By Jonathan Amos Science reporter, BBC News, Kourou

The launch pad was swept by wind and rain on Friday morning

The UK is due to continue the upgrade to its military satellite communications system with the launch of a new spacecraft on Friday.

The Skynet 5B platform will ride into orbit atop an Ariane 5 rocket from the Kourou spaceport, in French Guiana.

It will join the 5A satellite lofted successfully in March and which is already handling secure traffic for UK forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The £3.6bn Skynet project represents the UK's single biggest space venture.

The investment includes replacing and updating control centres, and the major antennas and terminals used by military ships, land vehicles and planes to communicate through the satellites.

The 5B spacecraft is waiting on the launch pad in Kourou for a flight timed to start at 1904 local time (2204 GMT).

"We've had an incredibly smooth launch campaign so far, and now we're in the final stages," said Patrick Wood, who has led the development of both spacecraft for manufacturer EADS Astrium.

"There are a series of umbilical connections and we communicate with 5B night and day. We're doing final battery charging, making sure it is optimised for launch," he told BBC News.

Laser protected

Skynet 5 will allow the Army, Royal Navy and RAF to pass much more data, faster between command centres.

See how Skynet 5 is being deployed

The bandwidth capacity is two-and-a-half times that of the previous satellite constellation, Skynet 4.

Although they look much like any of the other modern commercial telecommunications spacecraft launched from Kourou, the 5s incorporate new technologies specially prepared for military use.

Skynet 5B will be put in a position over the Indian Ocean Enlarge Image

Four steerable antennas give them the ability to focus bandwidth onto particular locations where it is most needed - where British forces are engaged in operations.

The spacecraft have also been "hardened" to withstand any interference - attempts to disable or take control of the satellites - and any efforts to eavesdrop on their sensitive communications.

They each have advanced receive antennas that enable the spacecraft to selectively listen to signals and filter out attempts to "jam" them.

They will also resist attempts to disrupt them with high-powered lasers.

"Hardened doesn't mean armour-plated, because the cost of launching a spacecraft like that would be phenomenal and the amount of useable payload in it would be very small," explained Mr Wood.

"But Skynet 5 does incorporate electronic - and some physical - protection that will help the spacecraft in some types of adverse environment."

Information battle

The benefits of the upgrade should become evident when the UK starts using Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to support troops in Afghanistan.

These aircraft will stream real-time video of Taleban activity and, with the capacity of Skynet 5, those pictures can be fed back to the UK quickly for further analysis, if necessary.

The Skynet system brings an increase in power and bandwidth Enlarge Image

The UK military increasingly talks about NEC - Network Enabled Capability. It describes modern commanders taking rapid decisions based on superior information - enabling them to deploy equipment and personnel far more effectively than has been possible in the past.

The abundance of information has to be managed, however.

Tony Skinner, from Jane's Defence Weekly, said British commanders had admitted they were still learning how best to handle what is becoming a flood of information.

"As some of these new systems are coming online, and the communication bearers increase capacity, the armed forces have to work out the human processes, standards and protocols needed to use the information efficiently," Mr Skinner explained.

"Also, your systems have to be interoperable, especially working in a coalition environment. It's all very well taking a video stream from a drone but can you share that with friendly forces, other bases and even back to the UK?"

Complex deal

The cost of the Skynet project has raised eyebrows, not least because it has been financed through a private company with City money.

Paradigm Secure Communications won a contract with the Ministry of Defence to supply satellite services to UK forces.

The contract called for two new spacecraft and, because of the way the financing deal was put together, will allow for an in-orbit spare, Skynet 5C to be launched next year.

The MoD is currently struggling to tie down the details of another major PFI (Private Finance Initiative) to overhaul the RAF's mid-air re-fuelling tankers, but Paradigm managing director, Malcolm Peto, is in no doubt the novel procurement route is good value.

"This is the way to do it," he said.

"Other European militaries and procurement agencies have been sceptical that we could put this satcom network and services together.

"But with one satellite already in orbit, people are starting to take notice. With two in orbit we will have nothing left to prove."

Skynet 5A looks over the Atlantic Ocean. 5B will occupy a position above the Indian Ocean. Together, they will provide coverage from the eastern US seaboard to east of China.

Friday's Ariane rocket will also loft a Brazilian telecommunications spacecraft.

1. Skynet 5 overhauls satellite communications for UK forces 2. The largely autonomous satellites talk to two UK ground stations 3. Skynet 5 supports high-bandwidth applications, such as UAV video 4. Antennas and terminals are upgraded to make best use of Skynet 5. New battlefield networks, such as Cormorant, feed into the system 6. System gives commanders access to more information, faster The satellites are 'hardened' against interference. A special receive antenna (1) can resist attempts at jamming Each spacecraft has four steerable antennas (2) that can concentrate bandwidth onto particular regions The system gives near-global coverage (3), providing 2.5 times the capacity afforded by the previous system Each spacecraft (4) is a 3x4x4.5m box and weighs just under 5 tonnes; the solar wings once unfurled measure 34m tip to tip Improved technologies, including a solar 'sail' (5), lengthen the platforms' operational lives to at least 15 years

Skynet military launch is delayed

The launch of the UK's Skynet 5B military communications satellite from French Guiana has been delayed. The spacecraft's Ariane rocket has developed an electronic problem in one of its solid fuel boosters and will be rolled back to an inspection shed. The flight, originally timed for Friday night, is not now expected to take place until Monday at the earliest. The £3.6bn Skynet project is designed to give British commanders access to more information, much faster. "We tried to understand what's going on [in the electronic equipment] but unfortunately we did not succeed," explained Jean-Yves Le Gall from Arianespace, the company which runs the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. "We are now taking the launch vehicle back to the Final Assembly Building where we will investigate the equipment and replace it." The countdown was stopped six hours, two minutes and 34 seconds before the scheduled lift-off. Video demand The Skynet 5B platform is set to join in orbit the 5A satellite, which was lofted successfully in March and is already handling secure traffic for UK forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The spacecraft, which have been developed by EADS Astrium in Stevenage and Portsmouth, provide-two-and-a-half times the bandwidth capacity of their predecessors, the Skynet 4 satellites. Controllers take no risks with a launch The greater performance is necessary because military commanders are starting to use information-rich applications, such as video, in their operations. Only today, the Ministry of Defence announced it had started flying its new Reaper Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in Afghanistan. The planes will gather intelligence on Taliban activities and their pictures can be fed back to the UK via Skynet 5A for further analysis, if necessary. The problem with the Ariane rocket also delays the launch of Skynet 5B's co-passenger - a Brazilian satellite called Star One C1 which will deliver broadband internet services to consumers in South America. Delays to launches are not uncommon. Officials constantly monitor the rocket and its payload and if there is the slightest doubt, the flight is stood down. Skynet 5A was itself held on the ground for 24 hours when a fault developed in the launch table. "This is the price for total quality; we do not want to take any risks, and this is why we replace equipment anytime we could have a problem," said Mr Le Gall. The technical teams responsible for the satellites will continue to monitor their systems over the weekend. Umbilical connections to the Ariane allow engineers to talk to the spacecraft even though they are closed inside the top of the rocket. "At this stage, the thing we worry about is the battery [in 5B]," explained Patrick Wood, the Skynet programme chief at Astrium. "The team will be monitoring the charge on the lithium ion battery, and checking it is on external power. Once we've got a resumed launch time, we will go with our standard test sequence," he told BBC News. The RAF is now using Reaper, which was formerly known as Predator B

Galaxies clash in four-way merger

Four gigantic galaxies have been seen crashing into one another in one of the biggest cosmic collisions ever seen.

A US team of astronomers observed the four-way cosmic smash-up using Nasa's Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes along with ground-based observatories.

The clashing galaxies are expected to eventually merge into a single, behemoth galaxy up to 10 times as massive as our own Milky Way.

Details of the research appear in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The rare observation offers an unprecedented look at how the most massive galaxies in the Universe are formed.

Collisions, or mergers, between galaxies are common in the Universe. Mergers between one large galaxy and several small ones, called "minor mergers", have been well documented.

Astronomers have also observed "major" mergers among pairs of galaxies that are similar in size. But, until now, no major mergers between multiple large galaxies have been seen.

"It's the first one that I know about. So far, nobody has written to me to say they've found another four-way merger," said co-author Kenneth Rines, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, US.

Plume of stars

Dr Rines likened the collision to "four sand trucks smashing together, flinging sand everywhere". The new quadruple merger was discovered serendipitously during a survey of massive galaxy clusters consisting of tens to hundreds of galaxies.

The Spitzer Space Telescope spotted an unusually large fan-shaped plume of light emerging from a gathering of four elliptical galaxies in the cluster CL0958+4702, which is located nearly five billion light-years from Earth.

"The galaxies that live in the middle of clusters like this are the biggest galaxies anywhere in the Universe," Dr Rines told the BBC News website.

"When this merger finishes, the giant galaxy left at the end will be one of the biggest ones in the Universe. This shows how these giant galaxies get assembled."

All the galaxies in the merger are categorised as large; three are about the size of our own Milky Way, while the biggest one is about three times the size.

Analysis of the plume coming from the merger revealed it was made up of billions of stars flung out and abandoned in the ongoing clash. About half of the stars in the plume will later fall back into the galaxies.

"It seems as if there are several galaxies-worth of stars being thrown out by this collision," said the Cambridge-based astronomer.

"There are more stars in that plume than there are in the Milky Way. So an incredible amount of material is being tossed out."

Missing gas

The stars studied so far from the merger all appear to have formed within the first three billion years after the Big Bang. The quadruple merger itself is taking place some nine billion years after the Big Bang.

The observation that large galaxies contained many old stars used to be problematic for a popular theory of galaxy assembly - the hiearchical model.

This proposed that smaller structures underwent successive mergers to form larger ones. Under this model, the largest galaxies should be sites of star formation and therefore contain young stars.

One way to resolve the problem is through the idea of gas-rich and gas-poor mergers. In gas-rich mergers, the galaxies are soaked with gas that ignites to form new stars. But in gas-poor mergers, no new stars are formed.

Gas-poor mergers, then, were one way that large galaxies might merge without accompanying star formation.

Indeed, the Spitzer observations demonstrate that gas is a missing component in the new quadruple merger, perhaps explaining why only old stars have been found.

In addition to Spitzer, the team used Nasa's Chandra X-ray Observatory to weigh the mass of the giant cluster of galaxies in which the merger was discovered. Two ground-based observatories were also used in the study: the MMT and WIYN observatories, both of which are based in Tucson, Arizona.

Full power Indonesia

Facing the odds team – Saudi Arabia in this (14/7) night at Gelora Bung Karno main stadium, Indonesia seem have no doubth. Play with full of spirit, Indonesia giving no chance to Saudi players.

Thousand eyes watching in the Gelora Bung Karno main stadium, but only one color show – the red for Indonesia.

The spirit getting increase with the Indonesia President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono present in the stadium. Using the same color with the others, the president gave another spirit for senior team players.

Even Indonesia was left one goal after Yasser l Qahtani goal in minutes 14, Indonesia still have lot of power. Not have to wait so long, one of Indonesia best player Elie Aiboy (8) in minutes 20 gave Saudi a hard situation, Elie Aiboy success make a wonderful goal for Indonesia. The game ended draw until the end of first half. (fa) Squad Indonesia:

Yandri Pitoy (GK)
Muhammad Ridwan (DF)
Richardo Salampessy(DF)
Maman Abdurrahman(DF)
Charis Yulianto(DF)
Eka Ramdani(MF)
Elie Aiboy (MF)
Budi Sudarsono (FW)
Firman Utina (MF)
Syamsul Bachri(MF)
Bambang Pamungkas (FW)

Substitute :

Ismed Sofyan(MF)
Atep (MF)
Zaenal Arif(FW)
Hary Syahputra(DF)
Supardi(DF)
Markus Rihina(GK)
Achmad Jufriyanto (DF)

The 2007 Asian Cup

Keep your fight, Indonesia

Indonesia may lose in this night match (14/7) faced Saudi Arabia, but the spirit would not stop. Indonesia that lose 2-1 over Arab Saudi due the Saudi Arabia substitute player Saad Al Harthi (11) free kick in the injury time.

Indonesia lone goal was made by Elie Aiboy in first half. Saudi Arabia best striker Yasser Al Qahtani (20) also made Saudi first goal in the first half.

The truth, Indonesia was played great. Since the first half, Indonesia kept fight to make a goal.

However, it is not the end. Indonesia would never stop. (fa)

'Many dead' in Brazil plane crash

'Many dead' in Brazil plane crash

The plane skidded across a main road before hitting a fuel depot

Scores of people are feared dead after a passenger plane carrying 176 people crashed at Congonhas airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil, starting a major fire.

The state governor said the chances of finding survivors were "practically nil", while a fire official said more may have been killed on the ground.

The TAM airlines Airbus A320 is thought to have slid off the end of the runway as it landed in very wet conditions.

Concerns had been raised about the safety of the runway during heavy rain.

There had been persistent, heavy rain in the two hours preceding the accident.

On Monday afternoon, a smaller plane skidded off the runway onto the nearby grass in similar conditions.

Major fire

TAM Express flight 3054 was carrying 170 passengers and six crew when it attempted to land at Congonhas airport in the heart of Sao Paulo.

The plane was travelling to the city from Porto Alegre in the south of the country.

All of a sudden I heard a loud explosion, and the ground beneath my feet shook Elias Rodrigues Jesus TAM employee

After touching down on the airport's main runway at 1850 (2150 GMT), the passenger jet skidded before sliding across a busy road in a residential area.

It then struck a depot used by TAM for storing cargo and some fuel.

Brazilian television has been showing pictures of a major fire at the scene and the emergency services have arrived in large numbers to deal with the aftermath of the accident.

An eyewitness, TAM employee Elias Rodrigues Jesus, said the plane had exploded after slamming into the depot.

"All of a sudden I heard a loud explosion, and the ground beneath my feet shook," he told the Associated Press.

"I looked up and I saw a huge ball of fire, and then I smelled the stench of kerosene and sulphur."

Safety concerns

The BBC's Gary Duffy in Sao Paolo says the weather has been bad for much of the day and there has been concern for some time about safety at Congonhas during heavy rain.

In February, a judge briefly banned flights in and out of the airport, which is the busiest in Brazil.

Pilots had complained that water was pooling on the surface of the landing strip, making braking difficult and occasionally causing planes to skid out of control.

Remedial work, including laying a new surface, has been carried out in recent months.

However, a much smaller plane skidded off the runway before stopping on grass in similar weather conditions on Monday. No-one was injured in the incident.

Air safety in Brazil has been a major issue since a crash last year when a passenger plane collided with an executive jet over the Amazon, our correspondent says.

Some 154 people died in that incident, which was the worst air crash in the country's history.

China joins EU's satellite network

China has struck a deal to invest in Galileo, the European Union's space satellite navigation network.

China is already one of the biggest players in the global satellite launch industry and is making final preparations for its first manned space flight which could take place as soon as next month.

"China will help Galileo to become the major world infrastructure for the growing market for location services," said EU transport commissioner Loyola de Palacio.

China will invest 230m euros ($259m; £160m) in the Galileo satellite tracking system, roughly a fifth of the expected cost of building the 1.1bn euros network of 30 satellites.

Rivalry in space

The EU is developing Galileo to provide an alternative to the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS), which is favoured by the Pentagon.

The European Space Agency and China's Ministry of Science and Technology have also set up a joint training centre for satellite navigation based at Beijing University, was officially opened on Friday.

The joint agreement to develop Galileo covers co-operation in satellite navigation, technology, manufacturing, market development, as well as regulatory issues such as flight frequency and certification, the EU's statement said.

Eventually China's involvement in Galileo could lead to it tailoring its military as well as civilian satellite technology for use in the system, analysts believe.

"The point is that if a country opts for Galileo, it will too for defence systems that are compatible with Galileo," the Financial Times quoted an EU diplomat involved in the development of Galileo as saying.

Security concerns

The paper reported EU officials as saying that China was mainly interested in the top end of the Galileo system, or Public Regulated Service (PRS), which is used by the police and security services.

PRS is also expected to play a role in the development of future military co-ordination capabilities.

The United States has security worries about the development of Galileo.

GPS, like the Russian Glonass system, is a military-run network and can be downgraded or taken offline if an enemy attempts to use the data to launch guided missiles, for example.

By contrast, Galileo will be a civilian-run operation that will be guaranteed in all but the direst circumstances so services that are safety-critical - landing planes, for example - can rely on the data.

Europe presses ahead on sat-nav

By Jonathan Amos

BBC News science reporter

There will be 30 spacecraft in the Galileo constellation

The Galileo satellite navigation system will soon become a reality after being given final approval in Brussels.

European transport ministers agreed to the next phase of the project - the construction and launch of spacecraft.

It is expected the European network will have orbiting satellites in place to begin operations beyond 2008.

Galileo will be interoperable with the US GPS, improving the accuracy and reliability of navigation and timing signals received across the planet.

"This is a real technological revolution," said the European Commissioner for Transport, Jacques Barrot.

WHAT IS GALILEO? Europe's own global satellite navigation system Will work alongside US GPS and Russian Glonass systems Promises real-time positioning down to just a few metres Guaranteed under all but most extreme circumstances Suitable for safety-critical systems - can run trains, guide cars and land planes

"This will have many practical applications: direct information for emergency rescuers in case of car accidents, dynamic traffic management to help trucks avoid huge traffic jams, the prevention of natural catastrophes such as flooding or fires, and a lot of other useful applications."

Friday's meeting of ministers approved the "deployment" phase of Galileo. This covers the construction and launch of satellites and the building of ground receiving stations.

This will cost 2.1 billion euros (£1.4bn), with industry putting up two-thirds of the investment. More than a billion euros has already been released for research and development. Further funds will need to be approved to pay for the first years of operations.

Eventually, however, it is expected the running costs will be entirely covered by the private sector.

US agreement

Galileo is expected to drive a multi-billion-euro industry in which receivers find their way into many more markets - from consumer devices such as mobile phones to safety-critical applications such as guided trains and buses.

"This programme will offer Europe a worldwide position with countries such as China and Russia using the system Galileo," said Jacques Barrot.

THE GALILEO FUTURE Expected to be more than 400 million sat-nav users by 2015 European aerospace and electronics firms say it will create more than 100,000 jobs Rescue services will be able to pinpoint the exact location of a car driver's accident Will allow someone to find their way in an unfamiliar city using their mobile phone

"We estimate the creation of 150,000 jobs and a serial of industrial and technological developments."

The final constellation of 30 satellites will double the spacecraft providing the American Global Positioning System, greatly improving the quality of signals users can receive.

The idea of the Europeans developing their own network had irked the US Department of Defense, which controls GPS, because of the potential of Galileo's signals interfering with those intended for use by the American military.

The Pentagon was concerned frequency clashes could have prevented American commanders from degrading navigation data in the theatre of war to all but their own forces, as is possible at present.

But Washington and Brussels signed an agreement in June to adopt compatible operating standards.

Galileo should lead to a bigger demand for positioning systems

These technical parameters will allow either side to effectively jam the other's signal in a small area, such as a battlefield, without shutting down the entire system.

More importantly from the civilian perspective, the agreement allowed the systems to be meshed seamlessly, greatly benefiting manufacturers, service providers and consumers.

Better accuracy, especially in built-up areas where the current GPS signal can be patchy, should lead to a bigger demand for positioning systems.

Two consortia are fighting to obtain the contract to operate Galileo, and ministers are expected to decide on a winner in the next few months.

The Eurely alliance includes Alcatel, Finmeccanica and Vinci; while the iNavsat consortium comprises Thales, EADS and Inmarsat.

The first demonstrator spacecraft should be launched next year. Although 2008 is supposed to be the start time for Galileo, commentators say the system will not be fully operational for some years after this date.

Police avert car bomb 'carnage'

A car bomb planted in central London would have caused "carnage" if it had exploded, police say.

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

An ambulance crew saw smoke coming from the green Mercedes, near the Tiger Tiger nightclub at 0130 BST (0030 GMT).

London's Park Lane was later cordoned off while a suspicious vehicle was investigated.

Scotland Yard, Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur urged people to be "alert and vigilant" and to report any suspicions to the police.

Disruption would be kept to a minimum, he said, although the police were reviewing the safety of a number of big public events set to take place in the capital over the weekend.

"I want to reassure Londoners that we are doing everything possible to make them safe," he added.

Earlier, a Scotland Yard spokeswoman said that Park Lane was closed at Marble Arch to Hyde Park Corner and a 200m cordon was in place.

Sources close to the investigation said the Park Lane closure was linked to the discovery of a vehicle at an underground car park. A police robot was being used to investigate the vehicle.

"International elements" were believed to be involved with the Haymarket bomb, Whitehall sources told the BBC.

Nightclubbers

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command, said: "It is obvious that if the device had detonated there could have been serious injury or loss of life."

The ambulance had been called to the nightclub - where up to 1,700 people were inside - when they spotted smoke, now believed to be vapour, inside the car.

Bomb experts manually disabled the "potentially viable explosive device".

Scotland Yard declined to comment on reports that a mobile phone was found in the Mercedes that may have been intended to trigger the explosion.

One report claimed that a quick-thinking officer disconnected the mobile phone before bomb squad officers arrived.

Mobile phones have been used to detonate bombs in Iraq and Indonesia and in other terror attacks, such as the 2004 Madrid bombings.

The car bomb has echoes of other terrorist plots. Five men were jailed for life in April for a UK bomb plot linked to al-Qaeda that targeted a shopping centre and a nightclub with a giant fertiliser bomb.

And Dhiren Barot was jailed for life last November for conspiring to park limousines packed with gas canisters underneath high-profile buildings before detonating them.

DAC Clarke told a press conference that it was too early to say who was responsible but the incident "resonated" with previous terrorist plots.

"The threat from terrorism is real. It is here, enduring. Life must go on but we must all stay alert," he said.

Mr Clarke also specifically mentioned nightclubs as a potential target.

Following Friday's discovery police patrols in central London were stepped up "to provide a visible reassurance", rather than in response to a specific threat.

Officers will visit licensed premises to reiterate ongoing crime prevention and safety advice, said a police spokesman.

The Muslim Council of Britain, the largest organisation representing Muslim groups in the UK, urged people to help the police find the perpetrators.

Secretary-General Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, said: "It is now a duty upon all the rest of us to help the police so that they can bring whoever was involved in this plot swiftly to justice".

Alert

Speaking in Downing Street after a private meeting with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the new Home Office minister for security, Admiral Sir Alan West, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith urged members of the public to report anything suspicious to the police.

Mr Brown said Britain faced "a serious and continuous threat".

He added the public "need to be alert" at all times.

The BBC's Andy Tighe said the timing was significant coming a day after Mr Brown became prime minister, and with the second anniversary of the 7 July bombings approaching.

Earlier reports said bouncers from a nearby nightclub saw the car being driven erratically before it crashed into a bin. They claimed the driver then got out and ran off.

A police source said the bomb was a "big device" and had posed a real and substantial threat to the hundreds of revellers leaving the area's bars and nightclubs.

Dozens of forensic officers examined the scene and the car was taken to the Forensics Explosives Laboratory in Kent for further tests.

The current terrorism threat level has been classed as severe - one level lower than the highest "critical" - since 14 August 2006.

Intelligence sources said they were keeping an open mind on who was responsible for the car bomb.

The BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner said the incident had "come from nowhere" and that the driver of the car was now Britain's "most wanted".

He said CCTV was the key to finding the "first clue" as to who was behind the attempted bombing.

Police have urged anyone with information to phone the confidential Anti-Terrorist hotline number on 0800789321.

Microchip shawls to save wildlife

The government of Jammu and Kashmir in India has started a new scheme in which microchip tags are used for all registered Tibetan antelope products.

They hope that this will check illegal trade in valuable wool that comes from the creatures used to make shawls.

The scheme was initiated on the orders of the Indian Supreme Court.

The aim of the move is to implement a total ban on antelope wool known as shahtoosh. It has been welcomed by conservationists.

Huge demand

They say that there are increasing fears about the antelopes being pushed to extinction.

Any person found in Kashmir with a shahtoosh shawl without a digital tag and ownership certificate can face imprisonment of up to six years.

Shahtoosh is fine wool made from the endangered Tibetan antelope, locally known as the chiru.

Found only in high Himalayas, the chiru has been killed in large numbers for the wool.

India says its current chiru population is between 70,000 to 80,000.

International trade in shahtoosh products was banned in 1979 under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).

Wildlife activists have blamed western countries for the demand.

In India, the shawls cost between $1,000 to $5,000 (40,747 to 203,747 Indian Rupees) but internationally they can sell for up to $20,000 (815,000 Indian Rupees).

Total ban

Trade in shahtoosh was banned throughout India except in the state of Jammu and Kashmir which follows a different legal system from the rest of the country.

That prompted Ashok Kumar, an Indian wildlife campaigner, to petition the courts in Jammu and Kashmir asking them to ban totally the trade in shahtoosh products.

In December 2005 the Supreme Court ordered the Jammu and Kashmir wildlife department to make an inventory of genuine users of shahtoosh and give them a certificate of ownership.

'Gram weight'

Wildlife officials will now receive special training to stitch little microchips in the corners of each shawl.

The electronic transponders are smaller than a matchstick and weigh less than a gram each.

Officials used to stamp the shawls or add cloth patches which marked them as legal.

This led to protests by shawl owners who said it defaced the shawl and made the value go down.

Shahtoosh, which means "king of wools" in Persian, is more delicate than human hair. The shawls are so fine that they can pass through a wedding ring.

A single shahtoosh shawl requires the wool of four to five such antelopes - and conservationists estimate that 20,000 chirus are killed annually.

Mr Kumar hopes that the rest of India will take similar steps to check the flourishing illegal trade in shahtoosh.

In pictures: Lake pollution

Raw sewageIncreased pollution is threatening the sustainable use of Lake Victoria, a vital resource for Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, reports the BBC’s Noel Mwakugu.

Each day gallons of raw sewage and rubbish flows into the lake from houses and industries near its shores.

In Kisumu, on the Kenyan side of the lake, sewage from 20% of homes flows into the waters.

Fuel spillage

The growing demand in international markets for Nile perch and Tilapia fish caught in the lake has led to more fishermen.

Dozens of fishing boats are out on the lake every night to supply the 18 fish processing industries in Uganda.

Researchers say fuel spilled from fishing boats is poisoning aquatic plants, which are vital for feeding fish and serve as breeding grounds.

Artificial skin 'cuts scarring'

A prototype artificial skin used to heal wounds has been developed by British researchers.

Writing in the journal Regenerative Medicine, UK-based company Intercytex said it had produced promising results in early trials.

It said the skin seemed to incorporate itself much better with real tissue than any other skin substitutes tried in the past.

The researchers hope it might provide an alternative to skin grafts.

Currently the best way of treating serious burns and large wounds is to take skin from part of a patient's body and graft it on to the damaged area.

But this is not ideal, and there have been attempts to create a form of artificial skin.

However, some doctors say that the failure of these to fully integrate with the wound have rendered these efforts of limited value.

Intercytex believes its latest version weaves into wounds much better.

The skin is created from a matrix made up of fibrin, a protein found in healing wounds.

To this is added human fibroblasts - cells used by the body to synthesise new tissue.

In a process that effectively replicates the way the body makes new skin, the cells produce and release another protein, collagen, which makes the matrix more stable.

It is in this form that the "skin" is implanted into a wound.

The researchers say that because the matrix is in a stable form, it is more able to withstand changes that take place during the healing process.

The fact that the collagen is synthesised directly by the cells themselves also more closely mirrors the natural healing process.

Quick healing

In tests researchers cut an oval section of skin from the arms of six healthy volunteers and replaced it with their lab-grown skin.

After 28 days the artificial skin had remained stable and the wounds had healed with relatively little scarring.

Dr Paul Kemp, Intercytex's chief scientist, said: "I was very surprised at how quickly the wounds healed.

"If this continues in larger trials then it could revolutionise the way in which wounds and burns are treated in the future."

Dr Kemp has been working with Ken Dunn, a consultant surgeon at the burns unit at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester.

Mr Dunn said: "This particular product behaves like the patients' own skin.

"It seems to excite much less reaction than the other materials we are using at the moment.

"If this is borne out in larger clinical trials then we would be very interested in using it with our patient group."

Others, however, have warned it is easy to heal a small, surgically-created wound in healthy volunteers, and that the true test will come when the technique is tried on real patients with real burns.

Dr Phil Stephens, an expert in cell biology at Cardiff University, said: "Future studies are needed to establish whether this system is substantially better then those already on the market.

"But this skin replacement system has the potential to dramatically reduce scarring and help heal chronic wounds in aged patients to give them a better quality of life."

Tropical giant penguin discovered

A giant penguin that preferred the tropics to the southern oceans has been discovered by a team of scientists.

The fossilised remains of the animal, which lived some 36 million years ago, were found in what is today Peru.

At 1.5m (5ft) tall, the penguin looked quite different from its modern-day cousins, a report in PNAS journal says.

It had a long protracted skull and what its discoverers are describing as a grossly elongated beak that was spear-like in appearance.

The Icadyptes salasi penguin would dwarf all the penguins who walk the planet today.

It would have stood head and shoulders over the emperor and the king penguins of the southern seas.

Its well-preserved skeleton was discovered in the Department of Ica on the southern coast of Peru along with the remains of as many as four other previously undiscovered penguin species, all of which appear to have preferred the tropics for colder climes.

Indeed, the Icadyptes appears to have lived happily at such warmer latitudes at a time when world temperatures were much hotter than they are today - and long before anyone thought penguins had reached such low latitudes.

Of course, not all modern-day penguins are adapted for life in cold temperatures.

The African or Galapagos penguins, for example, as their names suggest, also prefer warmer waters to the better-known penguins of the southern seas and Antarctica; but they are comparative newcomers, say the researchers, compared with the giant whose discovery they are now announcing.

"That was sort of a dominant hypothesis - that in fact penguins had only reached low latitude regions comparatively recently and after two major periods of cooling in Earth's history," said Dr Julia Clarke, of North Carolina State University, US, and a member of the research team.

"One was around the Eocene-Oligocene about 34 million years ago; and more recently, post 15 million years ago - but in fact we find penguins there now in much warmer periods and much, much earlier."

Full details are reported in a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) of the United States of America.

Team makes Tunguska crater claim

Scientists have identified a possible crater left by the biggest space impact in modern times - the Tunguska event.

The blast levelled more than 2,000 sq km of forest near the Tunguska River in Siberia on 30 June 1908.

A comet or asteroid is thought to have exploded in the Earth's atmosphere with a force equal to 1,000 Hiroshima bombs.

Now, a University of Bologna team says a lake near the epicentre of the blast may be occupying a crater hollowed out by a chunk of rock that hit the ground.

Lake Cheko - though shallow - fits the proportions of a small, bowl-shaped impact crater, say the Italy-based scientists.
Their investigation of the lake bottom's geology reveals a funnel-like shape not seen in neighbouring lakes.

In addition, a geophysics survey of the lake bed has turned up an unusual feature about 10m down which could either be compacted lake sediments or a buried fragment of space rock.

Other features suggest a recent origin for the lake.

Shocking rocks

Luca Gasparini, Giuseppe Longo and colleagues from Bologna argue that the lake feature, about 8km north-north-west of the airburst epicentre, may have been gouged out by remnant material that made it to the ground.

"We have no positive proof this is an impact crater, but we were able to exclude some other hypotheses, and this led us to our conclusion," Professor Longo, the research team leader, told BBC News.

The object that hurtled through the atmosphere on the morning of 30 June, 1908, is thought to have detonated some 5-10km above the ground with an energy equivalent to about 20 million tonnes of TNT. The explosion was so bright it even lit up the sky in London, UK.

Small fragments of the body should have survived the airburst and made it Earth. But, mysteriously, no crater - or even the slightest trace of the impactor - has ever been positively identified.

"In my opinion, they certainly haven't provided any conclusive evidence it's an impact structure," commented Dr Gareth Collins, a Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc) research fellow at Imperial College London, UK.

He added: "The impact cratering community does not accept structures as craters unless there is evidence of high temperatures and high pressures. That requires evidence of rocks that have been melted or rocks that have been ground up by the impact."

Tree observation

Dr Collins pointed out that the Cheko feature was "anomalously" shallow and lacked the round shape of most craters - being more elliptical in its form. Elliptical craters only occur if the impactor's angle of entry is less than about 10 degrees.

"We know from modelling of the Tunguska event that the angle of entry must have been steeper than that," Dr Collins told BBC News.

A key feature of other impact craters is conspicuously missing from Lake Cheko - a "flap" around the crater rim of upside-down material tossed a short distance from the crater by the impact.

Dr Collins added that if pieces of the space rock had survived the airburst, they would have been too small and travelling too slowly to have generated a crater the size of Lake Cheko.

An impact would also have felled trees all around the crater, said the London geologist, yet there appeared to be trees older than 100 years still standing around Lake Cheko today.

Dr Benny Peiser, from Liverpool John Moores University, was also cautious about the findings, adding: "There has been an inflationary increase in the number of claims that allege discovery of impact events or impact craters."

Drill project

The Italian researchers argue that some of the lake's anomalous features could be explained if a space rock was travelling at a low speed and had a "soft" impact into the swampy Siberian taiga.

The crater could have become subsequently enlarged by the expulsion of water and gas from the ground.

The Bologna team says this could also account for the limited damage to the surrounding area and the absence of a rim of upturned ejecta.

"If formed during the impact, [the rim] would have been rapidly obliterated by collapse and gravity-failures during the subsequent degassing phase," the authors write in the journal Terra Nova.

Intriguingly, Lake Cheko does not appear on any maps before 1929, though the researchers admit the region was poorly charted before this time.

The University of Bologna team plans to mount another expedition to the Tunguska region in summer 2008.

The researchers aim to drill up to 10m below the lake bed to the anomaly picked up in the geophysics survey and determine whether it really is a piece of extraterrestrial rock.

Computer models carried out by other teams suggest that centimetre-sized fragments of the body could be found hundreds of kilometres away from Tunguska.

As the impactor plunged through the atmosphere, it pushed air out of its way, leaving a near-vacuum in its wake.

As it broke up, fragments would have expanded back up the vacuum and rained out over a much larger area.

Cyber-bullying gathers pace in US

One third of US online teenagers have been victims of cyber-bullying according to research by the Pew Internet Project.

The most common complaint from teens was about private information being shared rather than direct threats.

Girls were more likely than boys to be targets and teens who share their identities online are the most vulnerable, the survey found.

But teenagers still think that the majority of bullying happens offline.

Social networks

Some 32% of teenagers questioned had experienced one of more of the following: having a private e-mail, IM or text messaging forwarded or posted where others could see it, the victim of an aggressive email, IM or text message, having a rumour spread about them online or having an embarrassing photograph posted online without permission.

As more and more young people join social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, so they are opening themselves and their personal information up to more people.

The survey found that 39% of social network users had been cyber-bullied in some way, compared to 22% of online teens who do not use social networks.

The sites themselves offer new avenues for bullies, the survey found.

One 16-year-old girl said: "There's this boy in my anatomy class who everybody hates and some girl started up this I Hate [Name] MySpace thing. So everybody in school goes on it to say bad things about this boy."

Sites such as MySpace and Bebo employ security and safety officers to trawl the site for inappropriate content.

"E-thugs"

The survey attempted to find out why teenagers go online to bully.

"Bullying has entered the digital age. The impulses behind it are the same, but the effect is magnified. In the past, the materials of bullying would have been whispered, shouted or passed around.

"Now, with a few clicks, a photo, video or a conversation can be shared with hundreds via e-mail or millions through a website, online profile or blog posting," concluded report author Amanda Lenhart.

Some teens felt that the insulating nature of the web was distancing bullies from their actions.

"People think they are a million times stronger because they can hide behind their computer monitor," one teenage boy said in his response to why teens bully online.

Describing those indulging in cyber-bullying as "e-thugs" he followed old-fashioned advice to avoid getting involved.

"Basically I just ignored the person and went along with my own civilised business."

Government guidelines.

In the UK, schools such as Helston Community School in Cornwall, have experienced cyber-bullying first-hand.

It fought a battle to have offensive comments about pupils and a teacher removed from UK social networking site Bebo.

Bebo said that it froze accounts that were used inappropriately but the school felt it didn't act quickly enough and banned the site from school computers.

Last year the UK government issued guidelines to help parents and pupils deal with the issue of cyber-bullying after the Anti-Bullying Alliance found that one in five UK schoolchildren had been the victim of some form of online and mobile abuse.

Its recommended that schools included cyber-bullying in their anti-bullying policies and undertook regular monitoring of communication technology used in schools.

It advised youngsters not to give out personal contact details or post photographs of themselves online.

Apple's iPhone makes it to stores

Apple's much-hyped iPhone finally goes on sale in the US today.

Some people have been queuing for days outside Apple and AT&T stores across the US to ensure they get hold of one of the devices.

Hundreds more are expected to start queuing during the day because stores will not start selling the iPhone until 1800 local time.

Apple said buyers visiting its stores would not be able to walk out with more than two iPhones each.

Costly deal

The iPhone will be available in Europe in 2007 and Asia in 2008.

Since the iPhone was announced at Macworld in January 2007 the gadget has won a huge amount of coverage.

That interest has continued up to the launch with bloggers reporting live from queues outside some stores. Gadget site Gizmodo is broadcasting live video from the Apple store in San Francisco.

The quad-bandphone has a 3.5in (9cm) touch screen, wi-fi, no keyboard, a camera and a web browser on board. It is also intended to be used as a media player to listen to music and watch video uploaded to it via iTunes.

It is available in two versions sporting either five or eight gigabytes of memory.

Apple said the iPhone's battery was good for eight hours of talktime, six hours of net use or seven hours of video watching.

Early reviews of the iPhone have been broadly positive but those who have played around with it said touch screen typing took some getting used to and data download speeds were very slow.

The handset has also been criticised as it does not use the 3G network, does not support instant messaging or voice-activated dialling and does not let people choose ringtones beyond the 25 pre-installed on it.

Apple said it hoped to sell 10 million iPhones by 2008 and grab itself a 1% share of the mobile phone market.

To do this it will face significant competition from well-established handset makers such as Nokia and other touch screen phone makers such as Samsung and HTC.

However, some commentators thought that the high price of the gadget could put people off.

The device costs either $499 or $599 and buyers must also commit to a two-year contract with AT&T that will cost them a minimum of $59.99 per month.

As with many Apple products prices in Europe for the device are likely to be higher than direct currency conversions would suggest.

In a company-wide message relayed to Apple employees on 28 June, Steve Jobs said every worker who had been at the company for more than a year would get one of the devices for free.

The iPhone going on sale on 29 June is likely to be just the first of a long line of gadgets with future models adding the features and software lacking in the original.