Mom of boy held in bunker is worried






STORY HIGHLIGHTS


  • Phil McGraw speaks with mother of former Alabama child hostage

  • She tells him she worried about trying to put him back on a school bus

  • Ethan told her the Army killed the 'bad man'

  • The 6-year-old tells his mom that 'My bus driver is dead'




(CNN) -- Jennifer Kirkland says she caught her 6-year-old son Ethan just staring at a school bus the other day.


He was mesmerized, his eyes locked on the yellow vehicle. He didn't say a thing, and she didn't know what to say to him.


The last time he was on a bus, he was sitting just behind the driver -- as he always did -- waiting for his stop so he could go home.


But the "bad man" got on, and killed the driver, his buddy Mr. Poland.


Appearing on the "Dr. Phil" show, Kirkland told Phil McGraw she was worried how her little boy was going to react the next time she tried to put him on the bus to school.


After being kidnapped, the recovery ahead









Photos: Alabama bunker standoff










HIDE CAPTION















Ethan has been having a hard time sleeping, she told the psychologist turned syndicated daytime talk show host.


He thrashes his arms, tosses and turns and sometimes he calls out.


It has only been almost 10 days since the FBI sent a rescue team into the bunker in Midland City, Alabama, where Ethan was held hostage for nearly a week by Jimmy Lee Dykes.


His mother hasn't asked Ethan what happened when he was there.


"I have not talked to Ethan about it," she said in an interview aired Wednesday. "I don't know how to. As a mother I want him to know that I'm there if he needs to talk. I don't know how to respond because I have never been through this."


Inside the bunker: From storm shelter to boy's prison


Ethan has seen two people shot to death. Dykes shot bus driver Charles Poland several times before he carried Ethan, who had fainted, off the bus and into an underground bunker Dykes had built on his property.


Then the FBI killed Dykes when negotiations broke down and authorities felt they had to rescue the boy before Dykes, who had a handgun, did something rash.


"The Army came in and shot the bad man," Kirkland said Ethan told her.


Kirkland said she had hoped Dykes wouldn't be harmed.


"From the very beginning, I had already forgiven Mr. Dykes even though he had my child," she said. "I could not be angry through this. My job was to be the mother."


She thinks Dykes had a soft spot for Ethan because he has disabilities. Dykes took care of her boy as best he could, she said.


He even fried chicken for the boy.


Still, as the crisis continued, she worried that Dykes might be spooked by something her child did -- or that he had enough supplies to stay down there for months. She worried her boy would think she had abandoned him.


She asked authorities to let her speak to Dykes.


"That's my baby. He's my world. He's my everything," she said. "Everything I do I do for him. And I was afraid I wasn't going to get him back."


When she did get him back, he was in the hospital, putting stickers on everyone in sight.


"Hey, bug, I sure have missed you," she recounted.


"I missed you, too," he answered.


FBI: Bombs found in Alabama kidnapper's bunker


Now she worries that even though he seems like the same playful little boy, there is an emotional storm ahead.


McGraw told her to talk to Ethan about his feelings, not what happened to him in the bunker.


"Let that decay in his young mind," he said.


McGraw asked Ethan a few questions, but as 6-year-olds are apt to do, he answered most with a "Yes" or a "No."


But when the doctor asked him how he got to school, Ethan said, "On my bus, but my ..."


Then he walked over to his mother and as if telling a secret, whispered in her ear, "But my bus driver is dead."


Kirkland told McGraw that it was Poland who helped Ethan conquer his fear of descending the steep school bus steps. Poland would cheer Ethan on and one day when the child hesitated and the mother went to help, the driver said, "Let him do it."


Since then, Ethan has had no problem.


But now his cheerleader won't be there, and Kirkland is anguished about her boy.


"Mr. Poland put him behind him so he could keep a good eye on him," she said.


Ethan hasn't been back to school yet. He's been busy opening birthday presents and playing with his favorite toys. On Wednesday, he made a new friend in Gov. Robert Bentley.


There's a picture from the event where little Ethan is sitting underneath the governor's desk. The child is beaming.


"Ethan is a loving, forgiving child," Kirkland said. "He is easy to go up to a perfect stranger and say, 'Can I have a hug?'"


That was the boy who went into that bunker. She is concerned it's not the child who came out.







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Cruise passenger: People thought ship was "going to tip over"

(CBS News) Four thousand people who have been adrift at sea for four days are finally nearing shore Thursday night. This evening, the Carnival cruise ship named Triumph is being towed into Mobile Bay, Ala., and is expected to dock by midnight.

She left Galveston, Texas, a week ago, loaded with her maximum 3,143 passengers and crew of 1,100. The brochure described a four-day cruise in the Caribbean, but an engine room fire left her adrift and powerless.

All aboard have suffered in squalid conditions, stranded as Carnival slowly brought the ship in.

When CBS News flew over the Carnival Triumph, it was within sight of shore -- but still seven hours away from the dock.

Cruise ship on the move after latest setback
Carnival cancels 12 more cruises on troubled ship
Inside Carnival cruise nightmare: Passenger describes deteriorating conditions

From up there we could see people waving, some with signs that appear to be made out of bed sheets. One said "SOS" -- save our ship -- but at this point it's not the ship that needs saving, it's the passengers.

The ship has been without power since an engine room fire five days ago. CBS News reached passenger Jacob Combs on the phone.

"The really bad part is there was no running water and toilets for almost the first 30 hours," Combs said. "Once they finally did get running water, the toilets only worked in certain places. I would say it's the worst smell imaginable."

Emailed photos (above) reveal squalid conditions. Many passengers used red plastic bags as toilets. Hundreds slept in hallways or topside to escape the foul and stagnate air below deck.

Carnival CEO Jerry Cahill insists passengers were never at risk. But 22-year old Leslie Mayberry disagreed.

"It was leaning to one side it was literally like walking up hill whenever the boat was leaning," she said. "I mean it was very scary," Mayberry said. "I mean a lot of people thought it was going to tip over and sink. And then you look out on the deck and you see the ocean and there is no one, you are just by yourself and you are so alone, even though you are around 3,000 other people on this boat."

The towline pulling the 14-story tall ship snapped, delaying Thursday's operation. It was re-attached, but it will be nightfall before the ship arrives at the terminal. Nellie Betts came from Tupelo, Miss., to meet her daughter.

"There's no reason why those people should be out there as long as they have. Why? I want to understand why," she said. "What is taking them so long to get them out?"

Once the ship arrives at the terminal, Carnival plans to put most of those passengers on a two-hour bus rid to New Orleans or even to Galveston, Texas, but some already are saying, "no thanks" - they have relatives picking them up in Mobile so they can go straight home.

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Nightmare Ends: Passengers Leave Disabled Ship












After five days without power in the Gulf of Mexico, the Carnival Triumph cruise ship carrying more than 4,000 people arrived in Mobile, Ala., to greet a cheering crowd of friends and family members waiting to embrace their loved ones.


Passengers began to disembark the damaged ship around 10:15 p.m. CT Thursday in Mobile, Ala. The last passenger disembarked the ship at 1 a.m. local time, according to Carnival's Twitter handle.


As the ship docked, passengers lined the decks of the ship, waving, and whistling to those on shore. "Happy V-Day" read a homemade sign made for the Valentine's Day arrival and another, more starkly: "The ship's afloat, so is the sewage."


Some still aboard chanted, "Let me off, let me off!" and "Sweet Home Alabama."


The Carnival Triumph departed Galveston, Texas, last Thursday and lost power Sunday after a fire in the engine room disabled the vessel's propulsion system and knocked out most of its power.


After power went out, passengers texted ABC News that sewage was seeping down the walls from burst plumbing pipes, carpets were wet with urine, and food was in short supply. Reports surfaced of elderly passengers running out of critical heart medicine and others on board squabbling over scarce food.


Click Here for Photos of the Stranded Ship at Sea


Passengers said many of the cabins became intolerable with the smell of raw sewage. They were forced to create makeshift beds out of lounge chairs on the ship's deck.






AP Photo/John David Mercer











Girl Disembarks Cruise Ship, Kisses the Ground Watch Video









Carnival CEO Gerry Cahill: 'I Want to Apologize' Watch Video









Carnival Cruise Ship Passengers Line Up for Food Watch Video





"We kind of camped out by our lifeboat. We would have nightmares about Titanic basically happening," passenger Kendall Jenkins told ABC News Radio after disembarking from the ship.


"I am just so blessed to be back home," she added.


Jenkins was one of many passengers that were photographed kissing the ground when they exited the ship.


WATCH: Carnival CEO Gerry Cahill Apologizes to Passengers


Approximately 100 buses were waiting to take passengers on the next stage of their journey. Passengers have the option to take a bus ride to New Orleans or Galveston, Texas, where the ill-fated ship's voyage began. From there, passengers will take flights home, which Carnival said they would pay for.


Inside the buses, Carnival handed out bags of food that included French fries, chicken nuggets, honey mustard barbecue sauce and apples.


Deborah Knight, 56, decided to stay in Mobile after the arduous journey was over rather than board a bus for a long ride. Her husband Seth drove in from Houston and they checked in at a downtown Mobile hotel.


"I want a hot shower and a daggum Whataburger," said Knight.


She said she was afraid to eat the food on board and had gotten sick while on the ship.


Cruise Ship Newlyweds Won't Be Spending Honeymoon on a Boat


For 24-year-old Brittany Ferguson of Texas, not knowing how long passengers had to endure their time aboard was the worst part.


"I'm feeling awesome just to see land and buildings," Ferguson said, who was in a white robe given to her aboard. "The scariest part was just not knowing when we'd get back," she told The Associated Press.


Carnival president and CEO Gerry Cahill praised the ship's crew and told reporters that he was headed on board to apologize directly to its passengers shortly before the Carnival Triumph arrived in Mobile.


"I know the conditions on board were very poor," Cahill said Thursday night. "I know it was very difficult, and I want to apologize again for subjecting our guests for that. ... Clearly, we failed in this particular case."


Luckily no one was hurt in the fire they triggered the power outage, but many passengers aboard the 900 foot colossus said they smelled smoke and were living in fear.






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Runaway stars to fill in the blanks in Milky Way map









































GUIDES to the galaxy might call it Zona Galactica Incognita – the half of our home galaxy we know little about. Indeed, the Milky Way is one of the least charted spiral galaxies in the nearby universe. Now it seems that stars kicked out of their birth clusters can help fill in the void and create the first proper map of the entire galaxy.












Young star clusters and clouds of hydrogen that formed in our galaxy help trace the shapes of the Milky Way's arms, so astronomers are reasonably certain that it has a spiral structure (see right). Observations of stellar motion show that there is a supermassive black hole at its core.











But figuring out how fast the arms rotate or even counting how many there are is tricky, in part because we are embedded in one of its arms and unable to get an outsider's view. In addition, everything behind the galactic centre is shrouded by a dense wall of stars and dust, blanking out a whole area of the Milky Way map.













"It's quite difficult to see the actual structure," says Manuel Silva of the University of Lisbon in Portugal. "I'm a little upset, really, that we don't know our own galaxy that well."












A space telescope called Gaia, scheduled for launch later this year, will map the positions and distances of about one billion stars on our side of the Milky Way, plotting the three-dimensional structure in unprecedented detail. But even Gaia won't be able to pierce the material that blocks our view of the far side.











Instead of trying to look across, Silva and his colleagues suggest looking up, where hundreds of runaway stars fly high above the disc of the galaxy. These stars are born in clusters inside the Milky Way but get ejected during gravitational jostling with other stars. Precise measurements of their velocities, ages and distances would allow astronomers to trace the stellar fugitives back to their homes, even on the far side.













"The idea is that the runaway stars act as signal flares, showing the position of the spiral arm, the same way someone lost in the middle of a dense forest could fire one to the sky to show his or her location to an outsider," says Silva.












His team traced the origins of about 40 runaway stars, observed by the Hipparcos satellite, ranging from roughly 1000 to 100,000 light years above the galactic plane (arxiv.org/abs/1302.0761v1). Although none of these stars came from the far side, the technique seems to work because the results agreed with previous studies that mapped star clusters in the visible section of the galaxy.












"The idea is a new one, and is an interesting one," says Jacques Lepine of the University of São Paulo in Brazil, who was not involved in the new study. Comparing Gaia's view of stars with the runaways will be helpful, he adds. "It is good to have different methods, to compare results. If the results are similar, we get more confident."












Jacques Vallée of the Canadian National Research Council in Victoria, British Columbia, agrees that the proof of concept is impressive. But that doesn't stop him fantasising about easier ways: "Wish I had a friend on a planet around a runaway star in the halo, sending me back a photo."












This article appeared in print under the headline "Runaway stars flesh out Milky Way map"




















































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Scientists discover new owl species in Indonesia






JAKARTA: Researchers in Indonesia unwittingly identified a new species of owl believed to be unique to the country, raising hopes of further new bird discoveries, a scientist said on Thursday.

The brown-and-white Rinjani Scops owl was first spotted in 2003 on the island of Lombok, while researchers were looking for another nocturnal bird. It was formally identified by four scientists on Wednesday in the online "Plos One" journal.

Prior to that, the bird had been mistaken for the related Moluccan Scops owl, found in the Maluku islands in central Indonesia.

"Ornithologists have long patted themselves on the back, believing that the taxonomy of birds was almost complete," researcher George Sangster from the Swedish Museum of Natural History, told AFP.

"Our study shows that even after more than 250 years of taxonomic research, we can still find new species, even of birds."

Sangster discovered the bird days before another researcher, Ben King, made the same discovery independently when both were on the island to collect sounds of large-tailed Nightjars.

They noticed the owl's songs were "completely different" from the Moluccan Scops owl.

He said further research should be carried out on the nearby island of Sumbawa to verify if the bird was unique to Lombok.

Ornithologists have often overlooked Lombok during field work in the region, believing there were no endemic bird species there, Sangster said.

Sangster has called for more research on birds in Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of around 17,000 islands that he calls "a treasure trove for taxonomists".

The Rinjani Scops owl was named after the volcano in the heart of Lombok island.

- AFP/al



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Woman found killed in home of 'blade runner' Pistorius






STORY HIGHLIGHTS


  • NEW: Agency identifies the victim as Oscar Pistorius' girlfriend

  • The shooting occurs in the home of Pistorius

  • South African police say man, 26, was taken into custody

  • Pistorius is a double-amputee who ran with the aid of prosthetic limbs




Pretoria, South Africa (CNN) -- The 29-year-old girlfriend of South African Olympian Oscar Pistorius was found fatally shot in his upscale Pretoria home early Thursday, authorities said.


Read more: Who was Oscar Pistorius' girlfriend?


Police charged a 26-year-old man -- the same age as Pistorius -- with murder in connection with the shooting and said he will appear in a Pretoria magistrate court Thursday afternoon. But they would not say whether the suspect was Pistorius.


"We can confirm he was taken to a police station but can't confirm if he is the suspect," said police spokeswoman Denise Beukes. "You will find out in the afternoon."


Pistorius, nicknamed the "Blade Runner," made history when he became the first Paralympian to compete in the able-bodied Olympics last year.










The victim was model Reeva Steenkamp, according to Capacity Relations, the agency that represents her.


Beukes said the home did not appear to show signs of forced entry and that Pistorius and the victim were the only two people at the time of the shooting.


She also said there had "previous incidents" at the home.


'Blade runner' Pistorius: Track hero at center of shooting probe


"Allegations of a domestic nature," Beukes said.


Police said Pistorius was cooperating with them.


Several South African media outlets reported that the woman was mistaken for an intruder.


Beukes said she was aware of the reports, but that they did not come from the police force.


A spokeswoman for Pistorius declined to comment. His father, Henke, told the South African Broadcasting Corporation said Pistorius was "sad at the moment."


"I don't know nothing. It will be extremely obnoxious and rude to speculate," the father said. "I don't know the facts."


Police were alerted to the shooting by neighbors and that residents "heard things earlier," Buekes said.


A pistol was recovered at the scene, police said.


South Africa has a high crime rate, and it's not unusual for homeowners to keep weapons to protect themselves from intruders.


"This is a very quiet area and this is a secure estate," Buekes said.


Pistorius, a double-amputee, ran with the aid of prosthetic limbs during the London Olympics last year, the first Paralympian to compete in the able-bodied Olympics.


The runner's legs were amputated below the knee when he was a toddler because of a bone defect. He runs on special carbon fiber blades, hence the nickname.


While he failed to win a medal in the Olympics, his presence on the track was lauded as an example of victory over adversity and a lesson in dedication to a goal.


Pistorius was initially refused permission to compete against able-bodied competitors, but he hired a legal team to prove that his artificial limbs didn't give him an unfair advantage.


He smashed a Paralympic record to win the men's 400m T44 in the final athletics event of the 2012 Games.


The athlete was named one of People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive last year.


CNN's Nkepile Mabuse reported from Pretoria, and Faith Karimi wrote from Atlanta. CNN's Richard Allen Greene and Marilia Brocchetto contributed to this report.






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Couple: "Calm" Dorner tied us up in our condo

LOS ANGELES A California couple says fugitive ex-police officer Christopher Dorner tied them up in their mountain condominium and stole their car before the firefight that led to his presumed death.

Karen and Jim Reynolds said at a news conference Wednesday that they came upon Dorner when they entered the condo in Big Bear, Calif. Tuesday, and believe he'd been there as early as Friday.

They say Dorner had a gun but said he wouldn't hurt them.




Play Video


SoCal breathing easier after deadly standoff



CBS Los Angeles station KCBS-TV reports Karen said, "He talked to us. Tried to calm us down. And saying very frequently he would not kill us."

"He was very calm and very methodical," said Karen.

Authorities couldn't immediately verify their story, but it matched early reports from law enforcement officials. Later reports said the incident involved two women from a cleaning crew.




18 Photos


Ex-LAPD cop accused of going on killing spree



The Reynolds said they went to the cabin noon to clean it for rental purposes, and that's when they -- and not two cleaning ladies as had been reported - met up with Dorner, KCBS says.

The Reynolds say he tied their arms and put pillowcases over their heads before fleeing in their Nissan.

Karen Reynolds managed to get to her cell phone and dial 911.

The couple, who said Dorner had his gun drawn the entire time, said they were with the suspect for 15 minutes, KCBS adds. "It felt like a lot longer," said Karen. "I really thought that it was the end."

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Dorner Not IDed, But Manhunt Considered Over













Though they have not yet identified burned remains found at the scene of Tuesday's fiery, armed standoff, San Bernardino, Calif., officials consider the manhunt over for Christopher Dorner, the fugitive ex-cop accused of going on a killing spree.


"The events that occurred yesterday in the Big Bear area brought to close an extensive manhunt," San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon told reporters this evening.


"I cannot absolutely, positively confirm it was him," he added.


However, he noted the physical description of the suspect authorities pursued to a cabin at the standoff scene, as well as the suspect's behavior during the chase and standoff, matched Dorner, 33.


The charred remains of the body believed to be Dorner were removed from the cabin high in the San Bernardino Mountains near Big Bear, Calif., the apparent site of Dorner's last stand. Cornered inside the mountain cabin Tuesday, the suspect shot at cops, killing one deputy and wounding another, before the building was consumed by flames.


"We did not intentionally burn down that cabin to get Mr. Dorner out," McMahon said tonight, though he noted pyrotechnic canisters known as "burners" were fired into the cabin during a tear gas assault in an effort to flush out Dorner. The canisters generate high temperatures, he added.


The deputies wounded in the firefight were airlifted to a nearby hospital, where one died, police said.








Christopher Dorner Believed Dead After Shootout with Police Watch Video









Carjacking Victim Says Christopher Dorner Was Dressed for Damage Watch Video









Christopher Dorner Manhunt: Inside the Shootout Watch Video





The deceased deputy was identified tonight as Det. Jeremiah MacKay, 35, a 15-year veteran and the father of two children -- a daughter, 7, and son, 4 months old.


"Our department is grieving from this event," McMahon said. "It is a terrible deal for all of us."


The Associated Press quoted MacKay on the Dorner dragnet Tuesday, noting that he had been on patrol since 5 a.m. Saturday.


"This one you just never know if the guy's going to pop out, or where he's going to pop out," MacKay said. "We're hoping this comes to a close without more casualties. The best thing would be for him to give up."


The wounded deputy, identified as Alex Collins, was undergoing multiple surgeries for his wounds at a hospital, McMahon said, but was expected to make a full recovery.


Before the final standoff, Dorner was apparently holed up in a snow-covered cabin in the California mountains just steps from where police had set up a command post and held press conferences during a five-day manhunt.


The manhunt for Dorner, one of the biggest in recent memory, led police to follow clues across the West and into Mexico, but it ended just miles from where Dorner's trail went cold last week.


Residents of the area were relieved today that after a week of heightened police presence and fear that Dorner was likely dead.


"I'm glad no one else can get hurt and they caught him. I'm happy they caught the bad guy," said Ashley King, a waitress in the nearby town of Angelus Oaks, Calif.


Hundreds of cops scoured the mountains near Big Bear, a resort area in Southern California, since last Thursday using bloodhounds and thermal-imaging technology mounted to helicopters, in the search for Dorner. The former police officer and Navy marksman was suspected to be the person who killed a cop and cop's daughter and issued a "manifesto" declaring he was bent on revenge and pledging to kill dozens of LAPD cops and their family members.


But it now appears that Dorner never left the area, and may have hid out in an unoccupied cabin just steps from where cops had set up a command center.






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US should vaccinate poultry to stop killer salmonella









































It is a case of putting the bottom line before our health. This year, a million Americans will succumb to salmonella poisoning. Several hundred will die. Yet in Europe, a cheap vaccine for chickens has slashed the number of cases. Vaccination in Iowa shows US lives can be saved too – but US rules give meat producers no incentive to use a vaccine that doesn't boost their profits.












Salmonella causes more deaths than any other food-borne germ and is the second-most common cause of food-borne illness in the US, according to a new report published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. Poultry, meat and eggs are the biggest source, causing a third of all cases.












But this can be prevented. After a scandal over infected eggs in the UK in the late 1980s, farmers boosted hygiene standards and killed infected flocks. Human cases stayed high until 1998 when British supermarkets started buying eggs only from vaccinated hens, says Sarah O'Brien of the University of Liverpool, UK. Human cases then plummeted with a forty-fold drop between 1993 and 2010.











In the US, a massive recall of eggs due to salmonella in 2010 similarly led to tighter hygiene rules for chicken farms. But the US Food and Drug Administration declared there was "insufficient data on efficacy" to make vaccination compulsory, despite evidence in Europe to the contrary.













Nonetheless, as monitoring programmes have revealed just how widespread the infection is, about a third of US egg producers have started to vaccinate their chickens. That and better hygiene has reduced the number of infected hen houses fivefold in Iowa, the biggest US egg producer, in the past two years, says Darrell Trampel of Iowa State University.












Meat producers have resisted, however, even though there is salmonella on 13 per cent of chicken breasts sold in US supermarkets, says Lance Price of George Washington University in Washington DC. The farmers vaccinate for several poultry diseases, but since salmonella doesn't hurt the birds or affect their growth, says Price – and human illness is not a cost the farmers have to bear – there is no motivation to prevent its spread.












Journal reference: Emerging Infectious Disease, doi.org/kgx


















































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Bank of England says UK economic recovery in sight






LONDON: The Bank of England forecast on Wednesday that the British economy would experience a "slow but sustained" recovery, but 12-month inflation would top 3.0 percent in the summer months.

Gross domestic product (GDP) was expected to grow by about 2.0 percent by the end of 2014 and remain positive despite some volatility amid the ongoing eurozone crisis, the central bank said in its latest quarterly report.

"The UK economy is therefore set for a recovery," said BoE governor Mervyn King, who will be replaced by Canadian central bank boss Mark Carney in July.

"That is not to say that the road ahead will be smooth. This hasn't been a normal recession and it won't be a normal recovery.

"The bank does not expect a triple-dip recession but said GDP was likely to continue at below pre-financial crisis levels for around another two years."

The BoE report will likely ease concerns over the outlook, after a 0.3-percent contraction in the fourth quarter of 2012 left Britain on the brink of its third recession since 2008.

The bank's monetary policy committee (MPC) last week froze its key interest rate at a record-low 0.50 percent and maintained its quantitative easing cash stimulus.

In addition, last year Britain launched an £80-billion ($123.7 billion, 102 billion euros) "funding for lending" initiative -- which is aimed at providing banks with cheap funding to stimulate lending to households and businesses, and thereby boost growth.

"The MPC continues to judge that the UK economy is set for a slow but sustained recovery in both demand and effective supply, aided by a further easing in credit conditions -- supported by the bank's programme of asset purchases and the funding for lending scheme -- and some improvement in the global environment," the report said.

"But the risks are weighted to the downside, not least because of the challenges facing the euro area."

The British central bank added that household budgets would be squeezed further, with 12-month inflation set to strike 3.0 percent in the coming months and hold above its official 2.0-percent target level for another two years.

Official data had shown on Tuesday that consumer prices index (CPI) annual inflation was 2.7 percent in January for the fourth month in a row, driven partly by rebounding food and drink prices.

- AFP/al



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