The police have embarrassingly lost control of the National High-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) website. It appears the police have let the domain registration lapse, and it has now been picked up by an opportunistic German owner, Uwe Matt.

A man who chose “Lloyds is pants” as his telephone banking password said he found it had been changed by a member of staff to “no it’s not”. He said he was then banned from changing it back or to another password of “Barclays is better”.

The computer, which was sold on eBay for £77, contained sensitive information on several million bank customers. The information is said to have included account details and in some cases customers’ signatures, mobile phone numbers and mothers’ maiden names.

Gay rights campaigners have accused the Vatican – which has ordered the disinterment in the first step towards beatification – of attempting to cover up the sexuality of Cardinal John Henry Newman, who died in 1890.

Beleaguered British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, keen for a fillip from his country’s sporting successes in Beijing, has instead been swamped by more bad news and poor polling. A survey published on Sunday put support for Mr. Brown’s Labour Party at 25%, compared with the opposition Conservatives’ 46%.

After accounting for socioeconomic differences, men aged over 60 from 140 countries that practice polygamy to varying degrees lived on average 12% longer than men from 49 mostly monogamous nations, says Virpi Lummaa, an ecologist at the University of Sheffield, UK. Lummaa presented her findings last week at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology’s annual meeting in Ithaca, New York.

Stonewall, the gay lobby group, has been hired to advise MI5, the domestic arm of the intelligence services, on how to encourage its spies to be more open about their sexuality and how to attract more gay applicants for posts.

The king penguin - full name Nils Olav - became the first black-and-white pint-sized Norwegian Sir with wings after inspecting the Norwegian King’s Guard, which is visiting Edinburgh for the annual Military Tattoo.

Lynton Crosby is a former federal director of the Liberal Party and together with his business partner, the pollster Mark Textor, was seen as vital to Howard’s long winning streak, which came to an end in last November’s federal election. Crosby’s golden rule No. 2 might have rung most loudly in Liberal ears.

The High Court in London heard that Mwynwen Jones, 57, was guilty of nothing more than making run-of-the-mill “household noises”. But Judge John Behrens rejected her legal attempt to overturn Gwynedd County Council’s moves to evict her.