But details of the strategic reserves have not been made public, it added on Monday. China controls about 95 percent of the global trade for the 17 minerals that collectively make up the rare earth metals market. The metals, prized for their special chemical or electromagnetic properties, are used in making mobile phones, batteries for hybrid cars, wind turbines, flat-screen televisions and other high tech products.

According to a report issued by the US Geological Survey in November, about 36 percent of the world's reserves of the metals are in China. With the prices of rare earth metals rising on average by about 130 percent last year, mining companies in countries such as Australia have stepped up efforts to extract the minerals. But according to the Wall Street Journal, a new mine could take a decade to develop, so the processing of rare earth elements will remain concentrated in China for years.

Last month, China brought 11 rare earth mines under state control as Beijing consolidated the industry - a move analysts said could drive up prices of the elements.

Tuesday saw one of the biggest anti-government rallies in Cairo since the protests began on 25 January. It came despite the government's announcement of its plans for a peaceful transfer of power. President Hosni Mubarak has said he will stay in office until elections in September, when he plans to step down. Mr Biden told Mr Suleiman that the transition to a more broadly based government should produce "immediate, irreversible" progress. The US vice-president has been phoning his Egyptian opposite number on an almost daily basis and his latest call is the toughest yet, the BBC's North America editor, Mark Mardell, reports.

As the protests entered their third week, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians poured into Cairo's Tahrir Square for the latest protest. Initial attempts by the army to check the identity cards of those joining the demonstration were quickly abandoned because of the sheer weight of numbers. The BBC's Jim Muir, in Cairo, says the message to the authorities is simple - there is huge support from all walks of Egyptian life for the protests, and the government's concessions are not enough.

Wael Ghonim, a Google executive who was detained by state security forces for 12 days, often blindfolded, was feted by the crowds as he entered Tahrir Square. He is credited with setting up the page on the Facebook social network that helped galvanise protesters. "We will not abandon our demand and that is the departure of the regime," Mr Ghonim told protesters in the square, to cheers and applause.

The unrest over the last two weeks has seen fierce clashes with police, and pitched battles between protesters and Mubarak supporters. Human Rights Watch (HRW) researchers say they have confirmed the deaths of 297 people since 28 January, based on a count from eight hospitals in the cities of Cairo, Alexandria and Suez. No comprehensive death toll has been given by the Egyptian government.

Mr Hague is currently on a three-day tour of north Africa and the Middle East. In an interview on his way to Jordan, he voiced concerns about the future. "Amidst the opportunity for countries like Tunisia and Egypt, there is a legitimate fear that the Middle East peace process will lose further momentum and be put to one side, and will be a casualty of uncertainty in the region," he said. "Part of the fear is that uncertainty and change will complicate the process still further. That means there is a real urgency for the Israelis and the United States."

Mr Hague spoke after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to "reinforce the might of the state of Israel" whatever the outcome of the unrest. Responding directly to those words, the foreign secretary said: "This should not be a time for belligerent language." He added that without action now, "within a few years, peace may become impossible".

He re-iterated his feelings in a message on the micro-blogging website Twitter, saying: "Time for bold leadership on Middle East Peace Process from the US & equally bold steps by Israelis and Palestinians".

Emerging again, he was the first to deny that he had done anything heroic at all, bowing to the young activists on the streets since 25 January. But his return to the public eye, marked by an emotional TV interview on 7 February which gripped Egyptian viewers, re-energised the movement just as it seemed to be losing steam. The fact that hundreds of thousands of protesters returned to the streets of Cairo the day after he spoke testifies to his appeal.

He was hailed on Facebook and Twitter as a hero, Egyptian blogger Issandr el-Amrani noted. "You know how this has been a leaderless movement and they're saying they want to designate him as a leader of the youth component in this movement," Mr Amrani told the BBC World Service.

Mr Ghonim walked free after a campaign waged by Google on behalf of its marketing manager for the Middle East and North Africa. The search engine giant may not have been aware that its Dubai-based manager had been running a popular Facebook page, with 400,000 Egyptian followers, outside of office hours, BBC technology correspondent Mark Gregory reports. Named after Khaled Said, a businessman who died in police custody in Alexandria last year, the page played a crucial role in organising the protests. The "We are all Khaled Said" website became a rallying point for a campaign against police brutality. For many Egyptians, it revealed details of the extent of torture in their country.

Soon after being freed, he appeared live on one of Egypt's most watched talk shows, on the Dream 2 television channel. "This is the revolution of the youth of the Internet, which became the revolution of the youth of Egypt, then the revolution of Egypt itself," he said. He burst into tears, insisting it was the fault of the authorities, not the campaigners, and left the studio - a human response that provoked a wave of sympathy.

"Ghonim's tears have moved millions and turned around the views of those who supported [Mubarak] staying," the website masrawy.com wrote two hours after the interview. At least 130,000 people have joined a Facebook page titled "I delegate Wael Ghonim to speak in the name of Egypt's revolutionaries" since the interview, the Associated Press news agency reports. It is not yet clear what, if any, political ambitions the young executive harbours, beyond "putting an end to all the rubbish" in Egypt.

The digs have been taking place under the Dome of the Chain, believed to have been built over 1300 years ago. For eight months, the dome - which has a diameter of 14 meters - has been surrounded by a metal fence and black cloth, which hide whatever activity has been going on there from outside inspection. The Muslim Waqf religious authority has claimed the activity is simply a refurbishing of the structure, but refuses adamantly to let Jews or tourists near.

Jewish activists made various attempts to enter the Dome, but met with no success. In the end, the Our Temple Mount news outlet found an Arab who was willing to take photos inside the compound in return for a handsome fee. The man said that it appears the Waqf has already completed its digs and is now covering the dig with dirt.

Our Temple Mount notes that according to Jewish tradition, the place where the Dome of the Chain is located is the spot upon which the sacrificial Altar stood in Temple times. Temple activists said that the Muslim digs are intended to erase the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount.

See photo's at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142187

"The fact is that the US-Israel relationship is good," he said. "We see it on a military level. We see it in other areas. Congress voted 90 percent for every resolution that dealt with Israel, whether it was support for the war in Gaza or sanctions on Iran." Hoenlein noted that the support for Israel goes beyond Congress. "The American people are supportive of Israel in record numbers," he pointed out, but added that this should not be taken for granted.

"One of the issues we hear more and more is that the relationship with Israel costs American blood and treasure," said Hoenlein. "We can't take the American people's support for granted. We have to emphasize the positives in the relationship. I think with the United States there has been an overriding fundamental commitment that has remained strong throughout," he added. "One of the measures for the Arab countries is the strength of the US-Israel relationship. When they see that commitment's strong then they have more confidence that their commitments from the United States will be honored as well."

He pointed out that Europe is not an alternative for the US-Israel relationship and added that "the United States is not giving up on the Middle East. You'd be surprised how many friends there are of Israel and the Jewish people, but they need to be reached out to. There are friends in the strangest of places but none as consistent as America."

There is only one foreign state that matters to Mubarak and that's America, which had bankrolled his regime for 30 years and pays for Egypt's armed forces. And the message from Washington? Shockingly, it's all over the place. President Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, began by saying Mubarak should stay. Then they said he should take heed of the protests. When that yielded nothing, they said he should consider going. He disagreed. Finally, they insisted he should step aside.

Unfortunately, the special ambassador they dispatched to Cairo, former envoy to Egypt Frank Wisner, has not been kept up to date about their changes of mind. After meeting Mubarak last week, Wisner said: 'The President must stay in office to steer those changes. I believe President Mubarak's continued leadership is crucial - it's his chance to write his own legacy.'

The truth is, America is terrified that the demise of their reliable stooge Mubarak might lead to the installation of an Islamic government in Egypt, which in turn might result in restrictions on the Suez Canal, putting western economies in crisis, and a reduction in Israel's security. Intelligent American analysts recognise it's transparently cynical to demand democracy in Egypt while at the same time preventing Islamic parties, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, taking part in any election. But what if the Muslims - like Hamas in Palestine - seek power in order to establish an Islamic state which is not democratic?

Why does the US - and Britain as its cheerleaders - need to interfere abroad at all? Because, like us, it is addicted to growth. It wants its economy to become bigger and its citizens richer. It needs to sell more goods in order to consume more. America (and ourselves) can't do that without freedom of trade and a continuing supply of raw materials, including oil. With Britain's enthusiastic co-operation - no matter what government was in power, Tory or Labour - the US fixed this by backing Arab leaders keen to deal with us while enriching and entrenching in power their own families.

This trusted old racket is now coming to an end. You can't keep peons down for ever. We'll have to get used to the idea.

The study also shows that, despite concerns about online safety, one in eight young people is in contact with strangers when on the web and often lies about their appearance, age and background.

Researchers for children's charity Kidscape assessed the online activities of 2,300 11-18-year-olds from across the UK and found that 45 per cent said they were sometimes happier online than in their real lives. The report - Virtual Lives: It is more than a game, it is your life - lays bare the attitudes of children today to the internet and includes revealing insights into how they feel when they are on the web.

One told researchers: 'It's easier to be who you want to be, because nobody knows you and if you don't like the situation you can just exit and it is over.' Another said: 'You can say anything online. You can talk to people that you don't normally speak to and you can edit your pictures so you look better. It is as if you are a completely different person.'

Psychotherapist Peter Bradley, who is also deputy director of Kidscape, said that the desire for so many to adopt a different identity online was a cause for concern because the children were being divorced from reality.

The Fed's "QE2" risks accelerating the demise of the dollar-based currency system, perhaps leading to an unstable tripod with the euro and yuan, or a hybrid gold standard, or a multi-metal "bancor" along lines proposed by John Maynard Keynes in the 1940s.

China's commerce ministry fired an irate broadside against Washington on Monday. "The continued and drastic US dollar depreciation recently has led countries including Japan, South Korea, and Thailand to intervene in the currency market, intensifying a 'currency war'. In the mid-term, the US dollar will continue to weaken and gaming between major currencies will escalate," it said.

David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC, said the root problem is lack of underlying demand in the global economy, leaving Western economies trapped near stalling speed. "There are no policy levers left. Countries are having to tighten fiscal policy, and interest rates are already near zero. The last resort is a weaker currency, so everybody is trying to do it," he said.

The innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of Fed policy are poor countries such as India, where primary goods make up 60 per cent of the price index and food inflation is now running at 14 per cent. It is hard to gauge the impact of a falling dollar on commodities, but the pattern in mid-2008 was that it led to oil, metal, and grain price rises with multiple leverage. The core victims were the poorest food-importing countries in Africa and South Asia. Tell them that QE2 brings good news.

So the question that Ben Bernanke and his colleagues should ask themselves is whether they have thought through the global ramifications of their actions, and how the strategic consequences might rebound against America itself.

Foreign investment has driven a 38 per cent appreciation of Brazil's real against the dollar in two years and a flood of cheap Chinese imports has damaged the country's manufacturing base. But Mr Geithner said that when "countries with large surpluses" allow their currencies to "reflect fundamentals" the upward pressure on the real will fall, aiding Brazilian exports.

He did not name China but his comments come days after a Treasury Department report said the yuan remains "substantially undervalued" and that China had made "insufficient" progress in allowing it to rise. "Investors around the world see Brazil growing at a faster pace and offering higher rates of return relative to other major economies," Mr Geithner said in a speech in Sao Paulo.

His comments suggest that the US and Brazilian governments are ready to forge closer links which could see them jointly pressure China on the value of the yuan. President Barack Obama is due to visit Brazil in March, with Dilma Rousseff, his Brazilian counterpart, making an official visit to China the following month.

The term "currency war" was coined last year by Guido Mantega, Brazil's Finance Minister.

The documents, stretching back two decades, reveal an Egyptian commitment to research and development of WMDs, the acronym for weapons of mass destruction that thrust itself into the common lexicon during the Iraq war. They also reveal that Cairo is interested in nuclear and radiological weapons, though the extent of that interest is far from clear.

The US has long known about but tolerated this because of Egypt's central role in both the Middle East peace talks and counterterrorism. To quote one congressional expert on arms proliferation, "If they were any other Arab state, we would be all over them every day on these issues." At the same time, US, Israeli and Russian officials have expressed concerns that the Egyptian weapons programs - particularly its missile expertise - has the potential to destabilize the relative peace that has reigned in the Middle East for several decades. Despite these concerns, the officials say, Egypt has continued to work on many of these programs.

Egyptians have defended its development of WMDs as a necessary counterbalance to Israel's weapons capabilities, which are daunting even to the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state. With an estimated 200 nuclear warheads - bigger than Great Britain's arsenal - and 100 medium-range missiles, Israel is in a world of diminishing nuclear programs, a regional superpower - at least.

NBC News obtained a US Customs Service account of a debriefing of an Egyptian-American spy, Abdel Kadr Helmy. Helmy, who was jailed in the 1980s for trying to obtain various missile technologies including Pershing-II guidance packages - said in the interviews that Egypt had an active nuclear weapons development program that included sending uranium to Pakistan for enrichment to bomb-grade levels. He also said that an Egyptian Brigadier General, Ahmad Nashet, ran both the civilian nuclear establishment in Cairo as well as the nascent bomb program.

The area where Egypt excels is in missile development. The FIS report noted: "By 1990, Egypt's missile forces were armed with a regiment each of Soviet Scud-B (with a range of 300 kilometers) and Frog 7 (70 km) transporter-erector-launchers and also a certain quantity of Sakr 80 and Sakr 365 Egyptian-Iraqi-North Korean short-range missiles. It is technically possible to fit the Scud and Frog warheads with chemical weapons."

At the heart of the concern is intelligence indicating that Egypt has quietly carried out research and development on weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, chemical, biological and missile technology. The research and development has continued virtually without pause over the past three decades, according to interviews with US officials and a review of intelligence and other government documents by NBC News.

Specifically, the intelligence indicates that Egypt has carried out experiments in plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment, helped jump-start Saddam Hussein's missile and chemical weapons programs in Iraq, and worked with Kim Jong Il on North Korea's missile program. "If we found another country doing what they've done, we would have been all over them," said a former US intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

These foods provide 35 per cent of our calories, most of our minerals, vitamins, and anti-oxidants, and the foundations of gastronomy. Yet the bees are dying - or being killed - at a disturbing pace. The story of "colony collapse disorder" (CCD) is already well-known to readers of The Daily Telegraph. Some keep hives at home and have experienced this mystery plague, and doubtless have strong views on whether it is caused by parasites, or a virus, or use of pesticides that play havoc with the nervous system of young bees, or a synergy of destructive forces coming together.

The bee crisis has been treated as a niche concern until now, but as the UN's index of food prices hits an all time-high in real terms (not just nominal) and grain shortages trigger revolutions in the Middle East, it is becoming urgent to know whether the plight of the honey bee risks further exhausting our already thin margin of food global security.

The agri-business lender Rabobank said the numbers of US bee colonies failing to survive each winter has risen to 30-35 per cent from an historical norm of 10 per cent. The rate is 20 per cent or higher in much of Europe, and the same pattern is emerging in Latin America and Asia. Albert Einstein, who liked to make bold claims (often wrong), famously said that "if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years to live".

Analysts did not expect the general strike, the third by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina took office in early 2009, to bring forward the date of the 2013 general election.

But it is a large-scale challenge by the BNP, emboldened by its success at municipal polls, and adds to the woes of Hasina's government, already struggling with discontent over high prices, lacking public services as well as the crash in the stock market, a main source of income for many in this impoverished country. At least five people were injured, two seriously, in clashes between protesters and police outside the BNP's central office in Dhaka, a Reuters reporter at the scene said.

In December, food inflation hit 11 percent, its highest level in three years, and analysts warned rising global food prices may drive the index higher. Angry investors took to the streets of the capital on Sunday after the stock exchange suffered another dramatic fall, the latest of a series of collapses that forced halts in trading several times last month.

Several hours of shelling and machine gun fire subsided at around 11 am (4:00 am British time), creating an uneasy peace in the 4.6 square km (two square mile) contested area around the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple claimed by both Southeast Asian neighbours.

Both sides blame the other for sparking clashes that have killed at least two Thais and three Cambodians since Friday and unleashed nationalist passions in Bangkok, energising "yellow shirt" protesters demanding Thailand's government step down. Reasons behind the fighting remain murky. Some analysts reckon hawkish Thai generals and nationalist allies may be trying to topple Thailand's government or even create a pretext to stage another coup and cancel elections expected this year.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement he was "deeply concerned" and urged both sides to cease fire and find a "lasting solution" to the dispute, echoing a similar statement from Washington over the weekend. The dispute threatens to worsen long-running hostility between Thai political factions ahead of the expected general election this year.