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Miliband (E) was understandably keen to distance himself from David Cameron during his first leader's speech yesterday. Despite their divergent politics, however, it seems the party heads share a taste for 1980s-inflected MOR soft-rock.

Cameron famously chose "All These Things That I've Done", by his favourite band The Killers, as the soundtrack to an early conference appearance. Ed's outro, meanwhile, was the equally stadium-sized "Use Somebody" by the Kings of Leon. Theories abound as to its significance: presumably Miliband (E)'s aides were keen on the insistent, if almost inaudible, refrain of the song's middle eight: "I'm ready, I'm ready". The chorus might, too, be directed at Miliband (D), wavering over whether to join his brother's shadow Cabinet: "You know that I could use somebody: someone like you and all you know and how you speak."

I must also note that, upon the song's release in 2008, music weekly the NME warned that the band "may be in danger of mistaking bluster for brilliance". Apt indeed.

* While the Labour conference was in full flow up in Manchester, back in the capital members of the Cabinet were enjoying a political farce – namely the press night of Yes, Prime Minister at the Gielgud Theatre. I hear Iain Duncan Smith, earning his title as Secretary of State for Work, cancelled his night out at 6pm to attend to pressing government business, only to change his mind at 6.30 and dash to the West End for curtain-up. The Quiet Man assured stewards he'd happily stand in the wings to watch the play, so as not to disturb the actors or audience. No such subtlety from Theresa May, however: as the curtain fell, the Home Secretary was whisked to her two waiting cars by a phalanx of heavies. The play, an update of the classic TV sitcom, portrays the Prime Minister of a shaky coalition government dealing with an economic crisis, while a foreign dignitary demands a teenage prostitute during a visit to Chequers, in exchange for signing a lucrative oil deal. Broadly plausible, then.

* For her next trick, Irish pop's proto-Gaga Roisin Murphy has been in the studio working on an "epic track" with a coterie of UK hip-hop artists. "Demon Lover", she told me cheerfully at Somerset House during London Fashion Week, is "a bit of an all-star event, with lots of British talent like Wiley and Kano". But the singer, 37 (best known as the former frontwoman of Moloko), explained that the band at the top of her wish list of collaborators had proven elusive so far. "I never normally say who I'd collaborate with, but the truth is – and it may never happen – it would be a dream come true to work with [art-house electro outfit] Daft Punk. How do you track them down, though? I mean, they live in a subway in Paris or something." Murphy will next be able to catch the perennially helmeted Parisians appearing briefly in December's sci-fi sequel Tron: Legacy, for which they've composed the soundtrack.

* Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has sage advice for screenwriters considering cocaine to enhance their craft. The writer, whose copious drug use became common knowledge while he was writing The West Wing, has now been clean for nearly 10 years. "It doesn't matter if you're writing better or worse on cocaine," he told The Daily Beast. "Don't use cocaine. You're going to ruin your life." Early reviews for Sorkin's new film The Social Network have been ecstatic, so his theory would appear to hold water.

* Geraldine James may be starring in the next Sherlock Holmes film – alongside Jude Law, Robert Downey Jr and the newly announced Stephen Fry as Holmes's brother Mycroft – but it hasn't always been plain sailing for the actress. "I joined an acting company in the 1970s and I was getting paid £25 a week," said James, 60, at the premiere of Made in Dagenham, in which she stars as one of a group of women factory workers striking for equal pay. "I found out the boys were getting £28. They said it was because I didn't have an agent, but I knew it was because I was a woman." What's Stephen earning, I wonder?

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Teresa Lewis died early today after being given a lethal injection at the Greensville correctional centre, the first woman to be executed in Virginia in almost a century.

The execution went ahead despite protests from lawyers, international celebrities and others who argued that she should have been given clemency because of her low IQ. Under US law, anyone with an IQ of 70 avoids the death penalty. Lewis was judged to have an IQ of 72.

Her lawyer, Jim Rocap, said: "Tonight the machinery of death in Virginia extinguished the childlike and loving spirit of Teresa Lewis."

The 41-year-old was convicted of plotting to kill her husband, Julian Lewis, and her stepson, Charles Lewis. She persuaded two men to carry out the murders in return for sex and money. The two men received life sentences.

Lewis spent most of her final day with her family. Virginia correctional services said she asked for a last meal of fried chicken breasts, a dessert and a Dr Pepper.

In the minutes before leaving her cell, she prayed and held hands with her chaplain and with Rocap.

Wearing prison-issue denim trousers and shirt, she walked the 10 steps from her cell to the execution chamber, where five warders strapped her to a hospital trolley. Witnesses said she looked terrified.

Kathy Clifton, Lewis's stepdaughter, was in an adjoining witness room, blocked from view by a two-way mirror. The families of the victims were also present.

A prison warder held up a phone to the governor's office, in case of a last-minute decision to offer clemency.

Asked if she wanted to make a last statement, Lewis said: "I want Kathy to know I love you and I am very sorry." The executioners, dressed in black, with all identifying tags removed and hidden behind a curtain, released a sedative and a lethal dose.

Lewis was pronounced dead within six minutes of delivering her final statement.

Rocap said that she had spent her last days singing, praying and laughing. "She accepted a long time ago what was going to happen here."

The lawyer portrayed the murders in 2002 as an aberration in Lewis's life and suggested she was not the prime motivator.

Pleas for clemency were rejected by the governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, who said there was no "compelling reason". An appeal to the US supreme court was also turned down.

The last execution of a woman in the US was in 2005 when Frances Newton was injected in Texas. The last woman to be executed in Virginia was Virginia Christian in 1912, for suffocating her employer.

Lewis's motive was primarily money, according to the prosecutor in the case. She intended to pick up $250,000 (£160,000) in insurance from a policy Charles Lewis had taken out and which passed to his father on his death.

She recruited Matthew Shallenberger, with whom she had an affair, and Rodney Fuller, to carry out the murder. In 2002, on the eve of Halloween, she went to bed with her husband but got up to unlock the door and put their pit bull terrier in another room. Shallenberger and Fuller then shot her husband and stepson.

Lewis waited 45 minutes before calling the police, but her husband was still alive and told police she knew those responsible. She confessed a few days later.

About 6,000 people signed a petition calling for clemency, in part because of the apparent injustice of Lewis receiving the death penalty while the two men who carried out the murders received life. About a dozen people protested outside the jail.

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, referred to the case earlier this week on a visit to New York, saying the west had double standards. It criticised Iran for sentencing a woman to be stoned but failing to show the same outrage in the Lewis case.

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A computer virus that experts said may have been created by a state did not affect Iran's nuclear plant or government systems, but did hit computers of staff at the plant and internet providers, officials said yesterday.

A senior official at US technology company Symantec told Reuters news agency on Friday that 60 per cent of the computers worldwide infected by the so-called Stuxnet worm were in Iran, prompting speculation that the nuclear power plant may have been targeted in an attempt at sabotage or espionage.

Some Western cyber security companies suggested the attack could only have been conducted "with nation-state support", indicating that industrial plants in the Islamic state were the target.

The head of the Bushehr nuclear power plant said the virus had only affected personal computers of staff. "A team is inspecting several computers to remove the malware," Mahmoud Jafari told the official IRNA news agency. "Major systems of the plant have not been damaged."

Russia was fiercely criticised by the West for involvement in completing the long-mothballed plant. Moscow says the plant is purely civilian.

Iran's Telecommunications Minister, Reza Taqipour, said the worm had not been able to "penetrate or cause serious damage to government systems", the state-run newspaper Iran Daily reported. Authorities said Iran had identified some 30,000 internet providers infected by the Stuxnet worm, blaming Iran's "foreign enemies for creating the virus".

Diplomats and security sources say Western governments and Israel view sabotage as one way of slowing Iran's nuclear work, which the West fears is aimed at building bombs. Tehran says it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity.

The worm attacks software programmes that run Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems. Such systems are used to monitor automated plants – from food and chemical facilities to power generators.

"The Stuxnet spy worm has been created in line with the West's electronic warfare against Iran," Mahmoud Liayi, the secretary of the information technology council of the Industries Ministry, told the paper.

Israel, which is believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, has hinted it could attack Iran's nuclear facilities if international diplomacy fails to curb the country's programme. Iran refuses to recognise Israel.

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Barack Obama staked his prestige yesterday on direct Middle East peace talks, telling world leaders in New York that he wants a permanent agreement finalised within 12 months that "will lead to a new member of the United Nations – an independent state of Palestine, living in peace with Israel".

In only his second speech to the UN General Assembly as US President, Mr Obama also told Iran that despite further international sanctions imposed in June because of the country's nuclear enrichment activities, "the door remains open to diplomacy". But the US and UK delegations later walked out on the speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he cast doubt on the guilt of al-Qa'ida in the 9/11 terror attacks.

Mr Obama's address, which also covered the world economy and climate change, was a fresh reminder that on the twin issues of Israeli-Palestinian relations and Iran, Mr Obama is facing challenges and opportunities that will define his legacy on the world stage. Direct negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel finally resumed earlier this month.

Mr Obama and the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, now stand on the threshold of a historic breakthrough. But all could fall apart this weekend, as a moratorium set by Mr Netanyahu on new Jewish settlements in the occupied territories is due to expire. If Mr Netanyahu were to allow construction to resume, the talks would probably be over almost as quickly as they started.

With Israeli diplomats absent from the hall because of a Jewish holiday, Mr Obama reiterated that such an outcome should not be allowed to happen. "Our position on this issue is well known," he said. "We believe that the moratorium should be extended. We also believe that talks should press on until completed."

But the President also had direct language for Arab nations, saying they should play a greater part promoting peace. They "must stop trying to tear Israel down," he said, adding: "Those who have signed on to the Arab Peace Initiative should seize this opportunity to make it real by taking tangible steps toward the normalisation that it promises Israel".

Without a deal, he warned, "more blood will be shed" and "this Holy Land will remain a symbol of our differences, instead of a symbol of our common humanity."

His parallel focus on Iran was also no surprise, given that a year of cajoling and threatening by the West has been met with little but defiance in Tehran. The UN sanctions imposed in the summer were followed up by similar measures by the European Union and the US.

A new peace map in 12 months would be one thing, but Mr Obama made no mention of where the world might be by that time if the dispute with Iran over its nuclear intentions has not been resolved. The two issues are not entirely separable. Israel continues to leave open the option of military strikes.

There has been optimism that Iran may be ready to re-engage in talks on the nuclear dossier, broken off last year. "Iran has already been ready for dialogue based on faith and justice," President Ahmadinejad said at the podium later. Yet in the same speech, he contrived, in New York of all places, to rehearse doubts about who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks.

One theory, he said, was "that some segments within the US government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy, and its grips on the Middle East, in order to save the Zionist regime." He went on: "The majority of the American people as well as most nations and politicians around the world agree with this view." At this point, both the US and Britain strode out of the hall.

Mr Obama said in his speech that a diplomatic solution remained possible, but his tone was tough. "The Iranian government must demonstrate a clear and credible commitment, and confirm to the world the peaceful intent of its nuclear programme."

In his address to delegates from 192 countries, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, said the world was becoming more politically polarised. "We hear the language of hate, false divisions between 'them' and 'us,' those who insist on 'their way' or 'no way,'" he said, noting that the lives of millions are being affected, not just by military conflicts but also by economic upheaval and unemployment.

With America's mid-term elections just weeks away, Mr Obama sought also to highlight the progress made to combat the global recession. "I have had no greater focus as President than rescuing our economy from potential catastrophe," he said.

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President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has often spoken of going hungry as a child growing up in a remote village in the north-east of Brazil. One of the first measures Lula took when he came to power in January 2003 was to announce the Fome Zero (no hunger) programme. Almost eight years later, with three months of his second term left to serve, the president is proud of what has been achieved. In 2003, 12% of the population (22 million) did not get enough to eat. That figure has been more than halved, down to 10 million; 28 million of his compatriots have been lifted out of poverty

The key measure is a grant to families living in poverty (less than $1 a day), in the form of a credit card. Some 12 million households (50 million people) currently qualify for the bolsa familia. In 2008 the scheme cost $6bn, just under 2% of government spending. It is nevertheless the world's biggest redistribution programme.

Though clearly vital, Candido Grzybowski, the head of the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis (Ibase), thinks the bolsa does not go far enough. "It was a response to an emergency situation, but if it is suspended tomorrow people will go on dying of hunger," he said. "It must be followed up with structural reform, in particular in education."

"The problem of hunger remains a concern for Dilma Rousseff," the leftwing candidate in the coming presidential election, according to her policy advisor Alessandro Teixeira. "If she is elected she will improve the bolsa."

The opposition candidate, José Serra, who is standing for the Brazilian Social Democratic party, has also undertaken to maintain the grant, despite his party's frequent attacks on what it refers to as "assistencialism".

A survey conducted by Ibase revealed that bolsa beneficiaries are afraid the grant will be withdrawn.

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The chief executive of Italy's largest bank, UniCredit, has resigned following a row over the firm's links with Libya.

Alessandro Profumo, one of the more enterprising figures in the conservative world of Italian finance, stepped down at an extraordinary board meeting last night and will be replaced, temporarily, by the bank's chairman, Dieter Rampl. The McKinsey-trained banker has been heavily criticised recently for his readiness to see Libyan state bodies increase their combined stakes in the bank to almost 7.5% – as the Italian bank hardest hit by the credit crunch scrambled for funds.

Major shareholders have reportedly been concerned by Profumo's fundraising strategy and an anaemic dividend policy. The Libyan Central Bank is now UniCredit's third-largest shareholder and Libya's sovereign wealth fund its eighth-biggest.

Umberto Bossi's populist Northern League movement has a say in the bank's affairs with its 4.6% holding through Fondazione Cariverona, a non-profit foundation based in Verona. Foundations own around 11% of UniCredit, and Profumo's courting of Libyan investment has been interpreted as an attempt to limit the foundations' influence.

Flavio Tosi, a league governor and Verona's mayor, said Profumo should have "stopped the Libyans at 5%". He added: "I'm not a banker. But to let in partners like Gaddafi and the Libyans means letting in partners who may not have the [same] interests as Verona and the Veneto."

Tosi has also accused the bank of focusing on business abroad at the expense of Italian enterprises, which need help recovering from the world economic crisis.

For the first time, the governor of the Libyan central bank, Farhat Bengdara, was seen entering UniCredit's headquarters in Milan, on Tuesday afternoon.

Profumo's problems began with the credit crunch. UniCredit's share price plunged as it emerged that it was the big Italian financial institution most at risk, partly because of its chief executive's drive into central and eastern Europe. Profumo's relations with Rampl were reported to have deteriorated.

Celent analyst Enrico Camerinelli said the clash with Rampl was not over Profumo's ability to run the company but over political control of a major banking institution. "It has a lot to do with the political situation in Italy. The Northern League wants to have control over northern Italian banks."

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On the approach to Barbulesti the highway dissolves into gravel and dust. For Romica Raducanu the village in which he was born and brought up feels like the end of the world. His hopes of a new life are for now a distant dream and he is stuck here. Only his T-shirt gives away the place he considers home: emblazoned over stripes red, white and blue is one word – France.

Until three weeks ago Raducanu was living on the outskirts of Montpellier in southern France, eking out a living for his wife and children by collecting scrap metal and selling it on for seven centimes (6p) a kilo. Then, after a summer of growing unease, the crackdown ordered by President Nicolas Sarkozy hit home. Friends were ordered to leave, and the pictures he was seeing in the newspapers became too much. Raducanu was scared.

Without taking the money available to him as part of the "voluntary repatriation" scheme – he didn't understand the papers, he says, so he didn't sign them – the 35-year-old and his wife packed their family into the car and set out, with other departing Roma, on the journey of more than 1,000 miles to Romania.

A day later he heard that the police had come to clear away his former home. Now, in the dilapidated surrounds of his new one, he is bitter and depressed.

"We had to leave so that we weren't sent away. Every day I was seeing in the papers and on the television that more and more people were being expelled," he says quietly, fiddling with the handle of a bedroom door missing half a pane of glass. Remembering the moment he realised what was going on, he adds: "We were desperate when we heard. Sarkozy hates the Roma. He's making the same moves as Hitler."

Vichy comparison

An extreme comment in the same vein provoked fury this week in the Elysée palace, where the French president fumed over the comparisons made by Viviane Reding, European commissioner for justice, between his summer clampdown and persecution of the Jews during the second world war.

But, incendiary as these remarks may be, the vehemence of Raducanu's anger is perhaps understandable. For, he says, while he had little in France, he has nothing in Barbulesti.

Since the end of July, when Sarkozy made a speech in Grenoble outlining his tough new approach on crime and immigration –the two themes, he implied, were inextricably linked – about 1,000 foreign Roma have left France, mostly for Romania and mostly under a scheme offering €300 (£250) for each adult and €100 for each child returning to their native country.

About 200 non-authorised Roma camps have been cleared, as well as hundreds of traveller sites occupied mostly by French citizens. However, a leaked circular, since amended to avoid singling out an ethnicity, stated that the Roma were the chief targets of the evacuations.

For many French people and other western Europeans who witness the poverty in which a large number of Roma live, in cities from Marseille to Milan to Madrid, their desire to stay is incomprehensible.

Yet most of the 7,500 Roma in Barbulesti, a predominantly Gypsy village 50 miles north-east of Bucharest, say that a life in the wealthy west offers chances unimaginable in their native Romania, where the vast majority are trapped in a cycle of discrimination, unemployment and poverty.

And, as long as this remains the case, they say, they have no intention of staying put. Ever a nomadic people, they will be on the move again soon.

Raducanu, an EU citizen entirely conscious of his right to free movement within the bloc, is already planning his return. "I can't wait to get back, to work. There is nothing to do here. Hunger. No work. I will go back," he says. Later, in a flourish of the language he had learned to love, he adds: "C'est très dur, la vie." Life is very hard.

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Jailed pop star George Michael will be transferred to an open prison next week, a source said tonight.

The 47-year-old, whose real name is Georgios Panayiotou, was jailed on Tuesday for eight weeks after crashing his Range Rover while high on cannabis.

Michael, who was taken to Pentonville Prison in north London, will be downgraded from a category C prisoner to category D and transferred to an open prison, a source said.

It is understood the move will take place next week.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "Prisoners are regularly transferred within the prison estate according to their needs and individual circumstances."

Michael was found slumped at the wheel of a car after it smashed into a branch of photo store Snappy Snaps in north London in July.

The singer, who had a previous conviction for the same offence, was told by District Judge John Perkins there was no option but jail.

The former Wham! star admitted driving while unfit through drugs and possessing two cannabis cigarettes when he appeared at London's Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court last month.

Earlier today, a bail application on his behalf was cancelled.

Lawyers acting on behalf of the singer were due to apply for bail before a judge at Blackfriars Crown Court.

But a court spokeswoman said: "The bail application has been abandoned."

Mukul Chawla QC, who represented Michael on Tuesday, said he did not wish to talk to the Press.

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The EU summit has opened in Brussels amid continued tension over the French expulsion of Gypsies and the European commission's threat to take Nicolas Sarkozy's government to court.

The EU justice commissioner, Viviane Reding, has expressed regret for comparing French treatment of Roma with that of Jews during the second world war but insisted she was right to rebuke the French government and maintained that it could face a court case for breaching of common EU rules.

Allies of Sarkozy had said the French leader would take the commission to task over Reding's attack but he arrived at the summit without making any comment. He angered Luxembourg – Reding's home country – when he told the principality to take in France's unwanted Roma.

Reding's office has said "there should not be a parallel with world war two" but she faced further criticism. The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said: "Madame Reding ... made unacceptable statements about French policy, in particular certain comparisons with the second world war."

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said: "I found the tone and especially the historical comparisons unsuitable. And I hope we can find a better way." Germany and Italy have been pushing for discussion of the Roma expulsions at the summit.

The commission chief, José Manuel Barroso, has rejected Reding's analogy but emphasised his support for her. "The prohibition of discrimination based on racial and ethnic origin is one of the EU's fundamental principles," he said. "The commission will do what is necessary to ensure the respect of [EU] law."

Reding's attack on France was triggered by a leaked document from the French interior ministry showing that Roma were being targeted collectively on ethnic grounds "as a priority" despite repeated French government denials.

The dispute has overshadowed the meeting even though it is not on the official agenda, and threatens to undermine the main objective of the summit, which is presenting a unified foreign and economic policy. There are key summits in coming weeks with Asian nations including China and India.

"When we promote free trade, climate change and human rights around the world we need to have our own backyard in order," said Finland's foreign minister, Alexander Stubb. "And of course anything that looks a little bit different, perhaps suspicious or complicated in Europe, will not strengthen our foreign policy."

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France vowed today to continue deporting Roma Gypsies after critics claimed a leaked document suggesting they are being targeted on President Nicolas Sarkozy's orders means the expulsions are against the constitution and break international human rights laws on discrimination.

The leaked memo emerged a few days after France's immigration minister, Eric Besson, insisted that sending police to destroy camps and settlements and ordering inhabitants to leave France was not aimed at the Roma. He insisted they were being treated no differently to other EU migrants who do not meet France's residency rules.

However, the internal order, circulated to police chiefs last month as France began expelling nearly 1,000 Roma Gypsies to Romania and Bulgaria, appeared to confirm the ethnic minority was being singled out.

Today Besson repeated his claim: "France has not taken any measure specifically against the Roma [who] are not considered as such but as natives of the country whose nationality they have," he said.

However, a leaked memo, dated 5 August 2010 and signed by the chief of staff for interior minister Brice Hortefeux, reminds French officials of a "specific objective" set out by Sarkozy.

"Three hundred camps or illegal settlements must be evacuated within three months; Roma camps are a priority," the memo reads. "It is down to the préfect [state representative] in each department to begin a systematic dismantling of the illegal camps, particularly those of the Roma."

Besson told France 2 state television that he was not aware of the leaked circular: "I wasn't a recipient, and therefore I didn't need to know about it," he said.

He refused to make any further comment but added: "The concept of ethnic minorities is a concept that does not exist among the government."

Later, in a press conference, he said: "We will maintain our policy of expelling illegal immigrants. This is not something new." He said 5,000 Romanians and Bulgarians had been expelled so far this year, compared with 10,000 in 2009.

He admitted there had been an increase in deportations since August, following "Nicolas Sarkozy's demand to go ahead with the dismantling of all illegal camps".

In what was seen as a criticism of the Romanian authorities, he added: "Free movement in the European area doesn't mean free settlement. What has been forgotten is that each of the European countries is responsible for its own national citizens."

The document has sparked furious reactions from the opposition and critics of the expulsions. The Group for Information and Support for Immigrants (Gisti) says it is examining the memo to establish if it breaks any criminal laws.

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