Air Zimbabwe announced the decision to stop the thrice-weekly flights after a European air safety agency won a court order allowing it to seize planes to cover a $2.8m (£1.5m) debt. Air Zimbabwe board chairman, Mike Bhima, said: "As a security measure, our lawyers have advised us to suspend flights pending discussions."

Rising costs of fuel and equipment last month forced Air Zimbabwe to raise airfares by 500 per cent. The cost of an economy return flight to London soared to £3,900. The same flight on British Airways is £450.

The cost of living in Zimbabwe has become increasingly expensive with the official inflation rate running at 1,200 per cent. Experts have put the real figure at 4,000 per cent. Prices for staples such as a loaf of bread rise daily, even by the hour.

President Robert Mugabe has pinned the blame for Zimbabwe's economic woes on Britain and the West, but aid agencies and ordinary Zimbabweans have pointed to an ill-fated land reform programme and a slum demolition scheme that made 700,000 people homeless.

Hundreds of thousands of tourists used to flock to Zimbabwe to see the Victoria Falls, but numbers have dwindled, with Zambia now benefiting. The grounding of Air Zimbabwe's London flights will damage tourism - and the wider economy - even further.

Earlier this year the federal government announced its proposed changes to copyright law, which it says are designed to keep up with the rapidly changing digital landscape.

But in the submission to the senate legal and constitutional affairs committee, senior counsel and head of public policy at Google Inc, Andrew McLaughlin, says the changes fail to take into account the realities of the way in which information is processed and provided online.

"Google believes that the bill fails significantly to bring Australia's copyright act fully into the digital age," the submission says.

The internet company wants general "safety valve" provisions, as well as specific copyright exemptions, to protect search engines from falling foul of the law.

"Given the vast size of the internet it is impossible for a search engine to contact personally each owner of a web page to determine whether the owner desires its web page to be searched, indexed or cached," Google submits.

"If such advance permission was required, the internet would promptly grind to a halt."

Google is also concerned about the effect of the copyright laws on digitisation projects, like its book search, which allows users to download books from the internet.

Authors, news organisations and porn sites

Dr Matthew Rimmer, a copyright law expert from the Australian National University, says Google's concerns are justified and that the current laws haven't considered the crucial role search engines play in organising and providing information.

Google has already attracted legal action from the French press agency AFP, as well as authors and publishers in the US, he says.

The internet company is also appealing a decision which found in favour of a California pornographic company's breach of copyright claim against it.

Rimmer says internet search engines could be "crippled" by the proposed copyright changes, which protect libraries, archives and research institutions but leave commercial entities like Google out in the cold.

He says this will affect the ability of search engines to engage in digitisation projects like book search, provide images, index news stories and archive web content.

"Given the amount of litigation that Google has been involved in the last year I think they've got very genuine fears that they could be subject to copyright actions in Australia," he says.

He says rather than adopting the narrow "fair use" definitions contained in the legislation, Australia should adopt a US-style open-ended fair use defence to ensure a flow of and access to information.

"In the past when Google has been sued ... one of the things it did is take down its links and content.

"Google could very well become more reluctant to provide such comprehensive image and news services ... and with geo-identification technology you can also offer certain content in some countries and not others."

A spokesperson for attorney general Philip Ruddock says the committee has received 70 submissions, including one from Google, and all would be taken into account when considering the legislation.

"We will take on board all the submissions and the committee will take their views into account when they do their report," he says.

Submissions will be discussed at a public hearing in Canberra today.

The research came amid renewed calls for the Government to consider extending the time police can hold terror suspects without charge. The current limit of 28 days was set as a compromise after MPs threw out government plans to permit suspects to be held for up to 90 days.

Tomorrow's Queen's Speech is expected to include controv-ersial anti-terror legislation, while Gordon Brown and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair have called for an extension of the time suspects can be held in terror cases.

Labour MPs rebelled in 95 out of 343 votes, almost equalling the 96 rebellions suffered by the Government during the whole of Mr Blair's first term. MPs rebelled more often even than during the 1992-93 session, when John Major struggled to push the Maastricht treaty through Parliament.

Philip Cowley, a researcher, found that 114 Labour MPs had voted against their whips since the general election. He said no other post-war government with a majority of more than 60 in the Commons had suffered as many defeats in an entire parliament, let alone in its first session.

The most frequent rebel was John McDonnell, the chairman of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs and a declared candidate to stand as a left-wing successor to Mr Blair. Mr McDonnell warned there was widespread unease over civil liberties across all parties and predicted fresh unrest if ministers failed to make the case for new anti-terror laws. He said: "If the Government is going to focus on this in the Queen's Speech they will have to come up with some very strong arguments and evidence."

Other senior Labour backbenchers also warned that the Government had to give strong evidence to justify extending the length of time police can hold terror suspects.

David Winnick, the Labour MP who proposed the 28-day compromise, told the BBC that he did not believe there was "any justification" for increasing it.

John Denham, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, called for an independent review of any case for an extension. He said: "If the Government is now convinced by the evidence they should subject it to the sort of independent scrutiny that the select committee called for. I think that if that happened, Parliament would be inclined to support a change."

"It would create a totally uneven playing field. It could have quite an effect on the whole of the UK drinks industry. We're talking about billions of pounds of tax losses for the Exchequer, which could have a serious impact on the UK economy," Mr How said.

UK shoppers pay £1.29 in duty on every bottle of wine, regardless of its price. This hits the cheapest wines the hardest. An ECJ ruling, expected on 23 November, is likely to allow shoppers to avoid paying that by ordering beer, wine and tobacco online from EU countries.

Mr How said Majestic would be better placed than rivals to cope because it already has three outlets in France pitched at UK booze cruisers. The French-based Wine and Beer World chain, which has suffered from the drop in the number of day-trippers, could ship cases to British shoppers, he added. "What the cost would be, I don't know."

He was speaking as Majestic unveiled a 17 per cent increase in interim profits before tax to £6.5m on sales up £7.6m to £88.3m. The group announced plans to buy back up to £20m of its shares over the next few months, lifting the stock 9.25p to 323.75p.

Demand for lighter wines, such as sauvignon blanc from New Zealand, and a new breed of less heavy Spanish riojas, helped to lift its sales. In the past five weeks like-for-like sales are up 4.3 per cent, roughly in line with the first half once the boost from a late Easter is excluded from the figures.

The group expects to open nine new stores during this financial year, lifting its total to 136 by March 2007. Customers, who have to buy cases in batches of 12 but can mix up their order, spent £121 on average, up from £115. The group's emphasis on fine wines, priced at £30 and above, is helping to drive both this and the average price of a bottle of wine higher.