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Parents of hyperactive children should not be blamed for failing to bring up their offspring properly, according to scientists who today publish evidence that the condition is genetic.

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) find it hard to concentrate and can be wild and uncontrollable both at home and at school. Controversy has raged around the drug most widely used to calm such children, Ritalin, which is of the amphetamine family. In the US, such drugs became popular among families who wanted their lively (non-ADHD) boys to do better in class, while in the UK they were tagged chemical coshes. Meanwhile, parents have often tacitly been blamed for lack of discipline or giving their children a sugar and additive-laden diet.

But today the furore around ADHD moves into a different space. Researchers, funded not by drug companies but by the Wellcome Trust and other bodies, are publishing the results of a study which for the first time identifies genetic changes in children diagnosed with ADHD.

And the particular DNA markers they found are in the same area of the brain as genetic variants linked to autism and schizophrenia. That means, say the authors of the paper in the Lancet, that ADHD would be better classified as a neurodevelopmental disorder than a behavioural problem.

"We hope that these findings will help overcome the stigma associated with ADHD," said Professor Anita Thapar from the MRC Centre in Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics at Cardiff University, one of the authors.

"Too often, people dismiss ADHD as being down to bad parenting or poor diet. As a clinician, it was clear to me that this was unlikely to be the case. Now we can say with confidence that ADHD is a genetic disease and that the brains of children with this condition develop differently to those of other children."

One in 50 children is affected by ADHD, and while it used to be thought that they grow out of it, many continue to have problems in adult life.A genetic link has been suggested for some time, but not proven. Past investigations have shown that ADHD is more likely in a child who has a parent that suffers from the disorder, and that if one twin has ADHD, the other twin has a 75% chance of also having it.

But the study has found the first direct evidence by analysing DNA samples from 366 children diagnosed with ADHD, aged five to 17, and 1,047 children without the condition. They found the children with ADHD were more likely to have certain small segments of DNA either duplicated or missing than the other children. Although this finding was limited to 16% of all the children with ADHD, they say it is highly likely the rest have other genetic variants that have not yet been identified.

The researchers point out that they have not found a single gene that is responsible for the condition, and environmental circumstances will also be part of the picture – although as yet they do not know what those are. "ADHD is a very complex disorder which will have a number of different causes. A number of different genetic factors will be involved along with other, non-genetic factors," said Dr Kate Langley, another of the authors.

The findings will not be used for diagnosing ADHD, they add, but they result in new treatments. The stimulant drugs most commonly used to control the symptoms have been around since the 1950s.ADHD support groups warmly welcomed the findings, which they said would make life easier for families.

"This is indeed extremely welcome news of clear evidence to confirm that attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is indeed a brain development disorder with closer links to autism than was previously thought," said Simon Hensby of Adders, an online information organisation.

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They might have been lifted from the most ghoulish of horror films: more than 200,000 jars containing more than a million snakes, monster frogs, bats, stunted fish, outlandish lizards and serpents, all garishly illuminated on nearly eight miles of theatrically back-lit shelving.

The spectacular display, which uses some 21,600 gallons of alcohol, is the world's biggest, most sophisticated collection of so-called "wet species", comprised of rare reptile specimens collected across the globe in the past 200 years. Visitors to Berlin's natural history museum are able to pass through an elaborately constructed climatised air lock at the 200-year-old research institute and enter a vast darkened chamber where the alcohol-preserved reptiles have gone on permanent public display to the public for the first time.

Yet inside the magical "wet" collection room, it was crowds of delighted rather than frightened children that were pressing their noses against huge illuminated glass walls that seemed to be stuffed with creatures taken straight from Alice in Wonderland.

"In museum terms, this is like a Phoenix rising from the ashes," said Andreas Kunkel, a spokesman for the museum, which was inspired by the research conducted by the German explorer Alexander von Humboldt two centuries ago. "After a break lasting all of 65 years, we are back in business," he said. The exhibition is the high point of what amounts to the rebirth of Berlin's once-legendary natural history museum. It is now aiming to resume its place among the world's foremost after undergoing a comprehensive €30m (£25m) restoration programme.

Its collection includes the world's largest dinosaur skeleton, 25 million mammals, fish and insects, and birds, now extinct, collected during Captain Cook's voyages, and the institution once rated alongside its counterparts in London and Paris in terms of global scientific importance. It was formally opened by the last Imperial Kaiser, Wilhelm II, in 1889 and was designed to put German natural science firmly on the map.

However in 1945, an Allied air raid reduced the east wing of the turn-of-the-century building in Berlin's Invalidenstrasse to a blackened ruin. During the Cold War, the museum was deprived of cash as it was located in the communist-run sector of Berlin, firmly ensconced behind the city's infamous Wall. "The museum was left badly neglected," Mr Kunkel said. "Almost nothing was done to it for over six decades."

As little as eight years ago, trees were growing out of sections of the bomb-damaged building. Its priceless collections of stuffed birds and mammals were so badly affected by the lack of a modern climate-control system that the skin and feathers were drying up, splitting and falling off the exhibits. "It is not nice for the visitors," complained the museum's director at the time.

Chronic underfunding meant that staff were unable to open, let alone catalogue, the museum's 250 tons of prehistoric skeletal specimens that were brought back to Berlin from the largest single dinosaur excavation on record, which took place in 1913 in German East Africa. In winter, museum researchers had to wear thick coats if they wanted to examine specimens. Heating was banned because it meant the alcohol containing the reptiles would evaporate too quickly.

The museum's plight prompted natural history professors from Britain, the United States, France, Switzerland and Denmark to publicise an appeal in 2002 for the equivalent of an initial £6.4m to help to rescue the building.

They pointed out its collections were "part of a national and international cultural heritage" and concluded that the museum was "dangerously underfunded". However, the suggestion that the Berlin museum should bid for sponsorship – as its London counterpart did for its popular Darwin Centre – was not taken up. Instead, the museum became mired in bureaucratic wrangling between Germany's federal government and the then government of the bankrupt capital, Berlin, which faced £31bn worth of debts.

Yet salvation arrived last year, when the museum was finally classified as one of the country's acclaimed Leibniz scientific research institutes, funded jointly by regional and central government.

The new money has allowed the purchase of sonar-type equipment which enables researchers to examine the contents of hundreds of bamboo crates packed with dinosaur bones that have remained unopened since they were brought by ship nearly a century ago.

Specimens such as a finely penned 16th-century specimen log book and a sea-foam-coloured antique cabinet full of rare corals have been restored. And items with a darker history, such as a doe-eyed panda that Hermann Göring, the Nazi air chief, ordered stuffed for Berlin's 1935 "hunting exhibition", are also on display. Even the remains of a stuffed Vasa parrot called Jacob – the favourite pet of Alexander von Humboldt, the founder of modern geography – are there.

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Swedish police evacuated a Pakistan International Airlines plane that was diverted to Stockholm because of a bomb alert today, and detained a passenger on suspicion of preparing to sabotage the aircraft, officials said.

The Boeing 777 was travelling from Toronto to Karachi when the pilot asked to land at Stockholm's Arlanda airport, after Canadian authorities received a tip that a passenger was carrying explosives. Arlanda spokesman Anders Bredfell said 273 people were on board.

A Swat team detained the suspect as he was evacuated from the aircraft along with the other passengers. Police described him as a Canadian citizen of Pakistani origin, aged about 30.

Stephan Radman, who led the police operation, said no explosives were found on the man, who was being questioned by investigators at a police station. He said a bomb squad was searching the aircraft, which was parked on a ramp at the end of a runway.

The tip was "called in by a woman in Canada", Radman said, adding that Swedish police took the threat seriously.

Police officials said the man was not on any international no-fly lists and had cleared a security check in Canada. He didn't resist when the Swat team took him into custody.

A prosecutor was to decide whether to formally arrest him.

In Pakistan, a spokesman for state-run Pakistan International Airlines confirmed the incident involved flight PK782 to Karachi.

"The plane has landed at the Stockholm airport due to security reasons," the airline spokesman Sultan Hassan said.

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Ed Miliband has scored a minor historic first by being the only unmarried man ever to be elected leader of the Labour Party – though that says more about how society has changed than it says about him.

He is in a relationship with Justine Thornton, a 40-year-old, Cambridge-educated environmental lawyer. They have an 15-month-old son, Daniel, and another boy is due in November – raising the possibility that in 40 years the brothers will be fighting to follow their father's footsteps as leader of the Labour Party.

Until the 1990s, the revelation that a politician had had a child outside marriage was potentially career destroying, and one Sunday paper referred yesterday to the old-fashioned concept of "wedlock", but the new Labour leader's married status is unlikely to affect his standing with the public.

When questioned about his status by The Mail on Sunday, Mr Miliband said that he thought they would get around to getting married, but did not say when.

"Ed does believe in marriage," said a spokeswoman yesterday, "but he doesn't think for one second that he loves Justine any less or that they are in any less of a strong relationship because they aren't married."

Ms Thornton was in Manchester to witness her partner's triumph, but headed back to London yesterday. She will return tomorrow to listen to him deliver his first leader's speech. Like Nick Clegg's wife, Miriam, she will continue with her legal career rather than give up her job, like Samantha Cameron, and drop into the role of a politician's wife.

The couple met five years ago, and live together in Primrose Hill, north London, close to where the Miliband brothers grew up. David Miliband lives nearby.

They kept their relationship out of the public eye until March last year, when right-wing newspapers went on the attack because he was the climate change secretary, and she was advising Eon, the German energy company.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change asserted that Ms Thornton had not worked on any cases "in which DECC is the decision-maker".

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It is a long way from Liverpool, but New York was not the escape Nick Clegg might have hoped for. First he had to perform Vince Cable damage control before speeding to a New York University town hall event to tell of strange things going on in Britain: opposing parties talking to each, governing together even.

All that was before most of Manhattan had had breakfast. Only much later was the Deputy Prime Minister released into the baffling maze of the United Nations to tell other people about other strange things going on in Britain: an austerity government willing, nay eager, to increase spending on aid abroad.

Mr Clegg might make a decent American politician – he has the town hall format down pat and some say he wasn't bad in the election leaders' debates. On the other hand, he wouldn't last five minutes here on account of his frankness about the lapses of the country he co-governs. Not patriotic enough.

There is, Mr Clegg told NYU, much "uncivilised and irrational debate" going on in Parliament "every day". The way in which power is centralised in Britain "beggars belief", and voters at home are burdened with a political system that is "creaky and clapped out". With good old English irony, he also quipped: "Personally, I like democracy. I think we should start practising it in the United Kingdom."

The discussion, of course, was about the voting reform to be put to a referendum next year. But the students were gripped most by this notion that rival parties can co-operate. The language of "someone's up and someone's down" is giving way, he said, to a "more complex idiom where people are open to all kinds of difference and are grown-up about the differences".

His argument that sustaining Britain's commitment to foreign development aid is about "enlightened self-interest" – his most frequently uttered phrase of the day – was uncontroversial at NYU, at least. Some at the UN, who have not matched their rhetoric on the Millennium Development Goals with cash, might think "pious" while smiling and shaking his hand.

What left the students puzzled, perhaps, was his analysis of shifts occurring in politics not just in Britain but everywhere. Whether he cheered or scared them was hard to tell. But the old status quo, he said, is crumbling. "Something seems to be going on in political democracies and we don't where it is going to evolve," he offered. "The old tribalism is collapsing. All democracies are dealing with this."

If old orders are indeed on their way out, whither Democrats and Republicans? Is America ready for its duopoly of political power finally to falter? Could an independent rule the country, say, with a Tea Party deputy leader or the other way about? Mr Clegg may have just suggested a ticket for 2012: Bloomberg-O'Donnell. Those crazy, naive British. Don't be fooled by this clean-cut leader comes here all sane, sensible and "grown-up". Unhinged.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

It is a long way from Liverpool, but New York was not the escape Nick Clegg might have hoped for. First he had to perform Vince Cable damage control before speeding to a New York University town hall event to tell of strange things going on in Britain: opposing parties talking to each, governing together even.

All that was before most of Manhattan had had breakfast. Only much later was the Deputy Prime Minister released into the baffling maze of the United Nations to tell other people about other strange things going on in Britain: an austerity government willing, nay eager, to increase spending on aid abroad.

Mr Clegg might make a decent American politician – he has the town hall format down pat and some say he wasn't bad in the election leaders' debates. On the other hand, he wouldn't last five minutes here on account of his frankness about the lapses of the country he co-governs. Not patriotic enough.

There is, Mr Clegg told NYU, much "uncivilised and irrational debate" going on in Parliament "every day". The way in which power is centralised in Britain "beggars belief", and voters at home are burdened with a political system that is "creaky and clapped out". With good old English irony, he also quipped: "Personally, I like democracy. I think we should start practising it in the United Kingdom."

The discussion, of course, was about the voting reform to be put to a referendum next year. But the students were gripped most by this notion that rival parties can co-operate. The language of "someone's up and someone's down" is giving way, he said, to a "more complex idiom where people are open to all kinds of difference and are grown-up about the differences".

His argument that sustaining Britain's commitment to foreign development aid is about "enlightened self-interest" – his most frequently uttered phrase of the day – was uncontroversial at NYU, at least. Some at the UN, who have not matched their rhetoric on the Millennium Development Goals with cash, might think "pious" while smiling and shaking his hand.

What left the students puzzled, perhaps, was his analysis of shifts occurring in politics not just in Britain but everywhere. Whether he cheered or scared them was hard to tell. But the old status quo, he said, is crumbling. "Something seems to be going on in political democracies and we don't where it is going to evolve," he offered. "The old tribalism is collapsing. All democracies are dealing with this."

If old orders are indeed on their way out, whither Democrats and Republicans? Is America ready for its duopoly of political power finally to falter? Could an independent rule the country, say, with a Tea Party deputy leader or the other way about? Mr Clegg may have just suggested a ticket for 2012: Bloomberg-O'Donnell. Those crazy, naive British. Don't be fooled by this clean-cut leader comes here all sane, sensible and "grown-up". Unhinged.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

Barack Obama inherited both the war in Afghanistan and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Now he tells critics, somewhat late in the day, that a Republican president's response to resurgent Taliban and bankrupt bankers would have been worse. True, but that does not mean that his response to both – a troop surge in Afghanistan and an inadequate stimulus package – were the right ones. It does, however, mean his ownership has been indisputably stamped on each of the worst legacies of the Bush era. Telling left-wingers to get real is beside the point. Obama first has to prove that these policies work, first and foremost because they are now his.

The task of winning back a growing band of sceptics is complicated – not least by the actions and words of his own administration. Doubtless all left for different reasons, but the fact remains that, with the departure of Larry Summers, his top three economic advisers have now quit in the runup to midterm elections in which the handling of the economic crisis will be the hot-button issue. In these circumstances, few are going to be wholly convinced by the formula that the best and the brightest left to spend more time with family, or with Harvard. So is it right to see this administration in the terms in which it describes itself – as a team that evolves over time – or as it is described by others, as an executive that finds big decisions difficult and makes them only after much blood has been split on the Oval Office carpet?

On Afghanistan, the apparent dissension matters. Bob Woodward's account of the internal debate that led to the troop surge is in many respects too contemporaneous for its own good. It has been just over a month since the last of those 30,000 troops were deployed, and it is only three months until the review of that decision has to take place. Yet we hear that Obama wants out of Afghanistan at all costs ("I am not doing long-term nation-building"); that David Petraeus, since appointed the commander of ISAF, says that the US will be in the fight for the rest of his life and probably his children's; and that they think that Hamid Karzai, the bearing on which the whole creaky wheel turns, is a manic depressive.

How much more difficult will it be for Obama when he has to stand up, some time before July 2011, and say the US is in Afghanistan for the long run? His only hope is that, by next July, the tide will have turned sufficiently for Gen Petraeus to say that counter-insurgency is working. Failing that, a recalcitrant president will have been drawn ever deeper into a war he does not believe in, and which he cannot get out of. He would have been better off trusting his instincts.

drive from www.guardian.co.uk

In future years, 2010 may be remembered as the landmark year healthcare was finally secured for all Americans. It may be remembered for the most sweeping reforms of Wall Street ever. It may even be remembered for sweeping Democratic losses in congress.

But for now, 2010 is, hands down, the year of the Tea Party.

Democrats' reaction to victories of Republican Tea Party candidates, culminating in last Tuesday's primaries has been one of shocked delight. Did Republican voters really elect candidates who believe masturabtion will earn you box seats in hell, have "dabbled into witchcraft", want to abolish state education, would allow discrimination on the basis of race, want to ship welfare recipients to prison and believe that "healthcare will kill more people than terrorism?

Democrats have found it hard to temper their public delight at the hickjacking of their opponents' candidates, making the calculus that it will temper their impending disaster at the November elections. That's possible, but unlikely. The house of representatives is all but gone. The senate remains in Democrats' tenuous grasp.

But take the slightly bigger picture. If Republicans make the gains they're likely to, we're looking at two years of gridlock that can only benefit the president who will do what he does best – play mediator, speak with a voice of reason and be a calming influence in the polarised and chaotic Washington of the next two years. This, combined with the Palin factor – forcing primary Republican presidential challengers to veer violently to the right – will improve Obama's chances of re-election in 2012.

Yet, this still misses the greater point.

The Republican "tent" is straining: witness the cannibalism already taking place this weekend, with Karl Rove attacking the tea partiers, with moderate senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska announcing a "write-in" campaign against her extremist opponent Joe Miller (the guy that says unemployment benefits are unconsititutional).

The Republican party is already already severely divided. And this isn't temporary. On one side, the nationally electable socially moderate (and fiscally conservative) candidates like Mitt Romney. On the other side, Sarah Palin and associates. Enough said. Remonstrations are already rife in the party. Expect that to accelerate.

As America – admittedly, slowly – becomes more socially moderate (see polls on greater acceptance of gay rights, belief in healthcare, etc), Republican leaders in Washington are doing their best to portray an inclusive party. Many in the Republican camp are on board with the moderate strategy (see Ken Mehlman – Bush's chief strategist's – call for acceptance of gay rights, or Karl Rove's repudiation of the Tea Party).

It's tempting to compare the Republican party to the British Conversative party of the late 1990s: at war with itself; unsure of its identity; fundamentally torn by the issue of Europe and forced into being the party of "no" (remember William Hague's "Five days left to save the pound" campaign?). The answer for the Conservatives was to modernise, tack to the middle and embrace social change. They were able to do so not least because of the ageing population of the most rightwing elements.

Americans Republicans don't have that luxury. Tea Partiers aren't dying out. Their extremism is sustained, in part, by thriving Christian fundamentalism. They're here to stay. And they're here to be vocal.

And so the inevitable conclusion? A Republican party that either is doomed to represent an extremist vocal minority, or – more likely – a schism in the party. It's doubtful that will take place anytime soon. It will take a series of disasters to prompt change. But the cracks in the party are widening. They will become chasms, especially as the country moves on.

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What is the one bit of science from your field that you think everyone should know?
Stephen Hawking: Science can explain the universe without the need for a Creator.

Brian Cox: That's a wonderfully provocative sentence, actually. A beautiful answer. It's interesting, because you have previously used the word God in a similar way, in my view, to Einstein. I am thinking of phrases like "knowing the mind of God", which you used in A Brief History Of Time. In my opinion, Einstein was using the word God as a shorthand to convey the majesty and beauty of the laws of physics, and did not intend this to be taken as a sign that he subscribed to a particular religious doctrine. Is this the sense in which you have used the term before, and are you trying to clear up any misunderstandings caused by your previous use of the word "God", or have I read too much into your answer?

SH: In A Brief History Of Time I used the word "God" like Einstein did as a shorthand for the laws of physics. However, this is not what most people mean by God, so I have decided not to use the term. The laws of physics can explain the universe without the need for a God.

BC: As for my answer, I think everyone should know a few basic facts about the universe. It began 13.7 billion years ago; our sun and solar system formed just under five billion years ago; there are 200 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, and 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. These are wonderful discoveries, and it's quite astonishing we've been able to find these things out from our vantage point on our tiny Earth.

Where and when do you do your best thinking?
SH: It can be anywhere I have time to think. I'm never any good in the morning. It is only after four in the afternoon that I get going.

BC: I say that actually, and my wife thinks it's an affectation, I just don't want to get out of bed. I don't think at any particular time of day or night, or in any particular place. If I have the time and I'm not totally overwhelmed with things to do, then my mind constantly and gently chews over problems and often an answer or idea will pop into my head almost at random. Having the space to think is a genuine luxury, and vitally important if we want people to be creative in any job.

What distracts you?
SH: People asking me questions. I can concentrate and ignore everything else.

BC: For me, it's TV. If I had more willpower, I would limit the amount I watch. When I was studying for my PhD in Hamburg, I only had German channels, and watched them very little. This was probably the most productive time of my life.

What problem do you hope scientists will have solved by the end of the century?
SH: Nuclear fusion. It would provide an inexhaustible supply of energy without pollution or global warming.

BC: I share that view, that the provision of clean energy is of overwhelming importance. What frustrates me is that we know how to do it as physicists, how it works. It is an engineering solution that is within our grasp. I don't understand why we don't seem to want it enough at the moment. As a society, do you think we invest enough in scientific education and research?

SH: I don't think we invest enough. They are why we are not still in the Middle Ages. Many badly needed goals, like fusion and cancer cure, would be achieved much sooner if we invested more.

BC: I think the most important practical problem, which may be more of an engineering challenge than a scientific one, is to build economically viable nuclear fusion power stations. If we haven't dealt with our world's increasing appetite for energy by the end of this century, I think we will be in very deep trouble indeed. In physics, understanding why gravity is such an astonishingly weak force compared with the other three forces of nature is probably the great challenge. Also, understanding why the universe began in such a highly ordered state.

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The police officer blinded by gunman Raoul Moat has revealed he is fighting the Government after being awarded £18.95-a-week mobility allowance.

Pc David Rathband said it was "somehow not fair" that he had been awarded the lowest band for his disability living allowance.

The 42-year-old Northumbria Police officer lost sight in both eyes after he was blasted while sitting unarmed in a patrol car on an A1 roundabout on July 4.

He wrote on Twitter: "Now ready for battle with the DHSS. Been awarded lowest band for mobility. Somehow not fair."

After receiving messages of support over his plight, he added: "Thank you for all the words of support, each one makes me stronger to keep up the battle. It's easy to remove the dark days with your support."

Home Secretary Theresa May has twice written to the officer and invited him to the House of Commons.

Pc Rathband likened the shooting to having his "head inside a tin can with the biggest firework you can imagine. It was absolutely unbearable".

But he has insisted he has "no malice towards the man who shot me".

Disability living allowance, a tax-free benefit for disabled children and adults needing care, is in two parts - care and mobility.

Pc Rathband is understood to be receiving a higher band for care.

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: "We are indebted to Pc Rathband for his bravery and we want to ensure he receives all the benefits he is entitled to.

"For those who require frequent care and supervision, the highest rate of the care component of disability living allowance is awarded to meet their care needs."

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