"On the whole, production will increase in such a way that we will manage to export half a million crude barrels (a day to China) in the five next years," Chavez said.

Venezuela, the fifth biggest exporter of oil in the world, currently delivers 150,000 barrels per day to China, compared with 1.5 million barrels it exports to the United States.

Chavez said agreements would be signed with state-owned China National Petroleum Corp and China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec) on Thursday to jointly exploit his country's oil-rich Orinoco region.

He said he was excited about building a strategic alliance with China and said the two nations were expected to sign nine agreements on Thursday when he meets with Hu.

"We are building the future. I am very heartened -- it is our fourth visit to China. Each visit is a step forward ... that is to say, a true alliance," he said.

Among the contracts expected to be signed are a deal to build 18 tankers to carry Venezuelan crude to China, and 12 drilling rigs to help Venezuela boost its production capacity.

Chavez's statements backed up his country's offer earlier this month to export between 500,000 and one million barrels of oil a day to China if it reached a goal of producing 5.8 million barrels of crude by 2012.

Chavez said that during the first day of his trip to China on Wednesday he had met with company officials from the telecommunications, oil tanker and building construction industries.

While Chavez looks to China as an alternative market to the United States, observers have said the arrangement is beneficial to Beijing because it wants to diversify its imports away from the volatile Middle East.

However some Chinese analysts have questioned whether the deal would be worth it, due to the higher costs associated with Venezuelan oil.

Aside from the extra expense of the long distance for shipping, Venezuelan crude is heavier than most of the Middle Eastern varieties, making it more costly to refine.

Venezuela meanwhile appears willing to accept a three-dollar discount per barrel of oil it exports to China caused by longer shipping times and increased insurance payments, according to analysts.

"It's a slightly higher cost on both sides but I also believe it's in the long-term interest of both countries to develop their relationship," said Mark Daniell, a Singapore-based oil analyst with consultancy Cuscaden Group.

As well as looking to broker energy deals, Chavez took time out on Wednesday to hail China's economic model as an alternative to the US capitalist approach.

Chavez praised China for being able, in less than half a century, to leave behind a "practically feudal" society and turn itself into one of the world's largest economies.

"It's an example for western leaders and governments that claim capitalism is the only alternative," he said.

"We've been manipulated to believe that the first man on the moon was the most important event of the 20th century.

"But no, much more important things happened, and one of the greatest events of the 20th century was the Chinese revolution."

Chavez was due to meet with Hu around 5:00 pm (0900 GMT) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

After his six-day China trip, Chavez will travel to Malaysia and Angola.

According to local media, the Shanghai Sunshine Community Youth Affairs Centre, which opened yesterday, offers one-night stays to youths who would otherwise spend all their time in internet cafes rather than going home.

It can provide free accommodation and counselling for up to four minors at a time. Visitors can read books, play table tennis, tinkle on the piano or use computers.

The aim of the halfway house is not to prevent young people going online but to provide an alternative to gloomy cafes and an opportunity for visitors to discuss the reasons why they spend so much time in a virtual world.

"None of the teenagers are forced to come here," Wang Hui, the chief social worker at the house told the Shanghai Daily. "We wander around in internet bars at night and bring them to the halfway house if the teen agrees." The paper said the first three boys at the house were all from one-parent families.

The shelter is the latest attempt by the authorities to come to grips with the social problems associated with excessive internet use. According to a survey by the China Youth Association for Network Development, 13% of young people with access to the web are online for more than 38 hours a week - an international health professionals' agreed definition for so-called internet addiction disorder.

A separate study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences blamed internet addiction for 80% of the cases in which students failed to graduate.

Online obsessions, particularly among players of role-playing games, have also been blamed for sleep disorders, depression, ill health and several deaths.

Considering China's online population is forecast to pass 160 million this year, the scale of the problem may be overstated. But the authorities have responded with an increasing sense of urgency.

Last year, China's first clinic offering treatment for internet addiction opened at a Beijing military hospital. The China youth league - a body of the Communist party - launched a nationwide "For the sake of the future" campaign against internet addiction. The problems were also publicised through a recent TV drama series, The Story of Shan Dianmao.

But the main focus, linked to a censorship campaign, has been a tightening of controls on internet cafes, which Xinhua, the state news agency, described as "hotbeds of juvenile crime and depravity". But the business is so lucrative that new regulations often go unenforced.

Psychologists question whether the Shanghai shelter will have any more success in tackling virtual escapism.

"I don't think this centre will help at all. It simply highlights a trend among parents to send children to doctors or counsellors whenever they encounter problems instead of talking it through together," said Song Hao, director of adolescent psychology at Beijing Giant School.

"The main reason for internet dependence is a lack of love and care inside a family. Parents and teachers only judge children by their test scores."

"It is overwhelmingly in our interests to stop states failing," Howard told reporters.

"I have very much in mind the experiences in East Timor, in the Solomons, the worry I continue to have about Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu," he said.

Australia currently has about 51,000 full-time soldiers, sailors and air force personnel.

The two new battalions will strengthen Australia's army to the highest number of active battalions since 1973, when Australia withdrew from the Vietnam War, Howard said.

The military buildup comes as Australia's stretched military maintains deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor and the Solomon Islands, with more than 4,200 military personnel on duty overseas.

Australia sent about 3,000 peacekeepers to East Timor in June to head an international force to restore order following violence in the capital Dili, although the deployment is now being scaled back.

It also has about 1,400 forces in and around Iraq, and about 500 in Afghanistan. A detachment of 150 more troops began leaving this week to bolster the Afghan deployment.

Australia led an international force into the Solomon Islands in 2003 when the nation was on the brink of collapse and was facing increased ethnic violence.

Australia sent another 400 troops and more police to the capital, Honiara, in April this year after a fresh outbreak of violence and riots following national elections.

Howard said while Australia did not see any increased military threats to the country, regional instability would become worse over the next two decades and would require Australia's military to be able to respond.

"I believe in the next 10 to 20 years, Australia will face a number of situations the equivalent of, or potentially more challenging, than the Solomon Islands or East Timor," he said.

Howard did not say how the military would find the extra recruits, with the defense forces already struggling to fill recruitment targets and with defense surveys showing 30 percent of servicemen and women were looking at quitting.

A report by security analysts the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said Australia had spent A$500 million over five years to build up the defense forces, but overall troop numbers had continued to fall.

It said in the past two years defense staffing levels remained 1,000 below target, while the number of people leaving the forces continued to increase to a high of almost 13 percent for the army and just over 12 percent for the navy.

Although no margin of error was given for the survey, three percentage points is typical, meaning any difference between the two is too close to call and they are statistically neck-and-neck.

The IPSOS survey contrasted with a poll by the rival IFOP institute published on the weekend which gave Royal a
clear lead over Sarkozy, 55 to 42 percent.

The French elections are due to be held in two rounds starting next April. The first is open to all qualified hopefuls, while the second will be a run-off between the two leading candidates.

All the polls currently agree that those two candidates are likely to be Royal and Sarkozy, though both have to first win nominations from their respective parties in the coming months.

The IPSOS poll found that Royal had the backing of 63 percent of voters, while Sarkozy had 57 percent.

But Sarkozy enjoyed a nucleus of 24 percent of voters who declared themselves "certain" to vote for him, while Royal's core was only 17 percent.

The newspaper said the government was planning a decree announcing the new law, but would make exceptions for bars that sell cigarettes, casinos and
nightclubs.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's office stressed, though, that "nothing is yet definitively decided," the daily reported.

But it said "the timetable is known," pointing to a parliamentary report on the issue due to be submitted next month.

"The government will announce its plan in the following month (October). The decree's application could take effect from January 1, 2007," the newspaper said.

The UMIH association representing the hospitality industry reacted to the report by saying it wanted any smoking ban to be introduced "in a realistic way" and asked that "restaurants which have invested in non-smoking areas to be free to offer their clients a choice."

News of the possible smoking ban came after a study published Saturday by Britain's scientific review the Lancet which said that smoking triples the risk of heart attacks and all sorts of smoking -- including passive smoking -- was bad for the heart.

France has long shed its stereotypical image of a country overrun with smokey bars and cafes, though tobacco addiction is still a big problem despite successive government price rises that have made packets of cigarettes among the most expensive in Europe.

The company, which is facing daily protests from residents, now accepts its drilling may have caused the world's largest disaster of its kind.

A 100 metre-high column of thick white smoke is visible several miles from Porong district, 22 miles south of Indonesia's second largest city, Surabaya, in East Java, and the smell of rotten eggs pervades the hazy tropical air. The mud is up to seven metres deep, and every few seconds the earth jolts and another dollop of hot sediment belches out. Occasionally the mud exits more dramatically, shooting up several metres into the air with a loud "whooosh". The gas stings people's eyes and it is impossible to breathe without taking in the fumes, even with a mask.

The drilling company is PT Lapindo Brantas, which is controlled by the family of Indonesia's powerful senior welfare minister, Aburizal Bakrie. Its senior vice-president in charge of the clean-up, Imam Agustino, admits he has no idea when the mudflow will be stopped, let alone when the affected land will be useable again.

"We don't know if the source of the mud really comes from the well bore or somewhere else," he told the Guardian. "The best-case scenario [for stopping the mudflow] is now mid-November, but I have to admit it might never be stopped."

Porong's "mud volcano" is coming from liquid sediment up to 2,750 metres (9,000ft) deep that was formed 5m years ago, the Jakarta Post reported. The first two attempts to block the flow - by plugging the borehole, which extends two miles underground, and pumping concrete into its bottom - had to be abandoned when the mud continued to rise.

The current plan is to drill into the mud reservoir from three directions and fill it with concrete. "The problems are that we don't know how big the reservoir is and there's never been anything like this on this scale so we don't have any precedent to help us," Mr Imam said.

Preparations are already under way for the worst-case scenario. "We want the well to be stopped but if we can't do that we have to be ready," Indonesia's environment minister, Rachmat Witoelar, told the Guardian as he inspected a potential site for the water from the mud to be dumped at sea. "We would siphon off the water, treat it and then pump it through pipes 16 kilometres [10 miles] to the sea. The mud will then be treated further before being removed."

Despite Mr Imam claiming it was too early to blame Lapindo, Mr Witoelar had no doubts. "Lapindo has to pay for its mistake and restore the environment," he said. Nine people, mainly from Lapindo and the drilling sub-contractor, are being investigated by police, and trials could start within weeks. The drilling rig that was being used when the mud started flowing will be introduced as evidence.

Unless the mudflow is stopped soon, other problems are expected to exacerbate the crisis. As Lapindo runs out of places to build ponds to store the mud, the sediment threatens to cover the main railway line just three metres away. The main motorway to the region on another side of the sea of mud has already been raised 2.5 metres and is being raised another two metres. Other villages are in danger of being submerged and experts estimate that the land has been sinking by up to three centimetres a month since May.

The rainy season, forecast to start in October, may also worsen the situation. "Who knows what will happen when it starts raining," said Andiko Harmiyul, the deputy leader of the mud management team. "All I can say is that we will build the dykes as high and big as necessary."

For the 11,000 people made homeless, Lapindo is paying rent for alternative accommodation for two years plus moving costs, 300,000 rupiah (£17.50) a person a month for food, arranging alternative schooling and negotiating to buy the destroyed houses. Thousands of people have received free medical treatment. Farmers are receiving compensation of two years' income in advance and factories are being relocated.

But many feel the company is being untransparent, unfair and uncaring.

"We've all stopped work but we've been given no money to make up for what we've lost," said Siti Mualimil, a food seller who, along with 8,000 other people, has been camping for two months in a market that had been built but not yet used. "The farmers are doing much better than us."

Car mechanic Dodi Sumartono said: "I reckon I'm earning about 50% less than I was before the mudflow started. We now go to people to fix their cars rather than them coming to us but it's not the same."

Mr Imam said the company did not know what to do to help those affected. "We're an oil and gas company so we're not equipped to handle them," he said. "That's why we leave it to the local government who has the skilled people."

But the consequence is that many residents believe Lapindo is shirking its responsibilities. "Why don't they come and deal with us," Ms Siti said. "Are they afraid?"

The center scheduled an Air Force Reserve reconnaissance aircraft to investigate the system in the afternoon.

All of the major weather models showed the wave entering the Caribbean Sea over the next day or so.

Four models put the storm in the waters south of Cuba near Jamaica within five days. Another model had the storm crossing the Dominican Republic before approaching the Bahamas over the next five days or so.

If the wave gets into the Gulf of Mexico, it could disrupt the U.S. oil and natural gas producing and refining facilities, damaged last year by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Meanwhile all of the weather models, including the NHC model, projected Debby would not hit land as it continued to move northwest for a couple more days before turning northeast toward Europe later this week.

The NHC expects Debby to strengthen into the season's first hurricane in about three days. If Debby becomes a hurricane, the center projected it would be a weak Category 1 hurricane. Category 1 hurricanes have wind speeds of 74 to 95 mph.

Debby, with winds near 45 mph, was located about 845 miles west-northwest of the Cape Verde Islands.

DInSAR, a sophisticated version of 'spot the difference', involves mathematically combining different satellite radar images, acquired from as near as possible to the same point in space at different times, to create digital elevation models and reveal otherwise undetectable changes occurring between image acquisitions.

With a diameter of 13 kilometres, the Phlegrean Fields caldera had its last eruption back in 1538 but has exhibited signs of unrest (bradyseismic activity) in recent years. Its underlying magma system remains active, leading to rapid periods of ground uplift followed by longer-term subsidence. The most recent uplift event occurred between March and August 2000.

The satellite images used to detect the newest uplift phase of the Phlegrean Fields, known in Italy as Campi Flegrei, were acquired from January 2005 to April 2006 and show an area of maximum deformation localised in the centre of the town of Pozzuoli, which lies near the caldera's centre, with the deformation extending westward to the area surrounding Monte Nuovo. By using the data, scientists were also able to determine the uplift trend started in June 2005.

Ground deformation is recorded as part of the phenomena which precedes a volcanic eruption, but such deformation, especially in the preliminary phase, can be very subtle. Therefore, surveying techniques, such as DInSAR, that allow for large scale deformation mapping with sub-centimetre accuracy are particularly relevant.

Geodetical monitoring of the Phlegrean Fields, located 25 kilometres west of Vesuvius, has historically been carried out by the Vesuvius Observatory - the world's oldest volcano observatory - through terrestrial networks. Since 2002, the Observatory has included satellite-derived data in its Surveillance Reports, an innovation following a project with ESA called MINERVA (Monitoring by Interferometric SAR of Environmental Risk in Volcanic Areas).

Geodetic ground networks can provide very high accuracy deformation information, but only within the network layout, so any change in deformation beyond the area covered is lost.

Among the terrestrial methods, levelling, which obtains the vertical component of ground motion, is the oldest. Levelling is based on height measurements carried out on single points called benchmarks, which together constitute the levelling network. The number of benchmarks has been continuously increasing during the last three decades. As a result, the levelling data set of the area is quite large and allows for the retrieval of the geodetic information starting from the end of the 1960s to present.

An extraordinary levelling campaign took place between June and July 2006 in order to verify the uplift trend with about 30 benchmarks being measured for a total path length of some 15 kilometres. The collected data were added to those already available and led to the deformation time series shown in the image to the right that reports the vertical movement in the maximum deformation area from March 1999 to June 2006.

Still, levelling is costly in money and time. Obtaining measurements across a network is a lengthy process - the Phlegrean Fields network has more than 300 benchmarks - as is the consequent data processing. Typically levelling is only carried out once or twice a year.

The poor temporal sampling of terrestrial network data is greatly improved by using DInSAR techniques, considering the revisiting time of satellite sensors with respect to the possible repetition time of field measurements.

The analysis conducted on these satellite observations, together with that obtained by using traditional geodetic measurements, has been transmitted to the Italian Civil Protection as a part of the duty of the Vesuvius Observatory.

To boost the use of Earth Observation data at volcanic observatories ESA has initiated an Invitation to Tender (ITT) to monitor volcanoes worldwide within the framework of the Agency's Data User Element programme. The Globvolcano project will define, implement and validate information services to support volcanological observatories in their daily work by integration of EO data. Services will be related to the different responsibility areas of the users with emphasis on observation and early warning.