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ACTE last year filed a Freedom of Information Act request to press the government for information on what happens to data seized from laptops and other electronic devices. “Is it destroyed right then and there if the person is in fact just a regular business traveler?” Gurley asked. “People are quite concerned. They don’t want proprietary business information floating, not knowing where it has landed or where it is going. It increases the anxiety level.”

Udy has changed all her work passwords and no longer banks online. Her company, Radius, has tightened its data policies so that traveling employees must access company information remotely via an encrypted channel, and their laptops must contain no company information.

At least two major global corporations, one American and one Dutch, have told their executives not to carry confidential business material on laptops on overseas trips, Gurley said. In Canada, one law firm has instructed its lawyers to travel to the United States with “blank laptops” whose hard drives contain no data. “We just access our information through the Internet,” said Lou Brzezinski, a partner at Blaney McMurtry, a major Toronto law firm. That approach also holds risks, but “those are hacking risks as opposed to search risks,” he said.

The blaze had consumed as much as 12.5 million tonnes of coal as it raged unchecked beneath the surface and spewed out more than 70,000 tonnes of toxic gases annually since the 1950s.

Firefighters finally beat the fire by boring into the coal seam and flooding it with water and slurry. They then capped the mine shafts to starve the flames of oxygen. As well as staving off further environmental damage, they have saved more than 651 million tonnes of coal, which will be mined to fuel the Chinese economic and industrial juggernaut.

Miao Pu, head of the firefighting team at the Terak mine in Xinjiang, a sparsely populated, mainly Muslim region in northwestern China that is rich in resources, said: “First, we drilled into the burning coal bed and then poured water and slurry into it to lower the temperature. After the temperature dropped we covered the surface to starve the fire of oxygen.” Officials plan to monitor the coal seam for several years in case the fire reignites.

The smouldering furnace 100 metres (330ft) underground at the second-largest coalfield in Xinjiang had released more than 70,000 tonnes of toxic gases annually since the 1950s. Two years ago firefighters in the area put out a similar fire that had been burning for more than 50 years, but there is much more to do.

Thousands of underground coalmine fires are believed to cover an area of 720sq km (280sq miles) in China. They consume as much as 20 million tonnes of high-quality coal and another 200 million tonnes of coal storage each year.

Damage to the environment is as troubling as the economic losses. Scientists believe that the underground fires may produce as much carbon dioxide as about 1 per cent of the total burnt as fossil fuels, although estimates vary.

Some scientists say that the fires could release as much as 360 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — as much as all the cars and light lorries in the United States.

Judge Marie-Odile Bertella-Geffroy also opened an investigation for manslaughter against Sanofi Pasteur MSD, a joint venture between Sanofi Aventis and Merck, the same source said.

The investigations follow allegations that the companies failed to fully disclose side effects from an anti-hepatitis B drug used in a vaccination campaign between 1994 and 1998.

There was no immediate comment from the companies or the two managers involved.

From 1994 to 1998, almost two thirds of the French population and almost all newborn babies were vaccinated against hepatitis B, but the campaign was suspended after concerns arose about possible secondary effects from the treatments.

“Another useful indicator of the Federal Reserve’s relative monetary policies can be found weekly in the Federal Reserve data. A key statistic is the net free reserves or net borrowed reserves line item. This statistic measures the degree to which depository institutions have found it necessary to obtain funds in the Fed Funds market and through the Fed discount window in order to obtain required reserves.

During periods of central bank credit-tightening operations, the depository sector might find it necessary to borrow funds to meet reserve requirements. This practice results in net borrowed reserves, which shows as a negative number. Conversely, if ample funds are available through the banking system to meet reserve requirements, banks can become net lenders of reserves through the Fed Funds markets.”

“We had decided that money is money and we’ll take it and just do the exchange whenever we can with our bank,” Robert Chu, owner of East Village Wines, told Reuters television.

The increasingly weak U.S. dollar, once considered the king among currencies, has brought waves of European tourists to New York with money to burn and looking to take advantage of hugely favorable exchange rates.

“We didn’t realize we would take so much in and there were that many people traveling or having euros to bring in. But some days, you’d be surprised at how many euros you get,” Chu said.

“Now we have to get familiar with other currencies and the (British) pound and the Canadian dollars we take,” he said.

Homeowners are abandoning their homes and, more importantly, their mortgages, rather than trying to keep up with rising payments on deteriorating assets. So many people are handing their keys back to lenders that a new term has been coined for it: jingle mail.

…

Current lending practices have created an environment where a measure as extreme as abandoning a home actually makes sense to some people.

Many buyers put little or no money down, so they don’t have much invested in them. That leaves them with little incentive to keep making payments when a home’s market value dips below the balance of the mortgage.

The Afghan government claims they prove British agents were talking to the Taliban without permission from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, despite Gordon Brown’s pledge that Britain will not negotiate. The Prime Minister told Parliament on 12 December: “Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating their leaders. We will not enter into any negotiations with these people.”

The British insist President Karzai’s office knew what was going on. But Mr Karzai has expelled two top diplomats amid accusations they were part of a plot to buy-off the insurgents.

The row was the first in a series of spectacular diplomatic spats which has seen Anglo-Afghan relations sink to a new low. Since December, President Karzai has blocked the appointment of Paddy Ashdown to the top UN job in Kabul and he has blamed British troops for losing control of Helmand.

It has also soured relations between Kabul and Washington, where State Department officials were instrumental in pushing Lord Ashdown for the UN role.

President Karzai’s political mentor, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, endorsed a death sentence for blasphemy on the student journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh last week, and two British contractors have been arrested in Kabul on, it is claimed, trumped up weapons charges. The developments are seen as a deliberate defiance of the British.

An Afghan government source said the training camp was part of a British plan to use bands of reconciled Taliban, called Community Defence Volunteers, to fight the remaining insurgents. “The camp would provide military training for 1,800 ordinary Taliban fighters and 200 low-level commanders,” he said.

The computer memory stick at the centre of the row was impounded by officers from Afghanistan’s KGB-trained National Directorate of Security after they moved against a party of international diplomats who were visiting Helmand.

A ministry insider said: “When they were arrested, the British said the Ministry of the Interior and the National Security Council knew about it, but no one knew anything. That’s why the President was so angry.”

Details of how much President Karzai was told remain murky. Some analysts believe Afghan officials were briefed about the plan, but that it later evolved.

The camp was due to be built outside Musa Qala, in Helmand. It was part of a package of reconstruction and development incentives designed to win trust and support in the aftermath of the British-led battle to retake the stronghold last year.

But the Afghans feared the British were training a militia with no loyalty to the central government. Intercepted Taliban communications suggested they thought the British were trying to help them, the Afghan official said.

The Western delegates, Michael Semple and Mervyn Patterson, were given 48 hours to leave the country. Their Afghan colleagues, including a former army general, were jailed. The expulsions coincided with a row within the Taliban’s ranks which saw a senior commander, Mansoor Dadullah, sacked for talking to British spies. One official claimed the camp was planned for Mansoor and his men.

The computer stick contained a three-stage plan, called the European Union Peace Building Programme. The third stage covered military training.

Curiously, the European Union says the programme did not exist and there were no EU funds to run it.

Afghan government officials insist it was bankrolled by the British. UK diplomats, the UN, Western officials and senior Afghan officials have all confirmed the outline of the plan, which they agree is entirely British-led, but all refused to talk about it on the record. President Karzai’s office claimed it was “a matter of national security”.

The memory stick revealed that $125,000 (£64,000) had been spent on preparing the camp and a further $200,000 was earmarked to run it in 2008, an Afghan official said. The figures sparked allegations that British agents were paying the Taliban.

President Karzai’s spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, accused Mr Semple and Mr Patterson of being “involved in some activities that were not their jobs.”

The camp would also have provided vocational training, including farming and irrigation techniques, to offer people a viable alternative to growing opium. But the Afghan government took issue with plans to provide military training, to turn the insurgents into a defence force.

Afghan government staff also claimed the “EU peace-builders” had handed over mobile phones, laptops and airtime credit to insurgents. They said the memory stick revealed plans to train the Taliban to use secure satellite phones, so they could communicate directly with UK officials.

Mr Patterson, a Briton, was the third-ranking UN diplomat when he was held. Mr Semple, an Irishman, was the acting head of the EU mission. Officially, the British embassy remains tight-lipped, fuelling speculation that the plan may have been part of a wider clandestine operation.

A spokesman repeated the line used since Christmas: “The EU and UN have responded to inquiries on this. We have nothing further to add.”

But privately, the UN maintains it had no role in setting up the camp. Meanwhile, Mr Semple’s EU boss, Francesc Vendrell, admitted he had very little idea what was going on.

Yet the British ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, cut short his Christmas holiday to meet President Karzai and “spell out the Foreign Office paper-trail” which diplomats claim proves his government had agreed. They met twice, but it was not enough to stop Mr Semple and Mr Patterson being forced to leave.

Gordon Brown has also said Britain would increase its support for “community defence initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modelled on traditional Afghan arbakai”.

Background to the proposal

* December 11

British and Afghan troops take Musa Qala, a Taliban stronghold in Helmand, after President Hamid Karzai reveals that a senior Taliban commander swapped sides.

* December 23-24

The acting head of the EU mission, Michael Semple, and the third-ranking UN diplomat in Afghanistan, Mervyn Patterson, hold talks with local dignitaries and Taliban sympathisers in Helmand. Afghan secret police arrest their colleague, General Stanikzai, and seize a memory stick containing plans for training camps.

* December 25

Semple and Patterson are given 48 hours in which to leave Kabul.

* December 27

Five nations lowered interest rates last week in step with the Federal Reserve to keep their links to the U.S. currency even as inflation accelerates. When Saudi Arabia left rates unchanged after the Fed’s Sept. 18 reduction, the riyal rose to a 20-year high.

“A lack of action on exchange-rate policy continues to fuel inflation, driving wage demands, which in turn fuel inflation,” a Merrill team including currency strategist Emma Lawson wrote in an e-mailed note today. “Revaluation and a move to a basket could break this vicious cycle.”

Inflation accelerated to records in all six of the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, states last year as the oil-rich nations sought to preserve their dollar links. The regional average was 6.3 percent in 2007, compared with 0.3 percent in 2001, according to Merrill, the world’s largest brokerage.

The Fed cut its target rate for overnight bank lending by 1.25 percentage points in January to prevent the housing slump from pushing the U.S. economy into a recession. The U.S. Dollar Index traded on ICE Futures in New York, which tracks the currency against six major counterparts, dropped 0.7 percent last week to 75.45. It was at 74.48 on Nov. 23, the weakest level since the gauge started in 1973.

“It’s going to be very difficult for central banks in the region to have adequate control of monetary policy, and hence inflation, when the Fed is slashing rates left, right and centre and the dollar is slumping,” Steven Barrow, chief currency strategist in London at Bears Stearns, the fifth-largest U.S. securities firm, wrote in a client note yesterday.

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Speculation of a Gulf-wide revaluation is rising before a meeting between Saudi Arabia’s advisory council, the Shura, the finance ministry and the central bank, according to Barrow, who said the largest Arab economy is blocking other states from dropping their dollar pegs. The meeting will be held on Feb. 17, Arab News reported.

“The authorities do not have to act on recommendations from the council and, of course, the council might not even recommend any currency change,” Barrow wrote.

Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Qatar and Bahrain cut their benchmark rates for deposits by half a percentage point to 3 percent on Jan. 31, while Kuwait lowered its repo rate by the same amount to 3.5 percent. Oman cut its repo rate 0.18 percentage point to 4.14 percent today, Dow Jones reported.

“Central banks can take other measures to try to limit the damage, such as raising reserve requirements, but we are skeptical that this works and we are also concerned that such tactics can adversely affect the banking sector,” Barrow said.

These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria.