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.

First female boss for Home Office

Jacqui Smith has become Britain's first female home secretary, having been appointed as John Reid's replacement.

Her promotion to Gordon Brown's Cabinet comes after a stint as chief whip.

The MP - one of the incoming "Blair babes" pictured with Tony Blair in 1997 - became a junior education minister within two years of gaining her seat.

Her ministerial posts included health, trade and industry and education. As equality minister, she published the proposals for civil partnerships.

At the recently-split Home Office, she will now be responsible for security, counter-terrorism and civil emergencies.

Her predecessor Mr Reid placed prisons and sentencing with the newly formed Ministry of Justice, which is expected to be run by Jack Straw.

She described being "very, very proud and pleased to have the job", as she arrived at the Home Office.

"It's hard to imagine a greater responsibility or honour for somebody elected by the British people to be tasked with that job of protecting our borders, and our communities and our people in order that they can get on with their lives."

New Labour

At the beginning of her Parliamentary career, Ms Smith - a former economics teacher - served on the Commons treasury select committee before joining the Department for Education and Employment as school standards minister.

After the 2001 election she became a minister of state at the Department of Health.

And in the June 2003 reshuffle she became a Department of Trade and Industry minister, and deputy minister for women.

In May 2005, Ms Smith was appointed schools minister.

She was seen as loyal to New Labour - she was one of the most committed of the party's modernisers and even in her time on Redditch Borough Council, she was a strong supporter of Mr Blair.

Born in Malvern, the 44-year-old represents Redditch and is married with two sons.

She is a graduate of Hertford College, Oxford, and prior to her election she was head of economics at Haybridge High School in Hagley.

Who's who: Brown's inner circle

Analysis

By Nick Assinder
Political correspondent, BBC News website

Gordon Brown has brought a new team into Downing Street to replace Tony Blair's old inner circle. Some will be well-known faces inside the Cabinet, others will be advisers. Here are some of the names to look out for.


ED BALLS
Sometimes known as Mr Brown's representative on earth. In fact, many suspect the Normanton MP and former chief economics adviser at the Treasury actually hails from another planet altogether where his famous phrase about "post neo-classical endogenous growth theory" is actually understood.

Mr Brown understood it well enough so it is no surprise the two are the closest of colleagues. Mr Balls is one of the big figures in the Brown inner circle.

YVETTE COOPER
Mr Balls' wife and MP for Pontefract is a former journalist and housing minister who somehow managed to escape any consequences from the shambles surrounding her Home Information Packs policy.

Another rising star who, nonetheless, many believe still needs to prove herself.

ED MILIBAND
His brother David may have been the more favoured under Mr Blair and will continue his rise under the prime minister, but Ed served as Mr Brown's special adviser and is bound to flourish under his rule.

Some have suggested that, of the two brothers, he is the one to watch in the long term. Should be some good, friendly sibling rivalry at least.

IAN AUSTIN
Mr Austin first made a name for himself as Mr Brown's spin doctor in the wake of Charlie "would I lie to you?" Whelan.

He is now MP for his home town of Dudley, which explains the Ozzy accent, and is bound to be kept close to the prime minister.

JEREMY HEYWOOD
A former Treasury man who went to work as Tony Blair's principal private secretary from 1999-2003 (although it is said Mr Brown tried to talk him out of it).

He has been brought back from the City as head of domestic policy in the Cabinet Office, which means he will be Mr Brown's top policy hit man in Whitehall.

TOM SCHOLAR
Another, you guessed it, Treasury man who has become Mr Brown's all-powerful chief of staff.

He was Mr Brown's principal private secretary before being seconded as the UK representative at the World Bank

MIKE ELLAM
Mr Ellam is the prime minister's official spokesman, taking over from Tom Kelly who took over from Alastair Campbell. But forget any return to Campbell-style briefings, Mr Ellam is a civil servant through and through.

It hardly needs saying he is being brought across from the Treasury.

SPENCER LIVERMORE
Mr Livermore has been appointed director of political strategy, one of the key jobs in Downing Street.

He joins the list of those crossing the road from the Treasury where he was a special adviser on policy.

DAN CORRY
Mr Corry has been appointed head of the Downing Street policy unit.

He is an economist who has worked for both Margaret Beckett and the late John Smith but hit the headlines when he worked for then Transport Secretary Stephen Byers and sent an email to Labour HQ seeking information about the political sympathies of Paddington rail crash survivors

He apologised for the incident and it was widely regarded as out of character.

JON CUNLIFFE
Yet another Treasury man, Mr Cunliffe was head of finance regulation there but has been appointed as Mr Brown's head of international economic affairs, Europe and G8 Sherpa (the people who do the deals before the big summits).

The other main foreign post goes to Simon McDonald who is head of foreign and defence policy.

DAMIAN McBRIDE
He was Mr Brown's spin doctor at the Treasury, having taken over from Ian Austin. He is likely to remain in the background as an adviser, briefing editors and selected journalists.

It will be his behaviour, rather then Mr Ellam's, that is most likely to set the spin-or-no-spin tone of the new administration.

SHRITI VADERA
One of Mr Brown's closest, most respected and, it is said, intimidating economic advisers at the Treasury.

A former director of Warburg she will have huge power in ensuring the PM gets his way. She is set to be a junior minister in the international development department.

SUE NYE
She has been with Mr Brown since the year zero and acted as his personal adviser and gatekeeper - if you want to get to Gordon you go through her.

Married to ex-BBC chairman Gavyn Davies, who resigned after the Hutton Inquiry, she introduced Mr Brown to his wife, Sarah.

Brown set to overhaul government

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is starting his first full day in office with an overhaul of the Cabinet.

Mr Brown, who has promised a "new government with new priorities", is expected to make long-time ally Alistair Darling his chancellor.

Environment Secretary David Miliband is expected to be promoted to foreign secretary. Douglas Alexander is the new international development secretary.

Alan Johnson is tipped for health and Jack Straw to be justice secretary.

Heavyweights

Mr Brown is expected to announce his senior ministerial appointments at about 1200 BST and to hold his first Cabinet meeting shortly afterwards.

Several heavyweight figures in predecessor Tony Blair's Cabinet are going.

John Reid is retiring as home secretary, Margaret Beckett is leaving the role of foreign secretary and Baroness Amos is no longer to be leader of the House of Lords, .

Patricia Hewitt, who has elderly parents in Australia, said she was quitting as health secretary, and resigning from the government, for "personal reasons".

It is being suggested that Education Secretary Alan Johnson will replace her.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Mr Johnson said: "You'll see lots of talent coming through, particularly the young talent that came into Parliament in 2001 [and] 2005.

"Now is their time for promotion and I think we'll see a lot of that," he said, but did not reveal what his new position would be.

It is thought unlikely that a replacement will be announced for outgoing Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.

Lib Dem meeting

Meanwhile, Mr Straw, who oversaw Mr Brown's campaign to become Labour leader, is widely tipped to replace Lord Falconer as justice secretary.

Before entering 10 Downing Street on Wednesday, the new prime minister said: "I will try my utmost. This is my promise to all of the people of Britain. And now let the work of change begin."

He met Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Williams in the Commons but a government source said no ministerial role would be offered to her.

He has already asked former Lib Dem leader Lord Ashdown to become Northern Ireland secretary, but this was refused.

After stepping down as prime minister, Mr Blair also quit as MP for Sedgefield to become a Middle East peace envoy on behalf of the EU, US, UN and Russia.

This will prompt a by-election, expected to take place in mid-July.