Schumacher has three weeks to get in shape for an F1 return

Michael Schumacher could test this year’s Ferrari ahead of his return to Formula 1, BBC Sport understands.

Under F1 rules, drivers are not allowed to test current cars, but the F1 Teams’ Association (Fota) members have agreed to let Schumacher test for one day.

However, F1’s governing body, the FIA, must still sanction the decision.

The seven-time world champion, 40, is to stand in for Felipe Massa, who suffered a fractured skull in an accident at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Schumacher began his preparations for his return to F1 by testing a 2007 Ferrari at the team’s Mugello test track on Friday.

“The cars are not current, but I simply like to drive as much as possible. It was a good option,” he said.

“The next weeks are totally about preparation.”

Schumacher, who retired at the end of the 2006 season, had not driven an F1 car since April 2008. His first race will be the European Grand Prix in Valencia on 23 August.

On Thursday he spent a day at the Ferrari factory in Maranello, Italy, familiarising himself with the controls on the 2009 car’s steering wheel in the team’s simulator.

ANDREW BENSON BLOG Schumacher is not a man who makes these sort of decisions lightly, and he will have taken a long, hard look inside himself before making this decision

The car was fitted with untreaded slick tyres, which were reintroduced for this season and Schumacher has not raced on since 1997.

Ferrari have said the German, who won a record 91 grands prix in a 15-year career, will stand in for Massa until the Brazilian is fit enough to make a return.

Massa, 28, was taken out of intensive care on Wednesday and is set to leave hospital in Budapest on Monday to return to his home in Brazil, his personal doctor Dino Altman said on Friday.

“We have decided that he will go back home on Monday,” Altman said, adding that Massa’s condition continues to improve.

“He will be transported in a private jet, probably to Sao Paolo. In Brazil, he will continue his recovery and will go back into racing as soon as possible.

He added that he could not say how long Massa’s recovery would take.

Massa was hit on the head by a spring that had come off Rubens Barrichello’s Brawn while travelling at more than 160mph during qualifying at the Hungaroring on Saturday.

F1’s governing body, the FIA, has launched an investigation into the accident.

The Kimberley Process aims to stem the flow of blood diamonds

Zimbabwe should be banned from the international diamond trade, according to the organisation set up to stop the use of diamonds to fund conflict.

According to a leaked report, the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme has recommended the country be suspended for the next six months.

The move follows reports that the Zimbabwean army has forced some people to search for diamonds at gunpoint.

Participants in the scheme must prove the origin of any diamond being traded.

It seeks to assure consumers that by purchasing diamonds they are not financing war or human rights abuses.

Many people search for diamonds in Zimbabwe’s Merange region, where the gems can be found close to the surface.

Ban sought

Members of the Kimberly Process scheme met in Namibia earlier this month and although its conclusions were not made official, a leaked report reveals it wants Zimbabwe to be officially banned from the international diamond trade.

Elly Harrowell from the pressure group Global Witness said that Zimbabwe’s army was forcing local people to mine for diamonds.

“The Zimbabwe national army is now running the mines there as a way of funding themselves,” she said.

They’re forcing local people to do the mining and then smuggling diamonds out and taking the money for themselves.”

The Kimberly Process group’s members are now seeking talks with the Zimbabwean government.

However, even if the country is officially suspended from trading, experts acknowledge that it may prove almost impossible to prevent all the diamonds which are mined illegally from reaching the international market.

Government bank bail-outs have been controversial in the US

The global credit crunch has cost governments more than $10 trillion, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says.

The IMF says that rich countries have provided $9.2tn in government support for the financial sector, while emerging economies spent $1.6 tn.

About $1.9tn represents up-front expenditure, while the rest is made up of guarantees and loans.

Governments are likely to recover most of these sums when the world economy recovers, but big deficits will stay.

The financial bail-out costs include:

• Capital injections: $1.1tn
• Purchase of assets: $1.9tn
• Guarantees: $4.6tn
• Liquidity provision: $2.5tn

Budget gaps

The IMF has also been revising its estimates of the cost of the global downturn on government budgets.

It now says that overall, the rich countries of the G20 group will suffer a budget deficit of 10.2% of economic output or gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009, the largest for most countries since World War II.

The largest projected budget deficits are in the US, with 13.5% of GDP, the UK, with 11.6%, and Japan 10.3%.

However, the UK will have the largest projected budget deficit of all G20 countries by 2010, at 13.3% of GDP, compared to 9.7% for the US.

Fiscal boost

The rising budget deficits have been caused by a combination of the severe global economic downturn, which has slashed government revenues, and the stimulus measures introduced by some governments to try and kick-start the recovery.

The IMF estimates that the G20 countries will implement stimulus plans worth 2% of their GDP in 2009, and 1.6% in 2010 - but it says it is difficult to measure how effectively these have actually been implemented.

However, it says that such plans have had a big effect on limiting the severity of the recession.

It estimates that such spending has boosted growth in G20 countries by between 1.2% and 4.7% this year.

The IMF says increased spending is more effective than cutting taxes in boosting demand, and works best when implemented in conjunction with looser monetary policy and in a coordinated fashion around the world.

Long-term damage

The IMF estimates - prepared ahead of the G20 summit of world leaders in Pittsburgh in September - also show how much long-term damage the crisis is doing to public finances.

It estimates that by 2014, government debt will reach 239% of GDP in Japan, 132% in Italy, 112% in the US, and 99.7% in the UK.

Proportionately, however, the rise in the UK is the biggest - with debt more than doubling from 44% in 2007.

Rating agencies have recently warned that a UK debt of 100% of GDP would force them to consider downgrading the credit rating of UK government bonds.

This could make it more costly for the government to raise money.

The IMF says that it is important for governments to show a credible path for reducing deficits in the long-run, although it urges them to continue the fiscal stimulus in the short-term.

A “lack of policy credibility (either real or perceived)” makes fiscal expansion less effective by raising risk and raising real interest rates.

G20 leaders are set to discuss the state of the world economy at their next summit in September, and look at the effectiveness of measures to revive the economy and regulate the banking sector.

The Voyager of the Seas had travelled from the Italian city of Naples

A cruise ship carrying dozens of victims of swine flu among its 5,000 passengers and crew has docked in the south of France, officials have said.

Sixty crew members have so far been diagnosed with the H1N1 virus, while 70 of their colleagues were also showing signs of being infected, they added.

They will be treated on board the ship while it docks at Villefranche-sur-Mer.

On Thursday, officials said a 14-year-old girl infected with H1N1 had become France’s first fatality from the virus.

However, they cautioned that it did not appear that her death, at a hospital in the north-western city of Brest, had been directly linked to the virus.

“This young girl suffered from a serious illness, complicated by a severe pulmonary infection,” the Institute for Public Health Surveillance (InVS) said.

Neighbouring Belgium also reported its first swine flu death on Thursday when a 34-year-old woman passed away after developing “a double viral pneumonia”.

Deaths have now been recorded in five European nations - Belgium, France, Hungary, Spain and the UK, where 31 people have died.

The cruise ship docked at Villefranche-sur-Mer - the Voyager of the Seas, operated by Royal Caribbean Cruises - had travelled from the Italian city of Naples as part of a Mediterranean tour.

The ship’s 3,600 passengers have been allowed off to visit the town before the boat leaves on Friday night for Marseille, officials say.

Chlamydia is the most common sexually transmitted infection

A urine test can diagnose the sexually transmitted infection chlamydia in men within an hour, enabling on-the-spot treatment.

Chlamydia is the most common STI, and doctors are concerned at high rates of transmission, particularly among younger people aged 16-24.

The infection often produces no symptoms but, if left untreated, it can seriously damage fertility.

Rapid treatment would prevent it being passed to others unknowingly.

CHLAMYDIA No symptoms in most cases in men and women Symptoms can include discharge or pain, possibly when passing urine Evidence that, left untreated, it may reduce male fertility, and leave women unfertile In women it can also cause serious complications, such as pelvic inflammatory disease, chronic pelvic pain and ectopic pregnancy

In 2008, young people accounted for two-thirds of all new standard chlamydia infections diagnosed in sexual health clinics.

In England, as many as 68 young men in every 1,000 and 84 young women in every 1,000 carry the infection.

Since the mid-1990s, the number of diagnosed infections has risen an average of 7,500 per year to over 123,000.

Once diagnosed, chlamydia can be treated easily with a one-off antibiotic pill.

However, male tests have been relatively inaccurate and involved urethral swabs, which can cause discomfort.

Dr Helen Lee, from the University of Cambridge, who helped develop the new test, said: “Horror stories about painful swabs have put men off getting tested for chlamydia, and other non-invasive tests are expensive, technically complex and take days to obtain the result.

“This has led to many cases of infection in men going undiagnosed and being transmitted to their female partners, with potentially more serious complications.”

Collection device

The new Chlamydia Rapid Test is designed to be used with a device for collecting urine from men called FirstBurst.

FirstBurst can collect six times the amount of chlamydia bacteria contained in a standard urine sample.

The test then uses a signal amplification system to boost its sensitivity, giving the results in less than an hour.

An evaluation, published in the British Medical Journal, found the test was significantly more accurate than existing urine-based rapid tests.

Samples from more than 1,200 men produced a diagnostic accuracy rate of 84.1%.

Dr Lee said: “Without an effective and rapid testing programme for men, we are unlikely to succeed in efforts to control chlamydia infection.

“This new test is both accurate and swift, allowing men attending the clinics to be tested and treated on site in one visit.”

Dr Ted Bianco, of the Wellcome Trust, which funded development of the test, said: “Right now, our tests are too slow to permit on-the-spot treatment or too insensitive to detect an adequate proportion of cases.

“The new assay offers a way forward.”

It is hoped that the new test will also be of particular use in the developing world, where management of chlamydia in men is often based on self-diagnosis and specific diagnostic tests are rarely available.

The new version of Firefox may allow tabs to run across the top

The open-source browser Firefox passed its billionth download on Friday, ahead of the release of its fourth iteration.

The milestone includes downloads of all versions of the web software since its first release in 2004.

Figures suggest that Firefox now has nearly one third of the browser market worldwide, at 31%.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still dominates the field with around 60%, whilst Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari and Opera are all less than 5%.

Microsoft is currently in talks with the European competition regulators, which ruled in January that pre-bundling Internet Explorer with the company’s Windows operating system hurt competition.

The firm recently made a proposal that would offer European buyers of its new Windows 7 operating system a list of potential browsers when they first install the software.

Regulators in Brussels said they “welcomed” the proposal but have yet to make a decision.

Firefox would be among the browsers on offer.

Record run

The browser, developed by the Mozilla Foundation, has quickly become a favourite with web surfers since its launch in 2004.

Last year, the foundation set a new Guinness world record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours when the third version of Firefox was downloaded more than eight million times.

The billionth download figure includes all versions of Firefox released since 2004 and includes single users downloading multiple copies for different computers.

In addition, the figure includes anyone manually updating their software to the latest version, rather than waiting for the automatic download.

Automatic updates are not included in the total.

The total number of downloads can be tracked on the Mozilla website. The foundation plans to launch a new website, OneBillionPlusYou.com, to celebrate the milestone.

Mozilla developers are currently working on the fourth iteration of the software.

Earlier this week, it showed off screenshots of the next version of the browser, Firefox 4.0.

The images showed a browser with a similar look to Google’s Chrome software.

Google said that it had already patched the weakness

Apple is set to release a software patch to address a recently described security flaw in the iPhone, the UK network operator 02 has said.

Experts revealed on Thursday that modified SMS messages could result in iPhones being disconnected from the network or hijacked altogether.

Phones incorporating the Windows Mobile and Google Android operating systems are also vulnerable, they said.

An O2 spokesperson said the patch would be available Saturday through iTunes.

“We will be communicating to customers both through the website and proactively,” the spokesperson added.

“We always recommend our customers update their iPhone with the latest software and this is no different.”

Access all areas

Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner told the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas that the hack works by slightly modifying the data - sent by the network and which the user does not see - that arrives as part of a text message.

The system that processes such messages is similar across different operating systems and can, once compromised, gain access across a range of applications including a phone’s address book or camera.

The team say that hackers could develop programs to exploit the weakness in as little as two weeks, but told the conference that publicising the means of attack was necessary to ensure the problem was addressed.

“If we don’t talk about it, somebody is going to do it silently. The bad guys are going to do it no matter what,” Mr Mulliner, an independent security expert, said.

The team wrote software to exploit the weakness, targeting iPhones on four networks in Germany as well as AT&T in the US. However, they believe it would work equally well in any country.

The approach is particularly dangerous because messages are delivered automatically, and users cannot tell that they have received the malicious code.

The problem could be fixed by directly patching the vulnerability in smartphones’ operating systems, or the network providers could scan for messages that look to be trying to gain access to phones via the malicious code.

The researchers said they had informed Google of the hack and that the company had already taken steps to address the problem.

The Black Hat gathering, part of a leading series of conferences for information and computer security experts, took place from 25 to 30 July.

Apple were not available to comment on the flaw.

Endeavour has now carried 23 crews into space

The space shuttle Endeavour has safely landed at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, ending a 16-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

The seven-strong crew touched down at 1548 BST (1048 EDT) in near perfect weather conditions.

During the mission, the combined shuttle and ISS crews set a new record of 13 people on the orbiting outpost.

Nasa plans seven more shuttle missions to complete construction of the space station by the end of 2010.

Endeavour blasted off on 15 July with its crew of seven astronauts after weather concerns scuppered five launch attempts.

The ISS, now about the size of a four-bedroom house, has been under construction for more than a decade.

Space ‘porch’

Endeavour’s crew delivered and installed fresh batteries, large spare parts and a “porch” for Japan’s $1bn Kibo science laboratory. This addition to the onboard lab is designed to hold outdoor experiments.

The crew also deployed two pairs of small satellites from canisters in the shuttle’s payload bay.

Five spacewalks were undertaken during the course of the mission.

Crew members also shared some unexpected inconveniences, most notably a flooded toilet aboard the space station.

The station hosted 13 crew members for the duration of the mission

During testing on Thursday, one of the shuttle’s thrusters failed to fire but Nasa said it would not be needed during re-entry.

Endeavour has brought home Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, who has spent 138 days in space and has been a member of three separate space station crews.

Mr Wakata returned to Earth in experimental underwear that he has been wearing for a month. The hi-tech garments were designed in Japan to be odour-free.

US astronaut Tim Kopra, who was carried into space aboard Endeavour, has remained on the station.

Nasa plans seven more shuttle missions to complete construction of the ISS before the scheduled retirement of the shuttle fleet in September 2010.

Discovery will be next to fly to the ISS; its launch is scheduled for 25 August.

Earlier this week, a senior Russian space official was quoted by a news agency as saying that delays to the schedule of US shuttle launches to the space station were resulting in extra work for Russian rocket crews without financial compensation.

The exposed facility aboard Kibo will have space for 12 scientific experiments

Aerial photographs have revealed the streetplan of a lost Roman city called Altinum, which some scholars regard as a forerunner of Venice.

The images reveal the remains of city walls, the street network, dwellings, theatres and other structures.

They also show a complex network of rivers and canals, revealing how the people mastered the marshy environment in what is now the lagoon of Venice.

Details of the research have been published in the journal Science.

Andrea Ninfo and colleagues from Padua University, Italy, made the first detailed reconstruction of the city’s topography and environmental setting.

This was assembled using visible and near-infrared aerial photographs of the farmlands that currently cover the region, along with a computer model of the local terrain.

The photos were taken during a severe drought in 2007, which made it possible to pick up the presence of stones, bricks and other solid structures beneath the surface.

The authors note that Altinum is the only large Roman city in northern Italy - and one of the few in Europe - that has not been buried by medieval and modern cities.

The results show that the city was surrounded by rivers and canals, including a large canal that cut through the centre of Altinum, connecting it to the lagoon.

Two gates or bridges were built into the walls encircling the city, providing further evidence of how the city’s residents adapted to their marshy surroundings.

The researchers were also able to see harbour structures at the edge of the lagoon.

Del Toro’s film Che was a big hit in Cuba last year

Oscar-winning actor Benicio del Toro has been presented with an award by the Cuban government in Havana, in recognition of his body of work.

The inaugural Tomas Gutierrez Alea prize was presented at a ceremony attended by US actors Robert Duvall, James Caan and Bill Murray.

Their visit is seen as a sign of warming Cuban-US relations.

Puerto Rican-born del Toro played revolutionary hero Ernesto “Che” Guevara in two films out last year.

Named after prolific Cuban filmmaker Alea, the new award was voted for by the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba.

Del Toro - who won a best supporting actor Oscar for Traffic in 2001 - said it was “an honour” to receive the award and thanked Che director Steven Soderbergh.

This is a show that will never be able to be repeated. Bill Murray singing, Robert Duvall with his flowers, James Caan sitting here next to me Benicio del Toro

The director’s two-part, four-and-a-half hour biopic on the Argentine revolutionary who helped Fidel Castro take power in Cuba in 1959, was a big hit on the island.

Murray sang songs to union members packed into a room behind the group’s main headquarters.

He then jokingly passed around a baseball cap to collect tips for the pianist who accompanied him.

“This is a show that will never be able to be repeated,” del Toro said.

“Bill Murray singing, Robert Duvall with his flowers, James Caan sitting here next to me, with [Cuban actors] Jorge Perugorria and Mirta Ibarra.

“It will stay in history forever.”

Because of the long-standing US trade embargo against communist Cuba, Americans have been forbidden - with some exceptions - from visiting the island, which is 90 miles (145km) away from Key West, Florida.

Hollywood stars such as Robert Redford, Arnold Schwarzenegger and director Steven Spielberg have visited in the past but cultural exchanges slowed down because of restrictions imposed by former US President George W Bush.