SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium: A day after the world of Formula One was shocked by a $100 million fine over spying, the racing federation on Friday revealed some extraordinary details of the scandal.

In a 15-page account - including details from e-mails and cellphone text messages - the International Automobile Federation explained its punishment of the previous day against McLaren Mercedes. What came out was a tale of intrigue, and insight into the workings of the pinnacle of motor racing.

In Formula One, each team spends hundreds of millions of dollars each season to build a car to gain precious seconds on the competition. Sharing intellectual property is, to a degree, part of the game, with teams employing photographers to take pictures of the elaborate technology belonging to the opposition to garner the slightest advantage.

But the federation concluded that the McLaren team probably had gained an unfair advantage by obtaining data from its rival Ferrari. On Thursday, in addition to the fine, it excluded McLaren from the constructors championship this season.

The case first broke in the media in the days leading up to the British Grand Prix on July 8. But its beginnings can be traced to the retirement from Ferrari of Michael Schumacher last year after 11 seasons with the team, and the resulting sabbatical of Ross Brawn, the teams technical director.

Nigel Stepney, a right-hand man to Brawn, was unhappy about his new boss. According to the federation report, as early as the first race of the season in mid-March, the Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne, Stepney began to communicate with his friend and former colleague, Mike Coughlan, McLarens chief designer, about details on Ferraris car and team strategy.

When the scandal broke in July, it focused only on a 780-page document found at Coughlans home in England.

Ferrari claimed that it had been tipped off about the document by an employee of a copy shop in Woking, England, where McLaren is based, as the employee was a Ferrari fan and became suspicious about the document. But, according to Stepney, in an interview with the British media in early July, Ferrari had been following his movements all season.

On July 4, McLaren said that the data had not been transferred to the car or used by anyone else within the company, and that it had been an isolated incident involving a rogue employee.

But the evidence issued Friday suggests otherwise. Coughlan and Stepney were shown not only to be communicating regularly since before the first race of the season - won by Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari - but also to be contact with two drivers of the McLaren tam.

Coughlan had worked with the McLaren test driver, Pedro de la Rosa, on another team years ago. Coughlan shared some information in e-mail exchanges with de la Rosa.

“Hi Mike, do you know the Red Cars Weight Distribution?” de la Rosa wrote in an e-mail to Coughlan on March 21, three days after the first race. “It would be important for us to know so that we could try it in the simulator.” At the hearing Thursday, de la Rosa confirmed that Coughlan had responded by text message “with precise details of Ferraris weight distribution.”

De la Rosa then sent an e-mail to Fernando Alonso, the McLaren driver and reigning world champion, setting out the Ferraris weight distribution to two decimal places on each of Ferraris two cars as they were set up for the Australian Grand Prix.

“Its weight distribution surprises me,” Alonso responded in an e-mail. “I dont know either if its 100 percent reliable, but at least it draws attention.” De la Rosa responded on 25 March, saying: “All the information from Ferrari is very reliable. It comes from Nigel Stepney, their former chief mechanic.”

De la Rosa then mentioned to Alonso in the e-mail that in the first race of the season, Stepney was “the same person who told us” before the race the exact lap on which Raikkonen would make his first pit stop in the Ferrari.

Other information provided included such things as a special gas that Ferrari used to inflate its tires to reduce the internal temperature and blistering of the rubber.

“Well have to try it, its easy,” de la Rosa wrote to Alonso.

E-mail exchanges continued through April, when de la Rosa asked Coughlan for details on Ferraris braking system, and Coughlan told him.

In June, Ferrari started proceedings in court in Modena, Italy, against Stepney.

PARIS: The British bank Barclays won shareholder backing on Friday for its offer for ABN AMRO of the Netherlands, now worth about \58 billion. But a rival bid and ongoing turbulence in financial markets left the outcome of the worlds biggest banking battle still uncertain.

The chief executive of Barclays, John Varley, said a tie-up with ABN AMRO still made sense because it offered “growth, certainty and deliverability.” But he acknowledged that the $80 billion offer, which is mostly in shares, had lost value since a recent slump in bank stock prices due to the crisis over risky mortgage loans in the United States.

Varley said the offer now was worth about \5.50 less per share than another offer by Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis Group of Belgium and Banco Santander Central Hispano. Theirs is worth about \70 billion.

Varley said Barclays was “prepared to walk away” if it failed to strike a deal with ABN AMRO on the right terms - a strong hint Barclays would not raise its bid. But he also said the fight was far from over because the share price of ABN AMRO was significantly trailing the rival bidders offer price.

In a normal situation, the price of ABN AMRO should have jumped to match the best offer price, but some analysts say investors are skeptical that the consortium will be able to raise the money for its bid in current market conditions.

“The stock market, which is seldom wrong about these things, is indicating at the moment that the outcome is far from certain,” Varley said.

ABN AMRO next week will issue a so-called reasoned opinion, which will compare the offers by Barclays and by the consortium, although it may not necessarily make a recommendation on which offer shareholders should accept.

Analysts said ABN AMRO probably would be even-handed in its assessment of the bids, in part to maintain Barclays as a rival to the consortium.

“With Barclays sitting there, the consortium is not likely to be ready to lower its price,” said Julian Chillingworth, a fund manger at Rathbones in London.

ABN AMRO had previously recommended the bid by Barclays, but the board changed its stance to neutral in July because of the change in valuations.

A spokesman for ABN AMRO, Neil Moorhouse, said Friday that the opinion would be issued at least four days before ABN AMRO shareholders gathered for an extraordinary general meeting, which is scheduled for Thursday. Shareholders will discuss the offers at the meeting, but no vote will be held.

The offer by Barclays would include a strategic alliance with China Development Bank and Temasek Holdings of Singapore, the result of a three-way financing deal reached in July.

The bid by the Royal Bank of Scotland consortium is mostly cash and would result in a breakup of the Dutch lender.

Some investors have said the bid led by the Royal Bank of Scotland group could be appealing to hedge funds investing in ABN AMRO because it is mostly in cash.

Yet that bid hinges on the approvals of shareholders of all three bidders involved in the consortium.

They have until Oct. 4 to tender shares to Barclays and until Oct. 5 to the consortium.

Even as the struggle for control of ABN AMRO continues, Barclays may be seeking a new potential merger partner in case its offer fails, some analysts said.

“Its a classic rule that who ever has a failed takeover behind him is now a takeover target himself,” said Herman Bots of Theodoor Gilissen Bankiers in Amsterdam. “Barclays may be saved from this for now as mergers and acquisition activities have cooled because of the recent troubles in the credit market, but that calm may only last one or two months.”

Bots said he thought Citigroup could make an offer for a stand-alone Barclays, while Barclays could make offers for Bank of Ireland and the Scandinavian bank Nordea.

A MAJOR rescue operation to save a whale “stranded” in a Scottish harbour was unnecessary and risked making the situation worse, experts warned last night.

As attempts were made to drive “Marvin” the minke whale from Fraserburgh harbour, worried researchers said the mammal was a “master of its environment” and should be allowed to find its own way out.

They said the operation could stress the animal, which onlookers said appeared to be well fed, causing it to panic and injure itself.

Hundreds of people turned out at the docks yesterday to watch the various rescue attempts unfold. Thousands more watched on television.

But that outbreak of public concern contrasts sharply with the level of attention given to what researchers believe could be a real threat to the species - falling fish stocks off the west coast.

Largely unnoticed, the number of minke whales off Mull has fallen dramatically. Those that are left are changing their behaviour as they are forced to spend more time hunting.

But it was Marvin’s plight that was attracting all the attention. The whale equivalent of a teenager, it was first spotted at about 6pm on Wednesday after apparently having followed a boat into the harbour with its mother. The adult whale then left, leaving it behind.

The first rescue attempt began shortly after midday yesterday, when a boat was used to try to entice the animal out of the harbour entrance on the high tide. But it turned back.

Last night, preparations were being made for a second attempt, this time by banging metal pipes in the water at low tide to drive it in the direction of the open sea.

However, Professor Ian Boyd, director of the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St Andrews University, said the mammal should be left alone for several days, warning that “the flap in Fraserburgh” might be counter- productive.

He said: “I think there is a real tendency to over-react to these sorts of things. The whale in the Thames was a classic case.

“It’s very hard to say whether we could kill these things with kindness, but it’s always a possibility we could do that and create more of a problem, with the very best of intentions.”

Richard Fairbairns, the founder of the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust (HWDT), who has studied minke whales off Mull for about 25 years, said: “[People should] just back right off - leave it alone.”

He went on: “Humans can actually cause more problems than help by stressing it, by causing it to do things that are unintentional.”

He said following boats was very typical behaviour for minkes. “In fact, one followed me into Tobermory harbour the other day. They are very inquisitive animals; they are lovely,” he said.

“It’s a superb animal. They are masters of their environment. They wouldn’t go anywhere they didn’t want to go.”

I don’t know of a minke stranding - they just don’t do that sort of thing. It makes me laugh, we humans try to protect everything and see dangers for them.”

While there was huge concern over one minke whale in Fraserburgh, there has been little sign of public interest in the species’ plight off Mull, where numbers have fallen sharply amid what appears to be a lack of food.

Mr Fairbairns, who takes tourists out to see wildlife in the seas near Mull, said the sightings rate in 2003 was 0.54, equivalent to about one every two hours, but by last year this had dropped to 0.08, one every 12 hours.

And those that are seen no longer show the same amount of interest in boats as they did in the past.

“If we sight a whale, we stop and give the whale the opportunity to come to us. We never go to a whale,” Mr Fairbairns said.

“They are curious animals naturally. They would put their heads out the water and look at the boat or just lazily swim round us. They would be there for certainly up to an hour.

“That was lovely - then it suddenly stopped. That no longer happens. The whales appear to be continually hunting and have no time for anything else.

“They are continually foraging rather than just casually feeding, getting full and bumbling over to us.

“Occasionally, one will come and associate with a boat, but it’s very unusual.”

A lack of small fish may also be the reason for a marked increase in the numbers of basking sharks off Mull - they may be moving in to take advantage of a glut of plankton no longer being eaten by the fish.

The HWDT is investigating reports of minke whales off Skye and in the North Sea, which may suggest the Mull population has moved to look for food.

Dr Becky Boyd, marine policy officer for the Scottish Wildlife Trust, said the minke whales’ problems off Mull were an indication of wider issues for sea life.

“We are looking at creatures high up in the food chain and it is an important shot across the bows,” she said.

“When you do look at the top of the food chain and there is damage happening there, we know below that - even if we cannot see it - there are problems. It’s quite frightening.”

Mark Simmonds, science director of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society and chairman of the Marine Mammal Rescue Coalition, which was involved in the Fraserburgh rescue operation, said attempts to save the whale were justified.

“The whale seems to have taken a wrong turning and got into a potentially dangerous situation,” he said.

“It’s breathing at the kind of rate you would expect if it was feeding, which it is not. The high breathing rate probably means it is stressed to bits, which is another good reason to get it out of there.

“An animal in a prominent place like this can attract foolish behaviour and a man jumped into the water to mess about with the whale.

“Fraserburgh is a busy fishing port with quite large boats and little manoeuvrability and large, fast-moving propellers. The whale was in a corner near a couple of boats, one of which was reversing.” LATE RESCUE BID FAILS

ATTEMPTS to rescue Marvin the whale were scaled down last night when he became distressed.

Rescuers aboard a flotilla of small boats banged steel pipes to generate underwater sound waves and direct him to safety.

Hundreds lined the quayside at Fraserburgh as experts struggled to guide him back to sea, where his mother had been spotted circling the harbour mouth.

At one point Marvin swam tantalisingly close to the open waters, but, visibly stressed and confused by the noise, he turned back.

As a second attempt later in the evening failed, a final desperate bid saw a boat trailing fish try and entice him out of the port.

As the light faded, stubborn Marvin was left to spend another night in the harbour.

Fresh attempts to release him will be launched today. MINKE WHALE STATISTICS

THE Minke whale gets it name from an 18th-century Norwegian whaler, infamous for regularly breaking the rules concerning the sizes (and therefore species) of whales that he was permitted to hunt.

Soon all the small whales became known as “Minke’s whales” Eventually, it was formally adopted as the name for this small species.

There are two types of Minke: the Common or Northern Minke and the Antarctic or Southern Minke. They are part of the rorqual family.

An average adult male Minke measures 22ft 8in in length, while females are 24ft 5in. Both sexes typically weigh four to five tonnes at maturity but can reach a maximum weight of 14 tonnes.

They can reach speeds of up to 12 to 18 mph.

Minke whales typically live for 30 to 50 years; in some cases they may live for up to 60 years.

The total population of Minkes is estimated at around 1,284,000.

Minke whales are generally solitary.

They feed on whatever food source is most abundant in the area, which in the Hebrides is small fish like herring.

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