In a speech the day after his lavish coronation ceremony, 28-year-old Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck said he would protect the landlocked country's unique culture and traditions by pursuing the principle of 'Gross National Happiness.'

"My deepest concern is that as the world changes we may lose these fundamental values on which we rest our character as a nation and people," King Wangchuck, now the world's youngest reigning monarch, said in a speech to tens of thousands of people.

"Henceforth, even as more dramatic changes transform the world and our nation, as long as we continue to pursue the simple and timeless goal of being good human beings... we can ensure that our future generations will live in happiness and peace," he said.

"Ultimately without peace, security and happiness we have nothing. That is the essence of Gross National Happiness."

The crowning of the new king Thursday capped a year of sweeping changes for the Buddhist country, which is sandwiched between Asian giants India and China but has never been colonised.

Bhutan held its first democratic elections for a new parliament and prime minister in March, as part of a plan by the former king to modernise the country by relinquishing the Wangchuck dynasty's absolute power.

It was the revered former king, who is 52, who devised the principle of pursuing national happiness rather than focussing on purely economic indicators.

He abdicated two years ago, saying he wanted to match the shift to democracy with a change of face in the white-walled palace that overlooks Thimphu.

The new king, an Oxford-educated bachelor, is widely viewed as having brought a more common touch to the royal family. Immediately after being crowned, he stood for hours personally greeting thousands of well-wishers.

"Throughout my reign, I will never rule you as a king. I will protect you as a parent, care for you as a brother and serve you as a son," he said in his speech.

"As the king of a Buddhist nation, my duty is not only to ensure your happiness today but to create fertile ground from which you may gain the fruits of spiritual pursuit and attain good karma.

"As citizens of a spiritual land you treasure the qualities of a good human being -- honesty, kindness, charity, integrity, unity, respect for our culture and traditions, love for our country and for God," he said.

Bhutan, home to just over 600,000 people, is one of the most remote places on earth.

It had no roads or currency until the 1960s, allowed television only in 1999 and continues to resist the temptation of allowing mass tourism -- preferring instead to allow access to only small organised groups of well-heeled visitors.

The king's first speech was delivered to at least 30,000 people in Thimphu's main stadium, the scene of traditional dance, military parades and Buddhist rituals throughout the day.

National celebrations marking the coronation end late on Saturday.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels, Berlusconi said something must be done about the fact that 'markets' evaluations have become absolutely divorced from the reality of companies'.

He suggested that trading in a share should be suspended if, for example, 'the share price rose to 20 times above its profits, which would be an excessive price.'

Shares should also be suspended if the share price fell to a level eight times below profits, he said.

Berlusconi added that European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and International Monetary Fund Director General Dominique Strauss-Kahn had said they would consider his proposal 'with attention.' Keywords: FINANCIAL/BERLUSCONI

(Reporting by Francesca Piscioneri, writing by Gavin Jones; editing by David Cowell; Rome newsroom; gavin.jones@thomsonreuters.com, Phone: +39-06-8522-4232)

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The three-term Labour Party prime minister is a committed social democrat. Now 58, she has been prime minister since 1999.

Clark's administration has boosted economic growth, cut government debt and stacked up huge budget surpluses. But the economy slumped into recession in 2008 — hit by global economic head winds, the credit crunch and a domestic downturn.

Clark opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq but sent troops to help with reconstruction there and in Afghanistan, and held firm on anti-nuclear policies that prevent U.S. warships from entering New Zealand's ports.

She helped steer the country to a free trade agreement with China — the first such deal between the emerging giant and a developed Western-style economy. And she has declared that New Zealand will be the world's first carbon-neutral society.

___

JOHN KEY:

The 47-year-old National Party leader is a former currency trader and multimillionaire who entered politics in 2002.

His "ordinary guy" style belies his determination to give New Zealand what he characterizes as a chance to draw a "line under the past ... and choose a fresh start."

Bought up in a state-owned house by his widowed mother, Key has spent most of his career out of the public eye, cloistered in currency trading rooms as he made his fortune.

Key glosses over his past as a money trader — including stints in the United States, Singapore and elsewhere for Merrill Lynch — before entering parliament in 2002.

He won his party's top post after it lost the last election in 2005, and has demonstrated he isn't afraid to speak his mind and make tough calls.

Described by critics as "Labour-lite," Key has forced the traditional center-right National Party into the political middle ground. As a result, the party has accepted Labour policies like the anti-nuclear law and the deployment of troops to Afghanistan.

Key says he wants to "rebalance" the economy, slash taxes, get tough with criminal gangs, ramp up spending on infrastructure and cut the bureaucracy.

Just months ago, some Labour members openly questioned Brown's leadership after the party scored poorly in local elections and fell 20 points behind the Conservatives in the opinion polls.

But Brown's determined handling of the banking meltdown has cut the Conservative lead to nine points, despite economists warning that Britain is on the brink of recession.

Thursday's vote for a parliamentary seat in Scotland, where Labour's main rival is the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP), provided the first firm evidence at the ballot box of a "Brown bounce."

Asked if Labour would now go on to win the next election, due by mid-2010, Brown told a news conference: "The undivided focus of governments and of ministers is on taking people through these difficult times.

"We have got to get the banks resuming their lending, we've got to help people with their gas and electricity bills and we've got to get the rest of the world working with us."

Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who was tipped earlier this year as a potential challenger to Brown, said the result was an endorsement of the prime minister's leadership.

Security officials said they suspected a woman had blown herself up in Thursday's blast at a bus stop in Vladikavkaz, a city in Russia's North Caucasus region where Moscow has been struggling to contain a wave of violence.

"This event shows that the terrorist threat in our country remains. It is no time to relax," Medvedev said at a meeting with senior law enforcement officials in St Petersburg.

"Even though active terrorist attacks in our country have been suppressed, the conditions for these kinds of crime exist."

Alexei Malashenko, a security analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center, said the use of a female suicide bomber could point to militant Islamists who have not used the tactic on this scale since a spate of deadly attacks that culminated in the 2004 Beslan school siege, in which more than 300 people were killed.

In a separate explosion on Friday in Ingushetia, also part of the North Caucasus region, a police officer with the organized crime unit died after a bomb went off under his car as he opened the door, Interfax news agency reported.

After a decade of fighting, Russia has largely quelled a separatist insurgency in Chechnya, once the biggest flashpoint in the North Caucasus, but explosions, gunfights and ambushes are frequent in other parts of the region.

Officials on Thursday had said 11 people were killed in the Vladikavkaz bombing but they later revised the figure to 12.

Female suicide bombers have attacked civilian and military targets in Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003. They are difficult to defend against because women attract less attention and are problematic to search, security experts say.

Women with explosives strapped to their bodies have carried out attacks in Russia that included a hostage-taking at a theater in Moscow, the blowing-up of passenger aircraft, and the Beslan siege.

Beslan is in the same North Ossetia region where Thursday's bus stop explosion took place.

Russia's chief investigator Alexander Bastrykin said the blast may have been linked to a sectarian conflict between mainly Christian North Ossetia and the neighboring Muslim region of Ingushetia.

(Additional reporting by James Kilner in Moscow; Writing by James Kilner; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Especially in the Middle East, therefore, no miracles should be expected. An entire subculture operates within the American political arena, and although it is widely known as the "Israel" or "Jewish" lobby, it represents neither US nor Israeli interests, only those of far-right ultra-Zionists, and its influence on American views of the region is enormous. The fact that this group led the cheer for the very Bush policies that caused so much misery in the Middle East - and which were so thoroughly repudiated by the American people on Tuesday - does not mean that the lobby will go away.

The United Opposition coalition held its rally exactly a year after riot police used tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse peaceful demonstrators who called for Saakashvili's ouster.

But at least two significant opposition parties — the Republican Party and the Christian Democrats — stayed away from the protest, citing the need for postwar unity against Russia.

Opposition leaders said they expected 50,000 people at the rally outside parliament on the capital's main avenue, but the crowd did not come close to that size. Protesters marched through Tbilisi's winding streets to Saakashvili's hillside headquarters, chanting "Go away!"

The opposition also demanded greater press freedoms and called for early presidential and parliamentary elections next spring.

"We will push for Saakashvili's resignation using peaceful means," said Kakha Kukava, leader of the Conservative Party.

Anger over Georgia's losses in the war has added to the dissatisfaction among Saakashvili's opponents. The opposition has demanded an explanation from the government for the mistakes of the war, which broke out when Saakashvili launched a military offensive to reclaim separatist South Ossetia.

Russian forces swiftly intervened, routing the Georgian military and driving deep into the former Soviet republic, where they remained for weeks.

"Saakashvili's bloody adventure ended in complete failure," said Nestan Kirtadze, a leader of the Labor Party.

Russia has recognized separatist South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent nations and pledged to station thousands of troops there, badly undermining Georgia's chances of regaining control.

The 2007 protests — during which Saakashvili declared a state of emergency and cracked down on independent media — caused great concern among his Western backers and damaged his image as a democratic reformer.

Participants in Friday's rally endorsed a statement addressed to Barack Obama urging the incoming U.S. administration to withdraw support for Saakashvili.

"The Georgian people believes that Georgia's relations with the United States will be based on democratic values rather than support of certain individuals who compromised themselves and democratic values," the statement said.

Vice President-elect Joe Biden also is participating in the session with the diverse group of economists, academics and business leaders who advised Obama during his campaign. They include William Donaldson, a Republican who headed the Securities and Exchange Commission during President Bush's first term, and Robert Reich, Labor secretary for President Clinton.

Also in the group are CEOs Richard Parsons of Time-Warner and Eric Schmidt of Google, and Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard. Summers, who was Treasury secretary under Clinton, is a candidate to return to that job in the Obama administration.

Obama's meeting on the economy, just three days after his election, shows that he "understands the gravity of the situation," said Conrad DeQuadros, senior economist at RDQ Economics. Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist for Global Insight, an economic forecasting firm, said Obama's move "reassures the markets" that the president-elect "intends to hit the ground running."

"We're not starting from nowhere," Summers told NBC's Today program Friday. "Throughout his campaign the president-elect has been talking about what we need to do. We need to put the middle class at the center of the policy approach in a way that it hasn't been these last years."

The meeting comes after the stock market plummeted more than 400 points on both Wednesday and Thursday, although it was rallying slightly Friday. Also Friday: The Labor Department announced the jobless rate had surged to 6.5%, the highest in more than 14 years. The number of people drawing unemployment benefits hit a 25-year high, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

The question-and-answer session with reporters is set for 2:30 p.m. ET.

Obama began to assume the burdens and privileges of the presidency Thursday: The Democrat received a classified intelligence briefing, confirmed the appointment of Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, and returned congratulatory calls from world leaders.

Future chief of staff Emanuel is giving up a House leadership post to return to the White House with Obama. He served as a top aide to Clinton before running for Congress from Chicago.

In his statement announcing Emanuel's appointment, Obama cited the lawmaker's experience in crafting "large and complicated financial transactions" during several years as an investment banker and his political savvy.

"Rahm knows how to get things done in Washington," Obama said.

Emanuel, known for bare-knuckled partisanship extended an olive branch to "my Republican colleagues, who serve with dignity, decency and a deep sense of patriotism."

"We often disagree, but I respect their motives. Now is a time for unity," he said in a statement.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a close friend of Obama's opponent in the presidential race, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., hailed Emanuel's appointment as "a wise choice."

Graham and Emanuel worked together negotiating the logistics of the fall presidential debates for their respective candidates. Emanuel "can be a tough partisan but also understands the need to work together," Graham said.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell flew to Chicago to deliver Obama's first President's Daily Brief, the classified assessment of threats around the globe that will be part of his White House routine. The 75-minute briefing took place at FBI headquarters here.

Obama spent three hours Thursday afternoon in meetings. His staff did not announce his agenda, but just before heading to his home on Chicago's South Side, Obama lingered at the door of his SUV as he talked to Denis McDonough, one of his foreign policy advisers.

Obama also returned the calls of several leaders he'll soon be working with, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Mexican President Felipe Calderón.

Obama, who was sharply critical of Bush on the campaign trail, also thanked the president for promoting "a smooth, effective transition."

"I thank him for reaching out in the spirit of bipartisanship that will be required to meet the many challenges we face as a nation," he said.

Vice President-elect Joe Biden also is participating in the session with the diverse group of economists, academics and business leaders who advised Obama during his campaign. They include William Donaldson, a Republican who headed the Securities and Exchange Commission during President Bush's first term, and Robert Reich, Labor secretary for President Clinton.

Also in the group are CEOs Richard Parsons of Time-Warner and Eric Schmidt of Google, and Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard. Summers, who was Treasury secretary under Clinton, is a candidate to return to that job in the Obama administration.

Obama's meeting on the economy, just three days after his election, shows that he "understands the gravity of the situation," said Conrad DeQuadros, senior economist at RDQ Economics. Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist for Global Insight, an economic forecasting firm, said Obama's move "reassures the markets" that the president-elect "intends to hit the ground running."

"We're not starting from nowhere," Summers told NBC's Today program Friday. "Throughout his campaign the president-elect has been talking about what we need to do. We need to put the middle class at the center of the policy approach in a way that it hasn't been these last years."

The meeting comes after the stock market plummeted more than 400 points on both Wednesday and Thursday, although it was rallying slightly Friday. Also Friday: The Labor Department announced the jobless rate had surged to 6.5%, the highest in more than 14 years. The number of people drawing unemployment benefits hit a 25-year high, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

The question-and-answer session with reporters is set for 2:30 p.m. ET.

Obama began to assume the burdens and privileges of the presidency Thursday: The Democrat received a classified intelligence briefing, confirmed the appointment of Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, and returned congratulatory calls from world leaders.

Future chief of staff Emanuel is giving up a House leadership post to return to the White House with Obama. He served as a top aide to Clinton before running for Congress from Chicago.

In his statement announcing Emanuel's appointment, Obama cited the lawmaker's experience in crafting "large and complicated financial transactions" during several years as an investment banker and his political savvy.

"Rahm knows how to get things done in Washington," Obama said.

Emanuel, known for bare-knuckled partisanship extended an olive branch to "my Republican colleagues, who serve with dignity, decency and a deep sense of patriotism."

"We often disagree, but I respect their motives. Now is a time for unity," he said in a statement.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a close friend of Obama's opponent in the presidential race, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., hailed Emanuel's appointment as "a wise choice."

Graham and Emanuel worked together negotiating the logistics of the fall presidential debates for their respective candidates. Emanuel "can be a tough partisan but also understands the need to work together," Graham said.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell flew to Chicago to deliver Obama's first President's Daily Brief, the classified assessment of threats around the globe that will be part of his White House routine. The 75-minute briefing took place at FBI headquarters here.

Obama spent three hours Thursday afternoon in meetings. His staff did not announce his agenda, but just before heading to his home on Chicago's South Side, Obama lingered at the door of his SUV as he talked to Denis McDonough, one of his foreign policy advisers.

Obama also returned the calls of several leaders he'll soon be working with, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Mexican President Felipe Calderón.

Obama, who was sharply critical of Bush on the campaign trail, also thanked the president for promoting "a smooth, effective transition."

"I thank him for reaching out in the spirit of bipartisanship that will be required to meet the many challenges we face as a nation," he said.

GM, the nation's largest automaker, reported it lost $4.2 billion, or $7.35 a share, excluding special items. That's up from the loss $1.6 billion or $2.86 a share it reported a year earlier and was far worse than the forecast of analysts surveyed by earnings tracker Thomson Reuters, which had forecast a loss of $3.70 a share.

But the most shocking news came in its statements about its cash position. GM said it had burned through $6.9 billion during the quarter and warned that it "will approach the minimum amount necessary to operate its business" during the current quarter.

In addition, the company said that in the first half of next year its "estimated liquidity will fall significantly short" of what it needs to continue operating. It said the only thing that would save it would be a significant improvement in economic and automotive industry conditions, help from the federal government, better access to capital markets or some combination of those options.

The report was by far the most grim assessment by a company that has insisted it is not considering filing for bankruptcy court protection. While the release did not mention the threat of bankruptcy, the outlook appeared to raise the possibility of such a dramatic step.

Dave Cole, chairman of Michigan think-tank the Center for Automotive Research, said the chances that GM would be forced to file for bankruptcy were high unless Congress takes almost immediate action to bail out the industry.

"This is not something that can go on and be dealt with in the next year, it needs to be dealt with in the next few weeks," said Cole. "When your cash is gone, you're gone."

One possible scenario reported recently involved a corporate tie-up between GM and Chrysler. GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner, without mentioning Chrysler by name, said on a conference call that GM had ended talks about a possible merger with a Detroit rival to concentrate on the cash crisis it now faces.

GM announced a series of steps Friday designed to help it improve its cash reserves by $5 billion. Those steps included cutting another 10% of salaried employment costs, on top of the 20% cut in those costs already planned. In addition to expected staffing reductions, those white collar workers will not get their typical incentive pay next year.

GM will also cut capital spending plans by $2.4 billion in 2009, pushing back development plans for some new models. But it warned that even those steps would not be enough unless conditions improve. It did not announce any plans for additional plant closings or hourly staff cuts in its statement, however.

The company is clearly pinning much of its hopes of weathering the current downturn on the Congress approving some kind of bailout for the industry.

"The company has engaged in discussions with various U.S. federal government agencies and congressional leaders about the ... the need for immediate government funding support given the economic and credit crisis and its impact on the industry, including consumers, dealers, suppliers and manufacturers," according to a company announcement.

Wagoner joined the chief executives of Ford Motor (F, Fortune 500), privately-held Chrysler LLC, as well as the president of the United Auto Workers union Thursday afternoon in meetings with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to seek support for a wide-ranging bailout package. Both congressional leaders voiced support for additional help for the sector following their meetings.

Among the topics discussed were a $25 billion loan to fund union-controlled trust funds that would be set up in the coming year to cover the health care costs of retirees and their family members. Shifting about $100 billion of those costs from the automakers' balance sheet to the trust funds was a key concession the companies won from the UAW in the 2007 labor deals.

The discussions also touched on whether the government would allow the automakers to tap the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street firms and banks that was enacted last month. Treasury has so far rejected auto industry inquiries about accessing that pool of money.

The automakers also renewed their pre-election request to double the $25 billion low-interest loan program approved by Congress to help automakers convert operations to make more fuel-efficient vehicles and meet the demands of car buyers and new federal rules.

Shares of GM (GM, Fortune 500), whose trading was halted ahead of the announcement, fell 16% after they resumed.

The company's problems have been building for many years. It has not made money on its core North American auto operations since 2004, and since that time it has run up $72 billion in net losses, including this latest period.

The company did see a one-time $1.7 billion gain from a change in accounting for its obligation to pay for health care for retirees and their family. That allowed it to post a net loss of $2.5 billion, or $4.45 a share, an improvement from the net loss of $42.5 billion, or $75.12 a share a year ago when it was hit by huge special charges.

Much of the net losses in recent years have been due to non-cash charges, such as the ones a year ago. But even excluding those kinds of special charges, GM's core auto operations in North America have lost nearly $18 billion over the course of the last 15 quarters.

GM's announcement came on the same day that Ford Motor reported a $3 billion loss in the period, excluding special items. Even Japanese rival Toyota Motor (TM), which has a much better cash position coming into this crisis, announced Thursday that its third quarter earnings had plunged nearly 70%, as it slashed its full fiscal-year outlook by 50%.