The effects will be mainly felt by the freight industry and distributors but also right across

"The effects will be mainly felt by the freight industry and distributors but also right across the country," said Tony Bradley, policy director of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce. "This is the crossroads and the most important link of Britain's motorway network and I'm a little surprised this hasn't happened earlier." Geoff Dossetter, of the Freight Traffic Association, said the journeys of more than 100,000 goods vehicles had been disrupted.He said: "A large lorry costs pounds 1 a mile to run, so if you have to make a 100-mile detour and get stuck on jams on unsuitable roads, then the costs will escalate horribly. Modern life is delivered on the back of a lorry, so this has been mind-numbingly horrendous."The IKEA furniture company is also counting the cost after it closed its store on a retail park off Junction nine on the M6 on police advice to avert further traffic disruption. "We are usually very busy in the second week of Easter and as a family firm we would have hoped to see up to 10,000 people visiting the store.

Having one of our seven stores shut for two days does have an effect on our takings," a spokesman said.r Police in the Irish Republic have discovered a second underground firing range hidden in woodland at an IRA training camp in County Monaghan, near the border with Northern Ireland, writes Alan MurdochThe long tunnels were constructed at a site apparently chosen for its remoteness. They were found two miles into the forest during a four-week Garda search backed by Irish Army soldiers in the Knockatallon area, near the village of Scotstown.. Your eyes meet across a crowded room and suddenly you know there is no one else for you You have never felt this way before. The glorious irrationality of the emotion called love? Not at all, according to new research. Your choice of lover has subconsciously been made coolly and rationally, based on a mathematical model - similar to how job applications are processed - which analyses the best mate you're likely to get. But finding the love of your life through mathematics does not have to be a long, protracted process Dr. Peter Todd, of the Max Planck Institute in Munich, said that by the time someone had met 12 potential partners they had enough information to make a good choice as to who should be their life-long love.By the time you had analysed the dozen you were attracted to, Dr. Todd told the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference, you had formed the criteria of what you were looking for in a life partner and would then take the next best one that came along.To consider more could mean you ended up with the law of diminishing returns.

"This is solace for people who believe you don't have to spend your whole life searching for the right person," he said. For true perfectionists he added that the 37 per cent rule which was currently used to evaluate job applications could be employed.It is estimated that once an employer has seen 37 per cent of job applicants a coherent picture of the ideal employee is built up and the next person to fulfil these criteria is the one that gets the job.When it came to affairs of the heart, Dr. Todd said that you should first estimate how many people you were likely to meet in life, assess the first 37 per cent, remember who was best, and then take the next person who measured up. Unfortunately, you would probably have to search through 75 per cent of potential acquaintances to do so. And for most of us who meet thousands of people, it is likely to be an impossible task.However, Dr. Todd said there was no point in going to the other extreme and marrying your childhood sweetheart, because at the time you met, you would probably not have assessed enough potential spouses to make a logical choice.. Your tabby cat may seem to be your best friend when she responds to a gentle pat with what seems like unconditional love and devotion.

But beware: your pet may be manipulating you into treating it like a favoured child, at the potential expense of your own offspring. In Darwinian terms, this is highly beneficial for Rover but not such good news for the evolution of the human race, the British Psychological Society annual conference heard yesterday."Pet-keeping is best viewed as a form of social parasitism where one species manipulates the behaviour of the other to obtain a benefit," according to Professor John Archer of the University of Central Lancashire.Cats and dogs can become "cuckoos in the nest" by diverting attention away from human friends, he said. They can even make it difficult for you to form relationships."In evolutionary terms, pet ownership is a puzzling form of behaviour since it entails provisioning another species in return for which there are no apparent benefits."He put forward an alternative Darwinian explanation in which pets con humans with responses that have traditionally assisted human relationships.King Charles spaniels and Chihuahuas, for instance, are particularly attractive to us because we associate their features - big eyes and chubby cheeks - with babies."We are able to feel in part that we are responding in the way we would respond to babies," said Professor Archer.Owners also talk to their pets in baby talk normally reserved for young children.Coupled with that, pets show affection in a non-judgmental way which we find attractive.. Tucking into a bowl of cornflakes washed down with orange juice and coffee will boost your IQ and put you in a better mood, new research has found. Breakfast-eaters performed up to 10 per cent better in memory tests, in recording lists of words and in the ability to think logically, the British Psychological Society's annual conference heard yesterday. In another study looking at the long-term effects of eating breakfast, cereals emerged as the optimum food. Andrew Smith, Professor of Psychology at Bristol University, told the conference in Edinburgh: "People feel better - cereals boosted their mood."In the study, nearly 50 people had their mental functions and mood measured before eating. Half were then given breakfast and half subsisted on a cup of decaffeinated coffee.