There are fears that the 3,988-tonne ship, carrying about £1 million worth of sawn timber from Finland to Algeria, was under the control of pirates when contact was made with the British Coastguards. It would be the first time a ship in the Channel has been taken hostage in modern times.

Mark Clark, of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), said Dover Coastguard did not suspect anything untoward as a supposed crew member made radio contact before the ship made its passage along the Channel. The person on board the vessel told the Coastguard the ship was due to arrive in Bejaia in northern Algeria on August 4 at 11pm - a mandatory process for any ship wanting to enter British waters. There were reports that the Russian navy is to deploy vessels to help locate the missing ship. Mr Clark said: "The ship contacted Dover Coastguard on July 28 and that was the last time anyone has heard from them."

Mr Clark said: "It's bizarre. There is no Coastguard I know who can remember anything like this happening." Mr Clark said an innocent explanation was looking highly unlikely and he added: "We are extremely curious to find out what could have happened to this vessel."

The exercises will send 50,000 armored troops - the People's Liberation Army's "largest-ever tactical military exercise" - to unfamiliar areas far from their bases for two months of live-fire drills, state media reported. The exercises involve four brigades from the major military regions of Shenyang, Lanzhou, Jinan and Guangzhou, which all will be deployed at least 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) from their bases, the reports said. Such deployments would be needed to reinforce units in Tibet and Xinjiang, where security forces have battled renewed ethnic conflict and anti-government violence over the past two years.

China also continues to claim territory along its remote border with India over which the two fought a short but bloody border war more than 45 years ago. Its navy, meanwhile, has grown increasingly assertive in defending territorial claims in the South China Sea. "IN THE UNPRECEDENTED EXERCISE, ONE OF THE PLA'S MAJOR OBJECTIVES WILL BE TO IMPROVE ITS CAPACITY OF LONG-RANGE PROJECTION," the official Xinhua News Agency said. It said the war games constituted the army's "largest-ever tactical military exercise," although numbers of troops involved were relatively small.

THE 2.3 MILLION-MEMBER PLA IS THE WORLD'S LARGEST STANDING MILITARY. The PLA has undergone a rapid upgrade in recent years in both equipment and doctrine. At the same time, training and tactics have been redesigned to take advantage of information technology and China's much-improved economy and infrastructure.

The stress of a poor economy and a liberal administration led by a black president are among the causes for the recent rise, the report from the Southern Poverty Law Center says. Conspiracy theories about a secret Mexican plan to reclaim the Southwest are also growing amid the public debate about illegal immigration.

Bart McEntire, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told SPLC researchers that this is the most growth he's seen in more than a decade. "ALL IT'S LACKING IS A SPARK," McEntire said in the report.

Analysts say she will take a tough line on corruption and electoral reform. Last month, US President Barack Obama skipped Nigeria on his first official Africa trip, in what was seen as a snub for its record on governance.

"NIGERIA IS UNDOUBTEDLY THE MOST IMPORTANT COUNTRY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA," Assistant US Secretary of State for African Affairs, Johnnie Carson, was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency, en route to the Nigerian capital Abuja. But Mr Carson said it had also been described as "THE MOST CORRUPT STATE IN AFRICA".

UK farmers have warned that unless they can feed their pigs and poultry on GM soya and maize varieties being grown in North and South America - but which are currently unlicensed for use in Europe - they may be forced to leave the industry. The article notes that GM crop producers in the Americas have begun exporting to China and India rather than the EU. The issue is expected to be on the EU agenda in the autumn.

A leader in the Telegraph argues, "Farmers are overwhelmed with regulation and red tape, most, it is true, the result of our membership of the [EU's] Common Agricultural Policy, which has been instrumental in embedding inefficiencies in Continental farming and impoverishing many producers in the developing world through the dumping of surpluses."

An official report also disclosed that hundreds of errors had been made in these "interception" operations, with the wrong phone numbers or emails being monitored. The figures will fuel concerns over the use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act by public bodies. The Act gives authorities – including councils, the police and intelligence agencies – the power to request access to confidential communications data, including lists of telephone numbers dialled and email addresses to which messages have been sent.

COUNCILS HAVE BEEN ACCUSED OF USING THE POWERS, which were originally intended to tackle terrorism and organised crime, FOR TRIVIAL MATTERS SUCH AS LITTERING AND DOG FOULING. Only last month, it emerged that councils and other official bodies had used hidden tracking devices to spy on members of the public.

Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "It cannot be a justified response to the problems we face in this country that the state is spying on half a million people a year. WE HAVE SLEEPWALKED INTO A SURVEILLANCE STATE BUT WITHOUT ADEQUATE SAFEGUARDS."

Foreign Minister Lieberman greeted the Democrats with a stinging condemnation of the Palestinian Authority and the Fatah convention, which is to conclude Monday in Bethlehem. The Arabs "are effectively burying the possibility of reaching an agreement in the coming years," he said. "The extreme and uncompromising stand of Arabs in Jerusalem, the 'right of return' and the Jewish population centres [in Judea and Samaria] HAS CREATED A GAP BETWEEN THEM AND ISRAEL THAT CANNOT BE BRIDGED."

He added that PA leaders do not represent Arabs and instead speak for "Hamastan in Gaza and Fatah-land in Judea and Samaria." The Foreign Minister warned the Democrats that AN ATTEMPT TO FORCE AN AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE PA AND ISRAEL WITHIN A SPECIFIC TIME FRAME, as President Obama has suggested, IS "DOOMED TO FAILURE."

His comments followed by several hours of strong statements by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud) and Shas leader and Interior Minister Eli Yishai, both of whom implicitly said that THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION POLICY FLIES IN THE FACE OF REALITY and previous understandings between Israel and the US.

Speaking with Hizbullah's TV station Al-Manar on Monday night, the organization's deputy chief Naim Kassem ruled out the possibility of Israel launching a war against Lebanon. He said, "because neither Americans nor Israelis can predict the outcome or developments in such a conflict they are unwilling to wage a war at this time." The same Israeli and American concern, Kassem claimed, holds true for a military strike against Iran's nuclear program. However, in the latter case, he continued, Israel is willing to attack, but the United States is vetoing any action.

Regardless of his analysis, Kassem emphasized that Hizbullah is on alert and is well prepared for a confrontation with Israel. Referring to the 2006 Second Lebanon War between Israel and Hizbullah, the senior Hizbullah leader said, "WE WILL BE RESOLUTE AND ISRAELIS SHOULD MAKE ACCURATE CALCULATIONS, BECAUSE THE NEXT WAR WILL BE MORE INTENSE AND THE RESISTANCE WILL BE MORE VIOLENT IN ITS RETALIATION."

In the meantime, Kassem claimed, Hizbullah is "remaining calm" and abiding by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which brought an end to the 2006 war. Resolution 1701 initiated an arms control regime for southern Lebanon and installed UN forces there. Kassem added that Hizbullah's supreme leader, Hassan Nasrallah, will discuss the situation on the Israeli border in an address on August 14, 2009.

The Andromeda towers almost 40 meters (131 feet) above Hamburg's Burchard wharf, as countless feeder ships and container stacking vehicles bustle around it like insects around a bored elephant. Shipyard CMA CGN's new flagship container ship, one of the world's largest, boasts a 100,000 horsepower engine, can carry 11,400 containers, is 363 meters long and was delivered from South Korea only a few months ago - at a price of $160 million (€111 million).

The Andromeda was built for an economic boom that never seemed to end, at a time when more and more containers, bigger ships and ever-growing port facilities were needed. With each passing minute, lift bridges hoist containers from the quay wall onto the deck of the 100,000-ton behemoth. When fully loaded, the vessel has space for containers arranged up to 18 wide, 86 long and 19 tall. In the end, the Andromeda is loaded to about two-thirds capacity. "That's not bad," says Captain Ivan Bozanic. "At least nowadays."

Year after year, new and ever more massive ships were built, ports were expanded and new scheduled services introduced. The cargo capacity of the world's combined container fleet increased from 4 million TEUs in 2000 to 12.5 million today. The industry, once one of the biggest beneficiaries of globalization, now threatens to turn into one of its chief casualties.

"THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A CRISIS LIKE THIS BEFORE," says Reinhard Lange, the CEO of Kühne & Nagel, the world's largest sea-freight forwarder. Shipping line operators alone are expected to suffer combined losses of $20 billion in 2009. Drewry Shipping Consultants, the world's top consultant to the industry, warns: "THE INDUSTRY IS LOOKING AT THE EDGE OF A DEEP ABYSS." And industry publication Lloyds List writes: "Container shipping was thrown into a full-scale panic." This sense of panic is more palpable in Hamburg than almost anywhere else in the world.

In its latest assessment of the $700 billion financial system bailout, the Congressional Oversight Panel warns that banks still hold many risky loans of uncertain value. If unemployment rises sharply or the COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE MARKET COLLAPSES - as many economists fear - the banking system could again lose its footing, the panel says in a report to be released Tuesday.

"The financial system (remains) vulnerable to the crisis conditions that (the bailout) was meant to fix," the panel wrote in a draft copy of Tuesday's report. The Congressional Oversight Panel was created as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. It is designed to provide an additional layer of oversight, beyond the Special Inspector General for the TARP and regular audits by the Government Accountability Office.

The commercial real estate market's fortunes are tied closely to the economy, especially unemployment, which registered 9.4 percent last month. As people lose their jobs, or have their hours reduced, they cut back on spending, which hurts retailers, and take fewer trips, affecting hotels. Ten months into the federal rescue program, the troubled assets "remain a substantial danger to the financial system," the report says. "FINANCIAL STABILITY REMAINS AT RISK IF THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM OF TOXIC ASSETS REMAINS UNRESOLVED."

The incidents, tracked by Shaun Gregory, a professor at Bradford University in UK, include an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on November 1, 2007, an attack on Pakistan's nuclear airbase at Kamra by a suicide bomber on December 10, 2007, and perhaps most significantly the August 20, 2008 attack when Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers BLEW UP SEVERAL ENTRY POINTS TO ONE OF THE ARMAMENT COMPLEXES at the Wah cantonment, considered ONE OF PAKISTAN'S MAIN NUCLEAR WEAPONS ASSEMBLY PLANTS. These attacks have occurred even as Pakistan has taken several steps to secure and fortify its nuclear weapons against potential attacks, particularly by the United States and India, says Gregory.

In fact, THE ATTACKS HAVE RECEIVED SO LITTLE ATTENTION that Peter Bergen, the eminent terrorism expert who reviewed Gregory's paper first published in West Point's Counter Terrorism Center Sentinel, said "he (Gregory) points out something that was news to me (and shouldn't have been) which is that a series of attacks on Pakistan's nuclear weapons facilities have already happened."

Pakistan insists that its nuclear weapons are fully secured and there is no chance of them falling into the hands of the extremists or terrorists. But Gregory, while detailing the steps Islamabad has taken to protect them against Indian and US attacks, asks if the geographical location of Pakistan's principle nuclear weapons infrastructure, which is mainly in areas dominated by al-Qaida and Taliban, makes it more vulnerable to internal attacks.

MR BROWN was famously described as "PSYCHOLOGICALLY FLAWED" by the Blairites. To the Brownites, Mr BLAIR WAS OUT OF CONTROL, MESSIANIC AND MAD WITH POWER. When the Tories lost power in 1997, MPs said the experience was like having a "collective nervous breakdown". LORD MANDELSON BELIEVES THAT MOST POLITICIANS HAVE PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES. "I've never met a perfect politician, including the one who's talking to you," he told me in an interview recently. "I've come through my catharsis and emerged a more relaxed, less spiky, less insular individual."

History seems to indicate that he is right. WINSTON CHURCHILL WAS PLAGUED BY THE "BLACK DOG" OF DEPRESSION AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN SUFFERED FROM VIOLENT MOOD SWINGS — "I may seem to enjoy life rapturously when I am in company. But when I am alone I am so often overcome by mental depression that I dare not carry a penknife," he once wrote. They must also develop what is, in effect, a split personality, combining unstinting loyalty to their party with a ruthless ability to stab colleagues in the back. They must be as narcissistic as a Hollywood actor and as selfless as a parish priest, compulsive risk-takers and obsessively careful about staying "on message".

There is a case that being involved in politics can damage mental wellbeing. In his book In Sickness and in Power, Dr Owen argues that the sense of being "intoxicated" by power may actually change how the brain works. "It has been observed for centuries that something happens to some people's mental stability when in power... POWER IS A HEADY DRUG WHICH NOT EVERY POLITICAL LEADER HAS THE NECESSARY ROOTED CHARACTER TO COUNTERACT." So politicians are not mad, nor are they bad, but we — and they — should remain alert to their psychological flaws.

In 2001, when EU leaders gathered in Laeken, Belgium, to plan their next great leap forward to European integration – the ill-fated EU constitution – they also agreed on what they saw as another bold symbol of their wish to see Europe politically and legally united: THE EUROPEAN ARREST WARRANT. Fired by the recent 9/11 outrage, they agreed that the courts of any country could call on those of another to order the automatic extradition of anyone suspected of offences under 32 headings, with such crimes as terrorism, drug-running and "xenophobia" high on their list.

Even then, FEARS WERE EXPRESSED THAT SUCH A SUMMARY SHORTCUTTING OF NORMAL LEGAL PROCEDURES MIGHT LEAD TO SERIOUS INJUSTICES. Not all of the EU's judicial systems (to put it mildly) rest on the same ideas of justice. But even those most worried about the dangers of this system could scarcely have imagined a case like that involving the extradition to Greece of a 20-year old British student, Andrew Symeou.

In light of the evidence of alleged misconduct by the Greek police and other suspicious features of the case, a legal battle ensued. Mr Symeou's case was taken up by various bodies including Fair Trials International, Liberty, Open Europe and the UK Independence Party. (Politicians of the three main parties pointedly refused to get involved.) In June this year, two High Court judges proposed that the case should go to the House of Lords because it raised legal issues of "public importance". But the Law Lords refused to hear it because it did not raise "an arguable point of law of general public importance".

Little could Tony Blair and his fellow European leaders have imagined in 2001, when they blithely agreed to strike a blow against terrorism by agreeing to the Arrest Warrant, that this was what it would come down to in practice. ALL TRADITIONAL BRITISH BELIEFS IN PROTECTING THE LIBERTIES OF THE SUBJECT HAVE BEEN THROWN OUT OF THE WINDOW. MR BLAIR – and all those other politicians who acclaimed the Arrest Warrant and have refused to comment on Mr Symeou's case – CAN REALLY BE PROUD OF WHAT THEY HAVE DONE.

The article notes that the Commission is "increasingly looking like a political lobby group with its own agenda" and that EU communication officials have admitted in internal documents that "FACTUAL INFORMATION ISN'T ENOUGH".

The article cites the Commission's attempt to blame "EURO-SCEPTIC BRITISH PAPERS" for the Irish No vote, and the press release from Wallstrom's office to the Swedish media which wrongly claimed that the think-tank campaigns for the UK to withdraw from the EU. The article concludes that "None of these examples can be seen as attempts to inform the general public about EU affairs... instead of contributing to a diversified debate, THE COMMISSION IS INSTEAD STIFLING THE DEBATE. THIS DOES NOT FARE WELL FOR THE DEMOCRACY IN THE EU."

Over 100 students and volunteers from Israel and abroad are taking part in the dig, which is a joint project of Tel Aviv University's Archaeological Institute and Heidelberg University in Germany. Prominent among the findings unearthed at the site are a tremendous amount of imprinted pitcher handles. Researchers assume that jugs of oil and wine, as well as other agricultural produce, were amassed here as taxes to be given to foreign rulers.

The administrative centre at what is now Ramat Rachel included a complex of palace buildings that was active from the reign of King Menashe through that of King Zedekiah, at the end of the First Temple period, and for at least 200 years after the return to Zion and through the Hellenistic period. During the Hasmonean period, however, the site was razed to the ground – and atop it was built a Jewish village, from which remain many ritual baths situated in private homes, caves used for raising pigeons, and more.

The Jewish village lasted until at least the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in the year 68, when the Romans took it over. A church was built there under the Byzantines, but the site was later to remain desolate for nearly 1,000 years – until the construction of Kibbutz Ramat Rachel by modern-day Zionist Jews. The Israel Antiquities Authorities estimates that there are one million archaeological artefacts on display in Israel at present.