Benedict later prayed to Brazil's patron saint for help in restoring the church's eroding influence in Latin America's largest nation, where the number of Catholics has dropped sharply in recent decades while born-again Protestant congregations have added millions of faithful to their ranks.

Speaking at a special brainstorming session on the sidelines of the 34th Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers (ICFM), the foreign ministers termed Islamophobia the worst form of terrorism and called for practical steps to counter it.

The ministers described Islamophobia as a deliberate defamation of Islam and discrimination and intolerance against Muslims. "This campaign of calumny against Muslims resulted in the publication of the blasphemous cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in a Danish newspaper and the issuance of the inflammatory statement by Pope Benedict XVI," they said. During a speech in Germany last year, the Pope quoted a 14th Century Christian emperor who said the Prophet had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things. The Pope's remarks aroused the anger of the whole Islamic world.

The proposal, in a new draft fertility bill published today, would allow scientists to create three different types of hybrid embryos.

Scientists would be allowed to grow the embryos in a lab for no more than two weeks, and it would be illegal to implant them in a human.

The first kind of hybrid allowed under the bill, known as a chimeric embryo, is made by injecting cells from an animal into a human embryo. The second, known as a human transgenic embryo, involves injecting animal DNA into a human embryo.

The third, known as a cytoplasmic hybrid, is created by transferring the nuclei of human cells, such as skin cells, into animal eggs from which almost all the genetic material has been removed.

This is this type of human-animal embryo that is being developed in British universities. Scientists say that developing these embryos will provide a plentiful source of stem cells - immature cells that can develop into many different types of tissue - for use in medical research.

The move is a U-turn on proposals to outlaw all types of human-animal embryos set out by ministers in a white paper published last December.

Mr Blair's decision to formalise his Catholic beliefs was revealed by Father Michael Seed, who is regarded as unofficial chaplain to Westminster and is a regular visitor to Number Ten.

A study skills curriculum written by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard is being taught as mainstream public education.

All the eighth-graders at Prescott Middle School are being taught learning techniques Hubbard devised four decades ago when he set out to remedy what he viewed as barriers to learning.

The curriculum and textbooks used by Prescott's 156 eighth-graders are similar to methods and books used among Scientologists worldwide. And teaching the children is a Scientologist hired by the school district.

Scientologists helped usher Hubbard's program into the school during the chaotic months after Hurricane Katrina. Celebrity Scientologists John Travolta and Isaac Hayes played key roles, as did a former Clearwater resident known for her persuasive voice.

The people who run the program say Hubbard's teaching technique is divorced from Scientology, that it is just a masterful way to learn. They note that it has won the support of many non-Scientologists, including a number of academics.

Other experts, though, question the quality of the program. And some church skeptics fret that it is an insidious plan ultimately aimed at promoting Scientology.

The testimony of a British surgeon about the "miraculous" recovery of a baby has helped pave the way for the canonisation of Malta's first saint.

Anil Dhawan, a professor of paediatric hepatology at King's College Hospital, London, told The Daily Telegraph yesterday that there was no scientific explanation for the recovery of a Maltese boy with "devastating" liver failure.

Dr Dhawan was speaking for the first time about his evidence to a Roman Catholic church tribunal, which investigated whether the child's improvement could be ascribed to Blessed George Preca, a 20th century Maltese priest who died in 1962.

A glove that had touched the body of the priest was placed on the boy by his parents, both devout Catholics, as he lay in a critical condition in King's College hospital nearly six years ago.

The "miracle cure" has been declared genuine by the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI will canonise Blessed George in Rome in 11 days' time.

"What we're interested in here is the transition from fin to limb -- a great evolutionary event," paleontologist Neil Shubin, an author of the research with colleagues Marcus Davis and Randall Dahn, said in a telephone interview.

They studied one of the most primitive types of fish on Earth -- the long-snouted paddlefish Polyodon spathula -- and found the fish that predated the first land vertebrates may have possessed genetic underpinnings for limb development.

Paddlefish, found in freshwater locales in the United States and China, are early "ray-finned" fish. Their fleshy fins are structurally similar to fish predating the first land creatures. Their fins contain cartilage thought to correspond to the upper arm bone of land vertebrates, Shubin said.