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Passionate lovers should not drink if they want to escape law trouble after having car sex.At least, this was the lesson learnt by an amorous couple that was hauled in for drunken driving after having sex in their car, parked at a disabled space outside a police station.

The duo, after attending a university event, had parked outside the main police station in Hellertown, Pennsylvania, and left the engine running.

A report in the Morning Call newspaper suggests that the couple were caught by a police officer who tapped on their windscreen, reports the Daily Telegraph.

They told the cops that they did not realise where they had parked their vehicle because they were under the influence of alcohol, the report says.

They even failed to notice the marked police cars in the other parking spaces nearby, the report adds.

Following the event, 23-year-old Dennis Cullen was charged under drunken-driving though both he and his unnamed female companion were let off not being charged in connection with having car sex.

While the rest of the world is facing a financial meltdown, the Iraq Stock Exchange is booming.

The ISX index soared nearly 40 percent during September, boosted by increasing confidence in security gains.

The ISX is only open two hours a day, three days a week and brokers track trading activity on the floor with colored markers and white bulletin boards instead of computers. But investors are seeing gains, especially in the hotel sector, even as markets elsewhere are taking a tumble.

“I don’t think that the current financial crisis will hurt our economy and especially this market because we are not connected to any of the global markets and we have very few foreign investors,” said Omar Mouwaffak, a 73-year-old trader resting on a bench along the wall.

Foreigners comprise less than 3 percent of the daily volume, officials said, but with the improving security situation on the ground and a lack of attractive options elsewhere investors hope that could change.

“I think that some foreign investors who are afraid to pump their money in the affected economies will pump their money in here, though not necessarily huge amounts,” said Salam Hassan Jawad, a 44-year-old trader and father of two, standing in the hall with two cell phones in his hands.

Iraq is in a unique position rebuilding its post-war economy with plenty of oil reserves and still largely dependent on U.S. money rather than international investment. That’s reflected in the stock market, which only has 95 Iraqi companies listed and a daily volume of $1 million to $2 million.

Still, the Iraq Stock Market’s chief executive officer isn’t gloating. He’s worried Iraq’s greatest asset — oil — could prove its Achilles’ heel.

“I believe we’re still far from what’s happening in the world in the financial markets. But in the end you must know we are part of this world. I believe somehow we will have some problems,” Taha Abdul-Salam said Sunday in an interview at his office above the busy trading floor.

Abdul-Salam is worried dropping oil prices, which have plunged nearly 50 percent from a summertime high of $150 per barrel, will force Iraq to readjust its projected $79 billion budget surplus.

The lack of electronic trading is another problem.

“There are many funds thinking to invest here in Iraq. They send e-mails, they contact my brokers. They like to collect information,” he added. “But some of those funds are waiting for the automation because they like to invest in the international way.”

“We still trade in the manual way,” he added.

Promoted by U.S. authorities, the independent Iraq Stock Exchange opened in June 2004 to replace the defunct Saddam Hussein-era Baghdad Stock Exchange, which was riddled with corruption.

It saw brisk trading in the beginning, with $10 million changing hands on a single day, but business tapered off as violence spiked and affluent Iraqis fled to neighboring countries, taking their money with them.

Abdul-Salam, who has a Master’s degree in economics from Baghdad University and speaks English, sees an opportunity to get them back — stressing plans are under way to implement electronic trading.

“Those who ran away, we are trying to convince them that you must get back because we have good security now in Iraq. We are trying to build the country,” he said.

Abdul-Salam said the biggest sector remains banking, but growth in hotels is driving up the overall index.

“Since September, the index going up because there is high demand in buying hotel shares,” he said. “The other sectors didn’t face any losses in their prices so the index is going up.”

Pictures of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il issued by the communist state may be several months old and possibly taken before his reported illness, South Korean media said on Monday, raising more questions about his health.North Korea’s state TV broadcast pictures of Kim on Saturday inspecting a women’s military unit, as the reclusive country stepped up a campaign to show its “Dear Leader” was healthy after U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials said he may have suffered a stroke in August.

The photographs of Kim, wearing sunglasses and looking generally healthy as he talked outdoors with women soldiers, were the first in nearly two months.

But the surrounding greenery suggested the pictures may be from before his last public appearance in the middle of summer and not from recent weeks, when trees in the northern part of the Korean peninsula would have begun changing colour, local media quoted government sources and experts as saying.

“There is little chance they were taken in October,” the JoongAng Ilbo daily quoted Lee Eun-joo, a horticulture specialist at Seoul National University, as saying.

Yonhap news agency quoted an unidentified intelligence source as saying: “Having analysed the look of Kim Jong-il in the picture, it is impossible to know what year the pictures were taken but looking from the environment, it’s likely it was July or August.”

TIGHTLY GUARDED SECRET

South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which manages bilateral relations with the North and monitors its official media, declined to comment on when the pictures may have been taken.

“As long as North Korea did not disclose the timing of the pictures, it is difficult for us to confirm when they were,” spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon said.

Another government official said the pictures “fall short of being a decisive basis to confirm” that Kim was currently in good health, but added it was difficult on the other hand to say conclusively that they were not taken in recent days.

Kim’s health and his whereabouts are the among the North’s most tightly guarded secrets. State media typically does not indicate the timing of his public appearances.

Medical professionals who were shown Kim’s pictures said there was little to indicate he was suffering from lingering symptoms of a stroke, South Korean media said.

Kim failed to appear at a celebration marking an anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea on Friday after the North’s official media said about a week earlier he had attended a soccer match, the first mention of a public appearance in about 50 days.

In September, Kim did not show up at a military parade on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the communist state, raising questions about the leadership of Asia’s only communist dynasty.

South Korean intelligence sources said they believed Kim was recovering and that he had not lost grip on power.

An earthquake in southern Kyrgyzstan has killed 58 people and destroyed dozens of houses in the Central Asian nation, the emergencies ministry said on Monday.

“We are continuing rescue operations to see if anyone may be still buried under the debris,” said an emergencies ministry spokesman from the regional centre of Osh.

The earthquake measuring 6.3 according to the U.S. Geological Survey was felt throughout Central Asia late on Sunday, mainly in Kyrgyzstan.

The Kyrgyz emergencies ministry originally said it had no information of major destruction or casualties.

A leading Iranian nuclear envoy on Thursday suggested the country could reconsider its uranium enrichment program if it gets cast-iron guarantees of regular international fuel supplies for its nuclear power plants.

“We are going to continue as long as there is no legally binding internationally recognized instrument for assurance of supply,” said Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, the chief Iranian delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

However, he declined to clarify whether that meant that Iran would halt its enrichment program in return for such international guarantees, suggesting it might have to continue at a diminished level in case the outside supply stops.

Iran has steadfastly rejected international pressure to give up enrichment, a potential source of both nuclear fuel and fissile warhead material.

The United States says the enrichment program is designed to giver Iran a nuclear bomb. Iran insists it is for peaceful nuclear power generation.

Soltanieh said Iran is forced to develop its own enrichment facilities to ensure security of supply for its power plants because it fears international suppliers would face pressure from the Untied States or others to cut deliveries.

That might change if all 145 members of the U.N.’s atomic energy agency concluded a legally binding agreement to guarantee a constant supply of fuel, Soltanieh told reporters after addressing a think-tank conference.

“Then Iran would be able to reconsider the position that we have now,” he said.

Iranian officials have for years refused to consider calling a halt to the program despite U.N. sanctions.

Getting all members of the Vienna-based nuclear agency to agree on legally binding guarantees would be very difficult, and Soltanieh suggested that Iran may want to keep some enrichment activities even if such an agreement were found.

“We have to have a contingency (safeguard) in case of interruption,” he said. “This is not an overnight situation that there is a paper today, and tomorrow then they say Iran will stop. No, it’s not possible. There is no way.”

Previous efforts to persuade Iran to stop its enrichment program by offering outside fuel supplies, notably from Russia, have failed.

Nevertheless the suggestion that an international supply agreement might end the nuclear stand off was welcomed by Hans Blix, the former head of the nuclear agency and chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq. He said it could be the basis for international negotiations.

“This is the direction in which one should look for the future,” Blix told the conference on Iran’s nuclear program organized by the European Policy Center.

The European Commission called on Wednesday for a coordinated European Union response to a crisis ravaging the financial sector as it proposed tougher regulations and cross-border oversight.

With confidence in financial markets at rock bottom, commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso assured: “Our system can cope, the European financial system has the ability to respond.”

However, he stressed that the European Union needed “to inject credibility in the European response, and that is why we are asking and urging member states for closer cooperation.”

His appeal came as Europe’s four biggest economic powers — Britain, France, Germany and Italy — prepared to meet on Saturday in Paris for talks on the global financial crisis.

The meeting, where leaders are to hammer out concrete actions, would set the stage for a full summit attended by all EU leaders in Brussels on October 15 and 16.

The EU commission chief said Europe’s response to the crisis should be stronger supervisory authorities and changes to accounting rules especially for the valuation of securities at the root of the current problems.

He also called for reforms to improve the consistency of deposit guarantee schemes in Europe, more transparency for executive pay packages and for structural reforms to be continued.

Separate from those emergency initiatives, the commission issued proposals to shake up banking sector regulations and oversight under a reform that has been in the works since long before the most recent turmoil.

Under the proposals, banks would have to limit their dependence on lending and borrowing in the interbank market in order to restrict their exposure to other banks.

The new rules would also require institutions that originate loans to retain exposure to them when they re-package pools of loans as tradable securities that are sold on to investors.

Such so-called securitised products have been blamed for being at the root of the current crisis because many banks originating loans in the United States sold them on without bearing risks for the underlying loans, many of which are now going sour.

The commission also called for a college of supervisors to be set up to oversee big cross-border banks in the face of opposition from member states for an EU banking watchdog to be created.

European financial regulators have failed to keep up with the waves of cross-border consolidation in the banking industry sector in recent years, leaving banks largely supervised along national lines.

“These new rules will fundamentally strengthen the regulatory framework for EU banks and the financial system,” said EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy.

“I believe that they are a sensible and proportionate response to the financial turmoil we are experiencing,” he added. “Basic rigour, transparency and prudence are key to a healthy and stable banking system.”

The proposed rules will have to be approved by EU member states and the European Parliament in order to take effect.

Microsoft Corp. will use its $1.2 billion purchase of Oslo company Fast Search and Transfer ASA to form key, Norway-based research and development centers for its business search systems, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer announced Tuesday.

Microsoft bought Fast in January in an all-cash deal to strengthen its enterprise search technology in effort to better compete with Oracle Corp. and IBM.

Microsoft’s Ballmer said Fast’s current staff of about 300 will be expanded to 350 people, with a main office in the capital city of Oslo and branches in the Norwegian towns of Trondheim and Tromsoe.

“Norway can be proud of building up an international competence center for business searches,” Ballmer said after meeting Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg in Oslo to inform him of the plans. “Microsoft wants to be a significant player in that area.”

Ballmer is on a European tour which includes stops in Norway, Denmark, Britain, France and Portugal.

Stoltenberg said the decision is “very positive because both research and business centers in Norway will work with a major international player like Microsoft.”

Ten-year-old Fast, based in Oslo, is one of the biggest enterprise search firms. Its technology, like those of competitors Autonomy Corp. and Endeca Technologies Inc., helps workers inside a business locate data kept in a tangle of different types of files and databases.

Microsoft hopes its own Web search and advertising business, which lags far behind Google Inc.’s in terms of traffic and revenue, will grow from the acquisition of Fast.

A billion-euro rescue plan for Alitalia on Monday won the support of two final unions of the nine that have bargained hard on pay and contractual issues at the failing Italian flagship, media reports said.

The two unions representing flight attendants and ground crew signed on to the plan by the Italian Air Company (CAI) investor group at a meeting with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s top aide Gianni Letta, ANSA reported, quoting sources close to the dossier.

A first breakthrough came last Thursday when Italy’s most powerful union, the CGIL, signed on after obtaining last-minute concessions on pay, leave and contractual issues.

Then holdout pilots came on board in the early hours of Saturday, leaving the small flight attendants and ground crew unions little choice but to mount a symbolic resistance today.

Alitalia, 49.9 per cent state-owned, is losing about three million euros a day and has debt of about 1.2 billion euros, which is now to be shouldered by the Italian taxpayer.

Under the rescue plan, CAI would take over Alitalia’s passenger activities and merge them with Italy’s number two airline Air One, which is also faltering.

Some 12,500 workers of the two sections would be rehired by CAI, while 3,250 would be laid off.

The government has promised compensation over seven years for those who lose their jobs.

Sudanese forces on Sunday killed six heavily armed bandits who kidnapped 19 European tourists and their Egyptian guides in a remote desert nine days ago, the army said.

The shootout erupted as Sudanese troops were scouring the desert for the 11 tourists and eight Egyptians who were snatched during a desert safari in southwestern Egypt and taken into Sudan, an army statement said.

Troops searching the Jebel Uweinat mountain range on the Sudan-Libya-Egypt border “spotted a moving white vehicle (and) when the soldiers tried to make it stop those inside the car opened fire,” it said.

“There was a fight between our soldiers and the kidnappers, in which six of the kidnappers were killed and two were arrested… The hostages are now inside Chad at a place called Tabbat Shajara, where they are being held by 30 men.”

The statement accused a faction from the Darfur rebel Sudan Liberation Army of being behind the kidnapping and said the army had found Kalashnikov assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns inside the vehicle.

“The kidnappers are from the SLA-Unity group and their leader was killed,” the statement said, naming him as a Chadian called Adam Bakheet.

Sudanese presidential advisor Mahjoub Fadl Badri told AFP the kidnappers were holding the hostages in a hideout and were negotiating on their fate, but that there were no details on whether the Chadian army had moved in.

A Sudanese soldier was also injured in the clash, Egypt’s official MENA news agency quoted the Sudanese army as saying.

Earlier an official had said the tourists, who were kidnapped at gunpoint on September 19, were “all well.”

Chad’s government, however, cast doubt on the claim that the hostages were inside the country.

“We have noticed nothing on Chadian national territory,” government spokesman Mahamat Hissene told AFP.

“We are surprised by the announcement … We are wondering whether it doesn’t amount to a media strategy by Sudan to turn public opinion.”

A French military source said a European force serving in eastern Chad had not spotted the kidnappers in Chadian territory.

A separate French deployment serving in Chad had also not spotted them, according to the source.

A London-based SLA spokesman said none of his fighters were involved.

“We completely deny any report that we are involved in this kidnap,” Mahgoub Hussein told AFP. “The movement, or any individual member, have no connection with the kidnappers, and in fact we condemn the action.”

However he offered a warning to those seeking the safe release of the group.

“Knowing the region and the behaviour of men like the kidnappers, we urge all parties to exercise restraint and enter in direct dialogue,” he said. “Any attempt by force may affect directly the hostages.”

An Egyptian security official told AFP that the kidnappers and German negotiators had agreed a deal but that “negotiations were still ongoing to work out details.”

The kidnappers have demanded that Germany take charge of payment of a six-million-euro (8.8-million-dollar) ransom, an Egyptian security official said last week. They want the ransom to be handed over to the German wife of the tour organiser.

The five Italians, five Germans, and one Romanian plus eight Egyptians — two guides, four drivers, a guard and the organiser — were kidnapped on a desert plateau famous for prehistoric cave paintings, including the “Cave of the Swimmers” featured in the 1996 film “The English Patient.”

Germany has kept quiet about its role in any negotiations, saying only that it has set up a crisis team.

The group was first moved across the border to Sudan to the remote mountain region of Jebel Uweinat, a plateau that straddles the borders of Egypt, Libya and Sudan.

There are conflicting reports about the nationality of the hostage-takers, with different sources saying they were from Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Chad or Djibouti.

One travel agent told AFP that in January a German group was attacked and robbed in the same area. They were abandoned in the desert with nothing but a satellite telephone. It is not known who carried out that attack.

Kidnappings of foreigners are extremely rare in Egypt, although in 2001 an armed Egyptian held four German tourists hostage for three days in Luxor, demanding that his estranged wife bring his two sons back from Germany. He freed the hostages unharmed.

Bomb attacks aimed at foreigners have been more common, with the most recent occurring between 2004 and 2006 in popular Red Sea resorts, killing dozens of people.

A former Iranian president warned the West on Friday that its support for Israel would backfire, as hundreds of thousands of people staged rallies in support of Muslim claims to the holy city of Jerusalem.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is still considered influential in Iranian politics, said the U.S., Britain and France back Israel — and this is dangerous.

“They will put themselves in trouble, eventually,” Rafsanjani said during a Friday prayer ceremony in Tehran marking “Al-Quds Day.” Al-Quds is the Arabic word for Jerusalem.

Israel could “take tougher and more offensive action” than the United States against Iran and the Arab world, warned Rafsanjani.

State-run television also aired clips on Friday featuring hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York. The president, who is in the U.S. for the U.N. General Assembly meeting, said Israel does not have support among ordinary people in America.

He also chided hundreds of demonstrators who protested against him during his trip, calling it a “big failure for them.”

The latest anti-Israel remarks by Iranian leaders come as hundreds of thousands rallied in cities across the Persian country to protest Israel’s continued hold on Jerusalem, the city where Muslims believe Islam’s Prophet Muhammad began his journey to heaven.

In the capital, Tehran, demonstrators chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” to commemorate “Al-Quds Day.” Some protesters also burned American and Israeli flags.

Tehran’s Jewish community also participated in the rally, according to a statement by the Tehran Central Jewish Committee, a copy of which was made available to The Associated Press.

Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran has observed the last Friday of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan as “Al-Quds Day,” as a way of expressing support to the Palestinians and emphasizing the importance of Jerusalem to Muslims.

Rallies were also held in the Syrian capital of Damascus to mark Al-Quds. More than 3,000 people gathered at the Yarmouk refugee camp carrying Palestinian flags and anti-Israeli banners. The rally was attended by several officials from Syria-based Palestinian factions, including Ahmed Jibril from the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General-Command.

“This day is a day of popular anger in the Arab and Islamic nations. It is directed toward all those who are colluding against Palestine and Jerusalem,” Jibril said, in apparent reference to Arab nations that have relations with Israel.

Another official, Ziad Nakhale of the Islamic Jihad group, said Jerusalem is holy for Muslims and “we call all Muslims around the world to liberate it.”

In Lebanon, the militant Hezbollah group held a rally south of Beirut marking Jerusalem Day. The group’s leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah urged Palestinians to “resistance” against Israel.

“No one has the right to give up a grain of soil … in the holy land,” said Nasrallah, speaking through a video link on a giant screen. He added that Jerusalem “must return to its rightful owners and it will, God willing.”