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The Nobel Prize in Economics for 2008 was Monday awarded to Paul Krugman of the US for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity.

Krugman, 55, 1953 is professor at Princeton University.

In its citation, the Nobel committee said: ‘Patterns of trade and location have always been key issues in the economic debate. What are the effects of free trade and globalization? What are the driving forces behind worldwide urbanisation? Paul Krugman has formulated a new theory to answer these questions. He has thereby integrated the previously disparate research fields of international trade and economic geography.’

Krugman worked on the concept of economies of scale. His theory clarifies why worldwide trade is in fact dominated by countries which not only have similar conditions, but also trade in similar products - for instance, a country such as Sweden that both exports and imports cars. ‘This kind of trade enables specialization and large-scale production, which result in lower prices and a greater diversity of commodities,’ the citation said.

Economies of scale combined with reduced transport costs also help to explain why an increasingly larger share of the world population lives in cities and why similar economic activities are concentrated in the same locations.

Lower transport costs can trigger a self-reinforcing process whereby a growing metropolitan population gives rise to increased large-scale production, higher real wages and a more diversified supply of goods. This, in turn, stimulates further migration to cities. Krugman’s theories have shown that the outcome of these processes can well be that regions become divided into a high-technology urbanized core and a less developed ‘periphery’, the Nobel committee said.

Losing hair? Blame your mom and dad for a new study has revealed a genetic link which suggests that men could inherit baldness from either parent.

Previous studies found a genetic association between male pattern baldness, the most common form of the condition where hair is lost in a well-defined pattern beginning above both temples, and the maternal side of the family only.

Now, an international team claims to have discovered a gene mutation which, when combined with a previously uncovered genetic abnormality, is linked to a seven-fold increase in the risk of developing male pattern baldness.

The team, led by King’s College London, analysed more than 1,100 men and found a genetic variation on chromosome 20 that increased the risk of male pattern baldness in them, the British media reported.

“It’s been long recognised that that there must be several genes causing male pattern baldness. Until now, no one could identify those other genes.

“If you have both the risk variants we discovered on chromosome 20 and the unrelated known variant on X-chromosome, your risk of becoming bald increases sevenfold,” co-researcher Brent Richards of McGill University said.

Though the researchers consider their discovery to be a scientific breakthrough, they have warned that the findings do not yet represent a treatment or a cure for the condition.

“We’ve only identified a cause. Treating male pattern baldness will require more research. But, of course, the first step in finding a way to treat most conditions it is to first identify the cause,” said Richards.

Added team leader Dr Tim Spector of King’s College: “Early prediction before hair loss starts may lead to some interesting therapies that are more effective than treating later stage hair loss.”

The findings are published in the latest edition of the ‘Nature Genetics’ journal.

Suicide bombers targeted Shiite worshippers as they left morning prayers Thursday at two Baghdad mosques, killing 24 people and wounding more than 50 others, police said.

In a separate attack, gunmen fatally shot six Sunnis as they traveled in a minibus in the mainly Shiite town of Wajihiyah, a town 60 miles north of Baghdad.

The dead were heading to Baquoba to visit relatives. They included two children, three women and a man, police in Diyala province said. Another woman and her small child were injured.

The bombings in Baghdad occurred as Shiite worshippers celebrated the holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

No group claimed responsibility, but attacks on Shiite civilians are widely associated with Sunni extremists like al-Qaida in Iraq hoping to re-ignite the sectarian conflict that pushed the nation to the brink of civil war two years ago.

In the deadliest attack, a suicide car bomber in a white Mercedes sedan detonated his explosives about 20 yards from a mosque in Zafaraniyah in southeastern Baghdad. He set off the bomb when Iraqi soldiers tried to stop him from approaching the building, police said. That attack killed 14 people, including three Iraqi soldiers, and injured 28, police said.

In the other attack, a suicide bomber who appeared to be in his late teens detonated his explosive belt as worshippers were leaving the Rasoul mosque in the capital’s eastern New Baghdad district.

Ten people died and 24 were injured, police and officials at the al-Kindi and Ibn al-Nasif hospitals said.

The attacker approached the mosque and set off the explosion as a suspicious guard tried to keep him from entering. The guard was among those killed, police said.

The police officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

A witness to the Zafaraniyah attack said he saw a white car speed toward the mosque and then heard a huge explosion that sparked a fire and heavy smoke. Ammar Hashim, 25, who runs a car parts shop nearby, rushed to the site and saw “a damaged and burned Humvee with dead and burned bodies and many injured people crying out in pain.”

“Pools of blood and the smell of burned flesh was everywhere and I saw a man of about 70 bleeding and lying on the ground from injuries,” said Hashim, whose brother was also injured by broken glass in his shop.

Hashim said civilian cars began to rush people to a nearby hospital before ambulances arrived.

Footage from Associated Press Television News showed slippers and shoes scattered on the bloodstained ground. The blasts blew out windows nearby and slightly damaged some shops.

The faithful at both mosques are followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s top Shiite cleric. Sunnis and other Shiite groups celebrated the Eid al-Fitr holiday earlier in the week.

Separately Thursday, a bomb in western Baghdad wounded four American soldiers, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Steven Stover said. He gave no other details, but Baghdad police said the attacker was a suicide bomber in a car who detonated his explosives on a U.S. convoy.

Two Iraqi civilians were also wounded, a police official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

The Bank of England on Wednesday offered 40 billion dollars (22.6 billion pounds) to banking institutions on a one-week tender amid ongoing world economic turmoil.

The BoE said that banks had snapped up 13.44 billion dollars of an available 30-billion-dollar loan. Borrowers will have to repay the cash on October 7.

The bank also offered a further 10 billion dollars that must be repaid on Thursday. A total of 7.47 billion dollars was taken up, it added.

The BoE began last month pumping overnight dollar funds as part of a coordinated central bank action led by the US Federal Reserve.

Major central banks agreed last month to inject hundreds of billions of dollars into money markets that have been hammered by the ongoing financial crisis.

Meanwhile, the bank also said it was draining 10 billion pounds out of sterling money markets.

“The Bank of England continues to monitor money market conditions closely,” it said in a statement.

A European tour group kidnapped in the Sahara Desert was abruptly freed after a phone call to one of the captors, and all 19 hostages piled into a single car, some clinging to the roof as they drove 200 miles to safety.

The accounts Tuesday by the freed Europeans and their Egyptian guides contradicted reports from Egyptian security officials who described a dramatic rescue involving gun battles between Egyptian forces and the hostages, with state news agency quoting the defense minister that half the kidnappers had been killed.

As their captivity dragged into its 10th night, one of their captors received a phone call, the Egyptian drivers said from the hospital.

“They told all the Egyptians to stand in one line and they cocked their weapons, and at that moment we thought we were dead,” Hassan Abdel Hakim, 45, told The Associated Press. “Suddenly the man told us to take one car and leave — there were 19 of us packed into one car, some on the roof.”

“We left everything, we didn’t even have room for a spare tire. We only had a GPS to go in the right direction until we met the Egyptian special forces around Eight Bells,” he said referring to a defunct airfield in southwestern Egypt.

Michele Barrera, a 71-year-old Italian who was among the group, confirmed the drivers’ account in a telephone interview from his home near the northern Italian city of Turin, describing how they were suddenly released.

“It was nothing dramatic, they just shouted ‘go, go, go!’ and they packed all of us in one car, allowing us to drive away,” he said.

The car started off at 8 p.m. and drove through the night some 200 miles before being found by what were initially hostile Egyptian security forces, said Sherif Farouq Mohammed, a 36-year-old driver.

“They pointed their weapons at us and we were waving our hands trying to tell them that we are the hostages,” he said. “Apparently, they received information that the kidnappers were roaming the desert in white vehicles.”

The five Italians and five Germans, as well as a Romanian living in Germany, were back in their home countries by Tuesday, after being kidnapped together with eight Egyptian guides and drivers on Sept. 19.

Abdel Hakim said the kidnappers were ethnic Africans and they spoke their own language, talking to the Egyptians in broken Arabic. He added they appeared to be Muslims, praying and fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.

The kidnappers were constantly moving the hostages, suggesting they were trying to evade rescuers.

The ordeal began Sept. 19 during a safari on the Gilf al-Kebir, a desert plateau renowned for prehistoric cave art in a remote corner of southwestern Egypt, near the Libyan and Sudanese borders. While the group was camping, heavily armed gunmen in SUVs seized them and took them across the unguarded border into Sudan.

The abduction — the first of its kind involving tourists in Egypt — was an embarrassment to the Egyptian government, which depends on tourism as the country’s biggest foreign currency earner. Tour companies feared it was a sign that chaos in violence-torn eastern Chad and Sudan’s Darfur region was spilling over into the isolated corner of Egypt.

The kidnappers, who officials said were Sudanese and Chadian tribesmen, reportedly demanded up to $15 million in ransom and were negotiating with German officials by satellite phone. At the same time, Egyptian and Sudanese troops working with German and Italian intelligence experts combed the desert looking for them.

Then on Sunday morning, Sudanese troops encountered eight of the kidnappers, apparently sent to get fuel and food. In a running gunbattle, six of the kidnappers were killed and two captured, Egyptian and Sudanese officials said.

The two kidnappers told authorities the remainder of the gunmen and their captives were holed up in Tabat Shajara in Chad, just across the border with Sudan, some 250 miles southwest of the Gilf al-Kebir.

On Sunday night, the remaining kidnappers then apparently released their hostages after taking all their belongings.

Egyptian authorities on Monday denied that any ransom was paid.

Three people were killed and six others were wounded in a suicide attack near the Algerian capital, APS news agency quoted security officials as saying on Monday.

The bomber blew up his car packed with explosives near the town of Dellys, about 40 kilometres (20 miles) east of Algiers, late Sunday at the end of the daily Ramadan fast.

APS did not indicate who might have been targeted in the attack.

The lives of those injured were not in danger, the report said.

No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing, the first in Algeria since the start of Ramadan on September 1, state radio reported.

The month-long fast was preceded by a series of attacks, with the deadliest killing 48 people on August 19 near Algiers.

That attack was claimed by Al-Qaeda’s north African offshoot, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

The U.S. and Russia, striking a compromise, led a new U.N. Security Council effort Friday to condemn Iran’s nuclear program that includes no new sanctions.

The brief resolution seeks to reaffirm the three previous ones, which imposed progressively tougher sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt its uranium enrichment program.

It also calls on Tehran “to fully comply, without delay, with its obligations” and meet the requirements of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency.

The council consulted privately for more than an hour Friday afternoon and agreed to hold further talks on the proposal as soon as Monday. It also was briefly discussed earlier in the day at a private meeting of foreign ministers with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Pakistan’s president.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the new resolution has the agreement of ministers from the six key players in negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program — Russia, the U.S., Britain, France, China and Germany.

The United States, Britain and France have been pressing for a new round of sanctions to step up pressure against Iran for its continuing refusal to suspend uranium enrichment as a prelude to talks on its nuclear program. But Russia and China objected to new sanctions.

The proposed new resolution is a compromise — no new sanctions but a tough statement to Iran that Security Council resolutions are legally binding and must be carried out.

“There will be no resolution on sanctions,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. “This is reiteration of the status quo.”

Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Russia believes “that more discussions are necessary with Iranians, and that there is still room for diplomacy here.”

The U.S. wanted more sanctions, but will settle for a strong statement.

“Unity of purpose on the council is a very important signal to send out,” U.S. Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff said. “It’s been six months since the previous resolution was adopted. … Council silence, we think, would send the wrong signal.”

Existing U.N.-backed sanctions against Iran include an embargo on proliferation-sensitive nuclear and ballistic missile programs, an export ban on arms and related material “targeted” sanctions on certain people, banks and other entities through travel bans and asset freezes.

Even without fresh sanctions, French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said Iran will become “more and more isolated” if it ignores another U.N. resolution.

Russia on Tuesday scuttled high-level talks on imposing new sanctions on Iran that had been set for Thursday between the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany. Even sanctions opponent China had agreed to the meeting.

U.S. officials, including Rice, sought to downplay the move, saying the time wasn’t right for the session. But they had previously said such a gathering would be useful and necessary to get a fourth Security Council sanctions resolution on Iran.

Iran insists its nuclear program is purely peaceful and designed to produce nuclear energy, but the U.S. and Europeans suspect Tehran is pursuing nuclear weapons.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday that Tehran needs the ability to produce nuclear fuel because it cannot rely on other nations to supply enriched uranium to the Islamic regime’s planned reactors.

Miliband said the new resolution would reaffirm the six countries’ determination to continue pursuing their twin-track strategy — offering a package of benefits to Iran if it suspends enrichment and pursuing sanctions if it refuses.

“We look forward to that resolution being passed, and we also look forward to full engagement by the government of Iran with the very significant offer that is on the table to them,” he said.

Also Friday, Rice denounced Iran’s president for calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, and said the U.S. would ask the Security Council to take up the issue.

“It is really quite an extraordinary circumstance to see one member of the United Nations call for the destruction of another member of the United Nations and have nothing said about that by the Security Council which, after all, is charged with threats to international peace and security,” Rice said.

The new Israeli U.N. ambassador, Gabriela Shalev, also urged the Council to “reject extremism, such as Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s toxic anti-Israel and anti-Semitic provocations.”

Meanwhile, the Quartet of key players trying to promote peace in the Middle East — the U.N., the U.S., the European Union and Russia — met on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Friday.

Saudi Arabia, the Arab League and the Palestinian president also urged the U.N. Security Council to save the faltering peace process by demanding an end to Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory.

The new Israeli U.N. ambassador, Gabriela Shalev, said “while settlements remain a delicate issue, they are not the principal one.”

Among world leaders addressing the General Assembly on Friday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for “a new global financial order” to resolve the financial crisis currently roiling world markets.

“For we must build a new global financial order founded on transparency, not opacity, rewarding success not excess, responsibility, not impunity, and which is global not national,” Brown said. “We must clearly state that the age of irresponsibility must be end.”

Haiti’s president implored leaders to commit to long-term solutions to help his nation after hurricanes and tropical storms killed hundreds of Haitians, saying a “paradigm of charity” would not end cycles of poverty and disaster.

“Once this first wave of humanitarian compassion is exhausted, we will be left as always, truly alone, to face new catastrophes and see restarted, as if in a ritual, the same exercises of mobilization,” President Rene Preval said.

At least 425 people were killed in the storms, and the U.N. has only received 3.4 percent of its $108 million appeal for relief after the storms, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

Pentagon officials are trying to discredit a military prosecutor who alleges evidence was suppressed in an upcoming war-crimes trial at Guantanamo Bay, a defense lawyer said in court on Thursday.

Air Force Maj. David Frakt said the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo is seeking a psychological exam for Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, who quit as a prosecutor in a case against an Afghan for what he called ethical reasons.

Vandeveld has offered to testify for the defense, according to Frakt, attorney for Mohammed Jawad, who was a teenager when he was accused of throwing a grenade that wounded two American soldiers and their interpreter in December 2002.

Frakt made the disclosure at a pretrial hearing where he is seeking the dismissal of war crimes charges against his client, now 23.

Vandeveld’s replacement as lead prosecutor in the case, Air Force Lt. Col. Doug Stevenson, said the allegations of ethical problems were “ridiculous.”

“There is absolutely no exculpatory evidence in this case that has not been provided to the defense,” Stevenson told the judge.

Frakt described a coordinated effort to discredit Vandeveld and keep him from testifying. He said a Pentagon official who oversaw the tribunals until last week, Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, prepared talking points for the media disparaging Vandeveld.

“He is very intimately involved in the effort to prevent Col. Vandeveld from being able to testify,” Frakt told the judge.

The judge, Army Col. Steve Henley, ordered the government to allow Vandeveld to testify by video link Thursday afternoon.

Vandeveld’s turnabout has triggered new criticism of the integrity of the military commissions. Other insiders, including a former chief prosecutor, previously said the war-crimes trials are riddled with ethical lapses and political interference, allegations denied by the government.

Jawad, who was captured in Afghanistan when he was 16 or 17, faces a maximum life sentence at a trial scheduled to begin in December at this U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

Vandeveld has told defense lawyers that his office knew Jawad may have been drugged before the grenade attack and that the Afghan Interior Ministry said two other men had confessed to the same crime, according to Michael Berrigan, deputy chief defense counsel for the Guantanamo tribunals.

In a written declaration, Vandeveld said he wanted to offer Jawad a plea deal that would allow him to receive rehabilitation during a short period of additional confinement. His bosses disagreed.

“As a juvenile at the time of his capture, Jawad should have been segregated from the adult detainees, and some serious attempt made to rehabilitate him,” Vandeveld wrote. “I am bothered by the fact that this was not done.”

Jawad is one of roughly two dozen Guantanamo detainees facing charges. Military prosecutors say they plan trials for about 80 of the 255 men held here on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

An early morning downpour on Wednesday and a shortage of oxygen tanks have slowed efforts to rescue 14 people trapped in an abandoned gold mine in the Philippines’s northern mountain region, officials said.Local government and police officials were losing hope of finding any survivors from a group of small-scale miners trapped since Monday after a portion of the mine collapsed due to rains brought by Typhoon Hagupit.

“We’re doing our best to get to the trapped miners,” said Mario Godio, mayor of a gold mining town in Benguet province in the northern Philippines.

“The water level inside is still high and it started raining again this morning. Once the weather permits, we’ll try to enter and get to these people. I was told it would take 2-3 hours just to get to the area where we believe the miners are.”

Godio said rescue workers were also running out of oxygen tanks to get deeper into the mine. It was not immediately known if the trapped victims were using oxygen tanks.

There has been no communication with the missing miners, but people in the community know they had been regularly going into the mine.

Early this month, 20 people were killed and about two dozen were injured when monsoon rains loosened soil and buried a mining village in the southern Philippines, forcing officials to close down two villages.

Landslides and flash floods are common across the Philippine archipelago during the monsoon months between May and October, particularly near mining areas, as well as low-lying and coastal areas.

In February 2006, more than 1,000 people died when days of monsoon rain triggered a massive landslide on a deforested mountain on the central island of Leyte, burying an entire village, including a school where many people had sought refuge.

The country’s worst disaster also happened on the same island in November 1991 when 5,000 people were swept to the sea by flash floods brought by monsoon rains.

The Delhi Police said on Monday that the explosives used in capital’s serial blasts are believed to have come from Karnataka.Delhi police and intelligence personnel questioned suspects in Manipal town of Karnataka today, where Mohammed Saif, arrested after a shootout in Delhi, was taken to find the source of explosives used in the September 13 bombings in the capital.

Besides interrogations in Manipal, a five-member Delhi Police and Intelligence Bureau team searched some hotels and other places in the town based on information provided by suspected terrorists arrested for the Delhi bombings.

According to Joint Commissioner of Delhi Police (Special Cell) Karnail Singh, Atif Amin alias Bashir (24), could be the mastermind behind the shadowy Indian Mujahideen who had sent Saif and Sajid to procure explosives from Karnataka.

However, Karnataka Home Minister V S Acharya said the explosives were not manufactured in the state but only transported to Delhi via the state.

Superintendent of Police Praveen Pawar told media persons at Udupi, 20 kilometres from Manipal, “The Delhi team did not detain anyone in Manipal but only conducted investigations.”

Investigators believe that Saif could prove to be the key in the blast probe as Sajid was killed during the shootout.

The same explosives were used to assemble bombs at Atif’s Jamia Nagar house and were detonated in parts of Delhi - one in Karol Bagh’s Gaffar market, two in Connaught Place and two in M-block market of Greater Kailash-I - by a module of 13 people, the police maintain.

While Saif was taken to Karnataka, officers from the Delhi Police (South District) and Special Cell were jointly interrogating the three suspected terrorists - Zia-ur-Rahman (22), Mohammed Shakil (23), and Sakib Nissar (22), - who were arrested on Sunday from Jamia Nagar in connection with the Delhi blasts. They are also said to be from the Indian Mujahideen.

All suspects belong to Uttar Pradesh’s Azamgarh district.