Prime Minister Tony Blair has ordered scientists to plan an early warning system which can alert boffins to the threat of earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and asteroids.

The £100 million initiative is based on a report ordered by Blair after the Boxing Day tsunami which killed upwards of 280,000.

He is to lobby nations to adopt the plan at the G8 Gleneagles summit in July. In the March edition of YM in a special tsunami report we told how Tony Blair was examining proposals for a five mile long barrier stretching across the River Thames from Essex to Kent to protect London from sea level rises.