Brigadier General Mohammed Asif Jabarkhel sits with folded arms in his office, just a few steps away from the security checkpoint at Kabul International Airport. "Of course I know what's going on here," the 59-year-old head of the airport's customs police grumbles from beneath his thick moustache as a fan whirs in the background. "But, in this country, who's allowed to speak the truth?"

Jabarkhel is referring to the huge amounts of money regularly being secreted out of Afghanistan by plane in boxes and suitcases. According to some estimates, since 2007, at least $3 billion (2.4 billion euros) in cash has left the country in this way. The preferred destination for these funds is Dubai, the tax haven in the Persian Gulf. And, given the fact that Afghanistan's total GDP amounts to the equivalent of $13.5 billion, there is no way that the funds involved in this exodus are merely the proceeds of legal business transactions.

Jabarkhel complains that all of his many attempts to stop this hemorrhaging have failed. "The central bank has reached an agreement with the government that makes these kinds of transfers supposedly legal," he says. "And whenever we try to look into where the money is coming from, pressure comes from the very top."

Since invading Afghanistan in 2001, the United States alone has invested almost $300 billion in military and reconstruction efforts there. But far less progress has been made than what was either hoped for or expected. One major reason for this could be the fact that a significant portion of the millions meant for reconstructive efforts continue to be siphoned off. The people benefiting are often those who enjoy extremely close business ties with the donor countries.

It is clear that much more money is making its way out of Afghanistan through Kabul's airport than is being officially declared and logged.

"Home sales are down. Retail sales are down. Factory orders in May suffered their biggest tumble since March of last year. So what are we doing about it? Less than nothing," he said. California is tightening faster than Greece. State workers have seen a 14 percent fall in earnings this year due to forced furloughs. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is cutting pay for 200,000 state workers to the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to cover his $19 billion (15 billion pounds) deficit.

Can Illinois be far behind? The state has a deficit of $12 billion and is $5 billion in arrears to schools, nursing homes, child care centres, and prisons. "It is getting worse every single day," said state comptroller Daniel Hynes. "We are not paying bills for absolutely essential services. That is obscene."

Roughly a million Americans have dropped out of the jobs market altogether over the past two months. That is the only reason why the headline unemployment rate is not exploding to a post-war high. Let us be honest. The US is still trapped in depression a full 18 months into zero interest rates, quantitative easing (QE), and fiscal stimulus that has pushed the budget deficit above 10 percent of GDP.

The average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks. Nothing like this has been seen before in the post-war era. Jeff Weninger, of Harris Private Bank, said this compares with a peak of 21.2 weeks in the Volcker recession of the early 1980s. "Legions of individuals have been left with stale skills, and little prospect of finding meaningful work, and benefits that are being exhausted. By our math the crop of people who are unemployed but not receiving a check amounts to 9.2 million."

Republicans on Capitol Hill are filibustering a bill to extend the dole for up to 1.2 million jobless facing an imminent cut-off. Dean Heller from Vermont called them "hobos". This really is starting to feel like 1932.

"Those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it... there was a head and shoulders pattern that developed before the Depression in 1929, then with the recovery in 1930 we had another head and shoulders pattern that preceded a fall in the market, and in the current Dow situation we see an exact repeat of that environment,"

The Dow retreated 457.33 points, or 4.5 percent last week, to close at 9,686 Friday. Guppy said a Dow fall below 9,800 confirmed the head and shoulders pattern.

The Shanghai Composite is seeing a very rapid collapse, falling below 2,500, which suggests the major fall in the Dow, he added.

In the European markets, Guppy says Frankfurt's Dax is witnessing a different pattern to London's FTSE.

Guppy uses the broad trading band as measurement- giving the Dax a downsize target of 1,500. The same head and shoulders pattern seen in the Dow can also be seen in the FTSE, he added.

Watched by his devastated young children, the 38-year-old immediately chased after the intruder as it leapt over a 4ft high fence, and although he managed to wrest Princess from its grip, she was already dead. The attack came after a wild fox attacked twin baby girls as they slept in their cots in London and numerous other incidents of foxes entering people's homes.

Mr Khanna said today he had tried to warn the local authorities about the prowling urban fox long before it killed his dog. Describing the moment he chased after the wild animal, he said: 'We heard this yelp and suddenly the dog was gone - I couldn't believe how quickly it happened'. Mr Khanna continued: 'The fox is obviously getting braver. I presume it came into the garden looking for food'.

'My neighbour has a seven-month-old baby and is very worried'.

The Financial Times newspaper said oil major BP had stopped refueling Iranian jets. BP declined to confirm the report but said: "We fully comply with any international sanctions imposed in countries where we operate." Pressure is mounting on Iran over its nuclear program and the United States has stepped up its push to isolate Tehran economically. On Thursday, President Barack Obama signed into law far-reaching sanctions that aim to squeeze the Islamic Republic's fuel imports and deepen its international isolation.

"Since last week, our planes have been refused fuel at airports in Britain, Germany and UAE because of the sanctions imposed by America," Mehdi Aliyari, secretary of the Iranian Airlines Union, told Iran's ISNA news agency. So far national carrier Iran Air and Mahan Airlines had been affected, he said. Washington has not spelled out whether its new sanctions are intended to require firms to refuse to fuel Iranian jets at airports in third countries, but US officials made clear they were pleased with reports sanctions had begun to bite.

"The costs of doing business with Iran, a country that is shirking its international obligations across the board and engaged in illicit activity, are rising," a senior Obama administration official said on Monday. "The international commercial sector is making the right choices. It's now time for Iran to make the right choice - to fulfil its international obligations - that remains our primary objective," the official said.

"When I became the NASA administrator - or before I became the NASA administrator - he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science... and math and engineering," Bolden said in the interview.

The NASA administrator was in the Middle East last month marking the one-year anniversary since Obama delivered an address to Muslim nations in Cairo. Bolden spoke in June at the American University in Cairo - in his interview with Al Jazeera, he described space travel as an international collaboration of which Muslim nations must be a part.

"It is a matter of trying to reach out and get the best of all worlds, if you will, and there is much to be gained by drawing in the contributions that are possible from the Muslim (nations)," he said. He held up the International Space Station as a model, praising the contributions there from the Russians and the Chinese.

There was a "high chance" it will become the second named storm of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season before it makes landfall in the Terrebonne Parish area near Caillou Bay early Monday evening, the Miami-based hurricane center said. Forecasters at the hurricane center were also keeping close watch over an area of disturbed weather in the southeastern Gulf that could strengthen into a tropical depression later this week, potentially hampering oil spill clean-up efforts.

In its latest advisory, the Miami-based hurricane center said the broad area of low pressure, which was moving northwestward at about 15 miles (24 km) per hour had a "medium chance" of becoming a tropical storm over the next 48 hours.

But it said items including weapons and materials that could have a military use would be barred or limited. Hamas, which has been controlling Gaza since 2007, dismissed the concessions as of no use and said the blockade should be fully lifted. Israel says its blockade of the Palestinian territory is needed to prevent the supply of weapons to Hamas.

Israel came under international pressure to ease its four-year blockade of Gaza after nine Turkish activists were killed in a 31 May Israeli raid on a flotilla that was trying to carry aid to the Palestinian territory. The international Middle East envoy, Tony Blair, told the BBC he believed the international outcry which followed that raid persuaded it to accelerate the easing of the Gaza blockade.

"It is true to say that the Israeli government, I think, were moving towards a different policy anyway, but of course what happened has hugely accelerated the idea," he said. The BBC's Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen says that Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu will have plenty to talk about: what comes next in the gathering storm over Iran's nuclear programme; the changing strategic picture in the Middle East, epitomised by Turkey's public falling out with the Israelis; and how to establish a credible peace process with the Palestinians.

"The stock market at this point, which used to be a reflection of the future value of actual businesses in this country, has been turned by our government and our banks into little more than a paper shredding facility [about which] we can make up reasons why it goes up and down," Ratigan said. "But when the computers... at the banks are controlling the action, most everything else is kind of silly."

Ratigan concluded that it's time to create an "alternative investment structure" that would allow people to invest their money without putting it "into the obviously corrupt stock market in this country." Ratigan was referring to the relatively new phenomenon known as high-frequency trading: High-speed computer programs that are able to "peek" at stock trades less than a second before the trades are made. If the computer sees that a trade about to be made will raise the price of a particular stock, it can purchase the stock in the split-second before that trade is made.

Many market observers say this "games" the entire stock market in favor of the large banks that practice high-frequency trading. Indeed, there is evidence that HFT has made the large investment banks much more profitable. As Ratigan mentioned, HFT is estimated to account for 70 percent of all the trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

He expressed deep concerns that previously staunch Catholic countries in Europe and North America were facing "the eclipse of a sense of God". Tens of thousands of worshippers are deserting the Church over issues such as clerical sex abuse and the ban on married priests. "I have decided to create a new body with the aim of promoting a renewed evangelism," in countries that are going through "progressive secularisation of society", the 83-year-old Pope said.

The new department, to be called The Pontifical Council for New Evangelisation, will try to reinvigorate belief among Catholics in rich, developed countries - or, in the pontiff's words, "find the right means to re-propose the perennial truth of the Gospel." It is expected to be led by an Italian archbishop, Rino Fisichella, who as head of the Pontifical Academy for Life is the Vatican's top bioethics official.

Congregations in the West have fallen dramatically and faith in the Church has been hard hit by a series of high-profile scandals involving the sexual abuse of children by paedophile priests.

In Britain there are about six million Catholics - one in ten of the population - but only around a million say they go to Mass every Sunday.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the President of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, said he looked forward to co-operating with the new body. "This initiative identifies a challenge with which many in the Catholic Church, and many in other Christian communities, are familiar," he said.

The Foreign Office will today reveal further details about the trip, which has already encountered difficulties with funding and hostility from campaigners, who plan to protest against the pope, and was the subject of an embarrassing gaffe by civil servants.

The latest problem arises over the pope's historic address at Westminster Hall on 17 September, which is the same date as Yom Kippur, also known as the Day of Atonement, a solemn occasion marked by 25 hours of fasting and prayer. Lady Hayman, Speaker of the House of Lords, is one of a number of people who have pressed for the speech to be brought forward to avoid excluding Jewish luminaries, such as the chief rabbi, from the audience, according to Foreign Office sources.

Sunset is at 6.56 pm that day, so a late afternoon start would still impinge on preparations for the holy day. To some, attendance at Westminster Hall could infer a person was not preparing properly for Yom Kippur.

The Foreign Office has already come under fire for its handling of the papal visit. Last April, it apologised for an internal memo, resulting from a brainstorm among civil servants, which included suggestions the pope could bless a gay marriage or open an abortion clinic. The resulting furore led to the disbanding of the planning team and the appointment of Catholic peer Chris Patten as David Cameron's personal representative to lead arrangements for the visit.

Leading European businessmen claim Beijing has violated its trade treaty commitments to increase protections for its domestic firms. The European Chamber of Commerce in China found that almost 40 per cent of members believed the business climate in the country would worsen in two years.

Jacques de Boisseson, the Chamber's president, said EU businesses in China would "vote with their feet" if Beijing continued to frustrate their operations. He said: "I'm worried about rising protectionism - on both sides - because we see this as a vicious circle. If you start playing that game it is very difficult to control."

"We are trying to say to the Chinese government and the EU authorities, 'Don't give reasons for protectionist sentiment to rise'. The more unfairly you are perceived to be behaving, the more reasons you will give for the other side to retaliate." A row over market access for European-made wind turbines has become a lightening rod for foreign grievances over selective regulations alleged to benefit China's firms over international competitors.

New rules limiting the use of turbines below 1MW effectively cut out all but the biggest Chinese state-owned manufacturers who were the only companies making turbines of the correct size. Despite programmes to increase wind-power generation in China, no international turbine maker has won a concession tender since 2005. The trade issue is to be the subject of a key EU summit in September.

At a meeting to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in May, the United States yielded to demands by Arab nations that the final document urge Israel to sign the treaty - a way of spotlighting its historically undeclared nuclear weapons. Israel believed it had assurances from the Obama administration that it would reject efforts to include such a reference, an Israeli official said, and it saw this as another sign of unreliability by its most important ally.

In a recent visit to Washington, Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, raised the issue in meetings with senior American officials. With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scheduled to meet President Obama on Tuesday at the White House, the flap may introduce a discordant note into a meeting that both sides are eager to portray as a chance for Israel and the United States to turn the page after a rocky period.

In addition to singling out Israel, the document, which has captured relatively little public attention, calls for a regional conference in 2012 to lay the groundwork for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Israel, whose nuclear arsenal is one of the world's worst-kept secrets, would be on the hot seat at such a meeting.

Even though the mural had been in clear view of commuters for nearly nine years, a Caltrans spokesman said it wasn't until last month that someone in the agency asked if the flag was on state property. Spokesman Allyn Amsk said it was covered up Wednesday morning. "We don't allow graffiti on state property," Amsk said Wednesday, the San Jose Mercury News reported. "No matter what kind of graffiti it is, we don't show favoritism."

However, Schwarzenegger issued a statement Friday expressing profound regret. "It has come to my attention that Caltrans has recently removed a patriotic and meaningful flag mural that was painted on the side of Interstate 680 following the tragic events of 9-11," he said. "To do so only days before we celebrate our independence and reflect on the freedoms we are lucky enough to enjoy in America is unconscionable," he added. "I extend my apologies to the artists whose mural inspired drivers along 680 for over eight and a half years."

RJ Waldron, Eric Noda and Thomas Hanley - the three artists who painted the flag at the top of the Sunol Grade - have since received messages of support from across the country, the Mercury News reported. Hanley sought permission from Caltrans officials to repaint the mural and was asked by Bijan Sartipi, the Bay Area director for Caltrans, to come for a meeting to discuss what to do, the Mercury News reported.

Look at a few of today's mainstream headlines: Drought threatens global rice supply in the India Times; VA farmers say heat taking toll on crops, Associated Press; Severe food shortage follows lack of rainfall in Syria; and, finally, Corn prices bolt as USDA downsizes crop estimates, which states that, "Commodity professionals were caught off guard Wednesday by a US Department of Agriculture report showing 1 million fewer acres of corn planted this year than earlier projected, and almost 300 million fewer bushels of corn in storage." And these articles don't begin to address crops being damaged by the toxic rain from the Gulf oil disaster.