Fu Ying also said that a young Chinese woman asked her: "Where is the gentlemanship?" after the protests during the Olympic torch run in London. Many of the visitors from China who were in London last week felt that Britain was against them, she added. Ms Fu said in the Sunday Telegraph that Tibet is "loved" by the Chinese. The ambassador wrote: "I am concerned that mutual perceptions between the people of China and the West are quickly drifting in opposite directions."

"Of those who protested loudly, many probably have not seen Tibet. For the Chinese people, Tibet is a loved land and information about it is ample. There may be complicated problems of religion mixing with politics, but people are well-fed, well-clothed and well-housed. That has been the main objective of China for centuries. Tibet may not grow into an industrial place like the eastern cities in China, but it will move on like other parts of China."

According to BBC political correspondent, Laura Kuenssberg, officials from the British Foreign Office suggest that one way to settle disputes about biased reporting would be for China to allow the international press free access to Tibet. But Ms Fu says that Western media has to earn China's "respect".

Hu's comments to visiting Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd marked his first public comments on anti-government protests that broke out in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa last month. "Our conflict with the Dalai clique is not an ethnic problem, not a religious problem, nor a human rights problem," the official Xinhua News Agency quoted Hu as saying, referring to supporters of Tibet's exiled Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, who Beijing blames for fomenting the unrest.

"It is a problem either to safeguard national unification or to split the motherland," Hu told Rudd at a meeting on the sidelines of a regional economic forum in China's southern province of Hainan. As Tibet's former Communist Party boss, Hu enforced a harsh crackdown against the last major anti-government protests there in 1989 and has tightened Chinese rule over the Himalayan region since taking over as president in 2003.

Under Hu, the party has increased controls over Tibetan Buddhism and increasingly opened the region to travel and migration from other parts of China. Hu's remarks come a day after China ratcheted up its attacks on overseas critics, blasting a US congressional resolution on Tibet as "crude interference" and labeling a leading Tibetan exile group a terrorist organization.

The supermarket chain's partnership with Dunnhumby, the market research specialist, is being rolled out to nine countries where Tesco operates, including Thailand, South Korea and China but not, as yet, the United States. Dunnhumby has worked with Tesco in the UK since Clubcard was introduced in 1995. Analysts claim that its vast database of shopping preferences has been one of the supermarket's biggest competitive advantages over the past decade.

Every day Dunnhumby crunches data taken from Tesco's tills to generate a picture of what its 13.5 million Clubcard holders are buying and why they may be switching products. Discount coupons and promotions are targeted at individuals based on extensive records of their past purchases.

The new agreement is almost certain to spark yet more controversy over Tesco's power. It already claims nearly £1 of every £7 spent on the high street and is set to report pretax profits of nearly £3 billion on Tuesday. It will now have the potential to map every tendency of a customer base equal in size to the population of the United Kingdom. Dunnhumby, which is majority owned by Tesco, generates most of its revenue by selling on the data in an anonymous form to some of the world's biggest companies, such as Coca-Cola and Unilever, to help them to devise marketing campaigns.

"I don't see any chance of us being able to implement an agreement in the near term," the Prime Minister said, addressing a pre-Passover holiday toast at Kadima party headquarters in Petach Tikva. Prime Minister Olmert angrily dismissed criticism that he and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni are compromising on Jerusalem.

"We will insist on all the terms of the Road Map, first and foremost among them a cessation of terrorism, as a precondition for implementation of any understanding. But the first step creating a horizon of hope for us and for the Palestinians can be taken, it must be taken, and we will make every effort in order to successfully do so this year."

The Prime Minister promised that "the response to Hamas will be such that it will be unable to act against the citizens of Israel as it currently is." Olmert concluded his pre-Passover remarks to his party loyalists by saying, "Ahead of the 60th Independence Day, we can stand tall and tell ourselves: we have a wondrous country, we have achievements, we have power, we have security - and with them we will march forward."

Ambrose Evans Pritchard has a comment piece in the Telegraph discussing the refusal of the ECB to cut interest rates yesterday. Jean-Claude Trichet, the ECB's President, claimed that Europe remains insulated from the unfolding slump in the US and would stick to its sole duty of combating inflation, now at a record 3.5pc. However, the ECB is at odds with the conclusions of the IMF, which urged a rate cut. Evans Pritchard notes that "house prices are more overvalued in Ireland (32pc), Holland (29pc), France (22pc), Belgium (18pc), Spain (17pc), and Italy (12.4pc), than in the United States (12pc), and may be subject to a nasty correction". Irish house prices fell 7.3pc last year.

Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas, said the ECB had its head in the sand. "They are not looking at the tidal wave that is about to roll straight over them. Balance-sheet stress in Europe is just as bad as it is in the US. The reporting periods are different, so the bad news has not yet come out," he said. The head of Italy's business federation, Emma Marcegaglia, said the soaring euro was having "a very negative effect on our economy. The ECB should be cutting rates," she said. Meanwhile, deficits have reached 12.5pc of GDP in Greece, and 9.2pc in Spain.

The EU's own scientific advisers yesterday joined the chorus of institutions calling for the EU's target for biofuel use to be scrapped. The European Environment Agency said yesterday that the target would be impossible to achieve without harming the environment and contributing to rainforest destruction.

Meanwhile Robert Zoellick, the World Bank's President said: "In the US and Europe over the last year we have been focusing on the prices of gasoline at the pumps. While many worry about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs. And it's getting more and more difficult every day." Zoellick said the price of wheat had risen by 120% in the past year, more than doubling the cost of a loaf of bread.

It has been suggested that the President should be given his own plane, 'White House' style residence and a large personal staff. The article quotes Open Europe saying, "EU politicians claim that the Lisbon Treaty will make the EU more transparent and accessible to voters, but this latest example of secretive horse-trading shows that if it ever does come into force it will be business as usual in Brussels."

Economic confidence indicators, as well as other recent data, have pointed to "startling differences" in performance across the 15-country eurozone.

The article notes that the trend is reviving arguments over the suitability of the "one size fits all" monetary policy of the eurozone. Spain is facing a "serious house price correction" and rising unemployment. A separate article discusses the situation in this country, where the "sudden collapse" in construction activity is prompting banks to sharply rein in credit. Meanwhile, external balances of eurozone members also expose "widening divergences": Germany has an 8% GDP current account surplus; Spain has a 10% deficit.

The CBI has estimated that the Directive, if passed, would cost the UK 250,000 jobs. According to the article, defeat for the UK has been looking increasingly likely since last autumn. The Government is holding secret talks with the European Commission this week. Gordon Brown is trying to persuade the EU to allow the UK to "apply the Directive flexibly".

However, it is far from clear that British trade unions would agree to such a plan if it has the effect of mitigating the cost to Britain of the Directive. The unions argue that the Government is already effectively defeated on the Directive, so they would have no incentive to sign up to Brown's proposed forum negotiation, the intention of which would almost certainly be to lessen the impact of the Directive.

France is likely to push for the Directive to be passed during its EU Presidency, which begins in July. The article notes that Paris has for a long time been "hostile to British foot-dragging on EU social legislation."

"They ratcheted up the currency rhetoric a notch or so," said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. in New York. "THEY'RE TRYING TO BUY SOME TIME FOR THE DOLLAR." Composed of the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, Italy, the U.K. and Canada, the G-7 oversees two-thirds of the world economy.

"THEY'RE TRYING TO DISCREETLY THROW A LIFELINE TO THE DOLLAR," said Sophia Drossos, a currency strategist at Morgan Stanley in New York, who used to help manage the Federal Reserve's foreign-exchange holdings. "HAD THEY NOT SAID ANYTHING, THE DOLLAR WOULD HAVE RESUMED ITS SELL-OFF. THIS ACKNOWLEDGES THERE HAS BEEN INCREASED VOLATILITY." The G-7 may fail to reverse the dollar's slump because there's no sign it's willing to intervene and the U.S. economy is weaker than its counterparts, said Samarjit Shankar, director of global strategy for the foreign exchange group at Bank of New York Mellon in Boston.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's government recently stepped up complaints that the euro's appreciation against the dollar is pushing France-based companies, including planemaker European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co., to cut jobs at home and relocate some activities abroad.

Ms Smith is facing a Labour rebellion over plans to extend the time suspects can be held without charge to 42 days. In the News of the World interview, Ms Smith said security services were investigating up to 30 terror plots. She said: "We now face a threat level that is severe. It's not getting any less, it's actually growing."

"There are 2,000 individuals they are monitoring. There are 200 networks. There are 30 active plots. That has increased over the past two years. Since the beginning of 2007, 57 people have been convicted on terrorist plots. Nearly half of those pleaded guilty so this is not some figment of the imagination. It is a real risk and a real issue we need to respond to."

"We can't wait for an attack to succeed and then rush in new powers. We've got to stay ahead." Under the proposals the home secretary would be able to immediately extend the detention limit of a suspect to 42 days, so long as it was supported by a joint report by a chief constable and the director of public prosecutions.

Sixteen of 17 senators who attended a special session of the chamber voted against Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, a Preval ally inaugurated in June 2006 as head of a coalition Cabinet meant to unite the fractious nation.

The move by opposition senators was seen as a serious but not crushing blow to Preval, whose 2006 election brought a measure of calm to the poorest country in the Americas as it searched for political stability after decades of dictatorship, military rule and economic mayhem. The quest for a permanent peace has been derailed in the past 10 days by riots over the rising cost of living.

Sen. Youri Latortue, a nephew of a former prime minister and leader of the vote against Alexis, said the ousted prime minister had failed to ramp up national food production, failed to protect people against crime and failed to heed calls to establish a new national security force.

In the jingoistic triumphalism of the late 19th century, when waving the Union Jack was a simple pleasure, people sang: "Rule Britannia! BRITANNIA, RULE THE WAVES" without any irony. IT WAS A STATEMENT OF FACT. A quarter of mankind lived under the British flag in the largest empire the world had ever known. And many of those parts that weren't under Britain's rule - such as the U.S. - had been created by Britain.

Britain was the workshop of the world, dominating science, manufacturing and trade. To many Victorians, unquestioning of the ideology that underpinned much imperialism, British supremacy was a simple matter of racial supremacy - Europeans, and the English in particular, were fated to be the masters. THE TRUTH IS THAT WE ARE MASTERS OF THE WORLD NO MORE. The global power shift from the West to the East is no longer just a matter of debate confined to learned journals and newspaper columns - IT IS A REALITY THAT IS BEGINNING TO HAVE A HUGE IMPACT ON OUR DAILY LIVES.

What would those Victorian masters of old have made of the fact that Chinese security men were on the streets of London this week, ordering our own police about and fighting running battles with British protesters while bewildered athletes carried the Olympic torch on its relay through the capital? It was a brazen display of how confident China has become of its new place in the world, JUST AS THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT'S FAILURE TO TAKE A FIRM STAND ON CHINESE ABUSES OF HUMAN RIGHTS SHOWS HOW CRAVEN WE HAVE BECOME.

Napoleon III compared China to a sleeping giant and warned: "WHEN CHINA AWAKES, SHE WILL SHAKE THE WORLD." After a long hibernation, China, and her 1.3 billion people - twice the population of the U.S. and EU combined - is awaking almost overnight. AND NOT JUST CHINA. THE WORLD'S SECOND MOST POPULOUS COUNTRY, INDIA, IS INDUSTRIALISING AT A HISTORICALLY UNPRECEDENTED PACE.

WESTERN ATTITUDES will change as well, WITH A LIKELY SHIFT TO THE POLITICAL RIGHT. White liberal guilt, the driving force behind political correctness, will subside as Westerners feel threatened by the global order changing, and their supremacy slipping away. ANTI-AMERICANISM WILL DISAPPEAR as Europeans realise how much better it was to have a world super power that was a democracy (however flawed) not a dictatorship.

R K Krishna Kumar, a senior Tata executive, thundered that "Indian companies ... will take their rightful place in the international arena. Enterprises and individuals must recognise and adapt to these fundamental economic changes. We believe that those with a fossilised frame of mind risk being marginalised." In a world in which we are no longer masters, it is a warning that we ignore at our peril.

Organisers of the event say that the Arrows military background might be "offensive" to other countries taking part in the Games. The display team have performed at more than 4000 events worldwide, but the Department of Culture, Media and Sport have deemed the display team "too militaristically British".

HOW EVER - HERE IS THE COMMENT FROM THE OFFICIAL RAF WEBSITE:-

Don't believe everything you read in the newspapers!

"There has been a lot of speculation recently both in the media and online regarding whether we have been banned from displaying at the 2012 Olympics, and we are getting an increasingly large amount of enquiries from people wondering whether or not to sign online petitions. We are very happy to tell you that the story is complete rubbish!

It's far too early for either us or the organising committee of London 2012 to discuss any participation by the Red Arrows in the celebrations. We plan our display season one year in advance and so we're currently busy trying to organise our 2008 display season. We would like to thank everyone for their support - but hope that the truth behind this story will put everyone's concerns to rest."

The "violent terrorist gang" was based in the western Xinjiang region and headed by a man identified as Abdulrahman Tuersun, Public Security Ministry spokesman Wu Heping said at a news conference. Wu said 35 people, including Tuersun and another man, Kuerban Mutalifu, were arrested between March 26 and April 6 for plotting to kidnap athletes, foreign journalists and other visitors to August's Olympics. Sections of Xinjiang's Muslim Turkic Uighur ethnic group have staged a struggle for a breakaway state.

"They wanted to make a global impact to sabotage the Beijing Olympics," Wu said, adding: "We face a real terrorist threat." Wu urged residents to raise their alertness and contact police about suspicious people or incidents.

China has tried to portray the insurgency in Xinjiang as linked to terrorist organizations in Central Asia and the Middle East. EVIDENCE HAS OFTEN BEEN SCANT, THOUGH, AND SOME TERROR EXPERTS AND OVERSEAS LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS HAVE QUESTIONED WHETHER SUCH TIES EXIST.