Al-Farouq was arrested in Indonesia in 2002 and was later handed over to the U.S. authorities when he still held Indonesian citizenship.

He was killed by British troops in Iraq Monday.

"Yes, he's dead already. We have checked it with our counterpart," BIN chief Syamsir Siregar told reporters here.

He did not elaborate.

Al Farouq, 35, who married to an Indonesian woman, escaped U.S.detention center in Afghanistan in July last year but Washington revealed his breakout until November that upset Jakarta.

Siregar said he was not sure that the body of the Kuwaiti-born al-Farouq can be brought to Indonesia at the request of his family.

However, his death is unlikely to ease terror threat in Indonesia, said a senior official with the Coordinating Ministry for Legal, Political and Security Affairs.

"Terrorism is based on ideology and politics. It doesn't depend on individual figures," the ministry's anti-terror desk head Ansyaad Mbai was quoted by the national Antara news agency as saying.

The general, whose Muslim nation is a key ally of George W. Bush in the war on terrorism, laughed off trademark caustic questions from Stewart, including whether the U.S. president slept or watched TV during their presidential talks last week.

But Musharraf, making the U.S. media rounds to promote his autobiography, "In the Line of Fire," gave a frank answer when Stewart asked if he had not mentioned the U.S. war in Iraq in his memoir because it has "gone so well."

"It has led certainly to more extremism and terrorism around the world," Musharraf said.

Throughout the pre-recorded interview on the cable channel Comedy Central, Musharraf was quick-witted and jovial, while Stewart struck a more serious, respectful tone than he normally does with guests.

Stewart closed by putting Musharraf on the "Seat of Heat" -- surrounded with flashing lights that mimicked flames -- and asking him who would win a popular vote in Pakistan between Bush and Osama bin Laden.

"I think they'll both lose miserably," replied Musharraf to loud applause from the studio audience.

The 11th summit of the International Francophone Organisation (OIF), which opens here on Thursday, will be attended by the heads of state or government of 33 countries and the foreign affairs ministers of 30 others.

The organisation, which has 53 member states and 10 with observer status from across five continents, is not only a cultural organisation, but somewhat like its British-led counterpart, the Commonwealth, is a political body which supports peace, democracy and human rights and has multilateral cooperation agreements.

Secretary General Abdou Diouf told AFP the summit would also make clear its attachment to cultural diversity in opposition to the "single concept of the world" held by the United States.

"We consider that culture is not a commodity to be traded. I have the impression that the notion of culture from a US standpoint is understood to mean entertainment rather than the expression of peoples' souls and identities," said Diouf, the former president of Senegal.

"Language is not neutral," he added, and defending the French language is a "combat" for linguistic diversity "so that we do not live under a reign of hegemony and a single conception of the world," he stressed.

Historically dominated by its African member states, -- France's former colonies with the notable exception of Algeria which is not a member although its 16 million French-speakers make it the second largest Francophone country in the world after France -- the OIF is now becoming more European with 14 of the 21 new members who have joined since 1991 coming from eastern Europe.

Something which is raising some concerns.

"As the Francophone family gets bigger, the oldest members ... are getting worried," said Jean-Didier Somda, a delegate from Burkina Faso's foreign ministry.

But Diouf said that on the contrary the more members "the better... particularly in order to defend our language in international organisations and notably at the European Union.

"When Romania and Bulgaria join the EU, then 13 of the EU's 27 members will also be Francophone members which will help get our message across," he said, adding "the EU is the organisation which gives the most amount of aid to the South."

It is no accident that this summit will be held in Romania where French has been an obligatory school subject since the 18th century.

"Romanian children start learning French in kindergarten and many families want to put their children in school where they can learn French," said Cristian Preda, secretary of state for Francophonie.

French is studied by 88 percent of Romanian schoolchildren either as their first or second foreign language, behind English, and there are 70 French-Romanian bilingual schools across the country.

This enthusiasm for French can be explained not only by the proximity of the two languages which both have Latin roots, but also by the historic links between the two countries and the fascination Romanian intellectuals have always had for France and its culture.

"At the beginning of the 19th century the boyars -- members of the old Russian nobility -- sent their children to study in France while educated Romanians made it a point of honour to speak French," explained art historian Cezara Mucenic.

But when Romania fell under the totalitarianism of communist Soviet Union, many were imprisoned for simply borrowing a book from or taking lessons at the French Institute in Bucharest.

"On March 3, 1950 I went to the French Institute. Two days earlier, the Communist Party had decided to close all Western cultural centres and to imprison anyone who went there. I borrowed a book, began to read it in the street and was arrested," recounted historian Serban Papacostea.

French is spoken by 175 million people around the globe and is the official language in 29 countries either alone, as in 12 countries, or together with another one.

"The history course we teach has nothing to do with the version drafted by Belarus authorities," Vladimir Kolos, director of the school is quoted by Reuters news agency. "And we conduct classes in good Belarussian. That's rare these days."

Officials say the school building was closed as part of a move to consolidate facilities and save money. Staff believe it was shut down because they broke away from the official curriculum taught at state schools and nurtured Belarussian.

They decided to keep their classes going, and resorted to the cat-and-mouse game after attempts to rent public halls led to confrontations or bureaucratic tangles with authorities.

Teachers found that halls were mysteriously booked, unavailable or found to have failed fire or safety inspections.

No one now discloses where the classes are held.

Running the gauntlet of inspectors and Education Ministry officials has become commonplace for these teachers in Belarus, ruled by President Alexander Lukashenko since 1994.

The opposition and Western countries accuse him of rounding up rivals, closing down media, rigging elections and hounding independent cultural associations.

Children starting state school are given a book entitled "Belarus - my homeland" featuring four imposing photographs of the president.

Re-elected in March in a poll denounced in the West as rigged, Lukashenko has reintroduced the Soviet notion of obligatory ideology courses for both state and private schools.

However, the Yakub Kolos school helps its teenage pupils challenge this official ideology.

"When we went to ordinary schools, we weren't free to express our opinions," said pupil Oleg Volotovsky. "That could get you into trouble."

For Elina Kazarskaya, whose two daughters attend the school, "there is no school in Belarus like this lycee. Its graduates get into the most prestigious universities."

Lukashenko routinely derides the Belarussian language.

Now associated mostly with academics and, more important, with the liberal and nationalist movements that denounce his administration, Belarussian is an eastern Slav language mid-way between Russian and Ukrainian.

It fell into general disuse under Soviet authorities determined to use Russian to limit nationalist sentiment here and elsewhere. Attempts to revive it after the fall of communism retreated when Lukashenko took office in 1994.

Though street signs are in Belarussian, it is rarely heard in towns and was viewed in Soviet times as unsophisticated.

It is the language of instruction for one in five pupils nationwide but for only two percent in the capital Minsk. In other schools, it is a required subject but some students and parents say it is not taught seriously.

The language - and its role in the national consciousness - seems to be at the heart of Yakub Kolos lycee's appeal. Two candidates compete for every available place.

"My son learned to speak Belarussian better here in a month than in all the previous years put together in state schools," said Tatyana Volotovskaya.

The school, which is funded by parents, cannot issue state diplomas but its pupils can enter universities by sitting separate examinations.

"I started at the lycee before they closed it down. Then we just kept moving from apartment to apartment. We were the first students to take the entrance exams separately," said Yevgeny Blok, now preparing for university in Lodz in next-door Poland.

Kolos - no relation to the Belarussian poet after whom the school is named - says about half the graduates go abroad to study.

"Our teaching methods try to ensure that pupils become Belarussian patriots and want to stay in our country," he said.

"But our graduates have a hard time in Belarussian universities as so much time in the academic program is devoted to ideological disciplines."

The pupils are keenly aware of their sensitive circumstances.

On September 1, the traditional start of the school year throughout the former Soviet Union, they gather informally outside the closed school building.

Standing by a gate outside the building - part of which has been converted into a courthouse - they place flowers on the ground and share old student songs.

"There are no restrictions on how we work," said history teacher Valentin Golubev. "We can discuss just about any problem with our children."

"There have also been a couple of studies that have been pretty good at showing that (these products) -- at least the aluminum in them -- are not really related to breast cancer," said Dr. Lisa Donofrio, assistant clinical professor of dermatology at Yale University School of Medicine.

"This debate right now is probably closer to 'case closed,' " she said, adding future studies might turn up conflicting data.

Donofrio said preservatives used in a wide range of beauty products called "parabins" could be a problem for some users. Parabins are used by manufacturers to increase shelf life because a small minority of consumers are allergic to another preservative called formaldehyde releasers.

"So, parabins are now found across the board in beauty items - makeup, and most commonly in lotions," Donofrio said. But the problem with parabins is that they "are estrogenic, meaning they will bind to estrogen receptors [on cells], and in test-tube studies, they actually stimulate breast cancer cells."

Higher levels of circulating estrogens has long been a prime risk factor for breast cancer. Industry experts note that parabins are used in extremely small amounts in health and beauty products.

"For that reason, they say they're just in too small amounts to cause any problems," Donofrio said. "But over a lifetime, with daily use of these creams, we don't actually know what the cumulative dose really is."

For that reason, Donofrio advises that anyone not allergic to formaldehyde releasers shy away from products containing parabins, which are usually noted on label ingredient lists as either methyl parabin or propyl parabin.

For those people who are allergic to formaldehyde releasers, she suggests using products containing a third class of preservative, sodium benzoate. Compared to parabins, "it's the lesser of two evils," the Yale expert said.

In Canada and Europe, the flu vaccines won't arrive at doctors' offices and clinics until November, about one month later than usual.

Manufacturers usually receive small amounts of the three most common flu strains recommended by the World Health Organization, and then they grow the virus in eggs, which takes about six months.

This year, one of the strains, A/Wisconsin, was difficult to grow, said Dr. Patricia Huston of the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Public health experts said it would be better if the vaccine was available by mid-October to increase the time for getting people vaccinated, but flu cases don't usually peak until around Christmas time.

"We should be able to get the vaccine into people's arms if influenza behaves the way it typically does before the peak in flu activity," said Dr. Danuta Skowronski, a physician epidemiologist with the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.

There may be a benefit to delaying the vaccine, said Dr. Chingiz Amirov of Toronto's Baycrest Geriatric Health Care System.

Some experts recommend delaying administration of the vaccine until early November so its effects last into the spring when the flu season is still active, Amirov said.

It takes about two weeks for the immune system to respond to the shot and build up immunity. People can still contract influenza if they get the vaccine, but it helps reduce the severity of symptoms.

Undetectable to the naked eye under the dark glaze is the translucent gauze garment over her dress called a guarnelo.

It was worn at that time by women who were pregnant or had just given birth, leading scientists to conclude that she sat for the painting shortly after the birth of her younger son.

That could account for the smile, but da Vinci's secrets for creating such a beautiful work of art remain undetected.

The 16th-century artist called the technique he used to paint Mona Lisa sfumato. Art experts believe it involved painting several translucent layers of colour to create the appearance of depth.

The high-resolution 3-D laser scanning technology used by an NRC research team allows study of the layers of paint used, down to a micron in width (about one-tenth the width of a human hair).

But scientists still can't tell how Leonardo achieved the uncanny detail of the Mona Lisa, or the effect of having her eyes follow the viewer.

The 11-person NRC team created a 3-D model of the painting by scanning the original - a technique that does no damage.

After examining the painting layer by layer, they found no signs of brush stroke detail, nor evidence that Leonardo used his fingers as he did in other works. "It's extremely thinly painted and extremely flat, and yet the details of the curls of hair, for example, are extremely distinct," John Taylor, co-ordinator of the research team, said in a news release on Tuesday.

"So the technique is unlike anything we've ever seen before. Leonardo was in a league of his own."

The NRC team visited the Louvre at the request of the Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France, which wanted confirmation that its preservation techniques for the masterpiece are the best available.

Although the work is seldom taken from its protected and climate-controlled setting, the researchers were given two nights to scan every aspect of the painting down to a micron's width.

They created an archival quality 3-D digital model of the Mona Lisa, which they used to complete their study.

In good shape

After more than year's worth of analysis of the painting, they had some good news for the Louvre - current environmental conditions are likely to keep her smiling for years to come.

Researchers paid particular attention to a warp in the poplar wood panel Leonardo used to paint his work.

They discovered the panel is sensitive to changes in climate, but under its current storage conditions, there is no risk of degradation.

They also studied a 12-centimetre split on the top half of the painting, which probably dates from the 18th century, and decided it has not worsened over time.

The NRC scanning technique provided detailed analysis of the painting's craquelure, the network of surface cracks.

"What our results show, and this corroborates the other studies, is that the paint layer itself, despite all its craquelure, is very well bonded to the poplar substrate," Taylor said.

"We didn't see any sign of paint lifting. So for a 500-year-old painting it's very good news. And if they continue to keep it the way they have in an environment-controlled chamber, it could remain like that for a very long time."

The results of the study are published in French in Au coeur de la Joconde by Les Éditions Gallimard and Mona Lisa: Inside the Painting, published in English by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

The 3-D technology used by the NRC is also being developed to make space exploration safer and allow more precise engineering on auto parts or other industrial applications.