Faced with increasing attacks from Catholic bishops, threats of resignation from several ministers and taunts from David Cameron, he announced that ministers and backbenchers could vote against the three most controversial measures. The free votes will apply to the creation of human admixed embryos containing both human and animal material, for studying serious diseases. They will also cover "saviour siblings", which are screened as embryos to ensure their suitability to donate umbilical cord cells to sick children.

The Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, said in a joint statement with the bishops' conference: "The free vote will be welcomed by people of all faiths or none who are concerned about the implications of this Bill that go to the heart of what it means to be human."

Medical research leaders and patient groups also applauded the decision, saying they hoped it would allow debate to focus on the medical potential of research, not parliamentary procedure. Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, of the National Institute for Medical Research, said: "I am not against a free vote, as long as the MPs understand what is being proposed in the Bill and why."

Commons Speaker Michael Martin will spend another £100,000 or more on a High Court attempt to block publication of their second homes allowance. To the astonishment of many at Westminster, he announced he would challenge an order by a Freedom of Information tribunal that 14 prominent current or former MPs should provide a detailed breakdown of their expenses. Mr Martin said he would appeal against the decision that their addresses should be published.

The 14 MPs include Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Tory leader David Cameron, who have already said they are happy for the publication, receipt by receipt, of how they spent their £22,000 a year Additional Costs Allowance. The BBC reported last night that MPs were mounting a legal challenge to keep their expenses secret, because they would be "unable to justify their behaviour before the electorate" if the details were made public. Nick Robinson on the Ten O'Clock News said that had been told 'by senior sources on all sides of the Commons' that "some MPs might well have to retire from politics so embarrassed would they be if what they spent, and what they'd spent it on, was publicly revealed."

Former anti-sleaze MP Martin Bell said: "This is extraordinary. I can only assume that, seeing exactly what was in the expenses accounts, the Speaker decided that discretion was the better part of valour. The House of Commons does not understand the depth of feeling in the country about this issue." The £22,100-a-year Additional Costs Allowance is used to furnish second homes so MPs can have a base in London as well in their constituency. It costs taxpayers £11.7million a year.

Rockets fired from the capital's Shiite district of Sadr City slammed into the Green Zone Tuesday, the second time in three days, and firefights erupted around Baghdad pitting government and US forces against the militia allied to the influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. At the same time, the oil-export city of Basra became a battleground Tuesday as Iraqi forces, backed by US air power, launched a major crackdown on the Mahdi Army elements. British and US forces were guarding the border with Iran to intercept incoming weapons or fighters, according to a senior security official in Basra.

The US blames the latest attacks on rogue Mahdi Army elements tied to Iran, but analysts say the spike in fighting with Shiite militants potentially opens a second front in the war when the American military is still doing battle with the Sunni extremists of Al Qaeda in Iraq. "The cease-fire is over; we have been told to fight the Americans," said one Mahdi Army militiaman, who was reached by telephone in Sadr City. This same man, when interviewed in January, had stated that he was abiding by the cease-fire and that he was keeping busy running his cellular phone store.

The fighting burnished Sadr's standing among fellow Shiites wary of the US occupation. Over the years, the US has repeatedly accused elements within the Sadrist movement of having ties with Iran and even Lebanon's Hizbullah. After rockets hit the Green Zone Sunday, US commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus said the weapons had been provided by Iran.

Some 18 years later, the parallel between Tibet's unfolding and increasingly bleak prospects and the Jewish historical experience seems all the more relevant. Just as after the failed first century Jewish uprising against Rome, Tibetans are becoming a minority in their homeland thanks to Beijing's strategy of drastically and irreversibly altering Tibet's population by flooding the territory with Han Chinese, China's dominant ethnic group.

Already, two out of every three residents of Lhasa, Tibet's capital, is Han Chinese. In 2006, Beijing hastened the process considerably by opening a high-speed rail link between Lhasa and Beijing. Saffron-robe clad Tibetan Buddhist monks have been replaced by Chinese-run brothels, karaoke bars and a sprawling amusement park that now surround the Portola Palace, the Dalai Lama's former residence and Tibet's equivalent of Jerusalem's ancient Temple.

It took Jews almost two millennia to re-establish an independent state in their homeland. During that time, later-arriving Arabs settled in the land and claimed it as their own. Despite Judaism's numerous ritual reminders of Zion's centrality, Jewish historical ties to the land were conveniently forgotten by most of the world, which came to view modern Jews as having no connection to the ancient Israelites who once populated the same land. As a result, returning Jews were regarded as colonialist interlopers and Arabs were seen as indigenous innocents suffering at the hands of Jewish pretenders. Tibetans now face a similar inversion of history.

Jewish cultural identity survived the destruction of the Second Temple by shifting from a temple-based religion to its rabbinic form. Moreover, it took Jewish secularists willing to take up the gun for Zionism to gain a state in the modern era. Tibetan religion and culture are in the initial stages of a similarly radical transformation. What shape that will take and whether it will successfully preserve a distinct Tibetan identity is, of course, unanswerable. What is clear is that Jews and Tibetans have more in common than is superficially apparent - as the Dalai Lama recognized back in 1990

However, Mr Sarkozy's hint of a boycott, delivered on the eve of his state visit to Britain today, threatened to open a rift with Gordon Brown. It contradicts the position of British ministers, who have repeatedly rejected calls for a boycott of the opening ceremony.

Mr Sarkozy's comments will increase pressure on the Prime Minister to be more explicit about his demands with Beijing over Tibet. They also threatened to overshadow what London and Paris had hoped would be a turning point in Anglo-French relations after the ill-feeling of the Blair-Chirac years. However, Mr Sarkozy's threat of a boycott of the Olympic opening ceremony will place the new entente under immediate pressure. "The opening ceremony is part of the Games and our position against a boycott of the Games has not changed. We do not believe in a boycott as a way of effecting change," a Department for Culture, Media and Sport spokesman said.

British arms exports to China have tripled in value in one year, according to a Foreign and Commonwealth Office report (Michael Evans writes). Arms exports were worth £215 million from October 2006 to September 2007. Licences for Beijing included equipment for military helicopters and for communications systems.

Profits will continue to wane, other analysts said. "There is light at the end of the tunnel, but it is still rather dim," Goldman analysts including New York-based Andrew Tilton said in a note to investors today. They estimated that residential mortgage losses will account for half the total, and commercial mortgages as much as 20 percent.

Goldman said the $460 billion in credit losses it foresees may "result in a substantial tightening in credit conditions as these institutions pull back on lending to preserve their reduced capital and to maintain statutory capital adequacy ratios." Credit-card loans, auto loans, commercial and industrial lending and non-financial corporate bonds make up the rest of the $460 billion in credit losses.

Goldman, which has lost 16 percent this year on the New York Stock Exchange, rose 75 cents to $179.63 in composite trading at 4:07 p.m. Merrill fell 53 cents to $47.85, Lehman declined $1.43 to $45.21 and Bank of America dropped $1.48 to $40.97.

Mr Sarkozy, who is due to arrive later, told the BBC the countries should "move from being cordial to being friendly". During his two-day visit, he will be a guest of the Queen at Windsor Castle and address both Houses of Parliament. Mr Sarkozy will hold talks with Prime Minister Gordon Brown on issues ranging from global finance to Afghanistan. The two leaders are also expected to unveil new co-operation on illegal immigration and nuclear energy.

The president is said by officials in London and Paris to enjoy a "warm" relationship with Mr Brown, whom he has known since they were both finance ministers. The two leaders are expected to focus on efforts to restore stability to global money markets with a call for banks to be clear about the scale of their bad debts.

They are also expected to suggest permanent representation for Africa on the United Nations Security Council. Mr Sarkozy is also likely to discuss sending more French troops to Afghanistan.

The warning came as seven people were killed in the latest fighting between Islamist insurgents and Ethiopian troops supporting Somalia's government. Reports say insurgents attacked and briefly took control of the southern town of Jowhar. One million Somalis have left their homes because of insecurity and hunger, the aid agencies say. Over the past year, Mogadishu has been rocked by almost daily violence and the agencies say a further 20,000 people flee the capital every month.

The continued fighting in Mogadishu was displacing 20,000 others every month, the agencies warned. The agencies said two million Somalis needed daily help to survive the crisis, which has been made worse by record food prices, hyper-inflation and drought in many parts of the country. Seasonal rains due to start soon are also predicted to fail. "For too long, the needs of ordinary Somalis have been forgotten," the agencies said.

Last month, the UN warned that Somalia was the world's "forgotten crisis".

The lengthy sale process started last June when Ford announced its intention to sell the companies as a package. Jaguar and Land Rover employ about 16,000 staff at plants across the West Midlands and Merseyside. Tata accounts for more than half of the sub-continent's truck market and has about 20% of India's car market.

The car workers union, Unite, has said that Tata was the preferred bidder for the company. BBC business editor, Robert Peston said: "Tata will commit to following an existing five year plan to invest in and develop the car manufacturing businesses."

"Jaguar and Land Rover require hundreds of millions in investment over the next few years, and returning Jaguar to profitability will neither be easy or without risks," he added. Robert also said that, to reassure the workforce, Ford will inject £300m into Jaguar and Land Rover pension funds. But it is thought that Ford has invested about $10bn in Jaguar since buying it in 1989, for $2.5bn.

Despite that investment, analysts say that Jaguar, which has plants at Castle Bromwich, West Midlands and Halewood, Merseyside, has never made a profit for Ford. However, Land Rover, which is based in Solihull, West Midlands, has been profitable under Ford's ownership.

Western Greyhound in south-west England has broken one route into three so that passengers have to change buses twice. The rules on routes longer than 50km (30 miles) are too costly to implement and the result is a farce, it says. But the European Commission says there is no problem elsewhere in Europe and the companies are trying to bypass laws which ensure drivers are not tired.

The EU insists the rules on driver safety were introduced in consultation with transport groups, and accuses firms of breaking up longer routes into shorter ones so they can ask staff to work for longer. "The companies are forcing clients to get on and off again. We don't decide how long a route has to be; we just want to be sure the average working time is nine hours a day," said the EU Transport Commissioner's spokesman, Michele Cercone. He also claimed the UK was the only EU member state which has had problems with the directive.

No state funded school should select children based on their family's beliefs and daily religious assemblies should be abandoned, the National Union of Teachers suggested. The union warned that the spread of separate faith schools under Government reforms threatens to undermine community relations, with children taught in segregated groups.

The NUT proposed a solution in which all state schools offer religious instruction to pupils who want it from different faiths. This should also include providing private prayer facilities in schools as well as food that is appropriate for all religious groups, the union said in a new policy paper, In Good Faith.

"I believe that there will be real benefits to all our communities and youngsters if we could find space within schools for pupils who are Roman Catholics, Anglican, Methodist, Jewish, Sikh and Muslim - to have space for more religious instruction in schools. You could have imams coming in, you could have the local rabbi coming in and the local Roman Catholic priest. If there were opportunities where they all talked together to the youngsters, what a fantastic example that would be."

The policy document was formally adopted by delegates at the NUT's annual conference in Manchester. The policy paper was released ahead of a planned debate at the conference on calls to abolish all state-funded faith schools.

The BBC has frequently been accused of biased coverage slanted against Israel; Israeli government officials have summoned the BBC to explain itself in the past. The "red-handed" false report in question was caught by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). CAMERA revealed that BBC used an old file photo to depict the alleged bulldozing of the home of the terrorist who slaughtered eight young yeshiva boys in Jerusalem this month.

"Hours after the attack, Israeli bulldozers destroyed his family home," reported the BBC - but it was untrue. The home of Ala Abu Dheim continued to stand unharmed, as did the mourning tent in which his family greets people who come to console and congratulate them on his achievement and subsequent "martyrdom."

Another well-documented false and biased BBC report, detected by a Jewish resident of Manchester, England, quoted United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as condemning Israeli attacks on Gazan civilians. The BBC used the quote several weeks later, out of context, to tie it to a specific IDF attack on Palestinian Authority terrorists in Gaza.

The news report in question stated that Israel had deliberately attacked Gaza civilians. In the report, BBC refrained from reporting the intensified attacks on Israeli civilians, in some weeks more than 100 rockets were fired at western Negev communities by terrorists hiding among women and children in Gaza. The BBC did issue an official statement of apology for both incidents in which the organization had been caught.

The Kinneret, or the Sea of Galilee, is Israel's largest reservoir, and its height is a mirror of Israel's water supply. If, because of heavy rains and water streaming into it from the northern mountains, it climbs to a height of 208.8 metres [685 feet] below sea level, its dams must be opened to prevent Tiberias and Ein Gev from being flooded. This last occurred some 17 years ago. The problems, however, usually occur in the opposite direction.

The Kinneret's level currently stands at only some 212 metres [696 feet] below sea level - and if it drops much further, the water will be unsafe for drawing. The official level as recorded on Monday was 212.06 metres below sea level, only two centimetres (3/4 inches) higher than last week. This can be compared to rainy years such as 2003, when rains and runoff helped the Kinneret rise an average of five centimetres [2 inches] each day during the month of March.

Shani, who served as ex-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Bureau Director several years ago, told the Committee that the reasons for the water crisis include the shift of rain concentrations to southern Israel, and the agricultural changeover from field crops to more water-needy orchards. March signals the beginning of the end of Israel's rainy season, which this year has produced only some 75% of an average year's rainfall. Since Israel transferred municipal sovereignty over most of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinian Authority some ten years ago, some underground water reservoirs which are part of the mountain aquifer have become unfit for drinking, due to overdrawing of water by local Arabs.

The "Miss Bimbo" internet game has attracted prepubescent girls who are told to buy their virtual characters breast-enlargement surgery and to keep them "waif thin" with diet pills. Health-care professionals, a parents' group and an organization representing people suffering from anorexia and bulimia criticized the website for sending a dangerous message to impressionable children.

In the month since it opened the site, which is aimed at girls aged from 9 to 16, "Miss Bimbo" has attracted 200,000 members. Players keep a constant watch on the weight, wardrobe, wealth and happiness of their character to create "the coolest, richest and most famous bimbo in the world." Competing against other children, they earn "bimbo dollars" to buy plastic surgery, diet pills, facelifts, lingerie and fashionable nightclub outfits.

Dee Dawson, the medical director of the Rhodes Farm Clinic in north London, which treats girls aged from 8 to 18 who suffer from eating disorders, said: "This is as lethal as pro-anorexia websites. A lot of children will get caught up with the extremely damaging and appalling messages." Susan Ringwood, the chief executive of Beat, a Norwich-based organization that supports those suffering from eating disorders, said that the website could make girls believe that weight and body size manipulation were acceptable.

MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, THE FINANCIAL WORLD IS NOT ABOUT TO IMPLODE. At the very least, some market pricing and financial commentary has invoked a systemic collapse akin to 1929's stock market crash and the Great Depression that followed.

Let's put that in context. U.S. historians estimate that in the first 10 months of 1930 some 744 U.S. banks failed - rising to a total of 9,000 by the end of the 1930s. Savers lost the equivalent in today's money of $140 billion in deposits by 1933. U.S. unemployment rose to 25 percent from 4 percent in 1929 and prices and incomes fell by 20 to 50 percent over the same period.

The debate, as German government spokesman Thomas Steg noted this week, has become "hysterical." THIS CRISIS IS SERIOUS, FOR SURE. But there is a pretty good chance it is not 1929 - even if the U.S. Federal Reserve has adopted depression-era tactics to address it. "To justify a repeat of last week, you really have to start believing this is going to be 1929 again," said Jim O'Neill, chief global economist at Goldman Sachs. "With the Fed moving so quickly, I think that is unlikely." BUT WITH INVESTORS ALREADY POSITIONING FOR A "WORST CASE" SCENARIO, THERE IS A CHANCE OF A LARGE PENDULUM SWING.