Somewhere here in Guangzhou, the balmy capital of the booming southern province of Guangdong, a shadowy group of computer scientists is said to be hard at work under the supervision of the People's Liberation Army, waging cyber warfare on Western military and industrial targets. Their fellow scientists in the dusty city of Lanzhou in northwestern China, not far from where the Chinese space mission is based, are also reportedly hacking into government files in Whitehall and the Pentagon.

It's hard to believe in the 30-degree-plus heat of Guangzhou, but this city has been named one of the epicentres of the Cold Cyber War. Instead of missiles pointing at capital cities, and huge standing armies facing each other across ideological divides and barbed-wire fences, the only weapons in this secret war are keyboards, some sharp minds and a lot of caffeine pills.

The experts tell of how cyber spies breach supposedly unbreachable firewalls as smoothly as a skilled jewel thief, before swooping on a hard drive, snatching the secret files, and sending them to a third country, usually somewhere in Asia such as South Korea or Hong Kong. Then they make good their escape, often leaving no trace of the raid.

Their methods may be hi-tech but the strategy is ancient - Trojan Horse software developed by the PLA's computer whizzes, disguised as PowerPoint or Word programmes, which find their way into computer systems in the corridors of power of London, into the Foreign Ministry and other government departments, even into the House of Commons. They redirect the programmes via South Korean networks or Taiwanese servers to disguise where they came from.

"There's a huge amount of cyber warfare going on here aimed at gathering intelligence and probing networks. There is also a huge amount of cyber espionage to access information about intellectual property rights and trade matters," said one security expert who did not wish to be named.

Cyber espionage costs British companies billions of pounds every year, not only in the direct effects of stolen secrets, but in the loss of competitive advantage. There have long been reports that China operates a web of operatives throughout Europe, who penetrate all levels of key industries. "As cyber warfare grows, so does cyber espionage. There have been significant advances in China but I still think China is playing catch-up on the West in this game - the West has a lot more to spend - just look at the Chinese military budget and compare it to the American spending on defence," said the analyst.

One internet commentator points out how the US controls the domain name system (DNS), and could do a lot of damage to China by simply removing the "cn" domain. The webheads speculate about just how the hackers were tracked, given that the routes they took are supposedly untraceable. And they say that spammers and organised gangs using automated penetration tools are a much greater threat than the Chinese army.

A key driver in the sudden interest in cyber warfare by the Americans was the confirmation in January this year that the Chinese had successfully shot down one of its own satellites. The test was criticised by the US, Japan, Canada and Australia and read as a sign that China was flexing its military muscle, a way of showing that it is capable of taking out spy satellites should the US follow up on its pledge to assist Taiwan in the event of a military escalation across the straits.

The test also came as a shock to military commanders in the West, a revelation about the level which Chinese technology had attained and they were surprised by the developments. If the reports are true of breaches in Whitehall, Berlin and the Pentagon, it is a sign that China's technological progress is taking place even faster than expected.

The scrapping of Planet Relief, an awareness-raising broadcast similar in concept to programmes such as the poverty-focused Comic Relief and Live8, and planned for early next year, marked a watershed moment: It showed that opining about climate change is now as significant in Britain as scientific fact.

Environmentalists and politicians fiercely criticised the BBC for abandoning the programme, for which Ricky Gervais and Jonathan Ross had been provisionally lined up as presenters. The corporation said that it had decided it was not the BBC's job to lead opinion on the global warming issue. However, critics complained that the effect of the decision was to imply that there was no scientific consensus on the reality of climate change and its human causes, and accused the corporation of being swayed by increasingly vocal climate-change sceptics.

The green activist and author Mark Lynas said that the decision showed "a real poverty of understanding among senior BBC executives about the gravity of the situation we now face. The only reason why this became an issue is that there is a small but vociferous group of extreme right-wing climate 'sceptics' lobbying against taking action, so the BBC is behaving like a coward and refusing to take a more consistent stance," he said.

Planet Relief was a working title for the TV special, which was being developed by Jon Plowman, head of BBC Comedy. While the event might have been similar in scale to Comic Relief or Children in Need, it would not have involved fundraising. However, a spokeswoman for BBC1, the channel on which Planet Relief would have been shown, insisted that last night's decision was not made "in light of the recent debate around impartiality." She added: "BBC1 aims to bring a mass audience to contemporary and relevant issues and this includes the topic of climate change.

"Our audiences tell us they are most receptive to documentary or factual-style programming as a means of learning about the issues surrounding this subject, and as part of this learning we have made the decision not to proceed with the Planet Relief event. Instead we will focus our energies on a range of factual programmes on the important and complex subject of climate change."

Andrew Neil, who presents the Daily Politics and This Week on the BBC, said: "I'm delighted the BBC has cancelled it. Our job is to cover these things, not to comment on them. There's a great danger that on some issues we're becoming a one-party state in which we're meant to have only one kind of view. You don't have to be a climate-change denier to recognise that there's a great range of opinion on the subject."

As the high moves over the Atlantic it will bring the low pressure closer to the East Coast. AccuWeather.com Meteorologists are concerned the system will reach hurricane strength before reaching the East Coast, likely impacting coastal areas from South Carolina to southern New England.

On the western side of the continent, Hurricane Henriette made a second landfall near Guaymas, Mexico, around 5 p.m. PDT. The Eastern Pacific Hurricane Center reports at around 5 p.m. PDT, Henriette made landfall as a weak Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds near 75 mph. As a tropical storm at 8 p.m. PDT, the storm was moving north at about 15 mph and is expected to turn to the northeast overnight.

Henriette will weaken to a heavy rainstorm once it moves over land; however, it will bring 5-10 inches of rain to northwest Mexico, with as much as 15 inches expected in the higher terrain. The heavy rain could trigger potentially deadly flash floods and mudslides.

The Southwest Regional News story reports by tonight, moisture from Hurricane Henriette will spread drenching thunderstorms into southeastern Arizona, southern New Mexico and far West Texas. The heavy rain could lead to dangerous flash floods in the dry Desert Southwest. The Severe Weather Center lists the flood-related Watches and Warnings in effect from southeast Arizona to North Texas.

A weak disturbance over the Gulf Coast and abundant moisture streaming north from the Gulf of Mexico tonight are combining to produce showers and thunderstorms across the Lower Mississippi Valley. Showers and thunderstorms associated with the same disturbance produced very heavy rain across parts of northeastern Texas Tuesday night and early Wednesday.

Severe flooding has been reported in the Dallas Metroplex area.

A study of 11,000 children found by the time they reached 30 they were 60% more likely to be an alcoholic and nearly twice as likely to have a conviction. The Institute of Child Health study comes as latest figures show the amount children are drinking is rising.

Experts called the findings worrying as the government said it was looking to cut the harm caused by youth drinking. The study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, found they had developed a host of problems compared to those who were not binge drinkers. As well as being more likely to be alcoholics and have criminal records, they were 40% more likely to use illegal drugs, 40% more likely to suffer mental health problems and 60% more likely to be homeless.

They were also 40% more likely to have suffered accidents, almost four times as likely to have been excluded from school and 30% more likely to have gained no qualifications. Just under a fifth of the group was classed as binge drinkers - those who had "two or more episodes of consuming four or more drinks in a row in the previous two weeks".

The storm hit land in north-east Nicaragua on Tuesday as a maximum strength category-five hurricane before dissipating to a tropical depression. Felix destroyed thousands of flimsy homes on the Central American country's low-lying Caribbean coast. It comes just two weeks after Hurricane Dean killed more than 20 in the region.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Henriette, which killed seven people in its march up the Pacific Coast, was poised to hit Mexico for the second time in two days. Officials in Nicaragua have been counting the cost of the damage caused by Felix. Up to 9,000 homes, many of them built of wood and tin, were destroyed and as many as 50,000 people were displaced by the hurricane.

The storm also struck Honduras, where up to 20,000 people were evacuated from coastal areas.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said on a visit to the devastated coastal city of Puerto Cabezas: "There are more than 200 people missing. We are talking about really serious damage."

Correspondents say the storm revived memories throughout Central America of Hurricane Mitch, which killed some 10,000 people in 1998.

The national weather service says a tornado actually touched down just outside of Soda Springs today, north of the Monsanto plant. "Well it's actually very unusual, we hardly ever see anything like this" said Bob Johnson of Soda Springs.

"A tornado in Soda Springs, it's just unheard of" said Trent Clark, Monsanto community relations. Being a division of the Department of Homeland Security, an emergency plan for extreme weather conditions was set, but the 400 people that work at Monsanto, never thought it'd be brought into action.

"Almost no one here thought we'd ever actually have to use that procedure. It was good to have that procedure in place because sure enough, we had a tornado right here in Soda Springs" said Clark.

Data released by the New York Federal Reserve shows that foreign central banks have cut their stash of US Treasuries by $48bn since late July, with falls of $32bn in the last two weeks alone. "This comes as a big surprise and it is definitely worrying," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.

"We won't know if China is behind this until the Treasury releases its TIC data in November, but what it does show is that world central banks are in a hurry to get out of the US. They don't seem to be switching into other currencies, so it is possible they are moving into gold instead. Gold is now gaining momentum across all currencies and has broken through resistance at 500 euros," he said.

While the greenback has been resilient over recent weeks - even regaining something of a 'safe-haven' role as banks scrambled to buy the currency to cover dollar debts - most experts believe that America's $850bn current account deficit will eventually cause the dollar to resume its relentless slide.

David Powell, an economist at IDEAglobal in New York, pointed the finger at Beijing as the main suspect in the sudden bond flight this summer. In a client note entitled "Has China started to dump US Treasuries?", he said the sales appear to coincide with early moves by Beijing to launch its new $300bn sovereign wealth fund.

Any evidence that China was pulling out would risk setting off an unstoppable stampede, which is why such a policy would never be announced. It holds the world's biggest pool of reserves, followed by Japan.

State-sponsored "cyber-terrorists" - believed to be part of China's vast People's Liberation Army - have been linked to a string of attempts to hack into UK Government computer systems, including at least one assault targeting the Foreign Office.

Security analysts believe the operations are part of Beijing's strategy to build a "cyber army" - trained to break into and cripple the computer systems of China's potential enemies, leaving them hugely vulnerable in a time of crisis or war. The disturbing claims follow a series of similar hacking assaults reported in America, Germany and elsewhere.

Here the Cabinet Office refused to discuss the threat yesterday, except to say that Britain had "procedures and mechanisms" in place to deal with such issues. According to security analysts computer hacking has evolved dramatically in recent years, from lone individuals attacking corporations to encompass organised crime gangs and now state-sponsored military operations.

China denies all the accusations, although it has publicly stated that it sees "information warfare" as a key part of its strategy, as it struggles to upgrade its own vast but still relatively low-tech military forces.

Western powers such as America and Britain are thought to be particularly vulnerable to large-scale hacking, as their armed forces are increasingly reliant on computer networks and satellites to communicate, target high-tech bombs and missiles and to organise every aspect of military operations. With their computers crippled or swamped by bogus information, military forces could be left blinded and directionless, or bogged down by chaos in their supply chain.

A country could also be crippled in time of crisis by successful attacks on its telecoms networks, transport links, financial sector and utilities. A computer hacking incident which led to part of the House of Commons computer network being shut down last year has since been linked to an organised Chinese group.

Known hacking methods include sending spy software into a low-grade computer used by an enemy government, and using its security weaknesses to gain access to more sensitive networks and data. Another tactic is to infiltrate huge numbers of ordinary PCs around the world and use them to swamp a target computer with millions of simultaneous messages or "hits" via the internet, bringing the whole system grinding to a halt.

The report was ordered by Wakefield Metropolitan District Council after Craig Faunch and Ian Wathey were jailed last year for sexual offences against four boys who were placed in their care. The inquiry found the children had been let down by "failures in performance", both by individuals and in systems put in place by the council.

The report's authors concluded that some staff were not up to the job of dealing with Faunch and Wathey, who had 18 children placed with them between August 2003 and January 2005. "It is clear that these foster carers proved challenging to a number of professional staff, some of whom were ill-equipped for the task of working with them and supervising them in their care of children," the report said.

The document said that council workers had "anxieties" about their actions being viewed as discriminating against gay people. "The fear of being discriminatory led them to fail to discriminate between the appropriate and the abusive," says the report.

Nepal Airlines, which has two Boeing aircraft, has had to suspend some services in recent weeks due to the problem. The goats were sacrificed in front of the troublesome aircraft Sunday at Nepal's only international airport in Kathmandu in accordance with Hindu traditions, an official said.

"The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights," said Raju K.C., a senior airline official, without explaining what the problem had been. Local media last week blamed the company's woes on an electrical fault. The carrier runs international flights to five cities in Asia.

It is common in Nepal to sacrifice animals like goats and buffaloes to appease different Hindu deities.

But scientists wanting to use hybrids will still need to make individual applications, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said. An HFEA consultation showed the public were "at ease" with the idea when told it could pave the way for therapies for conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. Opponents have said many people would be "horrified" by such a move.

Scientists want to create hybrid embryos by merging human cells with animal eggs in a bid to extract stem cells. The embryos would then be destroyed within 14 days. The cells form the basic building blocks of the body and have the potential to become any tissue, making them essential for research.

At the moment, scientists have to rely on human eggs left over from fertility treatment, but they are in short supply and are not always good quality. Two teams from Kings College London and Newcastle University have already applied to the HFEA to use hybrid embryos. It is now expected individual hearings for these two applications will be held in November with other scientists expected to follow suit.

Anthony Ozimic, secretary of pro-life group the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said he "deplored" the HFEA's decision. "This is not just a case of the 'yuk' factor - there are grave ethical and moral objections to this research and the way it is being promoted."

And Josephine Quintavalle, of the campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said the HFEA was wrong to be pushing ahead with a decision which should be left to parliament. "Using hybrid embryos has never been acceptable - it offends the dignity of humans and animals." A spokeswoman for the HFEA said the decision had been a challenging one to reach.

Last night, a sudden increase in tremor accompanied the start of a powerful so-called paroxysmal eruption, during which the vent on the E flank of the SE crater, which had been in intermittent mild strombolian activity since mid August, erupted tall lava fountains - several hundres of meters high - and some lava flows. The tall ash columns generated by the intense explosive activity dispersed to the southeast and forced the temporary closure of Catania's airport. The eruption lasted around 7 hrs and ended around 0430hrs this morning.

Mt. Etna, towering above Catania, Sicily's second largest city, has one of the world's longest documented records of historical volcanism, dating back to 1500 BC. Historical lava flows cover much of the surface of this massive basaltic stratovolcano, the highest and most voluminous in Italy. Two styles of eruptive activity typically occur at Etna. Persistent explosive eruptions, sometimes with minor lava emissions, take place from one or more of the three prominent summit craters, the Central Crater, NE Crater, and SE Crater.

Flank eruptions, typically with higher effusion rates, occur less frequently and originate from fissures that open progressively downward from near the summit. A period of more intense intermittent explosive eruptions from Etna's summit craters began in 1995. The active volcano is monitored by the Instituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Volcanologia (INGV) in Catania.

Evidence has also begun to emerge that the liquidity crunch is spilling into the wider economy, increasing the pressure on the Bank to act. Nationwide's consumer confidence index showed that "the number of people who think that now is a good time to make a major purchase such as a house or a car has fallen to a new low of 15pc".

Nationwide's chief economist, Fionnuala Earley, said: "Recent events such as the turmoil in the financial markets may be having something of an impact on sentiment." She added that "one bit of good news for consumers is that the unexpectedly large fall in inflation, along with financial market unrest, means it is now less likely the Bank will feel a further hike in interest rates is necessary".

The Bank makes its monthly decision tomorrow and is widely expected to leave rates on hold.

Prosecutors said they had arrested three suspected members of "an Islamic-motivated terrorist organization" for allegedly plotting attacks on one of Europe's busiest airports and the nearby Ramstein Air Base, a key US and Nato hub. "There was an imminent threat," said Franz Josef Jung, the German defence minister.

Der Spiegel reported in its online edition that the group has been under observation by German authorities for many months and that all three men are considered "radical Islamists" with contacts to terror cells abroad.
German public broadcast network Sudwestrundfunk reported that two of the suspects held German citizenship while the third was Pakistani.

Many of the most famous - including Bordeaux, Sancerre and Saint-Emilion - might not even be from the regions claimed. The scandal was partly blamed on corrupt inspectors who, in the face of increasing competition from New World wines, are said to be allowing inferior wines a prestigious AOC marking.

The famous "Appellation d'Origine Controlee" is a wine classification system which has become the industry's gold standard. It currently awards AOCs - which are clearly marked on bottles - to wines from some 470 regions of France. But, according to the country's UFC-Que Choisir consumer rights group, slack controls saw 99 per cent of all candidate wines awarded their AOC label in 2005. Up to a third of those did not merit the quality stamp, the magazine said.

This happened at a time when wines from New World countries such as Australia, Chile and the United States were outpacing French exports for the first time. Under the current system, wines are labelled according to their often small region of origin, or terroir. The tradition stems from the notion that the combination of soil and climate gives the wine produced there its special character.

New World wines rely more on production methods to earn their reputation. They are also more likely to be categorised by their grape variety or blends than by their region. There was even more bad news for the French wine industry yesterday when it faced up to its smallest harvest in 20 years, hit by a summer of storms and plant diseases brought on by wet weather.