Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez speaks while opening Venezuela’s cultural center in Moscow, Thursday, June 28, 2007. Chavez arrived in Moscow early for talks with his Russian counterpart as Russian news media speculated about a major weapons

By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) _ President Hugo Chavez said Sunday that Russia will help Venezuela develop nuclear energy — a move likely to raise U.S. concerns over increasingly close cooperation between Caracas and Moscow.

Chavez said he accepted an offer from Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for assistance in building a nuclear reactor.

“Russia is ready to support Venezuela in the development of nuclear energy with peaceful purposes and we already have a commission working on it,” Chavez said. “We are interested in developing nuclear energy.”

Putin offered Chavez assistance in developing nuclear energy during a meeting in the Russian city of Novo-Ogaryovo last week. The prime minister did not specify what kind of cooperation he could offer Venezuela, but Russia is aggressively promoting itself as a builder of nuclear power plants in developing nations.

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From CNN Political Producer Peter Hamby

Palin stumbled in her interview with CBS' Katie Couric.

SEDONA, Arizona (CNN) – Sarah Palin’s interview Tuesday with conservative talker Hugh Hewitt gave the vice presidential candidate a chance to showcase elements of her life story and demonstrate some of the folksiness that’s been central to her political success.

It’s exactly the kind of interview that voters can expect to see from the governor in the coming weeks, according to a Palin adviser, who recognized that there is hunger in Republican circles and among the public at large to see a less-scripted, more authentic candidate. That means more comfortable settings like conservative talk radio, and fewer opportunities for Palin to stumble, as was the case with a pair of high-profile network interviews with ABC and CBS.

“We’re going to be continue to put her in settings where she has an opportunity to shine, to be on offense,” the adviser said. “We’ve gotten very good feedback from the public from Hugh Hewitt interview.”

The adviser suggested that the campaign’s efforts at damage control following Palin’s interview with Katie Couric may have been hampered by the fact that the governor wasn’t doing more friendly interviews to counter her flubs on Russia and the congressional bailout bill, which have reverberated throughout the blogosphere and even turned Palin into a punchline on Saturday Night Live.

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BARACK Obama has vaulted ahead of his Republican rival John McCain, gaining ground in pivotal states and among women voters, new polls have showed.

Gaining momentum after the first presidential debate and amid a grave financial crisis, Democratic candidate Senator Obama now enjoys a seven-point lead nationally and has widened his lead in crucial states – including Florida, Virginia and Nevada – needed for victory on November 4, according to a new Time/CNN poll.

Another poll by Quinnipiac University had Senator Obama pulling ahead in the battlegrounds of Ohio and Pennsylvania, as well as Florida – a state that only weeks ago appeared out of reach for the Democrat.

With the troubled economy dominating the campaign, the Illinois senator and Senator McCain headed back to Washington to vote on a revised $US700 billion ($880 billion) Wall Street bailout plan designed to stem the country’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Time/CNN survey shows Senator Obama hitting the threshold of 50 per cent, the first time a Democratic White House candidate has done for decades, while Senator McCain was hemorrhaging support among women voters.

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AS THE Lower House of the United States Congress voted yesterday against a US$700-billion bailout plan for that nation’s banking sector, Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Audley Shaw, said there was no need for Jamaica to panic.

Shaw told The Gleaner yesterday that Bank of Jamaica Governor Derick Latibeaudiere and acting director of the Financial Services Commission, George Roper, have been monitoring the financial debacle in the United States.

Regulatory bodies up-to-date

The finance minister gave assurance that no local financial institution has been adversely affected in as a result of the turmoil in the US banking sector.

He said the regulatory bodies have been briefing him on the proceedings as they unfold.

However, the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) yesterday slammed the Bruce Golding administration for what it said was its failure to provide the country with full information on the possible fallout from the economic crisis.

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by Nikolas Barry-Shaw

Coming to office in the midst of a hurricane-provoked humanitarian crisis, Haiti’s new Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis clearly has her work cut out for her. Paradoxically, one of the biggest obstacles her administration will face is the blight of foreign-funded NGOs eagerly trying to “help” Haiti. The new Prime Minister acknowledged as much recently, stating that “the channelling of hundreds of millions of dollars of international aid through NGOs poses serious problems for the country,” according to the Agence Haitienne de Presse.

Over the past decade, a tidal wave of NGOs have come to blanket Haiti. According to the World Bank, there are today over 10,000 NGOs working in Haiti, the highest per-capita concentration in the world. These organizations occupy every possible sector of activity, their budgets sometimes dwarfing those of their governmental counterparts.

Agriculture provides a telling example, as Nazaire St. Fort reports: “[M]ore than 800 NGOs work parallel with the agriculture ministry, but most define their own priorities.” The Association National des Agro-professionnels Haïtiens (ANDAH) explains that of the “3.4 billion gourdes (91 million dollars) budgeted for public investment in 2006-2007, 3.2 billion (85 million dollars) are managed by NGOs.”

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