The former Alaskan governor reportedly made the comment during the 2008 presidential campaign as aides to John McCain, the Republican candidate, tried to bring his surprise choice as running mate up to speed on foreign affairs.

Mrs Palin’s confusion emerged during a coaching session with Steve Schmidt, a McCain adviser who asked her what she would do if Britain began to waver in its commitment to the Iraq war.

In one of the many rambling responses that eroded her credibility, Mrs Palin reportedly replied she would ”continue to have an open dialogue” with the Queen. A horrified Mr Schmidt informed her the prime minister, then Gordon Brown, would be responsible for the decision. She also mistakenly believed Saddam Hussein ordered the September 11 attacks.

The blunder was revealed during research for Game Change, an HBO ”docudrama” based on a book about the 2008 campaign by two American journalists. While the film is a dramatisation, with Julianne Moore playing Mrs Palin, its producers conducted dozens of interviews and Mr Schmidt confirmed its accuracy in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

It describes panicked cramming sessions during the campaign, with aides beginning history lessons with the Spanish Civil War and carrying through to post-September 11. Mrs Palin was initially enthusiastic, making notes on hundreds of coloured flash cards, but became increasingly sullen and was described by tutors as going into a ”catatonic stupor”.

Mrs Palin refused to co-operate with the film and her spokesman said it ”distorted, twisted and invented facts to create a false narrative”.

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During the “Japan. Thank You.” campaign, which runs until late April, posters and banners to express appreciation will be displayed at such places as major international airports, seaports and shopping areas.

“We have received great support from other countries and international organizations. . . . They have encouraged us amid our shock from the disasters. They have given us the power to rebuild an energetic Japan,” Mizohata told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.

The campaign will include special illuminations at Tokyo Sky Tree, Yokohama Marine Tower, Kobe Port Tower and Beppu Tower in Oita Prefecture as well as at the Kyoto Higashiyama Hanatoro festival on March 11.

A special version of the Zagat guidebook will be published for the campaign, according to the tourism agency.

The government had been trying to boost the number of foreign tourists, only to see the effort stung by the March 11 calamities and subsequent Fukushima nuclear crisis, Mizohata said.

The number of foreign tourists fell about 73 percent between March 12 and 31 compared with the same period the previous year.

However, tourism is showing signs of recovery, partly because of efforts to demonstrate the nation is safe, he said.

The Japan National Tourism Organization estimated that last month saw about 685,000 international visitors, down just 4.1 percent from January 2011.

“Tourism has been playing an important role in the reconstruction (of the disaster zones). It has not only contributed to the economy but also improved communications and spread (the word that) Japan is doing well,” he said.

This month, the tourism agency set new annual foreign visitor targets: 18 million by 2016 compared with 6.22 million in 2011 and 8.61 million in 2010. The original 2016 goal, 20 million, was scratched due to the March catastrophes.

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The device comprises a single phosphorus atom, etched into a silicon bed, with “gates” to control electrical flow and metallic contacts that are also on the atomic scale.

“Our group has proved that it is really possible to position one phosphorus atom in a silicon environment, exactly as we need it, with near-atomic precision, and at the same time (incorporate) gates,” said lead scientist Martin Fuechsle.

Transistors, which switch or amplify electrical flow, are the building blocks of computer chips.

For more than 50 years, the semi-conductor industry has been upholding Moore’s Law, the celebrated prediction by Intel Corp. pioneer Gordon Moore that the number of transistors on a chip would double every 18 months or so.

But the astonishing run of success could hit a wall by the end of this decade without a breakthrough in miniaturizing transistors.

The team made the transistor from a silicon crystal that was placed in a vacuum.

To etch it, they used a device called a scanning tunneling microscope, which is able to see atoms and manipulate them using a super-fine metal tip.

Phosphorus atoms were deposited in a nano-scale “trench,” covered with an inert layer of hydrogen, and the unwanted ones were then weeded out. A chemical reaction welded the “transistor” atom to the silicon surface.

The minute device operates in ultra-cold temperatures provided by liquid helium.

It is not a finished product but proof-of-principle, designed to show that single-atom devices can be built and controlled.

Scientist have made atomic-scale transistors in the past, but through a chance find rather than by design, said Michelle Simmons, director of the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication at the University of New South Wales, where the work was carried out.

“But this device is perfect,” she said.

“This is the first time anyone has shown control of a single atom in a substrate [chip base] with this level of precise accuracy.”

The research is reported in the specialist journal Nature Nanotechnology.

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Ra.a.g.f, pronounced “raf,” opened last fall in the fashionable Jiyugaoka area in Meguro Ward, and is usually packed at weekends with customers reveling in the company of the cafe’s 20 to 30 rabbits.

“I came here during my break to relax,” said a smiling woman in her late 20s as she fed fresh vegetables to some of the rabbits.

Customers who want to buy rabbits can purchase the animals from the cafe’s breeding center — but the cafe’s rabbit “staff” are not for sale.

Cafe manager Maria Fuwa cautioned that customers have to be able to provide suitable accommodations for the rabbits and also must promise never to abandon them.

In Fuwa’s view, a rabbit is for life.

Another rabbit cafe, Usagi Cafe Ohisama (Rabbit Sun Cafe), was launched last year by a pet shop operator in the Shimokitazawa area in Setagaya Ward.

This coffee shop is also buzzing on weekends and most of the customers are women, said cafe manager Asami Yoshimura

The cafe has about 30 of the animals, but the big rabbit on campus is Naito-kun — who lives with Yoshimura.

Yet another rabbit cafe operating in the same area is Usagi no Ehon (Rabbit Picture Books).

Given the many live music houses and small theaters nearby, it has turned into a gathering spot for musicians and actors.

“I want our cafe to be a healing space for stressed-out people,” said Etsuko Kawasaki, who has been running the cafe with her family for the past two years.

The cafe’s seven rabbits may not be a match for the hordes cavorting in its two rival establishments — but it does display picture books and sell rabbit-themed merchandise.

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After viewing a collection of portraits by Japanese children from the disaster-affected areas at the Japanese Information and Culture Center in Washington, the students from Thomson Elementary School spent an hour drawing with their own messages of encouragement.

“I’m sending them a hero, because they need a hero to help them,” said Danny Tan, 10, as he hunched over his drawing of Sherlock Holmes, his personal favorite hero.

Omar Mendoza, also 10, said he wanted to send the Japanese children “happiness and love.”

The drawings, many of which depicted cherry blossoms, suns, the Hinomaru flag and other Japan-related imagery, as well as hearts and angels, were adorned with words of encouragement for the children in affected areas. “We love Japan,” said one, while another boasted the Chinese character for friendship.

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“The year ended with extremely positive results that were in certain instances unprecedented in Ferrari’s history,” the company said in a statement.

Revenues reached 2.251 billion euros, up 17.3 percent, while a record 7,195 cars were sold, up 9.5 percent on the previous year’s figure, it said.

Ferrari, which is owned by the autogiant Fiat, sold 6573 cars in 2010 for revenues of 1.919 billion euros.

“We can only be satisfied with these results,” the head of the famous sportscar brand Luca di Montezemolo was quoted as saying.

“They were achieved against an economic backdrop that remains challenging, particularly in Europe,” he added.

The company said it achieved record sales in 2011 in America and in the Greater China Area — which has become Ferrari’s second largest market — while it also performed well in the Middle East, with a 22 percent increase in sales.

Demand was also up in Britain, Germany and Switzerland in particular.

“Our international expansion continues and Ferrari today has a network covering 58 nations,” he said.

Montezemolo said a new 12-cylinder model would be unveiled at a show in Geneva in March, which he described as “a revolutionary new car that delivers extreme performance and unprecedented power output.”

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After losing out to Rio de Janeiro in the race for the 2016 Games, Tokyo’s latest application claims it could stage the 2020 Olympics for half the cost estimated in its previous bid, projecting a total budget of around ¥7.5 billion.

The application was submitted Monday to the International Olympic Committee’s headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, two days before the deadline.

“Tokyo has submitted the application and we have been given a very high evaluation,” Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara said during a news conference Thursday at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building.

“We have worked hard to improve the plans we presented in 2016 to make sure they are fully integrated with the city and its residents,” Japanese Olympic Committee President Tsunekazu Takeda said.

Twenty-eight of the 31 competition venues, including the Olympic Stadium, would be located within an 8-km radius of the Olympic village. The 2016 plan proposed building the Olympic Stadium on a pier on Tokyo’s waterfront, and the IOC ultimately deemed that access to the site would have been insufficient.

The new application proposes building a National Stadium with a capacity of 80,000 spectators at the site of the 1964 venue, regardless of the race’s outcome. The bid has dubbed the stadium the “jewel in the crown” of its venue plan.

The new stadium would be used for the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as athletics, soccer and rugby.

Of the total budget to host the Olympics, 51 percent would be financed by the private sector and the metro government would fund the rest.

Tokyo is vying with Madrid, Istanbul, Doha and Baku for the hugely lucrative Summer Games this time round. The Olympics will be held for 17 days, from July 24 to Aug. 9.

“We had the honor of hosting the games in 1964 and it was a wonderful success that all Japanese remember. Tokyo 2020 hopes to build upon that legacy for future generations,” said Masato Mizuno, who is heading Tokyo’s 2020 bid.

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Zhou Xiaochuan admitted that China and other emerging nations like Brazil, Russia or India were waiting for the right time to help the bloc, after a European Union state visit was once again met with encouraging words but no concrete public commitments on fresh funding from China.

But he also suggested Europe needed to work harder to entice Beijing to part with its capital.

“We also hope that the euro zone and EU can innovate their mechanisms to offer new products that are more helpful for Sino-Europe cooperation,” he said.

The central bank governor reiterated previous comments from Premier Wen Jiabao that China was ready to play a bigger role in solving Europe’s debt problems, noting China had not cut its reserves exposure to the euro zone.

“At the G20, our state leaders promised European leaders that, amid the global financial crisis and the Europe sovereign debt crisis, China will not cut the proportion of euro exposure” in its reserves, Zhou said in a speech at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

Although Zhou’s comments largely underlined China’s established stance, the remarks helped push the euro to an intraday high of $US1.3163. Traders said some investors were short of the currency, which had exaggerated the rise.

Any bigger role in solving the debt crisis would be via the International Monetary Fund and the European Financial Stability Fund, or EFSF, Zhou said, echoing Wen’s comments.

“We strongly believe European countries can work together to handle the challenges. They are able to solve the sovereign debt crisis,” Zhou said.

“The People’s Bank of China has always maintained close cooperation and contacts with the European Central Bank, and we support each other in many policy aspects. The PBOC firmly supports the ECB’s recent measures to address the difficulties.”

Verbal reassurances from Zhou and senior Chinese leaders come as European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso are visiting Beijing for a China-EU summit.

Van Rompuy assured his Chinese hosts that they should not underestimate the strong political incentive to keep the euro zone intact.

The summit was delayed from late last year as European leaders struggled to deal with an escalating debt crisis.

Not a white knight

China, with $US3.2 trillion worth foreign exchange reserves at hand, is seen as having the potential financial firepower to bail out some European governments.

Beijing has been consistently reluctant to make firm financial commitments, although it has repeatedly said it supports a stable euro.

Analysts estimate that about a quarter of China’s foreign reserves are held in euro-denominated assets.

The head of China’s sovereign wealth fund said on Monday that hard assets are more attractive than European government bonds.

Chinese leaders have expressed alarm at protests and strikes sweeping Europe, while lauding a fiscal agreement to be signed in March that will build up a massive fund to backstop European debt.

“We believe the fiscal agreement will mark a big step toward closer economic and fiscal union, which will significantly boost EU member countries’ fiscal sustainability and improve the sovereign debt conditions,” Zhou said.

China and other countries beyond the 17-country euro bloc want to see its members stump up more money before they commit additional resources to the IMF, which had requested an additional 500 billion euros in funding.

The European Stability Mechanism (ESM), a 500-billion-euro permanent bailout fund that is due to be operational in July, is expected to replace the EFSF, a temporary fund, which has been used to bail out Ireland, Portugal and will help in the second Greek package.

Detailed policies and reforms to be launched by Europe can serve as “platforms” for China and other BRICS countries to help Europe, Zhou said.

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In Australia running a series of workshops for national network Business Chicks, he spoke to a packed room in Sydney earlier this week about his entrepreneurial journey.

Not the first time

Hsieh’s success with Zappos doesn’t appear to be a fluke. Out of college, Hsieh founded online advertising company LinkExchange, which he sold for $265 million to Microsoft in 1999 at the age of just 24.

“It just wasn’t a fun place to work any more,” says Hsieh, now 38.

“Company culture went downhill. Our whole strategy was to employ friends, and friends of friends. That worked well till we got to about 20 people. Then we ran out of friends.

“When we got to about 100 people, I realised that I was dreading getting out of bed to go to my own company.”

Selling out of LinkExchange gave Hsieh enough money to never work again. Along with his former college mate Alfred Lin, he co-founded incubator and investment firm, Venture Frogs. “We invested in about 20 companies,” he says. “Zappos was one of them. Within a year, I joined full-time.”

The idea for Zappos actually originated from Nick Swinmurn, who pitched the idea to Hsieh back in 1999 after he couldn’t find a pair of the shoes he wanted at his local shopping centre. The concept of buying shoes online – sight unseen – was a radical concept. But Hsieh paid attention when Swinmurn told him that footwear in the US was a $US40 billion market. That’s a hell of a lot of shoes.

That piqued Hsieh’s interest. Although the entrepreneur freely admits he is “not passionate about shoes at all”.

“I’m passionate about customer service and company culture.”

Indeed, Zappos’s approach to customer service and company culture have become the gold standard in the business world.

Customer service

At a basic level, it offers free shipping both ways, making it easy for customers to return shoes that may not fit or which aren’t what they expected. “We have customers who will order 10 pairs of shoes from us. They try them all on and send nine back.” This is accepted, no questions asked.

Beyond a good returns policy, stories abound of call centre staff who send birthday gifts to customers and those who will help customers find the perfect shoe even if it means tracking it down to a competitor. Phones are manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week and all consultants are based in the US.

Company culture

While outstanding customer service is important, Hsieh says it’s not their number one priority. “Our number one priority is actually company culture,” he says. “Every candidate goes through two sets of interviews – one for technical ability and one for cultural fit. We’ve passed on a lot of smart people if they are bad for our culture.”

All recruits then go through the same five-week training program, after which they are offered $4000. “We’ll pay you to quit and leave the company right now,” says Hsieh. “We want employees who really believe in the long-term vision of the company.”

To assess this cultural fit, Hsieh points to the 10 core values of the company, which range from “Create fun and a little weirdness” and “Do more with less” to “Be humble”.

The latter is tested on the day of the interview in an unexpected way. When candidates arrive from other states, they are picked up by a shuttle bus driver to head to the main office. After a day of interviews and meeting managers, Hsieh says the shuttle bus driver is always asked if he was treated well. “We hire or fire based on the core values, independent of job performance,” he says.

Zappos’s meteoric rise has been chronicled in Hsieh’s New York Times best-selling book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, realised in 2010. The title comes from Hsieh’s own passion and study of the science of happiness. This, in turn, has spawned a movement “to help people, organizations, and businesses apply frameworks of happiness to their lives”.

The science of happiness is not a typical topic of discussion for CEOs, but Hsieh points out how important it is in business, citing one of the frameworks for happiness as “having a higher purpose”.

“People want to be part of something bigger than themselves,” he says. “It’s important to remember that there is a huge difference between motivation and inspiration. If you have values and a vision that inspires, motivation will take care of itself.”

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This time, he was to do so as the man destined to lead China, the world’s most populous nation and second-biggest economy, a mantle he could hold for more than a decade.

His return was being hailed by the Iowa Governor, Terry Branstad, as the biggest thing to hit Muscatine since Pope John Paul II’s 1979 visit, and likened to the Iowa farm tour of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev two decades earlier.

”The fact that he’s going to be the leader of China, he obviously has a very friendly and positive feeling about Iowa,” Mr Branstad said, sensing future opportunity.

The Chinese Vice-President’s American ties may be modest but he has long enjoyed Hollywood westerns and US basketball, and has a daughter attending Harvard University under a pseudonym.

He insisted on adding Iowa to his jammed US itinerary to reacquaint himself with the small Midwest town that he visited with a posse of Communist Party officials in 1985, ostensibly to study US techniques in agricultural production.

During that trip he was billeted with the Dvorchaks, staying in their university-bound sons’ former bedroom that was still decorated with Star Trek prints.

The farming couple have since retired to Florida but told Associated Press they were returning to Iowa for Mr Xi’s hour-long visit, reconnecting with their Chinese guest and their former neighbours.

”I’m flabbergasted that he would take time out of his busy schedule and come back to Muscatine,” Eleanor Dvorchak, 72, said. The family took in Mr Xi, then 31, for two nights.

As well as a formal dinner in Des Moines, the US Agriculture Secretary ,Tom Vilsack, was hosting Mr Xi at a US-China agriculture symposium. The Chinese delegation was later headed for Los Angeles where Mr Xi will meet California business leaders and is expected to attend a Lakers basketball game on Friday, a point of common interest in his talks with the President, Barack Obama, at the White House yesterday.

With several points of tension in the US-China relationship providing a backdrop to their discussions – namely China’s undervalued currency, US re-engagement in Asia and cyber security – the two men chatted amiably in the Oval Office before Mr Xi visited the State Department and Pentagon.

At the State Department, Mr Xi defended China’s human rights record, though he said there was ”room for improvement”.

At the same time as the likely successor to President Hu Jintao was embarking on his Washington charm offensive, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, was being grilled by the Senate armed services committee over defence cuts and on whether China was America’s friend or foe.

Asked by the Republican senator Lindsey Graham whether Chinese hacking of US defence systems could be considered a hostile act, General Dempsey replied: ”I would consider it to be a crime. I think there are other measures that could be taken in cyber that would rise to the level of a hostile act.”

Asked what they were, he continued: ”Attacking our critical infrastructure.”

A committee member shot back: ”And that could be a hostile act?”

General Dempsey: I think so.

Senator Graham: Allowing us to respond in kind?

Dempsey: Well, in my view, that’s right – yes.

Graham: So, I’m going to have lunch with the Vice-President of China in about 20 minutes … so what do you want me to tell him?

Dempsey replied: Happy Valentine’s Day.

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