But, she added, the Government, and particularly Finance Minister Brian Cowen, needed to be much more pro-active in protecting SSIA holders from "misleading and unfair" selling of investment products to SSIA holders whose accounts are maturing.

"The Revenue Declaration form, which must be filled in, should be sent on its own to investors and not confused with promotional material," Ms Burton said.

"The problem arises because SSIA account holders are required under the conditions of the scheme to fill in a declaration for the Revenue Commissioners called an SSIA 4 form. This must be completed in the 90-day period before the SSIA matures.

"The forms are being sent by financial institutions to their SSIA investors, but in many cases the forms are accompanied by promotional material for the financial institutions' investment products."

Ms Burton said she was concerned that some people would be "conned" into signing up for further investments which they might not want when they went to their financial institution to complete their SSIA 4 form.

"Because 75pc of SSIAs are held with banks and financial institutions, some €8-12bn in savings is due to be repaid to account holders over the next year. Therefore, there is obviously a huge desire on the part of the banks and financial institutions to hold on to these savings accounts."

The Government must ensure that SSIA account holders are given the opportunity to complete their Revenue Declarations and SSIA 4 forms free from misleading pressure to sign up for further savings, she said.

With motorists already paying more for petrol as a result of the rise in oil prices, a rise in gas prices is likely to be accompanied by an increase in the price of electricity.

The price of domestic gas has risen by some 45 per cent since 2002 and the price of domestic electricity has risen by about 40 per cent in the same period.

Further increases in energy prices are being mooted as mortgage interest rates increase and as social partners seek to hammer out a new pay deal. While trade unionists argue that workers should be compensated for the higher cost of living, business says that would damage competitiveness.

The gas market is closely linked to the oil market and prices in the wholesale gas market in Britain, where Bord Gáis sources its imports, have risen significantly in recent months.

The latest application for an increase follows an 25 per cent rise in gas prices since the start of this year. Bord Gáis had sought a 30 per cent increase - long before the current oil spike - so an application for a higher rise this winter was expected.

A spokesman for Bord Gáis declined to discuss the details of the application but indicated that a dialogue with the energy regulator, Tom Reeves, had begun.

It is likely that Mr Reeves's office will issue a draft response to the Bord Gáis increase in July and put it out to consultation before issuing its final direction in August.

With the depletion of Marathon Petroleum's Kinsale gas field off the Co Cork coast meaning that Bord Gáis must import the overwhelming majority of its supply, the delivery of gas from the Corrib field off the west coast has been delayed for years by local protesters who do not want the multinational Shell to run gas pipes through their land.

Central bankers gathered at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) worry that global imbalances like the US current account deficit and high energy and commodity prices could threaten an otherwise rosy global economic outlook.

"[ Global imbalances] is one of the biggest potential risks in the global economy we are facing, always," said Bank of Japan Governor Toshihiko Fukui, entering the BIS. "We have to continue keeping an eye on oil prices as a substantial risk."

The world economy roared into 2006 after a lacklustre final quarter of last year and looks to be accelerating as a series of leading indicators and official forecasts are all pointing up.

The International Monetary Fund last month raised its 2006 global growth forecast to 4.9 per cent from 4.3 per cent, and the three top central banks worldwide are examining interest rate rises. In the meantime, global imbalances are becoming a rising concern for financial policymakers - an issue they highlighted in their April Group of Seven statement.

Perhaps the most worrisome is a US current account deficit worth more than 6 per cent of national output and countervailing surpluses and reserve stockpiles in Asia and among oil exporters. The concern is foreign players, who finance the gap, might at some stage baulk at accumulating more US assets, triggering a dollar slide.

New data by motoring research firm Roadtodata.com shows car prices in Ireland rose by 1.7% in the 12 months to the end of April — one of the fastest growth rates found in the 19-country survey. Sales volumes were 7.9% ahead year-on-year.

“Ireland had one of the fastest-growing new car markets in Europe in 2005 and there were signs of price increases accelerating in [first quarter] 2006,” the Roadtodata survey said.

The average car price in Ireland, which includes Vehicle Registration Tax (VRT), was 30% higher than in other eurozone countries at the end of the first quarter.

The least expensive market is Switzerland, where new car prices in the first quarter of the year were 10% below the average when measured in euros.

The pollster said most of the increases in volume sales were in the mid-sized segments of the market with sports utility vehicles (SUV) sales up 27%.

When NTL announced its merger with Telewest last year it pledged annualised cost synergies of £250m, which it is expected to elaborate on tomorrow.

Many of the job cuts are understood to come from outsourcing agreements with suppliers, such as technology engineers and technical support. NTL declined to comment on Sunday.

Over the past year NTL and Telewest have been gradually outsourcing technical jobs in order to reduce staff numbers in preparation for the merger.

Stephen Burch, the new NTL chief executive, is also expected to offer investors more detail on his strategy for the merged cable group. Last month the company announced its acquisition of Richard Branson's Virgin Mobile, which will enable it offer customers “quadruple play” – four services including fixed line and mobile telephony, internet and television. Such additional services are likely to help reduce customer “churn” amid intensifying competition in the broadband market and the gradual decline in fixed line telephone usage.

Investors are also looking for more information about television content strategy, following NTL's failure to acquire any of the Premiership football live broadcasting rights last week.

NTL is believed to have bid in the second round along with British Sky Broadcasting and Setanta, the Irish pay TV company that won two packages.

The Elysée palace on Sunday denied reports that the interior minister, who is also head of the ruling UMP party, had been asked to consider becoming prime minister. President Chirac had “complete and total confidence in prime minister Dominique de Villepin to fulfill the mission he had been given,” a spokeswoman said on Sunday.

But it is clear that Mr de Villepin is under increasing pressure after being accused of involvement in an alleged political smear campaign that targeted Mr Sarkozy and other senior French officials.

Mr Sarkozy's spokesman did not deny that he would consider replacing Mr de Villepin if asked. French media suggested at the weekend that the subject had been discussed in passing at meetings between the president and Mr Sarkozy on Friday and Saturday.

Mr Sarkozy, who might be tempted to accept such an offer in order to restore confidence in the right, had been hoping to resign from the government in the coming months to launch his campaign for the presidential elections next year. But the current political scandal and widespread disillusionment with Mr Chirac's presidency threaten to undermine the UMP's chances next year.

According to Le Monde, the highly regarded French daily, Mr Sarkozy is concerned not to add “a political and institutional crisis to a judicial affair”. He is quoted as saying to colleagues: “If I go the divisions would be too strong”.

Adding weight to his argument, a poll published yesterday in the Journal du Dimanche, the French weekly, signalled the divided Socialist party was beginning to show concerted support for the dark horse candidate, Ségolène Royal. More than 50 per cent of party members polled supported her as presidential candidate over veterans such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn or her partner and party leader François Hollande.

Meanwhile, the pressure on Mr de Villepin is unlikely to disappear in the near future. Mr Sarkozy will testify in the coming days to judges investigating the political scandal, which could lead to new revelations.

He lost his job in late 2001, unemployment benefits ran out over the next year and he and his wife, Laurie, along with their teenage son, were evicted from their apartment.

They spent a year in a borrowed motor home here in the working-class interior of Orange County, followed by eight months in a motel room with a kitchenette. During that time, Ms. Abbott, a diabetic who is now 51, lost all her teeth and could not afford to replace them.

Americans on the lower rungs of the economic ladder have always been exposed to sudden ruin. But in recent years, with the soaring costs of housing and medical care and a decline in low-end wages and benefits, tens of millions are living on even shakier ground than before, according to studies of what some scholars call the "near poor."

"There's strong evidence that over the past five years, record numbers of lower-income Americans find themselves in a more precarious economic position than at any time in recent memory," said Mark R. Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of "One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All."

In a rare study of vulnerability to poverty, Mr. Rank and his colleagues found that the risk of a plummet of at least a year below the official poverty line rose sharply in the 1990's, compared with the two previous decades. By all signs, he said, such insecurity has continued to worsen.

For all age groups except those 70 and older, the odds of a temporary spell of poverty doubled in the 1990's, Mr. Rank reported in a 2004 paper titled, "The Increase of Poverty Risk and Income Insecurity in the U.S. Since the 1970's," written with Daniel A. Sandoval and Thomas A. Hirschl, both of Cornell University.

For example, during the 1980's, around 13 percent of Americans in their 40's spent at least one year below the poverty line; in the 1990's, 36 percent of people in their 40's did, according to the analysis.

Comparable figures for this decade will not be available for several years, but other indicators — a climbing poverty rate and rising levels of family debt — suggest a deepening insecurity, poverty experts and economists say.

About 37 million Americans lived below the federal poverty line in 2004, set at $19,157 a year for a family of four. But far more people, another 54 million, were in households earning between the poverty line and double the poverty line.

"We don't track this group of people, and they are very vulnerable," said Katherine S. Newman, a sociologist at Princeton University who studies low-end workers.

Only a year ago, Machele Sauer thought she was entering the middle class. She and her husband, a licensed electrician, owned a large mobile home. He was starting his own business and Ms. Sauer, after bearing their fourth child, hoped to stop waitressing and be a stay-at-home mom.

"We were the ideal family, the envy of others," she said recently as she collected free food and diapers at the Hope Family Support Center, a small charity in Garden Grove, Calif., in Orange County. "And then, boom, everything flipped upside down."

Life fell apart last spring when her husband was arrested on theft charges, linked to a recent drug addiction she says she did not know about. Because of a prior record, he received a long prison sentence.

Now Ms. Sauer, 34, draws on the charity for goods and its director, Gayle Knight, for advice and emotional support, part of a grueling scramble to provide for her four daughters, ages 16 months, 8, 9 and 15. Many days over recent weeks, she dropped them at the baby sitter after school, worked the night shift as a waitress, picked up the sleeping children after midnight then woke up with the baby at 6:30 a.m. before preparing the older three for school.

At first she went on welfare, receiving $600 a month along with paid child care and counseling for herself and the children. As she resumed waitress work—four night shifts and two day shifts a week—she earned about $1,300 a month, which led her welfare payment to be cut to $300.

"Now the van is breaking down," she said. "With four kids it's really hard to hold a full-time job, and I need to make sure they do well in school." Her goal is to find a way to prepare for nursing school.

In Orange County, about 220,000 people received food from 400 local charities last year, according to the Second Harvest Food Bank, which distributes donations. Recipients include many families, often Hispanic, with several children and both parents working minimum-wage jobs. Over all, half the families seeking food had at least one working adult, according to a recent study by the food bank.

In the center of Orange County, a world away from its polished coastal towns, borderline poverty is common but seldom visible. On small streets behind strip malls and fast food restaurants, families, sometimes two of them, cram into small, aging bungalows.

What look like tourist motels along Beach Boulevard are mostly filled by working families or single people who stay for months or years, paying high weekly fees but unable to muster up-front money for an apartment rental.

Mr. Abbott, now 58, eventually found a lower-paying sales job. With help from church members, the couple amassed the three months' rent of $2,700 required to rent a one-bedroom apartment in Anaheim.

Describing their last several years, Mr. Abbott kept circling back to the emotional toll. Motels, like the one they lived in for eight months for $281 a week, are "dives," he said, "with lots of screaming and fighting and cops being called."

In a new setback, Mr. Abbott has developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He recently had to stop working and go on state disability, which pays $1,436 a month and gives him health coverage.

Ms. Abbott has no health insurance — if she gets sick, she says, she will go to a medical van that serves the homeless. But a generous dentist from church helped her get new teeth, and now she plans to hunt for work.

Those clicks should immediately turn into a lot more cash for Yahoo. It will not say how much. But Jordan Rohan, an analyst for RBC Capital Markets, estimates that if the strategy works, Yahoo will increase search-advertising revenue at least 20 percent right away — about $125 million in the fourth quarter of this year and $600 million next year.

That is a big impact from new software, and it speaks to the complex art and science of running a search engine. When hundreds of thousands of advertisers bid for the attention of hundreds of millions of searchers, little changes can have big results.

It is also a sign of how well Google, Yahoo's rival, has mastered those nuances. Mr. Rohan estimates that Google's ability to draw more advertisers and show the right ads to searchers lets it earn about 40 percent more from every search than Yahoo does.

Yahoo realized that its existing software had limitations shortly after it paid $1.6 billion in 2003 to buy Overture Services, the company that invented search advertising. But its effort to rebuild the software was delayed as it shifted its resources to creating its own Web search engine.

Daniel L. Rosensweig, Yahoo's chief operating officer, says he does not regret putting the search-advertising system behind the main search engine.

When the company turned its full attention to search-advertising software in late 2004, the task was bigger than it initially expected, partly because Yahoo wanted the system to be able to handle ads with graphics and video eventually, not just text.

"Yahoo has taken a lot of bumps and bruises," said Peter Hershberg, a managing partner of Reprise Media, a New York search-advertising agency. "We would get notification every day that data was not available, and that made it very challenging to manage our campaigns." He added that these problems had been cleared up in recent weeks.

Yahoo says the new system is more stable and is built for much higher volume. It hopes to make the system easier to use, both for small businesses and for giant marketers.

Most important, it is building a far more sophisticated system to determine the order in which it displays advertisements. That is crucial because users have a strong propensity to pick from among the top few ads.

When Overture began as Goto.com, an advertising-only search engine, it introduced what turned out to be two powerful innovations: Customers paid for an advertisement only when users clicked on it; and the price of an ad was set by a computerized auction. Thus, the advertiser that bid the most per click was listed first, and so on.

When Google got into the search-advertising business in 2002, it realized that Goto had made a critical mistake. Its system allowed obscure advertisers to gain a prominent position, even if they were not appealing to users and were unlikely to be clicked on. So Google found a way to predict the popularity of ads in order to put the ones that would bring in the most dollars on top.

Google's models have become quite sophisticated, trying to take into account that different ads may appeal to users in different locations at different times. Indeed, Google asserts that a supercomputer network of 100 machines evaluates more than a million variables in milliseconds to pick which to display each time someone searches.

Yahoo is building a cadre of mathematicians and economists to build similar models. But it acknowledges that it does not yet analyze as many data elements as claimed by Google.

Late last month, there was a clear sense of urgency at the headquarters of what is now called Yahoo Search Marketing in Burbank, Calif., near Los Angeles. Amid a sea of Yahoo's trademark purple cubicles, there were signs with "Panama: Are you ready?" written in big letters.

Under them was a mosaic of color-coded notations, tracking the work of 28 teams in three locations that are building the system. On other walls, more signs coordinated another effort, known as Roosevelt, a series of technological bandages meant to keep the old system running until the new one is ready.

"We are flying an airplane while rebuilding it," said David Henke, whom Yahoo hired last year as group vice president for engineering in the search-advertising group. "This is a bigger project than we expected because we are doing it in parallel with our existing systems. It required additional personnel and expertise."

Still, he said he had the complete support of Terry S. Semel, Yahoo's chief executive, and Susan L. Decker, its cost-conscious chief financial officer. When he asked earlier this year for a "gigantic" amount of money to buy a big portion of the thousands of servers and other machines that Panama requires, the approval came back in six hours.

Gigantic for Yahoo, however, may well be pipsqueak compared with its free-spending competitors. Google plans to spend at least $1.5 billion this year on servers, networking equipment and the facilities to house them, and it is hiring 1,000 people each quarter, many of them engineers. Microsoft plans to spend $2 billion on search and Internet technology this year.

Ellen Siminoff, a former Yahoo executive who now runs Efficient Frontier, a search-advertising agency in Mountain View, Calif., said Yahoo had to recognize that it was in a technological arms race.

"Yahoo hires a lot of smart people, and they can do this if they want to," she said. "The big issue for them is their willingness to spend and keep up with Google's R.& D."

While the underlying Panama system has a lot of capabilities, the first version will present only a subtle difference from what Google offers. Advertisers will simply enter the keywords they want their ad to appear next to and the maximum price they are willing to pay for a click. The most significant option will be to specify a certain geographic region in which the ads will be shown, a feature Google also offers.

Microsoft, in contrast, has sought to distinguish itself by allowing advertisers to enter bids based on the sex, age and other characteristics of the ad viewer. Even though Yahoo could do the same, it says that for now such an approach is not helpful to advertisers.

"The system is built to handle many variables," said Tim Cadogan, the vice president who runs the business side of Yahoo's Web search operation. "We don't want to go overboard" and confuse customers with too many choices.

Yahoo says the main distinction from Google will be in providing information about how a given ad is displayed. Google is often criticized by advertisers as a black box: they do not really know how a given bid will affect the placement of their ads. Yahoo isn't going to tell advertisers either — as its computers will keep experimenting to get the highest ad revenue.

But as advertisers enter each bid, they will see an estimate of how many clicks they will receive each day. More important, a graph will show how many more clicks they can expect for each increased bid.

This is cache, read story here