the secretary-general of nato reports that in addition to the uk and usa, a countries have already made offers of additional troops and that other countries are likely to follow. it is often said that america and britain are fighting alone. this is wrong. excluding america and britain, the numbers of international coalition troops will have risen from in january, to the seven, 16,000 troops to around 30,000. i believe over the coming months, even more countries will respond. our effort in helmut will benefit. last year, totals were run 7000. now they will be above 20,000, three times what they were pitted our -- but they were. president karzai and his defense minister have assured us that not only 500,000 members of the new afghan national army corps will be deployed to helmand to be -- additional recruits will arrive for training in the next few weeks. so, mr. speaker, with the conditions i have met, i confirm we will move to a new force level of ninat 500. from late january -- a new force level of 9500. mr. speaker, for understandable reasons of operational security, we shall continue

he was sent there from the uk after he was denied entrance. new this morning nearly half of u.s. kids could be on food stamps at some point during childhood. a new study says 90% of african-american kids and 37% of white kids may get food stamps by age 20. it says that these kids may be at risk for malnutrition and the recession could push those alarming numbers even higher. the study is in the archives of pediatrics and adolescent medicine. >>> well, you know what, if you're flying to see your family for the holidays get online now and book that flight before the fees get up any higher. air lines are loading on another round of surcharges. jen. >>> merry christmas, natasha. more money. we already talked about the surcharges for traveling on the busy days around thanksgiving and christmas, they just doubled them. you could now pay $40 roundtrip on top of your base fare. the airlines want to make as much as possible on the days when people are flying a lot to make up for the other days. travel experts say this year is a whole new ball game. last year you could wait up until the la