in the case," said Capt Solani.

Despite the police chief's prejudicial comments, Jeff Radebe, South Africa's Justice Minister, yesterday insisted that Mr Dewani would receive a fair trial in the country.

Mr Radebe said: "Our courts jealously uphold and enforce the Constitution, including the accused's rights. It is thus simply untrue to suggest that Shrien Dewani will not get a fair trial, should our extradition request to the United Kingdom succeed."

Dozens killed in series of Afghanistan attacks

Surrendering Taliban militants stand with their weapons as they are presented to the media in Herat: Dozens killed in series of Afghanistan attacks  Photo: AFP/GETTY

The latest string of attacks comes near the end of the deadliest year since the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, with the escalating insurgency costing the lives of a record number of both ordinary Afghans and foreign troops.

In Helmand, southern Afghanistan, a roadside bomb killed 15 civilians, while in the northern Kunduz province a suicide bomber drove a police vehicle and targeted an Afghan National Army convoy, wounding five soldiers and four civilians.

In the east, seven men died in a disputed air strike that sent hundreds pouring onto the streets of Gardez city in violent protest.

Local officials said the air strike, by the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), killed seven road construction company employees.

ISAF said they were attacked by armed men, and fired back.

"The security force ... is currently assessing who the individuals were, why they were armed and why they were in that area at that time of the morning," said ISAF in a statement.

In Gardez, near the air strike, police and protesters fired at each other and burning tyre barricades filled the streets with smoke.

Six civilians and two policemen were wounded, said Nader Noori, doctor at the Gardez hospital.

Despite the presence of about 150,000 foreign troops, casualties have risen rapidly this year.

According to UN figures, 1,271 civilians were killed in the first six months of this year, up by a fifth on the same period in 2009.

Mr Obama is expected to unveil a review of his Afghanistan war strategy next week, although officials have said they do not expect it to result in any major policy shifts.

Wikileaks: Russia trailed Litvinenko killers 'but Britain warned them off'

Alexander Litvinenko in hospital in November 2006, three days before he died Photo: Getty/Natasja Weitsz

A leaked US diplomatic memo contains claims by a former KGB officer that Russian officials had known about individuals moving radioactive substances into London before the dissident spy was killed, in 2006.

The disclosure, the latest cable to released by Wikileaks, could reignite the deep diplomatic row that followed the assassination.

Litvinenko, a former KGB agent who lived and worked in Britain, was poisoned in November 2006 using polonium-210, a rare radioactive isotope, a killing blamed by his associates on Russian agents.

The leaked memo was reported in the Observer newspaper, which said the contents of the cable are likely to be rejected in many quarters as a clumsy attempt by Moscow to deflect accusations it was involved in the killing.

The memo, dated December 26 2006, recorded details of a dinner meeting at the US embassy in Paris between Russian Special Presidential Representative Anatoliy Safonov and US Ambassador-at-Large Henry Crumpton.

Speaking about the need for bilateral co-operation to tackle terrorism, Safonov "cited the recent events in London – specifically the murder of a former Russian spy by exposure to radioactive agents – as evidence of how great the threat remained", the leaked cable said.

"The implication was that the [Russia] was not involved, although Safonov did not offer any further explanation," read a comment added by U.S. embassy staff.

Documenting later exchanges between the men, the memo added: "Safonov claimed that Russian authorities in London had known about and followed individuals moving radioactive substances into the city but were told by the British that they were under control before the poisoning took place."

The leaked cable comes days after Russia criticised Britain over its handling of the case of an alleged Russian spy.

Katia Zatuliveter, 25, an aide to a Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock who sits on the Commons defence committee, faces deportation after being arrested on suspicion of espionage.

Bloomberg rejects independent run for president - no way, no how

"No way, no how," Mr Bloomberg declared on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday. "I've got a great job."

He said he wanted to focus on the rest of his term as mayor, which ends in 2014, emerging as "a very good, maybe the greatest mayor ever".

Mr Bloomberg's frequent public comments on the need for bipartisanship in Washington as well as private urgings from some of his senior aides have fuelled talk that he could run against President Barack Obama in 2012. The mayor flirted with running for the White House in 2008.

In a speech in New York last Wednesday, Mr Bloomberg, 68, a lifelong Democrat who became a Republican before becoming an independent in 2008, blasted liberals for thinking that the US government could create jobs on its own. He then laid into conservatives for trusting too much in unfettered free markets.

Mr Bloomberg insisted his comments had nothing to do with a possible presidential run. "I am going to speak out on those things that affect New York City. That's my job."

He called on any aides whispering about a possible run to "cease and desist" immediately.

"People will say 'Oh, you shouldn't be talking on the national level,' " the mayor went on. "Well we created 55,000 private-sector jobs in New York in the last 12 months. That's much greater than the percentage we should create with our population."

Peter Fenn, a senior Democratic strategist, suggested that Mr Bloomberg might have accepted the reality that the electoral system was stacked against an Independent.

"To win he would need a Republican candidate who self-destructed and Barack Obama to be in deep, deep trouble, neither of which is impossible, which is why he has been keeping his options open.

But he added: "It is very difficult to win as a third party candidate and I don't see him as a protest candidate. He won't spend a billion dollars just to make a point."

Dan Gerstein, a Democratic consultant based in New York, said: "There is a vacuum in that there has never been a better time for an Independent presidential candidate to exploit the many people in the middle who are upset with both parties."

Suspected suicide bomb in central Stockholm injures two and panics shoppers

A still image taken from a video footage shows a firefighter attempting to put out the fire of a burning car in Stockholm Photo: REUTERS

Two explosions rocked the busy shopping street of Drottninggatan among the afternoon crowds.

A Swedish news agency said it had received messages about 10 minutes before the blasts in Arabic and Swedish, warning of unspecified “action”.

The email warning, 10 minutes before the bombs, protested about the country’s presence in Afghanistan, where it has a force of 500 soldiers, mainly in the north of the country.

“Our acts will speak for themselves,” the agency quoted the message as saying. “Now your children, your daughters and your sisters will die as our brothers, our sisters and our children are dying.”

The email had sound files in Swedish and Arabic.

The agency said the warning, which was also sent to Sweden’s Security Police (SAPO), also referred to caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed by the Swedish artist Lars Vilks.

Petra Sjolander, a police spokesman, said the first explosion was in a car containing gas canisters.

The dead man was found at the site of the second blast about 300 yards away.

According to reports, the man was carrying pipe bombs, as well as a backpack full of nails. He shouted Arabic slogans before setting off the explosion.

Gabriel Gabiro, a journalist, was inside a watch store on the opposite side of the street from the second explosion and saw people running from the scene.

“I saw some people crying, perhaps from the shock,” he said.

“There was a man lying on the ground with blood coming out in the area of his belly and with his personal belongings scattered around him.”

Mr Gabiro said the blast was “quite loud” and he saw smoke coming from the area where the man was lying.

“It shook the store that I was in,” he said. “Then there was smoke coming into the store.”

Police were last night investigating whether other, unexploded bombs were on the scene.

Police spokesman Ulf Johansson said: “We need more investigation and of course we need more witnesses. The car exploded with a series of minor explosions and there was also some kind of explosion close up to where we found the dead man.”

Putin serenades film star crowd

Called onto the stage by the hostess in St Petersburg, Mr Putin said: "Like an overwhelming majority of people, I can neither sing nor play, but I very much like doing it."

His audience on Friday included Sharon Stone, Monica Bellucci, Kevin Kostner and Gerard Depardieu.

Wearing a black suit and a white shirt, Mr Putin went on stage and played the opening notes to "Blueberry Hill" on the piano, then stepped behind the microphone and sang, backed by several musicians and singers.

Mr Putin, 58, described as an "alpha-dog" in US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks website, has a black belt in judo, and frequently undertakes testosterone-fuelled feats such as flying a fighter jet or shooting a Siberian tiger.

He has thus far shown little interest in musical pursuits, but his piano performance suggested he has been able to squeeze in some music lessons.

The prime minister's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Mr Putin takes lessons "but very rarely, when he has time".

He said Mr Putin learned the lyrics to "Blueberry Hill" as part of his English-language studies.

Mr Putin also attempted to play the Soviet-era spy movie song "From Where the Motherland Begins", which he said he had sung with the Russian agents, but hit a wrong key and stopped, promising to rehearse it better for the next performance.

Mr Putin, a former KGB agent, remains Russia's most popular politician and is seen as a senior partner in tandem with President Dmitry Medvedev. Both have said they do not rule out taking part in the 2012 presidential election.

"Medvedev will now have to learn to play saxophone," said a participant at the event.

German man fails in lightbulb campaign

Lawyers argued on Mr Rotth?user's behalf that 95 per cent of the energy the lightbulbs were converted into heat not light Photo: ALAMY

An EU wide ban on the importation and sale of the powerful bulbs was imposed last year on environmental grounds.

Customs will now seize and destroy 40,000 bulbs imported by Siegfried Rotthäuser must be destroyed.

Mr Rotthäuser had advertised the lightbulbs as a source of heat and the components of a resistance art project.

Lawyers argued on his behalf that 95 per cent of the energy the lightbulbs were converted into heat not light.

Consumers must purchase compact fluorescent and LED lights as the EU seeks to phase out conventional lighting.

Amanda Knox weeps as she insists she's innocent of murdering Meredith Kercher

"What you are going through and what Meredith went through is unacceptable and incomprehensible. I remember Meredith and my heart breaks for you. I am honoured to have known her. I don't know how you must feel, your suffering over a lost life."

Knox's words appeared to be in response to John Kercher, Meredith's father, who recently complained that Knox had been accorded the "status of a minor celebrity" while his daughter was a forgotten victim.

Miss Kercher, a student in the university town of Perugia, was found semi naked and with her throat cut in the bedroom of the house that she shared with Knox, and the prosecution said that she was the victim of a brutal sex attack that was made to look like a botched break in.

Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 25, were convicted of murder and sexual assault last December and given prison sentences of 26 and 25 years respectively. Both deny the charges and are appealing against their convictions. At the same time the judge and six jurors - none of whom played any part in the original trial - are being asked by the prosecution to increase the prison sentences to life.

Dressed in a grey pullover and jeans, Knox appeared apprehensive as she was led into court flanked by prison guards, ignoring questions from journalists and looking down to the ground.

By contrast Sollecito, dressed in a white jacket and sporting a new short haircut, appeared more upbeat and smiled to his father, Francesco, who was at the back of the court.

The court fell silent as Knox spoke and her lawyers, Carlo Dalla Vedova and Luciano Ghirga, comforted her. A university friend, Madison Paxton, who was present in court also wept.

Knox said: "I am appearing before you for a second time. I never thought I would find myself here. I still don't know how to face all this." She added: "I put my faith in the fact that everything, this enormous mistake would be sorted out, with the knowledge that every day in jail and every day in court would be a step closer to freedom.

"This is the only hope I have in this darkness in which I am living. I have been unjustly condemned. These last three years have been an experience of anguish and fear."

Pointing out that the pair had been in prison for three years now since their original arrest, she said: "Now I stand in front of you again, not scared but afraid that the truth will not be recognised. We are paying with our lives for a crime we did not commit.

"We deserve our freedom, like everyone else in this court room today. We don't deserve the three years (we have been in prison) and we don't deserve to spend any more time (in prison).

"I am innocent, Raffaele is innocent, we did not kill Meredith. Please truly consider this enormous mistake, no justice is done to Meredith our her loved ones by taking away our freedom for something we have not done. I am not the person the accused say I am."

She added: "I am a girl who is also asking for justice. Raffaele and I are innocent. We deserve our freedom. Taking away our lives does not give Meredith justice."

Knox and Sollecito's lawyers are basing their appeal on a lack of motive, the failure to discover the murder weapon, and poor DNA evidence which they say should not have been admitted.

Critics viewed the DNA evidence presented in court as inadequate. No physical evidence placing Knox at the murder scene was ever found, and 19 samples of genetic evidence discovered in the blood-stained bedroom were never identified.

The original trial was told that a knife compatible with the murder weapon was found in Sollecito's kitchen by police, and that it bore traces of DNA from Knox on the handle and from Miss Kercher on the blade.

But the results were too inconclusive to have been considered as evidence in any other court, say Knox's lawyers, who are requesting a third party examination of all the DNA material. The original trial judge, Giancarlo Massei, refused a request for independent analysis of all the forensic evidence

Defence lawyers will also ask for two new witnesses to be allowed to give evidence to the court: Luciano Aviello, a Mafia supergrass, for Knox and Mario Alessi, a convicted child killer, for Sollecito.

Aviello wrote to the original trial court three times to claim that his brother Antonio - a fugitive mobster - and an Albanian were responsible for the murder, and had given him the murder weapon and Miss Kercher's hosue keys to hide. Neither has ever been found.

Meanwhile Alessi contacted Sollecito's lawyers to say that the third person convicted of the murder - Rudy Guede, from the Ivory Coast, who had a separate, fast-track trial - told him in prison that neither Knox nor Sollecito were involved.

Sollecito's lawyer Luca Maori told the court that he was asking for the '"whole trial to be reopened'' adding that he wanted an independent analysis of all the evidence presented in court.

He said: "We want independent experts with knowledge of medicine, computers and DNA to look again at all of the evidence heard in the first trial. We say it is necessary for all of these aspects to be looked at again.

"In particular the knife that is said to be the murder weapon, the clasp that is from Meredith Kercher's bra and a stain on pillowcase found next to the body.

"We also want an expert to investigate whether it is possible, as one witness told the original trial, to hear a scream from the house as she said she did and we want Mario Alessi to tell the court how Guede told him Knox and Sollecito had nothing to do with this murder.''

The judge, Claudio Pratillo Hellman, is expected to decide next week whether to permit the original evidence to be fully reviewed, and whether to allow new witnesses. If he does so, the appeal hearings are expected to continue until next summer. If he decides against, it the appeal could conclude next month.

Miss Kercher, from Coulsdon, Surrey, was in Italy as part of her Leeds University degree course and had only been in Perugia for two months when she was murdered in November 2007.

As Knox began her statement the Kercher family lawyer Francesco Maresca, walked out and afterwards said: "She bores me. I didn't want to stay and hear what she had to say. I didn't want to cause any controversy.

"I thought what she had to say was late and inopportune. Her words came after Meredith's father spoke last week. What she said lacked content and was made just to impress the court.''

US diplomat Richard Holbrooke critically ill after surgery

He was rushed to the nearby George Washington University hospital where he underwent surgery to a torn aorta, the major artery carrying blood from the heart to other parts of the body.

"Doctors completed surgery to repair a tear in his aorta,” a State Department spokesman said. “He is in critical condition and has been joined by his family.”

His friend and boss, secretary of state Hillary Clinton, visited the hospital on Saturday.

Husain Haqqani, the Pakistani ambassador to Washington, had breakfast with Mr Holbrooke just hours before his illness and said he seemed fit and healthy as he worked on meetings with top officials from Islamabad. “It’s taken us all by surprise,” he said. “He’s a man of tremendous energy who has given such a lot to the US and the world in his role as a diplomat.”

Mr Holbrooke married Kati Marton, an author and former television news correspondent, in 1995. The couple does not have children, although she has a son and a daughter from a previous marriage to renowned television anchor Peter Jennings.

His combative style with the warring factions as he forged the Dayton agreement earned him the nickname of “the bulldozer” and he was nominated for a Nobel peace prize for his work on Bosnia.

Viewed as imposing by some and domineering by others, Mr Holbrooke has been at the centre of US diplomacy since his first posting to Vietnam in 1963.

He has served as assistant secretary of state for Asia and Europe, ambassador to Germany and the United Nations and special envoy on Kosovo during previous Democratic administrations.

He is a close ally of Mrs Clinton, serving as chief foreign policy advisor on her 2008 presidential campaign before being appointed to his current role - which he has called “the most difficult job I’ve had in my career” - by Mr Obama.

Mr Holbrooke’s confrontational approach has earned him critics as well as admirers and a recent book by journalist Bob Woodward put him at the heart of an internal battle over Afghan policy within Mr Obama’s national security team.

Vice President Joe Biden was quoted calling him “the most egotistical bastard I’ve ever met". And Mr Holbrooke was quoted as saying Mr Obama’s approach “can’t work", although in public he has been a loyal supporter of administration policy.

He has clashed regularly with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, whom he was reported to have confronted over voting irregularities in elections last year.

Mr Holbrooke was mocked by Gen Stanley McChrystal in article published in Rolling Stone magazine in June. The general, who was sacked as commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan after the profile appeared, was quoted as saying: “Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke... I don’t even want to open it.”

Mr Holbrooke was born in New York in 1941 to Jewish immigrants from Germany and Poland. He graduated from Brown University in 1962 and joined the State Department in response to President John Kennedy’s call to national service.

He has also worked as an academic and journalist and held two high-profile Wall Street positions.

Pakistan floods: No food, no homes, no help

Concrete walls, collapsed bridges and broken electricity pylons reared out of the flood water which must have been 10 feet deep.

The World Bank estimates the floods that struck Pakistan in July and August have caused nearly $10 billion worth of damage to the infrastructure of a country already deep in debt.

Five months later, huge areas of the country are still stricken, and farming families who once provided for themselves and for others through the crops they grew are reduced to the status of helpless supplicants, still unable even to make a start on rebuilding their lives and livelihoods.

My first sight of the havoc the floods have wrought was from a Pakistani Navy hovercraft, as with a camera crew and accompanied by a leading doctor I travelled the area by the only means possible.

Along the flooded streets, electric cables sparked menacingly and iron girders lurked below the surface to snag boat propellers.

Back in October, no helicopter could land here either, and the navy commandos urged me to beware of poisonous snakes, which would drop from the trees above.

I had come to KN Shah with Dr Shershah Syed, a surgeon from Karachi, who was responding to an SOS call to bring desperately needed medicines to the city. As we landed on a patch of high ground, people clustered around and although it was clear that many were sick it was equally clear that what they really needed was food.

An emaciated woman held out a limp and scrawny baby and demanded rice. She said they had eaten nothing all day.

The doctor set up a clinic at the landing point where people bring children suffering from diarrhoea. In the wake of the flood, disease has spread: across Pakistan there have been 99 cases of flood-borne cholera, 15 deaths from dengue fever and many more among young children from diarrhoea.

As small navy dinghies arrived and commandos started unloading bags of rice, people who had heard that food was on its way ran towards us.

Lieutenant Zeeshan Yousuf Zaidi, the officer in charge, pushed them quickly into a line, afraid the situation would spiral out of control even though people were weak and looked dejected.

"They are desperate for food," he said. "This is only the third time we have been able to come over here – the problem is it's so remote."

Apart from the navy boats there was no sign of any government relief effort. The Navy is popular and saved many lives during the flood, but the people here, as elsewhere in Pakistan, say the government abandoned them.

"There's no proper distribution system," one man told us. "Some people get more than they need but we're not getting enough."

Along a narrow embankment which stretched for miles above the waters, thousands of people were living with their animals, without proper shelter or regular food.

The shocking fact about events in Pakistan is that even now, almost two months after this journey in late October, so little has improved. Large areas of Sindh remain under water. Tents, long lines of white canvas along the embankments, have been erected for the many families made homeless as an estimated 1.6 million houses countrywide were damaged or destroyed by the flood waters.

But, as the chill of winter sets in, there are still an estimated 600,000 families without even emergency shelter.

The Pakistani government announced last month that it would spend a further 200 milloion rupees (£1.5 million) rehabilitating flood victims in Dadu, and insists it is doing all it can to help the victims.

But even proud supporters of the country like Dr Shershah, a social campaigner who received his medical training in Britain and vowed to improve conditions in Pakistan, find the apparent failure of the institutions of government hard to take.

It is individuals like him, from Pakistan's growing but frustrated middle class, who are driving much of the relief effort.

On a tiny patch of land in the water we discovered a group of women and children huddled in a washed-out compound. They had fled here from their own village as the floods rose and their men took the animals to higher ground.

The women were weak, hungry and above all afraid – this is bandit country and criminals roam in boats at night looting what little people have left.

"We are all alone," Sherbano said as she held her sick mother's hand. "We have no food or water, the men just abandoned us."

The women were dangerously anaemic. Poor labourers, weakened by constant childbearing and lack of food even before the flood, they were now on the edge of starvation.

"This is the result of decades of government failure," said Dr Shershah. "It is criminal to have a country with an atomic bomb, yet where such poor people live."

Today KN Shah remains under three feet of water and community leaders say the government is still failing to help them. The UN has delivered food in recent weeks but has warned that Dadu faces a protracted emergency well into next year. There still aren't enough tents, despite government promises to provide them. So saturated is the soil that it could take another three to six months for the waters to subside.

Near the town of Sukkur the camps set up for some flood victims are full of landless labourers like Maluk Sheikh and his wife Gholamee – her name means "slave", an indication of her status in this feudal society. They worked for their landlord for a share of the crop and were already in his debt. Now their village and fields are flooded and they won't be able to grow rice for a year.

Their story revealed another failure by the government. There were 17 family members in the camp, desperate for the compensation which had been promised to the married men in each household: 20,000 rupees (£150) for each family, equivalent to four months' wages for a labourer.

Yet securing their entitlement was not simple and there were widespread complaints that this system was open to abuse. I heard several reports of bank guards demanding bribes to help people get access to their cash.

At a school near the camp hundreds of men battled to get through the gates – held back by sweating policemen with big sticks.

"They are taking 3,000 rupees (£22) from us to get to the front of the queue," protested one man, who didn't want to give his name. "I've been coming here for 15 days and haven't got a penny."

Others crowd round with similar stories to tell of corruption as they tried to obtain their so-called "watan card" – exchangeable for money in an ATM cash machine.

Pakistan has the biggest electronic identity card system in the world and it was incongruous to see barefoot men wearing rags having their photographs and thumb prints taken by high-tech scanners.

Because he had lost his identity card, Maluk could not prove where he was from, and so his plea for compensation was rejected until he could obtain a new ID. His father Ghulam's application was approved, however, enabling him to return to his village, 80 miles away.

Days later they and their family waded through water to what was left of their homes, carrying beds and trunks on their heads, with babies strapped to the women's backs. The walls of their house were still standing but the roof and all the contents had been washed away. The family would need food aid for at least a year, just to survive.

"I will be able to stay in my village now and try and rebuild our lives, thanks to the watan card," said Ghulam Haider. "Without it we were in a hopeless situation."

Their desperate plight is being repeated all over Pakistan as foreign donors prove reluctant to give to a country with a reputation for militancy and corruption, and the Pakistan government struggles to cope in the aftermath of the floods. So far less than half the UN's appeal for nearly $2 billion in aid has been met.

"The world's attention is waning but millions still need assistance," said Baroness Amos, the former British minister who is now the UN official in charge of humanitarian and emergency aid and visited the relief effort last week. "The world must not close its eyes to the needs of Pakistan's people."

*Jane Corbin's film Pakistan's Flood Doctor, a Below the Radar production for This World will be shown on Monday (13 December) on BBC2 at 7pm

Cancun Climate Change Conference agrees plan to cut carbon emissions

Her action was greeted with a standing ovation as relief swept through the conference hall after two weeks of tense negotiating. The Indian environment minister described her as "a goddess" for her achievement.

The UN has been attempting to achieve a deal on climate change for more than 15 years but found it impossible to get all members to agree. Last year in Copenhagen the talks came close to collapse, embarrassing world leaders who had jetted in to "save the planet". This time expectations were kept deliberately low for fear of killing off the UN process completely.

However the Mexican presidency managed to keep the process alive by making great efforts to include poor countries and by holding open meetings.

The deal falls far short of what some scientists and environmentalist claim is needed to stop catastrophic global warming. But it represents a significant step towards the eventual goal of many, which is a legally binding treaty aimed at preventing temperatures rising more than 2C (3.6F) this century.

For the first time all countries are committed to cutting carbon emissions under an official UN agreement. Rich nations also have to pay a total of £60 billion annually from 2020 into a "green fund" to help poor countries adapt to floods and droughts. The money will also help developing countries, including China and India, switch to renewable energy sources including wind and solar power.

It is not yet decided how the funds will be raised, although preferred options are a new tax on aviation or shipping, or increased carbon taxes more generally.

A new fund will be also set up to help poor countries protect rainforests. The controversial scheme, known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, also came close to collapse but was saved by an agreement to protect the rights of indigenous peoples, while also leaving the door open for big business to make money from carbon markets.

David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said the UN agreement would force governments to act. "The Cancun agreement is a very significant step forward in renewing the determination of the international community to tackle climate change through multilateral action," he said.

The UK is already committed to taking the lead by cutting its emissions 34 per cent by 2020.

That target will increase to 42 per cent as soon as a legally binding global deal is achieved. Around £1.5 billion will be paid towards the green fund by Britain every year from 2020.

During the talks the UK played a key role in helping nations to resolve the contentious issue of the Kyoto Protocol. Developing nations were refusing to sign up to a deal unless the existing treaty, signed by most developed nations except the US, was honoured. So British lawyers drafted a compromise under which the protocol is guaranteed so long as developing countries also make cuts.

Chris Huhne, the Climate Change Secretary, said the deal would transform the world economy by encouraging both the private sector and governments to invest in green growth, especially in the developing world.

"What this does is show there's a real consensus internationally, a growing consensus from places a year ago you wouldn't expect, such as China and India, that we do have to go down this path to a low carbon economy and it's the road to prosperity," he said.

However Wendel Trio of Greenpeace said the targets need to be a lot tougher to stop global warming. "Cancun may have saved the process but it did not yet save the climate," he said.

Asad Rehman, Friends of the Earth International Climate Campaigner, also said the agreement was weak. But he was relieved that the process has not collapsed as expected.

"The world needed strong and determined action to tackle climate change in Cancun - the outcome is a weak and ineffective agreement but at least it gives us a small and fragile lifeline," he said.

Indian politician granted £100m monument park

Mayawati, leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party, which represents India's poor dalits or 'untouchables' is one of India's most controversial politicians and has built up a multi-million pound fortune from 'gifts' by supporters who regard her as a 'living goddess.'

But the Supreme Court has now given the project its approval on the condition that fifty percent of the 33 hectare park is under dense tree cover.

Until now, the park's statues, which feature her holding her trademark handbag, have been covered under plastic tarpaulins, but will now be unveiled as the final touches to the plinths are completed.

The decision brought an angry reaction from the opposition Samajwadi Party which pledged it would demolish the statue park if it wins the next state election. It said the statues were an insult to the more than 100 million people in the state living on less than £1.30 per day.

"Since the day she assumed power she has been only building monuments of herself all over the state. Under Mayawati, 5000 crores of rupees (around £600 million) have been spent on monuments while so many in Uttar Pradesh are living below the poverty line. It could be used to feed the people," said Rajesh Dixit, an aide to Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Swedish bombs were a protest against Afghanistan war

Another explosion took place, in which the man died, about 300 metres (yards) away. Two people were wounded in that blast.

"Most worrying attempt at terrorist attack in crowded part of central Stockholm. Failed - but could have been truly catastrophic," Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said in a message on Twitter, which was also shown on his blog.

Investigations were underway to see if the two incidents were linked, Lindgren said.

Several hours after the blast, the man's body was still lying on the pavement, covered with a white sheet.

Police vans had cordoned off several streets around the body and the car had been towed away. Elsewhere, the city centre was calm, with people having a normal Saturday night out.

One man said: "It looked as if the man had carried something that exploded in his stomach".

"He had no injuries to the face or body in general and the shops around were not damaged."

He also had a rucksack full of nails and suspected explosive material, the newspaper said. It also quoted eyewitnesses saying the man was shouting in what was apparently Arabic.

The police declined to comment on that report.

TT said the email it received was also sent to the Security Police, which confirmed it had received such a communication, but declined to reveal its contents.

TT said the email had sound files in Swedish and Arabic.

"Our actions will speak for themselves, as long as you do not end your war against Islam and humiliation of the Prophet and your stupid support for the pig Vilks," TT quoted a man as saying in one of the recordings.

TT said the threat was linked to Sweden's contribution to the U.S.-led NATO force in Afghanistan, where it has 500 soldiers, mainly in the north.

It also referred to caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad by the Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who depicted the Prophet with the body of a dog in a cartoon in 2007.

Most Muslims consider any depiction of the founder of Islam as offensive.

"This is the first casualty of my project," said Mr Vilks. "It was an act against the Swedish people to scare them and not to me. The good news was that a terrorist died and not someone else."

Evan Kohlmann, a U.S. terrorism consultant, said a small militant Islamic community had been based in Sweden for some time. But she thought that the Saturday incident, if an attack, was one man's work.

"However, given the scale of this attack and the target, I suspect this is a homegrown local extremist who may or may not have connections to any actual terrorist organization."

"We've seen a flurry of attempted attacks across northern Europe by similar lone wolf militants who were, in one way or another, enraged by the Cartoon controversy."

Lindgren said it was not clear what caused the car to explode. After the first explosion, the gas canisters caused smaller blasts, he said.

Gas canisters were also part of the homemade bomb which failed to avoid in Times Square in 2010 and when a jeep was rammed into Glasgow airport in 2007.

The Sharm Shark mystery: Why are the attacks happening?

Take the case of Shirley Anne Durdin whose head was decapitated and body torn in two after a White Shark attacked her as she snorkelled for scallops of the South Australian coast in 1985.

Then there was Theo Klein, disembowelled by another White that proceeded to tear chunks of flesh from his dead body in front of hundreds of horrified onlookers in 1971 after he was caught in its jaws off the breakers in Buffalo Bay, South Africa.

Perhaps because the file, which contains over 4,000 investigations of shark attacks dating back as far as the 16th century, is largely secret, Mr Burgess is reluctant to discuss recent individual cases.

But when it becomes to the business of killing, it is clear that some sharks go about their task with all the finesse of a medieval executioner faced with a treasonous Plantagenet courtier.

"If something is big enough to get its mouth around your head, the neck is very easily severed," he said. "It can be done in several bites or maybe in just one. A large, fully-grown white shark could cut a human in half."

As a scientist, who was drawn into his profession by reading the books of the oceanographer Jacques Cousteau as a child, Mr Burgess has little appetite for the gore of shark attacks that exercises so morbid a fascination on the rest of us.

Yet the bearded conservationist admits that the shark attacks that have taken place off the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in the past fortnight are "right up there" with the most fascinating investigations he has ever mounted.

Over the space of six days, sharks struck at swimmers in relatively shallow waters along a three-mile stretch of beach lined with some of the most exclusive hotels on the Red Sea Riviera. Four people were maimed and a fifth was killed.

Called in to investigate by panicked Egyptian authorities, Mr Burgess was swiftly able to establish that at least two of the attacks were carried out by the same oceanic whitetip shark, an astonishing revelation in a generally extraordinary case.

In recent years, experts have largely debunked the notion that single "rogue" sharks, unlike the predator dreamt up by the author Peter Benchley in Jaws, ever strike more than one victim. Having discovered that the taste of human flesh is not to their liking, the vast majority of sharks do not make the same mistake again.

Yet photographic evidence clearly showed that a whitetip with a distinctive notch in its tail-fin attacked a Russian man on Nov 30, taking off part of his leg. Six days later, the same shark returned to a nearby stretch of water by the Hyatt Regency hotel.

As her partner Rudi looked on in horror, Renate Sieffert, a German tourist who had been coming to Sharm el-Sheikh for 10 years, was pulled under the water.

Others swimmers described how she screamed as the churning waves around her turned red while the shark thrashed about, tearing at its victim. By the time she was pulled ashore, Renate Sieffert was dead.

The whitefin has been all but absolved of involvement in two of the attacks, thought to have been carried out by shortfin makos, but remains a possible suspect in the mauling of Olga Martsinko, a Russian-Ukrainian woman. So savage was the attack that her left buttock was ripped off, exposing the base of her spinal column.

Only once before has there been unimpeachable evidence of a shark striking more than one human victim. In 1916, a great white killed four people and injured a fifth along an 80-mile stretch of shoreline off the New Jersey Coast. The attacks captured the public imagination and became the inspiration for Jaws.

Although Mr Burgess has investigated that case exhaustively, even recreating the attacks around Matawan Creek, where three of the attacks took place on the same day, he has never been able conclusively to prove why the shark behaved in the way it did.

But the most convincing explanation, he says, is that the great white was in some way injured or malformed, forcing it to attack humans because it was unable easily to hunt its normal prey.

The same may be true of the serial attacker off Sharm el-Sheikh.

"It is something we are looking at here," he said. "Was this just a shark that made a couple of errors of judgment or decided that humans were ok, or was it an act of desperation by a shark trying to make a living in order to survive?"

Solving the mystery is a little like mounting a murder inquiry. In the days he has been in Egypt, Mr Burgess has been questioning witnesses, studying photographs, forensic evidence and pathologist reports and scouring the waters near each of the incidents.

The most pertinent questions revolve around what the sharks were doing so close to the shore in the first place. Both whitetips and makos are pelagic sharks whose natural habitat is far out to sea - and it is here where they are most dangerous.

Whitetips were involved in the deadliest attack on humans ever recorded when they attacked survivors pitched into the water after the USS Indianapolis was struck by a Japanese torpedo in the Pacific in the dying days of the Second World War.

Over 800 sailors survived the initial attack, but over the course of four days in which they trod water clung to flotsam and died of thirst and exposure, at least two dozen, possibly many more, were picked off by whitetips.

But until last week's attacks only two juvenile whitetips had been seen off the coast of Sharm el-Sheikh all year, according to Elke Bojanowski, an expert on Red Sea sharks.

Preliminary findings suggest that humans, both directly and indirectly, are at the very least accessories to the crime.

Unusually warm water temperatures for the season, perhaps the result of global warming, may have lured the sharks into the northern reaches of the Red Sea, far from their normal habitats.

A ship carrying sheep from Australia is also a prime suspect, after it tossed carcasses and waste into the sea as it voyaged up the Red Sea. With such a powerful sense of smell, sharks from 100 miles away could have been attracted by the ship - whose owners are facing possible litigation from the Egyptian government - according to Mr Burgess.

When the meat dried up, the sharks would have struggled to find food because of a dearth of tuna, their favoured prey, probably as a result of overfishing.

Despite everything he has seen, and although he nearly became one of his own statistics after narrowly escaping an encounter with a Lemon Shark by attempting to bop it on the nose, Mr Burgess is a true shark lover.

Sharks may inspire a visceral, even primal fear in humans, particularly after Jaws - a film Mr Burgess says set back the cause of shark conservation by 20 years - but in reality they pose us little danger.

There are an average of five shark-related deaths a year. By contrast, human beings kill up to 75 million sharks annually, for their fins, a delicacy in China, their meat or simply as bycatch. With some species seeing their numbers fall by 99 per cent in 50 years, the king of the seas is facing a battle for its survival.

Which is why, he says, it would send the wrong message to hunt and kill the sharks responsible for the Sharm el-Sheikh attacks. Doing so would not make the beaches safer anyway, something that would be better achieved by increased monitoring of the seas so that beaches can be closed - as happens in America - when sharks are spotted close to shore.

"To catch that animal, you are going to have to find it first," he said.

"That's a lot of expenditure in human time. But in the end what have you got? Sure, you have some retribution for what it did but you have no assurance it was going to do it again and no assurance that its mates won't do it again."

Bernard Madoff's massive financial swindle claims its latest victim as his son Mark commits suicide

It was all based on a lie, however, perhaps the biggest financial lie in history. And on Dec 11, 2008, to the disbelief of the financial world and the horror of his clients, Bernard Madoff was arrested before breakfast in his pyjamas at his $17 million Upper East Side penthouse for conducting the world's biggest scam.

Until then, Mark Madoff had seemed to have it all – an attractive wife, a young family, holiday homes in Nantucket and Connecticut, an apartment in the fashionable SoHo district of Manhattan and a multi-million dollar lifestyle.

But on Saturday morning, on the second anniversary of his father's arrest, just three days after he was named in a civil law suit and amid intensifying speculation that he would face criminal charges, he was found dead in that luxury apartment.

He had taken a black dog lead, tied it to a pipe in the ceiling and hung himself, in the latest tragic twist to a scandal that has ruined countless lives and prompted a number of suicides. He had been in an "increasingly fragile state of mind", according to friends.

The grisly discovery was made shortly before 7.30am by his father-in-law. He had gone to the apartment after Mark's wife Stephanie, who was in Florida with her four year old daughter, became fearful for his wellbeing because of an exchange of emails and calls in which he said "someone should check" on the couple's 22-month-old son, police said.

The toddler was found sleeping in an adjoining bedroom. No suicide note was immediately recovered, but there was no sign of foul-play. "Mark Madoff took his own life today," Martin Flumenbaum, the dead man's lawyer, said in a statement.

"This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy. He is an innocent victim of his father's monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo."

Another friend said that during the past two years, Mark Madoff had not spoken with either of his parents, and had tried unsuccessfully to get a Wall Street trading job in the wake of his father's arrest.

Ira Lee Sorkin, a lawyer for Bernard Madoff, said Mark Madoff's death was "a great tragedy at many levels." He declined to comment on whether he had spoken to Bernard Madoff, who is in a North Carolina prison, about his son's death.

Ruth Madoff, Mark Madoff's mother, was "heartbroken," her lawyer, Peter Chavkin, said in an emailed comment.

Mark, 46, and Andrew, 44, both insisted that they knew nothing of their father's crimes before he told them on Dec 10, 2008, that he was operating a $50 billion scam that was crumbling under the pressures of the world financial crisis.

They conversation in turn was initiated when they asked him why he was planning to hand out multi-million dollar bonuses to employees ahead of schedule. The two sons immediately reported their father to the authorities and have consistently expressed their outrage and sorrow at his actions.

They had been running the firm's market-making division, separate from the investment arm of their father. But there was widespread disbelief that they could have been unaware that something was amiss with his business after it emerged that he had barely made a genuine investment in years.

Their roles have been the focus of intensive scrutiny by investigators, and US media reported this month that they were the subject of a criminal tax-fraud inquiry by federal prosecutors. In a separate legal development, they were sued in London last week by Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee recovering assets for the victims swindled by their father.

Bernard Madoff. 72, is serving 150 years in a federal prison in North Carolina for running the so-called Ponzi scheme with which he used the money of new investors to pay annual returns of existing clients. The final tally for the losses is estimated at anywhere between $18 billion and $65 billion.

Though many of the estimated 13,000 victims of the fraud were ordinary investors, his web also ensnared some of Hollywood's biggest names. Actor John Malkovich lost money, as did Mr Spielberg through one of his charitable foundations. Actor Kevin Bacon and his wife Kyra Sedgewick were also among the victims, while Jeffrey Katzenberg, the movie mogul behind DreamWorks Studios and films such as Shrek, was one of several celebrities who lost money through their charities.

At the time, he said the losses his philanthropy had suffered were "extremely painful." So too did Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, whose Foundation for Humanity had much of its assets invested in Madoff's funds.

No charges have been filed against any immediate family members who worked in the Madoff firm. Their lawyers have also said that no son has ever been officially notified by prosecutors that they were the subjects of a criminal investigation.

A person close to Mark Madoff told The New York Times he had been increasingly distraught as the anniversary of his father's arrest approached and upset by some recent news coverage speculating that criminal charges against him and his brother were still likely.

The unearthing of Madoff's fraud shocked Wall Street and for many came to symbolise the excesses of a financial boom in which regulators and investors alike were happy not to ask tough questions about the high returns the scheme promised.

Three days before his suicide, Mark, as well as Andrew, and Peter Madoff, Bernard's brother, were hit by new legal action filed in London. Mr Picard, the trustee who is trying to recover billions of dollars for victims of the fraud, alleges that Madoff Securities International Ltd, the UK arm of Madoff's empire, was part of the elaborate deception.

All three men were directors of the company, which the suit says received more than $600 million from its parent company in New York in a period dating back to 1983 – money that Mr Picard claims eventually found its way into the pockets of the Madoff family as well as friends. It was, claims Mr Picard, "a critical piece of the facade of legitimacy that Madoff constructed to conceal (the company's) lack of actual trading." The London suit is seeking to recover at least $80 million. The three men all deny on knowledge of the fraud or wrongdoing.

The legal action against Madoff's sons was one of an avalanche of suits filed by Mr Picard in recent weeks. The day before Thanksgiving UBS was hit with a $2 billion claim; a week later JPMorgan Chase received a suit demanding $6.4 billion and this last week Mr Picard landed HSBC with a suit seeking $9 billion. The three banks are alleged to have ignored suspicions they had about the fraud, allegations that they all deny.

Mr Picard left it until Friday to file the most eye-watering suit against Medici Bank, an Austrian bank and its owner, Sonja Kohn. The suit alleges that she was a "criminal soul mate" of Madoff and is seeking almost $20 billion. Ms Kohn could not be reached for comment but has previously said that she was one of the fraud's biggest victims.

Mark Madoff had agreed with Mr Picard not to sell or transfer certain assets pending the outcome of earlier legal action brought by the trustee.

His mother, Ruth, was allowed to keep $2.5 million as part of a settlement last year that saw her forfeit claims to $80 million of assets. She is reportedly living in Florida and working to deliver meals to homebound people.

In the ultimate indignity, family possessions – ranging from Mrs Madoff's jewellery to her husband's monogrammed slippers – were recently auctioned off to raise money for victims. Investors who were once desperate to be allowed into Madoff's investment operation used to talk about "getting a bit of Bernie". The phrase took on a whole new meaning as those possessions went under the auctioneer's hammer.

WikiLeaks is delinquent and anti-democratic

We are entering an unprecedented age of free speech, right? For the first time in human history, the state will no longer have control over information, right? Democracy is about to come to its full fruition, with the triumph of bottom-up power over top-down domination, right?

Wrong. The frenzied hyperbole generated by the latest WikiLeaks episode – an anarchic, but so far remarkably ineffectual, spasm of delinquency – seems peculiarly weak in its understanding of the basic concepts with which its rhetoric is larded. It is, in fact, the precise opposite of what its apologists claim it to be: with its unilateral programme of revealing confidential information, which it boasts is unstoppable and accountable to no one, it is profoundly anti-democratic.

In its self-contradictory maintenance of its own untraceable operations, it effectively declares itself to be the only agency in the world that is entitled to secrecy. Its insistence that it is somehow a voice of open and transparent “freedom of expression” is simply absurd: there is no issue here of any individual or group openly expressing an opinion that would otherwise have been suppressed. The only opinion that is implicitly conveyed by WikiLeaks’ exposures is the boringly prosaic anti-Americanism of the average Guardian comment writer.

All that WikiLeaks has done, as its name suggests, is to publish stolen documents that were purloined by a malcontent within the US defence network. As it happens, the leaked material has been almost entirely unsurprising, apart from one rather spectacular own goal in WikiLeaks terms: it turns out that a number of Gulf states have been urging the US to strike at Iran before it succeeds in producing nuclear weapons, and that the US has been resisting this pressure. This tends to undermine both the image of America as trigger-happy warmonger and the idea that the entire Muslim world is united in hatred and distrust of the Great Satan.

But there was one document that did include information of a sensational kind: a list of soft targets (places that could be expected to be less well-protected) that the US considered vital to its national security. Many of these were non-military, including European centres for the manufacture of smallpox vaccine.

The blameless employees of these organisations, who had no say whatever in the publication of their firms’ identities and functions, and who now find themselves sitting ducks for amateur terrorists, may be doubtful about the new kind of democracy that WikiLeaks proposes to spring on the world. The claim by its spokesmen that this information was already “in the public domain” is neither here nor there. It has never been offered up in such a readily accessible form (for that is what the “information revolution” is all about, isn’t it?) and with such an extravagant flourish of publicity (because that is what WikiLeaks is all about).

So there is nothing democratic about this at all. It is an arrogant, defiant provocation of international conventions by a tiny handful of unidentifiable people that involved no consultation or popular mandate. Who are they? Apart from their self-publicising editor, Julian Assange, they are nameless and faceless. To whom could a society or an electorate – even if it was overwhelmingly opposed to such actions – protest or present its arguments?

If, as it claims, WikiLeaks has set in motion mechanisms for further disclosures that cannot be disabled, then the peoples and elected governments of all countries are powerless against it. Where is the democracy in this? Whose freedom has been enhanced? Who elected WikiLeaks and to whom is it answerable?

You might say, as presumably the WikiLeaks people would if they broke cover, that by giving people information about what their governments (or, more specifically, their governments’ diplomats) are saying in private, they are empowering the electorate. Knowing about what goes on behind the scenes can enable voters to make more knowledgeable choices.

In principle, this is obviously true: it is what investigative journalism has always been about. Which is why there is nothing new about the WikiLeaks phenomenon. It was simply presented with a huge mass of undifferentiated material by a peculiarly irresponsible source and it chose to publish it in a technologically immediate form.

The fact that it consists virtually entirely of things that were said rather than things that were done has two kinds of significance. One is that private conversations, even when they are not at the level of the diplomatic communiqué, are generally considered to be no-go areas for journalists, because it is recognised that professional life of any kind would be virtually unsustainable without the possibility of confidential communication. The other is that a very different degree of importance attaches to what is said than to what is done. An indiscreet remark or observation is in a different league from a dishonest or disreputable act.

What is it precisely that the ideologues of the great information revolution are arguing? That no one has a right to confidentiality in any sphere of public life – apart from WikiLeaks’ staff, of course, and their internet comrades in the Anonymous network who wreak vengeance on any website that threatens WikiLeaks’ power? What about the lawyer-client relationship, which has privileged confidentiality in the eyes of the law? It might be of considerable public interest to see the correspondence between defendants and their lawyers in terrorist trials, for example. Would WikiLeaks publish such material if it got its hands on it? For that matter, would it be willing, as a matter of public interest, to publish all the communications between Julian Assange and his lawyer?

Finally, is the power of the disseminated word so very novel? The state has not been “in control” of information for hundreds of years, probably not since Gutenberg invented the printing press and produced his Bible, which helped make the Protestant Reformation possible. The 18th-century pamphleteers who inspired the French and American revolutions, the 19th-century manifestos that motivated the modern ideological movements, and the samizdat publications under the Soviet Union all managed to cry freedom in their own ways and to spread their messages to huge effect. What is available now is the technology to make that dissemination instantaneous. Perhaps that also helps to make it mindless.

Now Wikileaks suffers its own leaks

WikiLeaks, which says its operating costs are about $200,000 (£125,000) a year, claims to have raised more than $1 million (£625,000) in donations in the first eight months of this year alone, before most of its highest- profile leaks were published.

Since then, according to one person connected with the group, further "serious amounts of money" have come in, mostly in small sums through the WikiLeaks website. However, in its four-year existence, the group and its associated organisations have never produced any accounts.

WikiLeaks promised to publish accounts in August, but did not do so. It now says it will provide them by the end of the year.

The most serious concerns centre on the proceeds of a special appeal by WikiLeaks for Pte Manning, the US soldier arrested in June on suspicion of leaking 250,000 classified diplomatic cables and hundreds of thousands of military logs from the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Jeff Patterson, of the Bradley Manning Support Network, which is handling Pte Manning's legal defence, said: "From July, WikiLeaks publicly solicited donations specifically for Bradley's defence expenses, and I assume people did donate.

They led us to believe they would make a substantial contribution in September. Since then we have had perhaps half a dozen conversations trying to follow up with them but we have not yet received any money."

Mr Patterson told WikiLeaks in July that the defence would cost $100,000 (£65,000). "They said at the time they would split it with us," he said. Last week, he said, WikiLeaks finally promised to pay, but only $20,000 (£12,500.)

"They told us on Thursday that nobody has signed off on it yet, but they expect it to happen soon," he said. "We're definitely going to be able to use $20,000, but it's less than we hoped for."

Mr Patterson said Wikileaks' failure to pay was "unfortunate", but added: "I attribute it to their fiscal disarray as the world closed in on them. I have spent many years defending military personnel. My concern was that an Icelandic-Australian-Swedish website was never going to be able to provide the defence that was needed for Bradley."

Much of Wikileaks's money goes through the Wau Holland Foundation, named after a former computer hacker and based in Kassel, Germany.

Authorities in the German state of Hesse said they had issued it with two warnings after it failed to file the required accounts.

Wau Holland's PayPal account for online donations was closed last week, prompting international hacker retaliation.

However, it was also suspended in 2008 and last year. "We suspended it temporarily in 2009 in accordance with European anti-money-laundering regulations, for reaching certain limits," a PayPal spokesman said. "The account was reinstated when the foundation provided additional information."

Meanwhile, a former senior WikiLeaks activist said she had resigned because of her concern that Julian Assange, the site's controversial founder, was "the sole decision-maker" and a "bottleneck" to the site's development.

Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Icelandic MP and transparency campaigner, said she and several other senior WikiLeaks activists had serious concerns about the group's structure.

"We were trying to get a meeting arranged so Wiki-Leaks could deal with the issue of transparency, but Julian refused," she said. "You can't run an organisation like this with one person in charge. Maybe there's nothing wrong with the money, but why can't he be transparent about it?"

At the time of WikiLeaks's first big release of information, the Afghan material this summer, the organisation had only "two or three" full-time staff, she said. "There were no direct press contacts and I, as one of the easier-to-reach people involved, felt the full brunt of the media. I was getting hundreds of calls."

The lack of organisation meant the Afghan logs were published with the names of confidential sources, putting lives at risk. At the same time, WikiLeaks released thousands of pages of secret prosecution documents from a Belgian child sex abuse scandal, complete with the names of some victims, and the names of suspects investigated and found to be innocent.

Miss Jonsdottir said she was "simply outraged" at the reaction to Mr Assange's arrest on sexual assault allegations by two women last week.

"There are two sides to the story and these women are on the receiving end of a lot of hate mail. How does anyone who calls for his release and the dropping of the charges know the truth? In this battle for Julian's release, Bradley Manning has been forgotten."
She added: "A lot of my work with WikiLeaks was great. I feel privileged to have been given an opportunity to participate in something historic. But this creating of a martyr and icon [in Mr Assange] has got completely out of control. I look at the website and I see a picture of him and there is nothing behind this façade.

"Julian is incredibly like-able, incredibly enjoyable to be with – if you are agreeing with him. If you criticise him, he is very abusive. He has a very high IQ but very low EQ [emotional intelligence]."

At least four other senior WikiLeaks activists have also left, including the site's former spokesman, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who accused Mr Assange of "behaving like some sort of emperor", adding: "Our raison d'être was transparency, but we were not transparent ourselves."

Mr Domscheit-Berg and other ex-WikiLeaks staff will tomorrow launch a rival site, OpenLeaks, which promises to be "democratically governed by its members, rather than one group or individual."

WikiLeaks was unavailable for comment. But Gavin MacFadyen, visiting professor of journalism at London's City University and a friend and supporter of Mr Assange, said that the critics constituted "four or five people out of around 500" who have worked with WikiLeaks.

"The site has a record of huge achievement," he said. "They take immense care to protect their sources. They deal with more whistle-blowers than you or I have dealt with in a lifetime, and there has never been a single complaint."

He said the site's workforce was spread around the world and was unaffected by Mr Assange's detention. "They are working 17 hours a day and having a hard time dealing with the attention. But they are functioning 100 per cent and processing enormous quantities of material."

Cancun climate change summit: Bolivians dance to a different beat, but fail to derail the talks

To cheers from his retinue of Bolivian pastoralists, he said any agreement must include the "rights of Mother Earth".

“Sooner or later we will realise the earth has rights, rights to regenerate its capacity. Mankind has to understand human beings cannot exist without Mother Earth,” he said.

The United Nations also says it wants to save the planet.

However this bloated bureaucratic body has rather different ways of going about it.

For more than 15 years the UN has been trying to agree on the best way to keep global temperature rise below 2C (3.6F). The group of 194 countries have to agree on everything before there are any UN decisions and the world can move towards the ultimate goal, which is a legally binding treaty to cut emissions.

This means that certain countries have to soften their principles.

In a tense two weeks of UN talks this month, many countries were forced to compromise.

Japan was forced to accept the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, despites its misgivings that the treaty only commits rich countries to cutting emissions.

China had to give ground on allowing the world to measure its emissions. Even the US had to keep quieter than usual as it has little power to take action on climate change back home, with a weak Obama administration.

But the spirit of compromise worked. Unlike a year before, in Copenhagen, when delegates were pulling their hair out and wringing their hands, this year there was a calm and positive atmosphere on the final days.

The UN started to hope that at last the world was reaching towards a deal on global warming.

Then the Bolivians came along.

In dramatic scenes the rather put-upon Bolivian chief negotiator Pablo Solon repeatedly stood to reject the texts other parties have been working on.

In the strongest language seen as the conference this year, he claimed to be working directly on the orders of his President.

“We cannot go along with a text that guarantees an increase in temperature to 4C,” he said. “This is tantamount to making us responsible for a situation my President has described as genocide and ecocide.”

Mr Solon demanded that the text be redrawn but as delegates became more tired even the traditional supporters of Bolivia including Venezuela and Cuba drifted away as it became clear that this stance could damage the outcome for everyone.

Minister after minister stood up to say the deal was not perfect but it will do – for now. The agreement sets up a fund to help poor people cope with climate change and halt deforestation. Most importantly it will keep the UN “show on the road” after Copenhagen had threatened to push the whole process off the rails.

In the end the President of the talks, Patricia Espinosa, who was described as a "goddess" for her diplomacy, lost her patience and gavelled through an official UN decision with the agreement of 193 of the parties.

She said consensus doesn't "mean that one country has the right to veto" decisions supported by everyone else.

As the official meeting ended, the grey bureaucrats trailed out with a quiet sense of a job well done.

Again the contrast with the meeting of social movements in Cancun was stark. Here there was music, food and dancing.

The Bolivians may have added colour to the talks but not as much drama as they would have done if their protests had worked.

Sarah Palin visits Haiti

Sarah Palin visits a cholera treatment center run by Rev. Franklin Graham's relief organization Samaritan's Purse Photo: AP

Mrs Palin was accompanying US evangelist Franklin Graham and the Samaritan's Purse Christian relief organisation.

Photographs released by the aid group showed her cradling a small child as she comforted victims at a treatment centre for cholera, which has claimed almost 2,200 lives since an outbreak began in October.

Mrs Palin also visited a temporary housing project for victims of the January earthquake that killed 250,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless.

She said: "I've really enjoyed meeting this community. They are so full of joy. We are so fortunate in America and we are responsible for helping those less fortunate. Samaritan's Purse is still here doing the tough work."

Mrs Palin came top in a recent poll of Republican voters asked to name their favoured challenger against President Barack Obama in 2012.

The trip to Haiti was her first overseas since last year when she delivered an economic speech in Hong Kong.

Cancun Climate Conference: what it all means

The last meeting of the UNFCCC in Copenhagen ended in chaos after countries failed to agree a way forward.

What has been achieved?

Campaigners claim it it has placed UN talks back on track after the disaster at Copenhagen. Countries agreed a ‘balanced package’ that will keep temperature rise below 2C (3.6F).

It stops short of a legal treaty, but commits all countries to cutting emissions for the first time under the UN.

How did they do it?

Haunted by the Copenhagen summit, the host country Mexico tried to focus on areas of agreement instead of seeking an ambitious full treaty.

It also insisted on transparency rather than closed-door talks among major powers. This and an unrelenting positive mood made it difficult for trouble makers to complain.

How will countries cut emissions?

More than 80 countries, including the US, EU and China, put forward voluntary emissions cuts in Copenhagen. These have now been made a formal agreement under the UN process.

How will emissions be measured?

China has always been uncomfortable about having its emissions measured by the outside world, claiming only rich countries that can afford the technology should be monitored.

However the US has insisted it is only fair that all countries are exposed to the same amount of scrutiny.

In an uneasy compromise the two superpowers have agreed that it is only fair that the world’s biggest emitters agree to international standards to measure their carbon.

What has the Kyoto Protocol got to do with it?

The Kyoto Protocol commits rich countries to cutting emissions. It was very important to developing countries that targets in the treaty are extended beyond 2012 because it is currently the only legal climate change agreement the world has.

However rich countries are nervous of committing to the treaty as it does not include China or the US.

In the end a compromise was found where the Kyoto Protocol will be continued, but targets for emissions cuts do not need to be decided until all countries makes cuts.

It is hoped that eventually the Kyoto Protocol will be continued as part of a legal treaty that commits all countries to cutting emissions.

What does it mean for the UK?

Britain has already committed to cutting emissions by 34 per cent by 2020 under domestic law. But the Government has promised to increase this to 42 per cent if there is a global deal, which is now looking increasingly likely.

Is there any money on the table?

Countries have agreed to set up a £60 ($100bn) per annum ‘Green Climate Fund’ from 2020 to help poor countries adapt to climate change.

It could also help developing countries, including India and China, develop green energy like wind turbines and solar panels. The UK will be expected to contribute around £1.5bn per annum towards the fund.

How will it stop deforestation?

Deforestation causes a fifth of global emissions so protecting trees is claimed to be key step in mitigating global warming.

A new fund called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation or REDD will be set up that will pay poor nations not to chop down trees.

The text includes safeguards to make sure the scheme respects the rights of indigenous people and biodiversity.

Language around carbon markets has been left deliberately vague so it is possible in the future for businesses to make money from ‘carbon offsetting’.

Wetlands will also be protected by allowing countries to offset carbon by protecting peatland such as the Yorkshire Moors.

Why is Bolivia so angry?

The Plurinational State of Boliva believes that any UN agreement should ‘protect the rights of Mother Earth’.

The South American country believes that the targets are not strong enough to stop catastrophic climate change and signing up to a deal would be ‘tantamount’ to genocide. They are threatening to keep fighting within the UN process for a stronger deal.

Anything else controversial?

Saudi Arabia won the right to get climate change subsidies for developing ‘clean’ coal, oil or gas. Carbon capture and storage or CCS takes the carbon emissions from fossil fuels and stores it under ground.

Who are the heroes and villains?

Japan came out as an early villain after refusing to sign up to a second period of the Kyoto Protocol but was persuaded to compromise.

By the end of the conference Bolivia was the trouble maker refusing to sign up the deal because they claimed it was too weak to keep temperature rise below 2C.

Mexico has been the hero throughout, with one delegate describing the President Patricia Espinosa as a ‘goddess’ for guiding the talks so well.

The UK Government has been praised for leading efforts to find a compromise on the Kyoto Protocol.

Will this save the planet?

Not yet. The latest scientific analysis suggests that the pledges currently on the table will only get the world 60 per cent of the way towards the emissions cuts that are hoped will keep global temperatures rising by more than 2C this century. However the deal agrees that ambitious must be increased.

Is this really a success?

Yes, after Copenhagen there were fears that the UN process would collapse. It is embarrassing for the UN not to have a full consensus but the agreement of every country except Bolivia still makes it a very strong agreement. Even though the deal is not legally binding it puts in place decisions that will help the world draw up a new treaty in the future.

What happens next?

The world now has a year to resolve any outstanding issues over the final form of a legal treaty that commits the world to binding targets. There are high hopes this could happen in a UN meeting in Durban, South Africa next year.

However, a deal will need America to up its target which is unlikely while there is a Republican Senate.

Richard Nixon's scorn for Jews, blacks, Irish and Italians revealed in new tapes

"The Italians, of course, those people course don't have their heads screwed on tight," he said. "They are wonderful people, but ..."

As his voice trailed off, he turned to Jews: "The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality."

Another time, he named several top Jewish advisers – including Henry Kissinger, his legendary national security adviser – and argued that they felt a need to compensate for an inferiority complex.

"What it is, is it's the insecurity," he said. "It's the latent insecurity. Most Jewish people are insecure. And that's why they have to prove things."

The remarks were recorded by the secret taping system that was installed in the White House at Mr Nixon's orders and provided key evidence in his downfall over the Watergate scandal a year later.

As the WikiLeaks "cablegate" affair throws the spotlight the inner workings of recent US diplomacy, the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum has released 265 hours of tape as well as the notes and documents.

The paperwork reveals that Mr Nixon's concerns about Jews spread to Mr Kissinger, as he ordered all Jewish-Americans be excluded from work on the Middle East.

"Get K. out of the play," he said, according to notes taken by chief of staff HR Haldeman in 1971. "No Jew can handle the Israeli thing."

In a separate recording, he and Mr Kissinger made bluntly clear that they had no interest in helping Jews escape persecution in the Soviet Union or immigrate to America.

"The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy," Mr Kissinger said. "And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern."

"I know," Nixon responded. "We can't blow up the world because of it."

The New York Times also reported that the president strongly hinted that his reluctance to consider amnesty for young Americans who went to Canada to avoid being drafted during the Vietnam War was because he believed so many of them were Jewish.

"I didn't notice many Jewish names coming back from Vietnam on any of those lists; I don't know how the hell they avoid it," he said, adding: "If you look at the Canadian-Swedish contingent, they were very disproportionately Jewish. The deserters."

And in a separate conversation with Rose Mary Woods, his personal secretary, he said that a colleague has "sort of a blind spot on the black thing because he's been in New York ... He says well, 'They are coming along, and that after all they are going to strengthen our country in the end because they are strong physically and some of them are smart.' So forth and so on."

The president continued: "My own view is I think he's right if you're talking in terms of 500 years," he said.

"I think it's wrong if you're talking in terms of 50 years. What has to happen is they have be, frankly, inbred. And, you just, that's the only thing that's going to do it, Rose."

American diplomat Richard Holbrooke critically ill

Mr Holbrooke, 69, named special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan when President Barack Obama took office in 2009, earned a reputation as a "bulldozer" in helping negotiate the 1995 accord that ended the Balkans war.

"This morning, doctors completed surgery to repair a tear in his aorta," said a statement from the State Department. "He is in critical condition and has been joined by his family."

Shortly after graduating from Brown University in 1962, Mr Holbrooke was working for the State Department in Vietnam and was an aide at the Paris peace talks.

He was a top foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton in her failed presidential bid in 2008. After Mr Obama won the Democratic nomination, Mr Holbrooke served as one of his advisers.

He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize seven times and is the author of To End A War.

The diplomat, who also served as the US ambassador to the United Nations and to Germany and twice was assistant secretary of state, fell ill at the State Department on Friday and was taken to the hospital.

The aorta is the body's biggest artery, which are vessels that transport blood away from the heart to other parts of the body.

Man on a mission: US defence secretary Robert Gates is still hungry for the fight in Afghanistan

After meeting Mr Gates in Kabul, General David Petraeus, commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan and the man who oversaw victory in Iraq, said the surge had "arrested the momentum of the Taliban" in much of Afghanistan but the enemy still enjoyed freedom of movement in many areas.

The review comes a year after Mr Obama's West Point speech that ordered a surge of 30,000 US troops, bringing America's total force to 100,000, compared to just 20,000 at the start of 2009. It is likely to conclude that slow but steady progress is being made and now is not the time to change course.

The new Nato deadline for transferring security control of the country to the Afghans is the end of 2014. Whether the Taliban can be defeated by then remains an open question, as Mr Gates would probably admit.

Less than three miles to the west of FOB Joyce, through the heat haze, the US Defence Secretary could see the Hindu Kush peaks that mark the Pakistan border, situated on the old Durand Line drawn up by the British in Victorian times to divide the rebellious Pashtun people.

To the south of FOB Joyce is the Tora Bora cave complex, a redoubt of the Mujaheddin against the Soviets in the 1980s and the place where Osama bin Laden escaped from US Special Forces in 2001.

To the north was the Korengal Valley, which American troops recently abandoned after the loss of 42 troops there. The valley saw countless incidences of heroism, including one that prompted the award last month of the first Medal of Honour to a living recipient since the Vietnam War.

Mr Gates, the only United States Cabinet member to have served both President George W Bush and Mr Obama, was visiting military bases throughout Afghanistan to establish some ground-level truth.

After touching down on FOB Joyce's dusty Landing Zone, surrounded by sandbags and flanked by watchtowers, Mr Gates presented six Silver Stars, the third highest American gallantry award.

The first, to Lieutenant Stephen Tangen of Naperville, Illinois, cited "valorous actions against a heavily fortified enemy" while rescuing wounded Afghan soldiers under "devastating fire" and ensuring his platoon's survival.

In a briefing that began with a PowerPoint slide entitled "The Problems in Kunar" and depicting "Why 'They' Have Gotten Stronger", Mr Gates was told by Lt Col J.B. Vowell, the battalion commander, that his men were battling a "surge in fighters".

Their "tenacious" enemy was using Afghan government corruption as its chief recruiting tool while the "survival culture" of people keeping a foot in both camps and a complex system of patronage undermined American attempts to secure allegiances.

Over the summer fighting season, Lt Col Vowell said, attacks had risen by 200 per cent, while a lack of American forces in the valleys had allowed Taliban forces to flow in from Pakistan.

While the Americans had achieved success in the summer's Operation Strong Eagle, the Taliban had launched their own offensive - Operation Al Faath, the Arabic word for "victory" taken from the Koran.

The Taliban, Lt Col Vowell said, viewed itself as winning because of the withdrawals from the Korengal Valley and four other remote locations. Its strategy was to maximise its gains so that it could cut the best possible deal "when the music stops".

In Mr Obama's West Point speech, he declared that July 2011 would be the date when US forces would begin to be withdrawn. Within Afghanistan, that was widely interpreted as the moment when the music would stop.

Now that Nato has embraced the end of 2014 as the completion date for the handover process, Mr Gates and Gen Petraeus have effectively bought more than three years of extra time.

The message to the Taliban, Mr Gates said at FOB Howz-e-Madad in Kandahar last week, was that "if you think this is over come next summer, think again".

Up at FOB Joyce, Maj Gen John Campbell, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, the job that first propelled Gen Petraeus to international attention during the Iraq invasion of 2003, argued that the July 2011 deadline had been counter-productive.

"For too long, people got this July 2011 thing out there and even the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] would say, 'You're leaving'." But now the 2014 date was operative, he said, the message was: "No, we're not leaving. This is an enduring relationship. We're here with you."

Both Gen Campbell and Gen Petraeus emphasised that although Mr Obama's surge had been ordered a year ago, the final troops had only just got into place. Gen Campbell said that "every single day we're either dropping bombs or Hellfires" in the nearby Pech Valley.

"It's very, very kinetic. The people don't want us up there but they don't want the Taliban either. They want to be left alone. So we've got to set the conditions at some point to be able to bring our forces out of there and reposition wherever the most people are."

He indicated that the 101st Airborne had yet to transition to a counter-insurgency strategy in Kunar and surrounding provinces.

"You've got to start with security first. You can't just go in and do governance before security. You can work some in tandem but you've got to get the security... It's going to take some time to work that piece."

Pakistan's double game and role in harbouring members of the Taliban's dangerous Haqqani network could prolong the conflict, he conceded. "They've sanctuary in Pakistan, we shouldn't make any bones about it. They go back and forth across the border."

At the same time, some Taliban elements are being pushed into Afghanistan as a result of increasing pressure from Pakistani forces. Lt Col Vowell said. During Operation Strong Eagle, he conducted complementary actions with his Pakistani counterpart on the other side of the border.

Mr Gates said that "in the east what we're engaged in is a disruption activity and a blocking activity to stop the Taliban from coming across the border" whereas in Kandahar and Helmand in the south "it's a different strategy of clearing the Taliban out of populated areas and then holding those areas".

After FOB Joyce, Mr Gates flew to FOB Connolly in neighbouring Nangahar province. There, he met privately with soldiers who lost six comrades shot dead last month by a rogue member of the Afghan Border Police.

A soldier at the meeting said that Mr Gates had wept as the troops had recounted their experience.

In Helmand, at the US base Camp Leatherneck, Mr Gates was given a much rosier situation report. After meeting him Maj Gen Richard Mills, the divisional commander for Helmand (with overall responsibility for the bulk of Britain's 10,000-strong force) said the Taliban was now making its last stand at Sangin.

Gen Mills told The Sunday Telegraph that that it would be "a mis-statement that the UK did anything but a satisfactory job" in Sangin, where 106 of the 346 British troops who have died in Afghanistan were killed, before the district was handed over to US Marines in September.

"The enemy's fighting with desperation. This is his last toehold. He cannot be kicked off this thing and so he's fighting with a real of sense of willing to die in place - and we're giving him that opportunity."

At every stop, Mr Gates addressed the troops, posed for a photograph with each one (on occasions, more than 350 lined up) and told them that as "the guy that signs the order to send you here" he felt a personal responsibility for every one of them.

In FOB Joyce, the normally unemotional Pentagon chief ended by telling the 101st Airborne soldiers gathered: "I feel the sacrifice and hardship and losses more than you'll ever imagine. You doing what you do is what keeps me doing what I do. I just want to thank you and tell you how much I love you guys."

Mr Gates, a veteran of the Cold War who began his career in the CIA before serving in a string of Republican administrations and ending up as CIA Director, has indicated he will step down next year.

Pentagon officials say that he wants to ensure that the Afghan war strategy is in place and is working before he leaves. Judging by his carefully calibrated words in Afghanistan, he believes that he is close to that point.

Some senior military figures, however, fear that Mr Obama, now politically weakened and beset by domestic difficulties, never fully bought into his own surge strategy and is a reluctant war president whose instinct remains to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible.

Although the generals are anxious to portray the clock as only being started recently with the arrival of the last surge troops, for the American public the war has been dragging on for nearly 10 years with little sign of imminent victory.

Gen Campbell seemed to accept that those back home had yet to be persuaded that it was worth remaining in Afghanistan, even as he was intent on reassuring Afghans that America was in for the long haul.

"We can sell Coca Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken and Burger King everywhere in the world but we can't tell people back in the US what the hell we're doing here."