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A little black calf with spindly legs has added a high-tech twist to the traditional world of Spanish bullfighting. Got, the country's first cloned fighting bull, was born this week, weighing in at 25kg, in the northern province of Palencia. His late father, Vasito, was a pedigree stud from Andalucia and his surrogate mother was a Swiss Holstein milk cow.

A team of scientists from the Valencia Foundation for Veterinary Research and the Prince Felipe Research Centre toiled for three years to achieve this test-tube feat, beating a rival bid to clone a prized Spanish stud in the US. "He's spectacular, healthy, black like a carbon mine and a perfect photocopy," lead researcher Vicente Torrent said as Got made his societal debut yesterday. Scientists say the objective of the experiment, which cost €28,000 (£24,000), is to perfect techniques that could be used to clone any endangered mammal.

Bullfighting enthusiasts are already speculating about the possibility of seeing clones of legendary fighting bulls in the ring. But animal rights activists are outraged at Got's arrival. "We express our deepest condemnation of this practice, for it leads to the genetic manipulation of a species, with the twisted objective of maintaining the falsehood that bulls are fighters by nature," a statement by AnimaNaturalis said.

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Allegations against Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, took an unexpected turn yesterday when Sweden's top prosecutor announced she was reopening a rape investigation.

It is the second time the country's authorities have made a U-turn over whether the Australian-born journalist should face charges.

An arrest warrant for the founder of the whistleblowing website was initially issued on 20 August, after allegations of rape and assault were brought against him by two women who approached police simultaneously.

The warrant was abruptly rescinded within 24 hours and last week Stockholm's chief prosecutor Eva Finne said all charges against the 39-year-old would be dropped. But Ms Finne's boss, Marianne Ny, Sweden's chief prosecutor, has overruled that decision after new information reportedly came to light on Tuesday.

"There is reason to believe that a crime has been committed," she said in a statement published on the Prosecution Authority's website. "Considering information available at present, my judgment is that the classification of the crime is rape. More investigations are necessary before a final decision can be made."

There was no immediate comment from Mr Assange but his lawyer Leif Silbersky told the Swedish newspaper Expressen: "Now I'm really surprised. I thought that Eva [Finne] is a skilled and competent prosecutor who draws the correct conclusions from the material that is available to her. Now another prosecutor says that she has not done that. We are back to square one – the circus continues."

Mr Silbersky, a colourful septuagenarian defence attorney who has a reputation for taking on some of Sweden's most controversial and high-profile cases, said Mr Assange was still in Sweden. He added that the Wikileaks founder was "angry and disappointed" with the country's legal system.

Mr Assange has previously suggested that the allegations are part of a smear campaign following his website's release of thousands of secret US Army documents relating to Afghanistan.

According to the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, Mr Assange was questioned on Monday afternoon at a police station in Kungsholmen, Stockholm. Sources told the newspaper that he had admitted staying at one of the women's flats for a week in August and having sex with her – but denied rape.

Claes Borgström, a lawyer who represents both women, appealed against the decision made last week to drop the charges against Mr Assange. In a statement, he said he welcomed the decision to reopen the investigation.

"This is a redress for my clients, because they have been dragged through the mud on the internet for having 'made things up' or 'intending to frame Assange'," he said.

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Doctors will this week call for a total ban on all homoeopathic treatment on the NHS.

Hundreds of delegates to the British Medical Association's conference are expected to support seven motions all opposed to the use of public money to pay for remedies which they claim are, at best, scientifically unproven and, at worst, ineffective.

Critics of the 200-year-old practice also want junior doctors to be exempt from working at homoeopathic hospitals because it goes against the principles of evidence-based medicine. Sugar pills and placebos have no place in a modern health service, they say, especially as the NHS must find £20bn in savings over the next few years.

But supporters claim homoeopathy helps thousands of patients with chronic conditions such as ME, asthma, migraine and depression who have not responded to conventional medical treatments. The British Homoeopathic Association (BHA) points out that less than 0.01 per cent of the massive NHS drug bill is spent on homoeopathic tinctures and pills.

Nevertheless, the conference will also hear calls for homoeopathic remedies to be banned from chemists unless they are clearly labelled as placebos rather than medicines. The over-the-counter market is worth around £40m a year, and rising, according to Mintel, the consumer research organisation.

The increasingly vocal dissent follows a report from MPs on the influential science and technology select committee earlier this year, which also urged the NHS to cease funding homoeopathic treatments due to a clear absence of scientific proof about its efficacy. The MPs criticised current licensing and labelling regulations which "lend a spurious medical legitimacy" to homoeopathic products which are no more than sugar pills.

But supporters of homoeopathy are passionate and are unlikely to take this lying down.

David Tredinnick, the Tory MP and outspoken supporter of complementary therapies, tabled an early day motion last week calling on the Government to reject calls for a centrally driven ban and instead allow local services and clinicians to continue making decisions. A protest will take place outside the BMA conference in Brighton on Tuesday.

Homoeopathy works on the principle of "like cures like", so patients are treated with diluted substances that would cause the same symptoms in a healthy person. More than 55,000 NHS patients are seen through four homoeopathic hospitals every year, while thousands more are treated by dually trained GPs. This costs the NHS an estimated £10m, a tiny fraction of the overall £80bn health budget. But this is too much for some.

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Tottenham today face a tense wait to discover if they have pulled off the deal of transfer deadline day – the £8m acquisition of Real Madrid's Dutch midfielder Rafael van der Vaart – as the Premier League investigate the club's claims that technical problems saw them struggle to meet the 6pm deadline.

Spurs, who were only alerted to Van der Vaart's availability two hours before the deadline, according to manager Harry Redknapp, are understood to have told the Premier League that technical difficulties relating to at least one of the computer servers being used by the buying and selling clubs then exacerbated attempts to submit the relevant paperwork in time. The League will today investigate that claim in more detail before they decide whether the new acquisition Redknapp had begun to despair of can be allowed to stand.

With Real desperate to release a player whose use to them has been severely limited by the arrival of Sergio Canales and Mesut Ozil, a €12m (£10m) deal with Bayern Munich had seemed likely but that collapsed, handing Spurs chairman Daniel Levy the opportunity which Redknapp said he had put to him yesterday afternoon. There was no announcement of a sale from Real last night, though the Spurs manager was confident that enough had been done before the 6pm deadline to secure the major signing which he had wanted following Champions League qualification. He certainly has history where last-minute deals are concerned: January's deal to bring in Niko Kranjcar was as close run as the release of Benjani Mwaruwari to Manchester City from Portsmouth, where he was manager, two years earlier.
"I think he was going to Bayern Munich yesterday for about £18m, but suddenly it became an awful lot cheaper," said Redknapp, whose attempt to sign Ryan Babel from Liverpool for £10m earlier in the day fell through as Liverpool's own £9m bid for West Ham's Carlton Cole came to nothing – even though Babel and possibly Lucas Leiva, were thrown in. "For that sort of money, he is a top player and he will improve us for sure. We have made the effort. I am hopeful. It could happen. It was a last-minute job."

Van der Vaart, who may not settle for anything less than regular starts, will be a tough management challenge for Redknapp. The Real manager, Jose Mourinho, appreciated his talents but simply had a preponderance of players for the position occupied by the 27-year-old. Redknapp's only other acquisition yesterday was Croatian goalkeeper Stipe Pletikosa from Spartak Moscow on a season-long loan.

Sunderland and Birmingham City to dominated the day otherwise, revealing the extent of their Premier League ambitions with the most eye-catching deals. The Ghanaian international Asamoah Gyan arrives on Wearside for a club record £13m, as Birmingham secured Alexander Hleb on a season's loan, the exciting Chilean winger Jean Beausejour on a permanent deal and Martin Jiranek, the Spartak Moscow captain, as left-back and central defensive cover.

Gyan's move from Rennes – sealed 20 minutes before the transfer deadline – will capture most attention. The Sunderland manager, Steve Bruce, said last night that he had tried to buy the 24-year-old a year ago but "couldn't do it". His 13 goals in the France's Ligue 1 were a good return last season, though he managed only one the year before.

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On a Monday evening in November 1997 Frank Lampard had just struck an equaliser for West Ham United against Crystal Palace when the floodlights at Upton Park failed, plunging the ground into darkness and forcing the abandonment of the game.

As football fans in east London cursed their luck, 6,500 miles away in Malaysia members of an Asian betting syndicate celebrated a six-figure payout.

A month later the syndicate – who had "arranged" for the lights to go out – repeated their scam during a Wimbledon vs Arsenal game. But, when they tried for a third time, at a Charlton vs Liverpool match, their plan was foiled. The security guard who had been bribed to trip the electrics using a remote control told a colleague of the plan and he alerted the police. Four men – two Malaysians, a Chinese man and Roger Firth, the Charlton security supervisor – were subsequently jailed for between 18 months and four years.

The scam was the first and so far only time that an Asian betting syndicate has been proven to have successfully infiltrated a British sporting event. But, as Sunday's News of the World cricket story suggested, sport in the UK is by no means out of the reach of crooked betting stings which have their roots in the Far East.

The three no-balls which the paper's reporter was given advance knowledge of would have been useless information to a British punter, who would be unable to place such a bet in a UK betting shop. In Asia, however, punters can place money on "spot bets" which predict the outcome of the minutiae of a game.

Similarly the floodlight failure scam was only of use to those placing bets in the illegal Asian betting markets. Bookmakers there pay out on the result as it stands if matches are abandoned during the second half of a game. British bookies simply void the bet.

But suspicious betting is by no means unique to Asian markets or football. In snooker a September 2008 match between Peter Ebdon and Liang Wenbo saw huge money being placed on the unfancied Wenbo to win 5-0, a scoreline he eventually achieved. And last year a low-key Wimbledon tennis match was the subject of complaints after a surge of bets predicted, correctly, that the favourite, Jürgen Melzer, would win 3-0.

But while the bookmakers report the cases, industry insiders say that their attempts to weed out cheats are frustrated by the GC and the police. In 2007 an offence of cheating in betting was created to help prosecute offenders, but in the three years since the GC has not brought a single prosecution in relation to sport.

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A life of booze, fags and slothfulness may be enough to earn your doctor's disapproval, but there is one last hope: a repeat prescription of mates and good conversation.

A circle of close friends and strong family ties can boost a person's health more than exercise, losing weight or quitting cigarettes and alcohol, psychologists say.

Sociable people seem to reap extra rewards from their relationships by feeling less stressed, taking better care of themselves and having less risky lifestyles than those who are more isolated, they claim.

A review of studies into the impact of relationships on health found that people had a 50% better survival rate if they belonged to a wider social group, be it friends, neighbours, relatives or a mix of these.

The striking impact of social connections on wellbeing has led researchers to call on GPs and health officials to take loneliness as seriously as other health risks, such as alcoholism and smoking.

"We take relationships for granted as humans," said Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a psychologist at Brigham Young University in Utah. "That constant interaction is not only beneficial psychologically but directly to our physical health."

Holt-Lunstad's team reviewed 148 studies that tracked the social interactions and health of 308,849 people over an average of 7.5 years. From these they worked out how death rates varied depending on how sociable a person was.

Being lonely and isolated was as bad for a person's health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being an alcoholic. It was as harmful as not exercising and twice as bad for the health as being obese. The study is reported in the journal Plos Medicine.

Holt-Lunstad said friends and family can improve health in numerous ways, from help in tough times to finding meaning in life. "When someone is connected to a group and feels responsibility to other people, that sense of purpose and meaning translates to taking better care of themselves and taking fewer risks."

Holt-Lunstad said there was no clear figure on how many relationships are enough to boost a person's health, but people fared better when they rarely felt lonely and were close to a group of friends, had good family contact and had someone they could rely on and confide in.

Writing in the journal, the authors point out that doctors, health educators and the media take the dangers of smoking, diet and exercise seriously, and urge them to add social relationships to the list.

A report by the Mental Health Foundation in May blamed technology and the pressures of modern life for widespread feelings of loneliness in all age groups across Britain. The survey of more than 2,200 adults found one in 10 people often felt lonely and one in three would like to move closer to their family.

Andrew McCulloch, of the Mental Health Foundation, said the latest study builds on work that links isolation to poor mental and physical health. "Trends such as increasing numbers of people living alone and the advent of new technologies, are changing the way in which we interact and are leading both the young and old to experience loneliness. It is important that individuals and policy-makers take notice of emerging evidence and of the potential health problems associated with loneliness."

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In a scientific tour-de-force that has been hailed as the most significant breakthrough in wheat production since the cereal crop was cultivated by the first farmers more than 10,000 years ago, scientists have decoded the genome of the wheat plant.

As a result, new breeds of disease-resistant crops could be producing higher wheat yields in as little as five years' time, raising the prospect of lower bread prices and greater food security in a more populated world. And rather than guard their knowledge, the British scientists responsible for the research will today place a draft version of the genome online, making it available for free to wheat breeders around the world, who will be able to use it to speed up the creation of the new disease-resistant varieties that are urgently needed. Most wheat breeders currently rely on traditional methods of mixing new crop varieties – techniques that have not changed substantially for hundreds of years.

Wheat production is under pressure, particularly this summer because of the failure of the Russian harvest. Yet world food production will have to increase by an estimated 50 per cent over the next 40 years if the growing global population is to be fed.

One leading scientist behind the British study said yesterday that knowing the wheat genome would revolutionise the conventional breeding of wheat. Breeders, he explained, will be able to take valuable shortcuts that reduce the amount of time it takes to breed essential new plant varieties resistant to disease and drought. This would not entail genetic modification, although the genome will also prove invaluable for scientists if they did want to directly change the DNA of the wheat plant.

Conventional breeding can exploit the information contained in the wheat genome to screen seeds for the genetic "markers" or signposts that indicate the presence of valuable genes, such as those for resistance to drought or disease.

"A process that now takes five or six years will take one or two years. It is quite possible in five years' time that a loaf of bread will be cheaper because of this," said Professor Neil Hall, a genome scientist at Liverpool University, one of the three research centres that carried out the study.

Professor Keith Edwards of the University of Bristol said the breakthrough was highly significant. "In a short space of time we have delivered most of the sequences necessary for plant breeders to identify genetic differences in wheat. The public release of the data will dramatically increase the efficiency of breeding new crop varieties," Professor Edwards said.

Wheat yields per hectare have increased threefold since Roman times, but over the past decade they have reached a plateau despite intensive efforts by the plant breeders who have struggled with the menace of constantly evolving wheat diseases. This is one reason why wheat production has failed to keep pace with increased demand.

"It has been estimated that in Europe, productivity needs to double to keep pace with demand and to maintain stable prices. We need to start breeding new varieties of wheat that will be important in five or 10 years' time," Professor Hall said.

"This means that we will be able to utilise the wheat genome to its full potential. It means that we can fully utilise what nature has given us." However Professor Hall added: "Unless global population is kept under control, nature may not be enough and we may have to use genetic modification because there is always going to be a limit to what you can get out of wheat."

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It is already renowned for its rolling green valleys, male choirs, rugby prowess and proud working-class solidarity, but now Wales can add another attribute to this list – the production of fine wine.

The first vintage of a newly-planted vineyard in a sunny valley in Monmouthshire has won two medals at leading wine competitions this week.

Ancre Hill Estate's prosaically-titled White Welsh Regional Wine 2008 was awarded a silver at the Decanter World Wine Awards and a bronze at the International Spirit and Wine Competition, and has been commended or won a medal at a third major show, the International Wine Challenge.

Richard Morris, a chartered accountant who turned his passion for wine into a business five years ago, planted three types of vine – pinot noir, seyval blanc and chardonnay – in a south-facing meadow outside his home four years ago.

Fielding media calls yesterday about his £12 bottle, which he sells from his cellar door, Mr Morris said: "It's our first vintage. You don't expect that to happen – to get three medals from the three most important wine competitions in the world."

The Welshman put the success of his wine down to a good site with low rainfall, sunny weather and good drainage, and "fastidious" viticulture practices such as regular pest spraying and canopy management.

Welsh bottles could compete with the best in the world, providing the vines were planted in the right "meso-climate," he added, saying: "It does always rain in Wales, but there are pockets where there are some valleys where there are surrounding trees that take the rain away."

There are around 15 vineyards in Wales, compared to more than 300 in England, concentrated in Cornwall, Sussex, Kent, Surrey and Suffolk. Most attention and prizes currently alight on English wine.

Mr Morris, 57, and his wife Joy, 50, decided to plant vines at his home in the Wye Valley after selling his part-owned logistics business for £36m in 1999. After a few years of consultancy work and travelling, which involved several trips to vineyards in Australia and South America, he took a course in viticulture at Plumpton College in East Sussex and realised that his home would make an excellent vineyard.

"We sent samples of the local soil for analysis to the geology master at the local school and were delighted to discover the white rocks that intersperse the clay loam soil are Jurassic limestone – responsible for the excellent terroir of the Chablis region in France," he said.

This year Ancre Hill is producing 14,500 bottles but aims to produce 25,000 annually by 2015. Around 70 per cent is sparkling. Mr Morris hopes that on its release in two years' time his sparkling wine will vie with champagne for prizes.

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Consternation and ridicule have greeted the news (on The Spectator's blog) that Gordon Brown is looking for a new career as an after-dinner speaker, and hopes for $100,000 for a night's work. (For $20,000 more, Sarah Brown will come too, either to hand out prizes or stand around looking supportive, like Linda McCartney in the line-up of Wings, but without the tambourine.)

It's piquant to discover that Mr Brown asked a top speakers' agency to find him bookings in the Middle East and Asia, rather than in, say, Hackney or Glasgow, where he might receive a less enthusiastic welcome. What's the impulse behind his new ambition? Can it have anything to do with the news that Tony Blair has been paid £240,000 for a 20-minute speech in Japan?

But I'm all in favour of Gordon seizing this chance to reinvent himself, because I know he's rather an amusing talker. You think I'm kidding? Not at all. I remember his appearance at The Independent's 20th birthday celebrations, when he discussed his ambiguous feelings about nature. How, before new Labour took office, he used to write an economic policy document of utter brilliance, release it to the press and open the Indy next morning, expecting either praise or some intellectually robust criticism. "Instead," he said, "the front page would be filled with some vital enquiry like, 'What's become of the common lapwing?'" The crowd was convulsed.

I saw Mr Brown at the Hay Festival (where Bill Clinton, coincidentally, came to deliver a $100,000-for-an-hour speech when he'd just left power) where he was interviewed by Mariella Frostrup. He was chatty and forthcoming, and deployed that after-dinner staple, Famous People I Have Met (he told a funny story about Nelson Mandela and Hilary Benn.) He tried out a version of that cornerstone of Richard Pryor's stand-up routine, Things That Puzzled Me As a Child (a sober-minded kid, he read about Edith Cavell "and wondered how anyone could kill a nurse.") And he amused the audience with tales of The Wacky Jobs I Had Before I Got Serious – in his case it was editing a books programme on Scottish TV, on to which he invited Anthony Burgess and Hugh McIlvanney. He was terrific. Then – disaster – someone asked him about politics. His eyes became hooded. His hands went into their chopping-onions gesture, and he went back to being boring, opaque and self-righteous. So welcome GB, the after-dinner smoothie, provided he can be kept off certain subjects. Like being a prime minister, say.

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Eccentric X Factor hopeful Shirlena Johnson has been thrown out of this year's Miss Great Britain contest after organisers discovered her real age when they watched her TV audition.
Millions of viewers saw Johnson, a single mother, get through to the boot camp stage of the X Factor on Saturday night after she performed, in leopard skin leggings, a bizarre rendition of the Duffy track Mercy.
Johnson told the X Factor judges that she was 30, but the age on her online Miss Great Britain form was 28, said a spokeswoman for the contest, which is for those aged 29 and under.
The aspiring star had applied for the competition in February and was due to compete in the next regional heat, Miss Essex GB, on Saturday, spokeswoman Charlotte Ellis said.
She had failed to get through the Miss London and Miss South East regional heats.
Miss Great Britain chief executive Liz Fuller said: "It's such a shame to lose Shirlena, though she did apologise. I have great warmth for this girl as being one of the most eccentric contestants I had. I hope the advice I gave will help her."
Johnson was seen shrieking, wailing, kicking and moaning during her performance on the X Factor, and got through despite confessing that she had forgotten the words to her song.
Simon Cowell, who voted Johnson through, told her: "It was like a musical exorcism," but added: "I have to say I love you. You are completely crazy but I like that. You are fantastically nuts."
The show returned for its seventh series on Saturday night and was watched by 12.6 million viewers, a record for an X Factor opening episode.
Miss Great Britain celebrates its 65th anniversary this year.A friend of Johnson, who has a three-year-old daughter, said she had put down her age incorrectly on the Miss Great Britain form and had tried without success to correct it.
Ron Street said: "She put down the wrong age and tried to correct it but couldn't get back online. She gave her right age on the X Factor so there was no deliberate lying."
Johnson was barred from Miss Great Britain as the X Factor was embroiled in a row with viewers who have accused the show's editors of using technology to improve some of the contestants' voices.

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