Facing a recent erosion of public support for health-care overhaul, President Obama lashed out at his opponents Saturday for spreading "outrageous myths" on the Internet, television, and at town hall forums. Republican leaders, in turn, said it was Obama who is guilty of playing "fast and loose with the facts." They repeated their assertion that the president's proposed government-funded public health insurance option would destroy the current private insurance-based system. ...Obama emphasized that, contrary to the assertions of many, illegal immigrants will not get health insurance under a reform plan. He said the charge that funding for abortions would be mandated is false, as is the notion that federal "death panels" would be established to discourage care for the sick and elderly.

More than two-thirds of people in Britain think troops should not be fighting in Afghanistan, and only 1.5 per cent of those polled think Prime Minister Gordon Brown is handling the war "very well". The poll of 2,000 adults for the Mail on Sunday, conducted on the internet on August 20 and 21, showed that three-quarters of those questioned did not think fighting in Afghanistan was making British people safer from terrorism.....Britain has about 9,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan, most of them fighting in the south, where the Taliban remain strong. July and August have been two of the deadliest months for Britain since the conflict began in 2001, with more than three dozen troops killed in the past seven weeks. The total death toll now stands at 206, nearly 30 more than were killed in the five years Britain was engaged in Iraq. Asked if British troops should be fighting a war in Afghanistan, only 31 per cent said yes, while 69 per cent said no.

In the excitement of Afghanistan's elections last Thursday, there was a moment of clarity for me. At lunchtime, the news came that the UN was declaring the day a success. "I am pleased," said Kai Eide, the UN's secretary-general's special representative here. "In general, it seems to be working well." This was despite the fact that in Kabul alone there had been seven bomb attacks, two gun battles, the first allegations of fraud and a city-wide scandal about the so-called indelible ink used to ensure no one could double vote. And there were still four hours of voting to go. It became clear to me that whatever the outcome, whatever events unfolded, the UN, the EU, the US, the west in general, would declare the day an unmitigated success. The fact that reports were only just filtering in from the rest of the country, rockets were falling across the south and turnout was incredibly low clearly meant nothing to those in their bulletproof, dark-glass fortresses. This is insulting to Afghans and incredibly short-sighted. In their desperation to report a success to their superiors, the Afghan UN mission is undermining the fragile checks and balances that so need their support. It is undermining the process of democracy itself, adding to the perception that we are propping up a corrupt and ineffective government in Kabul and threatening to alienate huge numbers of Afghan voters for the future. ....This is a complicated, fragile and intriguing time. Many Afghans are dealing with it with intelligence, with analysis and with realistic expectations. We should too.

The European Union said Thursday it eventually wants access to banking data in the United States in return for US access to European bank transfers to track funds supporting terror groups. EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Jacques Barrot said the EU's long-term goal is a "reciprocal exchange" with Washington. EU nations on Monday backed the expansion of the bloc's anti-terror cooperation with the United States to give US Treasury investigators access to European operation centers of SWIFT, the global electronic payments consortium used by banks worldwide. SWIFT, set up by member banks, collects and relays more than 14 million financial transactions daily between banks and other financial institutions worldwide. It operates one of the largest financial transfer systems in the world. US and EU authorities claim access to its data has helped stop the transfer of money that funds terror groups around the globe and track down wanted terror suspects.

A US judge has blocked RealNetworks from selling DVD copying software that film studios fear could be used as a tool by pirates to create bootleg copies of films. RealNetworks on Wednesday was studying an injunction issued by District Court Judge Marilyn Patel in California and mulling its next legal move."We are disappointed that a preliminary injunction has been placed on the sale of RealDVD," the Seattle-based digital media specialty firm said in a release. "We'll determine our course of action and will have more to say at that time."Patel is presiding over a legal battle between RealNetworks and film industry titans that argue selling technology to copy DVDs is being an accomplice to piracy of movies and television shows. "This is a victory for the creators and producers of motion pictures and television shows and for the rule of law in our digital economy," Motion Picture Association of America chairman Dan Glickman said. "Judge Patel's ruling affirms what we have known all along: RealNetworks took a license to build a DVD-player and instead made an illegal DVD-copier." .....Film studios signed onto the case against RealNetworks include Paramount, Sony, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, and Warner Brothers.

A four-year fight to keep the contents of the country's national library in French hands ended in defeat yesterday as it was announced that Google would take control of the archive.The Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) was reported to be on the verge of a deal with the Californian giant under which Google's digital library would get even larger. The decision was purely financial, said Denis Bruckmann, director of collections at the library -- which will be joining 29 other leading libraries in opening its shelves to Google's project, including Oxford's Bodleian. "We will not stop our own digitising programme, but if Google can enable us to go faster and farther, then why not?" Google scans items for free and has so far added about ten million works to its Books Search database, the great majority of them out-of-copyright works. Non-copyright books can be read for free, while only extracts are available from the rest. In a development that could upset the dominance of Amazon, Google now plans to start charging for e-books online. In France, which still has 12,000 bookshops and tight restrictions on pricing, publishers and booksellers want to create a national "digital distribution platform" to sell e-books. Alain Kouck, the chief of Editis, the No 2 publisher, called for a united front as the only way of blocking Amazon and Google.

The European Commission said Tuesday that it was examining the safety of Apple iPhones and iPods, after news reports said that several of the devices had exploded...In one instance, a teenager in Aix-en-Provence, France, reportedly was slightly injured when an iPhone overheated and shattered, sending debris into his eye. In another case, according to reports in Britain, an iPod Touch overheated and jumped into the air after it was dropped. in response to the reports, the consumer protection agency in Brussels had activated a rapid alert system, notifying the 27 members of the European Union and asking national regulators whether they had any information on such incidents. So far, she said, they had reported no problems. ...The reported incidents in Europe are not the first time Apple and other manufacturers have had problems with portable devices. Last year, Apple offered to replace batteries in some iPod Nano music players in Japan after the government warned that they might pose a fire risk. Three years ago, a number of computer manufacturers recalled laptops with batteries from Sony after reports of fires and explosions.