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.

Medics attending the British Medical Association (BMA) conference voted by 67% to 33% in favour of removing the need for two doctors' signatures to allow an abortion in the first trimester. The move would effectively remove the need for women to meet medical criteria that continuing with the pregnancy poses a risk to their medical or physical health.

The move means that abortion in the first three months of pregnancy would be as easy to obtain as other treatments. However, doctors rejected calls for midwives and nurses to be able to carry out first trimester abortions with suitable training.

They also voted against relaxing laws on what is an "approved" place to carry out first trimester abortions. If doctors had voted in favour, it would have paved the way for abortions to be performed in places like GP surgeries.

The protests presented a rare public challenge to Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the president, whose popularity has been based on his pledge to share oil revenues more fairly and cut living costs for ordinary Iranians.

After attending a closed parliamentary session addressed by the interior and oil ministers, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, Iran's parliamentary speaker, said fuel rationing, introduced at midnight on Tuesday, had to continue, to thwart US threats and the possibility of sanctions hitting petrol imports.

Though Iran is one of the world's biggest oil producers, its lack of refineries means it must import about 40 per cent of its petrol - of which it consumes about 75m litres a day. Iran imported $4.9bn (£2.45bn) of petrol in the year to March 20. This year, however, the government is authorised by parliament to import only $2.5bn.

Motorists were instructed to use smart cards last month to prepare for rationing but hundreds of thousands of drivers have yet to obtain them, including Tehran's 5,000-strong taxi fleet. The government has imposed rations of 100 litres of petrol a month for private cars, 450 litres for private taxis and 800 litres for shared taxis.

Researchers from Oxford and Cambridge universities have discovered that mice can produce embryonic stem cells very similar to those found in human embryos. The findings will make it easier to use mice, and other animals, to study human diseases and could lead to new treatments for conditions such as diabetes and cystic fibrosis in as little as five years. A steady supply of animal cells will lessen the need for stem cells taken from human embryos, a practice that is mired in controversy, as harvesting the cells from embryos leads to their death.

Stem cells are master cells which can change into every type of tissue. They are seen as a "repair kit" for the body, which can potentially replace the defective, dead and worn out cells behind conditions from diabetes to Alzheimer's. Until now, stem cells taken from mice have been very different to those found in human embryos.

But in two landmark pieces of research, carried out independently from one another, scientists have managed to obtain mouse embryonic stem cells that are virtually indistinguishable from their human counterparts. Not only do they look very similar to human cells under the microscope but they rely on the same proteins for growth and have many genetic similarities, the journal Nature reported.

The armada of 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs broke free from a cargo ship 15 years ago. Since then they have travelled 17,000 miles, floating over the site where the Titanic sank, landing in Hawaii and even spending years frozen in an Arctic ice pack. And now they are heading straight for Britain. At some point this summer they are expected to be spotted on beaches in South-West England.

While the ducks are undoubtedly a loss to the bath-time fun of thousands of children, their adventures at sea have proved an innvaluable aid to science. The toys have helped researchers to chart the great ocean currents because when they are spotted bobbing on the waves they are much more likely to be reported to the authorities than the floats which scientists normally use.

And because the toys are made of durable plastic and are sealed watertight, they have been able to survive years adrift at the mercy of the elements. Boxes of the bathtime toys - made in China for the U.S. firm The First Years Inc - were washed overboard in the eastern Pacific Ocean one stormy January night in 1992 and broke open.

In the intervening time an oceanographer, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, has devoted his retirement to tracking the little yellow ducks and their friends over 17,000 miles, and it is he who has predicted that this summer they will land in the West of England. Mr Ebbesmeyer said: 'We're getting reports of ducks being washed up on America's eastern seaboard. "It is now inevitable that they will get caught up in the Atlantic currents and will turn up on English beaches. "Cornwall and the South-West will probably get the first wave of them."

Mr Ebbesmeyer said the toys will be easy for British beachboardcombers to spot because they have largely faded to white and have the words "The First Years" stamped upon them. Mr Ebbesmeyer saw immediately how valuable the little toys would be to scientific research of the great ocean currents, the engine of the planet's entire climate.

He correctly predicted what many thought was impossible - that thousands of them would end up washed into the Arctic ice near Alaska, and then move at a mile a day, frozen in the pack ice, around their very own North-West Passage to the Atlantic. It proved true years later and in 2003, the first "Friendly Floatees" were found, frozen and then thawed out, on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada.

So precious to science are they that the US firm that made them is offering a £50 bounty for finding one.

Eduardo Ermita said the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the rebel group negotiating to end nearly 40 years of rebellion in the south, has also welcomed the appointment of retired Lieutenant-General Rodolfo Garcia.

The government has been talking with Muslim rebels to end a conflict that has killed more than 120,000 people and displaced 2 million in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic country.

Talks over the size and wealth of a proposed homeland for 3 million Muslims have been stalled since September 2006 although backroom discussions continued, resulting in a breakthrough in December when Manila agreed to grant Muslims the right of self-determination.

Some 3.3 billion people will live in cities by 2008, a report by the U.N. population agency report said. By 2030, the number of city dwellers is expected to climb to 5 billion. Without proper planning, cities across the globe face the treat of overwhelming poverty and limited opportunities for youth, said U.N. Population Fund Executive Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. "In 2008, half of the world's population will be in urban areas, and we are not ready for them," said Obaid told The Associated Press in London.

A revival in religious interest has been a surprising characteristic of rapid urbanization, according to the report.
Urbanization is often associated with a shift toward secular values. But the growth of new religious movements?such as radical Islam in the Middle East, Pentecostal Christianity in Latin America and the cult of Shivaji in India?has been a primarily urban phenomena, the report said.

When cities fail to meet the needs of growing populations, religious beliefs tend to become extreme, said Obaid, who is also a U.N. undersecretary-general. "Extremism is often a reaction to rapid and sudden change or to a feeling of exclusion and injustice, and the cities can be a basis for that if they are not well managed," Obaid said.

The study by the United Nations University suggests climate change is making desertification "the greatest environmental challenge of our times". If action is not taken, the report warns that some 50 million people could be displaced within the next 10 years. The study was produced by more than 200 experts from 25 countries.

This report does not pull any punches - desertification is an environmental crisis of global proportions, it says, and one third of the Earth's population are potential victims of its creeping effect.

The announcement came just hours after he stood down as UK prime minister and shortly before it was announced he was to quit as a member of parliament.

Mr Blair said a solution to Mid-East problems was possible but it required "huge intensity and work".

He faces an uphill task to address Palestinian misgivings over his ties to Israel and the US, say observers.

During his final prime minister's questions on Wednesday, Mr Blair was asked about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

He told MPs: "The absolute priority is to try to give effect to what is now the consensus across the international community - that the only way of bringing stability and peace to the Middle East is a two-state solution."