EUROPEAN stock markets closed higher on Wednesday, with London's FTSE 100 index of leading shares up 0.24 per cent to end at 6,571.93 points.
Frankfurt's DAX 30 gained 0.65 per cent to 8,254.72 points and in Paris the CAC 40 rose 0.55 per cent to 3,872.02 points.
NELSON Mandela's daughter says the South African leader has made a "dramatic" progress on the eve of his 95th birthday.
Zindzi Mandela said in an interview with Sky TV that her father may be going home soon.
Mandela turns 95 on Thursday.
She said her father is watching television with headphones in his bed in a Pretoria hospital and that he smiles at family members and raises his hand.
The latest description by Zindzi - who is one of Mandela's daughters by his second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela - is a significant improvement from court documents from the family that said he was on life support and near death.
Mandela has been in a Pretoria hospital since June 8 and officials say his condition is critical but stable.
A US man accused of holding three woman captive in his home for a decade has pleaded not guilty to hundreds of new charges, as his lawyers sought a plea deal that would skirt the death penalty.
Ariel Castro, a 53-year-old former school bus driver, is charged with kidnapping, rape and a host of other crimes in connection with the saga that allegedly unfolded at his home in Cleveland, Ohio.
He is also charged with aggravated murder for allegedly terminating the pregnancies of one of his victims by starving and beating her - a charge that can be punishable by death.
Castro was in court on Wednesday to enter a plea on the new 977-count indictment unveiled last week, updating the initial 329 charges which only covered the first four and a half years of the women's captivity.
The suspect, who has been on suicide watch, struggled to keep his eyes open after a magistrate judge insisted that he look at her while she explained the proceedings.
His lawyers declined to comment on Castro's dazed appearance.
But his defence team did say they have offered to change his plea to guilty if prosecutors take capital punishment off the table.
"We are looking forward to the resolution of this matter to spare the women of having to provide any of the details of these horrible events to the world at large," lawyer Craig Weintraub told reporters after the brief appearance.
"Either we're going to have a plea (deal) or we're going to trial on August 5."
The current indictment does not include the legal specifications that could lead to a death penalty case, but prosecutors said they "retain the right" to come back with a third indictment which does so.
"We're still in the process of reviewing whether or nor we're going to do that," Joseph Frolik, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office, told reporters.
Last week, the three women - Michelle Knight, 32, Amanda Berry, 27, and Gina DeJesus, 23 - spoke publicly for the first time since their escape in May, thanking their supporters and asking for continued privacy to rebuild their lives in a YouTube video.
The stunning case came to light after Berry - who was kidnapped the day before her 17th birthday - managed to escape with her young daughter by calling out to a neighbour for help through a locked front door.
"I am getting stronger each day, and having my privacy has helped immensely," Berry said in the video.
YOUNG adults who are more extrovert or more emotionally stable lead happier and healthier lives than their more introverted or less emotionally stable peers, a British study has discovered.
The research using data from over five decades examined the effects of neuroticism and extroversion at ages 16 and 26 years on mental well-being and life satisfaction of some of the same people in their 60s.
They found that personality dispositions by the time of early adulthood had an enduring influence on well-being, including physical health, decades later.
In the study, Dr Catharine Gale from the University of Southampton and a team from the University of Edinburgh and University College London examined the lives of nearly 4,600 people.
"Few studies have examined the long-term influence of personality traits in youth on happiness and life satisfaction later in life," Gale said.
"We found that extroversion in youth had direct, positive effects on well-being and life satisfaction in later life.
"Neuroticism, in contrast, had a negative impact, largely because it tends to make people more susceptible to feelings of anxiety and depression and to physical health problems."
The study examined data on 4,583 people who are members of the National Survey for Health and Development, conducted by the Medical Research Council.
All were born in 1946 and they completed a short personality inventory at age 16, and again at age 26.
Extroversion was assessed by questions about their sociability, energy, and activity orientation.
Neuroticism was assessed by questions about their emotional stability, mood, and distractibility.
Decades later, when the participants were 60 to 64-years-old, 2,529 of them answered a series of questions measuring well-being and their level of satisfaction with life.
They also reported on their mental and physical health.
Their answers point to a distinct pattern, the study claimed.
Specifically, greater extroversion, as assessed in young adulthood, was directly associated with higher scores for well-being and for satisfaction with life.
Neuroticism, in contrast, predicted poorer levels of well-being, but it did so indirectly.
People higher in neuroticism as young adults were more susceptible to psychological distress later in life and to a lesser extent, poorer physical health.
"Understanding what determines how happy people feel in later life is of particular interest because there is good evidence that happier people tend to live longer," Gale said.
"In this study, we found that levels of neuroticism and extroversion measured over 40 years earlier were strongly predictive of well-being and life satisfaction in older men and women.
"Personality in youth appears to have an enduring influence on happiness decades later."
The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality.
THE world's largest steel maker ArcelorMittal has scrapped plans to build a steel plant in eastern India due to delays in acquiring land.
The announcement on Wednesday comes a day after South Korean steel giant Posco scrapped a $US5.3 billion ($A5.77 billion) deal to build a steel plant in southern India.
ArcelorMittal signed an initial agreement in 2006 for the project to manufacture 12-million tonnes of steel a year in Orissa state, but it has faced widespread opposition from local farmers.
The company said uncertainties over iron ore supplies had also led it to scrap the plan.
"ArcelorMittal has not been able to acquire the requisite land for the steel plant, nor has it been able to ensure captive iron ore security, which is a necessary requirement for the project," the company said in a statement.
"Therefore, taking into account the current economic climate, ArcelorMittal has concluded it will no longer be pursuing its plans for a steel plant in Keonjhar (in Orissa) at this stage."The company said the decision was conveyed to the state government earlier on Wednesday.
Residents from 17 villages that would have been affected in Orissa's tribal district of Keonjhar have been holding regular protests against the proposed purchase of their land.
"The delays relating to land acquisition and allocation of captive iron ore blocks means this project is no longer viable," said ArcelorMittal executive vice president Vijay Bhatnagar as quoted in the statement.
"Nevertheless, we will continue to pursue our other two projects in Jharkhand and Karnataka, both of which are making steady progress," he added.
Industrialisation has been long championed by economists as a way to pull tens of millions of Indians out of poverty.
But acquiring land for factories, roads, housing and other projects has created sometimes deadly battlegrounds with many farmers complaining they have been forced to sell at below market rate and robbed of their livelihoods.
AT least 130 people have been killed, including 10 soldiers, in ongoing clashes between army forces and rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the government says.
"Our forces have inflicted very heavy losses on the M23 fighters, 120 have been killed and 12 captured," government spokesman Lambert Mende said, referring to fighting that broke out over the weekend.
Mende said that 10 soldiers had also died in the clashes, which began on Sunday in North Kivu province between the Congolese army and the M23 rebels.
UN soldiers did not intervene, Mende stressed.
"The toll from these skirmishes is not yet definitive," said Mende.
Army forces also managed to recapture previously rebel-held positions as they fled, said the spokesman.
Some 2000 soldiers were reportedly deployed during the fighting but Mende declined to confirm this figure.
A heavily armed brigade of some 3000 UN troops with more power to fight renegade forces than ever before has recently been dispatched to the region.
The troops, drawn in equal numbers from Malawi, South Africa and Tanzania, are joining about 17,000 UN soldiers already deployed in the area with a limited mandate to protect civilians and themselves only.
GREENS senator Scott Ludlum says Labor's plan to bring forward the start date for an emissions trading scheme (ETS) is a terrible idea.
He says his party might not support it if it comes before parliament.
Defence Minister Stephen Smith on Monday confirmed the federal government wanted to shift to a floating price from July 2014, a year before the fixed price period was due to end.
He denied the move was an admission that the government's carbon tax had been poorly designed, adding Labor had wanted to introduce an ETS earlier but was blocked by the Greens and the coalition.
Treasurer Chris Bowen says, either through the parliament or the election, Labor will be seeking a mandate to make the change.
The Rudd government would require the support of the Greens or the coalition in the Senate to pass any changes to its carbon pricing laws.
Senator Ludlum says the Greens will wait and see what the legislation looks like, but they aren't in the mood to support anything that cost billions and further delays real action on climate change.
"It's a terrible idea," he told ABC's Q&A program on Monday.
"I think we would be very unlikely to support something that costs us $4 billion and another 12 month delay."
Mr Smith said an announcement to explain how the government would find the budget savings to make this change was just "hours and days away".
Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop said the whole plan was a Labor "con", but had to fend off claims Tony Abbott had used the issue to stir up scepticism about climate science.
Earlier when criticising Labor's ETS plan, Mr Abbott described emissions trading as a "so-called market" dealing in an "invisible substance".
"Well.. it's (carbon dioxide) not visible to the naked eye, so he's making an evident point," she said.
"The point is, he was talking about the fact that emissions trading schemes have not been a success anywhere in the world."
