Winds of more than 80mph brought down trees and damaged houses as a severe storm battered Britain.

Travellers faced delays and thousands of people in the West Country and South Wales woke to find they were without electricity after falling trees crashed through power lines.

A tanker with 13 crew on board was in trouble off the Isle of Wight as the storms whipped up the waters around the coasts.

Police warned travellers to use "extreme caution" amid fears of heavy delays.

The gales were expected to last for much of the day with further bad weather over the next 48 hours. The highest recorded wind speed so far was 82mph at Berry Head in Brixham, south Devon.

Winds were gusting up to gale force nine in the English Channel, a Port of Dover spokeswoman said. The Port of Dover was closed to all shipping movements as hurricane-force winds buffeted the coast, a spokesman said.

He said: "We've got wind speeds of about 80mph at the moment. Our advice to travellers is for people to check with their ferry companies before setting off because it's unlikely that anything will be going out for some time."

Driving winds and snow caused treacherous conditions on the A66 between Co Durham and Cumbria. Lorries sheltered at the side of the Trans-Pennine route to avoid being toppled by the gusts.

Snow ploughs were out to keep the road open, as blizzards swept across the road.

The Environment Agency currently has seven severe flood warnings in force, 48 flood warnings and 53 flood watches

An Australian magazine has apologised for publishing a story revealing that Prince Harry was fighting with British troops in Afghanistan, eventually resulting in him being sent home.

New Idea said it was unaware of a media embargo about the Prince's mission when it ran the story in January. The report went largely unnoticed until February when the Drudge Report cited the magazine and a German publication with running the news.

The story was widely reported after the Drudge Report posting, and British officials decided to pull Harry out of Afghanistan for his safety and that of his unit.

In an unsigned item in its latest edition, New Idea did not explain the source of its January story and indicated that it did not check with British military officials before publishing.

"We did not knowingly breach any embargo and were not party to any agreement for a media blackout on the story," the magazine said.

"However, and more importantly, we do acknowledge that our actions in publishing the story can be reasonably viewed as insensitive and irresponsible... We regret this serious lapse of judgment."

The magazine apologised to its readers and to troops and their families who serve abroad.

Harry spent almost 10 weeks in Afghanistan's volatile Helmand Province, with his deployment kept secret by a deal between officials and British and media.

New Idea is a celebrity and lifestyle magazine with a monthly circulation of about 390,000 copies.

New Delhi: A city court on Saturday asked Delhi Police to confront a policeman, arrested on Friday for allegedly accepting bribes from kidney scam kingpin Amit Kumar, with him Feb 18.

Metropolitan Magistrate Chandra Shekhar ordered Delhi Police to conduct the Test Identification Parade (TIP) of assistant sub-inspector Ravinder Kumar with Amit Kumar in the Tihar Jail premises.

Delhi Police arrested Ravinder Kumar on Friday and registered a case against him and six other constables for accepting bribes from Amit Kumar, who was nabbed earlier this month in Nepal.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate A.K. Kohar sent Ravinder Kumar to four-day judicial custody on Friday.

The six policemen were allegedly bribed by Upendra Aggarwal, a key associate of Amit Kumar, to let off the scam kingpin. Aggarwal was the first to be arrested when the racket was unearthed Jan 24 from a Gurgaon clinic run by Amit Kumar alias Santosh Rameshwar Raut.

The multi-million-rupee racket of illegal kidney transplants served clients from Britain, the US, Greece, Lebanon, Canada, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries.

Amit Kumar was arrested Feb 7 from a resort hotel near the India-Nepal border and deported to India last week. He is presently in the custody of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Source: Indo-Asian News Service

Colombo: Tamil Tiger chief Velupillai Prabhakaran was "critically injured" in an air raid on Nov 26, 2007, said Air Marshal Roshan Goonetilleke, commander of the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF).

However, B. Nadesan, head of the political wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), said the claim was baseless.

On Friday, Goonetilleke told the state-owned television network ITN that Prabhakaran's presence in the targeted site was evident from the volume of anti-aircraft fire the raiders faced.

A mobile anti-aircraft unit always accompanied the LTTE chieftain wherever he went, the air chief said in support of his claim. It could be surmised that the LTTE chief was hit on that day, from two facts: firstly, all the 20 bombs dropped were bang on the targeted bunkers, destroying them totally; secondly, Prabhakaran has not been seen anywhere outside since then, Goonetilleke said.

"He had not even attended the funeral of Charles, his trusted chief of military intelligence," the air chief said.

But denying the incident in an interview to the Tamil daily Thinakkural, LTTE's spokesperson Nadesan said Prabhakaran's defences were foolproof and impregnable. "Nobody can approach our leader," he said.

The Sri Lankan air chief discounted the story that Prabhakaran had left the shores of the country for medical treatment.

"A terrorist leader usually doesn't leave his movement at a critical juncture like this as he fears that someone else might take his place," Goonetilleke said.

Asked when the LTTE would be defeated, he said: "Very shortly."

Earlier, the government had said the war would be over by August this year before the summit of the South Asian heads of government to be held at Kandy in Sri Lanka.

But Army Commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka had said it would be over before he retired the end of the year. More recently, President Mahinda Rajapaksa told a foreign magazine interviewer that it would take another year and a half.

Reacting to this, Nadesan said there was "no military pressure" on the organisation's defences in the north for the government to talk of any such time schedules.

He charged that the government was hiding the bitter truth from the people of south Sri Lanka, which was that the army was taking heavy casualties and burying its dead on the spot, instead of taking the bodies to the south for funerals.

Source: IANS