Last week's floods left thousands homeless, and officials fear the death toll of about 160 could rise dramatically unless food and clean water supplies quickly reach survivors.

There are security fears in Oro province, north of the capital Port Moresby, after looters made off with a rice shipment and local MPs were accused of commandeering relief supplies for their own villages.

Howard's bank account just skyrocketed like one of those home runs he deposits into the upper deck. Baseball's best bargain finally will be getting big bucks.

Howard won his salary arbitration case against the Philadelphia Phillies on Thursday when he was awarded $10 million, the highest figure given a victorious player.

Now teammates expect him to pay for their meals and pick up the tab on their nights out.

"My reaction is mostly relief," Howard said. "It was an interesting process. Anyway you look at it, it's a win-win because it's a substantial raise."

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Neal Ascherson: Fears and hopes

For 2006, I fear:

That the hopeful people of Iraq who go out to vote against all the threats of death and destruction will see their country fall apart into new destruction created by foreign meddling and megalomaniac clerics;

That the provincial fools who rule Iran will betray their long-suffering subjects, by driving the country into follies which will tempt Bush and the neocons to strike at them;

That Israel will press forward with the colonisation of the West Bank, until yet another Palestinian uprising and yet another wave of Israeli military reprisals postpones Palestinian statehood;

That China's growing demand for energy, raw materials and food will overwhelm all the world's efforts to conserve the rainforests and reduce the consumption of fossil fuels;

That the European Union will fail to replace its abortive “constitution” or to reconstruct the budget crippled – in the fiasco of the British presidency – by Tony Blair's unforgivable obsession with the rebate, and will begin to drift backwards towards disintegration;