. Bill for big-ticket defence projects may reach £130bn. Study says government underestimated expenseThe combined cost of replacing the Trident nuclear missile system and building, equipping and running two large aircraft carriers will be as much as £130bn, far more than the government has admitted, an in-depth study of the huge defence projects will reveal tomorrowreveals today.Ministers have said replacing Trident would cost up to £20bn, but key factors the government has left out of the calculation will push the final cost up to £97bn over the system's 30-year life, according to Greenpeace, the environment group.Estimates of the cost of the proposed two carriers have already increased from £2bn to £5bn over the past 10 years. However, today's the report, In The Firing Line, says these ignore running costs of an estimated £10bn and do not include spending on the US-made F35 aircraft designed to fly from the ships.Costs of the various aircraft planned for the carriers amount to £10bn.

Federal regulators turned their attention on Thursday to the fast-paced and sometimes-opaque electronic trading systems that dominate financial markets, proposing to ban a type of trading that critics contend gives hedge funds and other financial firms an unfair advantage over individual investors.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday that he has ordered the deployment of as many as 3,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to meet what the top commander there has described as pressing security needs.

Lawmakers in both parties raised concerns Thursday that the health-care reform bill offered by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus a day earlier would impose too high a cost on middle-class Americans and said they will seek to change the legislation to ease that potential burden.

President Obama's decision to abandon a Bush-era missile defense system in Europe and establish a partly ship-based shield against Iranian rockets could tighten U.S. pressure on the Islamic republic and ease a simmering rift with Russia.

The Senate has approved intelligence oversight legislation, deferring discussion of rules for interrogation and detention of terrorism suspects that have derailed previous proposals.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday said she worries that the protests of President Obama's health-care legislation may be of a similar nature to anti-gay rhetoric in the late 1970s in san francisco, which culminated in the assassinations of two of her home town's political leaders.

Sgt. 1st Class Jared C. Monti died one sweltering June day in 2006 on a remote ridge in Afghanistan, on his third attempt to creep through pounding insurgent fire to rescue one of his wounded soldiers. Barack Obama was then 18 months into his first term as a U.S. senator, and chatter about his pr...

Lawmakers in both parties raised concerns Thursday that the health-care reform bill offered by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus a day earlier would impose too high a cost on middle-class Americans and said they will seek to change the legislation to ease that potential burden.

One day after physicians suffered a pair of setbacks in a health-care bill unveiled by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), President Obama moved Thursday to ease the pain by accelerating a $25 million program aimed at softening the pinch of medical malpractice lawsuits.