By analysing the RNA of the virus the team could confirm that it

By analysing the RNA of the virus, the team could confirm that it came from a strain that first appeared in India in 1990 and has emerged more recently in the Middle East, Japan, South Korea and South Africa.”The thing about FMD is that the virus is very small and mutates very fast,” said Dr Kitching. “It has only 8,200 base pairs [the "stairs" of the double-helix staircase carrying genetic information] and every time it replicates, one of those pairs can potentially mutate.” While most mutations will not survive, the potential for more infectious versions to emerge is always there.For humans, there is little to worry about: “As part of our work for the UN.. I have to inspect sites with FMD,” said Dr Kitching “I’ve never caught it.”. Public bodies, including schools, hospitals and the police, that fail to promote good race relations will face legal action under new anti-racism laws proposed yesterday. Public bodies, including schools, hospitals and the police, that fail to promote good race relations will face legal action under new anti-racism laws proposed yesterday.
Most publicly funded organisations, such as the BBC, will be required to monitor and promote race equality within their organisations and outlaw discrimination.This includes ensuring that non-white people can apply for jobs on an equal footing. The proposed measures will be legally enforceable by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) and overseen by government inspectors. Individuals will also be able to sue more easily for racial discrimination.The new race-equality legislation was outlined yesterday by Jack Straw in a consultation paper. The Home Secretary plans to introduce the changes under the Race Relations (Amendment) Bill, which is due to be introduced in April and will give organisations until May 2002 to fulfil their duties.Mr Straw also published a report into the latest progress on the 70 recommendations made in Sir William Macpherson’s inquiry report into the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993.

The report, which comes on the second anniversary of the Macpherson inquiry into the racist killing in south-east London, said that the police are failing to reach ethnic minorities recruitment targets set by the Home Secretary.Under the Bill, the CRE will be given powers to issue a compliance notice against organisations it believes are not fulfiling their duties. The CRE will also be able to seek a court order to enforce the notice.The Bill goes further than a key recommendation of the Macpherson report – that the full force of the race-relations legislation should apply to the police. Organisations that will be affected range from Government departments and local councils to prisons, broadcasters such as the BBC, museums and universities.”We want the public sector to …lead by example,” Mr Straw said “Where it will have an impact is on those parts … which are a bit behind in moving from talk to action.”The second annual report into the progress made on the recommendations of the Macpherson inquiry, published yesterday, reported that all 43 police forces in England and Wales are failing to meet targets set by the Home Secretary about reducing the number of ethnic minority officers who are leaving the service.It also found that the four forces – the Metropolitan Police, and the Greater Manchester, West Midlands and West Yorkshire forces – that are expected to employ three-quarters of the country’s ethnic minority officers are failing to reach their targets. The Met, the largest force, has hardly increased the number of non-white officers in the past 12 months.

The Home Secretary had set the police a target of boosting the number of “visible” ethnic minorities to 8,265 in England and Wales by 2009. There are currently 2,900.But Milena Buyum, of the National Assembly Against Racism, said: “Resistance from within the police, reinforced by recent statements by William Hague that the Lawrence recommendations were ‘demoralising’ for police and should be abandoned, risks undermining the process of reform.”. It was the flotsam and jetsam of a national embarrassment. A stuffed Winnie the Pooh, a “hunny” jar, an old lunchbox labelled “Anthony Blair” and a book entitled Bluffer’s Guide to Politics. It was the flotsam and jetsam of a national embarrassment. A stuffed Winnie the Pooh, a “hunny” jar, an old lunchbox labelled “Anthony Blair” and a book entitled Bluffer’s Guide to Politics.
This was Lot 693 in the biggest auction the country has ever seen, the disposal of the Millennium Dome’s innards. And it was, indeed, a sorry sight.More than 17,000 lots will be sold over four days next week in a bid to recoup a scintilla of a fraction of the hundreds of millions of pounds that have haemorrhaged into the venture out of public coffers.Catering equipment and vast lighting and audio-visual systems will bring in the lion’s share of the anticipated £3m to £5m from the sale.But it is the detritus of the Dome’s various zones that is already attracting the attention of collectors and the curiosity of the public at large.There are the robotic lice with their electronic umbilical cords (Lots 479 and 480), the 6ft-tall hamster with its plastic wedge of cheese (Lot 100), and the giant eye from the Body Zone, a morbid jigsaw of an exhibit complete with blood-coloured fronds of optical nerve (Lot 103).It is arguably the biggest collection of useless tat the world has ever seen, a giant car-boot sale short only of the car boots – indeed, one of the exhibits, Lot 247, is a Mini whose rear half has been shorn away.Just feet away from Tony Blair’s lunchbox was Lot 440, a single roller-boot, Lot 643, a stuffed shark hat, and Lot 14, three crystal milk bottles in a plastic case.

There were scooters with no engines, rubber brains on electric stems and an 8ft-diameter clock bearing the cheerful fact that: “The average person works 100,000 hours during their lifetime” (Lot 650).Potential bidders attending the viewing inside the Dome were either smiling or frowning as they entered the Work Zone and sauntered past a dummy of an England football fan with his head in his hands and an operating theatre scene featuring a surgeon whose head had just been accidentally knocked off by a television cameraman.”It looks like a load of old junk to me,” said Jessie Kaur, a property developer staring at the large plastic lice. “We’re here for the more serious stuff – furniture, kitchenware and computers – but a lot of people are here for this It’s terrible.”But Tony Nutt loved it. Mr Nutt, who described himself as “a squirrel” from Boxhill, Surrey, is planning to return, pockets full of money, to bid for the more bizarre curiosities. “I love the eyeball and the lice – I would think they’d go for £400 – and I think people will pay silly money for the brains, maybe £1,500 a pair,” he said “I loved the Dome when it was open and I’m sorry it’s going. You’ve got to try to grab a piece of it – it’s a part of history.”Derek Sadler, a director of Henry Butcher, the auctioneers handling the sale, said more than 5,300 people had already registered to bid.