The Manx government is "concerned" about the safety of the Sellafield nuclear site, a spokesman said.

Article: About 11,000 people who have had early bowel, breast, prostate, stomach and oesophageal cancer will be involved.
Uncertainty about the drug's possible anti-cancer qualities has led to fierce medical debate in recent years.
If it is proven to work, scientists say it would be "game-changing", by providing a cheap and effective way to help more patients survive.
During the study, funded by the charity Cancer Research UK and the NIHR - the research arm of the NHS - patients will take a tablet every day for five years.
Researchers will compare groups of patients taking different doses of aspirin with people taking dummy (placebo) pills and check for any recurrences of cancer.
Dr Fiona Reddington from Cancer Research UK said: "The trial is especially exciting as cancers that recur are often harder to treat so finding a cheap and effective way to prevent this is potentially game-changing for patients."
The trial will run across 100 UK centres, involving patients who are having or have had treatment for early cancer, and will last up to 12 years.
But scientists warn that aspirin is not suitable for everyone and should not be used without medical advice.
Taking the drug every day comes with a serious health warning as it can cause side effects such as ulcers and bleeding from the stomach, or even the brain.
Prof Ruth Langley, lead investigator on the trial, said: "There's been some interesting research suggesting that aspirin could delay or stop early stage cancers coming back but there's been no randomised trial to give clear proof.
"The trial aims to answer this question once and for all.
"If we find that aspirin does stop these cancers returning, it could change future treatment - providing a cheap and simple way to help stop cancer coming back and helping more people survive."
Alex King, 51, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2009 and has been given the all-clear, said: "Having cancer was one of the toughest experiences of my life.
"Any opportunity to reduce the chance of cancer coming back is...

Summary: The world's largest clinical trial to examine whether aspirin can prevent cancers returning has begun in the UK.
###
Article: Similarities between these old strains of the bug and those prevalent today have given scientists unique insights into the spread of the disease.
It has revealed, for example, the key role played by the medieval Crusades in moving the pathogen across the globe.
The researchers tell Science magazine they hope their study will lead them to the ancient origins of the leprosy.
In medieval times, a sufferer of leprosy was likely to be an outcast, secluded from society in quarantined colonies. Then as now, there was a social stigma with having the disease, but it can be cured if caught early. If left untreated, it can leave sufferers deformed and crippled.
Leprosy sufferers were often quarantined in living areas called leprosaria. In public, they had to wear bells to warn others of their presence. In the bible it was referred to as an "unclean" disease and by 1225, there were about 19,000 leprosaria colonies in Europe.
"The important thing to remember is that leprosaria were religious institutions, showing both a major material investment and adherence to a religious rule of life," explained Prof Monica Green, who specialises in medical history at the Arizona State University, US.
"Leprosy was the only disease in medieval Europe that elicited a specific institutional response. In its full-blown form, it was grossly disfiguring and maiming. Stigma might be reserved for persons with the most serious cases.
"There was a general decline towards the later middle ages, in part because the segregation provided by leprosaria 'worked' in removing the most seriously affected individuals from open society."
Turmoil, crisis and the creation of a state - explore life in the middle ages
The scientists in this new study compared the genetics of the disease-causing bacterium Mycobacterium leprae found in five medieval skeletons from Europe with 11 modern strains.
The DNA comparison showed that one type of leprosy found in Europe 1,000 years ago is the same as one present in the Middle East now.
This strengthened the view that the...

Summary: The genetic code of leprosy-causing bacteria from 1,000-year-old skeletons has been laid bare.
###
Article: All workers are entitled to annual leave and the National Minimum Wage. Employees get additional rights, such as the right not to be unfairly dismissed, maternity rights and redundancy rights.
Which category you fall into depends on the type of contract you have and the obligations between the employer and the employee to provide work and accept work.
The defining feature of a zero-hours contract is that the employer doesn't guarantee work and the worker doesn't guarantee acceptance of work. So in most cases those on zero-hours contracts count as workers.
As the House of Commons Library notes "the distinction between these concepts is complex and the subject of much debate".
It's not just about the wording of your contract, what happens in practice counts too. If there is a regular pattern of work, which is regularly accepted, then an Employment Tribunal can - and indeed they have - deem the contract to be one of employment.
What's the truth behind the politicians' claims on the campaign trail? Our experts investigate the facts, and wider stories, behind the soundbites.
Read latest updates or follow us on Twitter @BBCRealityCheck

Summary: The employment rights you get depend on whether you are classed as an employee or a worker.
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Article: Speaking at the gala opening at the Palace Theatre in London, the best-selling author said fans had been "amazing" at avoiding spoilers.
"It's the most extraordinary fandom so I'm kind of not surprised, because they didn't want to spoil it for each other."
She added: "I'm so happy we got here without ruining everything."
Rowling said that she'd like the new Harry Potter play to be seen widely around the world.
Asked if the show would head to Broadway, she told the BBC: "I'd love it to go wider than that. I'd like as many Potter fans to see it as possible."
The story, by Rowling, writer Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany, is set 19 years after the seventh and final book in the series, the Deathly Hallows.
It portrays the stars of the Rowling's wizarding saga as adults with their own children heading off to school.
Audiences had been urged to "keep the secrets" since the play - presented in two parts over five hours - began previews in early June.
It won a number of five-star reviews earlier this week, with one critic describing it as "a game-changing production".
Tiffany said the play had "not massively changed" during the preview period.
"We've crystallized and evolved some of the illusions and costumes - all of the actors are still in it, I'm glad to say. It's been great to see it develop in front of an audience."
The script book of the play, billed as the eighth Harry Potter story, is published at midnight after play's gala opening.
Book shops around the world are planning late-night openings to allow fans to pick up their copies.
Waterstones said 140 of its shops would host Potter parties on Saturday night, with the largest events in Edinburgh, Manchester Deansgate and London Piccadilly.
A spokeswoman said: "Our pre-orders have exceeded six figures - numbers we haven't seen since the last Harry Potter book and we fully expect Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to be our best-selling book of the year."
It's a similar story in the US where booksellers Barnes and Noble say it's broken the pre-order record...

Summary: JK Rowling has praised fans for keeping the secrets of stage show Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
###
Article: On Monday, the BBC's Panorama programme uncovered several safety concerns, from staffing levels to waste storage.
The Mannin Branch of the Celtic League has called on the Manx government to campaign for a full, independent inspection of the plant in Cumbria.
Sellafield says the site is safe and has been improved with significant investment in recent years.
A spokesman added: "Safety is our priority and we are managing a very complex site which has got a great deal of hazardous radioactive materials on it."
The Isle of Man is located about 34 miles (55km) from the nuclear fuel reprocessing plant.
Due to its potential impact on the Manx fishing industry, the Manx government began monitoring radioactivity levels in the Irish Sea in 1989.
A government spokesman said: "Seafood fished in Manx waters can contain traces of radio-nuclides associated with effluent discharges from Sellafield to the Irish Sea, therefore these are monitored regularly to confirm that they remain well below maximum safe limits."
The BBC investigation was prompted by a whistle-blower - a former senior manager who was worried by conditions at the plant.
He said his biggest fear was a fire in one of the nuclear waste silos or in one of the processing plants.
The Manx government said it was particularly concerned about "the structural integrity of ageing waste storage ponds and silos".
A spokesman added: "However we are content that Sellafield Ltd and the nuclear regulators are trying to improve the safety situation.
"The government has asked questions about the technical solutions being developed to decommission these redundant structures and representatives have visited the site to look at the work under way".

Summary:


The Duchy of Cornwall was warned of the risk of a "potentially fatal situation" at a beach it owns, ahead of a man's death there last week.

Article: The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has issued new experimental data.
They estimate what spending occurred in each country or region of the UK, and what revenues were raised in each of those countries or regions.
Spending per head in Northern Ireland was £14,020 while the lowest expenditure was in the South East of England at £10,580 per person.
The statistcs suggest that Northern Ireland also had the biggest per-person deficit - the gap between what is raised in revenues and what is spent.
Revenues were estimated at £8,580 per person, giving a deficit of £5,440 per person.
The lowest per-person revenue was in Wales at approximately £7,980 per person followed by the North East of England at £8,200 per person.
The only areas to run per-person surpluses were London, the South East of England and the East of England.
London had the highest net fiscal surplus per person at £3,070.
This is the first time the ONS has published these statistics and is still refining the methodology.
It points out that certain assumptions have to be made because taxes are generally not levied, or collected on a regional basis and most spending is planned to benefit a category of individuals and enterprises irrespective of location.

Summary: Northern Ireland had the highest public spending per head of any region of the UK in 2016.
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Article: The claim: The cost of borrowing for the UK government is at record low levels. The government should take advantage of this to improve the UK's economic performance.
Reality Check verdict: The yield on UK government bonds has been falling to record lows, making borrowing cheaper, despite the recent cut in the UK's credit ratings. Borrowing to invest has the potential to reduce the need for future borrowing, but that's not guaranteed and it could further damage the UK's credit.
He's right about the cost of borrowing. The yields on 10-year UK government bonds have indeed been at record lows in trading over the past week, and that's a good indicator of the sort of amount the government would have to pay to borrow money.
You can only tell what will actually happen when there is a bond sale, as there was on Tuesday morning.
The government sold £2.5bn of bonds maturing in five years, at a record low yield.
The low bond yield is in some ways a bit surprising, as the downgrades from the ratings agencies S&P and Fitch mean they reckon that lending money to the UK government has become less safe.
But, in fact, what has happened is that the yield on government bonds has fallen because in uncertain times people look for relatively safe investments, such as government bonds.
It's not just the yields on UK government bonds that have been falling. The Swiss 50-year government bond has a negative yield for the first time, meaning that investors are prepared to pay to be able to lend money to the Swiss government. German government bonds also have negative yields, while US 10- and 30-year Treasury bonds are also at record low yields.
The rate of interest the government pays on its debt is important because the UK is currently in debt to the tune of £1.6 trillion (excluding holdings in public sector banks), so a small rise in interest rates would be very expensive for the public finances. The amount the country borrows each year (the deficit) has been falling, but the total debt has kept rising.
The Office for Budget...

Summary: Work and Pensions Secretary Stephen Crabb told BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday that the price of borrowing was at "record lows", and that if he became prime minister he would take advantage of this to invest in infrastructure.
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Article: The company said the practice, which sees certain trains given the green light to miss out stops, was being curtailed due to "customer feedback".
Trains will now stop at all scheduled stops between the hours of 08:00-09:00 and 17:00-18:00.
ScotRail said that out of 59,000 trains that ran over a four-week period, stop skipping only affected 222 trains.
Consumer group Transport Focus said passengers had the right to expect the destination that appeared on their ticket was the one they would be taken to.
Spokesman Robert Samson said: "What would make the problem better is that if the infrastructure in the system improved to such a level that stop skipping was not part of the solution.
"Just now, performance is hovering just below the 90% mark. We want to see that performance improve and that involves cutting down on signalling or other infrastructure issues."
The news comes after the ScotRail Alliance franchise, operated by Dutch firm Abellio, was severely criticised for delayed, cancelled and over-crowded services.
A ScotRail Alliance spokesman said the number of services affected by stop skipping was "miniscule".
He added: "In a tiny number of occasions each month we have to take action to recover the service after some kind of incident.
"Late trains have a knock-on effect on other services behind them, so taking action to get everything back on time is important. If we don't, then disruption affects more and more people.
"What we have decided to do is to make sure that we protect the services that carry the most number of people.
"These are the busy commuter routes that operate during the peak."
The spokesman said that action to correct late-running trains would now take place outwith peak hours.
He said that the chance of large scale disruption as a result was "minimal".
Scottish Labour's transport spokesman Neil Bibby said: "There is nothing more frustrating for passengers than paying over the odds for tickets on overcrowded trains that are often late running, only for the train to fly by their stop....

Summary: ScotRail is to stop late running trains from skipping stops to improve punctuality during rush hour.
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Article: The EC said both passengers and freight services are paying over the odds for using the track through the tunnel, which is operated by Eurotunnel.
Eurotunnel is a private company owned by the investors who paid for and now run the Channel Tunnel.
Eurotunnel said its charges are "transparent and not excessive."
The EC has formally called on the British and French governments to look into the pricing structure and to comply with European Union rules against excessive track access charges.
The European Commission said the high prices Eurotunnel charges the train companies get passed onto passengers.
The EC also said that freight companies are put off using the Channel Tunnel because of the "excessive" charges, preferring to send their goods by road, which causes traffic congestion and pollution.
The Commission claims 43% of the Channel Tunnel's capacity is currently unused.
Vice-President of the European Commission Siim Kallas said: "'The Channel Tunnel is not being used to its full capacity because of these excessive charges.
"As a result, more freight is being carried on lorries instead of by rail, freight operators and their customers are being over-charged, and passengers are paying over the odds for their tickets. The current regime is also stifling growth in the rail sector," he added.
In a statement, Eurotunnel said that it has "always sought the development of cross-Channel traffic and concentrates significant resources on this goal".
The European Commission also said that the regulator which oversees the tunnel, the Intergovernmental Commission (IGC) is weak and far from independent.
The Commission said the IGC "does not have the power to adopt decisions on its own initiative without a complaint".
The EC added that the IGC is not an independent body, because it is made up of representatives appointed by the UK and French governments.
In a statement, the European Commission said: "Lack of independence of a rail regulator can lead to failure by the regulator to address complaints by operators in an...

Summary: Passengers travelling through the Channel Tunnel are being overcharged, according to the European Commission.
###
Article: Oneil Din, 27, from Coventry, got caught in a rip current and died at Crantock beach, Cornwall on 15 August.
Crantock Parish Council told the duchy in April it was "extremely concerned about the safety risks to the public".
The duchy said new warning signs were put up in 2016 and it planned to "see what more can possibly be done".
More on this story, and other Devon and Cornwall news
The duchy was involved in a series of meetings and concluded there was no "simple solution" as the area had protected status, and that re-engineering the course of a river was a complicated and long process with no guarantees of success.
The council said the beach had become more dangerous since a breakwater was damaged by storms in 2015, causing the River Gannel to change course.
Earlier this month 11 bodyboarders had to be rescued at the same beach.
The council said: "Since the river diverted, very significant movements of sand have occurred that have made bathing conditions extremely dangerous at certain states of tide and sea condition".
The council met the duchy, the National Trust and the Marine Management Organisation on 27 January to discuss the issue but no repairs were authorised.
It also wrote a letter to the duchy in April saying it remained "extremely concerned about the safety risks to the public at large on a very busy beach, especially in the summer, and the possibility of an unfortunate, and potentially fatal, situation occurring".
RNLI lifeguard supervisor John Steadman said after the recent death: "Crantock beach has some unpredictable currents at the moment due to the topography of the beach constantly changing."
The duchy, which has land in 23 counties and funds the activities of the Prince of Wales, expressed its condolences and said in a statement: "In 2016 new signs were installed to alert people to the danger of strong currents and other risks.
"We plan to meet again with the parish council, National Trust and other stakeholders to see what more can possibly be done."
The National Trust, which has...

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The roads of central Juba, the capital of South Sudan, bear witness to the British colonial town it once was: They are lined with neem trees, tall and narrow-leafed, their seeds transported from India.

Article: Tobacco is the biggest culprit, causing 23% of cases in men and 15.6% in women, says the Cancer Research UK report.
Next comes a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables in men's diets, while for women it is being overweight.
The report is published in the British Journal of Cancer.
Its authors claim it is the most comprehensive analysis to date on the subject.
Lead author Prof Max Parkin said: "Many people believe cancer is down to fate or 'in the genes' and that it is the luck of the draw whether they get it.
"Looking at all the evidence, it's clear that around 40% of all cancers are caused by things we mostly have the power to change."
For men, the best advice appears to be: stop smoking, eat more fruit and veg and cut down on how much alcohol you drink.
For women, again, the reviews says the best advice is to stop smoking, but also watch your weight.
Prof Parkin said: "We didn't expect to find that eating fruit and vegetables would prove to be so important in protecting men against cancer. And among women we didn't expect being overweight to be more of a risk factor than alcohol."
In total, 14 lifestyle and environmental factors, such as where you live and the job you do, combine to cause 134,000 cancers in the UK each year.
About 100,000 (34%) of the cancers are linked to smoking, diet, alcohol and excess weight.
One in 25 of cancers is linked to a person's job, such as being exposed to chemicals or asbestos.
Some risk factors are well established, such as smoking's link with lung cancer.
But others are less recognised.
For example, for breast cancer, nearly a 10th of the risk comes from being overweight or obese, far outweighing the impact of whether or not the woman breastfeeds or drinks alcohol.
And for oesophageal or gullet cancer, half of the risk comes from eating too little fruit and veg, while only a fifth of the risk is from alcohol, the report shows.
For stomach cancer, a fifth of the risk comes from having too much salt in the diet, data suggests.
Some cancers, like mouth and throat cancer, are...

Summary: Nearly half of cancers diagnosed in the UK each year - over 130,000 in total - are caused by avoidable life choices including smoking, drinking and eating the wrong things, a review reveals.
###
Article: The killer whales are the same animals recently seen off Caithness.
The group is known in Scotland as the Northern Isles community and moves between Iceland and Scotland to hunt and raise young.
Pippa Low, of Findhorn-based North 58° Sea Adventures, photographed the orca in the firth earlier this week.
She was guided to where they were by marine life observers Adele Sutherland and Alan Airey, who were documenting the orcas' behaviour from locations along the firth's coast, including Burghead.
Ms Low said: "I had just got back to Findhorn Marina, cleaning up after a busy day on the water, when I got a call from Alan Airey to say there were orca in the firth.
"So we squeezed out of Findhorn on the low tide and headed across the firth towards Portmahomack Lighthouse - expertly directed by Adele Sutherland, Alan and the rest of the team.
"We encountered the pod at approximately 8pm, seven miles north-west of Findhorn."
She added: "The pod has been identified by the Icelandic Orca Project as a pod which winters in Iceland.
"Individual identification of each animal is still being confirmed. However, this is the furthest south that these particular whales have ever been recorded by the research group, which makes it an even more interesting sighting."
Kathy James, sightings officer with conservation charity Sea Watch, said: "Although this sighting is now the furthest south that individuals from the Icelandic population have been confirmed, other killer whale sightings have occurred in the Moray Firth and further south on many occasions.
"It may well be that amongst these, were unidentified Iceland killer whales. One must remember that clear photographic evidence is required to recognise individual orcas."
She added: "We don't know very much about the movements of killer whales around Britain.
"Members of a pod that has numbered up to 14 can be seen annually around the Hebrides of west Scotland, mainly in summer."

Summary: A pod of orca from Iceland has been photographed in the Moray Firth off Findhorn, the furthest south the group has been recorded.
###
Article: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 42 prisoners and 15 militants died when the facility near Mayadin, in Deir al-Zour province, was hit on Monday.
The Deirezzor24 news website said dozens of civilians and Syrian rebel fighters were detained there.
A coalition spokesman said it was looking into the casualty reports.
Mayadin, which lies in the Euphrates river valley about 45km (28 miles) south-east of the city of Deir al-Zour, has been targeted frequently by coalition aircraft.
US intelligence officials believe IS moved most of its leaders to the town in recent months as Iraqi government forces advanced into the Iraqi city of Mosul and a US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters encircled the Syrian city of Raqqa.
The Syrian Observatory, a UK-based group that monitors the country's six-year civil war through a network of sources on the ground, said the prison was hit at dawn on Monday by what were believed to have been coalition aircraft.
Deirezzor24, which is run by an activist collective, reported that the facility was located near the village of Tayibiya wa al-Maaharufa, and that it had once been the home of a commander of al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda-linked group now known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
Many fighters opposed to IS, including those from Tahrir al-Sham and the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, were held there along with civilians, it said.
It put the death toll at 60, but said it only included two militants serving as guards.
Coalition spokesman Col Ryan Dillon acknowledged that it had conducted strikes on "IS command-and-control elements" in the Mayadin area on Sunday.
"This disrupts [IS's] ability to conduct terrorist attacks in both in Iraq, Syria, against coalition partner forces, and also against our homelands," he told the BBC.
Col Dillon added that the strike was "meticulously planned" and that coalition officials "always account for and take into account human suffering and any type of casualties in our planning."
At the start of June, the coalition said its 21,035 air strikes...

Summary: Almost 60 people have been killed in a suspected US-led coalition air strike on a prison run by so-called Islamic State in eastern Syria, activists say.
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Article: There is great concern across Europe about the collapse of bee populations.
Neonicotinoid chemicals in pesticides are believed to harm bees and the European Commission says they should be restricted to crops not attractive to bees and other pollinators.
But many farmers and crop experts argue that there is insufficient data.
Fifteen countries voted in favour of a ban - not enough to form a qualified majority. According to EU rules the Commission will now have the option to impose a two-year restriction on neonicotinoids - and the UK cannot opt out.
The Commission says it wants the moratorium to begin no later than 1 December this year.
The UK did not support a ban - it argues that the science behind the proposal is inconclusive. It was among eight countries that voted against, while four abstained.
Wild species such as honey bees are said by researchers to be responsible for pollinating around one-third of the world's crop production.
There is heated debate about what has triggered the widespread decline in bee populations. Besides chemicals, many experts point to the parasitic varroa mite, viruses that attack bees and neglect of hives.
After Monday's vote the EU Health Commissioner, Tonio Borg, said "the Commission will go ahead with its text in the coming weeks".
"I pledge to do my utmost to ensure that our bees, which are so vital to our ecosystem and contribute over 22bn euros (Â£18.5bn; $29bn) annually to European agriculture, are protected."
Greenpeace EU agriculture policy director Marco Contiero said Monday's vote "makes it crystal clear that there is overwhelming scientific, political and public support for a ban.
"Those countries opposing a ban have failed."
An EU vote last month was inconclusive, so the Commission proposal went to an appeals committee on Monday - and again the countries were split on the issue.
Some restrictions are already in place for neonicotinoids in France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia.
The three neonicotinoids are clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam.
A report published...

Summary: The European Commission will restrict the use of pesticides linked to bee deaths by researchers, despite a split among EU states on the issue.
###
Article: In their broad shade, there is another familiar sight: Lines of men, in plastic chairs, most of them jobless. They wait and talk, scouring the thin pickings of the local newspapers.
Victor Lajar is one of them. He is 51 - his purple-striped shirt is perfectly pressed; his grey trousers have crisp vertical creases.
Over a cup of clove-laced tea, he tells me he used to be a local government official.
He was from the northern city of Malakal. He fled, during the civil war.  He has a family to support and no job.
I ask my first guileless question: "The war's over; why don't you return?"
Mr Lajar answers with his own question: "You don't know about Malakal?" he asks. "It's ashes," he tells me.
Few journalists go to Malakal. There are horrors aplenty elsewhere, and for long periods, the airport at the town has been inaccessible because of the fighting.
I arrive, on a tiny United Nations charter, at Malakal airfield. We swiftly have company.
A queue of large Russian-made transport planes, with no tail markings, land: Three in one hour, to re-supply the government forces, the SPLA, who currently hold the city.
Before I head to Malakal itself, though, I visit the UN camp, just to the north-east. It is where 45,000 former residents of the city now live.
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I am lucky - the rainy season is almost over. All I have to contend with is the broiling sun and the clouds of mosquitoes.
When it is wet, the ground is awash with mud and human waste.
The place carries the marks of the refugee camp. The new arrivals, strung out, hollow-eyed at its entrance.
The tents and shacks for long-term residents crammed into a crazed puzzle; the attempts to winnow a bit of extra cash: Men selling heaps of rusty nails; children selling single cloves of garlic; women selling small piles of...

Summary:


The city centre has been in the process of recruiting the city centre for £1.3m.
The council has been in the process of recruiting the city centre for £1.3m.
The council has been in the process of recruiting the city centre for £1.3m.
The council has

A new devolved authority has been ordered to review its estimated budget after it rose by £500,000.

Article: The galaxy NGC 1277, just a quarter the size of our own Milky Way, hosts a black hole 4,000 times larger than the one at the Milky Way's centre.
A report in Nature shows it has a mass some 17 billion times that of our Sun.
The surprise finding is hard to reconcile with existing models of black hole growth, which hold that they evolve in tandem with host galaxies.
Getting to grips with just how large black holes are is a tricky business - after all, since they swallow light in their vicinities, they cannot be seen.
Instead, astronomers measure the black holes' "sphere of influence" - the gravitational effects they have on surrounding gas and stars.
In the Milky Way, it is possible to observe individual stars as they orbit Sagittarius A*, our own local black hole, to guess its mass.
But for the 100 or so far more distant black holes whose masses have been estimated, astronomers have made average measurements of associated stars' speeds - their "velocity dispersion".
On a hunt for the Universe's largest black holes, astronomers using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope in the US state of Texas undertook a survey that brought in a haul of nearly 900 host galaxies.
But Remco van den Bosch, then at the University of Texas at Austin, and his colleagues were surprised to find that some of the largest black holes were to be found in small galaxies.
Among them was NGC 1277, 220 million light years away in the constellation Perseus, which happens to appear also in a high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope image, helping the researchers to refine their computer models.
"We make a model of the galaxy and compute all the possible stellar orbits," Dr Van den Bosch, who is now at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, explained to BBC News.
Could you survive falling into one?
"Like a big jigsaw, we try to put those orbits together to reproduce that galaxy so it has the same stellar velocities we measure. "
What the team found was that the NGC 1277 black hole was enormous - as large as our Solar System, and comprising some...

Summary: Astronomers have spotted an enormous black hole - the second most massive ever - but it resides in a tiny galaxy.
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Article: Northern Gas Networks (NGN) claims a nationwide move away from methane to a hydrogen grid was "technically possible and economically viable".
The gas distributor said conversion could start in Leeds by 2026, with estimated costs of Â£2bn.
The city has been selected due to its "size and location", the report said.
The H21 Leeds City Gate report said more than 30% of all UK carbon emissions were from domestic heating and cooking, with a conversion to hydrogen reducing heat emissions by "a minimum of 73%".
Existing underground gas pipes could be used and household appliances could be converted to run on hydrogen, it added.
Instead of burning methane and releasing carbon into the atmosphere, the process would remove the carbon and store it in "appropriate geological storage locations" under the North Sea.
The remaining hydrogen, which emits no carbon dioxide when burnt, would then be used for domestic energy, NGN said.
Dan Sadler, from NGN, said: "This is a major opportunity for our country to become a world leader in hydrogen technology and decarbonisation and would create thousands of new jobs across the UK."
The gas distributor said the highly flammable substance would need "expert management", but added research had found the risk between hydrogen and natural gas leaks in a typical home "comparable".
Councillor Lucinda Yeadon, Leeds City Council's executive member for environment and sustainability, said: "Transforming Leeds into a hydrogen city would be a bold step.
"The project has massive potential to make a significant dent in the city's environmental performance, as well as opening up a wealth of opportunities for innovation, manufacturing and low carbon transport."

Summary: Leeds should be the first city in the UK to convert its gas grid to hydrogen to help meet carbon reduction targets, a report has suggested.
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Article: Media playback is unsupported on your device
17 December 2014 Last updated at 08:39 GMT
Dyfi osprey project manager Emyr Evans, from the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust, has written a book describing how they went from "two guys with a torch" showing people the first birds to re-colonise Wales, to an observatory and conservation project attracting over 30,000 visitors per year.
He told BBC Radio Wales' Mai Davies two lots of birds had arrived simultaneously, at the Glaslyn valley and Welshpool.
"It was like buses - nothing for hundreds of years and then two turned up at the same time," he said.
There are now four or five pairs in Wales and this year for the first time the number of chicks went into double figures, with 10 born.
"Hundreds of years ago, ospreys were part of everyday life for Welsh people and hopefully it will be the same again," he added.

Summary: The story of a 10-year project to help ospreys breed in mid Wales when they returned to the country after a centuries-long absence has been documented by one of the people involved.
###
Article: The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) said it had transferred ownership of the landmark city centre Odeon cinema back to the council.
The 1930s venue, which played host to acts including The Beatles, has been derelict since it closed in 2000.
Bradford Council said it was now inviting bids for "commercially viable" ideas to save the building.
The nearby site of the former police station in The Tyrls has also been transferred back to council ownership, the HCA said.
The agency said it had provided £3.5m funding to the council to prepare both sites for development.
The former Odeon building was bought in 2003 by regional development agency Yorkshire Forward, which later entered into a development agreement with Langtree Artisan.
That agreement, which would have seen the demolition of the building, was scrapped in September 2012 after the HCA took over the Odeon site following the abolition of Yorkshire Forward.
David Green, Bradford Council's leader, said plans for the "regeneration and transformation" of the city centre could now go ahead.
"Acquiring the former Odeon means we can now examine commercially viable ideas to save the building which many have fought to keep over the last decade while it has stood empty.
"It has always been our policy to find a sustainable future for the Odeon."
Several ideas for the future of the site have previously been put forward, including turning it into an arts centre or music venue.

Summary: The sale of a former cinema and concert hall to Bradford Council for £1 has been completed.
###
Article: Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCC), set up this year, originally estimated annual running costs of about £1.3m.
But the authority's scrutiny committee voted against approving it, with one member asking if recruitment plans were "written on the back of a bus ticket".
CPCC said a reason for the rise was that a new authority was being created.
The authority, created under government devolution plans, intends to employ 15 staff, including newly-created housing, skills and transport director roles all on annual salaries above £100,000.
After Wednesday's decision by the scrutiny committee, the process of recruiting any new staff cannot begin until CPCC has reconsidered its budget, the deadline for which is 31 August.
Labour Cambridge city councillor Dave Baigent, a member of the scrutiny committee, asked of the new jobs: "Were these ideas written down on the back of a bus ticket? Were they discussed with councillors in advance?"
Lucy Nethsinga, a Liberal Democrat county councillor, said she had concerns over how these jobs overlapped with those in county and district councils.
CPCC chief executive Martin Whiteley said: "We, with 15 staff, will be substantially smaller than any other devolved authority in the country.
"I don't envisage us creating a big shiny office. We'll be looking to work flexibly across council offices."

Summary:


People with hidden health conditions are being offered "Please offer me a seat" badges in a bid to help ease their suffering on London transport.

Article: The layouts seem to converge over time to a similar structure regardless of where or over how long they were built.
The study,
          in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface
, analysed 14 subway networks around the world.
It found common distributions of stations within the networks, as well as common proportions of the numbers of lines, stations, and total distances.
In some senses, it is unsurprising that the study found that networks tended over time to comprise a dense core of central stations with a number of lines radiating outward from it.
By choosing the world's largest networks, from Beijing to Barcelona, the results were bound to represent networks that serve city centres with a dense collection of stations and bring commuters inward from more distant stations.
But the analysis shows a number of less obvious similarities across all 14 networks.
It found the total number of stations was proportional to the square of the number of lines - that is, a four-fold increase in station number would result in a doubling of the number of lines.
The dense core of central stations all had the same average number of neighbours in the network, and in all cases, about half the total number of stations were found outside the core.
In addition, the length of any one branch from the core's centre was about the same as twice the diameter of the core.
The number of stations at a given distance from the centre was proportional to the square of that distance, but only up to the edge of the core; at more distant reaches of the network, the number of stations contained was directly proportional to distance.
The authors analysed how the networks grew and added lines and stations, finding that they all converged over time to these similar structures.
They authors point out that the similarities exist regardless of where the networks were, when they were begun, or how quickly they reached their current layout.
"Although these (networks) might appear to be planned in some centralised manner, it is our contention here...

Summary: A study of the world's largest subway networks has revealed that they are remarkably mathematically similar.
###
Article: Figures for August showed 28,654 people waiting longer than nine months, the target time for everyone to be treated.
Tory spokesman Darren Millar blamed "record-breaking budget cuts", while Lib Dem leader Kirsty Williams said Labour had "lost control of our NHS".
The Welsh government said the figures were "not acceptable" but said spending on health was up by 9% in two years.
Mr Millar said: "Labour ministers have starved our NHS of more than Â£1bn over the past five years, while spending in other parts of the UK has been protected.
"These waiting time statistics show that it's patients and their loved ones who are paying the price."
Ms Williams accused Labour of "failure" on public services and a "poverty of ambition".
"NHS staff are working around the clock to offer the very best treatment they can," she said.
"Sadly they are having to work in very trying circumstances which is making their job incredibly difficult."
A Welsh government spokesman said: "These figures are not acceptable and we expect to see urgent improvement to reduce the number of people experiencing long waiting times for the start of their treatment.
"However, they do show that more than eight out of 10 were waiting less than 26 weeks to start treatment at the end of August 2015, with nearly 94% waiting less than 36 weeks.
"The standard referral to treatment time is 11 weeks."
He added that an extra Â£1.1bn had been invested in the Welsh NHS in the past two years, despite cuts in funding for the overall Welsh budget by the UK government.

Summary: The number of people waiting longer than nine months for hospital treatment in Wales has risen again.
###
Article: Palmer, who has died at the age of 87, was the first sportsman to use his fame to build a business empire, through an array of commercial ventures.
He put his name to products and services, including United Airlines, Cadillac cars, Rolex watches, Hertz car rental and Callaway golfing products.
The effects of his vision spilled over into other sports including tennis.
"He had the good looks, and affable persona and smile, as well as golfing ability, to become the template for what every successful sports endorser should be," says sports sponsorship expert Nigel Currie.
"He had all the attributes you need to maximise your earnings through commercial activities.
"Before then sportsmen made all their money from hitting a ball in a sporting arena."
Indeed, the man nicknamed The King, was the first golf player to make $1m from playing the sport.
He was Mark McCormack's - the undisputed king of sports marketing - first client at agency IMG, and together they invented a way of making more money off the golf course than on it.
In the first two years of his agreement with Mr McCormack, the golfer's endorsement earnings leapt from $6,000 a year to more than $500,000.
Palmer put his name to a variety of products and services, including United Airlines, Cadillac cars, Rolex watches, Hertz car rental, Pennzoil engine fluid, Callaway golfing products and E-Z-Go golf carts.
And he founded Arnold Palmer Enterprises to handle his endorsements and other ventures.
"Palmer was such a huge golfing icon in America, he was hugely popular with the public, and he and McCormack were able to make money from using his personality in conjunction with different brands," says Mr Currie.
"And it was not just endorsements during his playing career, nor indeed just golf brands.
"He also made a huge amount of money after he stopped playing."
The golfer was loved as an everyman superstar, and even had a drink named after him - the Arnold Palmer cocktail, made from one part iced tea and one part lemonade.
He also gave his name to a professional...

Summary: The passing of famous golfer Arnold Palmer has reminded the world of a true trailblazer in sports business.
###
Article: Figures suggest that by the final year of primary school, just 17% of pupils are doing the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity every day.
A spokesman for Public Health England described the drop in activity levels as "concerning".
More than a third of children in England are overweight by the time they leave primary school.
A new survey from Public Health England and Disney looked at the effects of physical activity on children's emotional wellbeing.
Five ways to keep kids active
More than 1,000 children aged five to 11 were questioned, with their parents acknowledging that being active made their children feel happier (79%), more confident (72%), and more sociable (74%).
But the survey also found that children's overall happiness declined with age, with 64% of five-and six-year-olds saying they always felt happy, compared with just 48% of 11-year-olds.
"Children's physical activity levels in England are alarmingly low, and the drop in activity from the ages of five to 12 is concerning," said Public Health England's Eustace de Sousa.
"Children who get enough physical activity are mentally and physically healthier, and have all-round better development into adulthood - getting into the habit of doing short bursts of activity early can deliver lifelong benefits."
Currently, just 23% of boys and 20% of girls, between the ages of five and 15, meet the national recommended level of activity, according to an NHS report published last December.
"Not being very good" was cited by many children as the reason they did not take part in some physical activities, with older children more likely to be self-conscious than their younger counterparts:  29% of 11-year-olds compared with 17% of five-year-olds.
As part of the Change4Life campaign, Sport England and Disney have joined forces to launch a 10 Minute Shake Ups programme, encouraging children to take part in accessible activities across the school holidays.
"The 10 Minute Shake Ups provide a load of fun activities to get kids moving more," said Olympic...

Summary: The number of children doing an hour of exercise a day falls by nearly 40% between the ages of five and 12.
###
Article: The Transport for London (TfL) trial follows the success of its "Baby on board" badge for pregnant women.
TfL is recruiting 1,000 people to start wearing the blue badges from 12 September.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said he hoped they would "give confidence" to people who find standing difficult.
Some travellers, such as James McNaught who is joining the trial, had already started making their own badges to alert fellow passengers to their condition.
The 45-year-old designed "Cancer on board" badges after travelling on the Tube between Kentish Town and University College Hospital for chemotherapy.
Radiotherapy on his throat left him unable to speak to ask for a seat, and the morphine made him appear drunk.
"I'm really pleased TfL is doing this trial," he said. "A badge and card could help make a real difference to the lives of people undergoing drug treatment or with longer term conditions or disabilities."
TfL will use social media and customer information to encourage other passengers to look out for the badges.
"This small act of consideration from Londoners could make a huge difference to disabled people getting around the city and being fully involved in all London has to offer," said Alice Mitchell-Pye of charity Leonard Cheshire Disability.
The six-week trial is believed to be the first of its kind in Europe.

Summary:


Liberty House plans to submit a formal bid on Tuesday to buy Tata Steel's UK assets, which include the Port Talbot works employing about 4,000 people.

Article: Paintings by 54 artists, using materials ranging from Plasticine to industrial aluminium foil, have been selected by a panel of four experts.
The act of painting itself is a theme explored within several works, which will be showcased at Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery from 9 July to 27 November.
A shortlist of four artists will be announced in June, with the overall winner unveiled on 7 July.
The sources of inspiration behind the paintings are varied, ranging from George Orwell's Animal Farm to a statue of an assassinated politician.
Director of Art Galleries at National Museums Liverpool, Sandra Penketh, said there is an "especially vibrant use of colour" in this year's selection.
"We also see many artists addressing the topical issues facing our world today, touching on subjects such as migration."
The entries were whittled down from more than 2,500 pieces by jury members Gillian Carnegie, Ansel Krut, Phoebe Unwin and Ding Yi, and author and freelance curator The Reverend Dr Richard Henry Davey.
Previous recipients of the prize include David Hockney and, most recently in 2014, Rose Wylie from Kent.
Sir John Moores, the owner of the Littlewoods company and a keen amateur painter, founded the competition to challenge London's domination of the national arts scene.
It was first held in 1957 and is open to anyone.

Summary: The longlist for the John Moores Painting Prize has been announced.
###
Article: US scientists have tracked the animals for nearly 30 years and find they have increased their activity levels.
Their normal behaviour is to stake out holes in the ice, waiting to prey on the seals as they emerge.
But the thinning pack in the warming Arctic is now drifting faster than it used to, and the bears must travel further to get back to their territory.
"If the drift is faster, and that prevailing drift is to the west, then in order for an Alaskan polar bear to remain an Alaskan polar bear, it must walk further or faster to the east on the 'treadmill', or it will end up in Russia," explained David Douglas, a wildlife biologist at the US Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center in Juneau.
He was speaking here in San Francisco, at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union - the world's largest annual gathering of Earth scientists.
The USGS study he presented compared the movements of tagged female polar bears from the period 1987-1998 with a more recent group, from 1999-2013.
Their behaviours were combined with data on the status of the ice pack. This is now drifting through the Beaufort and Chukchi seas up to 6% quicker than it used to, as today's thinner floes get pushed along more easily by the wind.
The analysis indicates the 1999-2013 bears have had to react to this greater speed by increasing their activity rates.
"We find that the bears in the recent period are 9-13% more active to compensate for the ice motion," Mr Douglas told BBC News.
The USGS teamed up with animal physiologists at the University of Wyoming to try to calculate how many more calories the bears would need to consume in order to fuel the additional walking.
The specialists did this, but also converted the requirement into an estimate of the number of additional whole seals the bears would have to eat.
It is an increase of 2-7%, which equates to between one and four extra seals a year.
"Now, you might think that's not a tremendous amount, but you have to keep in mind that that's happening at the same time as their...

Summary: Polar bears are working harder just to stay in one place, as the Arctic sea-ice on which they hunt drifts away.
###
Article: London's Menier Chocolate Factory said the star would not appear in Wednesday's sold-out production after not taking part in Tuesday's show.
It added it would "take each day as it comes" and would "never ask nor expect an artist to perform in this situation".
Smith's father is reported to have been diagnosed with cancer.
The actress plays real-life comedian and singer Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, the role that made Barbra Streisand famous in the 1960s when she starred in the original London production.
The show is transferring to the West End's Savoy Theatre next month after its run at the Menier Chocolate Factory, which ends on Saturday.
Smith thanked fans on Twitter for their support and said she hoped to return to finish the run for its final two nights, but her "family come first".
She also wrote a message on Wednesday saying: "Thank you so much, my beautiful followers, sat here crying at your responses. Love your support."
The Cilla and the C Word star also promised fans she would arrange new tickets personally, also telling others she would provide them with backstage passes and even a train fare to see the show.
Smith, who has protected her tweets so only followers can see them, added her father wanted her to continue with the role and the show was her "escapism".
The statement from the Menier Chocolate Factory came after it was reported Smith had felt pressured into returning to the show.
A spokeswoman said: "Our priority at this time is to Sheridan and her family. Sheridan's primary concern is quite rightly her father's wellbeing, and we support her wholeheartedly.
"We would never ask nor expect an artist to perform in this situation, and ask that you respect her and her family's privacy at this time. She will not be performing in Funny Girl this evening, and we will take each day as it comes. Tonight's performance of Funny Girl will go ahead with her understudy Natasha J Barnes."
She added the show had been a "tremendous success", saying: "For those patrons who have tickets to any affected...

Summary: Sheridan Smith has pulled out of two performances of Funny Girl after her father became unwell.
###
Article: Special Report: The Technology of Business
Keeping the cyber thieves at bay
Nollywood finds its global audience online
Joining up Ghana's healthcare to save lives
Ivory Coast stallholders turn to digital marketplace
South African education goes digital
With more than half a million people in the UK dying each year, the funeral industry makes about Â£2bn in annual revenues, according to market research company Ibis World.
Nearly 1,500 businesses employ 20,105 people, and industry revenue is expected to grow by 4.7% by the end of 2014, as increased competition for burial space is slowly pushing up the price of cremations.
With such a large and lucrative market, it's no surprise that tech firms have been eyeing up the death care and funeral industry.
Your Last Will, for example, is an iPhone app that lets anyone create a last message for loved ones in the form of a "video will", to be viewed after death.
You create and upload a private video will and are then issued your own QR code - a kind of smartphone readable bar code - which you give to a trusted confidant who is likely to outlive you.
After your death, your confidant signs in to the app using the specified QR code and receives an email containing a link to your last message video. This link is automatically sent to your chosen list of recipients.
The company acknowledges that "in most countries video wills cannot replace written wills", but for an additional fee, Your Last Will does provide the opportunity to have your video submitted for legal review in what it describes as "an easy process".
"Death is obviously an unpleasant but unavoidable part of life and it's much easier to leave a last message or last will via video than in the traditional way, which involves a lawyer and witnesses," Wolfgang Gabler, chief executive and founder of Your Last Will, told the BBC.
He believes technology will continue to influence death care in the UK and across the world.
"There will be many new businesses around this theme in the near future. I already met with other...

Summary: Death is big business.
###
Article: Liberty, headed by Sanjeev Gupta, was first to express an interest in the assets when they were put up for sale.
A spokesman for Liberty told the BBC that the firm had put together a team of advisers and financial backers.
"The formal process is to submit a letter of intent; it amounts to a bid. It will be done on Tuesday," he said.
In addition to the Port Talbot factory - the UK's largest steelworks - Tata's remaining assets include sites at Newport, where more than 1,300 people are employed, and Rotherham, which employs 1,200. Tata also has operations at Corby, Shotton and Teesside.
Macquarie, the Australian bank, was advising Liberty on a potential bid, and is considered a potential financial backer of any takeover.
Liberty House started life in the university room of Indian-born founder Sanjeev Gupta.
While a student at Cambridge University in 1992, the budding entrepreneur started what has since become a global steel and commodities business with annual sales of more than £2bn.
With operations in 30 countries, and headquarters in London, Dubai, and Singapore, Mr Gupta's Liberty has also emerged as a possible saviour of Britain's steel industry.
Liberty's focus is on recycling the mountains of scrap metal generated in the UK, rather than the historical method of producing steel in blast furnaces.
Last month, it acquired Tata Steel's plants in Lanarkshire. In recent years, it has reached similar deals for steel plants in Newport and the Black Country.
A management buyout team is also planning to submit a bid under the name Excalibur Steel UK Limited.
It has appointed investment banker Mark Rhydderch-Roberts as a non-executive director. He joins Stuart Wilkie, the head of Tata's United Kingdom strip steel business, and former Alcan senior executive and venture capitalist Roger Maggs, on the board.
The government has promised to support any buyer of the business by taking up to a 25% stake in a new business and making hundreds of millions of pounds of finance available.
Tata has not publicly set a deadline...

Summary:


A transgender woman has been found guilty of raping a girl when still living as a man.

Article: Though imposing, the 3.7m (12ft) cephalopod was much smaller than the 13m they can grow to.
It spent several hours in the harbour and was filmed by local divers on Christmas Eve.
Mitsuhiro Fuwa, a curator at the local Uozu Aquarium, told the BBC there had been more than a dozen giant squid sightings in the last year.
Giant squid are more often seen trapped in fishing nets than swimming near the surface.
Professional underwater cameraman Takayoshi Kojima told the BBC he rushed to the harbour from nearby Toyama city when a manager at the marina called him.
He helped guide the squid to a deeper part of the marina, near the exit to the sea, where it disappeared.
Mr Kojima said he did not know whether the squid made it to open waters but said it did not look like it would survive long.
Mr  Fuwa said that although the squid showed some signs of energy - squirting ink and trying to wrap its legs around the divers - it did not look very healthy, with its body pointing downwards and its legs up.
Mr Kojima said that with a rise in sea temperature, giant squid have moved north to waters off Toyama, from where they swim up from deeper waters during the winter season.
He added that most sightings happen between December and January.
Toyama is about 300km (186 miles) west of Tokyo.

Summary: Giant squid prefer the deep sea, so it was a rare treat for onlookers in Toyama Bay harbour when one swam in.
###
Article: In an attempt to make life more convenient, he bewitches a broomstick to mop the floor.
When that gets out of control, he tries to stop the whole process by splitting the broomstick in two - but that just creates two brooms, and doubles the problem.
Is that what retailers have done by offering traditional location shopping alongside online?
Click-and-collect is a fairly new battleground for UK retailers, and promises rich rewards for daring firms.
It has been hugely popular over the past five years, as customers embrace the convenience of being able to order goods online and pick them up in store or elsewhere.
John Lewis announced this week that it would start charging a £2 fee for click-and-collect purchases costing less than £30, after finding that its current free model was unsustainable.
Click-and-collect demand has boomed for the department store.
It now processes more than six million click-and-collect orders per year, compared with just 350,000 in 2008, and moves tens of thousands of parcels every night.
A spokeswoman said John Lewis had seen a 32% growth in demand for the service so far this year.
And the seemingly effortless method of shopping is anything but for retailers as it needs an army of behind-the-scenes pickers and delivery staff.
John Lewis is having to move fast to cope with demand. But it is not alone, according to Andy Mulcahy of online retail industry body IMRG.
It estimates a 20% per year growth rate in click-and-collect across all retailers.
For retailers that sell online and also have physical shops, click-and-collect accounted for 4% of online sales in 2010. That figure jumped to 17.7% in 2014, he adds.
John Lewis is in a position of strength, but this growth is causing significant problems for some retailers - especially UK supermarket giants, according to some retail analysts.
The phenomenon is adding to supermarkets' woes, rather than easing them, says Marc de Speville, the founder of Strategic Food Retail.
Free click-and-collect is "clearly a burden on supermarkets' already...

Summary: In the classic poem by Goethe, a young sorcerer's apprentice unleashes forces he can't control.
###
Article: Wales' main exam body, the WJEC, decided last year to stop offering the course in either English or Welsh due to a low uptake.
Regulating body Qualifications Wales invited exam boards from England to provide the course but did not insist it was available in Welsh.
The teacher behind the petition called it "linguistic discrimination".
Chris Evans, who established a psychology department at Ysgol Morgan Llwyd in Wrexham, wants the Welsh Government and Qualifications Wales to "change the policy".
Another exam board, Pearson, is offering psychology through the medium of English for students in Wales from September 2017 but would not provide it in Welsh, partly because it did not have "access to the expertise".
It means psychology is one of a number of GCSE subjects, including economics, available in English in Wales but not in Welsh next year.
A Qualifications Wales spokesperson said it was in discussion with two exam boards about putting Welsh-medium provision in place next year.
"As part of the reforms of GCSEs, GCSE Psychology was one of the subjects for which the potential number of candidates in Wales was too low for a qualification designed specifically for Wales to be viable," they said.
"A new A level Psychology for Wales was introduced in 2015 by WJEC and is available bilingually.
"As we have done for other low-take-up subjects, we have designated for funding in Wales three GCSE Psychology qualifications that have been designed for England. These are not currently offered through the medium of Welsh.
"We know there is a demand for GCSEs in this subject to be available in Welsh and we are still looking at how that could be achieved.
"We are in discussions with two exam boards, WJEC and Pearson, to see if there is a way of putting arrangements in place to secure Welsh-medium availability for next year."

Summary: A petition has been launched against a decision by an exam board to stop offering psychology GCSE next year.
###
Article: The deal with a Birmingham healthcare supplier is worth £250,000 over four years, enough to ensure continued support for GB at international level.
"Just three months ago, it really did look as though Sochi would be the last Olympics for our biathletes," said the British Biathlon Union's Andre Oszmann.
"Now we have a real chance to develop the sport in the UK."
Media playback is not supported on this device
The financial commitment from Aspen Healthcare Solutions exceeds the £200,000 figure the team had said was necessary for survival beyond next month's Olympics, where Lee Jackson and Amanda Lightfoot will compete for Great Britain.
All but one of the British senior team come from the military. Their continued participation in the sport's top events - World Cups, the World Championships and the Games - had been in jeopardy as the British Army cut its contribution.
"The reality is, unless a sponsor steps in, we won't be able to continue with the sport in Britain," Jackson had said earlier in January, before the deal was announced.
The British Biathlon Union lost its previous sponsor, Skandia, after Vancouver 2010.
"We are already looking forward to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Korea," said BBU chairman Oszmann.

Summary: The future of British biathlon beyond Sochi 2014 has been guaranteed after a new sponsor for the sport was found.
###
Article: The girl, aged 15 at the time, had met a man called David Ayrton in a Portsmouth garage in the autumn of 2004.
The defendant, now 34 and called Davina, denied the charge. She will be sentenced on 4 March.
Judge Ian Pearson remanded her into custody and said it was likely she would be held at a male prison.
He added: "If I were to release on bail there are substantial grounds to believe she would be a risk to herself and a risk of failing to attend for whatever reason.
"I will therefore have to remand in custody. It will have to be a male prison in Winchester but it will be an issue for the prison service."
He also told the jury at Portsmouth Crown Court: "It's been a slightly unusual case and it's not been an easy case."
The court heard that Ayrton, who has learning difficulties, attempted to commit suicide last summer.
Protocols have been put in place for her detention at the prison, a court officer explained.
During the trial Ayrton spoke about her sexuality, and said she she had not "made any physical changes or enhancements" to her body or taken any medication. She changed her name in 2012.
Portsmouth Crown Court was told she raped the teenager while two others were asleep in the garage.
The victim said she shouted and swore at Ayrton to stop the attack, but her friends had not woken up.
She had "only drunk a can and a half of Foster's" and clearly recollected the events.
The court heard that in 2014 Ayrton told a worker at the care home where she lived in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, about the attack.

Summary:


A group has called on Ceredigion council to delay plans to sell-off a former school site so it can bid to buy and retain it for community use.

Article: With such potential power, comes huge responsibility.
Demis Hassabis, the head of Google's £400m machine learning business and one of the world's leading authorities on the subject, has now called for a responsible debate about the role of ethics in the development of artificial intelligence.
"I think artificial intelligence is like any powerful new technology," Mr Hassabis, DeepMind's co-founder, told me.
"It has to be used responsibly. If it's used irresponsibly it could do harm.
"I think we have to be aware of that and I think that people developing that - us and other companies and universities - need to realise and take seriously our responsibilities and to have ethical concerns at the top of our minds.
"We engage very actively with [the artificial intelligence] community - at MIT, at Cambridge, at Oxford - so there are a lot of academic institutes thinking about this and we engage with them very actively and openly with our research.
"I think there are valid concerns and they should be discussed and debated now, decades before there's anything that's actually of any potential consequence or power that we need to worry about, so we have the answers in place well ahead of time."
Mr Hassabis was responding to concerns about the development of artificial intelligence raised, among others, by Elon Musk, the technology entrepreneur and a DeepMind investor, and Professor Stephen Hawking.
Prof Hawking told my colleague Rory Cellan-Jones that artificial intelligence could "end mankind".
Mr Hassabis is not at the "robots" end of artificial intelligence.
His work focuses on learning machines which are able to sift huge amounts of data and support human understanding of the exponential rise of digitised information.
"Artificial intelligence is the science of making machines smart," he said.
"If we're able to imbue machines with intelligence then they might be able to help us as a society to solve all kinds of big problems that we would like to have a better mastery of - all the way from things like disease and...

Summary: It is a technology so powerful that - on a distant day well into the future - it could mean computers that are able to advise on the best way to treat patients, tackle climate change or feed the poor.
###
Article: Owen Paterson has denied ministers were slow to react to the outbreak.
The Chalara fraxinea fungus, which causes Chalara dieback, has already infected 90% of ash trees in Denmark and has been found in East Anglia.
Mr Paterson said 50,000 ash trees have already been destroyed to try to prevent the spread of the disease.
Until earlier this week, the disease had only been recorded in a few nursery specimens.
Mr Paterson said: "We will bring in a ban on Monday. I have already prepared the legislation and we're ready to go. The evidence is clearly there."
The disease was first spotted in February, at a nursery in Buckinghamshire - a case that was confirmed in March, said the environment secretary.
Since then, examinations had been carried out at more than 1,000 sites and tree experts had been consulted.
Mr Paterson said ash trees were not imported commercially during the summer, so the amount of time that had elapsed since the initial discovery had not increased the risk that more infected trees had been brought in.
But Tim Briercliffe from the Horticultural Trades Association insisted the government's response to the disease had been too slow.
He said: "As a trade we're very frustrated about it, because in 2009 we saw it out in Denmark on trees and we said you should ban imports now.
"They didn't do it - they suggested that it was already endemic across Europe and across the UK, and since then the disease has continued to come in, and we believe it could be more widespread than perhaps we realise at the moment."
How to spot the signs
The Woodland Trust welcomed the ban but called on the government to set up an emergency summit to manage other diseases affecting trees in the UK.
Its chief executive, Sue Holden, said: "Ash dieback is only one of numerous tree pests and diseases present in the UK... it is crucial that the wider issue is tackled."
Ash trees suffering with C. fraxinea have been found across mainland Europe, with Denmark reporting the disease has infected about 90% of its ash trees.
Experts say that if...

Summary: A ban on the import of ash trees will come into force on Monday in an attempt to halt the spread of a deadly disease, the environment secretary has said.
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Article: The 23-year-old former Hampshire and Middlesex player is due to arrive in June and stay at New Road for the remainder of the summer.
"I'm absolutely thrilled to be heading back to England in 2012," said Hughes.
"Worcestershire is a quality organisation and I can't wait to meet my new team-mates and re-acquaint myself with English conditions."
After being called up to the Australia team at the age of 20 in February 2009, the left-hander became the youngest player to score successive centuries in both innings of a Test Match - in only his second Test.
But Hughes, currently playing for Australia in their Test series against New Zealand, has managed just once more ton in his overall total of 32 Test match innings, in which he has hit 1,072 runs at 34.58.
He was part of the Australian side which lost by seven runs to New Zealand on Monday - but he is not in the best form, having had a run of scores of 9, 9, 88, 11, 10, 7, 4 and 20 in his last eight Test innings.
Phil Hughes is a heavy run scorer with a career ratio of a century every four games in first-class cricket
"My previous stint in England helped my batting enormously and I have high expectations that spending the 2012 Australian winter in the UK will do the same," he added.
"I look forward to helping Worcestershire be a force in all forms of the game in 2012."
Worcestershire director of cricket Steve Rhodes added: "To gain the signature of the current Australian Test match opener is a tremendous boost for the club and the players for the 2012 season.
"Phil is a heavy run scorer with a career ratio of a century every four games in first-class cricket.
"In 2009, he amassed 574 first-class runs in three games for Middlesex, including three centuries, which demonstrates his hunger for run-scoring.
"I look forward to working closely with Phil during the second half of the season."

Summary: Worcestershire have signed Australian Test opener Phil Hughes for the second half of the 2012 season.
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Article: The hustle and bustle of a city going about its business is broken by the crack of gunshots, sending bystanders running and screaming. In the aftermath one man lies dead and another badly injured.
Further down the street, four security cameras outside a local resident's home picked up the sound of the exchange of fire between the two men, but no images of what happened.
Eyewitnesses reported seeing the pair standing just a few metres apart firing handguns at each other, but it is unclear which of the two perpetrators shot first.
In an attempt to unravel what happened, local police called Robert Maher, a professor in electrical and computer engineering at Montana State University.
Using audio captured by the microphones on the security cameras, he was able to reconstruct the incident shot-by-shot to reveal where each of the men were standing and who fired first.
Prof Maher is one of a small group of acoustics experts working to establish a new field of forensics that examines the sound of gunshots recorded on camera footage or by phones.
"Nowadays it is not uncommon for someone with a cell phone to be making a video at the time of a gunfire incident," he explains. "The most common types of recordings are from dashboard cameras or vest-mounted cameras carried by law enforcement officers.
"Also common are recordings from an emergency telephone call centres where the calls are being recorded and the caller's phone picks up a gunshot sound.  In some cases there are private surveillance systems at homes and businesses that include audio recordings."
Gunshots make a distinctive sound that makes them easy to distinguish from other commonly mistaken noises such as a car backfiring or fireworks.
A firearm produces an abrupt blast of intense noise from the muzzle that lasts just one or two millionths of a second before disappearing again. High-powered rifles also produce an additional sonic boom as the bullet passes through the sound barrier before the sound of the muzzle blast is detected.
Most of us spend our lives...

Summary: Pioneering work to extract detailed information from audio recordings of gunshots could give forensic case officers new avenues for solving murder cases.
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Article: Ceredigion council plans to auction the site of former Ysgol Dyffryn Teifi in Llandysul, which closed last term, for development.
The council cabinet meets on Tuesday to discuss the sale set for 30 September.
But a new group, Plant y Dyffryn, wants more time to draw up a bid to buy it.
The site has a price tag of between Â£250,000 and Â£300,000, with proceeds earmarked for the new-build Ysgol Bro Teifi school which opened this month providing education for three to 19-year-olds.
Leah Williams, one of the founders of Plant y Dyffryn, said "any developer could come in and squeeze the community".
She said: "Llandysul is so small and so Welsh it would just tip the balance.
"There are eight acres of land on a large site with plenty of potential," she said.
Plant y Dyffryn is looking at the example of the Cardigan community venture 4CG in order to raise funds to purchase the site, and then run it.
It took over the Pwllhai site in the centre of Cardigan in 2010, and turned it into a car park to generate income from parking fees with buildings and workshops leased out to small businesses.
A public meeting was held on Sunday when Llandysul residents voted to call on Ceredigion council to delay the process of selling the school site.
In response, cabinet member Gareth Lloyd said that if the cabinet delayed the process of selling, then they would consider offering help to the community with their application.

Summary:


Curzon will receive an outstanding British contribution to cinema prize at this year's Bafta film awards.

Article: Mr Murphy announced his intention to resign last month despite narrowly winning a confidence vote in the wake of Labour's general election defeat.
He had since been drawing up plans for reforms which he hopes will lead to the party's recovery in Scotland.
Labour lost 40 of its 41 Scottish constituencies to the SNP, including Mr Murphy's East Renfrewshire seat.
The party has also announced a timetable for the election of a new leader and deputy leader, with the result of the contests to announced on 15 August.
The leadership contest is expected to be between current deputy leader Kezia Dugdale and the party's social justice spokesman, Ken MacIntosh.
Speaking at a media conference in Glasgow on Saturday afternoon, Mr Murphy said Scottish Labour should better reflect modern Scotland.
He unveiled five proposals which he said had been agreed in principle by party's executive council.
These included electing a new leader through a one member one vote system rather than the electoral college system which requires a majority vote in at least two out of three blocks, comprising elected members, ordinary members and unions.
Mr Murphy was elected as leader despite opposition from the union college, which backed his opponent Neil Findlay last year.
The party will also reopen its selection process for the Regional Lists to attract the widest possible range of candidates for the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections.
This would "abolish the closed shop arrangements for list MSPs so that every Labour Party member has a fair chance of standing for the list, and so that incumbency isn't a guarantee of re-selection", Mr Murphy said.
Mr Murphy also said the party would consider establishing a national selection panel for local councillors, and consider the use of primaries in the selection of MP candidates in future elections.
And he said the party would do more to publicise a "little-known rule" which would allow it to waive the qualifying period before members can become candidates.
Mr Murphy added: "While commitment to the...

Summary: Jim Murphy has stood down as Scottish Labour leader as the party agreed to his plan for "dramatic" change.
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Article: The talks come after Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court ruled the facility unconstitutional, overturning a deal reached between the governments.
Australia sends asylum seekers there under its offshore processing policy.
Papua New Guinea has now said it will close the facility, but it is not clear when that could happen.
Manus Island was first opened in 2001, and along with Australia's other offshore processing centres, has played a central role in Australia's controversial asylum policy.
Papua New Guinea's high commissioner to Australia Charles Lepani said the detainees were now Australia's responsibility, but Australia has remained opposed to taking any of them.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said on Thursday there was room for them at another detention centre on Nauru.
"There's capacity [on Nauru] but we're talking with the PNG government about what options are available in PNG and we'll continue those discussions with them," Mr Dutton said on Sky News.
This comes after an Iranian asylum seeker held at the Australian-funded detention centre on Nauru set himself on fire on Wednesday.
His actions were a "political protest" according to the Nauruan government.
Mr Dutton said the 23-year old man was in a serious condition and was evacuated to Australia for treatment.
Nauru is a small Pacific Island nation about 3,000 km (1,800 miles) north-east of Australia.
It was previously administered by Australia but gained independence in 1968.
What next for Manus Island asylum-seekers?
Manus Island: Australia's Guantanamo?
Australia's controversial asylum policy
Mr Dutton said that the man set himself on fire at a settlement outside the detention centre.
"He's in a very serious condition," Mr Dutton said.
"His outlook is not good at all."
He also confirmed that other asylum seekers held on the island had harmed themselves.
"What we've been very clear about is that if people come to Australia for medical assistance they'll be returning back to Nauru once that medical assistance has been provided.
"We have returned three...

Summary: Australia and Papua New Guinea will hold urgent talks next week over the fate of asylum seekers held at a detention centre on Manus Island.
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Article: A document says chemical and biological munitions are produced at three main sites near Damascus and Hama.
It alleges that both Iran and Russia, the government's allies, are aware.
Western powers say a Syrian warplane dropped bombs containing the nerve agent Sarin on an opposition-held town a month ago, killing almost 90 people.
The United States launched a missile strike on a Syrian airbase in response to the incident at Khan Sheikhoun, which President Bashar al-Assad says was faked.
The intelligence document obtained by the BBC says Syria's chemical weapons are manufactured at three sites - Masyaf, in Hama province, and at Dummar and Barzeh, both just outside Damascus. All three are branches of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC), a government agency, it adds.
Despite monitoring of the sites by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the document alleges that manufacturing and maintenance continues in closed sections.
It says the Masyaf and Barzeh facilities both specialise in installing chemical weapons on long-range missiles and artillery.
The OPCW mentioned Barzeh and Dummar - also known as Jamraya - in its latest official progress update on its work to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons programme.
The watchdog says inspectors visited them between 26 February and 5 March and that it is still awaiting laboratory analysis of the samples that were taken.
The US imposed economic sanctions on 271 SSRC employees three weeks after the Khan Sheikhoun incident, accusing the agency of focusing on the development of non-conventional weapons and the means to deliver them.
It is promoted as a civilian research institute by the Assad government.
A source familiar with weapons inspection protocols says it is plausible that a government might only declare certain facilities on any given site to the OPCW and therefore only give inspectors access to those areas.
The intelligence document also accuses Syria of falsely declaring the work of one of its research branches as defensive -...

Summary: Syria's government is continuing to make chemical weapons in violation of a 2013 deal to eliminate them, a Western intelligence agency has told the BBC.
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Article: He has thirteen "13" tattoos inked on his skin, and on Friday he is adding another one.
Having a superstitious symbol or 13 tattooed on Friday the 13th was originally celebrated as a symbol of rebellion.
Nowadays, the tradition continues, with tattooists charging Â£13 (or $13 in the US) on this day, making them highly popular.
But it is not just tattooists that feel the impact of superstition.
The housing market, the car industry, airlines and the film industry are all affected too.
Victor Miller also has ink on his skin.
"I have a tattoo with the number 13 on my right wrist, indicating that the number 13 has been fabulously lucky for me and my wife and two sons," he says.
Mr Miller wrote Friday the 13th, one the most successful horror screenplays.
Indeed, the horror industry loves to play on the macabre connotations of this date.
Desmond Lam, associate professor of marketing at the University of Macau, says superstition offers people an illusion of control, which in turn offers them hope.
At times, it is simply a part of their culture, a learned value or behaviour passed down from generation to generation.
"People generally want to have control over events and their lives, which often they don't, he says.
"So, they use superstitious methods in an attempt to regain some form of control."
Some industries are actively trying to control the number 13 and its impact. Take aviation.
Some airlines are keen to avoid the 13 symbol, as design agency Hoet & Hoet discovered when asked to change their stylised "b" tail design, made up of 13 balls, to 14 for new Belgian carrier Brussels Airlines in 2007.
Others, though not all, omit seating row number 13.
"United's planes as well as AirTran and Comair don't have one," says air steward Bobby Laurie.
"A lot of folks have a fear of flying or a fear of not being in control when they're flying.
"For them, sitting in row 13 could just add insult to injury, so they removed the number 13 to offset any seating problems they may encounter from passengers who refuse to sit...

Summary: "Friday the 13th is my favourite day," says Dan Gold enthusiastically from his tattoo studio in London's West Hampstead.
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Article: The cinema chain has "provided the British public with unforgettable, cinema experiences", Bafta said.
The awards will be held at London's Royal Albert Hall on 12 February.
The Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema award is presented annually in honour of Michael Balcon, the British film producer known for his work with Ealing Studios.
Previous recipients include Mike Leigh, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Working Title Films, Sir John Hurt and BBC Films.
Curzon's history stretches back to 1934 with the opening of its first cinema Curzon Mayfair.
Dame Pippa Harris, chair of Bafta's Film Committee, said: "I am thrilled that Bafta is honouring Curzon with the Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award.
"For over 80 years, Curzon has provided the British public with unforgettable cinema experiences, while championing independent, art house and foreign language film-making.
"I would like to thank everyone at Curzon for their extraordinary contribution to our industry, and for their unwavering commitment to bringing the very best in film to audiences across the UK.
Philip Knatchbull, Curzon's chief executive, said he was "delighted" at the award.
"Curzon has a long and proud history in the British film industry and many talented and passionate people have contributed to its success story over the years," he said.
"We think of ourselves as champions of bold and visionary film-making from around the world supported by our growing network of cinemas and home cinema digital platforms."
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

Summary:


The BBC's report said the investigation was "a very good one" and that the investigation was "a very good one."
The BBC's report said the investigation was "a very good one."
The BBC's report said the investigation was "a very good one."
The BBC's report said the investigation was

Lawyers representing families in the baby ashes scandal have said they are to take legal action against Shropshire Council.

Article: The project aims to take a snapshot of current trends and map out the ways the public engage with music.
It is hoped the survey will help measure live music's cultural and economic value and identify future challenges and opportunities.
The 24-hour survey began at 12:00 on Thursday in Glasgow, Newcastle, Oxford, Leeds, Southampton and Brighton.
It has been commissioned by UK Music, the campaigning and lobbying group that represents the recorded and live music industry, and is being led by the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle.
Prof Martin Cloonan, professor of popular music politics at Glasgow University, said: "What is being proposed has never been done before and is set to reveal the true state of the UK's live music industry.
"Live music is a vital cultural and economic asset and it is important to monitor its health and to support it.
"The results will help to provide the clearest picture of the Glasgow live music scene yet, illustrating that vibrancy while also show issues which need to be addressed."
According to UK Music, the music industry is worth an estimated Â£3.5bn to the UK economy and creates almost 101,600 jobs.
The group said that despite the value of live music to the economy, the full picture of what the public is listening to and how they listen and interact has never been fully and accurately surveyed.
Dr Matt Brennan, from Edinburgh University, is leading the UK Census project.
He said: "Venues around the country have been telling us that they already operate on thin margins, so proposed increases in rateable values of up to 55% in some cases will have a significant impact.
"The UK Live Music Census will be very important in identifying challenges that the industry faces, such as rising rates and other issues.
"It will give us a detailed picture of what exactly it means to be venue owner, a musician, and a live music lover in 2017. Our hope is that the census will be a vital tool in strengthening a much-loved part of the UK's culture."
The census aims to cover 70 music...

Summary: The UK's first ever live music census is being carried out in six cities across the UK.
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Article: An international study led by the university said there was "strong evidence" of metformin's anti-inflammatory properties.
The researchers said this "may prove significant" in relation to non-diabetic cardiovascular disease (CVD).
Metformin has been in use for more than 50 years.
The study said the drug "continues to reveal significant possibilities for treatments other than those for diabetes."
The drug is also undergoing new clinical trials to determine if it can promote healthy ageing.
The study is being led by Professor Chim Lang and Dr Graham Rena, from the university's division of molecular and clinical medicine.
Professor Lang said: "The anti-inflammatory effects of the drug were observed, not only in those with diabetes, but also in a cohort of non-diabetic heart failure patients."
Dr Rena said: "We found that this drug acts differently to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs by inhibiting a different target."
Dr Rena said the next step would be to establish exactly how the drug inhibits this target and to identify "specific non-diabetic" patient groups that benefit from the anti-inflammatory properties.
Prof Jeremy Pearson of the British Heart Foundation said: "These findings offer further evidence that old drugs can perform new tricks.
"Repurposed medicines can much more quickly benefit patients.
"If this existing and affordable drug can be repurposed as a heart disease treatment, then this is excellent news for the 2.3 million people in the UK living with the condition.
"We look forward to seeing how the research progresses in patient studies."

Summary: The world's most commonly-used Type 2 diabetes drug could be used to treat non-diabetic conditions, according to Dundee University researchers.
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Article: It comes after nearly 500 animals at South Lakes Safari Zoo died over four years.
Local officials have said they don't think the zoo's conservation plans are good enough.
The zoo's owner has 28 days to appeal against the decision. If there's no appeal, then it's expected that the zoo will shut down.
Inspectors found the animals weren't being looked after properly, and there were problems with housing and overcrowding.
A keeper also died at the zoo in 2013.
South Lakes Safari Zoo opened in 1994 and has more than 1,500 animals, including giraffes and rare birds.

Summary: A zoo in Cumbria, north-west England, could close after the owner was refused permission to keep it running.
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Article: Edinburgh was the only Scottish institution to improve its standing in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
But Glasgow, Aberdeen, St Andrews and Dundee all saw their ratings drop dramatically.
The editor of the ratings warned UK universities were in danger of falling behind Asian rivals.
The California Institute of Technology retained the top spot in the survey - with Oxford University coming in second.
The UK was the second best represented country overall in the rankings, and three English universities were in the top ten.
But while the University of Edinburgh climbed from 36th to 32nd, Glasgow University fell 37 places to 139th, while Aberdeen dropped 25 places to joint 176th.
St Andrews went from 85th to 108th, and Dundee fell out of the top 200 altogether.
A spokesman for the University of Dundee said: "While we are disappointed with the drop in our overall position in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, it is important to look at the context.
"Dundee actually recorded a slightly higher overall score than last year, according to the metrics used in the table. This includes higher scores for teaching, international outlook, and research."
Education Secretary Mike Russell said: "Scottish universities are well known around the world for the quality of education they offer.
"We have invested significant funding in our universities to ensure they can continue to offer a world-class degree and compete internationally.
"We will continue to deliver access to university based on the ability to learn, not the ability to pay, and this year more students will be studying at our world-class universities - unlike universities in England where, overall, the number of acceptances has fallen."
However, Scottish Labour MSP Hugh Henry said: "Despite generous settlements for universities paid for with money from Scotland's hard-pressed colleges, this clearly shows that Scottish universities are facing major challenges both within the UK and internationally.
"Many universities are...

Summary: Scottish universities have slipped down an annual list of the world's top 200 institutions.
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Article: About 60 families were unable to get their child's remains because of poor training and out-of-date equipment at council-owned Emstrey Crematorium, Shrewsbury, between 1996 and 2012.
Lawyers believe the crematorium breached the Human Rights Act.
The council said it was liaising with its insurers.
A spokesman for the authority said: "Shropshire Council confirms it has received a letter of notification in respect of Emstrey Crematorium and this has been passed to the council's insurers, who will deal with the matter confidentially in the usual way."
If the legal challenge is successful, it could pave the way for action against crematoriums across the UK where other families were not given their child's ashes.
A Freedom of Information inquiry by the BBC last year found the ashes of more than 1,000 babies were not handed to their parents between 2008 and 2013.
The scandal in Shropshire came to light following a BBC Radio Shropshire investigation.
The lawyers are representing families who have joined the campaign group Action for Ashes.
In June, an independent inquiry into what happened in Shropshire ruled a national inspector should be created for crematoriums.

Summary: