Hours before police dismantled the first car bomb, a posting on the Al Hesbah chat forum pointed to an imminent Al Qaeda bombing in London.

The message, posted under the name Abu Osama al-Hazeen, gave the invasion of Iraq and the recent knighthood for Salman Rushdie as justification for a fresh terrorist attack on Britain. Al-Hazeen wrote: "Is Britain longing for Al Qaeda's bombings? We, and the whole world has seen what Britain has done ... their intention to honour Salman Rushdie who insulted and slandered Islam. "This 'honouring' came at a crucial time, a time when the whole nation is reeling from the Crusaders attacks on all Muslim lands.

"The British capital has witnessed blessed operations that shook it to its foundations. This was because the British had attacked the lands of Muslims and Al Qaeda is still threatening to strike against Britain to throw it out of the lands of Islam.

"But now, there's yet another reason for Al Qaeda to carry out such threats; the honouring of the apostate Salman Rushdie by the Crusaders ... Rushdie who insulted Islam ... and this reason has led Muslims to become even more sympathetic with the Mujahideen. "The question now is: Has London longed for the bombings of Al Qaeda? We say to Britain, the Emir of Al Qaeda, Sheikh Osama, has once threatened you, and he carried out his threats.

"Today I say: Rejoice ... By Allah London shall be bombed." Another poster on the forum responded: "Amen - we pray to Allah that the development of such operations would be under way." "Amen - O Allah make us witness this soon." Al-Hazeen replied: "Victory is very close - but you are just rushing it!"

The blaze is raging in the area of Saittas in the Troodos mountains, some 55km (30 miles) south-west of the capital Nicosia. Firefighters - backed by helicopters - are tackling the blaze, and Cyprus has called on Italy and Israel for help. Agriculture Minister Photis Photiou described the fire as "a big catastrophe".

He said the blaze was threatening the Troodos forest - one of the most scenic areas of the eastern Mediterranean island. Strong winds and a scorching heatwave had helped the fire to spread rapidly, officials said. Helicopters from British military bases on Cyprus are helping to douse the flames.

Firefighting aircraft are also expected to arrive from Italy and Israel within hours. The heatwave has been blamed for the deaths of three elderly people in Cyprus in the past week.

The image appears on the cover of the Polish weekly Wprost, and is titled "Stepmother of Europe". A Polish council overseeing ethics in the media said the montage overstepped "the limits of good taste". Tension between the neighbouring countries has been building following last week's European Union summit. "The Kaczynski brothers must bear the responsibility for this negative atmosphere," she told the Hannover-based Neuen Presse newspaper.

Ahead of the Brussels summit Poland demanded a boost to its EU voting rights at Germany's expense and threatened to refuse to sign up to a new EU treaty because it would give bigger countries such as Germany too much decision-making power.

In arguing for an extension of the vote system the Polish Prime Minister raised Poland's World War II suffering under Nazi Germany. And a day after Berlin said it wanted to heal the tensions exposed during the summit, Jaroslaw Kaczynski told Polish public RADIO "SOMETHING VERY NEGATIVE" IS HAPPENING IN GERMANY.

HE WENT ON TO COMPARE MODERN-DAY GERMANY TO THE NAZI ERA OF THE 1930S - BUT SAID EUROPEANS DID NOT DARE SPEAK OUT. "LIKE IN AN ERA WHICH HAS ALREADY PASSED, THE LARGE MAJORITY OF EUROPEANS DIDN'T HAVE THE COURAGE TO TALK ABOUT IT, IT IS THE SAME TODAY," MR KACZYNSKI SAID.

The Pride London event could see up to half a million revellers parade from Baker Street to Trafalgar Square.
The march will be followed by entertainment in Trafalgar Square. Presenters will include actor John Barrowman and TV host Graham Norton.

The event's organisers say the parade and festival will go ahead as normal despite Friday's car bomb alerts.
Police are investigating two explosive devices found in cars in the city's West End. Jason Pollock, chief executive of Pride London, told the BBC that after meetings with the Metropolitan Police it had been decided to keep the route as planned.

Many of them are without electricity or drinking water four days after a cyclone hit coastal districts. Eyewitnesses say there is almost no sign of government relief getting to the affected areas.

Police have fired tear gas on hundreds of angry protesters in the city of Turbat who were demanding help.
The central government has confirmed 14 deaths and 24 people missing in Balochistan since Tuesday, but other reports but the figure much higher.

Officials further north in the Khyber agency bordering Afghanistan say nearly 70 people have been killed. In Afghanistan, more than 80 people have died in recent days. Last weekend more than 200 people were killed in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, by floods and high winds. In India more than 140 were killed.

The first bomb, made of 60 litres of petrol, gas cylinders and nails, was found in a Mercedes outside a night club in Haymarket at 0130BST (0030GMT).

Police say a second device was found in a Mercedes in a car park in Park Lane after it was towed away from Cockspur Street, close to Trafalgar Square.

Both devices were "viable" and "clearly linked", police said.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command, said the discovery of the second device was "obviously troubling".

"There was a considerable amount of fuel and gas canisters, as in the first vehicle. There was also a substantial quantity of nails," he said.

It said this figure could rise if more properties are affected by further flooding. And the body warned that the overall cost of the damage could rise further, with more bad weather anticipated over the weekend. Greek Environment commissioner Stavros Dimas said that while Britain coped with the crisis over flooding, southern Europe was faced with a heatwave which was claiming the lives of many people.

As Britain's biggest-ever peacetime rescue operation continued, the Government was accused of "seriously underestimating" the chaos caused by this week's floods.

The death toll rose to at least seven after the body of a 60-year-old man was pulled from a canal in Lincolnshire. At least 600 have been injured since two months' worth of rain fell in a couple of hours on Monday.
More than 3,500 have had to be rescued from their homes, while many parts of the Midlands and northern England have been evacuated.

Forecasters are predicting more heavy showers over the weekend, with some flooded areas expected to get another two inches of rain, putting even more homes at risk.

"I can confirm police are attending a suspicious vehicle in Park Lane," she said. Park Lane is one of the most prestigious roads in central London. Earlier on Friday, police said they had found a bomb in a car in another area of central London.

A controlled explosion was carried out on the car, packed with 60 litres of petrol, gas cylinders and nails, in the early hours in Haymarket.

Police were alerted by an ambulance crew who saw smoke coming from the silver Mercedes, parked near the Tiger Tiger nightclub.

"International elements" are believed to be involved, the BBC has been told.

Police sources say it is quite possible the device failed to ignite - and might have been minutes away from exploding.

The death toll rose to at least seven after the body of a 60-year-old man was pulled from a canal in Lincolnshire.

At least 600 have been injured since two months' worth of rain fell in a couple of hours on Monday.
More than 3,500 have had to be rescued from their homes, while many parts of the Midlands and northern England have been evacuated.

Forecasters are predicting more heavy showers over the weekend, with some flooded areas expected to get another two inches of rain, putting even more homes at risk.

Eleven severe flood warnings remained in place yesterday, ten in the most badly affected parts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. The Environment Agency has another 52 flood warnings and 57 alerts in place across the UK.

There is growing anger among flood victims at the way developers have been allowed to build on flood plains without giving homes even the most basic defences. Many homeowners will be unable to return to their houses for nine months or more.

Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said: "The Government has not understood the scale, gravity and severity of what has happened.

"Fire crews and officers have been working to the point of collapse. We have witnessed the biggest rescue effort in peacetime Britain by emergency services and it's not over yet."

His scientists claim an underwater ridge near the North Pole is really part of Russia's continental shelf. One newspaper printed a map of the "new addition", a triangle five times the size of Britain with twice as much oil as Saudi Arabia. The dramatic move provoked an international outcry. The U.S. and Canada expressed shock and environment campaigners said it would be a disaster.

Observers say the move is typical of Putin's muscle-flexing as he tries to increase Russian power. Under current international law, the countries ringing the Arctic - -Russia, Canada, the U.S., Norway, and Denmark (which owns Greenland) - are limited to a 200-mile economic zone around their coasts. A UN convention says none can claim jurisdiction over the Arctic seabed because the geological structure does not match the surrounding continental shelves.

But Russian scientists have returned from a six-week mission on a nuclear ice-breaker to claim that the 1,220-mile long underwater Lomonosov Ridge is geologically linked to the Siberian continental platform - and similar in structure. The region is currently administered by the International Seabed Authority but this is now being challenged by Moscow. Experts estimate the ridge has ten billion tons of gas and oil deposits and significant sources of diamonds, gold, tin, manganese, nickel, lead and platinum.

A Russian attempt to claim Arctic territory was rejected five years ago, but this time Moscow plans to make a far more serious submission to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. A British diplomatic source warned that Russia was planning to secure its grip on oil and gas supplies "for decades to come". He said: "Putin wants a strong Russia, and Western dependence on it for oil and gas supplies is a key part of his strategy. He no longer cares if it upsets the West."

Bomb squad officers defused the 'massive' device after police investigated reports of a suspicious vehicle in the early hours. A police source said: "The indications that we have got so far are that it was certainly a big device." According to an eyewitness the door staff at the nightclub Tiger, Tiger alerted police after the car, believed to be a silver Mercedes, was driven into bins last night and the driver ran off.

The witness said the car was being driven 'erratically' before the minor crash. The driver was not stopped.
According to police source the bomb posed a real and substantial threat to the surrounding area, just yards from Piccadilly Circus. A massive police cordon was thrown around The Haymarket in the heart of the capital's busy West End. Rush-hour commuters faced disruption as nearby Piccadilly Underground station was closed and was expected to remain so for most of the morning.

The Haymarket is in the heart of London's theatreland and close to the popular shopping area of Regent Street.

In a development that has triggered unease and excitement in equal measure, scientists took the whole genetic makeup - or genome - of a bacterial cell and transplanted it into a closely related species.
This then began to grow and multiply in the lab, turning into the first species in the process.

The team that carried out the first "species transplant" says it plans within months to do the same thing with a synthetic genome made from scratch in the laboratory. If that experiment worked, it would mark the creation of a synthetic lifeform.

The scientists want to create new kinds of bacterium to make new types of bugs which can be used as green fuels to replace oil and coal, digest toxic waste or absorb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. "We are one step closer to synthetic organisms," said Markus Schmidt of the Organisation for International Dialogue, Vienna.

He said the experiment will drive discussions about the safety issues related to synthetic biology and the implications for society.

By joining the supreme governing body of the WEF, Blair brings "a tremendous wealth of experience and knowledge in all areas of the global agenda," Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the organization, said in a statement. "And he certainly will be very essential to shape our activities," Schwab added.

The WEF is an independent international organization with a proclaimed goal of improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas. Blair attended several annual meetings of the WEF in Davos, Switzerland while he was prime minister.

"This is the worst I've ever seen it in my lifetime," said Mayor Raymond Whitman, 47, who has lived in Marble Falls his entire life.The downpour and winds were so treacherous early Wednesday that helicopters were forced to halt efforts to rescue people from rooftops. No fatalities were immediately reported in the latest rainstorms.

Rains were heaviest in the Marble Falls area, about 40 miles northwest of Austin. Almost 18 inches fell on the town Wednesday. Whitman said 32 people had been rescued from floodwaters there.By midday, the flood waters were receding, but city officials expected several more inches of rain over the next 24 hours.

"The ground is fully saturated - it could be severe," Whitman said. "If people do not pay attention and move to high ground, it is very possible that there will be fatalities."Rains drenched North Texas as well, causing some creeks and rivers to overflow. About 30 homes were destroyed near Lake Granbury, about 60 miles southwest of Dallas, said Hood County Sheriff Gene Mayo. About 25 people were rescued from the water, trees and rooftops, he said.

In Parker County west of Fort Worth, County Judge Mark Riley has declared an emergency and ordered mandatory evacuation of subdivisions along the Brazos River. It's the wettest year on record in Austin, where more than 30 inches of rain have fallen since January. Dallas-Fort Worth, Waco and Wichita Falls also have received near record amounts. The rainfall has more than compensated for a drought that much of Texas had been experiencing since 2005, National Weather Service meteorologist Mark Lenz said.