They have been out of favour since March when investors rediscovered their

They have been out of favour since March, when investors rediscovered their taste for risk. But holders have been partly compensated for relatively flat share price performances by dividend yields of 6.7 per cent and 5.1 per cent, respectively. Compass, the catering giant whose interests run from posh London restaurants to railway station bun stalls, bucked the trend for defensive stock underperformance, thanks to its expansion in the US.With most City thinkers reckoning on just a mid-single- digits rise for the market as a whole this year, big blue-chip winners are going to be thin on the ground. And our other non-FTSE 100 stock, Brit Insurance, ended lower as investors sensed that the days of soaring insurance premiums were over.Of our larger-company picks, the ITV company Granada confounded the sceptics by sealing its merger with Carlton Communications on good terms and with barely any interference from regulators.

Our other media sector bet, British Sky Broadcasting, did not deliver, attracting more attention this year for the appointment of James Murdoch as chief executive than for meeting its target of 7 million subscribers.BP also put in a pedestrian performance, even though oil prices have stayed high. Its shares are up by about a half, anticipating cost savings and a wider advertising recovery next year. The recovery of the UK equity market in 2003 put a fair breeze behind The Independent’s portfolio of share tips for the year, but we are happy to report that, with a return of 35.3 per cent, our gain is more than double that of the market. API, the little packaging company we picked as a “wild card” recovery play, has done plenty to improve its balance sheet this year, but trading setbacks have wiped out gains.

The shares have nearly tripled in value.Ukbetting, an online sports betting group, was also a great performer, enjoying the return of investor confidence in the better dot stocks. Sales have done well, the company has brought in more products through an astute acquisition and, in the last week of the year, there was excitement over the potential for its BSE test, available through a partner in the US. The vessel’s owners were alerted and ordered the freighter to divert to an Italian port. There, intelligence operatives discovered the centrifuges, which are equipment for enriching uranium for civil or military nuclear projects. Officials declined to name the country that supplied the centrifuges. One likely suspect is Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, and which is believed to have provided nuclear equipment to Iran, whose alleged weapons programme is under intense scrutiny.A preliminary inspection of Libya’s nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency concludedthat the weapons programme was at a very early stage But the US believes Libya’s plans were far more advanced.. He is narrowly ahead of Mr Gephardt in Iowa and has a commanding lead in New Hampshire, whose primary takes place on 27 January.

But it is a place where people like Salma and Mahjouba have found, thanks to people like you, new hope. We were in Homa Bay, on the edge of the great Lake Victoria, in the west of Kenya – an area so devastated by Aids that, on the way there, we had driven for an hour and saw only deserted villages. They are not giving up.Rendt Gorter, Oxfam programme manager in Mauritania. The interception by British and US intelligence of a shipment of uranium enrichment centrifuges bound for Libya in October appears to have been the decisive step in persuading Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to abandon his nuclear weapons programme.