Under the deal, supermarkets have promised to reject meat from areas of the Amazon where illegal activities take place, such as illegal logging and invasion of public land, Mr Avelino said.

BBC: Brazil supermarkets 'to avoid Amazon meat'

In a BBC interview on Wednesday, Kofi Annan, the United Nations' secretary-general, reiterated his worries that the continuing violence could make it impossible to conduct the elections. (He also annoyed America and its allies by asserting that the Iraq invasion had been illegal.) Earlier in the week, Iraq's interim president, Ghazi al-Yawar, had said that the elections should go ahead unless the UN insisted otherwise.

ECONOMIST: Security first, sewers later | The

Mazzini was a dreamily unsuccessful revolutionary, Garibaldi an unscrupulous adventurer whose invasion of Sicily in 1860 was illegal and Cavour an old cynic who never travelled south of Pisa.

ECONOMIST: Italy