Ailing carmaker Opel is considering launching an electric car for inner-city use to tap what it sees as a high-potential market, the firm's boss said in an interview Sunday.

"We are thinking about a small electric vehicle," the chief of the General Motors unit, Nick Reilly, told Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

"We believe there is strong potential for growth in cities across the world," he added, predicting that "various governments are going to provide fiscal support for this kind of vehicle."

An Opel spokesman said the new model -- which would be smaller than the Corsa -- was expected to be launched in three years, in both electric and conventional fuel versions.

Hit by falling sales, Opel this month unveiled a sweeping restructuring plan along with an appeal for countries that host Opel and its British sister brand Vauxhall to stump up 2.7 billion euros in state aid.

By 2014 Opel has said it plans to invest 11 billion euros in new models and environmentally friendly technology such as electric powertrains.

Its first electric-only car, the Ampera, is scheduled for delivery in 2011. Its wheels are powered exclusively by an electric engine, with a small fuel engine integrated to recharge its batteries.

European Union industry ministers pressed the European Commission this month to devise a common strategy to develop electric cars, seen as both an environmental necessity and an opportunity for growth.

Current EU president Spain wants the electric car to feature in the EU's 2020 strategy, an economic reform project aimed at ensuring prosperity and sustainable growth for Europe.

A Hamas leader killed in his Dubai hotel room was drugged and then suffocated, police said on Sunday, giving further details of the Cold war-style hit allegedly carried out by Mossad agents.

Police also said that a Palestinian held in connection with the murder had helped the hit team with logistics.

"The killers used the drug succinylcholine to sedate (Mahmud) al-Mabhuh before they suffocated him," Major General Khamis Mattar al-Mazeina, deputy commander of Dubai police, said in a statement.

"The assassins used this method so that it would seem that his death was natural," Mazeina said, adding that "there were no signs of resistance shown by the victim."

Post-mortem test results revealed the presence of the drug, Mazeina said. He added that results did not indicate the amount injected, as the drug is difficult to trace.

Succinylcholine, also known as suxamethonium, is used to induce muscle relaxation and is favoured by anaesthetists and emergency doctors because of its fast onset.

It is "usually (used) for facilitation of endotracheal intubation" (inserting a tracheal tube), the statement quoted the General Department of Forensic Sciences and Criminology at Dubai Police as saying.

Mabhuh, one of the founders of Hamas' military wing, was found dead in his hotel room on January 20.

Israeli intelligence service Mossad has widely been accused of carrying out the assassination. Mabhuh is regarded by Israel as a key link in a weapons smuggling chain into Gaza, which is controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas.

Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan has called on Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, to come clean on the murder.

"Meir Dagan, the boss, should admit the crime... or present a categorical denial," government daily Emarat Al-Youm on Saturday quoted Khalfan as saying.

"But (Dagan's) current attitude shows he is afraid. Let him be a man, and tell the truth," Khalfan said.

Twelve British, six Irish, four French, one German and three Australian passports were used by the 26 people believed linked to the murder, according to Dubai police.

In many cases, the documents appeared either to have been faked or obtained illegally.

The issue has caused a diplomatic row in which the five countries whose passports were used have all called in Israeli envoys for talks.

Israel has sought to play down the row, saying there is no evidence of its involvement. It has rejected the calls for Dagan's arrest as "baseless" and "absurd."

In addition to the 26 Western suspects, police have announced that they have two Palestinians in custody, both residents of the emirate who had fled but were extradited back from Jordan.

The Dubai police chief on Sunday told Al-Arabiya news channel that one of the Palestinian suspects had allegedly provided "logistics assistance" to the hit squad.

The Dubai police "alone and without any outside help" was able to re-enact the murder, Khalfan added.

Al-Ittihad newspaper reported last week that a third Palestinian was also being held for questioning but there has been no official confirmation of that report.

Republican House Whip Eric Cantor may have made a Freudian slip Sunday when he told NBC's David Gregory that the GOP wants to "get people more uninsured."

Gregory asked a panel to comment on what he called the fundamental tension of the health reform debate.

"The tension seems to be that individual elements are popular. You can talk to people who want better health care, better access to health care, reform. But there's a lot of distrust that government can deliver this kind of care and handle it well."

"The reality is Republicans do care about health care," Cantor replied. "We want to address the first and most foundational element which is cost. Because if we can bring down cost, more people can access care. But we also know that there is something we can do to get people more uninsured."

"The problem is," he continued, "with the president's bill it's about expanding Medicaid. No one wants to go onto Medicaid. That's why physicians in Florida and other states are leaving Medicaid in droves because of the imperfect reimbursement structure. That's what this bill is about, is expanding the government programs that don't work. We need real reform to bring down costs."

Democratic Chief Deputy Whip Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz jumped in to counter his assertion that Democrats wouldn't address costs.

"There's 47 million people in America that don't have insurance. We are all paying for them because they show up at the emergency room as their primary access point for health care," she said.

"In order to reduce costs we can cut a tax of $1000 on American families just by covering those people," she insisted. "We can also make sure that we bring down costs by broadening the pool, adding the healthiest people who are choosing right now to not carry health insurance. Then when they get hit out of the clear blue sky by an unexpected illness, they don't have insurance, and we're all paying for it."

This video is from NBC's Meet the Press, broadcast Feb. 28, 2010.

Download video via RawReplay.com

New US-sponsored Pakistani media will raise awareness and build a brand for America, according to sources in the international press.

The Obama administration is set to spend $50 million on media in Pakistan.

The goal is to raise awareness of projects aimed at reversing anti-American sentiments.

The US Special Representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke believes that a substantial amount of monies spent on media, especially private TV channels, will reduce tension and may even bring Pakistan-US relations back on the right path, according to Examiner.com.

The Obama administration sent lawmakers this week a plan for $1.45 billion in aid for Pakistan this year, funding water, energy and other projects as well as a media campaign to counter extremist views, according to Reuters.

"This effort will reduce the ability of al Qaeda and other extremists to influence public perceptions and attitudes and support Pakistan's people and government as they establish a more secure, prosperous and lasting state," the report said.

Military spending, more than $10 billion over the past nine years, has not been effective at building better relations with Islamabad so under Obama the focus will shift to infrastructure, and apparently propaganda.

As RAWSTORY has extensively investigated, Obama's predecessor oversaw massive propaganda campaigns targeted at US citizens.

According to PR Watch, those programs were illegal under US law:

The Pentagon military analyst program unveiled in last week's exposé by David Barstow in the New York Times was not just unethical but illegal. It violates, for starters, specific restrictions that Congress has been placing in its annual appropriation bills every year since 1951. According to those restrictions, "No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."

The Obama administration plans to help Pakistan’s democratic government meet budget shortfalls and deliver services to a population increasingly angry about economic and security troubles. US law allows public money to be spent by the federal government on foreign propaganda.

The Republican Party is pulling the strings behind the tea parties but protesters still have some things in common with Democrats, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"The Republican Party directs a lot of what the tea party does, but not everybody in the tea party takes direction from the Republican Party. And so there was a lot of, shall we say, astroturf, as opposed to grassroots," Pelosi told ABC's Elizabeth Vargas Sunday.

"We share some of the views of the tea partiers in terms of the role of special interests in Washington, D.C," Pelosi continued.

"So, common ground with Nancy Pelosi and tea party movement?" asked Vargas.

"Well, no, there are some. There are some because they, again, some of it is orchestrated from the Republican headquarters," she replied. "Some of it is hijacking the good intentions of lots of people who share some of our concerns that we have about the role of special interests."

Taking the opportunity, she completed a one-two punch, without hesitation.

"And many tea partiers, not that I speak for them, share the view, whether it's -- and Democrats, Republicans and Independents share the view that the recent Supreme Court decision, which greatly empowers the special interests, is something that they oppose," explained Pelosi.

In his first state of the union speech, Jan. 27, President Barack Obama criticized the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. FEC that overturned decades of limits on corporate spending in elections, a move many observers say will result in a "wild west" of unbridled spending designed to influence elections.

Corporate lobbyists are openly discussing how to sway elections while dodging "public scrutiny" and attaining "sufficient cover" for their intended practices, earning a sharp rebuke from transparency groups and commentators.

This video is from ABC's This Week, broadcast Feb. 28, 2010.

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Sen. John McCain once said that he would trust the opinion of military leaders to decide when it was time to end the military's controversial "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

Now that the Congress is considering repealing the policy, and he is facing a primary challenge, McCain is changing his tune.

In 2006, McCain told MSNBC's Chris Matthews, "The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, Senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to."

In past weeks, military leaders have come forward to do just that. Admiral Mike Mullen told Congress that repealing the ban and allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be "the right thing to do."

Gen. David Petraeus told NBC's David Gregory that troops probably don't care if fellow soldiers are gay or lesbian.

But the Arizona Senator seemed to dismiss the opinions of those military leaders Sunday.

"Admiral Mullen was as quoted speaking personally. Just this week, commandant of the Marine Corps said that he did not want "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repealed. There are many in the military who do not want to," said McCain.

McCain pointed to the training, retention and recruitment success of the US military and then went on to say that the discriminatory policy is effective. "I believe that it's working," he told David Gregory Sunday.

He did not give any specific example of how homosexuals would reduce retention or recruitment. Gregory pointed out that McCain has been criticized for trying to present himself as more conservative because of a primary challenge for his US senate seat.

This video is from NBC's Meet the Press, broadcast Feb. 28, 2010.

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KARACHI — It took Pakistani athlete Naseem Hamid just 11.81 seconds to change her life and become the fastest woman in South Asia.

She ran to victory in the 100 metres in the South Asian Federation (SAF) Games in Bangladesh, becoming Pakistan's first woman to sprint to gold in the championship's 26-year history and shooting from rags to riches.

"It still hasn't sunk in," said 23-year-old Naseem, who received a rapturous welcome home. Cash prizes worth millions of rupees poured in from President Asif Ali Zardari and businessmen, and parliament promised her a bigger house.

"It definitely is a fairytale success and will take some time to digest."

Brought up in humble surroundings, Naseem comes from a one-room house in the Korangi slum area of Karachi. She was never discouraged by her impoverished background, but nor did she like it mentioned.

It only came to light when television channels rushed to find her house when she rose from nowhere to success in Dhaka.

"I asked my coach Maqsood Ahmed to pinch me so I realise it's not a dream," she reminisced after the February 7 race. "For the first 30 minutes it felt like a dream and what followed is also a dream."

Growing up, Naseem knew little of fairytales.

She watched her father Hameed Ahmed struggle to make ends meet on daily wages as a labourer. At times, the family had little to live on.

Undaunted, Naseem forgot her problems once she entered the world of sport, where only the best, and not the rich, excel.

She started an athletics career and soon became the driving force in the family, earning 9,000 rupees (104 dollars) a month after being recruited into the Pakistan army's sports section three years ago.

"I used to forget all the problems when I ran on the track," said Naseem. "I used to train very hard and there were times when I came back home with my legs aching and fell asleep before my parents woke me up for dinner."

The family could not afford proper running shoes, so Naseem ran bare foot. But she had the sprint to succeed and was talent spotted by physical education teacher Abida Ahmed at her Korangi college.

"I knew Naseem was destined for bigger successes," said Abida. "Besides 100 and 200 metre races, Naseem also competed in the high jump and made us champions at inter-college level in 2005 and 2006."

Her sister Quratul Ain is a member of the women's football squad in southern province Sindh, while her only brother took up table tennis.

Mother Nasreen has taken pride in her daughter's nerves of steel since she recovered from typhoid in childhood.

"Naseem has always been very brave. She is like a son to me and overcame lots of trouble but never lost heart, even when she couldn't win races," her mother recalled.

"Our relatives were against her going into sport but it was her will power that helped her stick to the game and attain such success," said Nasreen, whose home was mobbed by crowds of relatives after her daughter's win.

Part of Pakistan's bronze medallist 4x100m relay team in the 10th South Asian Games in Colombo in 2006, injury meant that four years ago Naseem had to watch her colleagues run the 100-metre race from the sidelines.

"Failures have always given me heart to perform," said Naseem, who beat two Sri Lankans and an Indian for the title of South Asia's fastest woman.

But the sky holds no limits for Naseem.

"I know the standard at the Asian and Commonwealth levels is very high, but I will try my level best to win more laurels for my country," said Naseem.

"I know you can beat all odds through your determination, and I have done that in Dhaka."

On the morning of the day unemployment benefits are set to expire across America, one Republican senator defended the ideology of another.

"All Senator Bunning was saying quite correctly is it ought to be paid for," Sen. Jon Kyl told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

Sen. Kyl (R-AZ) explained Sunday why Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) was justified in blocking another extension of unemployment benefits.

"Congress just passed the so-called pay-go legislation which is supposed to require that we find offsets or other savings if we are going to spend money. So what's the first thing we do? We exempt this bill from it," he complained.

But Kyl does believe the extension of benefits will eventually pass because they are temporary. "It will pass, though, because it's a temporary extension. The question for the longer term extension is a different issue because that's well over $100 billion," he added.

Republican Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) on Thursday night expressed his opposition to renewing unemployment benefits on the Senate floor with an unusually harsh message for its backers: "Tough shit."

Bunning repeatedly and single-handedly objected to an effort by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) to attain unanimous consent among senators for extending COBRA and other benefits to out-of-work individuals across America.

Bunning claimed he was concerned about the impact of the benefits extension on the deficit and insisted the funds come out of President Obama's stimulus package.

Provisions of last year's stimulus bill that allow extra weeks of unemployment benefits and COBRA health coverage are set to expire today.

This video is from Fox's Fox News Sunday, broadcast Feb. 28, 2010.

Download video via RawReplay.com

PARIS (AFP) – Peter Gabriel strips songs to their bare essentials in his latest album, the first in eight years, but he is as passionate about new technologies and saving the world as he is about music.

Looking forward to a concert tour to promote "Scratch My Back", the former Genesis frontman sits shoeless -- "I like big boots but always take them off" -- in a Paris hotel room, chatting about human rights and the music industry.

"The industry," Gabriel, 60, told AFP, "is a corpse but there's lots of interesting things crawling out of it.

"In some ways it reminds me of the early 60s because there wasn't a lot of business then the way we know it, so people could write or rewrite the rules," he said.

"The digital world I think is the same now," he added. "Artists can be in 10 or 12 different bands, release a piece that's three days long or three seconds, and have different audiences for different projects.

Gabriel's new album revisits -- in a somewhat dark mood -- a dozen songs by Radiohead to Talking Heads to David Bowie, with guitar and drums replaced by a symphony orchestra to enable Gabriel to focus on the lyrics.

"I love songwriters, and what pisses me off with reality talent shows is they're all about performance and not about what I love -- the writing," he explained.

"I think these songs are great songs," he added. "I wanted to transcript them back and some of the things I felt comfortable singing ended up more melancholic."

As befits its title, "Scratch My Back" is the first chapter in a two-part backscratching exchange where the artists whose songs he records, return the favour by each recording a song of his.

"Here there's dialogue, there's more connection, you do my songs, I do yours," he said.

Gabriel tunes to be rendered by the likes of veterans Randy Newman or Paul Simon as well as newer names Regina Spektor or Bon Iver, will be released at each new moon on iTunes.

Why the new moon? "It's great advertising," Gabriel said. "People look out at the full moon and think, 'Oh! There's gonna be something new on the website'."

Gabriel said his next album would contain original songs -- but with only three albums over two decades to his name, he declined to set a date for its finalisation.

"I need to make more time available," said the blue-eyed Englishman with the white goatee. "Before my life was about 90 percent music and 10 percent other, now it's a third music, a third technology and a third benefit projects.

Away from music, Gabriel is excited by the use of new technologies for humanitarian causes.

"It's a passion for me," he said. "We're beginning to see the formation of a world-changing engine built around the technology of the mobile and the Internet."

After launching Witness, which supplied cameras to activists to document human rights abuses, Gabriel set up The Hub (www.hub.witness.org) "which is like YouTube but very small and focused on human rights".

It enables people armed with camera phones to tell stories first-hand in their own voices, relaying information via mapping sites such as Ushahidi.

"Like Google Earth, you take an issue and zoom down into a house and hear the person speak in their own voice of their own experience. Then you have a group like Avaaz who do online petitioning and who got 1.5 million signatures in 10 days on Tibet."

"In a Twitter world that could be 150 million," he said. "Then you've got the numbers the politicians would listen to."

Part of the scheme involves The Elders, a project he launched with Virgin founder Richard Branson to set up a group of older reputable figures headed by Nelson Mandela with top worldwide connections.

"The dream would be that you connect people power to a group of elders," he said. Does it work? "The individual units are working. Now we're trying ways of putting it together like a little eco-system."

"The first tsunami from Chile's earthquake has hit Japan's outlying islands, but the initial waves are small," the Associated Press reports.

The article continues, "Japan's Meteorological Agency said the first tsunami to reach Japan after the magnitude 8.8 quake off Chile was recorded in the Ogasawara islands early Sunday afternoon. It was just 10 centimeters high. There were no reports of damage."

Japan and Russia went on alert Sunday, clearing tens of thousands of people out of vulnerable coastal areas as a tsunami triggered by Chile's massive killer quake powered across the Pacific.

Tsunami warnings were lifted in other nations across the Pacific Basin's "Ring of Fire" as fears of destructive waves eased, but Tokyo and Moscow were taking no chances after one of the biggest earthquakes on record.

Waves pummelled Chile and rolled through into Hawaii, French Polynesia and the South Pacific as the tsunami moved at jet-speed across the vast ocean after Saturday's 8.8-magnitude quake, which left at least 300 people dead. Related article: Chile quake kills over 300

Warning sirens wailed as about 50 countries and territories along an arc stretching from New Zealand to Japan were put on alert, five years after the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster that killed more than 220,000 people.

Five people were killed on the remote Robinson Crusoe archipelago far off the coast of Chile, the first reported tsunami casualties, but elsewhere no significant damage was reported and surges of water were smaller than expected.

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center lifted its tsunami warning for everywhere except Japan and Russia, but the Philippines was also bracing for outsized waves.

Japan warned that waves of up to three metres (10 feet) could hit its northern Pacific coastline, ordering more than 50,000 people living near the shore to leave and closing ports.

The Chilean disaster revived raw memories for Japan, where 140 lives were lost in 1960 when a 9.5-magnitude earthquake in the South American nation -- the largest on record -- sent a tsunami roaring across the Pacific.

"Last time, waves that hit after the first one became even more powerful," said Japan Meteorological Agency official Yasuo Sekita.

"We believe it will be the case this time, too," he said, as Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama set up an emergency task force. "The agency will keep the tsunami alert for quite a long time."

Russia issued a similar warning and launched an evacuation in its Pacific peninsula of Kamchatka.

"We are expecting waves of up to two metres, which is a dangerous height, and so people are asked to evacuate from dangerous zones," Sakhalin island's tsunami centre chief, Tatyana Ivelskaya, said.

Thousands of families in the Philippines also fled coastal areas.

"The most important thing is that for people not to panic. We have prepared all our local government units since last night," said Albay provincial official Joey Salceda.

The Hawaii center, set up by Pacific governments after the 1960 tsunami, had warned of possible "widespread damage" from waves as high as three metres.

In Hawaii itself, the tsunami led to the evacuation of thousands of people and triggered panic buying of food, water and fuel. But there was little damage in the event.

US President Barack Obama, who was born in Hawaii, had warned that the US western seaboard may see dangerous waves and currents throughout the day.

"In the hours ahead, we'll continue to take every step possible to prepare our shores and protect our citizens," he said.

One tsunami measuring nearly 2.5 metres slammed into Talcahuano, one of about 11 coastal towns in Chile pounded by the surge. Trawlers were sent shooting inland to the town square where they lay oddly marooned next to abandoned cars.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet announced a partial evacuation of Easter Island, but the island of about 4,000 people, known for its monolithic stone statues, received a relatively small onrush of water.

In the island paradise of French Polynesia, schools were closed, the port in Papeete was evacuated and thousands in Tahiti's hillside areas were taken to safer areas as the waves hit.

Waves up to 1.5 metres rammed New Zealand's eastern Chatham Islands, while in Australia, the size of the surge dropped to around 40 centimetres although strong currents rolled up the east coast.

In Tonga and the Cook Islands, residents made their way to higher ground, still jittery after a tsunami trashed entire villages in the South Pacific in September, killing more than 180.

Japan and Russia are on the outer edge of the "Ring of Fire", a belt of seismic fury responsible for most of the world's tremors and volcanoes.

(with AFP report)