West Ham & Blades end Tevez saga

Tevez is now playing for Man Utd

West Ham and Sheffield United have reached an out-of-court settlement over the long-running Carlos Tevez saga.

Tevez helped West Ham achieve Premier League survival in 2006/2007 but the Blades, who were relegated, claimed he should not have been allowed to play.

A hearing into the matter was to start on Monday but has now been abandoned.

The clubs have struck a deal with reports claiming the Blades will receive upwards of

Australia cuts migrant job intake

Construction and manufacturing are slowing in Australia

Australia has said it will cut the number of skilled foreign workers it accepts by 14% to safeguard local jobs.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans announced the cut, the first by the country in 10 years.

Mr Evans said the government did not want to admit people who would compete with Australians for limited jobs amid the global financial crisis.

Unemployment is rising in Australia, after years of economic growth fuelled largely by mining exports.

"We're going to cut (the programme) from 133,500 to 115,000, so that's about a 14% cut," Mr Evans told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The number of foreign skilled migrants will be cut by 18,500 for the 2009/10 financial year, which starts in June, from a total number of 133,500 in 2008/09.

"The economic circumstances in Australia have changed as a result of the global financial crisis," Mr Evans said. "It is prudent to reduce this year's migration intake accordingly."

Construction slowdown

The permanent skilled migration programme will bar entry to foreign bricklayers, plumbers, carpenters and electricians for the foreseeable future.

"That's where we've seen a drop-off in demand [and] some major redundancies," Mr Evans said.

He added that further cuts may be made when the national budget is unveiled in May.

The migrant scheme offers permanent residency to approved skilled workers.

Employers will still be able to bring in foreign tradesmen by sponsoring them under a special visa for temporary migrant workers, provided they can prove that the labour cannot be sourced in Australia.

Professions such as nurses, doctors, engineers and information technology will be safe, as Australia still has shortages in these areas.

The government removed hairdressers and cooks from Australia's list of critical skills shortages late last year.

Figures released last week showed the unemployment rate had risen to a four-year high of 5.2%. The federal government predicts a jobless rate of 5.5% by June, and 7% by the same time next year.

The government recently announced an Aus$27.5bn (

Madagascar president offers poll

Mr Ravalomanana said he was not afraid of holding a referendum

Madagascar's President Marc Ravalomanana has said he is prepared to hold a referendum to end the country's political crisis.

The move comes amid growing tensions in the capital Antananarivo, with Mr Ravalomanana vowing to ignore opposition calls to resign.

The opposition had earlier threatened to march on the presidential palace if Mr Ravalomanana refused to stand down.

At least 100 people have been killed since protests broke out in January.

Mr Ravalomanana told thousands of his supporters gathered outside the presidential palace that he was "not afraid" of holding a referendum.

"We must follow democratic principles. If we have to, we will organise a referendum," he said.

The BBC's Jonah Fisher in Antananarivo said Mr Ravalamanana's offer was an indication of how much pressure he was under from the opposition, led by the capital's former mayor, Andry Rajoelino.

It was not immediately clear what the content of the proposed referendum would be, but the president's special advisers told the BBC it would be along the lines of whether Mr Ravalamanana should remain in office.

Social networks 'are new email'

By Darren Waters Technology editor, BBC News website, Texas

Facebook is the dominant platform for status updates

Status updates on sites such as Facebook, Yammer, Twitter and Friendfeed are a new form of communication, the South by SouthWest Festival has heard.

"We are all in the process of creating e-mail 2.0," David Sacks, founder of business social network Yammer said.

Tens of millions of people are using social networks to stay in touch.

The growth in such services is being heralded as the start of the real-time, pervasive web.

'New communication'

Mr Sacks said: "What people want to do on social network these days is post status updates. We think it's all people want to do."

Yammer is an enterprise social network, designed to facilitate communication within companies and organisations.

It is one of a growing number of services that lets users share micro-updates. Other services have a richer mix of content, including sharing photos and video, and allowing comments from people within your social network, building a so-called activity stream.

"I think its a new form of communication; not quite e-mail, more lightweight and more real time, often with little bit of a publishing flavour to it," said Paul Buchheit, founder of FriendFeed, and the creator and lead developer of GMail, while at Google.

FriendFeed lets users share content from other services, such as Twitter and Flickr, and comment directly on the postings in real-time.

Simplicity and ubiquity

With more than 175 million users Facebook is the dominant platform for status updates.

Ari Steinberg, an engineering manager at the firm, told BBC News: "It's been interesting to see the way people change the way they communicate.

"You used to e-mail content to people and you had to choose who you wanted to e-mail it to and you didn't know if your friends even wanted to see it.

"Now you can passively put something out there and let people engage with it."

The simplicity and ubiquity of some of these services is beginning to see activity feeds and status updates replace many of the uses to which e-mail was once put.

Mr Sacks said: "It's no coincidence that these products are all looking like e-mail.

"These products are all standardising around a message form at the top, and the inbox which is a feed then folders around the side."

'Open system'

The problem with the current crop of status update services is that they are to varying degrees interoperable.

For example, while Twitter can be used to power a status update on Facebook the same is not true in reverse.

"We want to see a more open system where everything links together, the same as it does with e-mail," he said.

While e-mail has common protocols which allow people to send and receive messages even if they are with different services, such as Hotmail or GMail, the same is not completely true with status updates and activity feeds.

There are some standard protocols but the rapid development in the complexity and breadth of activity feeds, to include comments and ratings, has led to a series of walled gardens.

Dare Obasanjo, a program manager at Microsoft, said the firm was working on a set of standards.

"You need to give sites permission to get your data," he said.

'Hard to compete'

The complex nuances of relationships on social networks, with users having different degrees of openness with different friends or followers, further complicates the introduction of standards.

Facebook has also been accused of being unwilling to open up its system and work with other status update firms, and there is a belief among some that the social network is enacting a "land grab" in an effort to become the de-facto platform.

Mr Sacks said: "On the consumer side Facebook could become the one site for all social messaging. That becomes very hard to compete with."

But Mr Buccheit said he believed the different firms were moving towards a more federated system.

"There will be no separation between Facebook and Friendfeed and Twitter."

Mr Steinberg said: "We are totally happy to interoperate with other sites."

He told BBC News that interoperability wasn't necessary for activity streams to become a global messaging service.

"It's definitely something and a pretty cool thing we would like to enable. Conceptually it makes a lot of sense.

"It's in our interests to let people share. Twitter has had a lot of success in letting people taking their data and sharing it externally.

"We'd love to be able to let people tap into that."

Gun found in dead officer inquiry

Youths threw petrol bombs at police in protest at the arrest of Colin Duffy

A gun and ammunition have been found during searches in Northern Ireland as part of the investigation into the murder of policeman Stephen Carroll.

The weaponry was discovered in Lurgan, where a number of petrol bombs were thrown at police on Saturday evening.

Earlier, leading republican Colin Duffy was arrested in the town and is still being questioned about last week's murder of two soldiers in Antrim.

Constable Carroll, 48, was shot while on duty in Craigavon on Monday.

Mr Duffy is one of three men being questioned about the murder of two soldiers at Massereene Army base last Saturday night.

The 41-year-old was arrested during a police raid in Lurgan on Saturday.

Detectives investigating the soldiers' murders also carried out an operation in Bellaghy in County Londonderry.

Ex-IRA member

Sappers Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar were shot outside the base in Antrim. About 500 people attended a vigil at the scene on Saturday.

The gathering, which was organised by Antrim Borough Council, was addressed by the mayor of the town and local clergy. The mayors of Wexford, Cork, Westmeath, and Wicklow also attended.

The dissident republican group, the Real IRA, said it carried out the attack.

The other men arrested over the murders are aged 32 and 21.

Mr Duffy is a former IRA member who has been critical of Sinn Fein's support for the police service.

Officers searching his house came under attack from stonethrowers but there are no reports of serious injuries.

Sappers Quinsey, 23, from Birmingham and Azimkar, 21, from Wood Green, London, were attacked after coming out of the base to collect pizzas they had ordered.

Two gunmen in a car parked nearby opened fire with semi-automatic rifles.

Four other people, including two pizza delivery men, were injured.

The soldiers, from 25 Field Squadron of 38 Engineer Regiment, were murdered just hours before they were to have been deployed in Afghanistan.

Iraq's voices of pessimism

Life may appear to be improving in Iraq, reports the BBC's Mike Sergeant, but while most Iraqis are desperate to believe the war is over, many still worry about what the future may hold.

More than 25,000 people are thought to have been killed in Iraq in 2007

When I first came to Iraq in the summer of 2007, it was a very dark and dangerous place.

Bombs were exploding every few hours.

In a typical day, dozens of bodies were dumped on the streets of Baghdad. Thousands were killed every month.

The events of recent days have shocked many Iraqis and brought back painful memories.

Every attack is an uncomfortable reminder of the many risks that still lie ahead.

Spirited

A couple of weeks ago, things seemed a little brighter here.

Military commanders were keen to show off what people in the news business like to simplify as "life getting back to normal".

We attended one of many media events carefully designed to give the sense of things looking up.

A dozen or so reporters and cameramen were driven in military convoy to Shula, a suburb previously said to have been one of the most violent in the capital.

On arrival, we were handed a leaflet welcoming us on what was described as "a walking tour - honouring the improvements of the Shula area".

So, as instructed, we were briskly marched off to "honour" those improvements.

The brochure told us exactly what we were about to see: "Terrorists tried to destroy the best chicken restaurant in Shula", it read.

"They did not succeed.

"They also tried to destroy the spirit of Shula. They failed in this regard as well."

Darkness and light

Then we watched a football match.

The teams wore brightly coloured shirts and played enthusiastically on a nicely prepared grass pitch.

The crowd was almost entirely made up of heavily armed US and Iraqi soldiers.

One American colonel told me that he was "shocked" by how good life was here.

"People are still out there who want to do bad things," said another US soldier "but they are on the run."

US troops on the ground often talk about "good guys" and "bad guys".

They sometimes portray the struggle in Iraq as a battle between the vast majority of "ordinary Iraqis" and a small minority of "terrorists" who want to destroy progress and turn back the clock to the chaos of two years ago.

Six years of war has taught their commanders that things are almost always more confusing.

This patchwork country of intermingled faiths and traditions is not easy to divide into the "forces of light" on one side and "darkness" on the other.

Cultural re-awakening

In most areas and on most days you can see real improvements.

Iraqis are feeling more confident about being out on the streets at night

We went to a nightclub in what once would have been a charming old house in the centre of Baghdad.

Men sit around drinking alcohol watching women dance. These activities might have got them killed in the past.

In other parts of the city, restaurants, shops and galleries are reopening.

Cultural life is starting to blossom again. The sound of traditional Iraqi songs can be heard once more.

We spent an hour at a music institute in the centre of Baghdad.

In 2006 and 2007, the students had to play in secret and hide their instruments in plastic bags on the way to school. Now they are confident enough to perform their ballads openly.

The people I have met desperately want to believe the war is over

I am told, however, that before 2003, most of the musicians were girls.

When we visited there was only one, Hazzar Bassam. She plays an instrument called the joza, made from the shell of a coconut.

"It's true there are generally fewer explosions now," she told me, "but the violence may be coming back again. We are still afraid."

Waiting for revenge

Recent attacks have led others to question the accepted international narrative of recent months that Iraq is definitely "getting better" while Afghanistan is "getting worse".

About 140,000 US soldiers are currently based in Iraq

US generals have always been very wary of declaring victory. They remember President Bush's horribly premature "mission accomplished" speech after the US invasion.

Hundreds are still dying violently here every month.

The people I have met desperately want to believe the war is over.

Voices of pessimism, though, are not that hard to find.

One Iraqi friend told me that there will be many scores to settle once the US military leaves.

"Most people are sick and tired of violence, but some are just waiting for the right moment to take their revenge," he said.

"People in this country never forget, particularly if their relatives were brutally killed."

Everyone knows the Americans are leaving. The big unknown is what happens when they do.

Has Iraq really turned the corner? Or are most of the gunmen and bombers simply biding their time and waiting for the power struggles to come?

It is very hard to make predictions about a country like this. But, to think that Iraq is a problem that somehow has now been "solved", might be to repeat the historic mistake of simplifying a very complicated place.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 14 March, 2009 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service

Hezbollah chief defiant on Israel

Hassan Nasrallah's speech marked the Prophet Mohammed's birthday

The leader of Lebanon's Islamist Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, has said his group will never recognise Israel's right to exist.

He was responding to a US suggestion that both Hezbollah and the Palestinian faction Hamas should recognise Israel before expecting any US engagement.

"We reject the American conditions," he said. "As long as Hezbollah exists, it will never recognise Israel."

Israel and Hezbollah's armed wing fought a bloody conflict in 2006.

Mr Nasrallah made the statement rejecting the US conditions for talks said in a speech marking the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

'Positive developments'

Hezbollah leads a bloc in Lebanon's parliament that has veto power over major decisions in the unity government.

The coalition was formed last year after a political crisis that brought the country to the brink of civil war.

Last week, the UK said it would establish low-level contacts with the group, citing "positive political developments".

A British diplomat told the BBC's Kim Ghattas in Washington that the decision had been driven by the belief that it was possible to encourage Hezbollah to move away from violence.

But a senior US official told reporters on condition of anonymity that he was unhappy with the move.

He said he would have liked Britain to explain "the difference between the political, military and social wings of Hezbollah because we don't see a difference between the integrated leadership as they [the British] see it".

The US and Israel regard Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.