Last night shareholders and customers condemned the decision to 'reward' the people involved in the biggest banking crisis in modern British history with annual payouts of up to £100,000 each. They accused the recipients, who range from senior managers to management board directors, of siphoning money out of the bank as it hovers on the brink of collapse. The confidential payouts, which total £2.3million for this month alone and were known about by the Treasury, are detailed in company documents seen by The Mail on Sunday.

The disclosure will put further pressure on the bank's management as it prepares for an emergency shareholder meeting on Tuesday. It will also add to the Government's political difficulties over the issue. As Chancellor Alistair Darling battles to avoid the "nuclear option" of nationalising Northern Rock, City experts are warning that Britain's international reputation for economic management is being seriously damaged.

In a letter to senior staff on December 20, chief executive Andy Kuipers said the bank's board of directors had agreed "an enhanced remuneration package" for employees deemed "essential to our continuing excellent operational performance". He said they will receive a bonus amounting to a quarter of their gross annual salary every three months - effectively doubling their pay if they are paid the bonus for a year. The arrangement can be withdrawn only with three months' written notice, so the employees are guaranteed at least six months' extra pay.

Last night Matthew Elliott, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "With taxpayers having lost so much money in the Northern Rock crisis and being liable for many billions more, the top officials at the bank shouldn't be receiving a penny in bonuses. This is a typical case of a few fat cats living large at taxpayers' expense while ordinary families are expected to foot the bill." Robin Ashby, of the Northern Rock Small Shareholders Association, said: "While there is some argument for a few key talents to be paid retention bonuses, these sums would appear to be disproportionate, to put it mildly. That - and the secrecy involved - highlights the directors' poor stewardship of the company."

The Treasury is lining up the former boss of Lloyd's of London, Ron Sandler, to lead Northern Rock if it is nationalised.

Ministers are planning to implant "machine-readable" microchips under the skin of thousands of offenders as part of an expansion of the electronic tagging scheme that would create more space in British jails. Amid concerns about the security of existing tagging systems and prison overcrowding, the Ministry of Justice is investigating the use of satellite and radio-wave technology to monitor criminals.

But, instead of being contained in bracelets worn around the ankle, the tiny chips would be surgically inserted under the skin of offenders in the community, to help enforce home curfews. The radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, as long as two grains of rice, are able to carry scanable personal information about individuals, including their identities, address and offending record. The tags, labelled "spychips" by privacy campaigners, are already used around the world to keep track of dogs, cats, cattle and airport luggage, but there is no record of the technology being used to monitor offenders in the community. The chips are also being considered as a method of helping to keep order within prisons.

But details of the dramatic option for tightening controls over Britain's criminals provoked an angry response from probation officers and civil-rights groups. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "If the Home Office doesn't understand why implanting a chip in someone is worse than an ankle bracelet, they don't need a human-rights lawyer; they need a common-sense bypass. Degrading offenders in this way will do nothing for their rehabilitation and nothing for our safety, as some will inevitably find a way round this new technology."

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, the Prime Minister says that such a facility would save thousands of lives and that he hopes such a system can start this year. The proposals would mean consent for organ donation after death would be automatically presumed, unless individuals had opted out of the national register or family members objected. But patients' groups said that they were "totally opposed" to Mr Brown's plan, saying that it would take away patients' rights over their own bodies. There are more than 8,000 patients waiting for an organ donation and more than 1,000 a year die without receiving the organ that could save their lives.

A report on "presumed consent" to be published this summer, hopes its 14 recommendations will lead to 50 per cent more donations in five years. It admits to a possible "conflict of interest" between medical staff, trying to save lives and those keen to ensure every possible organ is harvested. Dr Kevin Gunning, an intensive care consultant at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, and a member of the UK Transplant's advisory group, said the measures could put doctors and relatives under pressure. "If, as a doctor you have turned your thoughts to your patient being a donor when they are still living, that is a real conflict."

Dr Bruce Taylor, of the Intensive Care Society warned that early indicators of death were not reliable. "The only way to be sure is to do all the tests which show brain stem death; anything in advance of that is only a prediction." But Chris Rudge, of UK Transplant, the authority in charge of organ donation and transplant, insisted patients would not be considered as donors at any point where survival was possible.

The KMT, which wants closer ties with China, secured 72% of the seats in the 113-seat chamber, beating President Chen Shui-bian's party, the DPP. The independence-leaning president said he was "shamed", resigning as chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party. The elections are seen as a barometer for the presidential poll on 22 March. China regards Taiwan as a renegade province that should be reunified.

BBC China analyst Shirong Chen says the two main parties concentrated on local issues and shied away from discussing China in the run-up to the vote, a tactic the Chinese government has also adopted. China has been focusing on getting countries like the US and France to oppose Taiwan's referendum on joining the UN, which will be held alongside the presidential election in March.

Mr Singh will meet President Hu Jintao as well as Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and the Communist Party's second highest leader, Wu Bangguo. Their talks are expected to focus on territorial disputes and increasing bilateral trade, worth $37bn (£18.9bn).

In December, the powerful states held a landmark joint military exercise. The war games in the south-western Chinese province of Yunnan, the first of their kind between the two largest armies in the world, involved just over 100 soldiers from each side. Military ties between the countries have been tense since a brief but bloody border war in 1962.

The visit comes at a time when trade between India and China is booming and officials said the bilateral talks are expected to focus on surpassing the $40bn target the two countries agreed to reach by 2010. "It's going to be a major business event... bilateral trade has registered impressive growth," Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon told reporters before the delegation left Delhi

The proposed rules are contained in a document circulated by the California Energy Commission, which for more than three decades has set state energy efficiency standards for home appliances, like water heaters, air conditioners and refrigerators.

The changes would allow utilities to adjust customers' preset temperatures when the price of electricity is soaring. Customers could override the utilities' suggested temperatures. But in emergencies, the utilities could override customers' wishes.

Final approval is expected next month. "This is an outrage," one Californian said in an e-mail message to Rosenfeld. "We need to build new facilities to handle the growth in this state, not become Big Brother to the citizens of California."

Under the proposal being discussed, the bulk of the money - roughly $9bn - would be most likely to come from China, people familiar with the negotiations say. The Kuwait Investment Authority would contribute about $1bn, while $2bn to $4bn would be raised through a public placement of shares.

The norovirus season began a month earlier than normal this winter. Cases of the bug increased rapidly, with more than 200,000 people a week now catching the infection, official figures claim. Hospitals struggling to cope have closed hundreds of wards to new patients. Three hospitals have been put on red alert because of a critical shortage of beds caused by people falling ill with the bug. Some schools are sending letters to parents telling them of norovirus symptoms to look out for and asking them to keep children at home for 48 hours after the infection has cleared. Others have installed alcohol gel dispensers for children to clean their hands before lunch.

The latest figures came in an agency update released yesterday, which said: "This season we have seen an increase in reports of noro-virus cases, almost double the number reported for the same period last year. The self-limiting infection usually only lasts a few days hence the majority of cases are not reported to the clinician." Anyone with symptoms of norovirus is advised to stay at home, drink plenty of fluids, not prepare food for others and wash their hands thoroughly and regularly with soap and water.

"It is true we intercepted a conversation with terrorist threats to the Eiffel Tower yesterday," the source, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. "Our air force informed the French air force of this matter. Paris police referred inquiries to the Eiffel Tower where nobody was immediately available for comment. French daily Le Monde reported on Friday that intelligence services were tracking the authors of the message. The newspaper said Portuguese air traffic authorities had intercepted a "vague and confused" short wave radio message on Thursday, according to a police source.

The French capital is already at its second highest security alert level and further public security measures would serve little purpose, Le Monde quoted police as saying. "We've been at red for several months. It's the highest level before scarlet alert which is implemented when there are attacks," the local police headquarters told the newspaper. The Eiffel Tower is one of France's best-known sights and welcomes millions of tourists each year. Since it was built for the 1889 World Fair, over 230 million people have climbed its 1,665 steps or taken the elevators to admire the views from the top of the 324-metre (1,063 ft) high structure.

A globalised world is, in many ways, a smaller world. When shoppers scour the grocery store aisles in San Francisco, Sydney or Seoul, they may be purchasing different food items, but these days they are suffering from the same sticker shock.

In China, soaring food prices have driven inflation to their highest levels in more than a decade, straining household budgets in the world's most populous country. Dramatic price increases have been chalked up to an unfortunate confluence of factors - supply problems endemic in China's pork industry, an outbreak of - blue ear - disease on pig farms and to drought and flood-related price hikes. But behind these events, a host of structural problems are contributing to higher prices.

China feeds 22 per cent of the world's people with only 7 per cent of its farmland and must do so with a poor endowment of agricultural resources. Compounding matters, China's per capita water supply amounts to just a quarter of the global average and is unevenly distributed. A host of daunting challenges suggests that the country's agricultural productivity must pick up dramatically to keep pace with the changing nature of food demand.

A wealthier generation of Chinese consumers is shifting from traditional meals to a diet heavy in meat, eggs and dairy products. China's urban population - which is growing by 15m-20m people a year - consumes three times more meat than the rural population.

This ratio has tremendous implications for the country's grain consumption: 70 per cent of China's corn and soyabeans and about half of the country's sweet potato supplies go towards feeding livestock. It takes 5-7kg of grain to produce 1kg of pork - the country's staple meat. Since 1990, China's feed industry has increased its annual output by an average of 18 per cent a year to supply the country's livestock farms.

As 1.3bn Chinese consumers move up the ladder of prosperity, extraordinary changes are occurring in China's agricultural trade and domestic food economy. China's success in resolving its agricultural limitations will go far in determining whether higher food prices are here to stay - not just in China, but across global markets.

The finding comes as GM foods are about to reignite trade friction between the US and European Union, with a deadline set to expire on Friday night by which the EU must comply with a World Trade Organisation ruling to allow imports of GM seeds. While it could be years before meat and milk from cloned animals are on dinner plates in the EU, the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) issued a "draft opinion" that such livestock and their products were as healthy and nutritious as their natural-born kin. "Healthy clones and healthy offspring do not show any significant differences from their conventional counterparts," it said.

Efsa has invited views on its opinion before drawing up a definitive conclusion in May. Its deliberations come as the Food & Drug Agency in the US is expected to reach a final decision on the issue, possibly next week.
The developments would boost a handful of US biotechnology companies that have been working on cloning animals, mainly cattle, for the past four years. They say cloning would help farmers by increasing the availability of elite breeding stock.

Europe is already sharply divided over GM food, dubbed "Frankenfood" by opponents, with just one product - a pest-resistant maize - approved for cultivation. Austria and Hungary have banned even that and France is set to follow suit. In the US, consumer acceptance of plant biotechnology in foods is high. Acceptance of biotechnologically altered animal produce is much lower, although a survey last year by the International Food Information Council showed that 61 per cent would purchase products derived from genetically engineered animals if they were FDA-approved.

Citing people with knowledge of the matter, the newspaper said the inquiry, begun last summer by state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, was focusing on how banks bundled billions of dollars of exception loans and other subprime debt into complex mortgage investments. Charges could be filed as soon as the coming weeks, the Times said. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal told the newspaper he was also conducting a review and cooperating with New York officials. The federal Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating, the Times said.

Reports commissioned by Wall Street banks raised alerts about the high-risk loans, known as exceptions, which fell short of even the lax credit standards of subprime mortgage companies and the Wall Street firms, the newspaper said, but the banks failed to disclose those details to credit-rating agencies or investors.

The inquiries highlight Wall Street's leading role in igniting the mortgage boom that has imploded with a burst of defaults and foreclosures. The crisis is sending shock waves through the financial world, and several big banks are expected to disclose additional losses on mortgage-related investments when they report earnings next week.

An ounce of gold for February delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange jumped $6.50 to $900.10 in morning trading, an all-time high and a psychologically important milestone. Gold later slipped to $898.70 an ounce on profit-taking but remained in record territory. "It's a reflection of market sentiment: Gold is a hedge against uncertainty and right now it's the best bet," said Carlos Sanchez, a precious metals analyst at CPM Group in New York. "None of the other investment options look that great and gold does."

Still, when adjusted for inflation, gold remains well below its all-time high. An ounce of gold at $875 in 1980 would be worth $2,115 to $2,200 today. Gold has had a meteoric rise the past year - rising nearly 32 percent in 2007 - boosted by a falling dollar, rising prices for oil and other commodities and increased Middle East instability. Those trends have lifted the metal's appeal as a haven; gold is seen as a safe investment in times of political and economic uncertainty around the world.

Smith's Cloud, as it is known, may set off spectacular fireworks when it smacks into our galaxy in 20-40 million years. It contains enough hydrogen to make a million stars like the Sun, say experts, and its leading edge is already hitting gas from our galaxy. When it does hit, the cloud could indeed set off a new burst of star formation in the Milky Way.

Details of the work, by a team at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, were unveiled at the 211th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas. Their new measurements also show that the cloud is 11,000 light-years long and 2,500 light-years wide. The monster cosmic "fog bank" is careering towards our galaxy at more than 240km/s (150 miles/s) and is set to strike the Milky Way at an angle of 45 degrees.

Broadly speaking, the cloud is currently rotating with our galaxy, but is also moving in towards it. Astronomers can see a wall of gas being ploughed up as Smith's Cloud thuds into the outskirts of our galaxy's atmosphere.

People came out on to the streets to watch and some Iraqis said it was the first time they had seen such weather other than in films. Mohammed Abdul-Hussein, 63 and retired, told the Associated Press he had heard from his father when he was young that snow fell in the early 1940s on the outskirts of northern Baghdad.

"But snow falling in Baghdad in such a magnificent scene was beyond my imagination," he added. Fawzi Karim, 40, said he had asked his 80-year-old mother, and she had never seen snow before in Iraq. "This is so unusual, and I don't know whether or not it's a lesson from God," he added.