The extraordinary case of the leech that led to a conviction of a weapon-wielding crook is believed to be a world first - and now the robber is awaiting sentencing on Friday.

Crown prosecutor John Ransom told a judge in Tasmania that the chances of the DNA found in the leech matching someone were one in a hundred million.

‘It is the oddest way of convicting anyone I have ever been involved in,’ Detective Inspector Mick Johnston said outside the court after 54- year-old Peter Cannon pleaded guilty to aggravated armed robbery committed in 2001.

‘I have not been able to find any similar cases anywhere in the world - nothing like this at all.’

But the photo, widely distributed via the Internet, appears likely to be a 7-year-old image taken during a film shoot.

“In this politically charged environment, people throw any kind of thing out there without checking,” said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at UC Berkeley. “It’s just part of the crazy Internet world.”

Violence broke out in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and surrounding areas March 14-16, days after the start of massive demonstrations marking the anniversary of a Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. Chinese officials say 22 people died in the riots; representatives of Tibetan exile groups say several times that number were killed.

Efforts to improve turnout by increasing postal voting have raised the risk of fraud and undermined confidence in the electoral process, a damaging report from the Joseph Rowntree Trust concludes.

The report criticises the state of the country’s electoral registers, which often include voters who are dead, fictitious or have a vote registered elsewhere. In some areas, particularly those with many migrants, up to a third of eligible voters may be missing from the roll.

The trust calls for an urgent overhaul, including making voters show photographic ID to get a ballot paper. It also calls for the cleansing of electoral registers to ensure that all names are legitimate. Thousands of “phantom” voters have just been removed or have disappeared from the register in Peterborough after the council drew up a new electoral roll.

Police said the death was suspicious and the cause was “unexplained head injuries”.

A 38-year-old man and 36-year-old woman have been charged with possessing materials to make methamphetamine and possessing a rifle after police last week searched the house where the child lived.

They appeared in Papakura District Court today where police said the man was a suspect in the boy’s death.

“Producing biofuels today is a crime against humanity,” UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told Bayerischer Runfunk radio.

Using arable land to produce crops for biofuels has reduced surfaces available to grow food, many observers warn.

Mr Ziegler called on the International Monetary Fund to change its policies on agricultural subsidies and to stop supporting only programs aimed at debt reduction.

Agriculture should also be subsided in regions where it ensured the survival of local populations, he said.

Women passengers are often exposed to taunts, jeers and drunken sexual advances from drivers and male travellers.

In the latest incident, Nwabisa Ngcukana, 25, who was travelling from her Soweto home to work at a bar in the upmarket suburb of Sandton, was set upon by taxi operators. They stripped her and sexually assaulted her as “punishment” for being what they said was indecently dressed.