The international implications of such beliefs are profound, as an increasing number of Americans believe that God sets foreign policy goals. Rev. Robert O. Smith, Lutheran pastor at the University of Chicago, one of the speakers at the hearing, discussed the development of this belief that dates to the 19th century and how it has received a powerful new impetus with the founding this year of a new group of the Christian right called Christians United for Israel (CUFI). And yet while it works closely with Jewish Zionist organizations in the US, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to promote the continued occupation of Palestine by the Israel (land God has given the Jews), it works just as effectively in dehumanizing the original inhabitants of the Holy Land, both Muslims and Christians.

Another speaker, Rammy Haija, who teaches at Radford University, drew attention to the necessity in the Christian Zionist dogma for the Israelis to retain control not only of the whole of the occupied territory but also all of Jerusalem. Christian Zionists have pushed the militarist policies of both Israel and the U.S. in an effort to secure the Holy Land in preparation for the coming of the "promised land." As part of this strategy, the U.S. occupation of Iraq is deemed absolutely necessary.

The irony of the alliance between Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists is that the one ideology promotes the ultimate destruction of the other. As Smith pointed out, the "Christians United for Israel" is all about Israel, not about the Israelis, and only a little surface digging into Christian Zionism shows how anti-Semitic it really is. So much so that Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, one of the ceaseless champions of Zionism in this country, has called the Christian right one of the direst threats to American Jews. This has not prevented top Israeli officials from paying homage to the Christian right, including Ariel Sharon (before he descended into a comatose state brought on by the withdrawal of the settlers from Gaza, Pat Robertson opined), the Israeli ambassador Daniel Ayalon, and Benjamin Netanyahu, and a host of others. The ability of CUFI and other far right Christian religious leaders like Jerry Farwell and Pat Robertson to raise money for Israel, including Israeli settlements, is well documented.

Christian Zionism, Smith concluded, has a fundamental lack of earthly concerns, is divorced from reality, and undermines the work of politics. Its practical impact is the killing of people in the Holy Land. The recent statement by the Christian religious leaders of Jerusalem that warned against Christian Zionism's policies of racist intolerance and perpetual war was much needed, but it should have come from America's religious leaders.

The mid-term elections will be the first national test of new voting procedures introduced in the aftermath of the 2000 election debacle in Florida, when it took a month of court challenges and recounts of punch-card ballots before George W Bush was declared to have won the state, and became president.

In the wake of that fiasco, Congress allotted $3.8bn (£2bn) to the states to modernise voting lists and replace the old-style punch-card systems with electronic voting machines by early 2006.

Election officials in more than 30 states opted for touch-screen voting machines that use a series of prompts to guide voters through the ballot. But the new machines have merely reawakened the old anxieties about miscounted votes and deliberate fraud.

In many states, voters will be casting their votes electronically for the first time. The officials at the polling stations may be equally inexperienced, and because such workers are typically elderly and retired, critics say they may be particularly poorly equipped to deal with any technological problems.

Those concerns crystallised last month, when a Princeton professor of computer science, Edward Felton, and two colleagues managed to hack into a new electronic voting machine without detection and install a virus that could alter vote counts - and go on to infect a wider network of machines.

The exercise, which Mr Felton repeated on television, took about a minute to complete. The manufacturers of the voting machine said Mr Felton had ignored newer software and security measures that safeguard against hacking.

However, vote monitoring organisations and computer scientists have grown increasingly wary about the new voting machines, especially those that do not leave a paper trail in case it is needed for future verification.

The rollout of the new systems has been far from smooth. In Maryland, earlier this autumn, voting was delayed for hours across an entire county because election officials forgot to bring in the electronic cards that activate the touch-screen machines.

During the 2004 elections in North Carolina, polling officials failed to notice the constant flashing of a warning light on the voting machine indicating that its memory was full. More than 4,400 votes were lost as the result of their inattention. In that same election year, a software error in Texas polling stations led to a vote overcount, with 100,000 more votes registered than had been cast.

The Electionline study predicts 10 states could face similar fiascos this time around because of computer security, inexperienced or elderly poll workers, and a network of new regulations meant to prevent illegal immigrants from voting.

Over the period of the past six years, the number of states requiring voters to show identification before they are given a ballot has risen from just 11 states to 24 states this year.

The study said it anticipated problems in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington state.

The bottle had been sitting in a student's locker and was left on the ledge in the bathroom, The Flint Journal reported Tuesday. It was found Oct. 9 and officials initially said they believed it contained a mix of household chemicals.

"It looks like it was chocolate milk, old, spoiled and under pressure," Superintendent Jeff Pratt said.

Pressure from the spoiled milk apparently caused the bottle to expand, making it look more suspicious. Pratt said school officials erred on the side of caution, noting that possible threats can't be taken for granted.

"Two police officers and three members of the bomb squad refused to go near it or touch it, and that was good enough for me," Pratt said.

Students were evacuated to the football field and later dismissed. It turns out a student had cleaned out his girlfriend's locker, found the bottle and accidentally left in the bathroom, the newspaper said.

Swartz Creek Police Chief Rick Clolinger said the milk was inside a clear, nearly 16-ounce water bottle.

"I know that after the fact it makes us look on the silly side, that we sent kids home because of spoiled milk on the shelf," Clolinger said. "But all of the right decisions were made."

The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) also shredded the travel plans of their sometime nemesis - Simon Davies of campaign group Privacy International.

Davies has been fighting for people's privacy against state schemes like Identity Cards and biometric passports for some 20 years. Last year, he was labelled privacy enemy #1, and claimed the government was trying to sully his name after being identified as one of many contributors to an academic report that was critical of the ID Card scheme.

On Monday he, like the Edwards', was told he couldn't renew his passport - this time it was a London office and this time it was because an inch of laminate covering the data page of his passport had come free.

As a consequence, instead of renewing, he would have to apply for a new passport, the IPS staff said. IPS staff didn't bat an eyelid after being shown newspaper clippings with his photo and other proof of his identity.

Moments earlier Davies had been the centre of a disturbance that had three security guards run to his attention. A wasp had taken to the air round his head while he was standing at the counter. The staff scattered, while the guards tried to swipe the wasp.

Davies told The Register he had been suspected of bringing the wasp into the office. His plans to speak at a UN conference on internet governance next Monday have also been cancelled