Patrick Swayze’s doctor said in March 2008 that Swayze was suffering from pancreatic cancer.

Patrick Swayze, whose hunky good looks and sympathetic performances in such films as “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost” made him a romantic idol to millions, died Monday. He was 57.

Patrick Swayze’s doctor said in March 2008 that Swayze was suffering from pancreatic cancer.

Swayze died of pancreatic cancer, his publicist, Annett Wolf, told CNN.

“Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months,” Wolf said in a statement Monday.

Swayze’s doctor, Dr. George Fisher, revealed in early March 2008 that Swayze was fighting the disease.

Most recently, Swayze starred in A&E network’s “The Beast,” which debuted in January. He agreed to take the starring role of an undercover FBI agent before his diagnosis. The network agreed to shoot an entire season of the show after Swayze responded well to cancer treatment.

In an interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters in January, Swayze said his work on that show was exhausting, requiring 12-hour workdays in Chicago, Illinois, doing his own stunts. But he said the show’s character “just felt right for my soul.”

“If I leave this Earth, I want to leave this Earth just knowing I’ve tried to give something back and tried to do something worthwhile with myself,” Swayze told Walters, when asked why he decided to do the show. “And that keeps me going, that gets me up in the morning. My work … is my legacy.”

“The Beast” was canceled in June because of Swayze’s illness, after doctors told him the cancer had spread to his liver.

Video footage has been released of a robot that can leap over obstacles more than 7.5m (25ft) high.

Most of the time, the shoebox-sized robot - which is being developed for the US military - uses its four wheels to get around.

But the Precision Urban Hopper can use a piston-actuated “leg” to launch it over obstacles such as walls or fences.

The robot could boost the capabilities of troops and special forces engaged in urban warfare, say researchers.

The robot is shoebox sized and guided by GPS

The programme is being funded by Darpa, the US military’s research arm.

Earlier this year, Sandia National Laboratories awarded the contract to build the next generation of the hopper to Massachusetts-based robotics firm Boston Dynamics.

Researchers at Sandia have tried out the robot on a variety of different surfaces.

The semi-autonomous, GPS-guided gadget could be used for surveillance in urban environments.

Its developers say this could potentially reduce troop casualties.

Testing and delivery of the Precision Urban Hopper is planned for late 2010.

Afghanistan’s reputation as the world’s leading narcotics supplier is well-known, but in a squalid ruin in Kabul, the country hides a darker secret — a huge home grown drug addiction problem now on the brink of fueling an HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Junkies smoking heroin can get high for $4.

Here junkies lie in their own filth, wasted limbs poking out of blood-spattered clothing as they blank out the abject misery of their surroundings. In one room, a veritable narcotics bazaar offers pills and drug paraphernalia — with hits retailing at less than $4.

One user claims he has been an addict for 22 years, although it is difficult to talk to any of the dazed and ragged occupants of the drug rooms. The atmosphere is edgy and — as thick clouds of burning opium fill the air — dizzyingly toxic.

The Kabul den is just the tip of the iceberg in a country awash with narcotics. The government estimates the number of addicts in Afghanistan could be as many as five percent of its 25 million people.

And though nascent efforts are being made to tackle the problem, chronic funding shortfalls have prompted the United Nations to warn that drug use will escalate, potentially driving an HIV/AIDS crisis as junkies move from smoking to high risk needle-sharing.

Afghanistan has always been a major narcotics supplier — responsible for 95 percent of the world’s heroin — although this was scaled back under the rule of the Taliban, which outlawed poppy cultivation and imposed strict penalties for drug users.

Since 2001, when the extremist regime was ousted by a U.S.-led invasion that installed President Hamid Karzai, production has doubled. And for many in the country still mired in poverty and conflict, these cheap drugs offer a tempting escape.

The last United Nations survey of Afghanistan’s drug problem four years ago estimated the country’s addicts to number about 200,000. According to Afghan Counter Narcotics Minister Khodaidad, the figure is now far greater.

“More than 1.2 million people in Afghanistan are addicts. It’s a very huge number and every year it increases,” he told CNN.

Khodaidad says the Afghan government is largely powerless to control the production of opium while Taliban extremists, who now control and draw funding from drug crops, control cultivation areas despite major international military efforts to push them back.

“We did very little due to weakness of governors, due to insurgents, due to pressure of terrorism in the area,” he added. “We don’t have sufficient law enforcement agencies — the police, the border security force, and other special forces to control this area — so it will take time.”

But, says Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Kabul, time is something Afghanistan does not have. As intravenous drug use takes hold, raising the prospect of needle sharing, he says HIV/AIDS will follow quickly.

“The little data we have at the moment are very alarming,” he told CNN. “They tell us that we should not wait longer and if not, this country will be saddled with another burden it just can not afford.

“I think it is already happening today. We have seen, now, a few HIV/AIDS cases. Hopefully we can contain the problem, although it is unlikely given the problems with the health structures.”

The U.N. has begun a program to detox users willing to get off drugs in Afghanistan. A renovated warehouse in Kabul offers hope to 100 addicts in the biggest facility of its kind in the country.

In the center’s clean, bare rooms, shaven-headed junkies tremble under blankets as they go through the agonizing cold turkey of weaning their ravaged bodies off drug dependency. Therapy sessions also help motivate them to kick their deadly habit.

But says Khan, with what little funding there is now dwindling fast, the salvation offered to these lucky few may be short lived — they will be forced back out on the streets, where more opium dens will flourish, bringing yet more misery for Afghanistan.

China’s Communist Party has opened a key annual meeting which might indicate leadership succession plans.

The four-day session is widely expected to promote Vice President Xi Jinping to the powerful military commission.

This would make him a clear front-runner to succeed Hu Jintao as party leader in 2012, and president in 2013.

Analysts say the party will also use the meeting to promote unity ahead of next month’s celebrations to mark the 60-year anniversary of Communist rule.

A regulation requiring party cadres to reveal their family wealth and assets is reportedly up for discussion.

Closed talks

The Central Committee full session, or plenum, will meet behind closed doors until Friday.

According to state news agency Xinhua, the 204-member committee will discuss a draft document on “party building” which covers everything from the battle against corruption to recruitment for the 75 million-member party.

It is hard to predict the inner workings of China’s top leadership, but analysts are primarily watching this meeting for signs that Xi Jinping will cement his status by gaining a seat at the powerful military commission.

Mr Xi became the heir apparent when he was appointed to the Politburo Standing Committee two years ago, and is widely seen to have done well in his position of vice-president since then.

President Hu was elected to the military commission in 1999, paving the way for his rise to the presidency less than four years later, and Mr Xi is expected to follow the same trajectory.

The military commission is in charge of the 2.3 million-strong People’s Liberation Army.

The son of a communist revolutionary hero, 56-year-old Mr Xi is married to a well-known singer.

He has served in the past as the top party official in the eastern provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang, and more recently as Shanghai’s top leader.

A year after Lehman Brothers collapsed, a think tank has warned the lessons of the crisis have not been learned.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says the rapid return to the City’s bonus culture shows that real reform has been “very limited”.

The warnings echoed a speech by US President Barack Obama, who warned of complacency in the banking sector.

Also, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that there was “unfinished business” with banks.

Bailouts

Lehman Brothers, once the fourth-largest US investment bank, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the early hours of 15 September 2008.

Governments around the world subsequently had to pump trillions into their financial systems through bank bail-outs, central bank actions and huge stimulus plans to save their economies from collapse.

BBC business editor Robert Peston said that Lehman’s collapse had huge repercussions on the psyche of investors and the scale of the financial crisis.

“The significance of Lehman Brothers was in the massive panic that it caused in the marketplace, where funds were withdrawn from any bank anywhere in the world that was perceived as remotely vulnerable,” Robert Peston said.

“That was the moment people thought, crikey, we’re on the verge of a depression.”

Most economists now think the world has avoided a second Great Depression, that some thought possible a year ago.

Left to right:Tanvir Hussain, Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar were found guilty of the bomb plot.