London, Aug 9 : Human activity is indeed responsible for the rapid warming of the 20th century, says a new report issued by the US Climate Change Science Program.

The report concluded that computer models do effectively simulate climate.

The report is the 10th of 21 due to be issued by the body, which the skeptical George Bush administration set up late in 2002 to review the validity of climate-change science before making policy decisions.

At the time, environmentalists accused the administration of using the programme as a way to drag its feet on the issue.

London  - More than 200 noisy demonstrators gathered outside the Chinese Embassy in London Friday to voice their protest at China's human rights record.

Demonstrators from Tibet, Zimbabwe, Sudan and Burma joined forces to protest against human rights violations and China's hosting of the Olympics.

Amid drumming and chanting they held aloft large banners calling for a "free Tibet" and demanded an end to China's support for the military regime in Myanmar.

London  - A newspaper Friday issued an unreserved apology to Britain's royal family for wrongly reporting earlier this week that Prince Philip, the 87-year-old husband of Queen Elizabeth II, was suffering from prostate cancer.

In an unusual step, London's Evening Standard newspaper said on its front page Friday that the "distressing allegation" was untrue and constituted a breach of privacy.

In its apology, the paper said the duke was "not suffering from any such condition."

"We unreservedly apologize both to him and to his family for making this distressing allegation and for breaching his privacy," it said.

London  - A former bomber pilot in Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe who survived being shot down nine times during World War II has crashed in a light aircraft he co-piloted on a pleasure flight to Britain, the Daily Telegraph reported Friday.

Willi Schludecker, 88, made headlines earlier this year when he visited the historic city of Bath, in western Britain, to offer a personal and public apology for his role in bombing missions in 1942.

Bath, a city famous for its Roman foundations, was targeted in Germany's so-called Baedecker raids reputedly chosen by the Luftwaffe from the tourist guides of the same name.

Schludecker took part in a memorial service to commemorate the 400 victims of the Bath raids earlier this year.

London, Aug. 8 : According to a register of risks that was kept secret until today, a pandemic flu bug would pose a greater threat to Britain than terrorism or floods.

Until now, the official list of threats and risks facing Britain has been kept confidential, although MI5 has for some time published on its website the terrorist threat level, currently defined as severe.

Plans to publish a risk register were announced by the Prime Minister in March during a statement to the Commons on national security strategy. Top of the list is pandemic flu because of the conviction in Whitehall that it is “not a question of if but when” and that it could kill 750,000 people, reports The Telegraph.

London, Aug. 8 : Some members of the British Parliament have called for the scrapping of the oath of allegiance to the Queen.

At least 22 MPs want the Commons and the Lords to be allowed to swear allegiance to their constituents and the nation rather than to the monarch.

The cross-party group, led by Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, says MPs'' "principal duty" should be to the people who elected them, reports The Telegraph.

The unofficial campaign has caused dismay among Royalist MPs, who have labelled the move an act of "Constitutional vandalism".

Currently, MPs must take the oath at the start of a new parliament, swearing on a bible or an equivalent sacred text.