The drug has been offered to those with close contact to swine flu

Experts have reported the first case of swine flu that is resistant to tamiflu - the main drug being used to fight the pandemic.

Roche Holding AG confirmed a patient with H1N1 influenza in Denmark showed resistance to the antiviral drug.

David Reddy, company executive, said it was not unexpected given that common seasonal flu could do the same.

The news comes as a nine-year-old girl has become the third to die in the UK with swine flu.

It is understood from her doctors at Birmingham Children’s Hospital that she had underlying health conditions. It is not yet known whether swine flu contributed to her death.

Meanwhile, the Department of Health has announced a big jump in the number of patients in England confirmed with swine flu - up 1,604 since Friday, taking the UK total so far to 5,937.

Routine sampling in the UK has shown that there is currently no resistance to oseltamivir or zanamivir A Health Protection Agency spokeswoman

Experts have been using tamiflu, also known as oseltamivir, in a bid to stop the H1N1 spreading in communities.

If taken early, it ensures that symptoms are mild and reduces the chance of a victim giving the illness to someone else.

This first reported case of resistance developed in a swine flu patient taking Tamiflu.

Watch and wait

Mr Reddy stressed that there were no signs of a tamiflu-resistant strain of H1N1 circulating in the community.

This is in contrast to seasonal H1N1 flu where a Tamiflu resistant strain emerged last year and is now widely circulating.

Experts fear if this were to happen, it could render tamiflu ineffective.

Another antiviral drug, called zanamivir or Relenza, made by GlaxoSmithKline, is also effective against swine flu.

The UK government has been stockpiling these antiviral drugs and currently has enough to treat half of the population, with a contract to bring that up to 80% as soon as possible.

Supplies of flu vaccine have also been ordered and the first doses could be administered in the autumn.

A spokeswoman for the Health Protection Agency said: “The Health Protection Agency continues to watch for antiviral resistance and will be carrying out regular sample testing throughout this outbreak.

“We have been monitoring antiviral drug resistance since the beginning of this outbreak. Routine sampling in the UK has shown that there is currently no resistance to oseltamivir or zanamivir.”

Virologist Professor John Oxford said: “I’m not surprised about this finding. The question is whether it is going to spread. We will soon know the answer.”

The test should tell if an embryo is healthy

A gene mapping test that can test embryos for almost any inherited disease could be available in the UK within a year, say researchers.

Unlike current tests doctors do not need to know the specific gene mutation involved.

At the same time embryos can be tested to check they are generally in good genetic shape.

Experts say there will have to be strict limits on what the test can be used for.

We’re not mad Frankenstein’s working away in our laboratories to create designer babies Professor Tony Rutherford British Fertility Society

The test - which will cost around £2,500 - uses a technique called karyomapping which looks for the inheritance of sections of DNA or chromosomes.

Rather than knowing the exact gene mutation which is passed down the generations in an family affected by a condition such as cystic fibrosis, doctors can just look for the block of DNA containing a faulty gene.

At the moment genetic testing of embryos is generally limited to a few conditions.

But karyomapping could in theory be used to test for any one of the 15,000 genetic defects known about.

Using the same test doctors could also look at whether any chromosomes are missing or duplicated which suggests the embryo will not be viable.

It would also be far quicker than current tests, taking only three days instead of weeks or months.

Professor Alan Handyside, from London’s Bridge Centre, who developed the test said in the handful of families they had looked at, it had been 100% successful in picking up affected embryos.

US researchers have also run the test in embryos at risk of cystic fibrosis.

In five cases where families had donated embryos to research, they proved the test can pick up cystic fibrosis mutations.

At the same time they found serious chromosome abnormalities suggesting those embryos would not have resulted in successful pregnancy, delegates at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference heard.

That could boost the chance of a couple having a successful pregnancy through IVF as well as a baby free from the condition in question.

Ethical issues

The UK team has applied to the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority (HFEA) for a licence.

Clinical trials of the test are due to start by the end of the year.

Regulators will be assessing whether it works and whether it is safe.

But there are also ethical issues to consider.

Ultimately, the test could be used to test for conditions which are not serious or life-threatening - leading to concerns about designer babies.

The HFEA will be able to set conditions on what the test can be used for.

Professor Handyside said one use for the test could be looking for genetic causes of autism which occurs in 5% of cases.

Other likely candidates are Huntington’s disease and spinal muscular atrophy - a condition that can cause death in infancy.

“What we’re mapping is inheritance from the father and the mother across the entire genome.

“The potential criticism of this work is we could find all kinds of changes in the embryo.

“But we wouldn’t get a licence to do this for all conditions.

He added: “We are limited in the number of embryos we can test so something has to be very likely to turn up.”

Professor Tony Ruthford, chair of the British Fertility Society said the test would be more reliable although admitted such technology was opening a “Pandora’s box”.

“The issue here is we may find out a lot of genetic information and how is that going to be used or stored.”

But he said the regulations in the UK on what could be tested for were very strict and would remain so.

“We’re not mad Frankenstein’s working away in our laboratories to create designer babies.

“We are only allowed to look for major diseases which cause handicaps.”

Some bidders have rejected the oil ministry’s terms

Only one of the bidders for the eight contracts to run oil and gas fields in Iraq has accepted oil ministry terms.

Six oil fields and two gas fields were available in a televised auction that was the first big oil tender in Iraq since the invasion of 2003.

BP and China’s CNPC agreed to run the 17 billion barrel Rumaila field after Exxon Mobil turned it down.

Iraq has asked the rest of the companies to consider resubmitting bids for the other seven contracts.

The oil ministry is offering 20-year service contracts.

Other fields have failed to find buyers, either because there were no bidders or because terms were declined.

Thirty-two oil companies had been approved as potential bidders.

Red envelope

For each field, the ministry specified a minimum production level, which was close to the amount that is currently being produced.

The bidders will not be paid for anything up to the minimum production level - but they say how much they want to be paid for each barrel produced above the minimum, and also predict how much oil they will be able to produce.

From that, the auctioneers pick a winning bidder.

However, there is another twist. In a red envelope, the auctioneers have the maximum amount that the oil ministry is prepared to pay.

Those amounts were significantly less than the oil companies were asking for, so the winning bidders were asked to cut their prices.

In the case of the Rumaila field, Exxon Mobil declined to accept the ministry’s maximum payment, but BP and CNPC, which had originally asked for $4 a barrel, agreed to do the work for $2 a barrel.

They will also be able to charge the ministry for the costs of the work they have to do on the production facilities.

The contracts are subject to approval by the cabinet.

Other winning bidders declined to accept the ministry’s maximum payments.

Raising production

Before the auction, Iraqi officials said companies from nations involved in the 2003 invasion would be neither favoured nor disadvantaged.

The auction was originally planned for Monday, but had to be delayed because of sandstorms in Baghdad.

“Our principal objective is to increase our oil production from 2.4 million barrels per day to more than four million in the next five years,” Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani told Iraqi public television.

Iraq has the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves, with 115 billion barrels, of which the fields up for auction account for about 43 billion barrels.

But there has been some controversy about the auction, with members of the Iraqi parliament objecting to not having the chance to approve the deals.

Parliament has not yet passed an oil bill. Some observers have suggested that the decision to award service contracts, instead of the more common production-sharing contracts, was taken to make it easier to proceed without such a bill being passed.

Under a production-sharing contract, an oil company would recoup its costs and then be entitled to a proportion of the oil extracted, instead of being paid a fixed fee for each barrel.

Weaker construction activity has hit the economy

he UK economy contracted 2.4% in the first quarter of 2009, a decline not exceeded in 51 years, according to the latest official data.

The decline was more severe than the earlier estimate of a 1.9% fall, and worse than analyst expectations.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) blamed the sharp revision primarily on weaker output in the construction and manufacturing sectors.

It also said the recession started earlier than first thought last year.

The ONS now says the recession began during the second quarter of 2008 rather than during July to September, so that the recession has now been running for a whole year.

The ONS said economic output shrank 4.9% during the first quarter of 2009 compared with the first quarter of 2008, the biggest year-on-year fall on record.

The figures will make it more difficult for the Treasury to reach its forecast of a 3.5% decline in the UK economy for the year, made in the April Budget.

But the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liam Byrne, said it would not be revising its forecast.

“There have been some tentative signs that the fall in output is moderating and I remain confident but cautious about the prospects for the economy,” he added.

Lower incomes

January to March’s quarterly 2.4% decline has not been exceeded since the second quarter of 1958, when the economy shrank by 2.6%. Analysts had only expected a 2.1% fall this time.

However, the decline was equalled by figures from the first quarter of 1974 and the third quarter of 1979, which also saw contractions of 2.4%.

1958 FACTS Singer Elvis Presley starts military service with US Army Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament founded in London First Cod War between UK and Iceland lasts three months UK’s first stretch of motorway opens near Preston

Construction output decreased between January and March by 6.9%, while the service sector contracted by 1.6% - led by the banking and financial industries, which saw output slip 2.5%.

Quarterly manufacturing output fell by 5.5%.

Meanwhile, real household disposable income fell by 2.4%, while the savings rate dropped from 4% to 3%.

Andrew Goodwin, senior economic adviser to the Ernst & Young Item Club, said the figures were much worse than expected.

“We had expected a downward revision to GDP, given the plunge in construction output since the last quarter, but the scale of revision comes as a real shock, and highlights the extreme weakness of the economy in the early months of the year,” he said.

Fellow analyst, Ross Walker, economist at RBS Financial Markets, said the latest figures were “disappointing”.

“We knew about the construction revisions in advance and the fall wasn’t quite as big as the ONS had indicated,” said Mr Walker. “But we’ve got a much bigger fall in services output.”

Getting better?

Shadow chancellor George Osborne said the GDP figures showed that the recession had “been longer and deeper than we had thought”.

“This also means that in the future, unemployment will be higher and Labour’s debt crisis will be even worse,” he said.

If you thought that any recovery was resting on shaky foundations, you will see plenty of support for that view in today’s news Stephanie Flanders, BBC economics editor Read Stephanie’s blog

Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said the figures put more pressure on the public finances.

“Rather than making promises on public spending that nobody believes, the Government must start taking tough choices on whether it is going to cut spending or raise taxes to bring the economy out of the red,” he said.

Despite the economy’s big downward revision for the first quarter of 2009, the expectation is that the official figures for April to June will be nowhere near as bad when the first estimates are published at the end of July.

Earlier this month, the ONS said industrial production rose in April, its first month-on-month climb since February of last year.

A growing number of reports from business organisations such as the CBI have also predicted that the worst of the recession is over.

The CBI said earlier this month that the economy was now stabilising, and would begin a “slow and gradual” recovery from early next year.

Separately, a key service sector survey reported a growth in business in May for the first time since April 2008.

The PMI service index from the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply rose to 51.7 in May, up from 48.7 in April, with a measure above 50 indicating growth.

Martin Weale, director of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, whose organisation estimates GDP on a monthly basis, recently told the BBC that he expected second quarter GDP to be flat.

The most complete terrain map of the Earth’s surface has been published.

The data, comprising 1.3 million images, come from a collaboration between the US space agency Nasa and the Japanese trade ministry.

The images were taken by Japan’s Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (Aster) aboard the Terra satellite.

The resulting Global Digital Elevation Map covers 99% of the Earth’s surface, and will be free to download and use.

The Terra satellite, dedicated to Earth monitoring missions, has shed light on issues ranging from algal blooms to volcano eruptions.

For the Aster measurements, local elevation was mapped with each point just 30m apart.

“This is the most complete, consistent global digital elevation data yet made available to the world,” said Woody Turner, Nasa programme scientist on the Aster mission.

“This unique global set of data will serve users and researchers from a wide array of disciplines that need elevation and terrain information.”

Previously, the most complete such topographic map was Nasa’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, covering 80% of the Earth’s surface. However, the mission’s results were less accurate in steep terrain and in some deserts.

Nasa is now working to combine those data with the new Aster observations to further improve on the global map.

Yemeni authorities said the plane conformed to international standards

A Yemeni airline which crashed into the Indian Ocean was banned from France because of “irregularities”, France’s transport minister has said.

Dominique Bussereau told parliament of ongoing concerns about the safety record of the Yemenia Airbus 310.

One young person is said to have been rescued from the ocean, the only known survivor of the 153 people on board.

The plane was heading from Yemen to the Comoros islands, but many on board began their journey in France.

Most had flown on a different Yemenia aircraft from Paris or Marseille before boarding flight IY626 in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen.

The crash was the second involving an Airbus aircraft in recent weeks. On 1 June an Air France Airbus 330 travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris plunged into the Atlantic, killing all 228 people on board.

That tragedy also involved large numbers of French citizens.

‘Never again’

In Paris, Mr Bussereau told legislators that the Yemenia Airbus 310 which crashed was not permitted to fly into France, and raised concerns about the transfer of passengers from a plane classed as safe to one which crashed into the ocean.

“A few years ago, we banned this plane from national territory because we believed it presented a certain number of irregularities in its technical equipment,” Mr Bussereau told parliament.

FLIGHT IY626 Airbus A310-300 aircraft, built in 1990 153 people on board, including 66 French nationals Flight originated in Paris, using modern Airbus A330-200 Stopped in Marseille before flying to Sanaa Passengers moved to A310-300 Stopover in Djibouti Comorans ‘warned of flight safety’ ‘We are praying for a miracle’ In pictures: Yemeni plane crash Timeline of Flight IY626

“The question we are asking… is whether you can collect people in a normal way on French territory and then put them in a plane that does not ensure their security. We do not want this to happen again.”

However, a spokesman for the airline said poor weather was more likely to have been a factor in the crash than the condition of the plane.

Yemeni Transport Minister Khaled Ibrahim al-Wazeer also told Reuters that the plane had recently undergone a thorough inspection overseen by Airbus and conformed to international standards.

The crash prompted the European Union to highlight its own concerns about Yemenia’s safety record, proposing a world blacklist of those carriers deemed unsafe.

The EU already has its own list, and its transport commissioner, Antonio Tajani, said such a list would be a “safety guarantee for all”.

Another EU official told Reuters news agency there were concerns about the airline’s “incomplete reporting procedure and incomplete follow-up” following 2007 tests on the aircraft that crashed, but that its record was improving.

Anger and grief

Reports say the plane was due in the Comoros capital Moroni at about 0230 (2230GMT on Monday). Most of the passengers had travelled to Sanaa from Paris or Marseille on a different aircraft.

The flight on to Moroni, on the island of Njazidja (Grande Comore), was also thought to have made a stop in Djibouti.

There were more than 150 people on board, including three babies and 11 crew. Some 66 of the passengers were French, although many are thought to have dual French-Comoran citizenship.

This is the second air tragedy this month involving large numbers of French citizens.

Gen Bruno de Bourdoncle de Saint-Salvy, French naval commander in the Indian Ocean, said the plane had come down about 15km (eight nautical miles) north of the Comoran coast.

They put us aboard wrecks, they put us aboard coffins, that’s where they put us - it’s slaughter Relative at Paris airport Ties that bind: Comoros and France EU wants world blacklist Air disasters timeline

A search is under way, with the French military assisting with the operation, which is battling strong winds and high seas.

Initial reports said that a five-year-old child was found alive in the ocean, but later information suggested the child may have been older.

Five bodies and some wreckage of the plane have also been recovered.

The three Comoros islands are about 300km (190 miles) north-west of Madagascar in the Mozambique channel.

A resident living near the airport told the BBC that about 100 people were trying to get into the building to find out more information, but without much success.

Radio stations in Moroni have stopped playing music and are broadcasting passages from the Koran as a mark of respect for those killed, a local reporter, Abubacar Omar, told the BBC.

The government had appealed for people to stay calm, he said, with key politicians returning to the Comoros from overseas to take charge of the recovery and rescue operation.

“Everybody here is talking about only one thing - the crash”, another local journalist, Abdul Rahman Bar Amir, said.

“There are groups of people huddled everywhere, talking. Nobody seems to know what is going on. All we can do is wait for information. Nobody is eating, nobody is drinking. All we are doing is waiting.”

In France, relatives also gathered at Paris’ Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport and at Marseille Marignane airport to wait for news.

Some expressed anger at the state of the airline’s planes.

“They put us aboard wrecks, they put us aboard coffins. That’s where they put us. It’s slaughter. It’s slaughter,” one relative in Paris told French TV.

The airline Yemenia is 51% owned by the Yemeni government and 49% by the Saudi government.

In 1996, a hijacked Ethiopian airliner came down in the same area - most of the 175 passengers and crew were killed.

At least 27 people have been killed by a car bomb at a market in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, officials say.

The attack in the Shurja district came as Iraqis celebrated the withdrawal of US troops from towns and cities in Iraq, six years after the invasion.

Iraqi and US troops have been on alert for attacks during the pullback, which was declared a national holiday.

Ten days ago more than 70 people were killed in a truck bombing in Kirkuk - the deadliest attack in over a year.

Police Brig Gen Sarhat Qadir told the Associated Press news agency at least 40 people had been wounded in the latest blast, caused by an explosives-laden vehicle parked near the crowded outdoor Shurja market.

Volatile mix

A teeming maze of shops and stalls, it is one of the country’s best-known markets, attracting buyers and sellers from all over Iraq, say correspondents.

Those who think Iraqis are unable to protect their country commit a big mistake

Kirkuk, about 250km (155 miles) from Baghdad, was also the scene of two suicide bombings last month, in which 14 people were killed.

The city is the centre of northern Iraq’s oil industry, and home to a volatile mix of Kurds, Arabs, Christians and members of the Turkmen community.

The BBC’s Jim Muir in Baghdad says Tuesday’s car bomb appears to be just the kind of attack designed to stir up ethnic tensions between Kurds and Arabs.

Most of the other bombs that have killed around 250 people in the past fortnight have been aimed at Shia areas.

Our correspondent says the clear aim is to reignite the sectarian carnage that took the country to the brink of civil war three years ago.

With American troops now taking a back seat, the big question, our correspondent adds, is can Iraqi forces cope with the challenge?

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is adamant they can.

“Those who think that Iraqis are not able to protect their country and that the withdrawal of foreign forces will create a security vacuum are committing a big mistake,” he said earlier, in a nationally televised address.

Our correspondent says Mr Maliki’s police and troops will have to prove on the ground that they are Iraqis - not Shias or Sunnis or Kurds - if they are to prevail.

Meanwhile, despite their pullback from cities and towns, US troops will still be embedded with Iraqi forces.

Hours before the Monday night deadline for the withdrawal, four US soldiers were killed in combat in Baghdad.

US commanders have said security and stability are improving.

Iraqi soldiers paraded through Baghdad’s streets on Monday in vehicles decorated with flowers and Iraqi flags, while patriotic songs were played through loudspeakers at checkpoints.

The pullback comes two years after the US “surge” of extra troops between February and June 2007, which saw US troop levels in Iraq reach about 170,000.

US-led combat operations are due to end by September 2010, with all troops gone from Iraq by the end of 2011.

Some 131,000 US troops remain in Iraq, including 12 combat brigades, and the total is not expected to drop below 128,000 until after the Iraqi national election in January.

Neil Lewington denies a total of eight charges

A racist arrested by chance at a railway station was “on the cusp” of waging a terror campaign using tennis balls and weedkiller, a court heard.

Neil Lewington, 43, had developed a bomb factory at his parents’ home in Reading, Berkshire, targeting those he thought “non-British”, jurors heard.

The Old Bailey heard he was carrying bomb parts when arrested at Lowestoft, Suffolk, after abusing a conductor.

He denies eight charges related to terrorism or explosives.

Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, said Mr Lewington was found to be carrying the component parts of two “viable improvised incendiary devices”.

His hold-all had been searched after his arrest for drinking and smoking on the train and urinating in public.

This man who had strong if not fanatical right-wing leanings and opinions was on the cusp of embarking on a campaign of terrorism Brian Altman QC

Later searches of Mr Lewington’s home revealed a notebook entitled “Waffen SS UK members’ handbook” which contained drawings of electronics and chemical mixtures, jurors were told.

“In addition to all of that the police discovered evidence that the defendant sympathised with and quite clearly adhered to white supremacist and racist views,” said Mr Altman

Mr Lewington had an “unhealthy interest” in the London nail bomber David Copeland, America’s Unabomber and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the court heard.

Mr Altman said: “The effect of these finds is to prove that this man who had strong if not fanatical right-wing leanings and opinions was on the cusp of embarking on a campaign of terrorism against those he considered non-British.”

He said Mr Lewington had two video compilations of news and documentary footage about bombers and bombings both in Britain and the US.

This “unhealthy interest” had gone “far beyond the mere intellectual or academic levels”, Mr Altman said.

“In the privacy of his own bedroom and far from the gaze of his parents with whom he lived, this defendant had amassed the component parts of and had begun the manufacture of improvised explosive or incendiary devices,” he said.

‘No qualifications’

Mr Altman said Mr Lewington left school at 16 without qualifications but had worked in a number of electronics jobs.

He had been unemployed for 10 years after being sacked from his last job for being drunk and, though he lived with his parents, had not spoken to his father for 10 years.

His mother said he had placed Plasticine in the keyhole of his bedroom door so no-one could see inside, the court heard.

It was alleged that Mr Lewington, described as “a loner” had met a number of girlfriends through mobile phone chatlines.

One said she was put off when he made racist remarks, while another - an army cadet sergeant - said he asked if she had dealings with the Nazi group Combat 18, the court heard.

Mr Lewington had taken some weedkiller from her and later told her he had bought a child’s chemistry set to use for making explosives, Mr Altman said.

Mr Lewington is accused of preparing for terrorism by having the bomb parts in a public place.

He also faces two charges of having articles for terrorism - including the weedkiller, firelighters and three tennis balls - two of having documents for terrorism and another of collecting information for terrorism.

Two further counts allege he possessed an explosive device “with intent to endanger life” and that he had explosives, namely weedkiller.

The trial continues.