Qaeda trains female bombers to attack West: US officials

WASHINGTON: The women, who may have a "non Arab" appearance and be travelling on Western passports, have been prepared for their missions by the Yemeni group responsible for the operation to blow up an airliner over the United States on Christmas Day.

Details of the bombers emerged just hours after British spy chiefs raised the UK threat state to "severe" amid fears that al-Qaeda was planning a wave of attacks against western targets.

Terror experts within the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, a unit of MI5, now believe that an attack against the UK is "highly likely".

US law enforcement agents have been told to be on the lookout for female suicide bombers who may attempt to enter the country.

At least two are believed to be connected to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula which dispatched underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who tried unsuccessfully to bring down a transatlantic airliner over Detroit.

Richard Clarke, a former chief White House counter terrorism adviser, said: "They have trained women.

"There are others who are still out there who have been trained and who are clean skins – that means people who we do not have a record of, people who may not look like al-Qaeda terrorists, who may not be Arabs, and may not be men."

Security sources said that it was "inevitable" that al-Qaeda would eventually turn to using women with a western appearance to carry out suicide attacks.

Officials said that airliners and all forms of transport could be targeted as well as sports stadiums, ports and power stations.

Haiti quake death toll reaches more than 111,000

Haiti.CNN: More than 111,000 people died in last week's massive earthquake in Haiti, the government announced, as search-and-rescue teams wind down their effort to find survivors.

The government's figure, released by the United Nations late Friday, is the first precise death toll for the 7.0-magnitude quake that struck on January 12. It said 111,481 people were confirmed dead.

It is the worst death toll from an earthquake since the 2004 Asian tsunami, and the second-highest death toll from an earthquake in more than three decades, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Some 609,000 people have also been left homeless in and around the capital of Port-au-Prince, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

Before the search-and-rescue effort ended Friday afternoon, OCHA said, rescuers had managed to pull 132 people alive from the rubble.

Google Sees Mobile as Key to Extend Search Might in 2010

Google's logged 87.8 billion searches in December 2009, or 66.8 percent of the more than 131 billion searches conducted worldwide. Google hopes to grow its search and ad dominance by focusing on a convergence of mobile search, advertising and applications, including location-based technologies with a heavy dose of social networking. Smartphones as Google's Nexus One, paired with mobile search, applications and advertising seem like a fine way for Google to extend its search dominance from the desktop to the PC. Google will pit its mobile technologies those of Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple in 2010.

Google's strategy to "double down" on its core search business helped the company clean up as the top search property with 87.8 billion searches in December 2009, or 66.8 percent of the more than 131 billion searches conducted worldwide.

That's good for a 58 percent increase in search query volume over the past year, according to figures released Jan. 22 by researcher comScore. These world-leading totals helped Google rake in a fourth-quarter 2009 profit of $1.97 billion and sales of $4.95 billion.

Google hopes to improve on these numbers through focusing on a convergence of mobile search, advertising and applications, including location-based technologies with a heavy dose of social networking.

Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president of product management at Google, attributed Google's successful Q4 to the company's doubling down on its efforts in search, AdWords search advertising and display advertising.

"Search did particularly well in 2009 and I think that may be the best example of what we feel we can do when we double down and focus," Rosenberg said on the company's Q4 earnings call Jan. 21. He cited Google's 550 search quality enhancements; a bigger and faster index; universal search expansion; and Google's new music search service.

However, Google's crowning search achievement arrived Dec. 7 in the form of real-time. Google indexes tweets from Twitter and public status updates from Facebook, as well as info from MySpace, news publications and blogs only seconds after the content is published online.

Rosenberg noted that two minutes after a force 4.1 earthquake struck California two weeks ago, Google's real-time search algorithms surfaced local Twitter tweets and news reports. The idea is that retrieving this type of content will keep users coming to Google.

It's difficult to gauge the financial impact of these real-time results, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt said on the call real-time search was "very successful."  Next

China economy shows strong growth

China says its economy expanded by 8.7% in 2009, exceeding even the government's own initial expectations.

The pace of change increased as the year went on, with growth in the final quarter of 2009 increasing by 10.7% from the same period a year earlier.

China is now on course to overtake Japan and become the world's second-biggest economy.

Japan announces its latest GDP figures next month. Its economy is likely to have contracted by about 6% in 2009.

'Right direction'

China's GDP announcement was made by Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics.

He said China had faced "severe difficulties" in 2009, but its economy has now recovered and is moving in the right direction.

Annual growth was only slightly down on 2008.

But Mr Ma played down speculation that China's economy had now overtaken Japan's.

"According to the UN standard - that is $1 a day - there are still 150 million poor people in China. That is China's reality," he said.

"So despite the increase in our GDP and economic strength, we still have to recognise that China is still a developing country."

These latest GDP figures have exceeded the target set by the Chinese government, the BBC's Chris Hogg in Shanghai says.

This is a turnaround because China, like other countries across the world, was hit by the economic crisis during late 2008 and early 2009. Factories closed and workers were laid off.

China's economy recovered with the help of a massive government stimulus package and now there are signs it is expanding too quickly.

Inflation is picking up, with Mr Ma saying consumer prices increased by 1.9% in December from a year earlier.

"It reminds us to be fully aware of following the trend of price changes," he said at a press conference to announce the economic data.

Mr Ma said price rises were "mild and under control", but over recent days the government has tried to limit the amount of loans made by the country's banks.

However, some economists have questioned the reliability of China's economic data, with some accusing the government of overstating economic growth for political reasons.

Predictions

Meanwhile, the World Bank has said that the global economic recovery will slow later this year as the impact of government stimulus policies wanes.

The Bank has forecast growth of 2.7% this year after a contraction in 2009.

However, its predictions for Japan are slightly less pessimistic than other forecasters. It estimates that Japan's economy shrunk by 5.4% last year.

It added that the poorest countries - those that rely on grants or subsidised lending - may require an additional $35bn to $50bn in funding just to sustain pre-crisis social programmes.

China is expected to become the world's biggest economy in 2030.

OIC head calls on Islamic Ummah to assist Haiti affetees

JEDDAH:  The Secretary General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu urged all OIC member states and civil society organisations to extend a helping hand to the Haitian population following the devastating earthquake on Jan 12.

The 7.3 magnitude earthquake killed about 75,000 people while 250,000 injured and a million left homeless.

According to Qatar media, Ihsanoglu expressed his shock and sadness following the disaster, which hit the Republic of Haiti and the large scale destruction inflicted on the people of this Island Nation.

He also praised the international community for its swift reaction in responding to the appeal made by Haiti government, Qatar News Agency said.

Ihsanoglu also expressed his gratitude to the OIC member states, which have already provided assistance and displayed solidarity by coming to the rescue of the Haiti people in the wake of this unprecedented catastrophe.

One week after the earthquake that hit the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, a massive international aid effort is underway as 43 search and rescue teams continue their work.