By Alex Kirby  BBC News Online environment correspondent, in Nairobi

The researcher says there have been recorded cases in several countries of dam construction causing earthquakes. Large-scale mining, he believes, can sometimes produce the same result. 

He says parts of Africa are especially vulnerable because of the tectonic forces that are shaping the continent. 

The scientist, Chris Hartnady, is a former associate professor in the department of geological sciences at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. 

He was attending a conference here, the Africa Mountains High Summit, hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep). 

Pulled apart

Professor Hartnady says in his presentation: "Large areas of the African continent are in an unstable, tectonically active state, and especially in the mountain regions substantial danger is posed to growing populations. 

"The economic cost of seismic and volcanic disasters is likely to escalate dramatically during this century. 

If you dig a big enough reservoir, you're going to get earthquakes

Bill McGuire Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre

Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre in London, UK, says rising seismic and volcanic damage is a worldwide problem. 

"There's no question that if you dig a big enough reservoir, you're going to get earthquakes. 

"The Three Gorges Dam in China is going to be a big problem," he told BBC News Online. 

"There's also the worry that if you build a dam in mountainous terrain that you will get landslides as it fills." 

A huge landslide behind the Vaiont dam in northern Italy in 1963 took the lives of over 2,500 people when a wave of water and debris spilled over the dam and swept away a small town, he explained. 

Professor Hartnady says the African continental crust is stressed to the "fracture criticality" limit. 

Build dams if you must, but engineer them much more sensitively than we do now

Chris Hartnady

"And partly it's the forces at play in the boundary zone between the Nubian and Somalian tectonic plates. Mining triggers earthquakes in South Africa's high veldt." 

Real and present danger

In late October 1995, the reservoir behind the Katse dam in Lesotho began to fill. Days later people started feeling earth tremors, and one measuring 3.1 on the Richter scale was recorded on 3 January 1996. 

"I am positive that was cause and effect. In 1964, a dam was built at Koyna in India's Western Ghats. There was a big earthquake in the region in 1967 - cause and effect again. 

"So build dams if you must, but engineer them much more sensitively than we do now." 

Professor Hartnady believes geohazards, including earthquakes, volcanic activity and shifting soils, are an underestimated problem. 

He says: "I wonder whether for Africa they may be a more real and present danger than climate change. We badly need more research, on the sort of scale of the effort going into climate change. 

"Geohazards are a problem in developed countries too, in places like California and Japan. The US Geological Survey has a wealth of expertise. But some of their knowledge just isn't applicable in places like Africa with much slower rates of motion. 

"In the San Andreas Fault in California, the rate is something like 30-50 mm a year, compared with 5-10 mm in the Rift Valley in East Africa. But while 5 mm a year may not be sexy, it could be serious." 

Signal in the noise

Compared with the centuries-old records and monitoring from developed countries, Africa's detailed seismological monitoring goes back only about 40 years, Professor Hartnady says. 

But he is confident that science means it will soon be possible to predict the risks much more accurately. 

"We need to leapfrog to a new kind of technology, and it does exist," he says. "There's everything space geodesy can offer, including the global positioning system, very long baseline interferometry, and satellite laser-ranging. These will measure current rates of plate motion. 

"I can't tell people now when the risks will become acute. There could be a catastrophe tomorrow, or we could get through this century without one. 

"Come back in five to 10 years, though, when we can start to distinguish the signal from the noise, and I'll give you the numbers. The sooner we begin sophisticated monitoring, the sooner we'll have the answers." 

The information will be used to develop more powerful medicines to fight superbugs and even cancer. 

The bacterium, known as Streptomyces coelicolor, is found in the soil. 

Superbugs are on the rise in hospitals

Together with other members of the same family, the bug produces two-thirds of all natural antibiotics. 

It also makes drugs used to treat cancer or stop organs being rejected by the human body after transplant operations. 

Microbe war

Biotech companies say they may be able to make new drugs from scratch using genetic knowledge of the bacterium. 

They now know the biochemical instructions for the machinery the bug uses to make antibiotics. 

The eight million or so DNA "letters" of the bug's genome are organised into 20 groups of genes. 

"This organism has twice as many genes as typical free-living bacteria. You could say it's a boy scout - it's prepared. You've got the core of the chromosome, and then there are arms which are not essential but do useful things, like making antibiotics." 

New antibiotics are needed to fight the rise of superbugs - bacteria that have become resistant to common antibiotics used to fight disease. 

The most notorious of these is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a bug that infects wounds and has become rife in hospitals. 

The completed genome of this bacterium was recently published by Japanese researchers. 

The Streptomyces data are published in the scientific journal Nature. 

The call has come from a Tory MSP, Phil Gallie, who has lodged a motion in the Scottish Parliament seeking a royal pardon for William Wallace. 

It urges fellow MSPs officially to recognise Wallace as a "patriot" before the 700th anniversary of his death in August 1305. 

Mr Gallie said the anniversary represented an opportunity to "right a wrong". 

You can't be guilty of treason if you didn't do it. Wallace was a prisoner of war

Mike Russell SNP

But the Scottish National Party criticised the move and said the Tories knew little about Scottish history. 

Wallace was the hero of Mel Gibson's 1995 Holywood blockbuster film Braveheart. 

So far, the motion has received the support of 11 Tory MSPs. 

'International name'

Mr Gallie also called for Wallace to be recognised as a "patriot, loyal to his country in the days before the Union of the Crowns and Parliaments". 

"William Wallace was somebody that Scotland can be proud of and today he is an international name," the South of Scotland MSP said. 

"Surely we would all agree that he was a great patriot and he shouldn't have the stain of treason left over his name. He wasn't a traitor." 

Phil Gallie: "Stain of treason"

Mr Gallie said that a pardon could also bolster Scotland's tourist industry. 

Wallace won several victories against better-equipped invading English armies. 

But he was betrayed after his defeat at the Battle of Falkirk and taken to London in chains where he was accused of treason. 

He was then hung, drawn and quartered following a mock trial on the site of what is now London's Smithfield Market. 

'Invading army'

SNP MSP Mike Russell said his party would not back the motion and accused the Conservatives of not knowing their Scottish history. 

"You can't be guilty of treason if you didn't do it. Wallace was a prisoner of war," Mr Russell said. 

"He was taken by an invading army and executed very brutally as part of an act of war. 

"It may have been called treason but it certainly wasn't. In 1995 on St Andrew's Day, the Tories' Michael Forsyth described William Wallace as a `loser'. 

"The Tories haven't changed, they still know very little about Scottish history." 

Levels of sales for Nicotine Replacement Therapy have risen massively and are expected to be 160% higher than in 1997. 

Nicotine patches and chewing gum are among the top sellers by those desperate to kick the habit, says consumer market analyst Mintel. 

Men are more likely to smoke than women, the survey found

But despite the sales, Mintel's survey found people still think the best way to give up is good old fashioned will power. 

In its survey Mintel quizzed 1,027 people and discovered one in three were smokers. 

Patches and gum

Almost 40% of these said they were trying to cut down for health reasons and a similar number admitted they wished they had never started smoking. 

Men were more likely to light up than women - the survey found 36% men and 29% of women smoked. 

Women are also more likely to try to stop smoking, the survey found. 

The report states that sales of products to help smokers quit will reach £94.7m this year and are expected to be £125m by 2006. 

Nicotine patches and chewing gum account for 85% of sales, but more people are also turning to tablets to help them ditch the habit. 

Those planning to stop smoking has also risen - one in five smokers would like to give up according to the report. 

Combined power

And it is the Scottish who seem to have the strongest desire to stub out their cigarettes. 

Less than a quarter want to stop in south-west England, and Wales, whereas 42% would like to become non-smokers in Scotland. 

But both smokers and new non-smokers are united in the belief that willpower is the strongest substance needed to stop. 

Mintel's consumer goods consultant Elvira Doghem-Rashid said NRT was most effective when coupled with support from manufacturers and health authorities. 

She said: "NRT is now viewed as an effective means of alleviating withdrawal symptoms, thereby addressing the biochemical problems." 

Cessation programmes

The Department of Health published figures on Thursday showing that thousands of smokers are successfully quitting the habit with help of cessation services. 

From April to December 2001, 153,000 people had set a quit date through smoking cessation services and at the four week follow-up around 79,100 had successfully quit. 

The NHS Smoking Helpline - 0800 169 0169 - and NHS Smoking Centres in every health authority provide support for those wanting to quit. 

BBC News Online's Claire Hills visited the Public Records Office in London's Kew and encountered the case of one of the more colourful spies to serve British interests.

There was only one appropriate codename for a playboy double agent who had a penchant for ménage a trois. 

But although Agent Tricycle may have come across as an early James Bond-type, he was vital to Britain's intelligence gathering and, some say, the country's most important agent. 

Born Dusko Popov, into a wealthy Yugoslavian family in 1912, he was recruited by MI5 to run as a double agent between 1940 and 1944. 

Communicating by wireless, invisible ink postcards and a special code of microdots, he convinced his German employers that he was passing them important British military intelligence - but in fact all he gave them had been carefully cleared and construed. 

In peace time, he spends a month or more of every year in Paris as he is very fond of the society of attractive women

British Army assessment

His regular room at the Savoy in London and his "appreciation of the ladies" earned him a reputation as a playboy and, until his liking for three-in-a-bed romps was revealed, he was simply named plain old Agent Scoot. 

One typed record from Major T A Robertson tells how on Christmas Day in 1940, he and Tricycle met for lunch at the capital's upmarket society restaurant Quaglinos. 

The pair then went to the Lansdowne Club in Berkeley Square to play billiards, before heading back to the Savoy for "dining". 

It reads: "I think he (Tricycle) enjoyed himself thoroughly once he took part in the Christmas bonhomous rioting, well lubricated by champagne. 

'Most secret'

"We were picked up by a couple by the name of Keswick who took us to the Suivi nightclub where we danced. 

"Early in the morning, we returned to the Savoy, both viewing things through rose-tinted spectacles." 

Under the heading "most secret," one part of Tricycle's file outlines how he was given a questionnaire on British arms and weaponry by a German officer and asked to gather the answers. 

It asked what was being constructed at various factories in Weybridge, Wolverhampton and Dartford and for "exact details" of the "guns and apparatus" belonging to the British military. 

It wanted to know about fighter squadrons, how many Spitfires and Hurricanes the British had, and what the Army's armoured division consisted of. 

Each time, British officers would construct realistic, though inaccurate, answers for Tricycle to deliver to them. 

His formula for making invisible ink is also in the records. Aptly, he mixed it in a wine glass. 

The British spy had a reputation as a playboy

Tricycle's files - which number more than a dozen - are packed full of dated documents, invisible inked postcards, airmail letters stamped with "opened" and "examined", letters to his girlfriends - naturally sent "On His Majesty's Service" - and minute-by-minute accounts of his movements. 

The agent, who spoke English, Italian, French and moderate German, also described Allied bomb damage to German cities. 

In one account, he said the harbour at Hamburg had been hit, but it could still be used. Hanover, he said, had "suffered badly". 

'Intelligent and cultured'

In a summary of the man, one British Army officer said Tricycle lost "no opportunity of disparaging the Germans" and had at one point in 1941 said he was "convinced Great Britain will win the war within two years, due probably to German's moral and economic collapse". 

He is described in one missive as an "intelligent, cultured" man. 

It goes on to say: "He has personality and charm and would feel at home in society circles in any European or American capital, being much the usual type of international playboy. 

Tricycle refused payment from the British secret service saying he was happy to work for a country for which he had "whole-hearted admiration" and that his payment from the Germans was enough. 

But MI5 did, on occasions, have to bail him out. 

As one record puts it: "On Friday 14 March 1941, I met a somewhat tired Tricycle for luncheon at the Savoy when he told me he had discovered that he had not enough money to pay his bill. 

"From this, it would seem that his previous evening must have been a somewhat expensive one."