The others -- including six colleagues who had also been part of the legal action lodged against Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy -- remain barred from restricted areas at the airport.

Unions at the state-owned facility are considering strike action to protest the government's move, which they claim is discriminating against employees simply because they are Muslim.

One of those who recovered his badge Monday after a hearing at government offices near the airport, Abdelhazak Rabehi, told AFP he was angry at having been targeted.

"I was smeared. They said I was a terrorist. There is no accusation more serious than that," said the baggage handler.

He added that the company he worked for since 2002 had been preparing to fire him over the matter, before he took the legal action.

"I hope that's the end of the nightmare. Now, I'm going to call my boss and resume work," he said.

Sarkozy said last week the withdrawal of the men's security clearance was a necessary "precaution", given the suspicions and the fact they worked in proximity with passenger aircraft.

Officials at Roissy said one of the 72 was in contact with an associate of the British "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid, who was convicted of trying to blow up an American Airlines Paris to Miami flight in 2001.

He did say, however, that the court would examine the legality of the database within the next four months.

The rights group SOS Racisme had Tuesday asked the court to suspend development of the database, claiming it would violate privacy laws.

France's interior ministry has rejected that allegation, and described the database as a "simple management tool" in the fight against clandestine immigration.

The ministry has started work on the database, called Eloi, into which police enter the name, sex, nationality, parents, languages, photograph and identity document of illegal immigrants.

It also contains the name and address of anybody lodging the foreigners, as well as those of any visitors to immigrants in holding centres.

The data would be kept for three years after the date the immigrant is deported from France, with police and other officials permitted to consult it.

The database is one of a series of measures Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has introduced to crack down on illegal immigration to France.

Sarkozy has been positioning himself as a champion of law-and-order policies in order to contest presidential elections due next year.

Earlier, the European Commission issued a report warning Turkey to meet its obligations, in particular toward Cyprus, or else its "overall progress" in EU membership talks would be affected.

The report said there was no resolution in sight over Cyprus, which is divided between an internationally-recognised Greek Cypriot administration in the south and a northern self-declared statelet under Turkish patronage.

Although Turkey is keen to join the European Union, it has not modified its stance on Cyprus, which it invaded in 1974 in response to a Greek Cypriot coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece.

"Today, it has to be noted that Turkey still does not accept opening its ports and airports to ships and planes, not only (southern) Cypriot ones, but also those that come from (southern) Cyprus. It is therefore evident today that Turkey is not responding to its obligations," Douste-Blazy said.

The minister said current EU president Finland was doing everything to resolve that and other outstanding issues with Turkey by the end of the year.

But he stressed that the European Commission report said that Turkey's EU negotiations were "accumulating delays" because of Ankara's lagging reform in the areas of freedom of expression, religious freedom and minority rights.

Although French President Jacques Chirac has said he was in favour of Turkey one day joining the European Union, relations with France and Turkey have frequently been strained over the issue.

In the latest row, Turkey last month expressed fury at a French parliamentary bill which would make it a crime in France to deny that the World War I massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks constituted genocide.

During the consultation at the Westside Contraceptive Clinic in Central London the doctor was said to have told the patient that she had black magic powers that could help to alleviate the problem.

The patient, identified only as Mrs K, was said to have left the clinic "very shaken and intimidated".

The General Medical Council's fitness-to-practise panel in Manchester was due to start a three-day hearing yesterday but Dr Pratt failed to appear. She was also not legally represented.

The panel then debated whether it could proceed in her absence to determine whether her conduct was irresponsible, unprofessional, intimidatory to her patient or liable to bring the profession into disrepute.

The incident is said to have happened when Mrs K attended the clinic, which offers free advice on family planning and contraception and counselling on sexual health. The patient, in her twenties, had complained of pain and bleeding and had gone to the clinic seeking a contraceptive injection.

Before the panel moved into private session, Heather Norton, counsel for the GMC, said: "It was made clear to Dr Pratt by Mrs K that she had concerns about the size of her stomach and about bleeding and pain she had experienced.

"Dr Pratt's response was effectively to tell Mrs K that she had black magic powers in order to alleviate the problem. She told her that she should take holy water and that she should see some priests. She gave her crosses and stones that she said would protect her.

"She told her that her mother was a witch and that she and her husband were planning to kill her. Mrs K was left very shaken and intimidated."

Dr Pratt was said to have then turned to a clinic nurse who was present and bragged about her special powers.

Miss Norton said: "The nurse was sufficiently alarmed that she contacted Mrs K to check she was all right and to notify her manager."

Dr Pratt also faces charges that she failed to co-operate with investigations carried out first by her employer and then by the primary care trust.

The panel was told that a number of attempts had been made to contact Dr Pratt to ask her to attend meetings but she had claimed not to have received the letters.

The hearing was adjourned until a later date for Dr Pratt to answer the allegations in person.

"We have identified a new mechanism whereby venoms produce pain, and we have shown it is similar to one used by pepper plants to generate a similar sensation," said David Julius, a molecular biologist at the university.

Both the spider and the plant have evolved a common mechanism to drive away predators, Julius added. Capsaicin, the main pungent ingredient in hot chili peppers, triggers the pain response.

When Julius and his colleagues, who reported their findings this week in the journal Nature, tested the venom of the spider in the laboratory on cells that contained the receptor it sparked a response, but not in the cells without the receptor.

The researchers also isolated three compounds from the spider venom. Mice with the receptor showed signs of pain and inflammation when the compounds were applied to their paw. Transgenic mice without the receptor showed no pain.

The researchers whose work is focused on understanding the molecular basis of pain sensation believe other spiders may also use a similar defense mechanism.