The unit, led by a man known as "King Rat", has been linked with the death of Michael McGoldrick, a part-time taxi-driver and student found shot dead near Lurgan, Co Armagh on 7 July. The murder, at the beginning of the Drumcree siege, fuelled nationalist anger at the Orange Order and Unionists during the following week of rioting. At the time, loyalist paramilitary groups denied responsibility, although a number of men in Portadown with links to the UVF were arrested by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. They were later released without charge. Last night there were growing fears about how the disbanded UVF unit would react to the decision of the leadership.There were fears that it could strike out on its own and unilaterally attempt to break the loyalist ceasefire; some observers even said that the UVF leadership had taken its decision because it feared an imminent outrage by the Portadown group and wanted to distance itself from it in advance to avoid an outbreak of tit-for-tat sectarian violence within the Province.One security source said: "The people we are talking about here in Portadown are not necessarily rational people and there is always the chance they will go off at the deep end and react badly to this decision.

An outlawed loyalist paramilitary group yesterday disbanded a unit linked to the murder of a Catholic taxi-driver. The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) said it was acting against the Portadown unit of its Mid- Ulster brigade, widely seen in loyalist paramilitary circles as a loose cannon. He was jailed for 24 years.Coach driver Tomas Honz, 27, from Liberic, in the Czech Republic, who had also unsuccessfully denied the conspiracy charge, was given 26 years.The jury received 24-hour police protection throughout the five-week trial.. They recovered 1,118kg of heroin, which is now the most common class A drug.After the trial customs investigator Steve Hemsley said: "These convictions and sentences represent a significant victory against the Turkish gangs who are responsible for importing so much misery to Britain."We know Simsek has been in Britain for 10 years and are convinced that for most, if not all, of this time he has been involved in smuggling in consignments worth hundreds of millions of pounds."Also jailed was car salesman Ali Aksu, 32, of Bounds Green, north London, the only one of the four to plead guilty The judge described him as a "mid-ranker" in the plot. He was sentenced to 20 years.Huseyin Kaynak, 34, of Wood Green, north London, who was also convicted of the conspiracy, was a "courier-cum-errand boy".

About 20 are believed to run 80 per cent of the multi-million-pound heroin trade. In the past 10 years they have wrested control from Pakistani and Indian traffickersMuslum Simsek, 31, who was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court, south London, to 30 years yesterday, is among the top 20 British operators, although his boss has not been caught.In March customs officers warned that Britain was on the verge of a heroin epidemic, with seizures of the drug up 80 per cent to a record total in 1995. The seizure last September, which had an estimated street value of up to pounds 60m, was the second-largest haul in Britain.The operation provided further evidence of the influence of Turkish drugs gangs operating from north London. Two other Turkish Kurds also received long sentences, along with a Czech driver who used a pensioners' tour bus to ship 50kg consignments of heroin into London. Customs officers believe millions of pounds' worth of heroin was smuggled into Britain and sold before the gang was caught with 198kg of the narcotic. One of Britain's major heroin smugglers was jailed for 30 years yesterday in an operation by Customs and Excise investigators which revealed the growing menace of Turkish drug barons. All British bread described as a loaf must be made in either full 800g or half 400g sizes, unless it is below 300g.But the EC regards this law as a barrier to trade, and wants it scrapped. A directive to be considered by the European Parliament would allow loaves of any weight to be sold, and labelled in "pence per gram".As Labour pledges its opposition, however, the affair has seen a bizarre reversal of usual political alignments, with the Government's "deregulation taskforce" at the Department of Trade and Industry keen to get rid of the old laws - "just because they are rules", said Tony Casdagli, director of the Federation of Bakers..

It is difficult to see anything good about tampering with nature in this fashion. But to see all new strains in a negative light simply because they will supersede old varieties or change the status quo is to deny the existence of progress.. Labour presented itself yesterday as the defender of a 700-year- old British law against the encroachment of Brussels as it launched a campaign to "save the British loaf". Ever since King John enacted the Assize of Bread in 1266, the weight of loaves in England has been regulated. But now, warns Nigel Griffiths, Labour consumer spokesman, a draft European Union directive threatens the standard loaf "In the UK we buy bread by the loaf. Consumers are protected because whatever the shape or size of the loaf, they get the same weight of bread by law - 800g in the case of a standard family loaf; which represents 85 per cent of all bread sales," he said. The standard loaf was halved from the 4lb "quartern" to 2lb as a wartime measure in 1939, and metricated to 800g in the 1988 Weights and Measures Order. It is when the breeding is purely for yield or speed of production and there is no consideration of quality that it becomes negative.The real danger lies with transgenic varieties, those that have been created by moving DNA from one organism to another.