Anglo will invest $400 million (£200 million) to build a platinum mine in Zimbabwe - a move that has raised concern among some of the company's shareholders and been condemned by politicians. The Foreign Office was investigating tonight whether the company's investment breached sanctions against Zimbabwe. Anglo insisted that its involvement in the country did not break the law.

The decision, which was criticised roundly as likely to give succour - and possibly money - to the Mugabe regime, is in stark contrast to the policy of nearly all other main British corporations in Zimbabwe. They are either withdrawing from the country or waiting for Mr Mugabe to be deposed before expanding their businesses.

The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed the declining importance of the church was creating a "double jeopardy" situation where faith was being challenged at a time when society would most benefit. He said believers needed to "recover their nerve" and spread the Gospel again. The outspoken bishop, who earlier this week told those who tolerate homosexuality in the clergy to repent, also said he was "frustrated" that decisions which had been made in the church had not been stuck to.

Dr Nazir-Ali was greeted with a standing ovation as he gave a speech to A BREAKAWAY SUMMIT IN JERUSALEM OF MORE THAN 1,000 TRADITIONALISTS FROM ACROSS THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION who oppose gay priests and the blessing of same-sex unions. He did not say that divisions over sexuality would lead to a schism in Anglicanism, and referred to unity being a "very precious thing".

THE PAKISTAN-BORN BISHOP REPEATED HIS CLAIM THAT THE CHURCH BEGAN ITS DECLINE IN INFLUENCE WHEN PARENTS STOPPED PASSING THE FAITH ON TO THEIR CHILDREN. "DON'T BLAME ANYONE ELSE," he said. Dr Nazir-Ali added, returning to the theme of parents not passing on religion to their children: "Many of society's problems particularly in young people are related to the fact that so many have not experienced a stable family life. So many have grown up without a recognisable father figure."

THE TWO WARS HAVE LEFT THE FORCES "STRETCHED BEYOND THE CAPABILITIES WE HAVE," Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup said. It is the first time the most senior officer in the British military has expressed such grave doubts about the struggle faced by troops fighting wars on two fronts. There are 4,000 British troops in Iraq and numbers in Afghanistan will soon exceed 8,000.

Ten British service personnel have been killed in Afghanistan in little over two weeks, fuelling fears that the UK has been sucked into a long and unwinnable struggle in the country. Sir Jock admitted that Britain could face decades more involvement in Afghanistan, which he called a "mediaeval" state lacking even basic government structures. Labour ministers have repeatedly denied suggestions that the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left the Forces overstretched, and opposition MPs said Sir Jock's candid remarks have made that position untenable.

Sir Jock was speaking after being asked why, after seven years in Afghanistan and five in Iraq, British forces still do not have enough helicopters.

Israel condemned the attack as a "gross violation" of the truce, but did not say whether it would retaliate. The barrage wounded two people and capped a day of violence that presented the truce with its first serious test. Just before midnight, Palestinian militants fired a mortar shell into an empty area in southern Israel. And in a pre-dawn raid, Israeli troops killed two Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus.

Islamic Jihad, a small armed group backed by Syria and Iran, claimed responsibility for the rocket fire. Although the West Bank is not included in the truce, the group said the Nablus raid had soured the atmosphere of calm. "We cannot keep our hands tied when this is happening to our brothers in the West Bank," the militant group said.

The Egyptian-brokered truce went into effect Thursday. The immediate aim was to end fighting that has killed seven Israelis and more than 400 Palestinians - many of them civilians - since Hamas gained control of Gaza a year ago. It also obliges Israel to ease a punishing blockade of the coastal strip. In a final stage, the sides are to address Hamas' demand to reopen a major border passage between Gaza and Egypt and Israel's insistence that Hamas release an Israeli soldier it has held for two years. The cease-fire is meant to avert an Israeli invasion of Gaza, a tiny, impoverished seaside territory of 1.4 million people that Israel evacuated in 2005 after a 38-year military occupation.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei spoke on Al-Arabiya television on June 20, discussing Iran's nuclear program, and the potential for the Middle Eastern country to produce a nuclear weapon. "If Iran wants to turn to the production of nuclear weapons, it must leave the NPT, expel the IAEA inspectors, and then it would need at least, considering the number of centrifuges and the quantity of uranium Iran has? it would need at least six months to one year," ElBaradei said.

"Therefore, Iran will not be able to reach the point where we would wake up one morning to an Iran with a nuclear weapon," he said. His interviewer then asked "If Iran decides today to expel the IAEA from the country, it will need six months to produce [nuclear] weapons?" The IAEA chief answered, "It would need this period to produce a weapon, and to obtain highly-enriched uranium in sufficient quantities for a single nuclear weapon."

"Whether it is anecdotal or statistical evidence, I SEE INFLATION EVERYWHERE, and this is where the financial tsunami cometh," Sedacca wrote in a report published yesterday. "A battered, over-indebted consumer, if forced to retrench, could create even more problems for the banking system as loan delinquencies would begin to rise even further. All sorts of delinquencies are rising. This is now a systemic issue."

Sedacca wrote that current financial-market conditions remind him of - "someone standing on a lonely beach, armed with only a small bucket, trying to stop a rare tsunami that hits the shores. It is how I feel about our markets and the tools being utilized by the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and other regulatory bodies. They are overmatched for what they are facing and, worse yet, THEY HELPED CREATE THE MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE by being far too easy with money and debt creation."

In a statement on its Web site Tuesday, the Kuwait Investment Authority said it agreed to invest $3 billion in Citigroup's $12.5 billion offering and $2 billion in Merrill Lynch's $6.6 billion offering. The two U.S.-based banks had announced in January how much they were raising in total, but did not give details about how much Kuwait's fund in particular had invested.

Government of Singapore Investment Corp. also participated in Citigroup's January offering, and Korean Investment Corp. participated in Merrill Lynch's. The cash-raising efforts were aimed at shoring up the banks' finances after huge losses in risky debt.

In a scramble to find a fix for energy prices, Congress has tried (and failed) to strip tax breaks from Big Oil, to open protected sites for exploration and drilling, and to jump-start a new era in nuclear power. Now, Capitol Hill is zeroing in on speculators and THE LEGAL LOOPHOLES THAT SOME LAWMAKERS SAY ARE ADDING AS MUCH AS $70 TO THE PRICE OF A BARREL OF OIL.

SPECULATORS NOW ACCOUNT FOR 71 PERCENT OF THE OIL FUTURES MARKET, UP FROM 29 PERCENT IN 2000, he says, citing data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Overall, commodity index speculation has jumped from $13 billion in 2003 to some $260 billion today.

Many lawmakers insist that such a surge cannot help but contribute to the surge in oil prices. "THE COMMODITIES MARKET IS BROKEN. IT DOESN'T WORK. It is full of speculators and what they're interested in is to drive up the price. THEY DON'T GIVE A RIP ABOUT THE DAMAGE TO THE ECONOMY," says Sen. Byron Dorgan (D) of North Dakota, who is chairing another hearing on speculation.

"Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, WHOSE CHRISTIANITY WOULD WE TEACH IN THE SCHOOLS?" Obama said. "Would we go with James Dobson's or Al Sharpton's?" referring to the civil rights leader.

Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy - chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application. Folks haven't been reading their Bibles," Obama said.

Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus' teachings in the New Testament. "I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology," Dobson said. "HE IS DRAGGING BIBLICAL UNDERSTANDING THROUGH THE GUTTER."

Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes in Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri and Indiana due to the heavy rains and deadly storms which swept through the region in recent weeks. Early estimates place the damage in the billions as roads were washed out, rail and barge traffic shut down and millions of acres of crops were swamped. Scores of levees collapsed or were overtopped by the rushing waters which swallowed entire towns.

The extreme weather which began May 25 and included a series of deadly tornadoes claimed the lives of 22 people, 17 of whom were in Iowa. MORE THAN 11 MILLION PEOPLE IN NINE MID-WESTERN STATES WERE AFFECTED BY THE FLOODING AND EXTREME WEATHER, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said. "A lot of these rivers won't go back below flood stage until mid-July," Buan told AFP. "IT'S GOING TO TAKE A LONG TIME TO DRY OUT."

Thousands of fire fighters battled the blazes on the ground and from the air and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he was alarmed by the number of fires that kept erupting. He said he was told late Sunday evening that the state had 520 fires, and he found it "quite shocking" that by morning the number had risen above 700.

Moments later, a top state fire official standing at Schwarzenegger's side offered a grim update: The figure was actually 842 fires, said Del Walters, assistant regional chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. All but a couple were in the northern part of the state. "THIS IS AN UNPRECEDENTED LIGHTNING STORM IN CALIFORNIA, that it lasted as long as it did, 5,000 to 6,000 lightning strikes," Walters said. "We are finding fires all the time."

The assistance, mostly fire fighting aircraft, arrived Monday from Nevada and Oregon after being requested over the weekend. Schwarzenegger said he had enlisted the help "because you can never prepare for 500 or 700 or 800 fires all at the same time."

Soaring energy and gasoline prices, fueled in part by voracious demand in China, have put central banks on guard against inflation. Many analysts expect interest rates increases sooner rather than later in Europe while the Federal Reserve is seen holding steady for the time being, while keeping a close eye on prices.

A United spokesperson said the cuts will take place over the next 18 months. It's a result of a sweeping cost-cutting measure which has United grounding 100 flights by the fall. Aviation experts said this could be indicative of what other airlines may be forced to do, too, as the industry fights to stay in the black.

The skies aren't looking so friendly anymore to Chicago-based United Airlines and its employees. Executives were getting ready to furlough about twelve percent of its pilots, about 950 in total, in the airline's latest cost-cutting move. In a statement, United blamed record fuel prices for the cuts. Aviation experts, like DePaul University's Joe Schweiterman, said it was expected.

Experts said the airlines' struggle to stay viable could likely result in even higher fares and many believe this is only the beginning. "WHAT HAPPENS AT UNITED, THE REST OF THE INDUSTRY TYPICALLY EXPERIENCES AS WELL. Probably the next few weeks we'll see reports of job losses at some of the other big network airlines. All that's going to ripple through the transportation system," Schweiterman said.

Iran and Israel have engaged in a sharp exchange of words this month over suspicions Tehran is looking to develop nuclear weapons, helping to push global oil prices higher. "THEY DO NOT HAVE THE CAPACITY TO THREATEN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told a news conference.

He was asked about a New York Times report on Friday that quoted U.S. officials as saying Israeli jets conducted a long-range Mediterranean exercise this month that appeared to be a practice for a mission against Iran. "They (Israel) have a number of domestic crises and they want to extrapolate it to cover others. Sometimes they come up with these empty slogans," Hosseini said in comments translated by Iran's English-language Press TV satellite station.

Iran's defense minister on Sunday accused Israel of "psychological warfare", but said Tehran would give a "devastating" response to any attack. On Friday, the U.N. nuclear watchdog chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, said a military strike on Iran would turn the Middle East into a fireball and prompt Tehran to launch a crash course to build nuclear weapons.

Many analysts say Iran's nuclear sites are too numerous, distant and fortified for Israel to take on alone. Iran has threatened to retaliate if it is attacked. Its Shahab-3 missile, with a range of 2,000 km (1,250 miles), is capable of hitting Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf, Iranian officials say.

The chaos that erupted outside Milwaukee County's main welfare office Monday over DISASTER-RELATED FOOD AID had more to do with a weak economy and crushing poverty in parts of this community than the devastating floods that swept through the state earlier this month, local government and food relief officials said.

About 3,000 people turned out for the assistance beginning at 3 a.m. Monday, creating a line that stretched several blocks around the Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center at 1220 W. Vliet St. At least one woman said she was trampled when a crowd rushed the doors as they opened around 7:30 a.m., and dozens of Milwaukee police officers and sheriff's deputies were called to quell the scene.

"The food crisis in Milwaukee and throughout the United States is worse than many of us have realized," said Milwaukee Common Council President Willie Hines, who with other elected officials called on the community to support local food pantries. "WE EXPECT LONG LINES FOR FREE FOOD IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES," Hines said. "We don't expect a line of 2,500 people waiting for food vouchers in Milwaukee."