The comments by the vice-president, who has been one of the leading advocates of reducing limitations on what interrogation techniques can be used in the war on terror, are the first public confirmation that water boarding has been used on suspects held in US custody.

A spokeswoman for Mr Cheney denied that he had endorsed or confirmed the use of water-boarding.

"The VP was talking about the interrogation programme, clearly noting that we do not torture and we live up to our international treaty obligations. He does not discuss any techniques or methods that may or may not be used in questioning," said Lea Anne McBride.

Mr Cheney said recent legislation passed by Congress allowed the White House to continue its aggressive interrogation programme.

But his remarks appear to stand at odds with the views of three key Republican senators who helped draft the recently passed Military Commission Act, and who argue that water boarding is not permitted according to that law.

"[It's] a direct affront to the primary authors of the Military Commission Act in the Senate - John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner - all of whom have publicly stated that the legislation signed by the president last week makes water boarding a war crime," said Jennifer Daskal, advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "This is Cheney ignoring the consensus of his own Pentagon," she said, referring to comments by senior officials that harsh interrogation techniques do not produce reliable intelligence.

John Bellinger, the State Department legal adviser, last week declined to answer specific questions on water boarding, saying Congress would have to determine whether specific interrogation techniques were permissible under the Geneva ­conventions.

The Bush administration was forced to work with Congress to pass the Military Commissions Act after the Supreme Court ruled that al-Qaeda suspects were entitled to some protections under the Geneva convention. "Any procedures goingforward would have to comply with the standardsof Common Article 3 [of the Geneva conventions], including the prohibition oncruel, inhuman and degrading treatment . . . ," Mr Bellinger said. "Congress would have to agree that theyare permitted under the law."

Asked in the radio interview whether he would agree that the debate over terrorist interrogations and water boarding was "a little silly", Mr Cheney responded: "I do agree".

"I think the terrorist threat, for example, with respect to our ability to interrogate high-value detainees like Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, that's been a very important tool that we've had to be able to secure the nation," he said.

It appears to be a groundbreaking prosecution for a case of female genital mutilation in the U.S., said Taina Bien-Aime, executive director of Equality Now, a New York-based human rights group that focuses on violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world.

Khalid Adem could face 40 years in prison if convicted in Gwinnett County on the charges of aggravated battery and cruelty to children.

Prosecutor Marty First acknowledged that Adem, who was born in Ethiopia, is from a culture that practices female circumcision.

"But circumcision is just a nice way of saying mutilation," First told the jury in his opening statement Tuesday. "There is no doubt that she was mutilated. And this is not something you go to a doctor and do because no doctor will do it. He did this to his own baby."

The practice, a tradition in some African cultures, is widely condemned by human rights groups and has been outlawed in the United States since 1997.

Police have said that Adem used scissors to circumcise his daughter in their Duluth apartment in 2001. The child's mother said she didn't discover it until more than a year later.

"He did not do that. He never wanted it to happen," defense attorney W. Mark Hill told the jury. "He will tell you that. And that only leaves two people. The people who were primarily taking care of the child. The mother and the grandmother."

First said the girl told Gwinnett County authorities that her father cut her. The prosecutor quoted Adem as saying in late 2002 and early 2003 that if the girl were not circumcised, "it will be a shame to the family."

"He said he wanted (the girl) to have it done so that she will not be promiscuous," First added. He also said Adem implied he had already circumcised the girl.

Hill denied Adem ever made any of those statements and asked how the victim's mother could not have known for more than a year that the girl was circumcised.

Hill said Fortunate Adem's allegations stem from a nasty divorce and a custody battle over the girl.

Children's charity Barnardo's echoed the claims, saying youngsters have been "demonised" by the media.

The report says 65% of Germans, 52% of Spanish and 50% of Italians would be willing to intervene if they saw a group of 14-year-old boys vandalising a bus shelter, compared with just 34% of Britons.

The IPPR also said teenagers needed structured activities like drama and sports clubs.

Julia Margot, from the IPPR, told the BBC Radio Five Live: "In Britain, as opposed to countries like Spain and Italy, adults are less likely to socialise with children in the evenings.

"So we don't have this culture of children hanging out and playing out in the town square where adults are also socialising and drinking.

"We don't have a culture where adults go out to pubs and bars and bring children with them, and so there is a problem about adults being less used to having children around."

Youth concerns

The 200-page report says that last year more than 1.5 million Britons thought about moving away from their local area due to young people hanging around.

About 1.7 million admitted to avoiding going out after dark as a direct result of youths gathering.

Britons were also three times more likely to cite young people "hanging around" as a problem than they were to complain about noisy neighbours.

Pam Hibbert, principle policy officer for Barnardo's, said public perceptions created by the media and politicians had bred fear amongst the nation's adults.

She said: "We have become fearful of all children.

"We know, for example, young crime in itself has remained fairly static in the last 10 years - it is a minority that cause problems and retaliate.

"The demonisation of children and young people in some sections of the media and when politicians refer to youngsters as yobs - that breeds the actual fear."

'Turning a blind eye'

British adults were more likely than their other European counterparts to say that young people were predominantly responsible for anti-social behaviour, and cite "lack of discipline as the root cause of anti-social behaviour".

The Britons who were unwilling to get involved claimed they feared being physically attacked or verbally abused - or that they would be the victim of subsequent reprisals.

Nick Pearce, IPPR director, said: "The debate about childhood in Britain is polarised between false opposites: that either children or adults are to blame.

"In closer knit communities, adults supervised their neighbours' children.

"These days, adults tend to turn a blind eye or cross over on the other side of the road rather than intervene in the discipline of another person's child, often because they fear they might be attacked."

A spokeswoman for YouthNet - an online charity which provides information, advice and guidance for people aged 16 to 24 through two websites - said young people's achievements were often overlooked.

She said: "While young people acknowledge that a minority of their peers can be anti-social, they'd like to point out that not all young people are the same and the majority, who contribute to society, work hard and have fun without being destructive, are often overlooked because the good things they do don't make news."

The report "Freedom's Orphans: Raising Youth in a Changing World" will be published next month.

The nurse anesthetist, Sally Jordan Hill, 50, is jailed without bail on first-degree murder charges. On Thursday, prosecutors announced they would not seek the death penalty.

Joyner, 45, had gone to the office of Dr. Peter Tucker in 2001 for a facelift, fat grafts to her lips, and laser therapy on her eyelids and facial scars. But she went into respiratory arrest in the recovery room and was taken to a hospital, where she died several days later after being taken off life support. An autopsy blamed her death on a lack of oxygen to the brain caused by respiratory arrest.

At a court hearing last month, Chuck Henson, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg detective, said he believes Hill poisoned the patient by injecting her with fentanyl, a powerful painkiller. The detective said he also believes Hill turned off an alarm that could have alerted other nurses to the patient's condition.

And he testified that two people - the plastic surgeon and a technician - recall hearing Hill say Joyner stole her high school boyfriend. That comment was said to have been made during Joyner's initial visit to Tucker's plastic surgery practice, in 1999.

In court last month, two weeks after Hill's arrest, defense attorney Jean Lawson disputed the allegations.

"There is no evidence that Miss Hill knowingly, deliberately selected this person and killed her. The suggestion that this is the product of a 30-year grudge is outrageous," Lawson said.

Hill and Joyner were students at Olympic High School in Charlotte in the early 1970s. Baker was a member of the Class of '73; Hill graduated a year later.

During a 2003 deposition given to the state medical board, Hill said she knew Joyner in junior high and high school.

"She was one of the judges of my cheerleading experience when I was in the eighth grade," Hill testified. Asked whether they were friends, Hill said no, but "I would see her and her then-boyfriend ... walk around school together because he was in football and she was a cheerleader or letter girl, something like that."

Joyner later married John Joyner; the two separated before her death. Police said John Joyner is not the boyfriend Hill believed was stolen from her.

The medical board blamed Hill for Joyner's death, calling her "grossly negligent" in administering fentanyl without the plastic surgeon's permission and for taking too long to alert the doctor that Joyner was having problems. The plastic surgeon took responsibility for the death in a 2003 agreement with the board but kept his license. Hill gave hers up.

Joyner's family filed a malpractice lawsuit against the plastic surgeon and Hill; the case was settled in 2003 on confidential terms.

In his 2003 deposition before the medical board, the plastic surgeon blamed Hill for the patient's death, calling her "a rogue nurse on her own wild mustang, riding through the West, you know, shooting whoever she wants."

Tucker described Hill's behavior on the day of Joyner's surgery as out of character: "She's flipped out. She's going nuts. She snapped."

Tucker said he reported his suspicions to the district attorney's office. It is not clear why it took until this year for Hill to be charged; District Attorney Peter Gilchrist has said only that his office asked the police department's cold case squad to take a look at Joyner's death after receiving new information.

There is a remarkably low rate of violent crime against strangers in most of the big cities, and it is safe to walk the streets of Mumbai or Bangalore late at night. But every six hours, a young married woman is burnt to death, beaten to death, or driven to suicide by emotional abuse from her husband, figures show.

More than two-thirds of married women in India aged between 15 and 49 have been beaten, raped or forced to provide sex, according to the UN Population Fund.

One of the most common causes of violence against women is dowry-related. In most of India, women's families are still expected to provide their husbands with dowries when they marry.

Husbands - or their families - who are dissatisfied with the dowry beat, emotionally abuse and often even kill the women.

Last year 6,787 cases were recorded of women murdered by their husbands or their husbands' families because of their dowries. Many die in "stove burnings": set alight by husbands or in-laws who then claim it was a kitchen accident.

Domestic violence against women is already illegal, under a 1983 law. But the new law marks the first time India has recognised marital rape. Previously it was impossible to prosecute a man for raping his wife, which was considered to be within his conjugal rights.

The new law also for the first time recognises emotional, verbal and economic abuse of a woman by her husband as a crime. Punishment can include a jail sentence of up to one year and a fine of up to 20,000 rupees (£230). Existing law already provides longer sentences for physical violence.

But more importantly, the new law also provides a share of an abusive husband's earnings and property for the victim, and medical costs.

Crucially, it also guarantees abused wives the right to continue living in the family house. Houses are still shared by extended families in much of India, and abused wives are often thrown out by their husbands' in-laws, leaving them destitute and homeless.

"It's going to orient women to stand up for their own rights and take the necessary precautions to empower themselves," said Renuka Chowdhury, minister of women and child development. Previously many women are believed to have been afraid to speak out because they risk losing their husband's financial support for themselves and their children.

But concerns remain that even under the new law, many cases of abuse will still go unreported, unless attitudes towards domestic abuse change. The UN Population Fund's 2005 report found that 70 per cent of Indian women believed wife-beating was justified under certain circumstances, including refusal to provide sex, or preparing dinner late.

Woman killed after refusing sex

Tripla, born in eastern India

Tripla was born in the jungles of eastern India. But she died hundreds of miles from home, in the scrubby fields around Delhi, murdered by her husband because she refused to have sex with his brother.

She was born into a penniless family. So when a man came looking for a wife and offered £170 for her, her parents accepted.

She never saw her home or her family again. Her husband took her to his village in Mewat district, an hour's drive from Delhi. There is a shortage of women in the area, because of the practice of female foeticide.

They lived together as husband and wife for six months. Then Ajmer ordered her to sleep with his brother, who could not afford a wife.

When Tripla refused, Ajmer dragged her to a field near the village and beheaded her with a sickle.

Tripla's story was uncovered by Rishi Kant, a women's rights campaigner. When he told her parents in Jharkhand what had happened, her mother wept. "But what could we do?" she asked him. "We are facing so much poverty we had no choice but to sell her." Her husband is now facing trial for murder. Hers is one case among thousands. Every week, in the villages of Mewat alone, Mr Kant rescues more women who have been bought as wives and face lives of abuse.

"Everybody is hunkered down here. They're fighting the fire around us. It's across the street from us," said Charles Van Brunt, a ranger at the station at the entrance to Silent Valley Club, the recreational vehicle park near Palm Springs. The residents were in no immediate danger, he said.

Authorities asked people in the RV park to stay put to leave the roads clear for firefighters. Hundreds of others in the area were forced from their homes.

A Riverside County Fire Department spokesman said the fire was deliberately set around 1 a.m.