Nominet said the idea was only a proposal and invited people to join the debate on the form of the final policy. IT lawyers said the proposal would be "worrying" if it led to websites going offline without judicial oversight. "It's not policy at this stage," said Eleanor Bradley, director of operations at Nominet.

She said SOCA's proposal emerged from changes made to Nominet's policy development process earlier in 2010, as well as experiences with closing down a series of criminal sites in the last 12 months. In the proposal, SOCA pointed out that Nominet currently has no obligation to close down criminal websites. SOCA wants this changed so domains can be cancelled if law enforcement agencies deem them to be engaged in criminal activities, and inform Nominet of their conclusion.

Nick Lockett, a lawyer at DLL specialising in computer law, said he was "deeply concerned" about SOCA's proposal if it meant it could act before a conviction had been secured. "In a world of online retailing, the ability for a police officer to seize any business, whether that is blocking a domain or seizing the servers - pre-conviction or certainly pre-warrant - would be a dramatic change in the relationship between the police and the internet community," he told BBC News.

North Korea also responded angrily. "The situation on the Korean peninsula is inching closer to the brink of war," the state controlled Korean Central News Agency responded Friday to the maneuvers, which are set to take place in the Yellow Sea between the Koreas and northeastern China.

The strong talk was the latest fallout from North Korea's hour-long artillery attack of a South Korean island on Tuesday that killed four people. The next day, the US and South Korea said planned joint exercises would go ahead over the weekend, heightening fears in some quarters that already-tense relations between North and South Korea - and their respective international protectors, China and the US - could be heading for a showdown.

Yet China's outwardly defiant response belies a more delicate political reality: Beijing's continued support of North Korea's erratic, martial regime is beginning to extract real costs. China's statement Friday included a face-saving formulation that appeared to open the door for a scenario China has long sought to avert - a US aircraft carrier, a potent symbol of US military might, plying the edge of Chinese waters.

China's Foreign Ministry suggested it wouldn't escalate its protests against the naval exercises as long as they took place outside China's "exclusive economic zone," a term of international maritime law for an area where countries enjoy mineral and fishing rights, generally 200 nautical miles from a country's coast.

China has long frustrated US efforts to bring its nuclear-armed neighbor to heel, fearing any radical change could sow chaos in the region and potentially lead to a unified Korea with a US military presence directly on its border. Beijing refused this week to blame North Korea for Tuesday's attack. Privately, its officials maintain, the weekend's exercises could be a grave mistake that risk further provoking the North.

ICE appears to be targeting sites that help Internet users download copyrighted music, as well as sites that sell bootleg goods, such as fake designer handbags. The sites are replaced with a note from the government: "This domain named has been seized by ICE, Homeland Security Investigations."

For instance, borntrade.com, 51607.com, and amoyhy.com have each been seized. One of the site owners told TorrentFreak that his site was shut down without any notice or warning. The effort comes as Congress considers the Combatting Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA). Critics, including Senator Ron Wyden (Democrat for Oregon) say it is too heavy-handed. He has vowed to put a formal hold on the bill.

As the German chancellor announced in her address to the "Integration Summit" yesterday, immigrants, who do not take advantage of the integration offers, will have to expect sanctions, which increases the pressure, particularly on the immigrant lower classes, who are, momentarily, the focus of a racist campaign ("the Sarrazin Debate"). Several more far-reaching demands are being raised. For some in the Berlin establishment, none of these steps explicitly directed at alleged unproductive groups in the population, have gone far enough.

A high-ranking advisor to the German Council on Foreign Affairs (DGAP), for example, is quoted saying that "drastic measures," that "will be unacceptable to the current generation of politicians," must be taken against the immigrants. The considerations aimed at promoting Germany's domestic restructuring are flanking a debate on a possible end of the European Union, and on Berlin's eventual unilateral attempt for global power. For months there has been talk of reverting to dictatorial methods.

His comments paved the way for milk and meat to be made available in British shops and was the clearest indication yet that the controversial farming practice could be accepted officially. Mr Wadge's statement was in response to a study by the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes, an independent body that examines all new food products for the FSA to assess whether they are safe to go on sale.

After an examination of all the evidence, its panel of experts concluded that there was no material difference between meat and milk from standard animals and products from cloned specimens. Studies of possible issues over allergies, toxins and possible side-effects of eating cloned meat "did not highlight any issues of concern", said its report.

Mr Wadge said: "The ACNFP has confirmed that meat and milk from cloned cattle and their offspring shows no substantial difference to conventionally produced meat and milk and therefore is unlikely to present a food safety risk." The FSA will discuss the issue at a board meeting next month. Insiders said previous "safe" rulings by the advisory committee nearly always led to licenses being granted. The committee's study was prompted by a scare in the summer when it emerged that meat from the offspring of a cloned cow had been sold unwittingly in butchers' shops without a licence being obtained.

Unthinkable only a few weeks ago, a small but growing number of experts now believe some version of this nightmare scenario could become a reality for the euro zone if policymakers fail to unite behind a more forceful strategy for saving the euro and address investor concerns about fiscal and economic imbalances. Some, like Financial Times commentator Gideon Rachman, say Germany could bolt if public frustration with bailouts mounts or if Berlin is unable to convince its euro partners to back its controversial plan for a new permanent rescue mechanism.

Dissident academics have challenged the legality of German participation in the Greek rescue in the Federal Constitutional Court. If they won, the impact on the euro could be devastating. Others see a risk that economic divergence between Europe's stable core and debt-saddled periphery could end up splintering the bloc into a two-tier "Euro-North" and "Euro-South."

Still others believe Germany could engineer the expulsion of euro weaklings like Greece that it feels should never have been allowed in. "I don't think we'll see a breakup of the euro and Germany returning to the deutschemark, but what we could see is a more homogeneous euro area purged of its low performers," said Domenico Lombardi, a former executive board member at the IMF who is president of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy.

"If Kim Jong-il and his son visited the artillery unit and were briefed on the South Korean naval exercises, they are likely to have given final approval on the bombardment two days later," said Yu Ho-yeol, professor of North Korean studies at Korea University.

"The North must have propagandized the deadly artillery firing as Jong-un's achievement to help him gain a stronger grip on the military and bolster its solidarity."

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen also linked North Korea's attack on Tuesday to the Kims' power succession. "It's a worrisome leadership in North Korea. He (Kim Jong-il) is a very unpredictable guy, a very dangerous guy," Mullen said in an interview with ABC News. "(The attack) is also tied, we think, to the succession of this young 27-year-old who is going to take over at some point, and he continues to generate these kinds of events."

At least four people died on Tuesday when the North surprised Seoul by shelling a southern island. The comments come as the South decides who to appoint as new defence minister. The previous minister, Kim Tae-young, resigned after criticism that he was too slow to respond to the attack on the island of Yeonpyeong.

The barrage of shells, which killed four South Koreans, is one of the worst incidents between the two Koreas since the end of the Korean war in 1953, which concluded without a peace treaty. "The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching closer to the brink of war due to the reckless plan of those trigger-happy elements to stage again war exercises targeted against the [North]," the North's official KCNA news agency said.

Though organised well ahead of this week's attack, the four-day naval manoeuvres are a show of defensive strength which, as well as angering North Korea, have also unsettled China, its major ally. North Korea has warned it will "wage second and even third rounds of attacks without any hesitation if warmongers in South Korea make reckless military provocations again".

- Belgium's debt reaches 100% of annual national income

- Portuguese and Spanish borrowing costs rise sharply

- Standard & Poor's reduces Ireland's credit rating to A

- Eire PM resists EU pressure to raise corporation tax

- Irish families each face 4,600 euro bailout bill

- European Finance chief: 'There is zero danger. It's inconceivable that the euro would collapse'

The rising cost of Belgium's debt is now 100 per cent of annual national income. That is raising concerns the country could join Portugal, Spain and Italy on the growing list of countries that could be heading for a financial crisis along with stricken Ireland.

The eurozone was dealt a further blow yesterday after Portuguese and Spanish borrowing costs rose sharply as investors worried that their debt levels will prove unsustainable, putting them next in line for a European bailout.

Portugal and Spain are viewed as the 16-nation eurozone's next weakest links now that Ireland has followed Greece and accepted a massive international rescue package. As a major public sector strike in Portugal further undermined market confidence there, the interest rate on the government's 10-year bonds broke through the 7 per cent barrier yesterday. The 10-year Spanish bonds rose to 5.08 per cent from 4.91 per cent at the start of trading.

While both countries are not at any immediate risk of bankruptcy, those rates are making their already heavy debt loads more expensive to finance. The higher cost to roll over debt is eating away at any progress the governments make in their public finances through austerity measures. Traders are also worried Belgium's broken political system, which has left it without a government since April, is distracting it from tackling its worsening economic outlook.

No more tariffs. No more visas. Vastly more economic cooperation between Russia and the European Union. That's the vision presented by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an editorial contribution to the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung on Thursday.

"We propose the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok," Putin writes. "In the future, we could even consider a free trade zone or even more advanced forms of economic integration. The result would be a unified continental market with a capacity worth trillions of euros."

The proposal comes as Putin travels to Germany on Thursday for a two-day visit, including a Friday meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. On Wednesday, Russia and the EU reached an important agreement on the elimination of tariffs on raw materials such as wood. The deal was an important prerequisite for the EU dropping its opposition to Russian membership in the World Trade Organization. Moscow is hoping to become a member in 2011.

Putin, though, as his Thursday proposal makes clear, envisions more. "The current state of cooperation between Russia and the EU is not consistent with the challenges that we face," he writes. "To transform the situation, we need to take advantage of the advantages which already exist and the possibilities for progress in the EU and Russia."

Or should they find something sinister in the new full-body screening machines and pat-down procedures which are making air travel here an ever less joyful experience? At the heart of the debate are conflicting impulses within the American soul towards state authority.

Here in the US, there is a nearly universal patriotic regard for any uniformed defender of the land. But it co-exists with a deep-seated suspicion of any expansion of the rights of the authorities over the rights of the individual citizen. Most Americans have a healthy scepticism towards centralised authority which one does not generally find in Europeans. In extreme cases that suspicion can develop into the view that government is a kind of larcenous conspiracy against the people. Hence the passions aroused by changes in the way air passengers are screened as they pass through American airports.

The procedure is pretty intimate - there would be no point to it if it wasn't - but it has incensed some travellers who see the firm patting down of thighs, buttocks and breasts as a process which would be considered sexual assault in any other circumstances.

Some critics believe all the airport screening is part of a kind of "theatre of security" which is designed to reassure the public but wouldn't actually deter a sophisticated terrorist. The hijackers of United Flight 93, the shoe-bomber and the Christmas Day attacker were all thwarted by brave and vigilant fellow passengers runs this argument, not by the authorities.

According to the latest IFO survey, published on Wednesday, business confidence in Germany is at its highest level since the reunification boom of the early 1990s. Unemployment is back below pre-crisis levels, consumers are out shopping again, investment is soaring, and the government's finances are heading back towards surplus.

Lord Young's howler in pronouncing that we've never had it so good would actually have had some veracity if directed at Germany rather than Britain. For most Germans, the crisis in the eurozone is just a humiliating irritant, and would indeed be something of an irrelevance were it not for the disrepute it heaps on their currency and the anger felt at being forced to bail out the profligate fringe.

Newly emboldened by what one minister has termed Germany's "golden autumn", the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has hardened her rhetoric over the past month. An increasingly uncompromising approach to the future of the euro area is being adopted.

Lump it or leave it, has become the German approach; live with teutonic economic and financial disciplines or get out. You kind of wonder whether there is any point to the single currency if all notion of joint and several liability is abandoned, and it becomes in effect just a way of pegging other currencies to the D-mark, but that's where we seem to be heading.

Credit default swaps on Spanish five-year bonds surged to an all-time high of 312 basis points, and reached 510 on Portuguese bonds, after Frankfurter Allgemeine cited a confidential report by the German finance ministry suggesting that Berlin aims to confront creditors with the risk of serious losses two years earlier than feared.

Jurgen Michels from Citigroup said Germany's haircut proposals would make it much harder for struggling Club Med states to raise money, risking a self-fulfilling crisis. "Portugal and Spain would be probably forced to tap the current European Financial Stability Facility, which could bring the facility to its limit and even exceed it," he warned.

Mr Michels said the results would be so destructive that Germany is unlikely to win EU backing for the idea. However, Chancellor Angela Merkel has already announced that she will "not back down" on demands for creditor pain. In an odd statement this week she said investors had made money "speculating on the bankruptcy of countries" and must now share the burden of rescue costs.

Greg Gibbs from RBS [government-backed Royal Bank of Scotland in the UK] said the European Central Bank (ECB) had helped cause the latest eurozone eruption by draining liquidity too soon and signalling that it aimed to end the "addiction" of struggling Irish and Club Med banks to its cheap funding window sooner rather than later.

"This tough stance is reigniting a eurozone debt crisis. The ECB needs to rethink its plans," he said. The RBS team said the central bank should dramatically increase its purchase of eurozone debt, especially Spanish debt, starting with 100 billion euros sovereign and corporate bonds.

The US military command in Seoul announced that the carrier will take part in exercises in "waters west of the Korean peninsula" from November 28 to December 1. "This exercise is defensive in nature," the statement said. "While planned well before yesterday's unprovoked artillery attack, it demonstrates the strength of the [South Korea]-US alliance and our commitment to regional stability through deterrence."

The maneuvers also will seek to improve the interoperability of US and South Korean naval forces, the statement said. The dispatch of the carrier to the Yellow Sea was postponed during earlier anti-submarine warfare exercises amid complaints from Chinese military officials that a carrier in the sea threatened China because US warplanes from the ship could reach targets in China.

Chinese Major General Zhu Chenghu told state-run media in July that "if the United States truly wants to take into account the overall interests of the Sino-US relationship, then it must on no account send its USS Washington to the Yellow Sea." He called the area "sensitive." The Pentagon rejected the Chinese criticism and said US Navy ships, including carriers, will transit the Yellow Sea because it is in international waters.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters last month that "there has been an assertion that we, the US, shouldn't operate in the Yellow Sea. That is international waters. We're going to operate in the Yellow Sea. We and others." The ships scheduled to take part in the exercise in addition to the George Washington include the missile-armed warships USS Cowpens, USS Shiloh, USS Stethem and USS Fitzgerald.

Chinese experts said the move reflected closer relations between Beijing and Moscow and is not aimed at challenging the dollar, but to protect their domestic economies. "About trade settlement, we have decided to use our own currencies," Putin said at a joint news conference with Wen in St Petersburg.

The two countries were accustomed to using other currencies, especially the dollar, for bilateral trade. Since the financial crisis, however, high-ranking officials on both sides began to explore other possibilities. The yuan has now started trading against the Russian rouble in the Chinese interbank market, while the renminbi will soon be allowed to trade against the rouble in Russia, Putin said.

"That has forged an important step in bilateral trade and it is a result of the consolidated financial systems of world countries," he said. Putin made his remarks after a meeting with Wen. They also officiated at a signing ceremony for 12 documents, including energy cooperation. The documents covered cooperation on aviation, railroad construction, customs, protecting intellectual property, culture and a joint communique. Details of the documents have yet to be released.