Most Internet users are familiar with the email scam known in the jargon as "phishing." A plausible-looking email arrives in your in-box, supposedly from your bank or a website like Ebay, informing you that your account has been "compromised" and that you urgently need to log in to the company's website to rectify matters. The catch is that the website the email directs you to is a spoof created by the hackers, meaning that anyone who falls for the trick is unwittingly handing over their all-important user names and passwords to the criminals.

Savvy email users know to delete such emails straight away. But canny thieves have now used the technique to make money in a very 21st century fashion - by fraudulently gaining access to companies' greenhouse gas emissions allowances and selling them on.

According to a report in the Wednesday edition of the Financial Times Deutschland, hackers sent emails last Thursday to several companies in Europe, Japan and New Zealand which appeared to originate from the Potsdam-based German Emissions Trading Authority (DEHSt), part of the EU's Emission Trading System (EU ETS). Ironically, the email said that the recipient needed to re-register on the agency's website to counter the threat of hacker attacks.

The cyber-thieves then exploited the user data that was entered into their spoof website to transfer emissions allowances to other accounts, mainly in Denmark and Britain, from which they were quickly resold. The new owners of the allowances would have assumed that they had acquired them legally. "The attack was highly professional," a DEHSt employee told the newspaper. Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) is now investigating the incident.

The company's 230 pea growers across Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Perthshire will not be affected. Birds Eye said the Italian contract had been cancelled at short notice. Some of the affected farms in Norfolk and Suffolk have been supplying the firm for 65 years since the UK's first frozen peas were produced in Great Yarmouth. Birds Eye is owned by private equity group Permira.

Last week, it revealed it had spent all 200 billion pounds of the QE funds so far. The Bank is also expected to announce that interest rates will remain at 0.5% for the 11th consecutive month. The expected decision to keep rates on hold at 0.5% comes despite official figures showing in January that UK inflation rose in December by 2.9%, its fastest annual pace for nine months, and above the 2% target.

Bank Governor Mervyn King warned last month inflation was "likely to rise to over 3% for a while", and could go even higher if energy prices and indirect taxes were to increase further, but added that it "should return to target in the medium term". Although the UK did officially come out of recession in the fourth quarter of 2009 - ending six consecutive quarters of economic decline - the growth was just 0.1%, much less than expected.

For that reason, most analysts expect rates to stay at 0.5% until at least the second half of 2010 for fear of the UK falling back into recession. "At present, we do not expect, or think it necessary, to increase QE above 200 billion pounds," said David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce. "But it is very important for the MPC to persevere with expansionary policies. The main priority must be to avoid a double-dip recession."

The complaint states Christians now can become the target of federal investigations, grand juries and even charges for no more than opposing the activism of homosexuals who want not only public endorsement of their life choices, but to halt any criticism of those decisions.

"On account of ... the Hate Crimes Act, plaintiffs are targets for government scrutiny, questioning, investigation, surveillance, and other adverse law enforcement actions and thus seek judicial reassurance that they can freely participate in their speech and related religious activities without being investigated or prosecuted by the government or becoming part of official records because of their Christian beliefs," the lawsuit explains.

It was filed today by the Thomas More Law Center in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of Pastors Levon Yuille, Rene Ouellette, James Combs and Gary Glenn, the president of the American Family Association of Michigan. The plaintiffs include individuals who already have faced accusations by homosexual advocates that they bear responsibility for the actions of others for no other reason than their agreement with biblical condemnations of homosexuality.

"There is no legitimate law enforcement need for this federal law," said Richard Thompson, president of the Law Center. "Of the 1.38 million violent crimes reported in the US by the FBI in 2008, only 243 were considered as motivated by the victim's sexual orientation. Moreover, Eric Holder himself testified at a Senate hearing that the states are doing a fine job in this area," he said.

"This is part of the list of political payoffs to homosexual advocacy groups for support of Barack Obama in the last presidential election. The sole purpose of this law is to criminalize the Bible and use the threat of federal prosecutions and long jail sentences to silence Christians from expressing their biblically-based religious belief that homosexual conduct is a sin. It elevates those persons who engage in deviant sexual behaviors, including pedophiles, to a special protected class of persons as a matter of federal law and policy," he said.

"If this law is used to silence me or any of these preachers for speaking the truth, then we will be forced to conscientiously defy it," Rick Scarborough, president of Vision America, declared. "That is my calling as a Christian and my right as an American citizen."

The beleaguered car-maker has now been ordered to investigate reports of a third technical problem linked to brake failures in its flagship Prius gas-electric hybrid cars. It has recalled 180,865 specific cars in Britain, leaving thousands of motorists too afraid to use their vehicles.

Tonight a US government official issued a stark warning to motorists to stop driving the recalled cars. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said: 'Stop driving it. Take it to a Toyota dealer because they believe they have a fix for it.' Mr LaHood later branded his outspoken words a 'mis-statement' but was too late to stop shockwaves spreading around the world.

Toyota's share price has plunged in the wake of the unprecedented recall, which is expected to cost the car-maker 1.25 billion pounds in lost sales and output, and could leave it facing a huge legal pay-out. Authorities in the US have linked the apparent defects to 19 deaths and thousands of accidents, and British lawyers have begun preparing legal action against the manufacturer.

Experts estimated the work could lead to the first animal-human transplants within five years. Dr Glenn Westall, who helped conduct the experiment, said: "The blood went into the lungs without oxygen and came out with oxygen, which is the exact function of the lungs. It showed that these lungs were working perfectly well and doing as we were expecting them to do. This is a significant advance compared to experiments that have been performed over the past 20 years."

The breakthrough came after scientists were able to remove a section of pig DNA, which had made the pig organs incompatible with human blood. Previous attempts to combine unmodified pig lungs and human blood ended abruptly two years ago when blood clots began forming almost immediately, causing the organs to become so blocked no blood could pass through. Human DNA is now added to the pigs as they are reared to reduce clotting and the number of lungs which are rejected.

The issue has prompted an ethical debate about the use of animals for human transplants. Medical ethicist Professor Nicholas Tonti-Filippini said: "It is basically a human-pig, a hybrid, or whatever you want to call it. It is about whether the community is prepared to accept a part human, part animal."

In what was interpreted as an attack on Harriet Harman's Equality Bill, which is going through Parliament, the Pope urged the 35 Catholic bishops from England and Wales in Rome on a five-yearly ad limina visit to make a united stand against it. He claimed that the proposed equal rights laws threatened "longstanding British traditions" of freedom of speech.

The Pope's words indicated the level of Catholic anger, shared at the highest levels of the Church of England, at the Labour Government's repeated moves to marginalise religion in public life. However, among Britain's growing secular majority, they are likely to provoke defiance, with online petitions and protest groups to oppose the papal visit being planned for this week. The stakes will be raised even higher if, as is being suggested in Rome, Archbishop Nichols is elevated to the College of Cardinals by being given the red hat in Rome this year.

Making a cardinal of Archbishop Nichols, whose political views are at one with the conservative Pope, would empower even further the Church in England and Wales on the international stage at a time when it is increasingly at loggerheads with the secular world over issues such as gay rights and equality for women. After centuries of persecution and suffering the effects of being a minority faith the Pope's speech signalled the more confident US-style of mission that the Catholic Church is embracing in Britain, as witnessed by the Pope's recent offer of a special Anglican Ordinariate for disaffected members of the Church of England.

The talks have been held at least annually for almost two decades. The official said Mr Obama - a frequent foreign traveler in 2009 - wasn't going to travel as much this year. The White House says it had never committed to, nor planned for, an EU meeting this spring, but didn't rule out having the gathering at another time. However, European officials say Spain has been preparing for an EU summit with Mr Obama to be held in Madrid in late May.

In Europe, Mr Obama's absence highlights a problem that was supposed to have been cleared up by a new treaty establishing a full-time president of the EU: Who is in charge? The EU has a bevy of presidents: There is the new full-time president, Herman Van Rompuy; the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso; and the "rotating presidency" - a position held every six months by a new country, and which involves running nonsummit meetings. Spain now holds the rotating-presidency seat.

In recent days, stories in the European press have described a behind-the-scenes tug-of-war between Mr Van Rompuy and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero over minutiae such as the seating plan for the dinner with President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama. But on Monday, Mr Van Rompuy's spokesman distanced himself from the entire gathering. The ill-fated May meeting "was prepared by the Spanish," said Dirk De Backer. "The permanent presidency has never been involved." Mr De Backer said Mr Van Rompuy would take charge henceforth. "The treaty is clear for the future," he said. Mr Van Rompuy "will prepare and organize summits - in Brussels."

Last December, Darling agreed to let the EU establish new authorities to police financial services in the 27-nation bloc but only on the condition that countries could veto those bodies' decisions if they would cost public money. Now senior lawmakers are preparing to challenge the deal - brokered after difficult talks among Darling, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, France's Christine Lagarde and others - as they fear it could render the watchdogs powerless.

The four lawmakers who will write the European Parliament's version of the rules are due to meet soon to finalise their position and will include a demand that EU countries ditch the veto, a central pillar of December's agreement, as it stands. "The veto on fiscal grounds is basically a get-out-of-jail-free card for any country that disagrees with anything the new watchdogs say," said Sven Giegold, one of the four parliamentarians.

"In parliament, I think most people are unhappy about the wording of this clause. We want strong supervisors that have the powers to do their job. This veto - at least as the countries have defined it - has to go," the German told Reuters. France had been in favour of giving the new bodies more clout, while Britain, fearing that it would lose influence over London's financial centre, wanted their powers watered down. In December, they struck a compromise deal which has now been turned over to parliament for approval.

Portugal is seeking extradition under a fast-track European arrest warrant because Mann did not serve his sentence in the UK after deportation. His lawyers claim he had an unfair trial under a fast-track procedure. The European Court of Human Rights said it was deferring its decision pending the result of a final judicial hearing at the High Court, which is expected to take place at the end of March.

Violent clashes erupted between England fans and police in Albufeira, in the Algarve, on 15 June, 2004. Mann claimed he was arrested, beaten and deprived of sleep by police. Less than 48 hours later, he was tried and found guilty of taking part in the disturbance. The former firefighter said CCTV footage that could have proved he was in a bar away from the violence was never seen by the court and had been destroyed.

Jago Russell, of Fair Trials International, called Mann's trial a "travesty of justice". He said: "He [Mann] did not know what he was charged with until after he had been convicted. He said he wasn't even in the area at the time. He has witnesses who could have supported his alibi but his witnesses did not even have an opportunity to give evidence in the court in Portugal because it all happened so quickly. It is a damning indictment of Europe's extradition system that the European court in Strasbourg has to stand in to deliver justice for a British citizen."

In a sweeping review of US military strategy, he said the Pentagon must prepare for an "uncertain security landscape" where extremists or "non-state actors" sought missile technology or weapons of mass destruction. Warning that US military power faced new limits and constraints, he said that weaponry, tactics and enemies had overtaken the "familiar contingencies that dominated US planning after the Cold War".

"We have learned through painful experience that the wars we fight are seldom the wars that we planned," said Mr Gates, as he presented the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defence Review and the 2011 budget plan to the Senate armed services committee. "As a result, the United States needs a broad portfolio of military capabilities, with maximum versatility, across the widest possible spectrum of conflict."

Calling for more investment in aerial drones, helicopters and special operations forces, which have proved vital in the Afghan war, he said the military should focus on winning current conflicts, not putative future ones. The Obama administration is seeking $741 billion (463 billion pounds) in defence spending for 2011, including 120 billion pounds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr Blair "and his mates" decided war was necessary, and "everything was done on a wing and a prayer", Ms Short said. She quit the cabinet two months after the March 2003 invasion, in protest at planning for the war's aftermath. In her evidence to the Iraq inquiry, during which she was highly critical of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, she said the cabinet had not been a "decision-making body" and called Parliament a "rubber stamp".

Ms Short, who was given a round of applause after her three-hour appearance, added that she had been "conned" into staying on as a minister until May 2003, despite her misgivings about the war. The Attorney General provisionally advised Mr Blair in January that year that it would be unlawful to invade Iraq without a further United Nations Security Council resolution. But he changed his mind a month later after being persuaded to talk to senior US government lawyers and Britain's ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock.

A definitive statement circulated at cabinet on 17 March 2003, three days before the war began. Ms Short said there was no suggestion given that he had had any legal doubts, and said that any discussion of the legal advice was halted at that pre-war cabinet meeting. She had been "shocked" that the Attorney General's advice was so late but was "jeered at" to be quiet by other ministers when she asked why.

This bizarre state of affairs, which was reported on in the Independent today, appears to be worryingly widespread. Professor Michael King of University College London apparently believes that a sixth of psychiatrists and psychotherapists have tried to reduce or convert a patient's sexual orientation.

I dare say that there are young and insecure gay people who would happily sign up for a miracle conversion to heterosexuality. But shrinks who prey on the anxieties of gay people are not helping the lot of gay people one bit and don't deserve referrals from the NHS.

The Government wants to pointlessly force gay rights on the Catholic Church, but shouldn't they instead put their own house in order and ban these offensive, money-wasting referrals?

At that moment, 192 laser beams housed in a building the size of three football pitches will focus on a target the size of a peppercorn to trigger a self-sustaining fusion reaction. If all goes according to plan, this could be achieved in October. Although no more than a test of the technology, it could mark the start of a revolution that will change the science and politics of energy for ever.

Scientists have spent decades chasing the dream of fusion power, which holds out the promise of producing unlimited amounts of clean energy from hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe. Nuclear fusion happens when the nuclei of atoms are driven together so hard that they fuse to form a heavier particle. A self-sustaining chain reaction occurs as more atomic nuclei collide, releasing huge amounts of energy in the process.

Stars are driven by nuclear fusion, as is the immense destructive power of the hydrogen bomb. But no one has yet managed to contain and sustain a fusion reaction under controlled conditions. The biggest problem facing fusion scientists is how to generate the enormous temperatures and pressures necessary for long enough in a confined space. Self-sustaining fusion requires conditions more extreme than at the centre of the Sun, with temperatures of around 100 million centigrade.

At its heart the ''nut'' is a tiny beryllium capsule the size of a peppercorn, designed to hold a dash of nuclear fuel in the form of deuterium and tritium. Both are isotopes, or different atomic versions, of hydrogen. The aim is to focus the laser beams on the capsule and blast it with a pulse of energy that causes the fuel to implode in an instant, reaching temperatures and pressures greater than those at the centre of the Sun. Crushed together, the deuterium and tritium nuclei will fuse, releasing a flash of energy. If the experiment is a success, more energy will be generated than was pumped into the capsule in the first place.

The team believe that the breakthrough could also lead to an extended shelf life for other fruits, including bananas, and see the cost of their production tumble. They lengthened the life of the tomatoes by "turning off" genes linked to the production of two enzymes which cause the fruit to start to ripen. Similar chemicals are involved in the maturation of other fruits, meaning the technique has the potential to extend the lifespan of mango, papaya and bananas as well as tomato. The alterations did not cause any other changes to the plants, the researchers said.

As much as 40 per cent of harvested fruit can be wasted because it ripens too quickly, the researchers from the National Institute of Plant Genomic Research in New Delhi, India, estimate. "Overall the results demonstrate a substantial improvement in fruit shelf-life," said Dr Asis Datta, who led the study. The big supermarket chains, including Tesco, have a policy against stocking GM foods on their shelves. GM crops, which opponents have dubbed 'Frankenstein food', can also be sold in Europe only if they have passed rigorous safety tests and European law states that GM foods have to be clearly labelled, including when they are sold loose.

However, campaigners have warned that there is no compulsory labelling of meat or dairy products from animals which have been fed on GM crops, and that any long-term problems from eating the foods is still unknown. Although GM foods can only be planted in Britain as part of a trial, and even then only under strict conditions, millions of hectares of the crops have already been planted in the Americas.

Pete Riley, from campaign group GM Freeze, said: "The majority of the public are very sceptical about the benefits of GM foods and I don't think that this will do anything to persuade them. We have survived for millennia without needing to extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables. Also, as many vitamins decline after fruit is picked this product could be less nutritious than other tomatoes." He added that not enough was known about the long-term safety risks of GM foods.