David Chaytor, Jim Devine, Elliot Morley and Lord Hanningfield appear in dock

Three Labour MPs and a Tory peer accused of expenses fraud said they would plead not guilty when they appeared in court today.

The three MPs – Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Jim Devine – appeared in the dock at City of Westminster magistrates court after an application from their barrister for them to be allowed to sit outside the dock was rejected.

Lord Hanningfield appeared afterwards in a separate hearing. He made no application to stand outside the dock.

All four were released on unconditional bail and ordered to appear at Southwark crown court on 30 March.

At their hearing the three MPs told district judge Timothy Workman they denied any wrongdoing.

Their prosecution, at a court a short distance from parliament, is the first to result from the Westminster expenses scandal.

Workman declined jurisdiction and agreed with an application by the defence for the case to be heard at the crown court.

Julian Knowles, counsel for the three MPs, said the case raised issues of constitutional importance and it was right that it should be tested at the higher court.

He said his clients would argue that a criminal prosecution would be in breach of a fundamental principle of British law.

He said: "I would like to make it clear on behalf of Mr Morley, Mr Chaytor and Mr Devine that they unequivocally and steadfastly maintain their innocence of the charges against them.

"They also maintain that to prosecute them in the criminal courts for parliamentary activities would infringe the principle of the separation of powers, which is one of the principles which underpin the UK's constitutional structure.

"The principle of the separation of powers means that whatever matter arises concerning the workings of parliament should be dealt with by parliament and not elsewhere and should be dealt with in a manner that is consistent with the way other members have been treated."

Knowles added that his clients were not "saying that they are above the law" and that their argument was against the process they face.

Morley, the MP for Scunthorpe, is alleged to have dishonestly claimed a total of £30,428 more than he was entitled to in second home expenses on a house in Winterton, near Scunthorpe, between 2004 and 2007 – including 18 months after the mortgage on the property was paid off.

Chaytor, the MP for Bury North, faces charges that he claimed almost £13,000 in rent in 2005 and 2006 on a London flat which he owned, as well as £5,425 in 2007 and 2008 to rent a property in Lancashire owned by his mother. He is also alleged to have used false invoices to claim £1,950 for IT services in 2006.

Devine, the MP for Livingston, is alleged to have claimed £3,240 for cleaning services and £5,505 for stationery using false invoices in 2008 and 2009.

The three MPs have been barred from standing as Labour candidates at the forthcoming general election.

They left court without commenting to journalists.

They got into a waiting black cab accompanied by their lawyers and escorted by police officers.

There was a brief crush around the vehicle as protesters hurled abuse, shouting "pigs" and "oink, oink".

Hanningfield appeared before the magistrates immediately after the three MPs.

He said he would deny charges of wrongly claiming for "repayment of travelling and other expenses".

The Conservative peer faces six charges of false accounting, relating to claims for overnight allowances from the House of Lords between 2006 and 2009, when records allegedly show he was in fact driven to his home near Chelmsford. The sums he claimed were between £150 and £170.

He was suspended from the parliamentary Conservative party and stood down as leader of Essex county council.

After the brief hearing, Hanningfield issued a statement saying he was "devastated" by the affair.

His spokesman, Mark Spragg, said: "Lord Hanningfield has devoted the last 40 years of his life to public service including both as leader of Essex county council since 2000 and as a member of the House of Lords since 1998."

The charges in full

David Chaytor, the MP for Bury North, is accused of providing false information on an allowances form under the Theft Act 1968.

The charge states he falsely claimed rents between September 2005 and August 2006 for 152 Hide Tower, Regency Street, London, from Sarah Elizabeth.

It added that he claimed £12,925 by lodging a claim for £1,175 a month in rent when he was in fact the owner of the premises.

A second charge stated that on or about 19 May 2006, he dishonestly filed two invoices for computer IT services worth £975.

The court document added that they purported to show the services had been provided in February and March 2006 by Paul France.

A third charge stated that between November 2005 and September 2006 he dishonestly made use of a short-hold tenancy agreement in a claim form.

This showed that between August 2007 and January 2008 he rented Delph Cottage, Castle Street, Summerseat, Bury, from Olive Trickett for £775 a month plus a month deposit.

The charge added that Trickett was his mother and it was not permissible to lease accommodation from a family member. The total sum claimed was £5,425.

Jim Devine, the MP for Livingston, is accused of falsely claiming costs for parliamentary duties in March 2009.

The charge sheet alleged he submitted two misleading invoices worth a total of £5,505 for services provided by Armstrong Printing Ltd.

A second charge alleged that between July 2008 and May 2009 he dishonestly claimed allowances for repair, insurance or security.

The document alleges he intended to gain by submitting false invoices for services, cleaning and maintenance worth £3,240.

The services were allegedly provided between April 2009 and March 2010 by Tom O'Donnell Hygiene and Cleaning Services.

Elliot Morley, the MP for Scunthorpe, is accused of falsely claiming a furnishing allowance between March 2006 and November 2007.

The charge sheet alleged he submitted a deceptive mortgage application.

This showed £800 mortgage monthly interest was charged by the Cheltenham and Gloucester when in fact the mortgage was paid off. A total overpayment of £16,000 was made.

A second charge alleged that between April 2004 and February 2006 Morley made a further false mortgage interest claim.

Again he is accused of claiming £800 a month, a total overpayment of £14,428.67.

Lord Hanningfield, also known as Paul White, faced six charges.

The offences are alleged to have taken place in March 2006, May 2007, April 2008, July 2008, May 2009 and April 2009.

One charge stated that on or about 1 April 2009, at Westminster, he made a dishonest claim for travelling allowances.

It stated that Hanningfield "purported to show that you were entitled to be paid expenses when the conditions entitled you to payment of such expenses had not been fulfilled".

Social networking site fears reputation permanently damaged by false claim that it let older men pressure teenage girls for sex

Facebook has threatened to sue the Daily Mail for damages after the paper wrongly claimed in a piece published on Wednesday that 14-year-old girls who create a profile on the social networking site could be approached "within seconds" by older men who "wanted to perform a sex act" in front of them.

The paper apologised in print today and online yesterday for the error, which the author of the piece, Mark Williams-Thomas, insisted had been introduced by editors at the paper despite being told it was wrong. In fact, Williams-Thomas – a retired policeman who now works as a criminologist – had been using another, unspecified social network.

But the giant social networking site, which has 23 million users in the UK alone, said that although the Mail has changed the headline of the article online – so that it now reads "I posed as a girl of 14 online. What followed will sicken you" – it had not at first changed the page title of the article online, used by internet search engines to index content, nor the URL of the piece, which is also a factor in search-engine indexing.

At 10am today the title still read "I posed as a girl of 14 on Facebook. What followed will sicken you" while the URL contained the text "i-posed-girl-14-facebook-what-followed-sicken-you". The title and URL were, however, amended before noon.

A UK spokeswoman for Facebook said that the company was still considering legal action and looking at the "brand damage that has been done".

Charles Garside, assistant editor of the Daily Mail, said that the apology had been produced in consultation with Facebook, and that representatives of the paper and Facebook would be meeting today. The changes to the URL and page title were "a technical matter", he said, adding: "We are removing elements of that".

The incorrect naming of Facebook is understood to be blamed on "a matter of miscommunication".

Facebook staff claimed that attempts to add a comment to the piece, as readers are able to do, were repeatedly blocked by the Daily Mail.

The company is concerned that the article may have done permanent harm to its reputation in the UK. "If you were a Middle England reader and your child was on Facebook, this sort of thing would have a very serious effect on what you thought of us," said the Facebook spokeswoman.

Tensions over Facebook's position in the UK as a popular site among people of all ages, allowing them to contact each other, have been magnified in the past week after Peter Chapman was convicted of murdering Ashleigh Hall, a 17-year-old girl who thought that Chapman, 33, was also a teenager. Chapman had got in touch with Hall via Facebook, leading to criticisms from some senior police officers over the measures that the site takes to protect susceptible individuals .

But the Daily Mail piece, which carried Williams-Thomas's byline, suggested that anyone who signed up as a 14-year-old girl would be approached "within minutes of the profile going up". The piece also said that "messages from men poured in" and that "the first three who approached me were aged between 20 and 40".

However, Williams-Thomas and his agent, Sylvia Tidy-Harris, both insisted on their Twitter feeds that he had not used Facebook for the Mail article.

It "was on another well-known SNS [social networking service], not Facebook", said Tidy-Harris, echoing Williams-Thomas.

Tidy-Harris said that yesterday had "Been a hellishly tough day trying to juggle @mwilliamsthomas misquote in daily mail along with meetings and literally 100ks of calls/emails".

At Facebook, the anger at the misrepresentation was magnified because, they say, they were initially unable to get any response from the paper to their appeals for corrections.

"The people at Facebook in the US were reading this and knew at once that it couldn't have been our platform," said the Facebook UK spokeswoman. "We have made Facebook much more favourable to the safety of minors – minors under 18 cannot receive messages from somebody over 18."

That means it would be impossible for the scenario described by Williams-Thomas to happen on Facebook.

Facebook's representatives said that they tried to get a response from the Mail throughout Wednesday without success, and that attempts by people at its PR agency to post comments on the piece with clarifying text failed. The Mail uses moderators who on that story approved comments before they could appear. By this morning the article had 380 comments.

Williams-Thomas has not responded to requests to specify which social networking service he was using by the time of publication.

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Minister says building work on 250mph route cutting journey times between London and Birmingham could begin in 2017

The government today unveiled plans for a £30bn high-speed rail network, with the first phase between London and Birmingham opening in 2026.

Lord Adonis, the transport secretary, said building work on the 250mph route could begin in 2017 once a formal public consultation has been completed.

The route linking the capital and England's second city, which will cut journey times from 84 minutes to 49 minutes, will originate at London Euston and pass through Old Oak Common, in west London, where a Crossrail interchange will transport passengers to Heathrow airport.

Controversially, the line will then run through the Chiltern hills in Buckinghamshire, past picturesque villages such as Wendover, before arriving at an intermediate stop near Birmingham airport. There will be a new terminal in Birmingham city centre, and the main body of the line will sweep through the Trent valley to join existing tracks north of Lichfield, where journeys will continue to Manchester and Scotland at conventional speeds.

"The time has come for Britain to plan seriously for high-speed rail between our major cities," said Adonis. "The high-speed line from London to the Channel Tunnel has been a clear success, and many European and Asian countries now have extensive and successful high-speed networks. I believe high-speed rail has a big part to play in Britain's future."

In a nod to Tory objections over the Heathrow proposal, Adonis said the case for a station would be examined by the former Tory transport secretary Lord Mawhinney. "A complex decision of this nature should not be taken in a knee-jerk fashion but after a full analysis of the facts and opinions," Adonis said.

The first phase will cost up to £17.4bn for 128 miles of track from London to the west Midlands, with the full 330-mile network costing £30bn.

The transport secretary also unveiled the blueprint for a wider network, with a Y-shaped route splitting off from Birmingham to go eastwards to Manchester and westwards to Sheffield and Leeds. Journey times between London and Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield would come down from about two hours 10 minutes to 75 minutes when the new network is in place.

Formal planning for the route from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds will be completed next summer, with a consultation to follow in 2012. The route to Scotland would be completed on existing lines under the current proposal, even when the Manchester and Leeds sections are completed.

Despite the Mawhinney gesture, the Conservatives attacked the detailed proposal. The Tories have pledged to build a high-speed network instead of a third runway at Heathrow, and to start construction in 2015.

Theresa Villiers, the shadow transport secretary, said: "Labour have betrayed the vision we set out three years ago for [high-speed rail]. In leaving out Heathrow and setting out plans that give no firm guarantees north of the Midlands, Labour's plans are flawed both by lack of ambition and undermined by their inability to grasp the basic truth that high-speed rail should be an alternative to a third runway, not an addition to it."

The government-backed company that drew up the plans, HS2, believes there is no business case for a direct link to Heathrow airport and some industry experts argue that the Old Oak Common interchange provides an equally good link.

Ralph Smyth, of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, described elements of the plan as "a major concern" and called on the government to listen to local people.

"By using existing and disused transport corridors as well as tunnelling, the impact on the Chilterns is less than feared," he said. "But the impact on the Warwickshire, where the line is proposed to run through open countryside, is a major concern.

"There is a strong need for more than just fine-tuning. The firm commitment to community consultation made by Lord Adonis must be backed up by real engagement and flexibility. As with the Channel Tunnel rail link, local people's contribution can help turn a contentious route into something that works both national and locally."

Schools adjudicator clamps down on parents who deceive to get their children into the best state schools
• Datablog: get the data behind this story

Parents caught lying to the authorities to get their offspring into top state schools will have their child's place automatically withdrawn under new rules, the schools adjudicator said today, following indications that more than 4,000 fraudulent applications were made last year.

Officials will conduct random samples of at least 10% of applications to root out deception, and set up a whistleblowers' hotline for parents to report their suspicions about other families. If a family changes its main place of residence within a year of an application, it will trigger an automatic re-examination of the case, to check they have not given false information about where they live to get into a high-performing nearby school.

The adjudicator, Ian Craig, said parents should have to sign a statement promising their application was truthful, after being given clear warnings on the consequences of making a fraudulent application. If they have suspicions, local authorities should instruct their lawyers to send parents letters demanding further signed confirmation that information provided was accurate.

And if cheating were detected, the child's place would be withdrawn immediately, even if he or she had already started at their chosen school. They would be allowed to continue to attend classes until a fast-track appeals panel had heard the case within two weeks, but after that could be forced to leave – particularly if they had not been at the school long.

If the panel allowed them to stay, deciding it was in their best interests, their parents would be penalised by losing the right to get a priority place at the school for their other children through the "sibling link" provision.

There is currently no rule that local authorities must withdraw a place where cheating is found, and they tend not to act if a child has been at the school more than a term. Under the new rules that would no longer be a consideration, at least until the appeal panel convened.

Official statistics published by the department for children, schools and families today showed that one in six children in England did not get into their first choice secondary school.

In total, 83.2% of families were given a place at their highest preference school on national offers day earlier this month, which is unchanged from last year. But there were wide variations around the country – in London and Birmingham, 66% got their first choice school.

Some 94.9% of children got a place at one of their top three preferred schools, which is marginally up from last year.

The adjudicator also recommended a media campaign pointing out that lying to get a place is not a victimless crime, and branding those break the rules thieves.

Craig said local authorities reported 1,400 cases of fraud last year,but that the data suggested that for every case detected and dealt with, there were two more suspected. This meant it was likely that more than 4,200 false applications were made each year, he said.

The schools secretary, Ed Balls, said: "While I am reassured that only a tiny minority of parents apply dishonestly, I am also clear that every place gained by deception is denying another child their rightful place.

"No child should be punished for their parents' actions, but neither should families on waiting lists be unfairly disadvantaged or delayed."

• Supermarket customers duped in two-year, £3m scam
• Lawyer claims client is far from industry's only bad egg

A Midlands businessman was jailed for three years today after admitting making a fortune by fraudulently passing off battery farm eggs as free range or organic.

Around 100m mislabelled eggs sold by Keith Owen ended up on the shelves of supermarkets including Sainsbury's and Tesco. That the fraud was able to carry on for two years while he made a £3m profit raises questions for the food industry about the provenance of goods.

Owen, 44, from Bromsgrove, in Worcestershire, ran Heart of England Eggs Unlimited, which supplied eggs to major packing companies that in turn supplied them to supermarkets and smaller retailers.

He pleaded guilty at Worcester crown court to three charges of fraudulent accounting, relating to altering his records to disguise the fact he was buying in eggs laid by caged hens and selling them on for a profit after relabelling or "misdescribing" them in paperwork.

Prosecutors said Owen had "dishonestly and systematically passed off millions of battery farm eggs as free range/organic eggs".

Amanda Pinto QC said: "The victims of Keith Owen's false accounting were not only the direct customers of Heart of England, but also the public, as well as the legitimate egg producers.

"The ultimate customer, a member of the public buying these eggs, would have received inferior eggs – sometimes even eggs not fit for sale to the public – or eggs produced by hens kept without the stringent welfare schemes from which they were said to benefit."

Owen's barrister, John Kelsey-Fry QC, suggested his client was far from the only one creating what he described as "mischief" in the egg industry.

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

At the time of Owen's fraud, between 2004 and 2006, farmers could expect to receive a price of around 90p per dozen for organic eggs, 70p for free range and 35p for cage eggs. As a "middleman" 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 profit for every 12 eggs he sold.

The court heard that Owen not only bought in cheap battery hen eggs, he also bought in huge quantities of so-called "industrial eggs". These do not meet the quality requirements for sale to the public, and instead are meant to be used only in processed foods.

The fraud came to light in 2004 when allegations began circulating in the egg industry 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 noticed during routine checks that eggs coming from Heart of England were not at all what they 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 the egg was laid and in what conditions. Paperwork must accompany eggs transported through the supply chain to indicate their origin and type.

When inspectors checked a selection of Owen's allegedly free range eggs using ultraviolet light, the shells bore telltale wire marks – a sure sign that they had been laid not on a bed of straw or even Astroturf, 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 to 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 that the same eggs they had delivered were being relabelled and then sold back to them the same day.

All of Owen's major contracts were to supply British eggs bearing the British Lion hallmark. But investigators from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs discovered that he was regularly buying eggs from the continent and passing them off as home-grown.

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 egg-packing business. Owen tried to mask the fraud by selling organic eggs from Owens Eggs to Heart of England at an extremely inflated price – £10-£40 per dozen at a time when other producers were selling a dozen for no more than £1.

Owen agreed under a confiscation order to surrender £3m of the profit he made from selling the misdescribed eggs, and will not be allowed to be a company director for seven years.

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US vice-president appeals to Israel after Palestinians walk out over decision to build new homes in Jewish settlement

The US vice-president, Joe Biden, today attempted to salvage the Middle East peace talks after the Palestinians announced they were pulling out of a new round of indirect negotiations before they had begun.

The Palestinian move was in protest against Israel's decision to build hundreds of new homes in a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem.

The withdrawal from negotiations, announced in Cairo by Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, represents a major setback to months of diplomacy by the US administration prior to Biden's visit to the region.

The US vice-president said an agreement would be "profoundly" in Israel's interests and appealed to the Israeli government to make a serious attempt to reach peace with the Palestinians.

"The most important thing is for these talks to go forward, and go forward promptly, and go forward in good faith," he said in a speech at Tel Aviv University.

"We can't delay, because when progress is postponed, extremists exploit our differences."

After strongly condemning the Israeli settlement expansion earlier in the week, Biden used today's speech to praise the country, saying the US had "no better friend".

But he stressed the need to end the conflict to restore to the Palestinians "the fundamental dignity and self-respect that their current predicament denies them".

Yesterday, Moussa said he had been told by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, that even the low-key process of "proximity talks" could not begin unless Israel stopped expanding its settlements.

"The Palestinian side is not ready to negotiate under the present circumstances," Moussa said.

Israeli and Palestinian leaders have not held direct negotiations since Israel's war in Gaza last year.

On Monday, the White House won agreement from the two sides to begin the indirect talks, hoping they would lead to face-to-face meetings.

The Palestinians had insisted there would be no direct talks unless Israel halted all settlement expansion, in line with the demands of the US administration and the "road map", which remains the framework of peace talks.

But the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, leading a rightwing coalition government, offered only a temporary and partial curb to new building.

Then on Tuesday – hours after Biden met Israeli leaders – the Israeli interior ministry announced approval for 1,600 new apartments in Ramat Shlomo, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem.

All settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law.

Israel's opposition Kadima party said it planned a no-confidence vote in the prime minister in parliament for "destroying" the Biden visit.

Yesterday, Biden emerged from talks with Abbas in Ramallah, on the occupied West Bank, and repeated his criticisms of the timing and substance of Israel's announcement.

"It is incumbent on both parties to build an atmosphere of support for negotiations and not to complicate them," he said.

"The decision by the Israeli government to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem undermines that very trust, the trust that we need right now in order to begin ... profitable negotiations."

The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, said the Palestinians appreciated "the strong statement of condemnation" by the US administration.

Eli Yishai, the Israeli interior minister, apologised for the timing of the announcement, admitting it had caused Biden "real embarrassment".

• Violence erupts in Athens over swingeing spending cuts
• General strike disrupts public and transport services
• In pictures: Greek strike protests turn violent

Greek police fired teargas to disperse protesters throwing rocks and firebombs outside parliament today as more than 20,000 people marched through Athens to protest against new austerity measures to tackle the country's debt.

A strike by public and private sector workers brought the country to halt, grounding all flights and stopping public transport. State hospitals were left with only emergency staff, and news broadcasts were suspended.

Strikers and protesters banged drums and chanted slogans such as "no sacrifice for plutocracy" and "real jobs, higher pay". People draped banners from apartment buildings reading: "No more sacrifices, war against war."

The demonstrators included a group of about 100 youths wearing black, faces hidden by crash helmets and ski masks, some of whom smashed windows of a department store and bank, and sprayed riot police with brown paint.

Minor clashes also broke out in Thessaloniki, where about 14,000 people marched through the centre.

Similar marches in the past two weeks have ended in violence when riot police clashed with demonstrators in central Athens.

The prime minister, George Papandreou, said in Washington last night that demonstrators had the right to protest, but added that the financial crisis was "not this government's fault."

Under international and market pressure to reduce the deficit, the Greek government launched an austerity plan last week. It announced an additional €4.8bn (£4.3bn) of cuts that will hit public sector wages and pensions.

The EU-backed cuts follow moves to lower spending by €11.2bn (£10.1bn) to reduce the country's budget deficit from 12.7% of annual output to 8.7% this year. The long-term target is to bring overspending below the EU ceiling of 3% of GDP by 2012.

The left-of-centre government says the cuts are the only way of escaping Greece's crushing debt. The debts have hit the euro and alarmed international markets, which has inflated Greece's borrowing costs.

Unions say ordinary Greeks are being called upon to pay a disproportionate price for past fiscal mismanagement.

"They are trying to make workers pay the price for this crisis," Yiannis Panagopoulos, leader of Greece's private sector union, the GSEE, told Associated Press.

Greece insists it does not need a bailout, and its European partners are reluctant to fund one. Athens has called for European and international support for its austerity programme, saying that unless it receives backing – and the cost for it to borrow on the market falls – it might appeal to the International Monetary Fund for help.

The internet's most valuable domain name, sex.com, is back on the auction block – and bidding starts at $1m

If you've got $1m for a starting bid, and many millions more available, you could next week be the proud owner of the internet's most fought-over domain name: sex.com.

The site's ownership goes up for auction next week by DOM Partners LLC, a New Jersey lender that backed a 2006 purchase of the domain name for up to $14m but which is now foreclosing on the loan.

The auction is scheduled for 18 March at the New York law firm Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf LLP, according to legal notices. And there is good reason for the site to attract bidders: at one point, it was making at least $15,000 a day, according to a 2008 book, The Sex.com Chronicles by Charles Carreon.

In the late 1990s, internet domains used to change hands for stunning amounts: though sex.com sets the price record, others including fund.com ($10m), porn.com ($9.5m), business.com ($7.5m) and diamonds.com ($7.5m) proved how much value some investors saw in the visitor-attracting power of a simple, easily remembered name.

But in many cases those domains were sold before the rise of Google, whose search engine dominates internet navigation, and which assesses sites not by their names but by their reputations, as measured by the number of other sites that link to them. A search for "sex" on Google shows sex.com as the fourth result; the top result is a site first registered in 2000.

The auction is yet another twist in the history of sex.com, which has seen bizarre shenanigans between would-be rival owners including Mexican jails, international pursuits and accusations of hacking which Kieren McCarthy, the author of another book about the struggle for sex.com's ownership, has called "a Trojan war for the digital age".

That war began in October 1995, when Gary Kremen, who 18 months earlier had become the first person to register sex.com, noticed that he was no longer listed as its owner. An 11-year battle, sometimes legal, followed with Stephen Michael Cohen, who also claimed to be the owner, disputing Kremen's ownership. It was finally settled in January 2006, when Kremen, having been declared the owner, sold the site to Escom LLC.

But Escom made the purchase with a loan from DOM Partners – and that has been in default for more than a year. "The loan was in default and DOM partners is foreclosing pursuant to its right under the security agreement," DOM's attorney, Scott Matthews, said. Attempts to reach Escom and sex.com for comment were not immediately successful.

But Richard Maltz, an auctioneer at Maltz Auctions who is running the sale, said on Monday there was considerable interest in it. "We don't know who's serious and who's not, but prospective bidders need a $1m certified cheque. It should be interesting."

Maltz said his firm was arranging for potential buyers to also be able to bid online. It is not known whether Stephen Cohen will be among the bidders.

Kremen, meanwhile, has been successful away from sex.com, having set up match.com, the dating website, and is chief executive of Grant Media.

Neighbours say 64-year-old David Askew had been targeted by gangs at his home in Hattersley, Greater Manchester

A man with learning difficulties who died at his home last night was "tormented to death" by local youths, neighbours claimed today.

Police had been warned that 64-year-old David Askew was being targeted before he was found dead in Hattersley, Greater Manchester, nearby residents said.

They criticised police and officials, claiming they had not supported Askew, his brother, Brian, and his mother, Rose, who uses a wheelchair.

Officers were called to the family home last night after being told youngsters were causing "annoyance".

When police arrived, the youths had vanished, but officers discovered Askew, who was pronounced dead at the scene.

"This has been going on for about 10 years," Avona Davies, a 49-year-old neighbour, said.

"We have complained to the police and council, and they put cameras in their back garden about three years ago.

"They tormented David for money and cigarettes. They harassed him every night without fail."

Davies said she had stopped complaining to police because "nothing gets done", adding that yesterday's harassment, by people who were "about 18 or 19 years old", had begun at around 6.30pm.

"David had learning difficulties, and I think that is why they tormented him, because he would scream out of the window at them," she said.

"Sometimes it would be two of them, others it would be six kids or a big gang. David would throw money and cigarettes into our garden to get rid of them, but they would always go back. That's why they did it."

Another neighbour, who asked not to be named, said she had lived near the Askews for 39 years.

"Last night, I came out to talk to a neighbour and there was a body on the ground under a white sheet," she said.

"We didn't know who it was then. I said: 'If it is David, his misery is over.'"

The woman said she believed the gang had come from a neighbouring area to target Askew. "Not that many children live around here, so this gang comes from elsewhere," she added.

"They would come and bait David ... he was a harmless soul. They would wind him up something dreadful. Every year, the youngest brother would join in – the next generation.

"They always knew he would retaliate. It is tragic – like bear-baiting – tormented to death."

The case has echoes of the death of Fiona Pilkington, who killed her disabled daughter and herself by setting fire to her car after suffering years of abuse from youths.

It is unclear how Askew died. The results of a postmortem examination later today, but Chief Superintendent Zoe Hamilton, of Greater Manchester police, said he had not been physically attacked.

"My team and the neighbourhood team have been in daily contact virtually with David and his family to address the problems they have been having," she said.

"It's a sad fact that if people are different in a community, sometimes they end up being targeted.

"I think we have done everything we can. The level of personal involvement my staff and housing officers have had cannot be stressed enough."

Police spokesman says more than 200 people detained in aftermath of machete attacks in Jos

Forty-nine people are to be charged with murder after a sectarian massacre in Nigeria left hundreds dead at the weekend, it was reported today.

Police spokesman Mohammed Lerama told the BBC that 200 people had been arrested since the pre-dawn attacks, near the town of Jos, in which children, women and elderly men were hacked with machetes and burned.

Most of the 49 facing murder charges are Muslims from the Fulani group, he said.

Nigeria is under international pressure to enforce the rule of law after accusations that it failed to protect the victims.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has called for the arrest and trial of the perpetrators.

Today, several hundred women, wearing long black dresses, marched through downtown Jos to protest against the killings, which happened in mostly Christian villages nearby.

The women waved Bibles and crosses made of scrap lumber.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Nigerian Red Cross said they were distributing food and water to nearly 5,000 people who have taken refuge in police stations, and to around 300 detainees.

Almost 3,000 people fled from Jos to camps in the neighbouring state of Bauchi after the violence, the ICRC said.

The death toll – as often after outbreaks of violence in Nigeria – remains uncertain.

Police have confirmed 109 fatalities, but the New York Times quoted the Nigerian Red Cross as saying 332 bodies had been buried in a mass grave in the village of Dogo Na Hawa.

The state authorities, human rights groups and religious leaders estimated that more than 500 people were killed.

A survivor called Pepi, from Dogo Na Hawa, told the BBC he had heard his neighbours scream as they were attacked.

"I went to my neighbour's house," he said. "I saw all the wives – they killed them, cut their bodies, put fire on them. And the babies. They killed all the children."

Yesterday, soldiers opened fire on a crowd after a curfew, killing two people, witnesses said.

Residents had tried to stop a truck from entering the town, fearing it was carrying fighters or weapons. The military later arrived and opened fire on the truck. Two people were killed and five others wounded, Angela Ogobri, a nurse from a local hospital, said.

The weekend massacre, which happened on Sunday morning, came less than two months after sectarian killings in the region killed more than 300 people, most of them Muslims.

Nigeria is almost evenly split between Muslims in the north and a predominantly Christian south. The recent bloodshed has been taking place in central Nigeria – the "middle belt", where dozens of ethnic groups vie for control of fertile lands.

The weekend killings added to the tally of thousands who already have perished in Africa's most populous country in the last decade amid religious and political tension. Rioting in September 2001 killed more than 1,000 people.

Muslim-Christian battles killed up to 700 people in 2004, while more than 300 residents died during a similar uprising in 2008.

Professor was arrested in London after extradition request from Serbia over alleged war crimes

A former Bosnian president who was arrested in London last week has been granted bail by the high court.

Ejup Ganic, who served as vice-president and president of Bosnia and Herzegovina after it broke from the former Yugoslavia, was arrested on 1 March after an extradition request from Serbia.

He had been in the UK for several days before being detained by police at Heathrow. The Serbian government has accused him of being responsible for the deaths of 42 Bosnian-Serb soldiers in May 1992 , a month after the start of the Bosnian war.

Ganic's bail request was adjourned last week to give the Serbian authorities more time to submit evidence to back their war crime allegations and oppose bail.

Lawyers for Ganic say moves to make him face trial in Serbia are politically motivated and his arrest is illegal.

Lord Justice Laws granted the former president bail today on what he described as "stringent" conditions.

Under the conditions Ganic, who is currently being held in Wandsworth prison, has to live at a specified address in London, and must remain "within the confines" of the property between 10am and 7pm.

He is not allowed to apply for a passport or travel document, and must report daily to a London police station.

Laws said £300,000 had been provided as security by a well-wisher who was, the court understood, "a lady of substantial means".

Terence Kealey, vice-chancellor of Buckingham University, paid a further £25,000 surety to be retained if Ganic breached the bail conditions.

Ganic is president of the Sarajevo school of science and technology (SSST) and had been in the UK attending events at Buckingham University, which is partnered with the SSST.

"Prof Ganic was visiting Buckingham to attend the graduation ceremony of the second cohort of SSST students to have graduated with a degree from Buckingham," a spokeswoman for the university said.

A Foreign Office spokesman said David Miliband, the foreign secretary, had met Haris Silajdzic, chairman of the joint presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, this morning.

"They discussed a range of issues including the UK's strong support for Bosnia and Herzegovina's European perspective," the spokesman said.

"The foreign secretary underlined that the arrest of Dr Ejup Ganic in London on 1 March is a judicial matter, which in no way amounts to a diplomatic or political statement by the British government or any UK point of view on past events in the western Balkans.

"The foreign secretary confirmed that the UK takes its obligations towards foreign nationals in detention very seriously, and that officials will continue to look into any concerns raised by the Bosnian authorities in this regard."

• £70m needed this year and next to feed poor and hungry
• Traditional donors, including Britain, have yet to offer aid

Millions of Yemenis are starving while the international community focuses on security issues and tackling al-Qaida, according to the United Nations.

Vital deliveries of food deliveries and assistance is being cut because of a near-total absence of funding.

Nearly one in three Yemenis, more than 7 million people, struggles daily to find enough food to live a healthy and productive life, leading to rates of malnutrition that are the third highest in the world, the UN said. A survey by its World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that, of those going hungry each day, 2.7 million are classified as "severely food insecure", meaning they spend one third of their income on bread.

"They are in a total poverty trap," Gian Carlo Cirri, WFP country director, said. "Most of the time they are illiterate, they have no access to land or water. The children are not attending school and the probability of having a malnourished child in the family is extremely high."

WFP estimates it requires $105m (£70m) this year and next to feed more than 3 million of Yemen's poor and hungry, including 250,000 people displaced by the recent war in the north and the boatloads of Somali refugees pouring into the country.

Yet the agency's accounts so far this year are barely breaking even. Cirri said it had received just a single donation of food and cooking oil worth $4.8m from the US; the same amount as the internal loan the agency was forced to take out recently.

Traditional donors to WFP Yemen, including Germany, Saudi Arabia and Britain, have yet to pledge assistance, a move seen by some as reluctance to write blank cheques for the government of President Abdullah Ali Saleh, without concrete reforms that would help ease Yemen's acute instability.

A conference last month in the Saudi capital brought together Yemen's Gulf neighbours, building on discussions in London in January on how to spend the $5.7bn of investment pledged in 2006, but of which less than 10% has been disbursed.

The massive humanitarian intervention in Haiti has also had a direct negative impact on relief aid to Yemen, even as rising food prices, falling fuel revenues, and cuts to remittance flows due to the financial crisis have increased poverty here by nearly 25% since 2006, wiping out decades of development.

If new donations do not arrive by June, the WFP will be unable to continue distributing food rations to refugees fleeing fighting with Shia rebels in the country's north. For families like that of 30-year-old Jamila Ali al-Mohn – a mother of four from the picturesque but poor village of Thulla, 30 miles (50km) north-west of Sanaa – that means hunger.

At the WFP-sponsored distribution centre in Thulla recently, Mohn, along with a few dozen other new mothers, collected her two-month support bag of grain, oil, sugar and salt and carried it on her head back up the steep hill to the house she shares with two other families.

"We haven't eaten meat for a year. If there's money I go and buy eggs and vegetables from the market, but other than that all we have is bread and tea," said Mohn, sitting on the floor of a room filled with children.

Her husband, the breadwinner, was at work, the first day's labour he had had on the farm for two months, she said.

When there's no farming, like most others, he travels to Sanaa with a bundle of narcotic qat leaves to sell to the many addicts of the city. He makes about $30 a week.

"If there was no WFP I would have to ask for help from my mother," said Mohn.

Asked why her mother was in a position to help, Mohn replied: "She is sick so receives benefits of 7,000 rial [$35] every three months."

Accused US Islamist Colleen Renee LaRose 'discussed plan' to kill Swedish artist Lars Vilks over Muhammad cartoon

An American woman convert to Islam who called herself "Jihad Jane" travelled to Ireland to meet some of the suspects arrested over a supposed plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist, Irish police said today.

Detectives believe Colleen Renee LaRose met a number of Irish-based Muslims through Islamist websites and discussed an alleged plot to kill cartoonist Lars Vilks.

Vilks had a $100,000 (£67,000) bounty on his head after drawing a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog in 2007.

Al-Qaida also offered a 50% bonus to anyone who slit his throat to ensure he was "slaughtered like a lamb".

LaRose is understood to have visited Ireland last August after cancelling a trip to Sweden.

While in the Republic, she was said to have met some of the seven people arrested in Waterford and Cork earlier this week.

It was after her trip to Ireland that the FBI contacted the Garda Síochána, who then put a number of people under surveillance.

The seven suspects – three Algerians, a Libyan, a Palestinian, a Croatian and an American woman married to one of the Algerians – were arrested on Tuesday, hours before the US authorities announced a terror indictment against LaRose.

Irish police are still questioning seven suspects, four men and three women aged between their mid-20s and late 40s.

Officers seized computers, phones and documents, but security sources in the Republic stressed today that they did not believe they had uncovered an active al-Qaida cell in the Republic.

LaRose, who also called herself Fatima LaRose online, allegedly posted a comment on YouTube in June 2008, saying she wanted to help "the suffering Muslim people".

According to the indictment, filed in a federal court in Pennsylvania, she sent emails to unnamed co-conspirators offering to become a martyr, as well as offering to use her US background to avoid detection.

The indictment accuses LaRose of agreeing, in March 2009, to marry a co-conspirator from a south Asian country who was trying to obtain residency in Europe.

He allegedly urged her to go to Sweden, find the unnamed Swedish man "and kill him". The indictment claims she tried to raise money over the internet, lure others to her cause, and lied to FBI investigators.

LaRose was arrested after returning to the US in October 2009 on a charge related to the theft of a US passport, according to court documents.

If convicted on the four counts in the indictment, issued on 4 March, LaRose could face a sentence of life in prison and a $1m fine.

Thousands gather in Athens to protest against the government's planned cuts imposed to alleviate the country's debt crisis

Sixteen outfits were 80% finished at time of Alexander McQueen's death and were completed by his design team

A selection of the best images from around the world

Driver says his hybrid car accelerated out of control on a US freeway on Monday

There are exactly eight weeks to go before 6 May – the probable date of the general election. As polling day approaches, hardy perennial issues such as the economy, crime and education will get plenty of attention. But what of the issues we won't be hearing about?

Michael White explores the topics that candidates will be sidestepping on the doorsteps.

Meanwhile in the studio Seumas Milne, Polly Toynbee and Deborah Orr provide their own examples.

Leave yours in the comment section below.

Also on this week's show we hear from Conservative frontbencher David Willetts. He appeared at an event at Guardian HQ this week to argue that a breakdown in trust between the generations has helped to bring about what his party calls a "broken society".

Why has the phrase resonated above all others for the Tories – and is it backed up by evidence? Polly Toynbee, who took part in the debate, disputes the premise of the Tory argument.

Next week Politics Weekly will be recorded live at Manchester University. For details of how you can get tickets for the event on Tuesday 16 March click here.

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FASHION DILEMMA

Was Alexander McQueen's posthumous show a fitting farewell?

Jess Cartner-Morley witnessed an exclusive unveiling of 16 looks completed by Alexander McQueen's team after his death:

"For fifteen minutes today, in a grand Paris drawing room with soaring white ceilings gloriously flounced with gilt, Alexander McQueen came back to life.

When the first model walked into the room, there was an audible intake of breath. Four weeks after the designer's death, the collection he had been working on was finally unveiled. And his spirit was right there - in the skullcap of bandages dissected by a mohican of lacquered feathers, in the fierce black boots with gold angels sculpted into the heels, in the muscular power of the tight crimson bodice and the way the pleated and ruffled skirt appeared to have come not from the past or the future but from some other dimension where the two meet. Every piece was cut on the stand by McQueen, the audience was told beforehand; once the clothes appeared, there could have been no doubt.

Of the outfits, 16 were 80% finished - they were completed by his team and seen for the first time today. The collection was truly spectacular; the mood, in the face of the evidence of what fashion has lost, was bleak."

Read Jess's full report here and view more pictures of the collection here.

FASHION HIGHS

The soundtrack at Balmain Held in a fancy Parisian ballroom with a chandelier the size of a black cab dangling over the catwalk, the Balmain show was a two-fingered salute to the pared-back, strict aesthetic that pervaded Paris. The show was as OTT as it gets - lots of trashy gold, big shoulders (still), and brocade tailoring. Sort of disco-highwaymen-meets-glam-rockers. But the soundtrack had the most impact. Even the more uptight members of the front row were bopping along to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy". The audience left and duly downloaded.

Celine Celine Celine The fashion world has the biggest ever crush on Phoebe Philo at the moment, and don't expect us to be all difficult and contrary, because we're totally besotted too. Throughout the week the fashion press corps was in and out of the Celine boutique, ferreting around for strict camel coats, the perfect Breton tee and beautifully boring handbags. By the time of the show, held at the Tennis Club de Paris, the excitement was feverish - or as feverish as minimalist Celine-ites get. And we weren't disappointed: from the gold-heeled riding boots to the stand-up collar navy wool coats, the show was perfection. Even the pale lime carpet on the catwalk filled our hearts with joy. Merci, Phoebe!

Loewe's café catwalk We quite enjoyed the lightbox grid-come-catwalk assembled in the Hotel de Crillon for the Balenciaga show, but on balance our favourite catwalk was the runway arrangement at Loewe. Round cafe-style tables lined the room, combining our two favourite Parisian things - sipping champagne in cafes and catwalk-watching. Did we like the 40s-inspired show? Yes. Did one British glassy magazine editor threaten to steal the beautiful champagne glasses afterwards? Yes, she did.

FASHION LOWS

The Rick Owens soundtrack First up, why did almost every member of the audience look like they were related to the long-haired designer? But more to the point, why on earth did he have a soundtrack that was so unbelievably loud and aggressive that we felt ill? Now, we like the idea of a second skin leather Rick Owens jacket with a flap of a lapel as much as the next girl, but the 4am Berlin trance music was distracting to say the least. We're not too keen on the fur helmet hoods, either.

No French Vogue at Balenciaga A bit like having a croissant without the jam - somehow not quite the same. We loved the presence of Charlotte "she inspired the perfume" Gainsbourg, but we missed the presence of La Roitfeld. The reason for the blacklisting is rumoured to be a misdemeanour with a sample which somehow found its way to the Maxmara design studio - where Carine is a consultant - and was copied. But nothing has been confirmed by either side. "Ask them", was Carine's enigmatic response to trade sheet WWD.

Absent friends Two British-based designers paid tribute to Alexander McQueen in their show notes. Stella McCartney wrote: "This one is also for Lee - you're missed", and Roland Mouret simply typed "Goodbye Lee" at the corner of his.

TRENDWATCH

Hidden knees. A slightly 70s, below-the-knee hemline is the New Length according to Ms Philo, and she is the style lawmaker right now. You might want to think about wearing it with a precise polished leather top to keep things the sharp side of dowdy, mind.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Since 'tis nature's law to change, constancy alone is strange.

That's John Galliano quoting Jon Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester and a 17th-century poet. You see - he's not just the Dior designer with flowing locks, a cavalier moustache and a penchant for taking the longest, most over-dramatic bow in fashion. He's deep.

OFFCUTS

Who wore what to the Oscars 2010? Rachel Dixon assessed all the outfits on the night, while Jess Cartner-Morley and Imogen Fox chose the 20 best-dressed celebs the next day.

Why didn't Lindsay Lohan turn up at the Ungaro show? Looks like the actor/designer has been quietly dropped.

Want perfectly shaped eyebrows? Check out makeup artist Alex Byrne's video guide to brow beauty.

Are you a man? Then grow a beard! Imogen Fox explains what your style of facial hair says about you.

Interested in shoes? Of course you are, so take a look at our video about John Lobb, one of the last remaining bespoke shoemakers in Britain.

For all the latest fashion news, visit guardian.co.uk/fashion

News to tell us? Email kate.carter@guardian.co.uk

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