Documents held by Metropolitan police suggest News of the World targeted former deputy prime minister

John Prescott tonight demanded the Metropolitan police reopen its investigation into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal as the Observer revealed that Scotland Yard holds News International documents suggesting that he was a target when deputy prime minister.

Two invoices held by the Met mention Prescott by name. They appear to show that News International, owner of the NoW, paid Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the heart of the scandal, for his help on stories relating to the deputy PM. Lord Prescott spoke of his anger that the information, spelled out in a letter from the Yard’s legal services directorate, emerged only after he was given a series of personal reassurances by detectives at the highest level that there was “no evidence” his phone may have been hacked.

The invoices are both dated May 2006, at a time when Prescott was the subject of intense media scrutiny following revelations that he had had an affair with his secretary, Tracey Temple. There is also a piece of paper obtained from Mulcaire on which the name “John Prescott” is written. The only other legible word on this document is “Hull”.

The name “Prescott” appears on two “self-billing tax invoices” from News International Supply Company Ltd to Mulcaire’s company, Nine Consultancy.

The Yard’s letter, obtained by the Observer, states: “One appears to be for a single payment of £250 on 7/5/2006 labelled ‘Story: other Prescott Assist -txt.’ The second, also for £250, on 21/5/2006 contains the words ‘Story: Other Prescott Assist -txt urgent’.”

The legal services directorate adds: “We do not know what this means or what it is referring to.”

In a statement to the Observer, Prescott said he formed the impression that the police were more intent on withholding information relating directly to him. “I have been far from satisfied with the Metropolitan police’s procedure in dealing with my requests to uncover the truth about this case,” he said.

“It seemed more about providing the least possible amount of information. I only discovered from the Metropolitan police that News International and Mulcaire were targeting me after repeated requests and in the end it came from their legal department, not the investigating officers.”

Prescott said the letter showed there was “a compelling argument to reopen the police investigation and fully report on the findings to the public”.

He added that he was pressing for full disclosure of all documents – including the invoices – and was prepared to seek their release through a judicial review. “We need far greater transparency to ensure not only that justice is done but that it is seen to be done.”

Prescott’s intervention follows a week in which the phone-hacking row was reignited by investigations carried out by the New York Times which raised questions about Scotland Yard’s enthusiasm for pursuing the inquiry. The row has intensified the pressure on Andy Coulson, David Cameron’s director of communications, who was editor of the NoW at the time of the scandal.

Peter Mandelson also became embroiled in the row last night with the Independent on Sunday revealing his mobile phone details were among lists of private data seized by police investigating illegal activity by News of the World reporters.

With MPs due to return to Westminster tomorrow, Labour leadership contenders Ed Balls and Ed Miliband said the allegations threw Cameron’s judgment into question.

Balls called for the home secretary, Theresa May, to make an immediate statement about the phone-hacking affair to the Commons. He said: “This goes to the integrity of the criminal law, proper investigation and government communication, and there will be questions over David Cameron’s judgment if he doesn’t see the seriousness of this now.

“We need to know that this is going to be properly investigated. It does go to the heart of the integrity of communications in government. When there are now serious and new allegations and questions over Andy Coulson’s integrity, that’s something which has to be sorted out quickly and I hope David Cameron will do so. You can’t just dismiss this as a piece of politics.”

Miliband later said: “Instead of sending out a junior minister to just dismiss the allegations and not even engage with them, we need to hear from David Cameron and senior people in the Conservative party about what Andy Coulson’s response is to these clear and detailed allegations. Until that happens, a cloud will hang over Andy Coulson, and indeed the government, because this is the man in charge of the government’s media machine. He is not some junior office boy – this is someone at the highest level of government.”

Prescott has placed intense pressure on the Met to reveal what material it has on him. Last September, the Met’s assistant commissioner, John Yates, assured him there was no evidence to suggest his phone had been hacked. But Naz Saleh, the Met’s assistant director of legal services, then admitted, following a further search, that it held information suggesting that Prescott had been a “person of interest to Mr Mulcaire”.

The international development minister, Alan Duncan, said: “The Labour party – in a concerted campaign through Ed Miliband, Lord Prescott and Alan Johnson – have piled in to attack Andy Coulson about something that happened years ago in order to try to attack the government.”

In a statement released yesterday, the News of the World said: “The New York Times story contains no new evidence – it relies on unsubstantiated allegations from unnamed sources or claims from disgruntled former employees that should be treated with extreme scepticism given the reasons for their departures from this newspaper.”

A spokeswoman for News International declined to comment on information appearing to show it paid Mulcaire for help relating to stories about Prescott. However, NI sources said it often paid for help during its many investigations and the invoices – if genuine – were no proof of illegality.

The Met said no new evidence had emerged and “consequently the investigation remains closed”.

Iranian woman facing death for adultery to be whipped despite Times apologising for using picture of another person

Iran has reportedly sentenced Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani – the 43-year-old Iranian woman who faces execution after being convicted of adultery – to 99 lashes in prison for “spreading corruption and indecency” after allowing an unveiled picture of herself to be published in a British newspaper.

The claim, which could not be confirmed, comes from her family and a lawyer representing Mohammadi Ashtiani, based on reports from those who have recently left the prison in Tabriz where she has been held for the last four years.

The latest charges against Mohammadi Ashtiani – if confirmed – would appear to suggest that the Iranian authorities have been stung by the international outcry her case has attracted through the campaign of her family and supporters in the media, and could be read as a warning that it is Sakineh who could suffer from the protests.

What has made the latest charges against her even more extraordinary is the fact that the unveiled photograph in question, published by the Times newspaper on 28 August, was not actually of Sakineh but of another woman, for which the paper has since apologised.

In reality, the woman pictured was Susan Hejrat, an Iranian political activist living in Sweden whose photograph had been published on a website along with an article she had written about Sakineh’s case, perhaps causing the confusion. In its apology, published on Friday, the Times said that the photograph had been obtained from Mohammad Mostafaei, one of Sakineh’s lawyers, who had claimed that he received the picture from her son, Sajad – which he has denied.

Instead, in an open letter today, Sajad Ghaderzadeh accused the Iranian authorities of using the mistaken picture as “an excuse to increase their harassment of our mother”.

He added: “My mother has been called in to see the judge in charge of prison misdemeanours, and he has sentenced our helpless mother to 99 lashes on false charges of spreading corruption and indecency by disseminating this picture of a woman presumed to be her [Sakineh] without hijab.”

Speaking to the Observer today, Sajad said: “This news reached us through some prisoners who were released from Tabriz prison recently and have informed my mother’s lawyer, Houtan Kian, that she has been given a sentence of 99 lashes for the alleged unveiled photo of her published in western media.

“As far as we know, the sentence of 99 lashes has not been administered yet. Once I got the Times apology for the misidentified photo, I instantly informed the lawyer and we are going to ask for an appeal. My mother has been denied visits for the past two weeks, no one has been allowed to visit her, including her family and even her lawyer. She has also been denied access to a phone and we have been completely cut off from her.”

News of the latest punishment came amid reports from the family that they had learned her case has been referred for a judicial review to Branch 9 of Iran’s supreme court which has requested police documents relating to her case, some of which appear to have gone missing. The reports have also emerged amid an increasingly bitter war of words between Iran and Sakineh’s most high-profile supporter, Carla Bruni, the wife of France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who was described as a “prostitute” in one Iranian newspaper unhappy with her intervention.

Mohammadi Ashtiani was first convicted in 2006 of having an “illicit relationship” with two men after the death of her husband and was sentenced by a court to 99 lashes. Later that year she was also convicted of adultery and sentenced to be stoned to death, even though she retracted a confession that she claims was made under duress. Iran lifted that sentence last month, but now says that she has been convicted of involvement in her husband’s killing.

According to the Iranian courts, her husband, Ebrahim Qaderzadeh, 44, was found dead on his bathroom floor in Meshkinshahr, in north-west Iran. Mohammadi Ashtiani is said by Iranian officials to have confessed to having had an extramarital affair with the killer, Eisa Taheri, and to have said that she had seduced him. The judiciary has also claimed that she confessed to having planned the murder in collaboration with Taheri, claims that are vigorously denied by her family.

Last month she was presented on Iranian state television where she “confessed” to involvement in the murder of her husband in a television interview recorded in Tabriz prison, where she is being held. It was suggested at that time that the 43-year-old had been tortured for two days before the recording of the confession.

Sajad also appealed to Mohammad Mostafaei not to make any more comments either on his mother’s case or on his father’s death.

Since her case has captured world attention, Iranian officials have claimed she was an accomplice to the murder of her husband, although her government-appointed lawyer, Houtan Kian, has accused the government of inventing charges against her.

Sajad has said the only reason his mother is still alive is because of the international campaign for her release.

Timeline

2006 Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani lashed 99 times for “adultery” in

Iran, charges she denies

November 2008 she is sentenced to death by stoning for the same offense due to process called “judicial wisdom”

July 2010 Protests begin about her fate

July 12th Iran says the stoning sentence is not for adultery but for the murder of her husband

August in a confession on state TV - which many believe to be forced - she confesses to complicity in her husband’s murder

September 3rd News emerges she has been sentenced to 99 additional lashes for allowing the dissemination of a picture purportedly of her (although of another woman) not wearing the hijab

Senior member of the Indian judiciary has alleged that police are allowing links between organised crime and the sport to flourish

South Asian betting rings are channelling millions of pounds into terrorism and drug trafficking with the connivance of police officers, a judge in India has warned.

As Scotland Yard continues its investigation into the alleged betting scam involving Pakistan cricketers, a senior member of the Indian judiciary has alleged that police are allowing links between organised crime and the sport to flourish.

Judge Dharmesh Sharma aired his warning while hearing an appeal last week into a case involving betting on a World Cup match between Australia and South Africa in 2007.

British police and the international cricketing authorities are examining allegations of match-fixing involving three Pakistan players and an Indian betting ring after a sting operation by the News of the World.

The agent at the centre of the scandal, Mazhar Majeed, is reported to have told undercover investigators that he supplied information about specific incidents during games to an Indian bookmaker, who used the tip-offs to place bets on the fixed outcome.

The newspaper published further revelations today. Pakistan Test opener Yasir Hameed allegedly claimed in an interview that his team-mates were involved in fixing “almost every match”. Pakistan team manager Yawar Saeed later told reporters at the team hotel in Cardiff that Hameed had denied such statements, although there is believed to be video footage of the interview.

The News of the World also said the International Cricket Council (ICC) was investigating a fourth Pakistan player, who has not yet been named, over match-fixing claims.

Police formally interviewed three Pakistan cricketers involved in the claims on Friday, while the ICC has already charged them under its anti-corruption code.

Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif and Test captain Salman Butt were all questioned by Met officers over allegations that they arranged for three no-balls to be bowled to order in return for cash. Police sources said yesterday that the trio may be summoned back for further questioning this week.

Discussions are continuing over whether there is sufficient evidence to charge the cricketers with conspiracy to commit fraud. Some reports have claimed that detectives found bundles of cash in the London hotel rooms of Pakistan players after the revelations last Sunday. Hameed, who played in the fourth Test at the Oval, allegedly told the News of the World: “They’ve been caught. Only the ones that get caught are branded crooks. They were doing it [fixing] in almost every match. God knows what they were up to. Scotland Yard was after them for ages. It makes me angry because I’m playing my best and they are trying to lose.”

The newspaper will also carry reports that investigators apparently recovered between £10,000 and £15,000 in marked bank notes in Butt’s room. The new allegations follow an apology on behalf of the three players from Pakistan Twenty20 captain Shahid Afridi, who also confirmed that Majeed, and his brother Azhar, were managing the trio involved. Speaking in Cardiff, Afridi said: “On behalf of these boys – I know they’re not in this series – I want to say sorry to all cricket lovers and all the cricketing nations.”

Detectives are also believed to be following the money trail of the alleged global betting scam to India, where betting is illegal but remains a massive industry. An estimated £277m alone was gambled on last year’s Indian Premier League (IPL). Illegal bookmakers have already taken bets on the upcoming Champions League Twenty20 tournament, which starts in South Africa this Friday.

But allegations last week that much of the money was being siphoned into narcotics and terrorism, with the complicity of police officers, has focused the spotlight on the links between organised crime and betting syndicates.

Sharma, an additional sessions judge, threw out the case against two men accused of organising betting on the 2007 match, but then launched into a diatribe on the prevalence of gambling in India, describing the escalating involvement of betting rings in cricket as alarming. “The extent of money that it generated is diverted to clandestine and sinister objectives like drug trafficking and terrorist activities,” he said.

Sharma claimed there were as many as 3,000 illegal bookmakers operating in Delhi alone and that the IPL was the subject of some of the heaviest betting. “This could not be done under the very nose of police without their knowledge,” he added.

The IPL has been a moneyspinner for top cricketers, but not those from Pakistan, who missed out on the bonanza as a result of the deterioration of relations between the two countries over the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008.

Although a Pakistan international cricketer might expect to earn about £25,000 a year, that figure is dwarfed by the millions on offer through the IPL. Some commentators this week have suggested that this might be one of the reasons Pakistan’s players might have been more open to financial inducements.

Amir and Asif, both bowlers, and Butt, Pakistan’s captain, have also been suspended from all cricket by the ICC in the wake of the allegations. The reaction in Pakistan was one of initial shock, quickly turning to denial as the scale of the national shame became apparent. Television news was dominated by the scandal, which pushed the country’s floods off the top of the agenda.

In London, the Pakistan high commissioner, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, criticised the ICC for suspending the players, describing the action as “unhelpful, premature and unnecessary”.

However, the ICC mounted a robust defence of its actions. Its chief executive, Haroon Lorgat, said on Friday: “We have been clear that we will not tolerate any sort of corruption in the sport and upholding the integrity of cricket is paramount and fundamental to every single one of us.”

Unison leader warns leadership frontrunner that he must abandon New Labour’s strong preference for privatisation

David Miliband, the Labour leadership frontrunner, must ditch his attachment to Blairite policies on privatisation and globalisation if he is to avoid splitting the party, the leader of Britain’s biggest public sector union insists today.

Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, said that Labour was at a watershed moment in its relations with the unions and accused the elder Miliband of having been part of a New Labour elite which caused untold “trauma” to public sector workers and sought to “beat up” unions. The comments, in an interview with the Observer before next week’s trades union congress, are part of an attempt by the unions to reassert their influence, after years of being sidelined, as the Labour party prepares to choose a new leader.

They also suggest that after the new leader is announced on 25 September, Labour will be plunged into a heated argument at its party conference on its future direction. Prentis, whose union is backing the more left-leaning Ed Miliband in the election, said that Ed Miliband reflected the values of the 1.4 million public sector Unison members “far better than the other candidates”.

However, recognising that the race is tight and that David Miliband could win, he spelt out a set of clear conditions which the elder brother must meet if he was to unite the movement behind him and make Labour electable.

Prentis said he would want to work with David Miliband and rejected any suggestion that the union would threaten to withdraw funding for Labour. But he added: “At the same time he [David] is very much part of the New Labour agenda which did seek on many occasions to beat up the trade unions … part of a New Labour agenda which is very comfortable with our members going through the trauma of privatisation.”

Prentis argues that the present coalition government, with its plans to widen private sector involvement in schools and hospitals, is in many senses a natural successor to New Labour. “What New Labour did has provided the floor for what the coalition is now doing, and David was very much part of that.”

He said that the party would not stomach a return to Blairite policies that would risk plunging it into renewed infighting. The challenge, he maintained, was to renew the party at local level through returning to “our values, which are the same as Labour party values”.

He added: “We will not go back to a New Labour agenda based on privatisation, and fragmentation and globalisation that we have had over the past few years.” His comments show that a win for David Miliband will open the way for a difficult and tense period as the party thrashes out the direction of its policy and arguments about who determines its future direction.

Tony Blair insisted in the memoirs he published last week that Labour lost the last election because Gordon Brown rejected New Labour policies and turned to the left.

Prentis said that the unions were gearing up to regain a greater role in policymaking. He said that they would unite behind a vote allowing the Labour party conference – where they have 50% of the votes – to vote on policy rather than just make recommendations.

He also called for reform of the party’s national policy forum, a body seen as toothless by the unions, to give ordinary members a greater input into policy. “We don’t seek to dominate the party. We don’t seek to dominate the government. But we expect to be able to play a constructive role within the party itself and stand up for our values, which are the same as the Labour party’s values.

“We [the unions] can provide the organisation. We are a voice for the good in developing Labour party policy, keeping it on the mainstream,” he said.

David Miliband, the former foreign secretary and a protege of Tony Blair, has insisted that New Labour remains “alive and well”, though he believes the party’s policy programme needs thorough renewal. He insists, however, that the era of Blair and Brown is over and that he will shun sectional politics.

Ed Miliband, in contrast, says that New Labour is dead and that the party must reject its slide towards “brutal” American-style capitalism.

Climate scientists meeting in Britain this week hope to build a database to predict natural disasters precisely. And records of the voyages of the Bounty and Beagle will assist them in their task

Leading climate scientists will gather in the UK this week to finalise plans for a revolutionary project aimed at transforming their ability to predict meteorological disasters. The goal is to create an international databank that would generate forecasts of unprecedented precision.

The scientists’ plans include:

■ Creating a global network of weather stations that would provide daily temperature readings for any spot on the planet. At present, only monthly readings are generated for the United States and Europe, while virtually no data is provided for much of Africa, the Amazon and Antarctica.

■ Digitising old sea logs – including those of the Bounty, the Beagle and Scott’s Discovery – to build up a data set of historical weather patterns.

■ Persuading many countries that currently refuse to provide meteorological information to the rest of the world to open their data banks.

■ Seeking help from web companies and organisations such as Google and Galaxy Zoo to help volunteers decode data. In this way, meteorologists hope to transform their long-term forecasts.

“It is now very clear that humanity is changing the climate through the greenhouse gases we are pumping into the atmosphere,” said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the UK Met Office, one of the organisers of this week’s meeting. “But we don’t know yet, and what we really must find out is how those changes will affect a particular area.

“We need to answer key questions such as whether the onset of the monsoon in India will be delayed, how the frequency of droughts in the Horn of Africa is changing, or whether Europe will experience more severe heatwaves in future.”

In recent months Moscow has been blanketed in smog from burning peatlands, a giant island of ice has splintered from Greenland and floods in Pakistan have killed about 2,000 and left millions homeless. Scientists believe that, as climate change takes an increasingly tight grip on the planet, more and more of these events will happen. They want to learn how to predict such occurrences and give vulnerable areas accurate warnings about potential catastrophes.

However, meteorologists are limited by the lack of data they receive from monitoring stations around the globe. Although there are more than 6,000 such stations providing data about temperatures, wind, precipitation and other variables, these only generate monthly averages for a particular locality.

“We need to get daily temperature readings if we are going to make accurate forecasts,” said Peter Thorne, of the Co-operative Institute for Climate and Satellites in North Carolina. At the same time, swaths of Africa and Antarctica and much of the Amazon have no stations at all.

One of the aims of this week’s meeting is to discuss ways in which daily readings could be generated by increasing the number of these remote, unmanned stations. It is intended to begin negotiations with countries that refuse to give out readings from weather stations on the grounds that such information could be sold. Simply opening these nations’ data banks would double the information available to world forecasters.

However, it is the decoding and digitising of old logs from some of Britain’s most illustrious sea voyages – a process likely to involve assistance from organisations such as Google – that promises to be of particular public interest. Throughout the 19th century and for many of the early years of the 20th century, Britain’s navy ruled the oceans. Daily information about weather conditions recorded in logs gives an invaluable insight into climate patterns for these decades. Examples include the logbooks of the ships of the East India Company, which are held in the British Library, the logs of Royal Navy ships during the first world war, which are held in the UK National Archives, and those of the major Antarctic expeditions, which are currently being digitised by the Met Office.

“The problem is that the data is stored in old logbooks and it is an extremely laborious business to turn that information into digital form,” added Stott.

However, recent developments on the web have provided precedents for providing help for such work. Three years ago Chris Lintott, an Oxford physicist, set up a website called Galaxy Zoo which asked the public to help classify photographs of a million galaxies. It has turned into the biggest citizen-science experiment on the web. Galaxies can be classified as spiral, elliptical or merging. However, with images of more than a million taken by astronomers, their categorisation – crucial for understanding the evolution of the universe – was daunting until Galaxy Zoo was set up. By logging on, members of the public can classify galaxies and have proved as good as, and in some cases better than, professional astronomers.

Now meteorologists hope that Galaxy Zoo, whose organisers have been invited to this week’s climate meeting, can provide a model that will allow the public to help in the massive job of digitising the weather data left by sailors.

“We need not only to create climate data sets at daily or even shorter timescales, at a resolution of a few kilometres at most, but to generate data sets as far into the past as possible,” said Stott. “That is why we are planning to take all these different approaches.”

Trapped for a month in the San Jose mine, Chile, shift leader Luis Urzua has worked heroically to protect his men

About 700 metres underground, in the most traumatic of circumstances, Luis Urzua has no intention of relinquishing command of the 33 men in his care. Urzua, 54, went to work as usual on 5 August as shift foreman for the ill-fated group of Chilean miners who became trapped below the surface of the Atacama desert in the north of the country. Now he finds himself shouldering responsibilities of the most extraordinary kind.

“The hierarchy and power of a supervisor in the world of the miner is extremely powerful; it is a military discipline,” said Dr Jaime Manalich, the Chilean minister of health, as he explained the ability of Urzua to organise the miners’ increasingly sophisticated underground existence. “Natural selection is extremely strong in this world,” said Manalich, who emphasised the “rigid system” of power which effectively makes a shift foreman “owner of the mine” during his typical 12-hour shift. “This is an extremely dangerous job, if you look at the statistics, this region of Chile has the highest worker mortality rate in the nation and that is led by mining.”

“[Urzua] is a leader in his field and has been for ages. He is recognised by his peers as a leader,” said Dr Andreas Llarena, a commander in the Chilean Navy who has been sent to the scene of the mining accident to help coordinate medical aspects of the rescue operations. “For a miner, their shift leader is sacred and holy. They would never think about replacing him. That is carved in stone; it is one of the commandments in the life of a miner.”

For Urzua, the command challenges began within moments of the mine collapse – he quickly ordered his men to huddle while he took three miners and scouted up the tunnel, searching for information on the massive cave-in. Correctly deducing that the men were trapped, Urzua instituted a set of rules and regulations that were both methodically rigid and crucial to the men’s survival. He ordered that the mine’s stash of emergency food be rationed into minimal portions – two spoonfuls of tuna fish and half a glass of milk every 48 hours.

As rescuers spent 16 days in frustrated attempts to drill a rescue hole 700 metres down to the trapped men, Urzua also used his training as a topographer to make detailed maps of the miners’ underground world, which includes more than 2km of tunnels, caves and a 35 square metre refuge. With a white Nissan Terrano pickup truck as his office, Urzua drew maps; divided the miners’ world into a work area, a sleep area and a sanitary facility; and used the headlights of mining trucks to simulate sunlight in an attempt to provide a semblance of routine to the men’s daily lives. Urzua also kept the men on a 12-hour shift schedule.

When the first letters from the trapped men arrived “top side”, rescue workers were heartened to see the messages carefully worded and dated, a sign that the miners were not disorientated. “You think they wrote those letters in the moment? No,” said Manalich. “Urzua had that material prepared. He knew there would be a rescue mission.”

The rationing of food was by all accounts a remarkably prescient move by Urzua. When rescuers finally drilled a hole through the roof of the miner’s shelter, their food was all gone and the men had not eaten in 48 hours. “Their health was on a curve like this,” said Manalich, sweeping his hand down.

As Urzua’s 12-hour shift stretches to nearly one month of command and control, the former football coach has such complete dominion over the situation that on Friday during a daily medical conference call, he told Manalich to “keep it short, we have lots of work to do”.

Indeed, as the miners’ saga shifts from basic survival to active participants in a sophisticated rescue plan, Urzua has a host of tasks to prepare. On Saturday, the men began the move to a new shelter – an area with less mud some 200 metres down the mine shaft. The men not only reinforced the roof, but spent days chipping away at loose rocks in the ceiling to avoid being struck by falling stones at night.

Urzua receives three daily briefings: one from a doctor, another from a psychologist and the third from a miner updating him on the technical aspects of the rescue operation. The Chilean government has three separate rescue plans in place, called simply plans “A”, “B” and “C”. Each effort is a multimillion dollar gamble; all count on Urzua to organise a host of tasks for his mining crew.

“You realise that if we do it this way, there will be some 70,000 litres of water coming down into your chamber,” said Andre Sougarret, the lead engineer in overall rescue plans as he briefed Urzua by telephone on Friday. For 10 minutes Urzua and Sougarret discussed plans to engineer drainage and holding pools to shunt the water into canals, away from the miner’s living quarters.

A simple audio recording of their talk would have sounded like a normal conversation between a mining manager and a shift supervisor. However, in this case, Sougarret was standing inside a windswept tent talking into a Nitsuka phone system the size of a small suitcase, with cables running straight down 700 metres into the ground, where a weary Luis Urzua prepared a mission that will determine the survival of 33 men.

“I fully believe they will do it [survive],” said Al Holland, a psychologist with Nasa who rushed to Chile in an effort to share the agency’s experience with human isolation in extreme environments. “The miners are quite hearty, quite resilient … They have shown every sign that they can organise themselves; they are masters of their own fate.”

Around 1.4 million taxpayers owe up to £5,000 after computer system finds PAYE underpayments totalling £2bn

Nearly 6 million people in the UK are to be told they have paid the wrong amount of tax, with some facing bills demanding up to £5,000 in extra payments.

Around 1.4 million people will be told they owe an average of £1,400 because of errors in HM Revenue and Customs’ calculations of the pay as you earn (PAYE) tax system over the past two years.

The errors were identified by a new computer system that found widespread underpayments by employers through the PAYE system, which total about £2bn.

Employees who moved jobs or accepted company cars or cash benefits from their employer were the most likely to be caught by the new system.

But 4.3 million people are set to receive a rebate because they have paid too much. With a total overpayment of £1.8bn, each could receive an average rebate of £418.

The first 45,000 letters from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) are expected to arrive on doormats on Tuesday.

Around 30,000 letters will alert taxpayers that they are due a rebate and 15,000 will inform them that they have underpaid and will have their tax code altered next year to retrieve the money.

With an average additional payment of £1,428 being demanded, those affected by underpayments could be more than £100 a month worse off next year while the cash is recouped.

It is believed that in some cases individuals may have both underpaid and overpaid, and the amounts could cancel one another out.

In some cases, HMRC will consider writing off demands where taxpayers can demonstrate that they provided all the information necessary to calculate their tax correctly.

The problems arise because at the end of each year HMRC checks that the amounts deducted in tax and national insurance by employers using the PAYE system mach up with the information held on their records.

The process of checking contributions was done manually on a case-by-case basis until last June when a new computerised system was introduced, which HMRC says should help reduce mistakes in the future. It aims to reconcile information held on different systems within HM Revenue and Customs.

A HMRC spokesman said: “The vast majority of the 40 million people who pay through PAYE deductions are correctly taxed, but because circumstances change during the year there will always be a minority who have paid either too much or too little.”

He said taxpayers could dispute extra tax charges by claiming on a ESC19 form that they had supplied information in good faith and retrospective bills should be dropped.

Anita Monteith, of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, said some people would not have to make the repayments if HMRC made the error while calculating the tax codes manually.

She said: “HMRC can agree to give up collecting an underpayment if they had the right information to calculate tax deductions and did not use it when they should have done.

“However, it would depend on what has caused the underpayment.”

Monteith said anyone who receives a letter should first check that the HMRC’s new calculation matches the information on the P60 for that year.

“If you disagree with what they are asking for then call or write to HMRC. However, you might find that the phone lines are jammed next week.

“People cannot refuse to pay the money because it is legally due.”

Former prime minister attacked by anti-war protesters in Dublin as he promotes memoirs

Skirmishes broke out between protesters and police at the first public signing for Tony Blair’s memoirs, with shoes and eggs hurled at the former prime minister.

Four men were arrested and charged with public order offences for their part in the protest this morning outside Eason’s bookshop on O’Connell Street in Dublin, Ireland, which involved anti-war demonstrators and the Continuity IRA-aligned Republican Sinn Féin, who oppose the Northern Ireland peace process.

A Garda spokesmen said the four men – two in their late teens and two in their mid-30s – were released from custody and will appear before Dublin district court on various dates later this month.

Gardai had earlier dragged a number of demonstrators off the street and during the fracas a male protester in a wheelchair was knocked to the ground.

Protesters shouted “Whose cops? Blair’s cops!” as they taunted the gardai while Blair remained inside the bookshop. They also shouted: “Hey hey Tony hey, how many kids have you killed today?”

About 400 people were queuing up around the side of the store in Middle Abbey Street to meet Blair. They were verbally abused by a number of demonstrators who denounced them as “west Brits”.

Protester Pixie ni hEicht, from Dublin, criticised both the garda and the hundreds who had turned out for the book signing: “The police are west Brits who are protecting a British terrorist and the people queuing up over there should be ashamed of themselves. All these people buying the book are jackeens and traitors.”

Activist Kate O’Sullivan, from Cork, attempted to make a citizen’s arrest during the signing before Blair’s security team dragged her away.

“I went up to him and I said ‘Mr Blair, I’m here to make a citizen’s arrest for the war crimes that you’ve committed’,” said O’Sullivan, 24, a member of the Irish Palestine Solidarity Movement.

Richard Boyd-Barrett, of the Anti-War Movement, accused the former prime minister of making blood money from the Iraq war.

He said: “It really is shameful that somebody can be responsible for the death and destruction that he was responsible for in Iraq and Afghanistan and walk away without any accounting for that and become a very wealthy man off the back of it.”

Following the skirmishes, the city tram service was suspended and shops in the surrounding area were also closed.

Buyers at the signing had to hand over bags and mobile phones before entering the store. Undercover detectives mingled with the crowds taking names before Blair arrived at about 10.30am.

A huge security operation was put in place around Dublin’s main thoroughfare in preparation for the Blair visit. The northbound end of O’Connell Street was closed to traffic from early this morning while the city’s main northside tram link, the Luas line, was closed down.

Plain-clothes detectives were also deployed around O’Connell Street as part of the security operation.

After the signing, Blair was whisked from a side entrance of the store at about 12.40pm.

In his memoirs, A Journey, Blair defends his decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003. The book, which was released earlier this week, has become one of the fastest selling autobiographies on record. His decision to donate the £5m proceeds from the book to the British Legion has been dismissed as a cynical gesture to curry favour by critics.

Before the signing he had already enraged the anti-war movement in Ireland with comments on the Irish TV programme The Late Late Show last night.

During his interview on RTE, Blair warned that Iran was now one of the biggest state sponsors of radical Islam. It must be prevented from developing a nuclear weapon, even if that meant taking military action, he said.

Blair defended the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, despite Saddam Hussein not possessing weapons of mass destruction.

He tried to convince the audience that he acted against the one million people who marched in opposition to the war because he could not take decisions “based on those that shout most”.

Blair, who was greeted by about 50 protesters at the RTE studios, also denied he had “blood on his hands” and said he didn’t believe he was a war criminal.

It is believed he chose Ireland for his only live interview since his memoirs’ publication because he felt he would get a better hearing because of the peace he secured in Northern Ireland.

He said: “When we finally got the whole lot together, literally weeks before I left office in 2007, and there was Martin McGuinness sitting with Ian Paisley, and it was such a strange and extraordinary sight and it was one of the few times in politics I felt really proud actually.”