David Cameron's attempts to detoxify his party are dealt a further blow today with details revealed for the first time of his extensive travel by private jet and helicopter funded by multi-millionaire businessmen.

The Conservative leader has accepted more than 60 flights by luxury plane and helicopter from 10 industrialists and plutocrats with a combined fortune of £3bn, figures obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal.

Many of the flights were for short trips in the UK that could have been easily made by road or rail, although together the air mileage would have taken Mr Cameron to Sydney and back - casting his much-vaunted commitment to the environment in a poor light.

Finnish police say a ransom demand has been made for a missing Russian-manned cargo vessel, the Arctic Sea.

The demand - which has not been confirmed as genuine - was put to the ship's Finnish owners, Finland's National Bureau of Investigation said.

A Finnish radio station said it had been told the 15 crew members' lives would be at risk if it was not paid.

Mystery surrounds the location of the Arctic Sea, last sighted in the Bay of Biscay on 30 July.

The 4,000-tonne Maltese-flagged vessel, which had been carrying timber, went off radar after passing through the English Channel.

We should've guessed Malta has something to do with all this...

Russian police are hunting gunmen who killed seven women at a sauna and four policemen at a checkpoint in the troubled southern region of Dagestan.

The attack happened on Thursday in the town of Buynaksk, 41km (25 miles) from the regional capital Makhachkala.

Police say they know the identities of some of the gunmen, who fled into a forest after the attack.

Separately, four policemen and two militants were killed in a clash near Grozny, in neighbouring Chechnya.

An al-Qaida inspired group which briefly proclaimed "the birth of an Islamic emirate" in the Gaza Strip included a Syrian national who was believed to be the head of its military wing, Hamas confirmed today after the group was overrun and its leader killed by police.

There have been repeated allegations from Israel and the Fatah-led Palestinian leadership in the West Bank that al-Qaida affiliates, including foreign militants, are operating in Gaza with the knowledge of Hamas, the Islamist group which controls the coastal strip.

The confirmation by a Hamas interior ministry spokesman that a Syrian national of Palestinian descent, named as Khaled Banat but also known as Abu-Abdullah al-Suri, was among those killed in fighting in the southern city of Rafah on the border with Egypt between police and Jund Ansar Allah ("Warriors of the Companions of God") will renew that controversy.

August 14th - Scenes from the Madhouse1. A website has been set up to promote Silvio Berlusconi's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. If you visit it, you will be rewarded with the patriotic martial music of the Italian national anthem. The site explains that the little crook should get the prize because, among other achievements, he ended the Russia-Georgia war and restored good relations between Russia and the USA.

2. Minister of "Culture", Sandro Bondi is to provide public funds for the Craxi Foundation, which was set up by the daughter of ex-Prime Minister Bettino Craxi to "guard the political heritage of Craxi". This heritage was the blossoming of corruption that led to the Mani Pulite trials of the 1990s; another part of heritage was that Craxi, in exchange for funds from Berlusconi's offshore holdings, promoted Berlusconi's monopoly of commercial television. Throughout the 1990s, the name of Craxi was guaranteed to produce a sneer and a scowl on the face of any Italian outraged at his blatant and cynical corruption. Although Berlusconi never defended him after the scandals when he was alive, he is now trying to promote the idea that he was a great man wronged. (Thanks to Antonio di Pietro's website for the reference).

In calculations which underline the catastrophic collapse in Britain's non-public sector economy under Labour, experts have revealed that the private sector will by next year have suffered a "lost decade" of less-than-zero growth.

The economic output of the private sector next fiscal year will be around £706.1bn - lower than the inflation-adjusted £708.9bn it amounted to in 1998/99, the first full fiscal year of the Blair government. The figures, calculated by the Policy Exchange think tank, show that in that same period the size of the public sector ballooned by some 63pc.

The figures are based on the assumption that the UK economy will shrink by 4.5pc this year, as predicted by experts such as the Ernst & Young Item Club, but does not contract any further next year.

Andrew Lilico, chief economist of the Policy Exchange, said that the collapse in the private sector was partly a consequence of the recent economic crisis and partly a result of the "crowding out" of business growth by almost unprecedented spending by the state over the past decade.

"Because government spending has risen in this recession it's both covered up and crowded out an absolutely massive contraction in the private sector," he said. "By contrast, under the previous Conservative government, the private sector grew."

[Torygraph Alert]

A rift has broken out within the US oil industry over a controversial plan to deploy thousands of workers in so-called "energy citizen" rallies protesting against imminent climate legislation.

The American Petroleum Institute, which represents the US oil industry, has written to member companies asking them to "move aggressively" to stage up to 22 gatherings.

It has strong support from key members such as Exxon, which has warned that the legislation could put businesses employing millions of workers "at a disadvantage" with global competitors.

But the plan threatens to expose splits in the API as some members belong to another group, the US Climate Action Partnership, which supports many of Barack Obama's environmental policies.

Shell, which has been a key member of the UCAP, has argued that tackling climate change is "the pro-growth strategy." Other companies which belong to UCAP include General Electric, Siemens, BP America and ConocoPhillips.

Yet all these companies simultaneously provide funding to the API.

China's carbon emissions will start falling by 2050, its top climate change policymaker said, the first time the world's largest emitter has given such a time-frame.

Whether China will agree to some kind of cap on its emissions is a critical question ahead of global climate change talks in December in Copenhagen. Beijing argues, as do most developing countries, that developed nations should take responsibility for cutting emissions first, since global warming originated with their industrialisation.

FT.com / China - Beijing sets date for emissions cut

The comments by Su Wei, director-general of the climate change department at China's planning body - the National Development and Reform Commission - signal not only increasing flexibility in Beijing's approach but also continued unreadiness to accept an emissions ceiling in the short term.

"China's emissions will not continue to rise beyond 2050," Mr Su told the Financial Times.

The oil giant is understood to have discussed acquiring Arrow Energy several weeks ago as part of wider talks about investing further in the Australian company's assets.

Arrow Energy confirmed the approach last week to the Australian Stock Exchange without naming the interested party after being forced to put out a statement due to takeover speculation. Arrow said: "The company continues to have discussions with parties with respect to the potential monetisation options for its considerable coal seam gas resources.

"It is noted that these discussions have included discussions with respect to potential change of control transactions. However, the company is unaware as to whether any change of control proposal will be forthcoming."

Shell is believed to have made the opportunistic approach during talks about extending its interest in Arrow's coal-seam gas assets. Although the discussions ended in stalemate, Shell is known to be interested and may return with a revised approach. Arrow is being advised by Citigroup and Australian brokers have been in the City over the past few days.

Public opinion polls reveal that Americans are angry about the current economic, healthcare, housing and environmental crises. Polls also document that a significant majority of the population want federal government assistance to fix these problems. But you've also got the makings of a huge neo-populist anger brewing, largely because (in the words of Frank Rich), "What disturbs Americans of all ideological persuasions is the fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand, from commercial transactions as trivial as the sales of prime concert tickets to cultural forces as pervasive as the news media." In other words, even the feds might not be able to help.

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All of which would suggest that it would not take that much to engender a situation where the country experienced a widespread debt revulsion. It might come to that, despite eminently more just historic alternatives, which Obama's economic advisors could have drawn on, but chose not to.

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By the same token, if the American household sector repudiates debt by living in the house until the sheriff shows up without paying a mortgage, and then paying rent once they get kicked out, banks will then do what - shut new credit off to the private sector? Already done. In the meantime, the household sector (like Argentina when it repudiated its foreign debt) will have just increased the discretionary income and wiped the liability side of its balance sheet. Then it is just a matter of Mr Geithner figuring out another way to stress test the banks back into Treasury Dept. seals of approval, and voila, presto change!

Or maybe a debt repudiation of the magnitude we envisage might force President Obama to stop his seemingly endless appeasement of the Rubinite wing of the Democrats and embrace an approach which prevents US households from losing wealth of an amount equal to the negative equity they have in their respective homes, while the banks write down their assets to market.

Ironically, by overplaying their hand, the banks might be forcing the households to adopt an approach that will ultimately weaken the banks and expose them as the emperor with no clothes. They will take huge hits to their capital if faced with widespread debt repudiation. Now, I expect you'll get a host of lawsuits and the very essence of the law of contract will come under attack if this scenario occurs, but the average American household might feel he has no choice and Obama might accommodate himself to these populist winds as he did in the Chrysler case, in effect overturning years of established bankruptcy law with no particular political cost to himself. At the very least, the more effectively people create a sense of urgency and crisis via these kinds of actions, the easier it will be for the President to push for progressive legislation, which overturns years of destructive policy making and finally delivers the change that many of us thought we were voting for last November.

One pissed-off good ole boy.  Seems knowledgeable about the current economic situation.  A candidate for Chairman of the SEC?  Bernanke's replacement?  At least his anger is focused in the right direction.  May it spread!

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Senator Jim Webb of Virginia held a rare meeting on Saturday in Myanmar with the leader of the ruling junta, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, and emerged with a promise to free a detained American, officials said, at a time when the United States has said it is reassessing its hard line toward Myanmar's repressive military government.

The senator's office said he had secured the release of the American, John Yettaw, who was sentenced to prison on Tuesday after intruding at the home of the pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

In another gesture by the government, Mr. Webb, a Democrat, was allowed to meet with Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who was sentenced at the same trial to 18 months of added house arrest, arousing international condemnation. She has spent 14 of the past 20 years under house arrest.

Pakistan's nuclear weapons facilities were attacked three times in 2007 and 2008 by extremists, a recently published report says. The incidents highlight how difficult it is to keep the weapons safe.  

For the international security community it is considered a worst-case scenario. The prospect that terrorists could get their hands on nuclear weapons has been worrying non-proliferation analysts for years. And ever since Al Qaeda has stated its intent to acquire such weapons, those worries have only increased.

Just last month, the leader of the terror group in Afghanistan said in an interview with Al Jazeera television that al Qaeda would use Pakistan's nuclear weapons against the US if it could get its hands on them. And according to an article by Shaun Gregory, head of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at the University of Bradford, there are plenty of reasons to take that threat seriously. As Gregory details in a piece for the Combating Terrorism Center of the US military academy at West Point, extremists have attacked Pakistani nuclear weapons facilities twice in 2007 and once in 2008. Gregory concludes that the Taliban and al Qaeda present a "real and present danger" for Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

So, who is going to be the next president? The question was put to me a year ago, by a friend who is more political than most Afghans.

He is a former mujahid - he fought the Soviet armies as a young man and is too honest for his own good.

Like many Afghans, he is completely disheartened by the corruption that has engulfed his country. But he was looking to the future, hence the question.

"I have no idea," I replied. "The elections are ages away."

"Ah," he said, "so the Americans haven't decided yet."

It is a generally held belief here that foreigners in general and Americans in particular will decide next week's election.

The threat of spreading strikes in Zimbabwe could undermine a six-month-old unity government that has brought rare hope, but has failed to win vital funding from donors who demand faster political and economic reform.

A pay strike by doctors this week is the first major sign of local discontent with the government formed in February between President Robert Mugabe and old rival Morgan Tsvangirai. Now teachers say they are getting ready to strike too.

Any worsening could strengthen those on both sides who feel the alliance is ultimately doomed and cannot rescue Zimbabwe from the decade of decline that Mugabe's foes blame on his rule and he says is due to Western sanctions targeting him.

"This is new terrain for the unity government and it just shows the urgent need for foreign financial assistance. If the strikes are sustained it's certainly a blow to any prospects of recovery," John Robertson, a consultant economist said.

Kenya's oldest pupil, Kimani Nganga Maruge, has died in Nairobi aged 90.

The great-grandfather held the Guinness World Record for being the oldest person to start primary school, at the age of 84.

His house in the Rift Valley was burnt down in post-election violence last year and he was later moved from a camp to an old people's home in the capital.

Despite the disruption, Mr Maruge kept hard at his studies and had two years left to finish his primary education.

Mr Maruge, a veteran of the Mau Mau independence movement, never had the opportunity to go to school when he was younger.

The father-of-five said he wanted to learn how to read the Bible for himself and he was also suspicious that he might not have been getting his full pension so he was also keen to study maths.

It seems that the financial assistance coming from donor nations is barely keeping the continent alive, which leads to two possible conclusions: Either development aid is not a solution, or Africa is beyond help.

In the small Namibian village of Otjivero, a coalition of aid organizations is attempting to prove that both conclusions are wrong. They insist that Africa can be helped -- provided it gets the right kind of help, which requires a new and different approach to aid.

The idea is simple: The payment of a basic monthly income, funded with tax revenues, of 100 Namibia dollars, or about €9 ($13), for each citizen. There are no conditions, and nothing is expected in return. The money comes from various organizations, including AIDS foundations, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and Protestant churches in Germany's Rhineland and Westphalia regions.

The organizers of the trial want to know what their subjects will do with the 100 Namibian dollars, whether they will invest the money or waste it on drink, and whether it will deter them from working or motivate them to work harder. Most of all, they want to know if it alleviates poverty.

"Come on," the general surgeon finally said. "We all know these arguments are bullshit. There is overutilization here, pure and simple." Doctors, he said, were racking up charges with extra tests, services, and procedures.

The surgeon came to McAllen in the mid-nineties, and since then, he said, "the way to practice medicine has changed completely. Before, it was about how to do a good job. Now it is about `How much will you benefit?' "

Everyone agreed that something fundamental had changed since the days when health-care costs in McAllen were the same as those in El Paso and elsewhere. Yes, they had more technology. "But young doctors don't think anymore," the family physician said.

The surgeon gave me an example. General surgeons are often asked to see patients with pain from gallstones. If there aren't any complications--and there usually aren't--the pain goes away on its own or with pain medication. With instruction on eating a lower-fat diet, most patients experience no further difficulties. But some have recurrent episodes, and need surgery to remove their gallbladder.

Seeing a patient who has had uncomplicated, first-time gallstone pain requires some judgment. A surgeon has to provide reassurance (people are often scared and want to go straight to surgery), some education about gallstone disease and diet, perhaps a prescription for pain; in a few weeks, the surgeon might follow up. But increasingly, I was told, McAllen surgeons simply operate. The patient wasn't going to moderate her diet, they tell themselves. The pain was just going to come back. And by operating they happen to make an extra seven hundred dollars.

I gave the doctors around the table a scenario. A forty-year-old woman comes in with chest pain after a fight with her husband. An EKG is normal. The chest pain goes away. She has no family history of heart disease. What did McAllen doctors do fifteen years ago?

Send her home, they said. Maybe get a stress test to confirm that there's no issue, but even that might be overkill.

And today? Today, the cardiologist said, she would get a stress test, an echocardiogram, a mobile Holter monitor, and maybe even a cardiac catheterization.

"Oh, she's definitely getting a cath," the internist said, laughing grimly.

What are we doing in Afghanistan? Apart from dying, that is, or propping up the loose collective of corrupt tribal chieftains that is laughingly called a "government". Ah yes - "reconstruction". Building a better, freer, more modern, potentially democratic nation and weening its fractious patriarchs away from support for the Taliban, who are, as everyone knows, the enemies of progress and of the Afghan people, the bad guys, the people we are there to defeat (or, failing that, negotiate with).

Tropical Storm Ana has become the first named storm of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season.

The annual hurricane season officially runs from June to November. The appearance of Ana only now means the season has begun notably late. By the same date in 2008, there had already been five tropical storms above the Atlantic Ocean.

Ana is travelling with wind speeds of approximately 65 kilometres per hour towards the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean Sea. It is expected to make landfall on Monday. Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and Florida lie on its projected route after it leaves the islands.

Tropical storms can grow into hurricanes, but to do so their wind speed must reach at least 120 kilometres per hour. Meteorologists expect this year's hurricane season to consist of between seven and 11 tropical storms and three to six hurricanes.

Motola, a female elephant who stepped on a land mine 10 years ago and endured painful operations, was fitted Saturday in Thailand for a permanent artificial leg.

The 48-year-old pachyderm became a symbol of the plight of today's elephants, and her injury sparked international sympathy and donations.

Experts were making a cast of her injured left front leg for a plastic prosthetic limb which will be attached later Saturday.

"I do hope she will accept the new leg. It would be wonderful to see Motola and Baby Mosha walking together side-by-side," said Soraida Salwala, secretary general of the Friends of the Asian Elephant, a non-governmental group.

Mosha, also a land mine victim, became the world's first elephant with an artificial leg, attached in 2007. Soraida said Mosha, now a 3-year-old, is faring well and has outgrown three of her prosthetic devices.

Like squabbling family members who band together against outside criticism, Britons have reacted to the barrage of American attacks on the N.H.S. with collective nationalist outrage.

A new Twitter campaign, "We Love the NHS," has become one of the most popular topics on the site, helped by Prime Minister Gordon Brown himself, as well as the leader of the opposition Conservative Party, David Cameron.

Mr. Brown's eyesight was saved by a National Health surgeon after a rugby accident when he was in college; Mr. Cameron's 6-year-old son, Ivan, who died in February, was severely disabled and received loving care from the service.

The Twitter campaign is full of testimonials from recipients of successful treatment for brain abscesses, complicated pregnancies, mangled toes, liver disease, hernias, car accidents, nervous breakdowns, cancer -- you name it.

For me, the health service was a godsend when my husband suffered a severe stroke in the 1990s. He got exemplary critical care; I did not get a bill. It was only in the aftermath -- when I learned that, unusually in Britain, my husband's job came with private health insurance -- that I came to realize what it could and could not do. A little over one in 10 Britons have some sort of private supplemental insurance; others pick and choose when to use the N.H.S. and when to pay out of pocket for the top specialists or speedier care.

SALT LAKE CITY - The Mormon church's vigorous, well-heeled support for Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California last year, has turned the Utah-based faith into a lightning rod for gay rights activism, including a nationwide "kiss-in" Saturday.

The event comes after gay couples here and in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas, were arrested, cited for trespassing or harassed by police for publicly kissing. In Utah, the July 9 trespassing incident occurred after a couple were observed by security guards on a downtown park-like plaza owned by the 13 million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The court case was dismissed, but the kiss sparked a community backlash and criticism of the church.

"I don't think that kiss would have turned out to be the kiss heard round the world if it were not for Proposition 8," said Ash Johnsdottir, organizer of the Salt Lake City Kiss-In.

Iran, Inside and Out

The German newspaper Die Zeit offers an interview with the Iranian director Sepideh Farsi, whose film "Tehran Without Permission"--which she shot with her cell phone--is being shown at the Locarno Film Festival (which runs through Saturday). Here's an excerpt from the interview, in which she discusses the gap between public and private life in Iran:

    At home people wear their hair uncovered and listen to the music and watch the movies they want. Iranians like to get their television by satellite and from the whole world. If a policeman should knock at the door, he gives them a summons and confiscates the satellite dish. So we go and buy another. Everything can be seen in Tehran, even CNN or [the Franco-German arts channel] Arte. But when you go out in the street, there are religious messages everywhere, propaganda, and the "good moral police." It's schizophrenic. I often wonder how Iranians keep all of this together.

No word about when the film will be screened here.

The filmmaker who has most profoundly sought Iranians' private concerns in their public faces is Abbas Kiarostami. This short film, "Where Is My Romeo?," suggests how he does it. He made it for the 2007 series of three-minute films, commissioned by the Cannes Film Festival, called "Chacun Son Cinéma" ("To Each His Cinema"). Kiarostami films, in close-up, women in a theatre who are watching, apparently, a movie of "Romeo and Juliet."

Unesco advisers say they are shocked by the huge billboards in Amsterdam's historic inner city, which has been nominated for world heritage site status.

Billboards for Bacardi Breezers, Diesel or the computer game Killzone 2, meant to cover up renovation work on historic buildings could lose Amsterdam its bid for a place on Unesco's list of world heritage sites, local preservationists have warned. Unesco advisers said they were "shocked" by the outsized billboards and video installations in Amsterdam's historic inner city. Their criticism has been added to Amsterdam's Unesco nomination file.

Weekend columnist Oliver Burkeman looks at what we have learned from the positive psychology movement in the last 10 years - and confesses to keeping what psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky calls a "gratitude journal", listing all the little things for which he feels thankful. "Naturally, I am hugely embarrassed to admit this," he says. "The awkward truth, though, is that keeping a gratitude journal has made a detectable and sustained difference to my state of mind."

He's not alone. In an online study of 26,000 people, announced last week, counting your blessings and reliving a positive memory from the previous day were two of the most effective techniques for boosting happiness.

When it comes to contentment within relationships, a little encouragement goes a long way, finds Luisa Dillner. She examines psychologist Shelly Gable's surprising finding that how your partner reacts to your positive news is even more important to your happiness than how he or she supports you when you get bad news.

Crown prince Willem-Alexander on Friday took legal action to demand that the US press agency AP pays a fine of €25,000 every time it publishes an unauthorised photo of his family on vacation, report various media.

According to the prince, the AP has broken the Dutch media code which states that photos of the royal family can only be taken at official photo opportunity sessions.

Participating in these sessions implies a media organisation will abide by these rules.

In his statement read to the court on Friday, Willem-Alexander said that taking pictures of the royal family on holiday puts `unacceptable pressure' on his children.