After a police patrol went to pick her up, the young woman told officers: "I am Natascha Kampusch." She said that her kidnapper - 44-year-old Wolfgang Priklopil - had just fled in his BMW. By the time the police caught up with him it was too late: Priklopil had killed himself by jumping in front of a Vienna train.

Yesterday detectives confirmed that the girl last seen carrying a rucksack and wearing a red ski jacket was Natascha, now aged 18. They had identified her by a scar and expected confirmation from DNA, they told a Vienna press conference.

The investigation into what had happened over the past eight years centres on Heine-Strasse 60 - a detached house in the grimy hamlet of Strasshof, 15 miles north of Vienna.

Trees and a heavy iron gate surround the yellow and brown painted house, which is next to a busy road.

It was here that Natascha, who told police she had to call her captor "master", was held in a homemade dungeon - and, police suspect, subjected to years of sexual abuse. The only way in to the cellar-like prison, Priklopil's sealed garage, was via a steel door.

Priklopil, a communications technician, had fitted a sophisticated alarm, with video cameras, to alert him should Natascha try to escape, police said. "He was a perfectionist. He was very careful. He did everything he could to make sure she couldn't get out," Armin Halm, spokesman for the Bundeskriminalamt, or federal criminal bureau, said.

Inside, the garage looked like a normal teenage bedroom. It was equipped with a bed, bookshelf, TV, and desk. Clothes were piled in a heap; nearby was a dictionary. There was even evidence that Priklopil helped Natascha with her studies. "She can read and write," Mr Halm said.

At weekends Priklopil's elderly mother dropped by to cook and clean for her unmarried son. He had only two friends, police said. Neither appears to have known anything about the girl hidden in his cellar. "We didn't suspect anything," said one elderly couple living down the road.

Police say it is unclear if Natascha had ever tried to escape before, or why her meticulous kidnapper suddenly grew careless. Last night it was reported he recently had allowed her occasional outings in the village in his company.

In the end, he was distracted by a phone call - thus enabling her to flee, investigator Erich Zwettler told Sky TV. "He found his victim had escaped, panicked, jumped in his car and drove away fast," Mr Zwettler said.

However, police also suggested Natascha might have become fond of Priklopil over her years of captivity.

Yesterday, there were embarrassing questions as to why investigators had failed to trace Natascha. Immediately after her abduction one eyewitness described how she had seen Natascha get into a white van.

Detectives tracked 1,000 white van owners in the area and interviewed Priklopil in April 1998, a month after Natascha disappeared. He told them he used the van for work. They believed him - and left without searching either the house or garage.

On Wednesday when they arrived at the house the van was still there. They also found Natascha's passport, which she had with her the day she vanished. Another neighbour, retired policeman Franz Hafergut, had also complained to the authorities because Priklopil used a .22 rifle to shoot pigeons. Police officers knocked on his door - but left.

Yesterday Natascha's father, Ludwig Koch, said he recognised his lost daughter immediately. In an interview with Austria's Kurier newspaper, he said she looked in bad shape physically and had wasted away. "She has very, very white skin and marks all over her entire body. I don't want to think about where they came from," he said. After being reunited on Wednesday they had both wept. "She told me: Papa, I love you. And her next question was, Papa, do you still have my toy car?'

"I told her I did, and we had never given it away. We still have all her dolls as well." Mr Koch said he did not know his daughter's kidnapper, adding: "I feel enormously joyful, but at the same time I feel like crying the whole time ... I just hope Natascha can lead a normal life. That she can get an education, find a job, and, who knows, perhaps even be happy. That's my great wish. I know now at last that the waiting has been worth it, and my life has a purpose."

The PM may well also have to face questioning from the Metropolitan police over the "cash-for-honours" investigation.

Mr Blair's eldest son, Euan, has remained behind in Barbados, after being admitted to hospital with stomach pains, according to Downing Street.

Cherie Blair stayed back with her 22-year-old son at the Queen Elizabeth hospital, near Bridgetown, where Professor Andrew Zbar, a doctor at the hospital, said it was "a bit of a non-story".

Next week's speeches are thought to be on social exclusion and education, but the conference, which takes place in Manchester between September 24 and 28, is now the focus of attention for Labour.

With the PM and chancellor, Gordon Brown, as usual scheduled to give speeches on successive days, it will be all but impossible for one or both men not to give some clue as to when a handover date is likely.

Mr Brown himself has been on paternity leave during August, and remained mute over the alleged airline bomb plots, the situation in the Middle East and calls for a recall of parliament.

The summer has seen a long series of bad headlines for the PM, from the attacks on both him and the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, sustained criticism of the role of John Prescott as deputy prime minister, ending with a Guardian opinion poll this week which put the Tories nine points ahead of Labour.

The ICM survey gave David Cameron's party 40 points, a key psychological breakthrough, and the strongest support for the party since 1992.

John Reid, the home secretary, was seen to have acted decisively and with purpose over the alleged terrorist plot, but is now on holiday himself.

Other items in Mr Blair's in-tray are the return of parliament on October 9, a new Queen's speech of legislation in the autumn, plus the deadline in Northern Ireland for the warring Democratic Unionist party and Sinn Féin to form an executive or face the collapse of devolved government.

The IPCC said it would look into how the Metropolitan Police handled the knife attack on Peter Woodhams in January.

Mr Woodhams, 22, from Canning Town, east London, was shot dead on Monday outside his house. He had confronted members of a gang several times because of their antisocial behaviour, according to his fiancée, Jane Bowden. Miss Bowden, 23, said the family phoned the police every day for five weeks after the stabbing but they failed to take a statement.

She said the gang had thrown stones at their house and car and shouted abuse since the knife attack.

The IPCC commissioner, David Petch, said: "There has been considerable public concern about this case and I therefore decided our investigators should look at the police's response to the stabbing incident."On Monday Mr Woodhams was shot in the chest, possibly by members of the same group, according to his family. Earlier in the day, he had argued with a group of youths outside a parade of shops. He drove back home, and complained to his fiancée of "trouble outside". He then went back out to the parade, apparently to speak to the group. Moments later he was shot.

Mr Woodhams, a television satellite engineer, managed to stagger back to his house but collapsed at the front gate. His fiancée, with their son, Sam, three, rushed to his aid but he died on his way to hospital.

Yesterday, Sir Ian Blair, the Met Commissioner, was asked to "report fully" to the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) on how his officers responded to the stabbing and Mr Woodhams' subsequent murder. The Metropolitan Police has also launched an internal inquiry into its investigation of the stabbing. The Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) will examine whether mistakes were made.

A 14-year-old arrested over Mr Woodhams' murder, who had also been held in connection with the earlier stabbing, has been released on bail.

A thousand tanks, armored vehicles and troop carriers were involved in "fierce battles" on the site covering 1,000 square kilometers (400 square miles), Xinhua said.

Thirty-five experts from the National University of Defense were on hand to monitor and assess procedures, according to the department directing the exercise.

The "Red Army" division conducted a series of drills to test long-distance maneuverability under complicated conditions, while under assault from "Blue Army" troops, using "electromagnetic" equipment, Xinhua said.

The sources gave no dates or timescale for the drill, said Xinhua.

It did not explain the purpose of the exercise and who the potential enemy may be.

"There is no rational reason left to oppose this research," said Dr. Robert Lanza, vice president of U.S. biotech group Advanced Cell Technology and leader of a team that reported the new technique in an article published online on Thursday by the Nature Journal.

Researchers from Advanced Cell Technology have generated stem cell cultures by plucking individual cells from newly fertilized embryos, which are not harmed.

The new technique would be performed on an embryo when it is two days old, after the fertilized egg has divided into eight cells, known as blastomeres.

In fertility clinics, one of these blastomeres can be removed for diagnostic tests, such as for Down's syndrome, and the embryo, now with seven cells, can be implanted in the mother if no defect is found.

Up to now, stem cells have been derived from slightly older embryos. Harvesting these cells destroys the embryo.

Last year, Lanza reported that embryonic stem cell cultures could be derived from the blastomeres of mice. He now says the same can be done with human blastomeres.

Hardline critics of embryo research, however, are unlikely to accept the manipulation even of a single embryonic cell, which they say could theoretically become a human being.

U.S. President George W. Bush last month vetoed a bill that would have required the federal government to fund experiments with newly created human embryonic stem cells.