UK

While the trend of government surveillance is on the rise across the world, the US has emerged as the country whose citizens enjoyed privacy protection the least last year, according to an annual report.

Police were accused yesterday of dishonestly manipulating a photograph showing Jean Charles de Menezes next to a suicide bomber. The remarkable composite picture - one half containing the face of the innocent Brazilian and the other that of terrorist Hussain Osman - was shown to a jury by the Met in an attempt to explain why they shot the wrong man dead.

Great Britain is considering opt-out organ donation. It'd be the opposite of the current system: instead of people signing organ donation agreements, doctors would assume that, unless they'd formally indicated otherwise, people wanted to donate their organs.

Britain is ready to sign up to a bombing campaign on Iran as revenge for the "shame" of the Navy hostage taking, it was claimed today. According to an investigation by leading American journalist Seymour Hersh, the UK is poised to join any US-led action against the rogue state.

There are few queues more annoying than the one at the end of a day's travelling. It is even more annoying when you are queuing to enter your own country. As a result, frequent travellers have been enrolling in the free biometric Iris Recognition Immigration Scheme (IRIS) to avoid lengthy immigration queues at UK airports.

The trade in hundreds of children smuggled into the UK for sexual exploitation, drug smuggling, under-age marriage, street crime and domestic slavery was exposed last night in a government report. The Home Office-commissioned survey identifies 330 cases of suspected or confirmed victims of trafficking - most of them from China or from Africa - but warns of an "unknown quantity" that have not come to the attention of the authorities. The true scale of child trafficking is believed to be far higher.

The row over CIA 'torture flights' using British airports has deepened following fresh evidence that a plane repeatedly linked to the controversial programme landed in the UK just days ago.

The plane was logged arriving at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk last weekend, and watching aviation experts said the aircraft, piloted by crew clad in desert fatigues, was immediately surrounded on the runway by armed American security forces.

Police in Sussex have taken the DNA details of almost 80,000 people, the Government has revealed.

Figures published by the Home Office show the force has logged the equivalent of more than six per cent of the area's population on to the national database.

Yarg Biometrics Ltd, and Fujitsu Europe Limited announced their plans to work together to develop a pioneering biometric identification system for schools, based on palm vein authentication technology known as PalmSecure™ from Fujitsu. Yarg and Fujitsu have implemented the technology at Todholm Primary School in Paisley, Scotland.

The palm vein-based biometric authentication system, the first of its kind in Europe, is an exciting new way to pay for school meals.

This project is part of the Scottish Executive’s “Hungry for Success” initiative to promote the health and social wellbeing of children in Scotland, with a focus on school meals.