Deep in the rolling green hills, the new arrivals - some willing, some not - pitched white tents alongside abandoned rows of dried-up corn. Protected by police armed with AK-47s, they began clearing weeds and hoeing the dirt.

“The government has told us to come back to cultivate our land,” Theresa Matei said as the sun set on her first day back at the farm - land that local militiamen had chased her from in January. “They gave us two blankets, just only two. And they’ve given us seeds, but no fertilizer. We will see what happens next.”

The advent of farming under armed guard in Kenya is the result of this country’s recent postelection political crisis clashing with a global food crisis that has already driven up the price of corn - the staple of the Kenyan diet - about 30 percent in recent months as the cost of fertilizer has nearly tripled.

Close-up images of an e-mail printout that Communities Secretary Hazel Blears was carrying when she left a meeting in Brown’s office showed details of a planned TV program called “Junior P.M.,” a talent show for young lawmakers in which Brown would be a judge.

The e-mail, sent to one of Blears’ advisers by television producer Margaret McCabe, says the show would be “a golden opportunity for the P.M.” to show a more relaxed side of his demeanor.

Voters must decide whether to move towards a future within Europe or sacrifice EU membership on the altar of Kosovo.

The pro-EU Democratic Party is led by President Boris Tadic, who is running virtually neck-and-neck with the anti-EU ultra-nationalists.

If he wins, negotiations on Serbia’s entry into the EU can advance.

The main threat to Tadic comes from Tomislav Nikolic’s Serbian Radical Party, which is against Serbia joining an EU that supports an independent Kosovo.

Analysts say the Radical Party has a pragmatic approach to the need for foreign capital, so wouldn’t necessarily scare off investors.

Local officials have called for the central government to declare a state of emergency on the tiny island of Leros, after the Greek coast guard picked up more than 200 refugees, half of them minors, over the weekend.

The immigrants, Pakistanis, Ethiopians, Iraqis and Somalis, said they had reached Greece by boat from Turkey.

Some were sent to reception centers across the country, while others were released after requesting political asylum, the authorities said.

“The problem now is who takes care of the minors,” said Chrysoula Sifouniou, deputy prefect of the Dodecanese, a group of islands dotting the Aegean’s southeast flank near the Turkish coast. “We don’t have the infrastructure to cope with them, not even a single reception center for them. There’s no state plan or strategy in place to deal with these cases.”

Last month’s NATO meeting in Romania, the largest NATO summit in history, may help get the word out, but Biggs points out that a recent ambassadorial ‘road show’ to the U.S. will likely answer that question for American companies a little better.

“We’re the best-kept secret in the EU,” she says, listing an impressive group of statistics—a population of over 22 million, eight consecutive years of GDP growth, low inflation and labor rates, and an educated workforce that posses excellent foreign language skills.

And, having joined the EU on January 1, 2007, together with Bulgaria, Romania is eligible for roughly 20 million euros in structural and cohesion funds from 2007 through 2013. While this is clearly a boon for the country, it also represents an opportunity for U.S. companies who can partner with a Romanian company, Biggs explains.

One company that has already gotten in on the action is San Francisco-based Bechtel Group, which is heading up construction of a $3.2 billion, 258-mile divided highway (the Autostrada Transilvania) that will become a vital link in the country’s infrastructure when it’s completed in 2011. The highway is significant on several fronts. For starters, it will nearly halve the driving time from Cluj-Napoca (an industrial hub in the center of Romania) to Vienna, which is a major gateway to Western Europe. Currently, the trip takes about 9 hours.

As Russia has become more assertive in international affairs, thanks in large measure to its lock on gas exports to the European Union, it has become increasingly petulant in response to the rare foreign expressions of concern about its worsening human rights situation. At the same time, the Kremlin has adopted more repressive measures at home to silence criticism.