Malaysian airport security arrested a convicted wildlife smuggler after finding almost 100 live reptiles in his luggage, the country's Wildlife and National Parks Department said.

Anson Wong, already convicted of trafficking in wildlife in the United States, was in transit from the Malaysian island state of Penang to the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Thursday when Malaysia Airlines staff at Kuala Lumpur airport were alerted to a bag that had broken while on a conveyor belt.

The department, in a statement issued late on Saturday, said its enforcement officers found 95 boa constrictors, two rhinoceros vipers and a matamata turtle inside the luggage.

Boa constrictors are subject to regulations or a complete ban in international commercial trade as they are listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

The statement said Wong would remain in detention for two days. Under Malaysian law, if found guilty, he could face seven years in jail and fines of up to 100,000 ringgit (£20,685) for each animal or both.

According to the US Department of Justice, Wong had previously pleaded guilty to a trafficking in the United States in 2001 and was sentenced to 71 months in jail.

TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring organization, said Malaysia must "rise to the challenge" of confronting new evidence of its role as an hub for those engaged in wildlife smuggling.

"Their attempt at mocking Malaysia's legal system must be dealt with head-on," said Kanitha Krishnasamy, TRAFFIC Southeast Asia Senior Programme Officer.

On Friday, Thai customs officials found a two-month-old tiger stashed in a bag filled with tiger toys which had been checked in for an international passenger flight.

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Leaders of Britain's midwives says there is a concerted backlash by some doctors to be negative about the the benefit of home births. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

A "concerted and calculated" backlash by some doctors is downplaying the benefits of home births and has involved the use of "flawed" evidence to support claims that babies were more likely to die if not born in hospital, the general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives claims today.

Cathy Warwick, who heads the body that represents 38,000 midwives in Britain, has been incensed by a recent paper presented by US academics last month that claimed a home birth carried three times the risk that a baby would die.

It prompted the respected medical journal the Lancet to write, in an editorial, that "women have the right to choose how and where to give birth, but they do not have the right to put their baby at risk".

In an interview with the Guardian, Warwick described the Lancet editorial as "sweeping and misogynistic".

She said midwives now "feel there is a concerted and calculated global attack and backlash against home birth which is being unfairly pilloried by some sectors of the global medical maternity establishment.

"There is a danger that risk during childbirth is presented in a way which is leading women to believe that hospital birth equals a safe birth. It does not. There is no hard and fast guarantee that a woman will have a safer birth in a hospital than at home".

There are concerns globally that midwives, who have long campaigned for mother-friendly births, have lost ground in recent years. Hannah Dahlen, the president of the Australian College of Midwives, backed her counterpart in Britain saying that "intense medical lobbying and strategically released journal articles" had put the profession in Australia "in the hands of the medical profession".

Warwick said there has been a trend for some doctors to cast birth as a "medical problem and not a natural process". Medics refute this saying that home births can only be justified for about a "quarter of pregnant women" and the rising cost of medical litigation, with NHS obstetricians facing half a billion pounds of court fines, has made medics wary of the risks.

Doctors have also voiced concerns that home births, where only midwives are present, can mean women rushed to hospitals if complications arise – and then get stuck in traffic.

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Towards the end of his 2008 documentary, The Tree Lover, which explored the link between trees and people in Sweden, Jonas Selberg Augustsén says: "Imagine being here on the veranda on a summer evening, or listening to the rain on the roof with the stove purring quietly." As he says this he's sitting in a treehouse he's spent the summer building, looking out over a wide tract of pine forest with a river flowing in the distance, reflecting a sinking sun. You don't have to imagine it any more. Since last month, when the Treehotel opened in Swedish Lapland, anyone can check into a treehouse and survey the landscape from Jonas' viewpoint.

Set just outside the small village of Harads, an hour's drive northwest of Luleå and very close to where The Tree Lover was filmed, the Treehotel is the creation of Britta and Kent Lindvall. Britta, a guesthouse owner, and Kent, a fishing guide, were inspired to action by the film when an area of forest behind Britta's guesthouse was sold for logging. Instead of waiting for the inevitable to happen in a country where forestry is such an important industry, they contacted the forest's owner and offered to buy the land from him. Calling in favours from various architect friends Kent had been on fishing trips with, they started building the Treehotel, determined to demonstrate that the natural environment around them had value beyond supplying timber. Along with daughter Sofia, who also moonlights as a stuntwoman, what they have created is a high design, back to nature retreat where guests can slow down, switch off and breathe more deeply.

Arriving at the guesthouse late on a light-soaked summer's evening, I was met by Britta. Ushering me in with motherly warmth she sat me down in the 1950s-style surroundings and served up a delicious homemade fish pie on vintage china, explaining that the guesthouse operates as a kind of base camp for the treehouse rooms. "Guests leave their luggage here and just take a small overnight bag to the treehouses," she said. "We want you to get the feeling that you're leaving one world behind and entering another."
It certainly felt that way when, after dinner, Sofia led me along a narrow gravel path through a glade of birch trees and then higher up, through sturdy pines, to the Mirrorcube. The most striking of the treehouses, it's a glass box perched high in the forest. Like an architectural magic trick, it almost disappears into the foliage, so sharply are the surrounding trees reflected in it. The only giveaway that things are not quite what they seem is a wood and rope bridge leading up to a near-invisible door.

Inside, the Mirrorcube's chic plywood interior smells of warm wood. The dimensions are neat (four metres wide, four metres long and four metres high) and it is light and airy inside. Like the hotel's other treehouses, the facilities here are fairly basic, not stretching much beyond an environmentally-friendly toilet (some treehouses have ones that freeze the waste and others have ones that burn it into ash) and a sink – meals and showers are taken at the guesthouse, 10 minutes' walk away.

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In his heyday Arthur Scargill was the union hero who took on the Thatcher government in the bitter miners' strike of 1984-5. But now, more than quarter of a century later, Old King Coal has another battle on his hands – against the very union he used to lead.

Yesterday it emerged that Mr Scargill, who is now 72, has been told by the National Union of Mineworkers that he no longer qualifies for full membership. Mr Scargill, who stood down as the union's president in 2002, is one of a number of people who has received a letter telling them of the decision to revoke their membership. He is understood to have told friends he intends to fight the move.

Ken Capstick, who has worked for the union for 30 years and currently edits its Miner magazine, has also been told he is being expelled.

"We have been told that the reason we are being expelled is that we don't qualify under the union's rules," Mr Capstick said. "A number of us have been raising claims of financial irregularity in the union and I believe we are now being subjected to a witch-hunt because of this. We will definitely challenge this decision, which has been made on extremely spurious grounds."

Mr Scargill has received wide criticism for arguing about the withdrawal of payments to him from the union. It was reported in June that Mr Scargill's solicitor had written to the NUM to demand the reinstatement of concessionary benefits which were removed as a cost-cutting measure.

However union members were angry after it was revealed that Mr Scargill reportedly received tens of thousands of pounds in annual payments for a London flat.

Mr Scargill was given use of the property the Barbican area of the capital when the union was based nearby in 1982. But the offices have been in Sheffield since 1983, leading many to question why he was able to continue claiming expenses for the rent and running costs of the apartment.

The NUM's national secretary Chris Kitchen said Mr Scargill remained honorary president of the union, but had lost his voting rights.

Mr Kitchen said Mr Scargill could become a "life member", "retired member" or "honorary member", but not a full financial member.

He confirmed that Mr Scargill had been sent a letter informing him that he did not qualify as a member according to the union's own rulebook – which Mr Scargill was instrumental in drawing up. Mr Kitchen added that the the union's Yorkshire area section had reviewed Mr Scargill's membership and made the decision.

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United States manager Bob Bradley would love the opportunity to take over at Aston Villa - although he has not yet had any contact with the club.

The 52-year-old has been heavily linked with the job since Martin O'Neill left on the eve of the new season.

Asked if he was interested in the job, Bradley told Sky Sports News: "Most definitely. The possibility of working in the Premier League at some point would be a goal for sure.

"There has not been any contact. Everyone knows that for the moment Kevin MacDonald is the caretaker manager and the first step is for a decision to be made with him. He's a good man."

Bradley has impressed many in his time in charge of the USA, although he would be considered a risky option for Villa having never managed outside of his home country.

Should he become the Villa boss, the 52-year-old would link up with compatriot Randy Lerner, the club's chairman.

"I know a lot about Randy Lerner but I do not know him," Bradley told Sky Sports News. "We know him through his ownership with the Cleveland Browns and of course as chairman as Aston Villa.

"I would love to have a discussion and hear more.

"Aston Villa have done a very good job in terms of handling the situation.

"As a manager the first thing you always want to have is respect for other managers.

"I know the reputation Kevin MacDonald has within the club and first things first, (there needs to be a) decision in terms of his future."

MacDonald's own hand was weakened considerably at the weekend by a 6-0 defeat at the hands of Newcastle.

Should Villa choose to look beyond the Scot, Bradley faces competition from the likes of Gareth Southgate, Sven-Goran Eriksson and Martin Jol for the post.

Asked why he is keen on the job, the American replied: "It begins with the desire at some point to work in the Premier League.

"I've had a chance to be around different clubs and see the way things go and it's the best league in the world.

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A desperate scramble for university places was under way tonight, as sixth-formers across the country celebrated another record-breaking year of A-level results.

About one in 12 exam entries (69,302 in total) were awarded one of the new A* grades, according to figures published by the Joint Council for Qualifications.

This exceeded predictions, based on last year's results, that around 7% would get the top grade.

Overall, the pass rate rose for the 28th year in a row - with more than one in four entries (27%) gaining at least an A grade.

But despite the bumper year, students are still facing a battle to win a university place.

Figures published by the university admissions service, UCAS, show that more than 185,000 students so far are eligible for clearing this year.

Last summer, 47,600 students accepted places through clearing, and the numbers are expected to be lower this year.

Clearing - the process which matches students with vacant university places - opened this morning, but it is expected to be short. Around 18,000 courses have places available.

More than 660,000 people applied to university by the end of June, and it is predicted that between 170,000 and 200,000, including sixth-formers and older learners, could miss out this autumn as universities face multimillion-pound cuts and pressure on places.

Universities which entered clearing began to fill up fast as soon as the results were published.

Thames Valley University said it had more than 1,200 calls to its clearing lines within two hours. Some 46 offers had already been made by 10am.

Kingston University said more than 40,000 attempts had been made to call its clearing and confirmation hotline by 1pm.

And Essex University said some of its most popular courses were already full.

Today's A-level results reveal that private school pupils were three times more likely to score the top mark than state school pupils, while overall girls achieved more A*s than boys.

Andrew Hall, chief executive of the AQA examining board, said candidates from comprehensive schools, which are responsible for 43% of A-level entries, gained 30% of the A* grades awarded.

Students from fee-paying schools, which are responsible for 14% of entries, also took 30% of the A* grades awarded.

Girls got more A* grades overall than boys (8.3% compared with 7.9%), but boys got more A* grades in science and maths-based subjects.

The results led to a dispute over whether the exams have got tougher this year.

To score an A*, a student needed to achieve an A overall, plus at least 90% in each of their papers in the second year of their course.

Mr Hall insisted that the new way of assessing students was not designed to make A-levels harder.

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The greenfinch may be declining because of a parasitic disease, but nobody knows – still – the reason for the decline of the house sparrow.

It was once our most common and familiar bird. Now, in many places, it has vanished. Yet, more than 10 years after The Independent offered a prize of £5,000 for a proper scientific explanation of the house sparrow's widespread disappearance from many of our towns and cities, London above all, its vanishing remains one of the great environmental mysteries.
Yesterday, for example, there were no sparrows visible in London's Trafalgar Square, whereas 25 years ago the major tourist destination scattered with sandwich crumbs was full of them – as similar sites in major cities around the world are full of them still.
In the 1990s London's house sparrows entered a sudden and sharp decline until, by the turn of the century, they had virtually disappeared from the capital – the last pair of sparrows in St James's Park, packed with other birds, nested in 1998.
When this newspaper launched its "Save The Sparrow" campaign on 16 May 2000, it made international headlines. The fact that the cheeky "Cockney sparrer", the street smart urban survivor par excellence, was no longer surviving in urban habitats, caught people's imagination, not least because their disappearance may resemble the miner's canary – a warning of some unknown and wider danger. If something in the urban environment was devastating sparrows, what was it doing to us?
However, we did not succeed immediately in drawing out definitive explanations. Suggestions for the reason behind the decline ranged from the increase in suburban predators such as magpies, sparrowhawks and cats to the trend in "tidying up" houses and gardens leaving fewer nesting spaces. Disease, mobile phone radiation and insect decline were also posited.
It was not until 2008 that we had a serious entry for the prize, for which the rules were fairly stiff – the explanation had to be in a paper published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and accepted by our referees, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the British Trust for Ornithology, and the world expert on sparrows, Dr Denis Summers-Smith.
The 2008 entry was based in the work of a young postgraduate student, Kate Vincent, whose 2005 PhD thesis at De Montfort University in Leicester showed that sparrow chicks in some places were dying of starvation in their nests because of the lack of suitable insect food, such as aphids.
Her data, analysed intensively by senior ornithologists led by Dr Will Peach of the RSPB, formed the basis of a paper in the journal Animal Conservation which was submitted for the prize. But of our three referees, one thought it merited the award, one thought it did not, and one thought it merited half the award. It was certainly a serious contender, but as it was possible that another entry might secure the prize unanimously, we felt the award should be held back.

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'One day I came home from school,' says Linda Whalley, 'and I'd got chips, pudding, gravy and, because I was on a diet, we didn't have the peas.' Photograph: Rob Murray for the Guardian

Linda Whalley is watching a video of her old self with a protective hand in front of her eyes. She can hardly bear to look. "Nobody's ever seen this before," she says. She wobbles around the garden, breathless and sweaty, ankles swollen, body hidden in a huge tent dress, and she's telling the camera how well she's done. "This is Linda Whalley, I've lost seven stone and it's June 21 2002." At the time she weighed 23 stone (146kg).

Whalley recorded herself as she lost weight. The videos are incredibly moving – like watching somebody slowly come back to life. "I've lost 10 stone now, and I feel absolutely wonderful. This is the new me," she says walking round her garden with relative ease.

A few months later she tells the camera: "What used to be a size 40 smock dress is now size 22. I can wear proper shoes, not sandals with my feet bulging all over the top, and I can walk for miles. The only thing I haven't done yet is swim. I feel I'm still too big with all my wobbly bits that I wouldn't want anyone to see."

"I have now lost 13 stone two-and-a-half pounds and I feel absolutely fabulous. Today I'm going to the wedding of my best friend's daughter, and I'm going to see a lot of people I've not seen since before I started slimming, so I think it will be a bit of a shock for one or two of them. I think that's it for today. Byeee." She gives her signature wave to the camera.

By the time she won Slimming World's Greatest Loser award, she had lost 18 of her 30st. As we watch the video, she smiles with pride and embarrassment. "Why do I always do that silly wave at the end? Anyway, that was me."

It's a lovely summer's day in Stoke, and we retire to her beautifully tended garden. Linda's husband, Charlie, cracks open a couple of beers for him and me, she sticks to water.

Linda, 59, knows if she'd carried on the way she had been, she might well have been dead by now. But the nearest she got to a warning at the time was a GP's suggestion that she eat off a saucer rather than a dinner plate.

She was aware of her weight from her earliest school days. Her uniform was different from her fellow pupils – it was adult size. She remembers the great big collars and sleeves and how self-conscious they made her feel, but she had friends, she could still play sport, was still one of the girls.

Then one day the school nurse sent home a letter for her mother saying she had to go on a diet. "It was Friday and Friday was always chippy day. Dad got paid and we'd have chips, steak pudding, mushy peas and gravy. And this day I came home and I'd got chips, pudding, gravy and, because I was on a diet, we didn't have the peas."

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David Cameron faced embarrassment last night after a multimillionaire former tax exile recruited to raise money for the Conservative Party resigned before even starting the job.

David Rowland, whose family has an estimated fortune of £730m, returned from Guernsey last year to donate almost £3m to the Tories in the run-up to the general election.

His appointment in June as treasurer, with the task of refilling party coffers depleted by the campaign, sparked a flurry of accusations about the business affairs and private life of the notoriously publicity-shy property magnate.
Mr Rowland, the son of a scrap-metal dealer who left school without qualifications, became a tax exile in the late 1960s after making his first million in property dealing by the age of 23.

He went on to build a vast corporate empire founded on company acquisitions. His involvement in a takeover of the Scottish football team Hibernian in the 1980s led to him being described in a Commons motion as a "shady financier".

In a brief statement issued by Tory headquarters he confirmed that he had decided not to take up the post, which was due to begin in October.

"Unfortunately my developing business interests mean I will not have the time to give that role the focus and attention it deserves," he said.

Mr Cameron has endured uncomfortable headlines in recent months over his links with wealthy business figures and there will be fresh questions over whether Tory chiefs examined the background of their millionaire recruit in sufficient detail.

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The most interesting thing that Chris Hughton reveals about himself during the course of our interview comes right at the end, in a comment not to me but to my colleague David Ashdown, who wants to snap him under the gigantic photograph, on the wall opposite his desk, of Sir Bobby Robson.

"Can you make sure I look like a football manager, not like... a model," says Hughton, and at first I think idly that chance would be a fine thing, on the basis that the 51-year-old Newcastle United manager, while a perfectly nice-looking fellow, is not exactly catwalk material. It is only when we are leaving the club's training ground at Darsley Park, and David remarks that, in all our years of working together, this is the first time a sporting subject has been more worried about his pictures than my copy, that the significance of Hughton's anxiety strikes me.

He worked under three Newcastle managers – Kevin Keegan, Joe Kinnear and Alan Shearer, two of them Gallowgate gods – before landing the job on a permanent basis himself, but of course its permanence is only at the whim of owner Mike Ashley, who is nobody's idea of a safe pair of hands. So maybe it is no wonder that Hughton, brilliantly as he did in guiding Newcastle to the Championship title, remains just a little insecure about looking the part as a new Premier League campaign begins.

Then there is that photograph of another Gallowgate god, far bigger than life-size, and hung, Hughton tells me proudly, at his own request. The Toon Army would approve of such a picture of Sir Bobby Robson. But I can't help wondering whether Harry Redknapp works under a vast picture of Bill Nicholson. Does a 10ft Bill Shankly gaze down at Roy Hodgson's desk? Does David Moyes toil in the shadow of Howard Kendall?

In short, what kind of manager wants an image of one of the most illustrious of his predecessors to loom quite so large in his office? A manager sure of his place in the scheme of things, or a manager eager, arguably over-eager, to show that he has embraced the spirit of the club? Either way, when Hughton shakes Sir Alex Ferguson's hand at Old Trafford this evening, we must hope that his thoughts are not straying to the Sky cameramen, wondering whether they are making him look like a top-class football manager in his natural habitat, or a decent coach labouring out of his comfort zone.

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