Home Secretary John Reid granted the US request to extradite him for trial.

At the High Court in London, his lawyers argued the 41-year-old had been subjected to “improper threats” and the move would breach his human rights.

His lawyers had argued that, if extradited, he would face an unknown length of time in pre-trial detention, with no likelihood of bail.

He would also face a long prison sentence - “in the region of 45 years” - and may not be allowed to serve part of the sentence at home in the UK, his lawyers had said.

But, on Tuesday, Lord Justice Maurice Kay and Mr Justice Goldring dismissed his legal challenge, saying they could not find any grounds for appeal.

Ben Cooper, for Mr McKinnon, said his client would now seek to make an appeal against his extradition at the House of Lords.

“We will certainly be applying for this court to certify a point of law of public importance and to grant leave,” he said.

Speaking later, solicitor Jeffrey Anderson said alleged threats by US authorities, including one from New Jersey prosecutors that Mr McKinnon “would fry”, would be among issues raised.

That had been a “chilling and intimidating” reference to capital punishment by the electric chair, he added.

It now looked as though the US would try to prosecute Mr McKinnon as a cyber-terrorist, Mr Anderson said.

“This could lead to him spending the rest of his life in prison in the US, with repatriation to serve his sentence in his home country denied as punishment for contesting his extradition.”

Mr McKinnon has never denied that he accessed the computer networks of a wide number of US military institutions between February 2001 and March 2002.

Mr McKinnon, arrested in November 2002, has always maintained that he was motivated by curiosity and that he only managed to get into the networks because of lax security.

Creative last May filed a lawsuit against the iPod maker, alleging that Apple infringed on a patent that Creative had applied for in 2001 and was awarded in August 2005. The company demanded that Apple ceased all production and sales of its iPod portable media players.
Apple responded with a counter-claim, alleging that Creative had infringed on four of its iPod patents.

The settlement ends all legal actions and will grant Apple with a licence to use Creative’s patents in all its products.

Under terms of the agreement, Creative also joined Apple’s ” Made for iPod” programme, allowing the company to manufacturer iPod accessories.

“Creative is very fortunate to have been granted this early patent,” Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said in a press release.

“This settlement resolves all of our differences with Creative, including the five lawsuits currently pending between the companies, and removes the uncertainty and distraction of prolonged litigation.”

Linkin Park performed a brand new song, tentatively dubbed “Qwerty”, during its appearances at this past weekend’s Summer Sonic festivals in Japan. Listen to the audio of the song at YouTube.com. The track can also be downloaded at the Linkin Park fan site Linkin Park Association.

Linkin Park rapper Mike Shinoda told MTV.com this past spring that the group wrote something in the neighborhood of 60 songs for its new album, the band’s first since 2003’s “Meteora”.

“When we were making ‘Meteora’, we wrote 70 to 90 songs to come up with the 12 tracks that are on the album,” he said. “For this one, we’re going to write more than that. We’re about halfway into it. But it’ll be out this year. And I can already tell that the record is going to sound a little different than our previous ones.

“Rick [Rubin, SLAYER, SYSTEM OF A DOWN, AUDIOSLAVE] and I are going to be producing it together, and that’s something different too,” Shinoda continued. “We’ve always based who we are on the fact that we all listen to different kinds of music, and we try to mix all those different styles as seamlessly as we can. And Rick’s done everything from BEASTIE BOYS and RUN-DMC to DIXIE CHICKS and JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE and SLAYER. At the core of his being, Rick understands so much. He doesn’t have to work for it. So in the studio, there’s no thought, there’s just feeling.”