Obsolete

The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

The home secretary, Charles Clarke, today said it would be "very, very surprising" if the two terrorist bomb attacks on London last month were not linked.

In his first comment since returning from a strongly-criticised summer holiday, Mr Clarke said there was no evidence "in the judicial sense" to yet link the July 7 and 21 attacks, but that the intelligence services were looking at the "support, training, inducting and tasking" of the men involved.

Officials are also convinced that there was no link between the July 7 cell and the failed July 21 attackers, whom they regard as "copycat" bombers. They base their view chiefly on the unplanned bombing of the bus in London's Tavistock Square by one of the July 7 suicide bombers, Hasib Hussain.

It is believed that Hussain, from Holbeck in Leeds, was meant to detonate his rucksack device on a Northern line train at the same time as his three fellow suicide bombers travelled south, east and west.

The would-be bombers on July 21 targeted a bus as well as three London Underground trains.

A government adviser who praised binge drinking and threatened to "deck" Downing Street officials will head a taskforce to promote respect, the Home Office said yesterday.

Louise Casey, 38, was formally investigated in July after complaints that her jokey speech to senior police officers breached the civil service code. She apologised and kept her job. But her promotion from head of the antisocial behaviour unit to director of the 30-strong taskforce drew criticism yesterday.

The National Association of Probation Officers said the appointment was "extraordinary" in light of her comments. Mark Oaten, home affairs spokesman for the Lib Dems, said it would "raise eyebrows".

One in 10 children in Britain has a recognised mental disorder, ranging from depression to autism, according to the latest government figures.

The study, the second to map patterns of child mental health nationally, also found that boys were more likely than girls to have a mental disorder, and that in general children in poorer, worse-educated or lone parent families were likelier to be affected.

The statistics, based on a 2004 study of 8,000 children in England, Scotland and Wales, echo the findings of the first survey of child mental health in Britain in 1999, which recorded the same proportion of youngsters with a disorder.

They were interpreted yesterday as an indication that levels of mental health disorders among five- to 16-year-olds, which had risen over the preceding 25 years, had now stabilised and may begin to fall.

Experts also said they were reassured by figures showing that medication was very limited for children with disorders other than those connected to hyperactivity.

Four Arab Israelis shot dead by a soldier opposed to the closure of the Gaza Strip settlements are not victims of "terror" because their killer was Jewish, Israel's defence ministry has ruled, and so their families are not entitled to the usual compensation for life.

The ministry concluded that the law only recognises terrorism as committed by "organisations hostile to Israel" even though the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, described the killings by Private Eden Nathan Zaada, 19, as "a despicable act by a bloodthirsty terrorist."

A leading human rights activist in Uzbekistan has been locked up in a psychiatric hospital in an echo of Soviet-style practices after distributing anti-government leaflets which prosecutors claimed insulted the country's emblem.

Elena Urlayeva had earlier criticised President Islam Karimov for the Andijan massacre in May when government troops allegedly shot hundreds of innocent protesters.

Mrs Urlayeva, who is a member of the opposition Free Peasants party, was arrested in the capital, Tashkent, on Saturday and incarcerated in the mental health ward of a city hospital.

Talib Yakubov, chairman of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, said Mrs Urlayeva had been detained in the past and forcibly injected with drugs. "It is because she is such a persistent critic who works 24 hours a day to help the people," he said.

Mr Karimov's regime is accused of a catalogue of human rights abuses and fears a backlash from opposition groups. The Free Peasants party is not officially recognised.

A police spokesman confirmed to Interfax news agency that Mrs Urlayeva was arrested for distributing leaflets with a caricature of the Uzbek national emblem: a fairytale bird with outstretched wings representing freedom that was depicted as downcast and bedraggled.

Yesterday the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights called for Mrs Urlayeva's immediate release.

Charles Clarke, the home secretary, has used the government's crackdown on preachers of hate to ban an American professor who speaks for the Animal Liberation Front.

Steven Best, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso, had intended to travel to the UK to take part in an event to celebrate the closure of a farm breeding guinea pigs for research.

In the wake of the London bombings of July 7, the Home Office announced it would not allow people to enter the UK who "foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs; seek to provoke others to terrorist acts; [or] foment other serious criminal activity or seek to provoke others to serious criminal acts."

In July Dr Best spoke at an international animal rights conference in England. At that conference, he was quoted by the Daily Telegraph as saying: "We are not terrorists, but we are a threat. We are a threat both economically and philosophically. Our power is not in the right to vote but the power to stop production. We will break the law and destroy property until we win."

According to the newspaper, he added that activists did not want to "reform" vivisectionists but to "wipe them off the face of the earth". The Home Office cited these words in a letter to Dr Best last week banning him from entering the UK. Dr Best, who claims his words have been taken out of context, said he was not surprised by the ban. "It was only a matter of time, especially after July 7. The climate in Britain is totally unbelievable. It's very fascist. It's becoming a police state," he told the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The electricity pylons that could mean the difference between life and death for Ennas al-Atrash are dotted a few hundred yards from the little girl's village in Israel's Negev desert.

But the residents of Sawa are Bedouin Arabs whose village is deemed "unrecognised" by the state, and so they are deprived of the basic services that Ennas's doctors say are essential if the frail three-year-old is to have a chance of survival.

Ennas was diagnosed with cancer in her chest cavity in January and subjected to weeks of chemotherapy and two operations. She was sent home to recover with a daily injection of medicine to boost her collapsed immune system. The drug has to be stored at a steady temperature between zero degrees and 4C (32F-39F).

But the Atrash family has no reliable means to do so because the Israeli government refuses to allow 80,000 Bedouin Arabs to be connected to the power, water or sewerage infrastructure on the grounds that their villages are illegal - even though many have stood since before the modern Israeli state existed.

It has made no difference that Ennas's father, Yusuf, is a doctor in Israel's state health system who treats other, more fortunate, children while his own daughter's health is hostage to politics.

"We put her drugs into a plastic bag and pack it with ice cubes to try to keep it cool. We're not sure it keeps it the right temperature," he said.

Last week, Ennas, who has lost her hair and is said by her mother to be terrified of going to hospital, fell victim to secondary infections and underwent another operation. The doctors say she needs radiotherapy and more drugs to boost her immune system. But the family still has no proper refrigeration.

The Atrash family shares a generator with four other homes, but the cost of running it constantly is so high - about £900 a month, which is the average monthly wage in Israel - that it is turned on for only four hours each evening.

The family says its last hope is a petition to Israel's highest court to be heard on Thursday.

Dr Atrash spent months pleading with government departments. Officials said they were constrained by the law, although this has not stopped the infrastructure ministry from providing power, water and roads to Jewish outposts in the West Bank which are also regarded as illegal.

The Home Office will today propose to outlaw the possession of extreme adult pornography downloaded over the internet from abroad.

Although the existing Obscene Publications Act makes publishing such pornography an offence, the government argues that the internet has made getting hold of it easier while at the same time allowing suppliers to evade prosecution. In a consultation document published today the Home Office suggests making illegal "the possession of a limited range of extreme pornographic material featuring adults". It cites the depiction of bestiality, sexual interference with a human corpse or certain forms of extreme violence involving serious bodily harm.

"This is material which is extremely offensive to the vast majority of people and it should have no place in our society," said the Home Office minister, Paul Goggins. "The fact that it is available over the internet should in no way legitimise it. These forms of violent and abusive pornography go far beyond what we allow to be shown in films or even sold in licensed sex shops in the UK, so they should not be available online either."

The government and campaigners cite the case of Jane Longhurst, killed in 2003 by a man obsessed with violent sexual pornography. Her mother Liz, who has helped organise a petition that has so far been signed by more than 35,000 people, yesterday welcomed the proposed new law.