Cupcakes are latest get rich quick scheme

By Veronique Dupont, in New York for AFP Published: 10:00AM GMT twenty-two February 2010

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Say it with cupcakes... a worldwide retailing phenomenon. Photo: Leila Cutler / Alamy

A normal dessert in America, the cupcake is zero new, but in new years it has morphed in to a must-have epicurean treat, popularised in piece when a brave woman on the trend-setting radio array Sex and the City ate one in an part shown in 2000.

This calorie-laden dessert, customarily colorfully decorated, has taken the United States by charge by specialised cupcake sell chains, similar to Magnolia Bakery and Crumbs, and outlets such as chocolate tradesman Godiva and the Cinnabon cinnamon bun sequence that are cashing in on the boom.

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Cupcakes are gathering up with augmenting magnitude at the sell level, too, as entrepreneurs open shops and online stores.

In New York there are even cupcake trucks snaking by the city"s streets, to one side those offered Greek sandwiches and alternative goodies.

The New York Times spoken in a new essay that the abounding cake, customarily coated with frosting, is the "latest entrepreneurial fantasy".

The Wall Street Journal not prolonged ago dedicated an complete page to the phenomenon.

Blogs are multiplying - cupcakeblog.com and cupcakestakethecake.com between them - as people go online to plead the one preferred iterations, such as Red Velvet (a reddish chocolate cake), Fluffer Nutter (vanilla baked sweat bread with peanut butter and marshmallow frosting) and Peppermint Everything (frosting brimful with peppermint candies, marshmallows lonesome in chocolate sprinkles and wafers).

Cupcakes even have their own being radio show, "Cupcake Wars," in that bakers array cupcake contra cupcake to win a prize.

The cupcake disturb is unconditional Europe, generally in France, where the small candy are gnawing at the heels of the normal macaroon, and is swelling in to the Middle East.

Magnolia Bakery, a colonize of the direction whose emporium in Manhattan"s Greenwich Village is well known for the prolonged queues, right away has 4 stores, together with one in Dubai.

The bakery has even desirous career switches. Fadi Jaber, a Saudi of Palestinian origin, gave up a career at Unilever to open Sugar Daddy, a sequence of cupcake stores in the Middle East, after tasting one at Magnolia"s.

Rachel Thebault quiescent from an investment bank to follow her culinary mental condition and non-stop in 2007 Tribeca Treats, a bakery that creates a gorgeous accumulation of cupcakes as commercial operation watch.

But foe has turn fierce, she said, and so her emporium branched out in to offered gifts and alternative sorts of cakes and cookies.

Kim, a healing workman in Washington who did not wish to give her last name, began offered cupcakes a year ago "to have a small additional income to compensate my 3 kids" college tuition".

"People have been funny about the cupcakes," pronounced Kim, who is you do the commercial operation on the side and for right away does not brave renounce from her unchanging job.

But for Kim, who earns a large distinction of 1.75 dollars on each cupcake sole at 2.50 dollars, foe is not a problem.

"The direct is clever even though there are a lot of cupcake places opening up".

And Kim suspects the mercantile downturn has something to do with her own great fortune: "Because the economy is so bad, so people infrequently wish to provide themselves rather than shopping a total cake."

Sniffer dogs replace magic wands in Baghdad

By Arthur MacMillan, in Baghdad for AFP Published: 10:37AM GMT twenty-two February 2010

A K-9 dog trains at the Iraq troops academy in Baghdad. Photo: AFP/ALI AL-SAADI

During a proof at a checkpoint in Baghdad, Neil scurried around a car, inhaling and exhaling the front and behind seats, foot and bonnet, prior to a handler patted the head helpfully and told a at the moment inconvenienced motorist he could move on.

"We usually check the cars we are questionable of," pronounced an Iraqi troops officer, who admits singular masculine drivers are the organisation majority expected to be stopped since they are seen as intensity self-murder bombers.

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A new liaison over a hand-held bomb-detection device that the Iraqi security forces make make make make make use of of of of of at checkpoints, but that US and British tests have shown is unqualified of detecting explosives, has forced them to see at alternative options.

The make make make make make use of of of of of of some-more sniffer dogs is a approach response.

"We have 47 explosve dogs," pronounced Brigadier General Mohammad Mossheb, commander in chief of the K-9 section at Baghdad Police College, and the troops officer tasked with construction up the war-torn nation"s dog capability.

The German Shepherds, Belgian Shepherds (Malinois) and Labradors being used in Iraq are typically around one year old. They cost in between $8,000 and $9,000 and arrive from the United States or the Netherlands entirely lerned in expectation of a 10-year operative life.

The cost is a fragment of the estimated $16,500 to $60,000 cost of the ADE651, the hand-held tool well known locally as the "magic wand", that notwithstanding being criminialized from trade by Britain, where it was bought, is still used via Iraq and around twenty alternative countries.

However, the charge confronting Mossheb, 48, who lerned for five years at Baghdad Veterinary College prior to fasten the troops dog section in 1986, is immense.

"We would need 1,000 dogs to cover the complete country," pronounced the officer, whose unvaried bears the pinned token of a German Shepherd with the prolonged red tongue unresolved out. "We have a plan in place but it will take time."

The subsequent stairs are to have 6 dogs at each of eighteen checkpoints surrounding the collateral by the finish of 2011, a serve twenty at troops stations on the easterly and west sides of the city, and multiform in each of Iraq"s seventeen alternative provinces.

Security concerns are quite heightened in the run-up to the country"s Mar 7 ubiquitous election, among fears of politically encouraged violence.

The supervision is additionally underneath serious vigour from opponents who contend a array of concurrent self-murder attacks that killed some-more than 400 people in Baghdad in the past 6 months infer it has unsuccessful to secure the capital.

Mossheb is acutely wakeful of allegations that the ADE651, some-more than 1,000 of that were paid for by the government, unsuccessful to acknowledge bombs that have caused hundreds, presumably thousands, of deaths since it came in to make make make make make use of of of of of in 2008.

"This appurtenance has caused most problems," he said. "But it is a make a difference for the supervision to resolve."

With bombers utilizing increasingly worldly techniques, together with stealing explosives in car frames or engines so they cannot be rescued by the exposed eye, sniffer dogs are deliberate really reliable.

While the dogs arrive in Baghdad entirely trained, a group is indispensable to see after them. Veterinarians, veterinary technicians and handlers are receiving apart nine-week precision courses at the K-9 unit"s headquarters.

Trainee handler Ammar Ali Najim, 31, from the northern city of Kirkuk, has outlayed one week at the troops college and is acutely wakeful of the job"s dangers.

"Even if there is a explosve and it explodes, may be my dog and I will die, but we competence save the lives of twelve or fifteen alternative people," he said.

Cultural concerns over the make make make make make use of of of of of of bomb-sniffing dogs, however, have been a worry, since that most Muslims cruise them unwashed animals.

While US soldiers and unfamiliar in isolation security firms have used dogs for years, Iraqis have been demure to, since soldiers did not similar to utilizing them and the internal race disliked being searched by them.

US troops officers, who were the initial to subject the efficacy of the ADE651, hold dogs and some-more costly hi-tech X-ray vans, that can shade an complete vehicle"s contents, suggest the most appropriate defence.

The perfect worry of interlude car bombs, however, is strong on the undiluted streets of the collateral where trade jams are constant.

On Abu Nawas Street in Baghdad, by that an explosives-laden train upheld prior to the motorist detonated the cargo outward the Sheraton Hotel last month, murdering multiform people, it was viewable that the troops face a dilemma.

In the two-and-a-half mins it took Neil to check one car, around 70 vehicles, together with multiform lorries and small buses, were waved by but delay.

"You can"t make make make make make use of of of of of a dog in so most trade as this," handler Hussein Ismail explained, as cars roared past. "Plus a little people at checkpoints are only not operative tough enough."

Voluntary carers to get week off under Liberal Democrat plans

Published: 9:00AM GMT twenty-two February 2010

Around one million people would good from the proposals, the celebration estimates, with personality Nick Clegg profitable reverence to the ""hidden army"" of those who yield caring for free.

Carers would embrace a ""personal budget"" homogeneous to the cost of a week"s residential care, permitting them to take a seven-day legal legal holiday or array of not as big breaks whilst patients are looked after elsewhere or by alternative people.

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Mr Clegg will set out his party"s ""respite caring guarantee"" in a debate to health think-tank the King"s Fund.

He is approaching to say: ""It is a elementary promise: if you caring for some-more than 50 hours a week, you will have the right to a full week of respite.

""Giving you the time you so desperately need to rest, recuperate, or simply have a holiday.

""This joining to carers would eventually admit the debt all of multitude owes to carers. And it would have a difference, a genuine difference, to a million family groups true away.""

The destiny of amicable caring - for people who need assistance with simple needs similar to washing, sauce and eating - has been the theme of sour domestic feuding in new weeks.

Secret cross-party talks on the origination of inhabitant caring make use of pennyless down in acrimony, and on Friday the Tories boycotted a discussion to plead the issue among fears that Labour plans to deliver a mandatory �20,000 levy - dubbed the ""death tax"" - to compensate for reforms.

There have additionally been concerns about the appropriation of Government plans to yield free personal caring to 400,000 of the majority exposed people in their own homes, underneath the Personal Care at Home Bill now prior to Parliament.

The Lib Dems would throw the Bill and make use of the �420 million set in reserve by the Department of Health for the Bill to account the remit guarantee, along with a serve �100 million already allocated for remit care.

Mr Clegg will contend he is ""in awe"" of the country"s five million proffer carers, adding: ""It is time to recognize that there is a dark armed forces of people in Britain, but whom no amicable caring process would be even remotely affordable.

""Between them, they save the nation an estimated �87 billion a year.

""They are a little of the majority dedicated, industrious and under-valued people in Britain today.

""They are carers: people who put in hour after hour, day after day, week after week of caring for their kin and desired ones.""

He will additionally call for an eccentric cross-party commission to inspect the destiny of care, severe alternative celebration leaders to ""stop grandstanding and put the long-term needs of the aged forward of the short tenure final of politics"".

Video: Bafta Awards 2010: red carpet fashion

Published: 12:16AM GMT twenty-two February 2010

The Botox Evita seeks a new lift

By William Langley Published: 6:56PM GMT twenty February 2010

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Cristina Fern�ndez de Kirchner, boss of Argentina, Photo: MAURICIO LIMA/AFP/GETTY

Late at night, as the submissive inhabitants of Buenos Aires contemplate the unpleasant inflation-proneness of the cost of their lucky bife de lomo, the impact of stilettos echoes by the used loftiness of the Casa Rosada, Argentina"s presidential palace. A new predicament has descended on the nation, but this time the glamorous leader, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, knows only who is to blame.

Away to the south, a hulk British oil supply has arrived off the Falkland Islands, the removed South Atlantic archipelago that Mrs Kirchner has described, in a specially burning speech, as "an bootleg colonial enclave". No one can nonetheless contend how majority oil lies subsequent the wild waters around the islands, but it is expected that substantial cache are at interest not the slightest of which, for the 57-year-old Mrs Kirchner, is the possibility of reviving her smashed domestic standing.

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Last week, as family in between Britain and Argentina sank behind towards the deep-frozen levels of twenty-five years ago, Mrs Kirchner imposed what amounted to an mercantile blockade. According to a new supervision decree, any boat flitting by waters claimed by Argentina contingency have a special permit. To underline how severely the issue is being taken, the unfamiliar method impounded a small Danish freighter indicted of carrying oil tube equipment.

Liberating the doubtful islands has been a sure-fire populist rallying cry for generations of Argentinian politicians: the 1994 constitution declares their liberation to be "a permanent and unrelinquished idea of the Argentine people". The big warn is that Mrs Kirchner unkindly referred to by the stiffer elements of Buenos Aires multitude as "The Botox Evita" has embraced the means so soon.

In a nation dependant to intrigue and intrigue, Cristina"s jubilant climb to the patio of the capital"s pinkish presidential house carried with it a sniff of some-more aged and improved times. The initial inaugurated womanlike boss of an incorrigibly macho nation, she was vivacious, blunt and energetic, hailed as the new Eva Peron on paper a rarely fitting some-more aged that the shrewd Cristina did zero to discourage.

At choosing rallies in 2007 she would appear, oozing pampas chic, in tight, Eva-esque outfits (mostly tailored in Milan by Gucci), underneath outrageous screens temperament photographs of her distinguished predecessor. Keeping her speeches short and to the point (at slightest by South American standards), she would wait for until the chants of the throng crashed over her prior to settling in to Eva"s heading hands-upon-heart pose.

When the votes were counted, she had twice as majority as the subsequent majority renouned candidate. Her doting husband, Nestor, showered her with kisses, and threw her a feat round where they tangoed until dawn. Then, if you hold the cynics, he got on with the pursuit of using the nation himself. For shades again of Eva Cristina is the wife, and, in a little senses the creation, of a absolute man.

Nestor Carlos Kirchner, a wiry-haired one-time Leftist radical, won the presidency in 2003 and hold it until he stepped down, effectively in his wife"s favour. Engrossed via majority of his tenure with Argentina"s bullheaded mercantile problems, Nestor realistically directed transparent of the Falklands issue. It was broadly assumed, when the husband-and-wife tab group switched places, that Cristina would do the same.

That she hasn"t suggests to her supporters that she unequivocally is her own woman. To her critics, it suggests she still has a lot to sense about politics. And to everybody else, it suggests that she"s really no Eva Peron. Which is only as well. For the celebrity cult of Evita has for all the erotically appealing wrapping turn a challenging barrier to women looking energy in South America.

Born in to poverty, Eva Duarte left home in her early teenagers to find her happening in the big city. She became a small-time singer and air call celebrity, and the chick on the side of a fibre of mostly meaningless men, until she met the charismatic statesman Juan Domingo Peron in 1944. They tied together the following year, and when Juan became boss dual years later, Eva theatrically expel herself as the saviour of the nation"s poor. "What this did," says Elena Highton de Nolasco, Argentina"s initial womanlike Supreme Court judge, "was settle the magnitude by that all womanlike politicians in Argentina are judged."

Cristina, by contrast, was innate in to a wealthy, landed tillage family in the southern range of Patagonia. She met her destiny father at university; they both lerned as lawyers, and entered governing body together. They similar to to execute themselves as a domestic unit, and it is at large believed that when she leaves office, the machiavellian Nestor will run again.

Yet whilst her father is worried in the open eye, preferring a easeful hold up in the behind corridors of the Casa Rosada, Cristina"s ardour for hobnobbing with celebrities and creation trips to unfamiliar capitals has turn notorious. "She loves being photographed, loves removing ready to go up, loves the total glorious package," says James Neilson, a domestic columnist for the repository Noticias. "You can similar to her or you can"t, but there"s no disbelief she"s brought a outrageous volume of wow-factor to the country."

But things have been going really bad for Cristina roughly given choosing day. An try to slap an trade taxation on farmers triggered a four-month call of strikes that sent the economy, heavily contingent on agriculture, true behind to the puncture ward. As the nation struggled to compensate the debts, Cristina demanded that the nominally eccentric executive bank palm the �2 billion income pot over to the treasury. When the administrator refused, she transposed him with an problematic domestic crony.

Next she fell out with the country"s press, that asked ungainly questions about her celebrated chumminess with the nonconformist Venezuelan celebrity Hugo Chavez, and in sold about the suitcases of income that were pronounced to have arrived at her choosing HQ from Caracas. She responded with ham-fisted threats to have the media handle itself, and now enjoys a little of the lowest capitulation ratings Argentina has witnessed. "The tougher she tries to be, the some-more she reveals her weakness," says Buenos Aires domestic researcher Rosendo Fraga. "It"s tough to see how she can recover."

There"s regularly a approach back, though. And only when she indispensable it most, Cristina has a Falklands crisis. Whoever gets the oil in the end, that"s positively something she can appreciate Britain for.

Lord Mandelson backs state investment bank plan

By Rupert Neate Published: 11:51PM GMT twenty-one February 2010

The bank would be modelled on Germany"s KfW bank. The Business Secretary"s await came as he pounded Tory plans to suggest the open ignored shares in the stream state-owned banks.

Lord Mandelson has hold talks with comparison management team of KfW, that was shaped after the Second World War as square of the Marshall Plan, and Treasury staff are sketch up proposals that could be voiced as square of the Budget.

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The Business Secretary believes that a state-run bank could emanate appropriation streams for sectors that normal banks competence differently ignore.

Lord Mandelson pounded George Osborne"s plan to emanate a "people"s bank bonus" by offered shares in Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group at favoured conditions to bad electorate as a "silly small gimmick".

Mr Osborne, the shade chancellor, had pronounced a Tory supervision would try to "re-capitalise the poor" by charity immature people and those on low incomes "special" conditions when it sells the supervision stakes in RBS and Lloyds.

"Taxpayers bailed out the banks, so they merit a "people"s bank bonus" when the time comes to sell the government"s shares," Mr Osborne said. "The nationalised and semi-nationalised banks should be reprivatised when the conditions are right to maximize taxpayer return."

Lord Mandelson pronounced the plan was a "another square of headline-grabbing incoherence". On the BBC"s The Andrew Marr Show he said: "What on earth are they you do giving afar the shares at a knock-down price?"

Liam Byrne, Chief Secretary to the Treasury said: "When it comes to the shares in the banks the open expects us to concentration on removing their income back. That equates to offered them at a time and approach that maximises their value, not an insane and costly domestic gimmick."

The Government outlayed a total �66bn shopping up a 84pc interest in RBS and a 43pc in Lloyds. Shares in the banks are now value about a third of the prices the Government paid. The intrigue has been compared to the "Tell Sid" British Gas privatisation debate of the 1980s.

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats" Treasury spokesman, pronounced it would be multiform years prior to the banks could be sole off, so "dangling this prospect" was "electioneering at the majority cynical".

"Actively enlivening people on really low incomes to deposit in a flighty share marketplace beggars idea and shows only how private the Tories are from bland reality," he added.

Neil Warnock silent on QPR move following Crystal Palaces home defeat to Coventry City

By Neil Trainis Published: 6:30AM GMT twenty-two February 2010

Touchline fury: Neil Warnock remonstrates with the arbitrate during the better to Coventry City Photo: REUTERS

Even a small of the Selhurst Park true competence assimilate if a man whose peripatetic managerial career has since him an downright form of emotions decides to call time on his power in south London and take up an suggest from wealthy rivals Queen"s Park Rangers.

Having engineered a earnest gash at graduation to the Premier League, where Warnock feels he has unprepared commercial operation after the Carlos Tvez affair, he has watched it pulp around him.

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Progress on the representation has been cracked by administration department and as Palace enter upon on a relegation battle, the wounds are gaping. Warnock praised his players" efforts in better to Coventry City and praised the pang fans, but did not endorse that he would finish the deteriorate at Palace. If, indeed, any new owners wish him to.

"All I can contend is I get all out of the squad. I have not been happy for weeks," he said.

The last 7 difference were revealing. A deteriorate of send embargoes, secret goals and monetary instability has done for sorry observation and it was formidable to shun the clarity that, notwithstanding his affinity to Palace, a shift of view would be refreshing.

Warnock is still bruise at being forced by the director to sell Victor Moses, a player who supposing "something a small different" and the loss of an imaginatively clever assailant was underlined here.

Palace strained and, the considerable Nick Carle aside, lacked creativity, slipping in to the relegation section after David Bell chipped the round over Julián Speroni after a breakway in the 85th minute. Warnock spoke some-more keenly about Wednesday"s FA Cup replay at Aston Villa compare that might outrider the finish of his reign.