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The claims led to Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary delaying a report into undercover police tactics at the last minute.

It had been due to be published today and was thought to be critical of the police.

Lawyers for a convicted protester claim a Metropolitan Police officer called Jim Boyling, posing as an activist, was prosecuted alongside their client and lied under oath to conceal his true identity.

Solicitors from the law firm Bindmans claim Boyling pretended to be Jim Sutton between 1995 and 2000 and joined the non-violent organisation Reclaim the Streets, the Guardian newspaper reported.

As part of his role, Bindmans claim, he was prosecuted at Horseferry Road magistrates court in London in 1997 for disorderly behaviour in a three-day trial.

The lifeless body of Claude Dray, 76, was found with three bullet holes in the neck in Neuilly-sur-Seine, the Paris suburb where President Nicolas Sarkozy built his career and still owns property.

A butler found Dray’s corpse at 9am on Tuesday following a death that had all the hallmarks of a professional hit.

Dray, one of the most prominent Jews in France, had been the subject of threats in the past. His palatial villa – which was called Madrid – was considered one of the most secure in the French capital.

It was regularly surrounded by police and private security guards, and is equipped with anti-intruder measures including cameras and infra-red alarms.

“Somebody got in and fired three bullets into the victim’s neck,” said one detective at the scene who asked not to be named, adding that a silencer had likely been used as domestic staff heard nothing.

Dray’s wife, Simone, was in the US, where four years ago he bought the famous art deco National Hotel in South Beach, Miami.

Anyone curious about the cost of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can look it up on costofwar.com, up to the latest fraction of a second. Last weekend, the Iraq war had cost more than $800 billion since 2001; the Afghan war, $467 billion plus.

For the 8-1/2-year conflict in Iraq alone, that works out to nearly $3,000 a second.

So President Obama’s announcement that all US troops will be out of Iraq by year end should mean some drop in ongoing military spending. But the budget relief probably won’t be as much as you might expect.

Tragically, beside the financial cost, there is the human toll. The war in Iraq has resulted in some 4,480 US troops killed and more than 32,000 wounded. (The Iraqis have suffered far more fatalities, about 654,965, according to the British medical journal The Lancet.) Thus, ongoing medical and disability claims and treatment of US veterans will boost the costs of the Iraq war even more.

After marathon negotiations that continued well past midnight, European leaders said banks and other major investors in Greek bonds agreed to take losses of up to 50 percent. This concession was meant to help prevent the Greek government from defaulting on bills it cannot pay and avoid an even costlier shock to the European financial system.

The losses are much larger than private investors accepted under a deal this summer. Since then, Greece’s economy has steadily eroded, making it even harder for the government to repay its bonds.

The question of how to structure a new refinancing plan for Greece and divide the costs of rescuing it has been at the center of negotiations. Other elements of the plan were dependent on European officials reaching an agreement with negotiators for major banks, which had been balking at taking bigger losses.

Under the deal, the bailout fund, known as the new European Financial Stability Facility, would help cash-strapped countries such as Italy and Spain borrow at least a trillion dollars by providing a kind of insurance that would make their bonds more attractive to investors.

Officers also fired bean bags but denied using rubber bullets to quell protest on Tuesday in Oakland, California, where unrest erupted after a protest camp was broken up and 97 people arrested.

On Wednesday, demonstrators were vowing to take to the streets again with a march scheduled for 6:00 pm (0100 GMT Thursday). Police have said protesters will not be allowed in the city plaza beyond 10:00 pm.

Police initially said they had no reports of injuries, but Highland General Hospital spokesman Curt Olsen confirmed that Marine veteran Scott Olsen had been admitted and was in critical condition.

The spokesman, who is not related to the veteran, said he was unable to release further details about the man’s injuries without the family’s consent.

A statement by the group Iraq Veterans Against the War said Olsen was suffering from a skull fracture after being hit by a “police projectile.”

Keith Shannon, a friend and fellow veteran, said that Olsen had joined the Oakland protest because “he felt corporations and banks had too much control over our government.”

The Stop Online Piracy Act has received bipartisan support in the House of Representatives and is the House version of a bill introduced in the Senate in May known as the Theft of Intellectual Property Act or Protect IP Act.

The legislation has received the backing of Hollywood, the music industry, the Business Software Alliance, the National Association of Manufacturers, the US Chamber of Commerce and other groups.

Victor Dahdaleh, 68, former president of the Canada-U.K. Chamber of Commerce and a McGill University benefactor, is alleged to have paid bribes to officials of an aluminium company in Bahrain between 2001 and 2005.

Police allege that the payments were in connection with contracts with U.S. aluminum maker Alcoa Inc., for supplies of alumina shipped to Aluminium Bahrain, a smelting company with a majority state ownership.

Dahdaleh, who was born in Jordan and holds dual Canadian and British citizenships, has denied any wrongdoing.

“Mr. Dahdaleh believes the investigation into his affairs was flawed and that he has done absolutely nothing wrong,” his lawyers said in a statement Tuesday.

“He will be vigorously contesting these charges at every stage, confident in clearing his good name.”

The U.K. Serious Fraud Office, a British government department responsible for investigating and prosecuting serious and complex fraud, filed the charges against Dahdaleh on Monday.

In charging Mr. Gupta, the government will tie up one of the biggest loose ends resulting from the investigation into the Galleon Group, which began nearly five years ago at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Since then, more than two dozen people have pleaded guilty or been convicted of swapping illegal tips around company earnings and other major corporate events. Raj Rajaratnam, the Galleon co-founder, was sentenced to 11 years in prison this month for making tens of millions of dollars by trading on confidential tips.

Authorities have broadly pursued insider trading on Wall Street, exacting guilty pleas from a chemist at the Federal Drug Administration, among others, as recently as this month. While the majority of those charged have been traders and analysts on Wall Street, Mr. Gupta, 62, is the first to be implicated from the upper echelons of corporate America.

The charges are a stunning reversal of fortunes for Mr. Gupta. A native of India, he graduated from Harvard Business School and had a global profile as an adviser to some of the nation’s most iconic companies. He served as a director at Goldman, Procter & Gamble and the parent company of American Airlines. In addition to his professional pedigree, Mr. Gupta was a noted philanthropist, serving in coveted posts with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Mr. Gupta’s case has been a tricky one for the government. Though his name came up repeatedly at Mr. Rajaratnam’s trial, both in testimony and in secretly recorded phone conversations, the Justice Department never filed charges against him. The S.E.C. filed an administrative action against Mr. Gupta, and he countersued. The agency later dropped the civil proceedings, but reserved the right to refile the case.

On Wednesday, the S.E.C. refiled their civil action against Mr. Gupta.

An internal investigation found signs that the information had been transmitted outside the company’s computer network, with the strong possibility that an outsider was involved.

This is the first time that sources have acknowledged that defense and nuclear plant information may have leaked from Mitsubishi Heavy’s computers due to a computer virus, despite the company saying it had taken appropriate safeguard measures.

The computers were found to have been hacked in August, and 83 computers were found to have been infected with a virus. Those computers were spread out over 11 locations, including the Kobe and Nagasaki shipyards that construct submarines and destroyers as well as the Nagoya facility that is in charge of manufacturing a guided missile system.

At that time, Mitsubishi Heavy officials said no confirmation had been made that information related to products or clients had leaked.

According to sources, a further investigation into dozens of computers at other locations found evidence that information about defense equipment and nuclear power plants had been transmitted from those computers to outside the company.

The defense information is related to the fighter jets and helicopters that Mitsubushi Heavy manufactures for the Defense Ministry. Officials said they were uncertain if any confidential defense information was included in the leaked data.