AP - A spokesman for a group of nuclear power plants in New Jersey says a U.S. man charged in Yemen with being a member of al-Qaida had previously worked at the plants.

AP - A Toyota executive said Thursday the company is "mystified" by a report that a California man's Prius gas pedal became stuck and caused the car to speed out of control on a California freeway.

AFP - Illegal fishing and climate change are decimating shrimp and lobster populations in Central America, threatening a two-billion-dollar industry and 136,000 jobs, regional experts said Thursday.

AFP - Climate change is pushing some bird species "towards extinction," US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar warned Thursday as a new report on the threats facing North American birds was released.

Today, many parents will be putting their children on to buses, cars or bikes and seeing them on their way to school. Sadly for the parents of 72 million children around the world, they do not have this choice. Today the prime minister of Britain and the president of France have the chance to change this when they meet in London. This year provides us with an opportunity to get all children through the school gates. In 2005, musicians took to the stage to perform in the name of Make Poverty History and helped secure an additional $50bn in aid for poor countries. In 2010, footballers will be taking to the pitch and playing in the name of the 1Goal campaign to secure funding for every child to go to school (South Africa ready to host World Cup, says Zuma, 5 March).

Backed by millions of campaigners, hundreds of companies and some of the biggest stars in football, this year's World Cup has the opportunity to leave a unique legacy never seen before through a sporting occasion. The South Africans recently agreed to host an extraordinary high-level summit on education to deliver this. We look to both the UK and France, which pride themselves on the quality of their domestic education, to deliver such opportunities to the rest of the world.

Adrian Lovett

Chair, 1Goal campaign committee

• As healthcare professionals, we are very aware that the impact of climate change on maternal and child health in developing countries will be enormous. Climate change will greatly increase deaths of the most vulnerable through water and food scarcity, increased infectious disease and forced migration. There will be no possibility of meeting the UN millennium development goals of reducing maternal and child deaths without serious action by the rich countries of the world, and there are real connections between poverty, inequalities, conflict and climate change which add to the urgency of our efforts.

We urge leaders in both politics and healthcare to show an example in moving to a low-carbon future, and to build on the innovative work in the health service through the NHS Sustainable Development Unit to reduce the carbon footprint of the NHS. If we do not tackle this problem ourselves, we must be held responsible for causing thousands of mother and child deaths in most of the poor countries of the world.

Professor Sabaratnam Arulkumaran President, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

Dr Peter Carter General secretary and chief executive, Royal College of Nursing

Professor Ian Gilmore President, Royal College of Physicians

Professor Alan Maryon-Davis

President, Faculty of Public Health

Professor Terence Stephenson President, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health

Professor Cathy Warwick General secretary, Royal College of Midwives

• International aid and development
• Schools
• World Cup 2010
• Climate change
• NHS

One option to get round the problem of a high-speed rail line painting a long grey "blight corridor" across the Chilterns and either Oxfordshire or Buckinghamshire (The fate of the Chilterns reveals the limits of localism, 8 March) would be to stitch the HS2 into another existing blight corridor. This was done successfully a decade ago in the routing of HS1, or the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Only at a few places did CTRL/HS1 leave the noisy environs of either an existing railway or one of the motorways.

For nearly 10 years I have been promoting an HS2 route that follows closely the M1, M45/A45 and (further north) M18 and A1(M) on the east side of the Pennines, and M6 Toll and the west coast mainline to the west side. As with HS1 there are a few tricky places, but there are simple solutions such as a two-mile tunnel under the M1 as it threads through Luton. The only objection I have heard is that the M1 corridor is "rather heavily populated"; this objection implies that a route that goes through open countryside, blighting it with noise, is acceptable – well, just you wait and see. The citizens of Buckinghamshire fought off an airport at Wing/Cublington three decades ago, and I can sadly foresee them fighting off this railway too.

And as for Heathrow, well, to me the simplest solution is to extend the Heathrow Express line from Terminal 5 to run beside the M25, using part of the Egham to Weybridge line, and so provide a link into the Woking-Basingstoke-Southampton electric 100mph line. True, it would only be suitable for trains like the shorter Eurostars, but it would provide a service direct to Terminals 1, 2, 3 and 5, linking in via HS2 at Cricklewood.

Peter Stephens

Wootton, Bedfordshire

• Not to connect the proposed high-speed rail network directly to Heathrow airport would be another major missed infrastructure opportunity for this country (Rail route towards Birmingham revealed for high-speed network, 11 March). We now have a chance to build a modern multi-modal transport hub, which would significantly boost London's business competitiveness and accessibility. It is not rocket science to understand the travel efficiencies inherent in taking passengers via the airport, rather than having them traipse from one connection to another with baggage in hand.

It is a mystery why we struggle in the UK with the idea of integrated transport planning. Rail and air (and road) are not competing transport systems, but complementary elements in what should be a comprehensive multi-faceted network.

Demand for air travel will continue to grow and we need to build on recent investments at Heathrow with a third runway and high-speed rail link. Our challenge is to offer business and leisure travellers a better experience and protect the UK's competitive advantage. Not servicing Heathrow directly by the high-speed rail would be to fail in that challenge.

Frank Wingate

Chief executive, West London Business

• High-speed rail is something we really need. The use of trains to go anywhere is wonderfully sound for the environment. So could someone tell me why my partner and I this week paid £75 each for a return to London, plus a £40 taxi fare to the station because there is no bus service at the time I needed the train. I sat on the train, packed to capacity, thinking that I could have taken the car, paid for a day's parking, the congestion charge and dinner for two, and still been better off.

Eean Wyatt-Lees

Salisbury, Wiltshire

• Which infrastructure development do you think would add more value to your life/business: (a) a high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham, to be extended to Scotland in due course, which will benefit a few people, cutting their travel time by 20 minutes; or (b) extending optic fibre cabling to 95% of homes and businesses so we can have genuine high-speed broadband of the calibre that Korea is already building.

The costs are roughly the same. If we are going to invest £60bn in the UK infrastructure, I think it is a no-brainer that we should apply it to the digital communications future, not the historic infrastructure that made the Victorians great. Tell your MPs (of all parties) before they make a stupid mistake.

Stephen Milton

St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex

• Rail transport
• Rail travel
• Channel Tunnel
• Heathrow third runway
• Broadband

In holding that the aim of science is truth alone, they misrepresent its real aims

George Monbiot is surely right to bemoan the profoundly unsatisfactory state of affairs that exists between science and the public (With complex science, we must take much on trust. The trouble is we can't, 9 March).

Many members of the public instinctively and irrationally distrust, even fear, science. Thus, for climate sceptics, "No level of evidence can shake the growing belief that climate science is a giant conspiracy codded up by boffins and governments to tax and control us". And scientists don't help by producing specialised "gobbledegook" so incomprehensible that even scientists "studying neighbouring subjects within the same discipline can no longer understand each other".

The situation might be helped if scientists stopped deceiving us, and themselves, about the nature of science itself, and adopted a more truthful view. At present most of them take for granted the view that the intellectual aim of science is to acquire knowledge of truth, the basic method being to assess, impartially, claims to knowledge with respect to evidence – nothing being accepted permanently as a part of scientific knowledge independently of evidence. But this is nonsense. Physics only ever accepts theories that are unified – that attribute the same laws to all the phenomena to which the theory in question applies – even though many empirically more successful disunified rivals can always be concocted.

This means that physics persistently accepts a substantial thesis about the universe independent of evidence: there is some kind of underlying unity in nature, to the extent at least that all seriously disunified theories are false. This substantial, influential and highly problematic assumption needs to be acknowledged within science, so that it can be criticised and, we may hope, improved. The aim of science is not truth per se, but rather truth presupposed to be unified, or explanatory.

And it goes further. The aim of seeking explanatory truth is a special case of the more general aim of seeking truth that is, in some way or other, important or of value. Values, of one kind or another, are inherent in the aims of science. But values are, if anything, even more problematic than untestable assumptions concerning an underlying unity in nature. Values implicit in the aims of science need to be acknowledged, so that they can be criticised and, we may hope, improved.

Finally, knowledge of valuable truth is sought so that it may be used by people, ideally to enhance the quality of human life. There is a humanitarian or political dimension. But this, again, needs to be critically assessed and, we may hope, improved.

In short, in holding that the intellectual aim of science is truth alone, scientists seriously misrepresent its real, problematic aims, and thus prevent urgently needed critical assessment by scientists and non-scientists alike. More honesty about the nature of science might improve science, and public attitudes towards it – and might even encourage scientists to produce less gobbledegook.

• Climate change
• Climate change scepticism
• Hacked climate science emails
• Philosophy

Transport secretary Lord Adonis has published £30bn plans for a 250mph rail link between London and Birmingham. The proposals, which would revolutionise Britain's rail network, are subject to parliamentary approval and public consultation. Even after that, work won't begin on the route until 2017, with the first stage expected to take 10 years to complete. After that, the government intends to extend the high speed rail network to northern England and Scotland.

Peter Walker hears the views of the people of Wendover in the Chilterns, an area of outstanding natural beauty which the new rail route would pass through.

Transport historian Christian Wolmar says the key question is whether the high speed rail plans would increase capacity.

Guardian columnist Julian Glover says the plan will bring economic benefits to the whole country, while Liberal Democrat transport spokesman Norman Baker believes the consultation process will allow members of the public to be heard, and for their views to be given due consideration.

Reuters - A growing number of Americans, nearly half the country, think global warming worries are exaggerated and more people doubt that scientific warnings of severe environmental fallout will ever occur, according to a new Gallup poll.

Governments indicate support for complete international ban to allow species to recover from years of over-fishing

Japanese tuna brokers protested today after the EU decided to support a worldwide trade ban on Atlantic bluefin tuna. EU governments indicated that they would back a complete international ban on the species to allow the bluefin to recover from years of over-fishing.

The protest came just days ahead of a meeting this weekend of Cites, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, in Doha, which will see 175 member states vote on whether to add the fish to a list of animals threatened with extinction, banning its trade.

Raw tuna is a key ingredient in sushi and sashimi in Japan, the world's main purchaser of bluefin. Although the ban would not prevent the fish from being caught, it would end the trade between European fishing fleets and Japan, where about 80% of captured bluefin ends up.

"This is like telling the US to stop eating beef," said Kimio Amano, a 36-year-old broker at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo who joined about 100 other dealers – many clad in work boots and shiny waterproof overalls – to chant slogans calling for better use of the ocean's resources.

The brokers argue that an Atlantic ban would be unnecessary if existing tuna stocks were better managed. The Japanese tuna industry also contends that the implementation of the ban could lead to broader restrictions.

"Our biggest hope is that this doesn't spread to the Pacific," said Tadao Ban, head of the Tokyo co-operative for large fish dealers. For this reason we are promoting strict resource management. We are even supporting putting a tag on each and every tuna caught."

Global stocks of bluefin tuna – which can reach 14ft (4.3 metres) in length and weigh more than 1,000lb (450kg) (450kg) – have been decimated over the last decade, particularly in the Atlantic.

It is estimated that some 1m bluefins were caught last year, while the total population is thought to be about 3.75m. The WWF says stocks of bluefin tuna in the Atlantic have dropped by 80% since 1978.

• Japan
• European Union
• Fishing

AP - Police say a national traffic safety agency is sending inspectors to suburban New York City to look at a wrecked Toyota Prius (PREE'-uhs) that its driver said accelerated on its own into a stone wall.

Saved permits can be used to meet future targets to cut emissions without reducing pollution

Companies across Europe are hoarding permits to produce greenhouse gas emissions worth hundreds of millions of pounds, the Guardian can reveal.

The surplus credits have been amassed from over-allocation of permits to pollute from the European emissions trading scheme, and by buying cheap credits from carbon-cutting projects in developing countries and holding on to their more expensive official EU allowances.

The saved permits can be used to meet future targets to cut the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming and climate change without actually reducing pollution, or sold for a profit in the future.

Campaigners for tougher emissions reductions said the saved-up allowances discredited the argument of some industries that much deeper cuts in future would be "fatal" because they could no longer afford to compete against rivals outside the EU.

However, companies involved said the banked credits would help them pay to develop new emission-cutting technology, and to meet emissions targets until that became widely available.

Industry also warned it faced "death by a thousand cuts" as a result of the next phase of the scheme, from 2013 and 2020, and other costly environmental legislation planned by government. Business leaders accused the government of being prepared to sacrifice industry to enable other sectors such as aviation to keep polluting and meet the UK's carbon budgets.

One steelmaker told the Guardian: "Officials see us as acceptable collateral in the fight against climate change. If we don't make anything in this country any more, it means people could still fly to Tenerife once a year and the UK will keep within the carbon budget."

He said meeting targets would require vast amounts of steel to build windfarms, nuclear reactors and electric cars. This would have to be imported from more-polluting steelmakers outside Europe if the industry disappeared in the UK.

The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the centrepiece of the EU's pledge to cut greenhouse gases, has already been criticised for giving many companies allowances to emit more emissions than they need, leaving little incentive to reduce pollution, and for lax regulation.

The latest concern about "banking" credits involves companies also buying cheap allowances from "offset" schemes which reduce emissions in other countries, often China and India, and using these to cover their emissions while keeping their official allowances – which are worth more because projects in other countries could in future be banned.

Analysis for the Guardian by campaign group Sandbag of the figures for 2008, the most recent available, looked at the extra allowances accrued by four big sectors: iron and steel, coke ovens, metal ore processing, and cement, which together have 800 installations covered by the trading scheme, and include big names like ArcelorMittal, Thyssenkrupp, Corus, Holcim and Cemex.

Sandbag calculated the four sectors received permits to emit 66m tonnes more carbon dioxide than they needed in 2008, partly because predicted growth did not happen and partly because of the recession towards the end of the year. In addition they bought cheap offsets for a further 18m tonnes plus, which would then free up more EU allowances. In total the surplus allowances would have been worth nearly €1.2bn (£1.1bn) in 2008, or just over €1.1bn at today's closing price of €12.99. Based on the forecast average price of €30 a tonne for the third phase of the ETS from 2013-2016 by analysts Point Carbon they would be worth more than double that in future.

If the companies stockpiled over-allocated surpluses for the whole of this phase of the ETS, from 2008-2012 they could be worth as much as €3.2bn at today's prices, said Sandbag. Any more credits released by buying offsets would be on top of that.

"If they [companies] want cashflow, which in the current climate they may, then they'll cash in the allowances," said Bryony Worthington, Sandbag's founder and director. "But if they are thinking long-term then they'll be thinking 'I should probably hold on to them and insulate myself for the future'."

ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steel producer, has pledged to use profits to invest in future energy savings to reduce pollution, but there were no guarantees they or any other company would have to do this, said Worthington. "How do we police it, they could be using it for dividends or anything," she added.

Ian Rodgers, director of UK Steel, said: "The climate change agenda won't affect the amount of steel consumed, but it will determine where it's produced."

According to industry estimates, the third phase could cost heavy industry – including steelmakers such as Corus, the chemicals industry and the ceramics industry – €1bn a year.

Sandbag will tomorrow publish in-depth analysis for 2008, including the biggest buyers of offsets from developing countries, and a map linking every offset scheme with their European customers.

• Emissions trading
• Carbon emissions
• European Union
• Pollution
• Manufacturing sector
• Climate change

Sainsbury's and Tesco among stores caught out by wholesaler who passed off battery produce as organic

For those who made the conscious decision to spend more on free range or organic eggs, it was worth paying a premium to know the hens that laid them had been kept in ethical conditions.

But those people who ended up paying over the odds for Keith Owen's eggs may feel a little less warm inside after it emerged the 44-year-old egg wholesaler had scammed all the major supermarkets and numerous small shops by passing off about 100m battery farmed eggs as free range or organic.

Owen, a married father-of-two from Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, was jailed for three years today and forced to surrender the £3m profit he had made by "dishonestly and systematically" mis-describing eggs over a two-year period. The fraud abused "well-intentioned public trust" by scamming innocent customers who had paid extra to ensure better animal welfare, Worcester crown court heard.

Defra, which brought the prosecution, said it was the biggest case of its kind it had ever investigated.

Owen ran Heart of England Eggs Unlimited, an egg-packing business that supplied bigger packing companies, which, in turn, provided the vast majority of eggs to the well-known supermarkets, including Sainsbury's, Morrisons and Tesco, as well as smaller retailers.

Last week he pleaded guilty to three charges of fraudulent accounting which involved him altering records to disguise the fact he was buying eggs laid by caged hens and selling them for a vast profit after "mis-describing" them in paperwork.

His barrister, John Kelsey-Fry QC, suggested his client was not alone in creating what he described as "mischief" in the egg industry.

"It's not the case that all those to whom Mr Owen supplied eggs were concerned to ensure the provenance of the eggs was as described," said Kelsey-Fry, adding it would be "inappropriate" to elaborate.

Passing sentence, the judge said Owen had made very substantial profits at the expense of "real-life victims" who believed they were buying premium eggs.

Describing Owen as the firm's guiding mind, the judge told the managing director: "Imprisonment there must be, because the offences are plainly so serious that only a sentence of imprisonment will suffice. This was all a carefully planned and executed fraud by false accounting. By greed, you have corrupted and destroyed the once-legitimate business which you have known all your life."

At the time of the fraud, between 2004 and 2006, farmers could expect a price of about 90p for a dozen organic eggs, 70p for free range and 35p for cage eggs. As a "middle man" wholesaler, Owen would normally make a few pence profit per dozen. But by passing off cage eggs as free range, he could make an extra 35p for every 12 eggs he sold. In a market where demand outstripped supply, he seized the opportunity to make a lot of money.

Richard Jones, a Defra official who investigated the case, said today that Owen was such a significant player in the free range egg market that after he closed down his business two years ago, a number of supermarkets, including Somerfield, had to start sourcing free range eggs from abroad.

The court heard that Owen did not only buy in cheap battery hen eggs in order to dupe customers further down the line, he also bought in huge quantities of so-called "industrial eggs". These do not meet the quality requirements for sale to the public; instead they can be used only in processed foods once liquefied.

Murmurings began circulating in the egg industry in 2004 that there were vastly more British free range and organic eggs being sold in shops than could ever possibly be laid in UK farms.

At the same time, investigators from the Egg Marketing Inspectorate (EMI) noticed during routine checks that eggs coming from Heart of England were not at all they were purported to be. Because all eggs look the same to the naked eye, the law requires that each egg is stamped with a unique number indicating where, and in what conditions, it was laid. Paperwork indicating origin and type must accompany the eggs all along the supply chain.

But when inspectors checked a selection of Owen's allegedly free range eggs using a strong ultraviolet light, the shells bore wire marks – a tell-tale sign that they had been laid not on a bed of straw, or even artificial turf, as farming regulations stipulate, but in a metal cage.

There were also complaints from lorry drivers who arrived at Owen's farms to drop off consignments of caged eggs and then pick up free range or organic eggs. A number of drivers reported to their trade union that they were made to wait hours to pick up their deliveries and suspected the eggs they delivered were being relabelled and sold back to them that day.

All of Owen's major contracts were to supply British eggs, bearing the British Lion hallmark. But investigators from Defra discovered that he was regularly buying eggs from the continent and passing them off as homegrown.

He used another of his companies, Owens Eggs, to disguise the accounting fraud. Owens Eggs was a legitimate business selling organic eggs laid in a barn on the same site as the Heart of England business. He laundered money by selling organic eggs from Owens Eggs to Heart of England at a hugely inflated price – £10-£40 a dozen at a time when others were selling a dozen for no more than £1.

Investigators found Owen had not only falsified records with real suppliers but also invented firms that had supposedly provided him with premium eggs. He was banned from being a company director for seven years.

A Sainsbury's spokesman said: "We have the highest standards of quality for all our products, and the eggs we sell are either Woodland eggs or Lion Mark eggs from non-caged flocks. So we were naturally very angry and concerned to learn that we and other retailers were the victims of this fraud.

"We purchased the eggs from a long-term supplier in good faith and it is important to note that at no point did we have any contact with Mr Owen or Heart of England Unlimited."

The British Free Range Egg Producers Association said: "As a result of this case, the British Egg Industry Council with the 'Lion', have introduced a raft of measures, one of which is the stamping of all eggs since January 2010. Consumers can therefore now be reassured that eggs cannot be tampered with as in this case."

• Crime
• Consumer affairs
• Supermarkets
• Food & drink industry
• Organics
• Food