Stoner holds off Pedrosa to win in Aragon (Reuters)

MADRID (Reuters) â€" Former world champion Casey Stoner held off local favourite Dani Pedrosa to win the Aragon MotoGP on Sunday and record his first victory of the season.

Spanish Honda pilot Pedrosa recovered from a poor start and began to reel the Australian Ducati rider in during the middle stages of the race at the new Motorland circuit in Alcaniz to the north east of Madrid.

But 2007 champion Stoner, who started from pole having recovered from a minor crash during the warmup, pulled away to win by a comfortable margin of more than five seconds.

Stoner's team mate Nicky Hayden of the United States pipped championship leader Jorge Lorenzo for third, just over nine seconds off the pace, after overtaking the Spaniard on an exciting final lap.

With five races remaining and 25 points awarded for a win, Pedrosa is the only rider who can catch Lorenzo in the overall standings. The Yamaha rider leads his compatriot by 56 points and Stoner is 129 points back in third.

"It was a difficult race today and I was very nervous for the first few laps after the crash this morning," Stoner said in an interview with Spanish television.

"I was lucky not to make too big a mistake and tried to put in some smooth, consitent laps and pull away for the win," the 24-year-old added.

Current world champion Valentino Rossi, who is struggling with a shoulder injury, finished sixth.

TOMIZAWA TRIBUTE

The sport is still reeling from the death of Shoya Tomizawa at the San Marino Grand Prix two weeks ago and riders had earlier gathered in bright sunshine in the paddock to pay tribute to the Japanese Moto2 pilot.

Members of his team placed his bike on the starting grid and a minute's silence was held for the 19-year-old, whose number 48 has been retired from the championship.

Andrea Iannone of Italy won the Moto2 race and Spaniard Pol Espargaro was victorious in the 125cc category.

(Reporting by Iain Rogers, editing by John Mehaffey; To query or comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)

(For more news visit Reuters India)

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Fed expected to wait and see as economy convalesces (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) â€" Glimmers of a revived economic recovery are expected to give the US Federal Reserve some breathing space when its top committee meets Tuesday, avoiding a renewed battle inside the central bank.

Members of the Fed's policymaking panel will gather for the last time before November's mid-term elections, with the economic outlook transformed since their last meeting from apocalyptic to vaguely promising.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is expected to anchor the fragile recovery by promising to leave interest rates at historic lows and keep stimulus spending at current levels.

But with the economic picture brightening it is expected to hold off from dramatic increases in spending designed to speed up growth.

"We see the improved data as buying time for the Fed to sit on the sidelines at the September FOMC meeting," said Michael Gapen of Barclays Capital.

The US economy, after months of languishing in the doldrums, has regained some momentum since the Fed meet at the end of June, when members expressed concern about a "sluggish" economic recovery.

In July and August private firms continued to add jobs, albeit at pace that was too slow to offset the loss of tens of thousands of Census taking jobs.

A rapidly narrowing trade deficit and recovering consumer prices have also pointed to a tempered, if tepid, recovery.

Most economists now expect the economy to grow faster in July, August and September than the previous three months.

That could help avoid a showdown at the Fed over the need for more stimulus.

At recent meetings Fed members have tussled over how and when to restart even modest crisis measures, which some fear would send the wrong signal to financial markets and forestall a return to normal monetary policy.

While "all but one member" agreed on the need to reinvest crisis spending that had expired, minutes showed deep divisions about the impact these measures would have.

Any move to increase stimulus spending would likely deepen divisions, especially if the case for action was not clear cut.

Given this many analysts believe a shift in policy will not now come until the Fed's November or December meetings, and will be contingent on signs that the economy is in deep distress.

"We believe the bar for further stimulus includes some combination of below-trend growth in real GDP (gross domestic product), a worsening labor market, and heightened deflation probabilities," said Gapen.

But not all economists were convinced that the Fed should wait.

"The 'better-than-expected' tone of many recent indicators says more about the gloom that has overtaken the markets than it does the improvement in economic fundamentals," said David Resler of Nomura Securities.

"Marginally stronger economic data have not altered the case for a new round of quantitative easing and we see no compelling reason to wait."

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Karzai votes for female Hindu candidate - sources (Reuters)

KABUL (Reuters) â€" Afghan President Hamid Karzai chose a female, Hindu candidate when he voted in Saturday's parliamentary election, two palace officials close to him said.

Just two Hindu candidates were on the list of about 600 vying for parliamentary seats in the Afghan capital. Karzai's choice could annoy supporters in deeply conservative, Muslim Afghanistan.

His backers include powerful ex-warlords who were fielding their own candidates and religious conservatives who are opposed to female politicians and unlikely to be happy Karzai is backing a non-Muslim.

"It was Anar Kali Honaryar," one palace official told Reuters, giving the name of a female activist who largely relied on Muslim supporters during her campaigning.

Hindus and Sikhs lived in Afghanistan and dominated trade long before the advent of Islam in the 7th century.

Their numbers shrank over the centuries and tens of thousands of those who remained fled Afghanistan after civil war broke out in 1992, leaving just a few thousand behind.

Women are a minority in Afghan public life, although 25 percent of the 249 seats in parliament are reserved for them.

Many of the 406 female candidates running in the election have been a particular target for threats and intimidation, and overall women's grip on rights won since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban -- like education and the vote -- remains tenuous.

Karzai's wife joined the millions of Afghans who did not make it to the polls -- although not because of the security concerns or frustration about corruption that kept others away.

The couple's only child is sick and she did not want to leave him alone, Karzai told a female election worker who later recounted the conversation to a Reuters reporter.

(Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison and Janet Lawrence)

(For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/afghanistanpakistan)

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U.S. woes are not our fault, Chinese economists say (Reuters)

BEIJING (Reuters) â€" China is not to blame for U.S. economic woes, Chinese economic researchers said in state media reports on Saturday, hitting back at U.S. complaints about unfair trade and China's currency policy.

"The actions and criticism against China makes no sense," Huo Jianguo, director of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, a Ministry of Commerce think-tank, told China Daily in an interview.

He said the Obama administration had made China a scapegoat to please voters ahead of mid-term elections.

The comments follow U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's promise to rally other world powers to push China for trade and currency reforms.

China's central bank said in June it would let the currency fluctuate more freely. Since then it has risen 1.53 percent, but many economists say it is undervalued by up to 40 percent.

China's government could not have let the yuan appreciate faster because of China's own economic situation, Huo said. In the longer term, the yuan would rise against the dollar.

"The U.S. moves do not hold any water and China must come out strongly against them," he said.

Zhang Monan, an economist with the State Information Center, a top government think-tank, said the United States gained more than China from their relationship as the world's biggest debtor and the world's biggest creditor.

"Ironically, being the largest debtor nation has not restrained the mammoth that is the U.S. Instead, its huge debt has been used as an effective apparatus to maintain and extend Washington's decades-old global financial hegemony," she wrote in a commentary in China Daily.

She said the United States was able to take advantage of the dollar's falling value and the currency's dominant position in international financial transactions to cut the country's foreign debts.

"From 2002 to 2006 alone, an accumulated $3.58 trillion worth of U.S. debt evaporated because of the Federal Reserve's increased issuance of the dollar or the decision to devalue the greenback as the world's leading reserve currency."

At the same time, U.S. investments overseas earned much more than the 3.5 percent average return ratio that foreign creditors got from 10-year U.S. debts, she said.

"Compared with the advantage the U.S. enjoys in the global financial scope, China is still not a credit power in the real sense despite its status as the world's largest creditor nation. It is more like a depositor that puts its enormous funds into the bank only to gain a low interest, before borrowing from (the) bank by paying a much higher rate."

(Reporting by Tom Miles, editing by Miral Fahmy)

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Pope's security in spotlight after London arrests (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) â€" Pope Benedict's security was in the spotlight on Friday after London police arrested five men on suspicion of preparing an attack in Britain.

It was not clear if the planned attack was related to the pope's visit or when it was to have taken place, but it prompted police to take another look at security for the pontiff, who was on the second day of his visit to Britain.

The Vatican said the trip would go on unchanged. Police said they had reviewed their arrangements for the visit and concluded that their plan "remains appropriate".

The arrests were made by anti-terrorism police, who were searching a business in central London and homes in the north and east of the city but had not uncovered dangerous materials.

The five men, aged between 26 and 50, who were not named, were arrested around 5:45 a.m. (0445 GMT), police said in a statement.

The Pope has been heavily protected during his four-day visit to Britain, travelling in a custom-built bulletproof car surrounded by security officials.

Four young British Islamists killed 52 people and wounded hundreds when they set off suicide bombs on three underground trains and a bus on in July 2005.

The Vatican was told of the arrests as the pope was arriving at a Catholic university in southwest London.

"We are totally confident in police and there are no plans to change the programme," said Father Federico Lombardi. He said the pope was calm and looking forward to the rest of the visit.

At the university, Benedict reminded his church, reeling from evidence of widespread sexual abuse of children by priests, that its first priority was to provide a safe environment for children.

"Our responsibility towards those entrusted to us for their Christian formation demands nothing less," he told a gathering of Catholic schoolteachers and administrators.

In the first substantial protest of his delicate visit to Britain, several hundred people whistled and shouted "Pope must resign!" and "Shame!" as the papal motorcade entered a nearby Catholic school complex.

They held placards reading "Hypocrisy and lies" and "Catholic paedophile cover up".

The sex abuse scandal, in which priests who abused children were moved from parish to parish instead of turned over to police, has hounded Benedict's five-year-old papacy, even though most of the abuse took place decades ago.

On Thursday, the pope told reporters aboard the plane from Rome that he was shocked by what he called a "perversion" of the priesthood and acknowledged that the Church had not been sufficiently vigilant and decisive in dealing with the scandal.

(additional reporting by Avril Ormsby and Maria Golovnina; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

(For more on faith and ethics, see the Reuters religion blog FaithWorld at http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld)

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Poverty rate hits 15-year high (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) â€" The U.S. poverty rate rose to 14.3 percent in 2009 from 13.2 percent the year before, bringing the percentage of the population living in poverty to the highest level since 1994, as the economic downturn took its toll on jobs, the government said on Thursday.

The Census Bureau said 43.6 million people, or one in seven Americans, lived in poverty last year, up from 39.8 million in 2008. The data paints a picture of rising hardship and declining incomes for many living in the United States and hands more bad economic news to Democrats ahead of November 2 congressional elections.

"Our economy plunged into recession almost three years ago on the heels of a financial meltdown and a rapid decline in housing prices," President Barack Obama said in a statement.

"Last year we saw the depths of the recession, including historic losses in employment not witnessed since the Great Depression," Obama said. His economic recovery package enacted last year, he said, had helped keep millions from falling into poverty in 2009.

The poverty threshold for a family of four in 2009 was $21,954, the report said. The Census report relies on cash income and government payments, including unemployment insurance, to measure poverty.

But the data omits other government assistance, such as food stamps and low-income tax credits, that were increased in last year's economic package.

Republicans pounced on the report, saying it showed that the government aid enacted by Obama and his congressional Democrats was not working.

"What poor Americans, like all other Americans, need are jobs, not more government benefits," said Republican Representative John Linder.

The worst recession in decades began in December 2007 while Republican George W. Bush was president and the recovery has been slow to take hold.

DECLINING HEALTH COVERAGE

While poverty levels rose, the number of people without health insurance jumped to 50.7 million in 2009 from 46.3 million a year earlier, leaving 16.7 percent of the population without health coverage, the Census Bureau said in its annual report on income, poverty and health coverage.

The data show that the impact of the economic downturn hit people at lower income levels the hardest, and many more would have fallen into poverty but for the additional unemployment payments approved by Congress, Census spokesman Stanley Rolark told reporters.

The annual measure of how well Americans are living is important because lawmakers and analysts use it to assess the overall health of the U.S. economy as well as the effectiveness of government programs.

The poverty rate in 2009 was the highest since 1994, but was 8.1 percentage points lower than the poverty rate in 1959, the first year for which poverty estimates are available, the Census Bureau said.

Median income declined between 2008 and 2009 for non-Hispanic white and black households in the United States, while Asian households had the highest median income in 2009. Median income for Hispanic-origin households was about the same in 2009 as in 2008, the report said.

The number of working men fell since 2007 by 2.5 million, while the number of working women fell by 1.3 million, the report said.

"No other set of income years surrounding the recessions dating from 1969 to the present has experienced such a large decline in the number of workers," the report said.

At the same time, earnings of working men fell by 4.1 percent, and earnings of working women fell by 2.8 percent. The data reflect a decline in the number of people working full-time, year-round jobs.

The number of people with health insurance fell for the first time in 2009 since the Census Bureau began collecting the data in 1987.

"The economic downturn exacerbated the steady erosion over the past decade in the number of people with employer-provided health coverage -- erosion caused by the unaffordable costs of health care for America's businesses," said Ron Pollack, of Families USA, a healthcare advocacy group.

The number of people covered by private health insurance fell from 2008 to 2009, while the number with government health insurance rose, the report said.

Some 194.5 million people in 2009 have private health coverage, compared to 201 million in 2008. The number of people covered by government plans rose to 93.2 million in 2009, from 87.4 million in 2008.

The newly enacted healthcare overhaul will require most people to obtain health insurance by 2014, and the government will offer subsidies to help them afford it.

(Editing by Philip Barbara)

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Commonwealth Games preparations go down to wire (Reuters)

NEW DELHI (Reuters) â€" When the head of next month's Commonwealth Games in India says that all the venues are complete, the constant noise of banging hammers and whirring drills that threatens to drown him out suggests otherwise.

Beset by stories of corruption, a dengue epidemic and leaking roofs of stadia, Indian authorities showed off new venues in the face of a storm of media criticism amid worries the Games, a showcase for this emerging global giant, could be a disaster.

"I am sorry to disappoint you, but the stadium is 100 percent ready. Everything is on time," Suresh Kalmadi, Organising Committee chairman, told reporters on a tour of the main Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium as labourers put down their tools to wave from the rafters above.

The opening ceremony, to be held in this renovated stadium is only 17 days away. Preparations for the Games, estimated to cost $6 billion and with 8,000 athletes expected, are going down to the wire.

Schools are being closed during the Games amid fears of gridlock in this chaotic city of 18 million. Many people that can afford it are leaving the city for holidays, fearful that plans to restrict traffic will cripple daily life.

But the government has told sceptical Indians and foreigners not to worry. This, officials say, is like a chaotic Indian wedding. Everything comes together at the last moment.

After weeks of criticism, much of the Indian media appears to have come behind the government. One TV station has broadcast a "Be The Solution" campaign.

The Games village, built over 63.5 hectares across the dirty Yamuna river from the city, is also complete, Kalmadi said. Yet the same sound of heavy drilling reverberates around the $230 million accommodation complex. Reports suggest 10 of the 34 tower blocks are under construction, while some delegates who have already arrived in Delhi are being asked to stay in hotels.

While the two towers open to the press are spacious, secure and well-equipped, many apartments are dirty and littered with empty boxes. Athletes are expected to arrive from next week.

Bags of rubbish and piles of unused cement are visible around the pathways, while the outdoor training pool shows insect larvae collecting on the surface of the unclean water.

As religious leaders bless the complex, the gardens are waterlogged as workers attempt to stimulate the growth of bare shrubs planted just weeks ago, while technicians rush to fill the designated internet cafe with networked computers.

Certainly, some venues support Kalmadi's declaration. The Thyagaraj Sports Complex, purpose-built in two and a half years at a cost of $64.5 million will host the netball competition. The impressive facility has been fully tested and is prepared.

Dhyan Chand National Stadium, built in 1951, was overhauled for the Men's Hockey World Cup in February. The changing rooms, VIP lounge and pitch are new, but the drab exterior betrays the venue's age. Mosquitos were breeding here just six weeks ago.

In the village's training complex, hurdles, pole vaulting equipment and crash mats lie wrapped in plastic as labourers finish installing bathroom fittings. It is evident that despite the claims of the organisers, Delhi's deadline looms.

"Everything has been left to the last minute. But they say 'Incredible India', and things really do come together," says Dennis Meredith, sports manager for the Hockey tournament.

(Editing by Alistair Scrutton)

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