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A Melbourne-based study has already transformed the lives of many of the children who took part in the clinical trial.

Researchers from the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute gave about 30 allergic children a daily dose of peanut protein together with a probiotic in an increasing amount over an 18-month period.

The probiotic used in the study was Lactobacillus rhamnosus and the dose was equivalent to eating about 20kg of yoghurt each day. At the end of the trial 80% of the children could eat peanuts without any reaction.

“Many of the children and families believe it has changed their lives, they’re very happy, they feel relieved,” said the lead researcher, Mimi Tang. “These findings provide the first vital step towards developing a cure for peanut allergy and possibly other food allergies.”

Almost three in every 100 Australian children have a peanut allergy.

“To establish a first-tier, international, liveable and harmonious city, it is very important to establish a system of standards, and Beijing is currently doing this,” he said last Friday, according to the China Youth Daily newspaper.

Eric Horvitz’s position contrasts with that of several other leading thinkers.

Last December, Prof Stephen Hawking told the BBC that such machines could “spell the end of the human race”.

Mr Horvitz also revealed that “over a quarter of all attention and resources” at his research unit were now focused on AI-related activities.

“There have been concerns about the long-term prospect that we lose control of certain kinds of intelligences,” he said.

“I fundamentally don’t think that’s going to happen.

“I think that we will be very proactive in terms of how we field AI systems, and that in the end we’ll be able to get incredible benefits from machine intelligence in all realms of life, from science to education to economics to daily life.”

Mr Horvitz heads up a team of more than 1,000 scientists and engineers at Microsoft’s research wing.

The division’s work on AI has already helped give rise to Cortana – a voice-controlled virtual assistant that runs on the Windows Phone platform and will shortly come to desktop PCs when Windows 10 is released.

Mr Horvitz said that he believed Cortana and its rivals would spur on development of the field.

Dr Nathaniel Cary told the inquiry into Mr Litvinenko’s death that his body was “very hazardous” and had to be transferred to a secure site for tests.

Mr Litvinenko died from radiation poisoning in a London hospital in 2006.

His death came nearly three weeks after he drank tea laced with polonium.

Attackers need little more than a phone number to send a message that can compromise the devices via the Silent Text application.

The impact of the flaw is troubling because BlackPhone attracts what hackers see as high-value victims: those willing to invest AU$765 (£415, $630) in a phone that claims to put security above form and features may well have valuable calls and texts to hide from eavesdroppers.

Mark Dowd (@mdowd), noted Sydney-based hacker and co-founder of security consultancy Azimuth Security, discovered the flaw during casual research in the latter months of 2014. He shared his findings with The Register while the fix – due to be disclosed today – was being developed.

“Successful exploitation can yield remote code execution with the privileges of the Silent Text application, which runs as a regular Android app, but with some additional system privileges required to perform its SMS-like functionality such as access to contacts, access to location information, the ability to write to external storage, and of course net access,” Dowd said, noting the bug took him about a week to find.

Since 2003, parts of the brigade have deployed in support of U.S. efforts there on at least three occasions.

Now, more than three years after the U.S. military presence in Iraq was thought over, about a quarter of the Panther Brigade will return with a new mission to help train Iraqi forces to fight the Islamic State.

About 1,000 paratroopers from the brigade will deploy this week as part of the Operation Inherent Resolve mission.

“The downgrade reflects our view that Russia’s monetary policy flexibility has become more limited and its economic growth prospects have weakened,” the ratings agency said in a statement announcing the one-notch cut to a ‘BB+’ rating.

The plunge in oil prices and Western sanctions over Moscow’s role in the Ukraine war have pummelled the Russian economy in recent months, with the ruble collapsing in value.