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A blood test to assess the risk of brain damage in vulnerable newborn babies could save lives and prevent disability, scientists say.

The test, carried out on blood taken from the umbilical cord immediately after birth, measures its acidity (the pH level). Blood with a low pH (more acid) indicates a lack of oxygen at birth, which is the commonest cause of brain damage, cerebral palsy and death.

Current guidelines suggest that measuring the pH level of umbilical cord blood is worthless as a predictor of how the baby will fare, because the association is inconsistent. But doctors based in Birmingham reviewed 51 studies involving almost 500,000 babies and found a low pH in the cord blood was strongly linked with serious outcomes.

Based on their findings, published in the British Medical Journal, they call for increased surveillance of babies born with low cord blood pH and for further research to explore the cost effectivenees of doing the test on all babies.

In an accompanying editorial, James Neilson, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Liverpool, said: "We should aim to reduce the number of babies born with a low cord pH, without increasing unnecessary obstetric intervention."

Andy Shennan, professor of obstetrics at St Thomas' Hospital in London welcomed the study into the relationship between low pH and future health. "Lack of oxygen to the baby during labour will result in a low pH in the umbilical cord," he said. "If it is prolonged, irreversible neurological damage can occur, although this is rare."

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A senior Pakistan diplomat has accused "powerful" figures of diverting floodwaters into unprotected areas to save their own land.

Abdullah Hussain Haroon, Pakistan's representative to the UN, has called for an inquiry into a "handful" of cases where influential people took "advantage of these floods and saved themselves" in a disaster that has left more than 1,600 people dead.

Mr Haroon, one of a number of senior officials including a former prime minister who have made the allegations, called for a full judicial inquiry amid claims that unprotected villages had been swamped, forcing the inhabitants to abandon their homes.

However, he said the incidents of embankments being breached by a few influential figures should not hamper the international effort to help the millions affected by the flooding.

The International Monetary Fund said yesterday that it will give Pakistan £290m in emergency aid over the coming weeks. The IMF's managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said yesterday that discussions on repayment of a £7.1bn loan would continue.

The announcement came amid continuing pressure on Pakistan over its handling of the unprecedented floods that have affected more than 18 million people and caused nearly £28bn of damage to infrastructure and agriculture, the mainstay of the economy.

Mr Haroon denied mismanagement of the relief effort, instead blaming a few people in powerful positions. "Over the years, one has seen with the lack of floods that those areas normally set aside for floods have come under irrigation of the powerful and the rich," Mr Haroon told the BBC.

"It is suggested in some areas, those to be protected allowed... levees to be burst on opposite sides to take the water away. If that is happening, the government should be inquiring and be answerable to its own people."

The controversy has surfaced in various parts of the country. Former prime minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali has alleged that water was diverted to submerge his lands in Balochistan province to protect an airbase he said the Americans were using near the town of Jacobabad. The authorities deny the claim. The US Embassy in Islamabad has denied that the American military uses the Shahbaz airbase.

In southern Punjab, prominent figures from the party of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, which heads the Punjab government, were accused of using their influence to divert water from the land of a clan headed by two senior regional politicians. The breach allowed water to flow into Muzaffargarh, a town which has now been abandoned. The clan denied the claim.

Sindh province has seen landowners revive local rivalries by diverting water to each other's land in order to preserve their own crops. The allegations also involve a senior government minister. Landowners in Sindh told The Independent on Sunday that Khurshid Shah, a federal minister from the town of Sukkur, had ordered an embankment to be cut on the wrong side, stopping the water from being diverted into the Thar Desert and onward to the Arabian Sea.

But senior government officials deny any such move. At the time, Qaim Ali Shah, the chief minister of Sindh rejected suggestions that water diversion had been mismanaged. "The water is king," he said. "Wherever it wishes to go, it is its own decision."

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As Poland goes to the polls to elect a new president today, the outcome of the vote could have dire consequences for the country's healthcare system if the leading candidate's plans to commercialise hospitals go ahead, a new study has warned.

A report by a British sociologist, Peggy Watson, argues that the result could represent the final nail in the coffin of public health services in Poland, where hundreds of thousands of people cannot afford private medical care.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, Dr Watson, of the University of Cambridge, argues that while attention has been focused on Barack Obama's attempts to close the affordability gap in healthcare in the US, the reverse has been happening in Poland, where the rich-poor divide is as wide as in America.

Poland's snap election was called after President Lech Kaczynski was killed in April, along with his wife and 95 other senior political, military and religious figures, when the plane carrying their party crashed in fog in western Russia.

The country's hospitals, described as the last bastion of a publicly funded health service, have been the subject of a 10-year privatisation battle. In 2007, the last time the government tried to launch a commercialisation programme, the attempt was vetoed by Mr Kaczynski.

Since his death, however, the government has pledged to revisit its plans. The policy would essentially give Poland's hospitals full market status – the same legal standing as any other company – and open the door to privatisation.

Critics of the plans suggest they would hit hardest the people who need free healthcare the most, in a country where many already struggle to afford dental care and medicines.

"While discussions over Barack Obama's healthcare changes have recently dominated the international media, the radical health reforms taking place in post-communist Europe have met with silence," Dr Watson wrote. "A system is emerging in Poland where better care is being offered to people who are better able to pay. Much has been said about the country's growth, but levels of poverty are high. The hospitals are the last bastion of an even health service. There is a real danger that private companies would bring that to an end."

The issue exploded on to the agenda late last week after the Conservative candidate Jaroslaw Kaczynski, twin brother of the late president, challenged the liberal front-runner, Bronislaw Komorowski, to a live televised debate on the issue, after a court found he had wrongly accused his rival of seeking to privatise healthcare. However, hours before they were due to start on Friday night, both campaign teams announced the debates would not go ahead.

Then, in a swift reversal of Mr Komorowski's victory, the appeal court ruled that the lower court had "omitted to examine" certain pieces of evidence presented by Mr Kaczynski and referred the case for a new hearing.

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Southampton have sacked their manager, Alan Pardew, just two days after the team's 4-0 win at Bristol Rovers. The League One side yesterday issued a statement claiming "it is essential to make changes to the first-team management and coaching".

The 49-year-old led Saints to the Johnstone's Paint Trophy in March with a 4-1 win over Carlisle at Wembley, and though they started the season as firm favourites for promotion to the Championship, a return of only one win in their first three matches has left them 14th in the table.

The board also relieved firm-team coach Wally Downes and goalkeeping coach Stuart Murdoch of their duties with immediate effect.

According to the statement, the decisions were taken to help the club "achieve its well-known targets" following "a review of the current status in and around the first team".

"We recognise that frequent changes to the football management are unlikely to assist in the winning of trophies and promotions. However, we are taking these steps to achieve our aims, which we share with all supporters, to get promoted this season," it said.

Assistant manager Dean Wilkins has been appointed as caretaker while Southampton begin their search for Pardew's replacement.

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Could Colonel Gaddafi, who is now 68, be planning to retire to Italy? The visit by the Libyan tyrant, which climaxed yesterday in a meeting – in his sleeping tent – with Silvio Berlusconi, and a demonstration by the 27 Berber horses he brought with him, was his fourth to the former colonial master in a little over a year.

And although he continues to look and behave like a walk-on character in an opera buffa, there are sneaking hints that he enjoys hanging out in Rome quite as much as any other tourist. On Sunday he threw his entourage into confusion when he decided on a whim to visit Campo de' Fiori for a cappuccino. He then strolled across the street for a look at Piazza Navona, blowing kisses at the crowd mesmerised by his unique collection of wrinkles and eye-pouches.

For the rest, the visit was the usual Gaddafi cocktail of impudence and hard trading. Many statesmen from the Islamic world have visited Rome down the years, but it is doubtful that any of them entertained the idea of assembling hundreds of pouting Roman lovelies to hear the message that "Europe should be Islamic" and that they themselves should convert.

Very few out of the 700 agreed to do so. One who did, Rea Beko, aged 27, admitted that she was brought up in Islam-majority Albania until the age of 15 and was already reading the Koran when she was a little girl. "My boyfriend said, finally you've covered up," she giggled.

So the event was a stunt, but an effective one: no doubt for the television audience back home in Tripoli, proof that their leader was making good, religious use of Ramadan – and equally efficient as a way of making mischief in Italy, where the xenophobic Northern League and other allies of Mr Berlusconi united to denounce Colonel Gaddafi's cheek. "Islam doesn't come in peace but to conquer us!" thundered one Northern League senator.

The proselytisation effort was "merely folklore", Mr Berlusconi insisted. The fact is that he and Colonel Gaddafi have long recognised each other as soul brothers in a world of diplomacy which considers both of them to be outrageous imposters. Way back in 1994, when Mr Berlusconi made his sensational entrance on the Italian political stage, becoming premier for the first time, albeit briefly, Colonel Gaddafi was quick to spot a fellow spirit. "I and Berlusconi were made for each other," he declared, "because we are both revolutionaries".

Their courtship culminated in the treaty of friendship and co-operation, signed two years ago and celebrated yesterday. To compensate for the damage inflicted during the colonial period, Italy agreed to build a hospital and pay €5bn (£4bn) over 20 years, to be delivered in the form of a 1,000-mile autostrada crossing Libya – though one Italian commentator calculated that the true cost of the road could be 10 times as much.

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Beer, ice-cream, crisps, Indian takeaways, chips and anything in batter: normally, it's a particular food type that gets blamed for helping the British to pile on the pounds. But now a whole style of cooking and eating has come under fire for encouraging obesity in the UK.

Research shows that Britons consume more than the recommended daily intake of calories in a single barbecue meal, with men often eating more than 3,500 calories and women more than 2,500.

The study, conducted by Boots and the Tony Ferguson Weightloss Programme, found that the average helping includes two sausages, one-and-a-half burgers, two chicken drumsticks, one and a half meat skewers, fish, a baked potato, a green side salad, pasta salad, a desert and – for the sake of healthiness, no doubt – a bowl of fruit salad to round the meal off.

That equates to just under 3,000 calories, 500 calories more than the recommended daily intake for men and 1,000 more than women are permitted.

Gaila Ferguson, co-founder of the Tony Ferguson Weightloss Programme, blames barbecue bingeing on tradition: "When you do a barbecue, you always have to have sausages, burgers, steaks, pasta salad, cous cous salad, potato salad and all the bits on the side. And when you have all those options you feel obliged to try them all, especially if you are a guest."

As the average family will have nine barbecues this summer (weather permitting), she suggests concentrating on one or two flame grilled and side salad options at each meal, and introducing simple measures like taking the skin off chicken to reduce fat content. "Put a chicken breast in some foil with lemon juice and some nice spices and herbs so it steams on top of the barbecue and stays moist, then take the foil off for the last few minutes so it gets the smokey flavour," she says. "Fish is also great. Peppered tuna is quick on the barbecue and it's full of omega 3s and 6s. Even a steak is great so long as you cut the fat off."

But diners should still exercise "portion control", adds Ferguson: one sausage is apparently much better than three. A tofu kebab or mixed green salad with harissa dressing is even better, according to the Tony Ferguson Cook Book. Barbecue diners can also consume twice their daily recommended intake of salt in one meal, according to Consensus Action on Salt & Health.

After surveying 603 shop-bought food products typically eaten at barbecues, it found that a typical meal comprising a hotdog with mustard, a burger with cheese and BBQ sauce, a piece of marinated meat, some coleslaw, potato salad and plain crisps with dips could include 12.11g of salt, more than double the recommended maximum of 6g for an adult.

The organisation points out that some sauces such as ketchup and mustard are even saltier than sea water, and warns that some foods which score well on fat content, such as venison burgers, are higher in salt than their beef counterparts. Burgers tend to be saltier than sausages, while coleslaws with prawns or cheese tend to be higher in salt than the basic varieties.

However, the Boots research indicates that any advice on sensible alfresco eating habits is likely to be ignored: it found that although a third of those questioned (2,000 adults) were aware they eat more food than usual, 41% chose to forget how many calories they were consuming and ate as much as they wanted.

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One of the world's tiniest frogs — barely larger than a pea — has been found living in and around carnivorous plants on Borneo island, one of the scientists who made the accidental discovery said today.

Indraneil Das, a scientist at University Malaysia Sarawak, said he and another scientist from Germany were doing field research on frogs in Malaysia's Sarawak state on Borneo island when they chanced on the tiny species on the edge of a road leading to the summit of a mountain in the Kubah National Park in 2006.

"For biologists, this is a curiosity," Das told The Associated Press.

The frogs were named Microhyla nepenthicola after the pitcher plant species where they live, Das said. A Malaysian museum had listed the species but misidentified it as juveniles of another frog species, he said.

The tubular plants are carnivorous, killing insects such as ants, but do not harm the frogs. Tadpoles grow in the liquid inside the plants.

Adult males of the amphibians range in size between 0.42 inches (10.6 millimeters) to 0.5 inches (12.8 millimeters), Das said.

The findings were published by Das and Alexander Haas of the Biozentrum Grindel und Zoologisches Museum of Hamburg, Germany in peer-review journal Zootaxa last week after they completed their research on the frogs.

Das said because the frogs were so small, he and his colleague only found them by tracking their singing of "harsh rasping notes" at dusk. They caught them by making them jump on a white cloth near the pitcher plants.

He added that the discovery should encourage efforts to protect the biological diversity in Borneo's rain forests.

Das said the tiniest known frog found was in Cuba, with its size of at least 0.39 inches (9.8 millimeters).

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The lobbying carried out by food manufacturers to block a European-wide food labelling system backed by doctors is laid bare in a series of private emails published today by The Independent.

In a flurry of statements and position papers to MEPs in the run up to key votes, Kellogg's, Danone, Coca-Cola, Nestle and other manufacturers claimed that colour-coded traffic lights were incapable of informing shoppers about the right diet.

They claimed that studies showed that their favoured percentage-based Guideline Daily Amounts (GDAs) had wide consumer acceptance. Polls by the National Heart Forum and the consumer group Which? that looked at both systems found shoppers preferred colour-coding.
On Wednesday, the European Parliament rejected the traffic light system devised by the Food Standards Agency vote in favour of GDAs. At the same time, they backed the compulsory labelling of harmful trans-fats and country of origin on processed products.

Glenis Willmott, the leader of Labour's MEPs, accused the food industry of heavy-handed tactics. "People weren't being told the full facts and the amount of time and money poured in by lobbyists was huge," she said. "It must have had an impact."

Mette Kahlin, policy advocate for Which?, said: "While I was lobbying in Brussels for Which? it was clear I was outnumbered by industry lobbyists 100-1. Consumer and health organisations don't have enough money to match that."

Devised by the UK Food Standards Agency in 2006, traffic lights show red lights for high levels of salt, fat and sugar, and amber and green for lower amounts. The British Medical Association, British Dietetic Association and British Heart Foundation are among the health groups that support the scheme.

On Monday, the Ad Hoc GDA Group, representing 11 manufacturers including Kellogg's, Mars, Nestle and Unilever, emailed MPs in a last-ditch attempt to swing their vote. "We still believe that a traffic light approach provides too judgmental an assessment of foodstuffs – the complex nutritional composition of a food and its place in the diet cannot be reduced to a single colour," they wrote.

In an earlier email, Nestle France warned that the introduction of a colour-coded system would "in effect, create an arbitrary judgement about the food and this, in total disconnection with dietary requirements."

Coca-Cola even claimed that a diet based upon green lights could be harmful. In a document headed "Food labelling, basic elements for discussion", sent in 2008, the US fizzy drinks giant told MEPs: "Colour coding gives the consumer false assurances. A diet based upon products with green lights would lead to chronic nutritional deficiences."

"The briefings are not based on evidence," protested Ms Kahlin, of Which?

"In the UK we have had traffic lights and no one has been admitted to hospital with malnutrition from eating food signed with green lights. People still eat products marked red but they become aware of what is in their food."

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Jack Wilshere's hopes of an extended run in Fabio Capello's squad received a blow yesterday when he was named in England's Under-21s squad for next month's European Championship double-header.

The Arsenal midfielder played in England's success over Hungary two weeks ago, replacing Steven Gerrard for the closing stages of the match.

However, Stuart Pearce has named Wilshere in his squad for qualifying matches against Portugal and Lithuania. Pearce said: "Jack's had the experience of an international cap with the seniors and his development will come. I think having the experience of playing with the Under-21s and seniors will be a help to him and is something he will have to come to terms with.

"He shouldn't feel disappointed that he's been in the senior squad and then come back to the Under-21s," Pearce added.

Wilshere will expect to be recalled into the senior squad for the friendly against France in November.

England play Portugal in Barcelos on 3 September before facing Lithuania four days later at Colchester's Weston Homes Community Stadium.

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BBC football host Gary Lineker attacked an elite British private school today for failing to get his son into university.
The 49-year-old former England captain said Charterhouse school had treated his son George as a "guinea pig" by ditching A-levels in favour of a new exam system, Cambridge Pre-U.
The 18-year-old learnt he had failed to obtain the three B grades needed for a place at Manchester University on Thursday.
Responding to the comments, the Surrey school said it was "proud" of its students' grades.
Lineker, the ex-Tottenham, Barcelona and Everton striker, told the Daily Mirror: "We don't know what's going on with George at the moment.
"He did the Pre-U and they seem to have been marked much harder than the A-level papers. It's all a bit frustrating, as it is the first year the Pre-U exams have been used, so George has been used as a guinea pig.
"At the moment his university place has been withdrawn, but we are hoping we might be able to find a way round this. We are all very disappointed."
George, who was hoping to read business at Manchester University, was spotted on a week-long holiday to Tenerife just weeks before his exams and had been pictured on nights out with ex-Big Brother contestant Sophie Reade, 22.
The Rev John Witheridge, the school's head, defended the school's results.
He said: "We are indeed delighted with our pupils' excellent results this year.
"As you would expect, we do not comment on the performance of individual pupils."
A spokeswoman for the school, which charges fees of about £25,000 a year, added: "We are very pleased with our first set of Cambridge Pre-U results. Our pupils have benefited from a much richer sixth-form education and they are celebrating excellent grades.
"Half of this year's cohort achieved at least three Pre-U Distinctions or A grades at A-level. 60 pupils achieved the equivalent of straight As or better (including Pre-U distinctions) with six pupils awarded straight D1s (top Distinctions) at Pre-U.
"Overall, 31% of our grades are equivalent to A* or better (including Pre-U D1s and D2s)."
Charterhouse, founded in London in 1611, moved to its 250-acre site in the Surrey countryside near Godalming in 1872.

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