Beijing announced a revaluation of the yuan last year, but so far it has only been allowed to appreciate against the dollar within tight limits - too slowly for Schumer, who said in Shanghai on Friday: 'We are not going to give up until we've seen a plan [from China].'

The US ran a trade deficit of more than $200bn with China last year, as shoppers sucked in low-cost consumer goods from the fast-growing economy. Like Japan in the Eighties, China is the target of protectionist rhetoric.

'There's a growing antipathy to free trade in Congress, and the Bush administration is fully on board,' says Dan Ikenson of free market think-tank the Cato Institute. Treasury Secretary John Snow has repeatedly pressed the case for the Chinese to float their currency.

Schumer and Graham will hold talks with colleagues in Congress to decide whether to press their bill to a vote. 'The jury's out,' Schumer said. 'We're going to make a decision next week. We're not saying yes, we're not saying no.'

A third Senator, Iowan Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has suggested he could table a compromise bill that would call for harsher scrutiny of the Chinese by the US administration, without imposing tariffs immediately.

Ikenson predicted that the senators would back away from making a move this week and await the outcome of a state visit by Chinese president Hu Jintao in April, but with many other anti-China bills also tabled in Congress, the pressure for action is mounting. He compared the rhetoric in Washington to furious objections to the takeover of US ports by Dubai Ports World last month. 'I look at the Dubai Ports situation - Congress turned into a mob. Everyone wanted to be seen as doing something about it. I think the same dynamic could take hold on the trade issue.'

Some analysts have compared the bill with the infamous 'Smoot-Hawley' tariffs of 1930, which kicked off a tit-for-tat transatlantic trade war and helped turn the stock market crash of 1929 into the Great Depression. Phillip Swagel of the American Enterprise Institute said that unless Schumer drew back from the brink this week, he could become known as the Smoot of the 21st century: 'He would go down in history as the man who crashed the US economy.' He said the anti-China senators were likely to 'declare victory', having delivered their message to the Chinese in person.

But Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, who met the senators - and Beijing officials - in China last week, said the rhetoric on Capitol Hill was already damaging a fruitful trading relationship. 'China is deeply troubled over the outright hostility from an increasingly xenophobic US Congress,' he said.

He said the trade deficit was the flipside of America's insatiable demand for foreign goods and its lack of savings. The US consumes more than it earns and borrows the difference, much of it from Asian central banks, including China's.

'The danger is that the United States views China with a growing sense of distrust - poisoning the chances for strategic co-operation and squandering one of the greatest opportunities of globalisation,' Roach warned.

Chinese premier Wen Jiabao made it clear that he has no intention of acceding to US politicians' demands. 'It is unfair to make China a scapegoat for structural problems facing the US economy,' he said. China has repeatedly said that it plans to float its currency eventually, but it fears the impact of 'big bang' flotation on its fragile financial sector.

Ikenson warned that by threatening punitive sanctions, America would exhaust Beijing's goodwill, which it might need for tougher geopolitical issues in the future: 'If we continue to hound them about their currency, we're not going to have enough left to push them on issues that really matter.'

The towers, piercing an otherwise pristine Rocky Mountain vista, tell a story being told throughout America - a story not just of abandonment but of legalized theft afflicting both urban centers, and yes, small-town outposts.

East Helena's plant was once a lead smelter, owned by Asarco.

In 1999, the company was bought by Grupo Mexico. That international conglomerate is headed by Larrea Mota-Velasco, listed as a billionaire by Forbes magazine's "The World's Richest People" in 2001. Within two years of the takeover, Grupo Mexico shut the smelter down, costing East Helena more than 200 jobs.

If the story ended there, it would be just another tale about the brutal consequences of globalization on blue-collar America. But what happened after is what should instill fear in millions of workers, urban or rural, blue or white collar.

In 2003, the company hiked health-care premiums for retirees. Executives claimed the company was under financial duress and that it thus "reserves the right to amend or terminate the plans at any time for any reason... even after you retire."

Retirees were forced to accept the increases while a lawsuit dragged into 2004. That was the same year Asarco's corporate parent reported more than a quarter-billion in profits in the fourth quarter alone - yet the company refused to back down.

Last year and this year, it has been more of the same. The company began delaying disability checks to retirees, property tax payments to the budget-strapped East Helena schools and cleanup operations at the smelter.

Meanwhile, according to the Associated Press, the company pressed a three-year wage freeze and reductions in pension and medical benefits for its workers in Arizona. These moves came as Grupo Mexico reported profits of more than $1 billion in 2005.

"The community worked really hard to understand and deal with the layoffs," said Bob Pyfer, 56, who grew up in East Helena. "But when you hear about those profits and the company's treatment of its retirees, it just makes you angry."

Pyfer's grandfather came to East Helena from Slovenia in the 1920s for a job at the smelter, where he worked for 40 years. Pyfer grew up working summers at the smelter, too. Now a lawyer, he sees a disturbing trend that goes way beyond one hamlet.

"These workers, like others all over, gave their lives to their company and they incurred serious health risks along the way," he said. "That means, at the very least, these companies shouldn't be able to use bankruptcy or reorganization to get out of what it owes to their workers." Being allowed to do that, he said, is "a serious concern whether you live in East Helena or not."

These reverse Robin Hood tactics are everywhere. At both Delphi and United Airlines, executives have used bankruptcy to enact massive cuts in wages and pensions - while cementing millions of dollars worth of new bonuses for themselves.

AND GM and Ford are demanding wage and benefit cuts. But, as BusinessWeek reported in June 2005, as "both GM and Ford still pay a dividend, GM CEO G. Richard Wagoner Jr. got a $2.5 million bonus for 2004 on top of his $2.2 million in salary" and "both companies have huge cash hoards - $20 billion at GM and $23 billion at Ford."

True, these companies have problems. But they are using those problems as an excuse to bilk workers and enrich themselves - and our government is doing nothing to stop them.

In the 1980s, audiences watching Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" often cheered Michael Douglas' famous "Greed is good" speech. After Enron, we stopped cheering, and lawmakers promised to stop corporate abuse. We now know those promises were lies.

Congress passed class-action "reform" limiting citizens' capacity to fight back against corporate abuse in court, budgets cutting services for displaced workers and a bankruptcy bill allowing courts to rubber-stamp companies' rip-off schemes. Meanwhile, in a recent Wall Street Journal story about pension cuts, the Labor Department said retirees "aren't our constituents anymore."

So, while East Helena, its rotting Asarco plant and its mistreated retirees may seem far away or isolated, the town's tale is not as distant as you think.

Unless our government starts outlawing these heists and forcing profitable multinationals to fulfill their promises to workers, East Helena's story may soon be coming to a community near you.

"Our boarding party, following a search of the vessel, has speculated that the vessel was inoperable and under tow when the tow-rope broke and it was subsequently abandoned and has drifted into its current position in Australian waters," he said.

He says they will continue to monitor the boat until they decide what to do with it.

"I should say there's no suggestion there's been anybody on board recently or that the vessel's been used in any people smuggling activity," he said.

"There's also no indication that the crew left the vessel in any haste or in any distress.

"One of the things we have found on board is a large quantity of rice and we believe that the vessel may have been used to resupply fishing boats with food and fuel in waters outside Australia's exclusive economic zone."

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) is sending a tug boat to retrieve the ship.

AMSA's Tracey Jiggins says they have arranged a salvor to bring the boat to Weipa.

"Due to the remote location of the vessel and the need to relocate salvage crews from the east coast, it's anticipated that just one tug will arrive on scene early on Monday the 27th of March," she said.

"But in the interim period before the salvors can reach the vessel, AMSA's working closely with other agencies, including Maritime Safety Queensland to minimise any risk of damage to the environment."

It is believed to be between 250,000 and 500,000 years old, a very significant period in the history of mankind.

The face and cranium of the fossil are recognizably different from that of modern humans but they bear unmistakable anatomical evidence that they are ancient humans.

"The Gawis cranium provides us with the opportunity to look at the face of one of our ancestors," Sileshi Semaw, director of the Gona Paleoanthropological Research Project in Ethiopia, said in a statement. "This fossil links us with the past by showing a face that is recognizably different and more primitive than ours."

Sileshi, an Ethiopian paleoanthropologist based at Indiana University, said most fossil hominids are found in pieces, but a near-complete skull, a rare find, provides a wealth of information.

Homo erectus, which many believe was an ancestor of modern Homo sapiens, is thought to have died out 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

The cranium dates to a time about which little is known, the transition from African Homo erectus to modern humans. The fossil record from Africa for this period is sparse and most of the specimens poorly dated, project archeologists said.

Although scientists have appeared on television to reassure the public that there is no evidence of any link between an eclipse and earthquakes, many still fear that next week's eclipse could cause a new disaster.

In the town of Niksar and surrounding villages, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Ankara, residents have set up tents equipped with TV sets, the Sabah newspaper said.

Niksar was devastated by two earthquakes in 1939 and 1942, the newspaper said.

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon crosses between the Earth and sun. On March 29, the eclipse will be visible across a track stretching from Brazil, crossing through much of Africa, into Turkey and ending in Mongolia.