Tel Aviv  - Her Kadima party may have won the most seats in Israel's February 10 election, but as the Israeli government is sworn in, Tzipi Livni finds herself the big loser, moving from the high- profile foreign ministry to the opposition front bench in parliament.

At least for the short term.

Tel Aviv  - New Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have achieved his aim of forming a broad-based unity coalition, but this does not guarantee him a premiership free of challenges.

Coalition requirements forced him to form a government with 30 ministers - so large that ministries had to be split to accommodate all the demands from various partners.

This, in turn, led to huge dissatisfaction inside his own right- wing Likud party, with senior legislators unhappy that the top cabinet posts were parceled out to coalition partners.

Washington - US legislators on Tuesday unveiled far-reaching climate legislation that would boost incentives for renewable energy and for the first time force companies to pay for pollution that is blamed for global warming.

The draft bill, introduced in the Energy and Commerce Committee in the US House of Representatives, marks the first step in what promises to be a long and contentious battle in Congress.

Islamabad - Pakistan will ask the Friends of Pakistan (FoP) forum to provide 30 billion dollars of assistance over a period of 10 years when the group meets in Tokyo on April 17, a senior Pakistani government official said on Monday.

Sardar Aseef Ahmed Ali, the deputy chairman of Pakistan's Planning Commission, told reporters his country would seek 22 billion dollars in financial assistance and another 8 billion dollars in foreign direct investment during the upcoming ministerial level meeting of the FoP.

Jerusalem - Completing a period of intense coalition negotiations, Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu was set to present his government Tuesday afternoon, seven weeks after Israel's elections.

Netanyahu formally requested the Knesset, Israel's parliament, to hold a special session and swear in the new government.

The session was scheduled to start at 5 pm (1400 GMT).

Kigali - In the western Rwandan town of Gisenye, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, a small platform sits on the scenic Lake Kivu, barely visible from the shores of the burgeoning resort town.

A long tube runs out of the bottom of the platform, extracting the methane gas that saturates the water of the lake.

The gas is pumped to shore and converted to electricity in a newly constructed facility, which is then shipped to a country that only has six per cent of its inhabitants on its national grid.