London

A little of Pavlov’s dog is hiding in all of us, scientists said after an experiment in which they taught human volunteers to associate abstract computer images with ice cream. During an initial training period, 13 hungry volunteers were shown abstract computer images while being exposed to the smell of vanilla or peanut butter.

ExxonMobil has been holding a series of secret meetings with environmental and human rights groups worldwide in an effort to change its hard-nosed public image.
The moves have been seized on by the Stop Esso campaign as a sign that its boycott activities aimed at changing the company’s anti-Kyoto treaty views are working.

The tide of Jamaican women entering Britain with their stomachs full of cocaine is pushing the country’s already overcrowded female prison system to breaking point. An investigation has established that the long sentences being served by the 450 Jamaican couriers are stretching British resources to the limit.

Syria’s youthful president sounded resolute and defiant this week in his first public comment on the Israeli air raid that struck deep into his country’s territory. ”We can, with full confidence, say that what happened will only make Syria’s role more effective and influential,”’ Bashar al-Assad told the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat.

Amnesty and Oxfam have joined with the International Action Network on Small Arms to campaign for a treaty to stop arms being exported to destinations where thay are likely to be used to commit human rights abuses. The groups are seeking the adoption of such a treaty by 2006.

A former senior British diplomat on Thursday broke the traditional taboo on discussing British intelligence (MI6) operations to launch a broadside against the United Kingdom intelligence agencies’ failures in the wake of the Hutton inquiry into the death of the British weapons expert Dr David Kelly.

Ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein has been in secret negotiations with US forces in Iraq for the past nine days, a British tabloid newspaper has claimed. Saddam is reportedly demanding safe passage to Belarus in exchange for information on weapons of mass destruction and bank accounts.

Former United Nations arms inspector Hans Blix has said that the war on Iraq was not justified and that Washington and London ”over-interpreted” intelligence data, while a new message attributed to ousted president Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis to fight United States occupying forces.

Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon has told an audience in London that he would oppose the Electoral Laws Amendment Bill in its current form as it disenfranchised South Africans abroad. He added that in 1994 South Africa made a special effort to enable overseas citizens to vote.

A veteran of unusual protests rolled a nut to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s doorstep with his nose on Friday, completing a 11,2km journey across London aimed at highlighting the issue of student debt. His journey took 11 days.

French anti-globalisation activist Jose Bove has said he supports the agricultural subsidies doled out in wealthy Western countries, saying states had the right to protect their farmers, but insisted poor nations still needed protection from European and United States exports.

The leader of Britain’s main opposition Conservative Party has said that Prime Minister Tony Blair should resign if an inquiry links him to the treatment of weapons adviser David Kelly, who apparently committed suicide after being caught up in a political row.

The leading theorist of the big lie was Adolf Hitler. ”The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed,” he wrote in Mein Kampf. Tony Blair is not in this league of mendacity, and I don’t suppose that when he set up the Lord James Hutton inquiry he had in mind for it a role as the great deceiver.

Early in March intelligence agents searching the western deserts of Pakistan thought they had finally tracked down the world’s most wanted man. They were wrong. And they are still in the dark as to the whereabouts of Al-Qaeda’s leader, now believed to be in northern Pakistan guarded by a ring of tribesmen.

Colin Humphreys of Cambridge University has the 21st-century equivalent of the philosopher’s stone. He is working with something that sounds like an alchemist’s dream: a substance that could turn base metal into gold. It could transmit light without wasting energy as heat and make computers 10 000 times faster.

Alastair Campbell has announced he is to leave his Downing Street job in a shock move mid-way through the Hutton inquiry.

More than half of Britons believe British Prime Minister Tony Blair cannot be trusted, according to a poll published a day after he dismissed claims of misleading the country over the war in Iraq.

Tony Blair’s hopes of leading Britain into the single currency before the next general election are in ruins after Labour loyalists admitted this week that Downing Street’s battle with the BBC has ”derailed” the pro-euro campaign.

British health service officials were forced to back away from offering a black woman undergoing a foot amputation a white artificial foot as a cheaper option than one in her own skin colour, after media reports publicised the case on Monday.

The misuse of the apostrophe and the appropriate use of the hyphen — questions that have plagued teachers of English and editors for generations — could soon be at an end.

Libya has agreed to pay ,7-billion in compensation to families of victims of the Lockerbie bombing, family lawyers said on Thursday.