BANGKOK AND Kuala Lumpur have been identified as the key staging posts in a multi-million- pound operation to smuggle

BANGKOK AND Kuala Lumpur have been identified as the key staging posts in a multi-million- pound operation to smuggle economic migrants into Britain. Barbara Roche, the minister responsible for immigration, said last night that the scale of the human trafficking identified by British officials stationed at overseas airports was "absolutely incredible". Sophisticated forgers based in the Thai and Malaysian capitals are offering a high-grade service in false passports and counterfeit British visas, she said. "Local post offices are a vital part of local communities but over the last few decades they have been in decline."People's lifestyles and buying habits have changed, which has led to the future of many offices being threatened," Mr Byers said last night. "These measures are an important step in providing the Post Office with the opportunity for a robust and healthy commercial future and helping to ensure they continue to be at the heart of our rural and urban communities."The review of the viability of the post office network has been ordered personally by Tony Blair in response to fears that bank closures in some deprived areas had left the post office as the only means of accessing cash..

Stephen Byers, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, is to create the appeal system in the Post Office Bill early next year to try to calm fears of closures. Under the proposals any customer worried about relocation or closure of a sub-post office can appeal to the Post Office Users National Council and a new post office regulator.After work by the Cabinet Office Performance and Innovation Unit, "access criteria" will also be published to give benchmarks against which closures can be measured. The Post Office will announce a revised code of practice next month governing how it should deal with proposed conversions and closures.This will be backed up for the first time with a requirement in law for close independent monitoring of the national network, with particular attention paid to rural and poor areas.Among measures lined up by Mr Byers are a strengthened Post Office Users National Council, appointment of a regulator, computer services for all sub-post offices and a study on the viability of the network.Mr Byers said that the Government was committed to maintaining as wide a spread of post offices as possible and he would set out in law a real commitment to monitor its reach and a promise to act where necessary. MEMBERS OF the public will be given the right to appeal against the proposed closure of a post office under measures to be announced by the Government today. She said there were no safety risks and people affected returned to a normal colour in a few weeks.Dr Cameron now intends to warn other doctors, with letters to medical journals.. The multi-national conglomerate Procter & Gamble was responding to reports from a pediatrician in Wales that a four-year-old he had seen was a "yellowy colour". Dr Duncan Cameron, from Glan Clywd hospital near Rhyl, had the child brought to him after her hands and face turned bright orange and yellow. She had been drinking 1.5 litres of the drink a day and analysis revealed that her condition was caused by beta carotene, an additive that boosts the drink's orange colour and vitamin A content.But a spokeswoman for Procter and Gamble said the child had been drinking "too much" and would have suffered the same effects with carrot juice.

THE MANUFACTURER of one of Britain's best-selling soft drinks, Sunny Delight, admitted yesterday that too much of it could send a child yellow. Ms Smith said that schools could also spend the extra money on "awareness training and personal safety techniques".One education authority has already take advantage of grants to set up its own course, offering staff a diploma in security awareness.. TEACHERS WILL receive more personal security training with the help of an extra pounds 22m to be announced by the Government today. Ministers said the money will also be used to install more closed-circuit televisions and security devices in schools.

Today, the Department for Education and Employment will announce grants to local education authorities in England for improving school security. The Education minister Jacqui Smith said: "Pupils and staff deserve to be able to learn, teach and work in safe and secure environments." The grants follow similar allocations in each of the last three years, following a string of tragedies that included the stabbing of the head teacher Philip Lawrence as he protected a 13-year-old pupil outside a school in west London in 1995, and the Dunblane shootings and the knife attack on a nursery class, in which the nursery nurse Lisa Potts was injured, in 1996.Most of the previous allocations have been spent on physical security - including fencing and closed-circuit TV cameras. It has recently sold some of its subsidiaries, including Lock Inspection Systems and an American firm called Roll Center which were the subject of parliamentary inquiries into whether Mr Robinson had properly registered his interests in them.Last week the Department of Trade and Industry said it had completed an inquiry into alleged accounting irregularities by Hollis Industries, another Maxwell engineering firm, chaired by Mr Robinson, and had decided to take no further action.. Mr Maxwell effectively absorbed Transfer Technology into Central and Sheerwood, paying pounds 5.5m for the deal, then changed the name of the company to TransTec.The company continues to own a number of engineering firms which were formerly owned by Mr Maxwell. The company aimed to harness technology devised by academics to produce business successes, but only took off after a "reverse take-over" in 1990 by Central and Sheerwood, an industrial and property conglomerate formerly chaired by the late Robert Maxwell.