Lord Heseltine says the UK's skills shortage is a serious problem - and if it was up to him he would start industrial strategy in primary schools.

Article: The University of Texas (UT) System is joining the edX online platform project set up by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The University of Texas says it could offer degree credits through the online platform, with a tuition fee attached.
Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa said he wanted Texas to "lead this revolution".
"The UT System does plan to eventually offer courses for credit. There will be a tuition charge for credit-earning courses, but the amount hasn't been determined," said Jenny LaCoste-Caputo, spokeswoman for the UT System.
This would be a major step for this new wave of online universities set up this year by top universities in the US.
The edX alliance, launched this year, already includes MIT, Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley. But so far these have offered free courses which do not carry credit towards degrees.
The latest recruit to edX - with more expected this autumn - is one the biggest public university systems in the US.
The network of universities in the University of Texas System has more than 200,000 students, 19,000 academic staff and an annual operating budget of $13bn (Â£8bn).
There has been something of an academic format war emerging with a rival Coursera platform, started by academics from Stanford in California.
Coursera now has 1.6 million students around the world studying courses from more than 30 leading universities, including Edinburgh and the University of London.
The University of London reported that 9,000 students had signed up within the first 24 hours.
There have been online courses in the US and UK for a number of years - but there has been a recent surge of interest as self-study courses have been put online by some of the world's most famous institutions.
These can be studied anywhere in the world and the assessment is also carried out online.
Helping to drive the expansion of online courses in the US has been a concern about the high costs of university and the rising level of student loan debts.
Gene Powell, chairman of...

Summary: The latest expansion in prestigious online universities in the US includes plans to charge for courses which will count towards degrees.
###
Article: John Davies says more needs to be spent on marketing the project, which is heavily backed with public money.
Take up in areas that have had it for a year is 19% with just over £300,000 spent on marketing, which is around 1% of the overall cost so far.
But ministers said take up was where they expected it to be at this stage.
The Welsh government signed the deal - the largest of its kind in the UK - with BT in 2012 to roll out super fast broadband across Wales.
Download speeds of up to 80 megabits per second (Mbps) are being offered to domestic customers, compared to the average download speed currently available in Wales of around five to six Mbps. Even faster speeds are available to businesses.
The project, called Superfast Cymru, aims to ensure that 96% of homes in Wales are covered by 2016 and is seen as vital for Welsh businesses in an increasingly competitive global market.
Welsh ministers are spending £58m on the scheme, with a similar amount coming from the UK government and £90m from European funding.
In two years, the aim is for around 700,000 premises to have access but so far it has gone past the 150,000 mark.
Mr Davies, who chairs the Welsh advisory committee for the communications watchdog Ofcom, said the project was transformative but more needed to be done to make people aware of when it is rolled out in their communities to encourage demand for the high-speed broadband.
He said: "For small and medium sized businesses, it gives them an opportunity to compete on equal terms with businesses elsewhere in the UK and elsewhere in the world, and on the back of that they should be able to cut their costs and increase their revenues."
He added: "There is undoubtedly take up, there are undoubtedly benefits accruing now.
"The question is, if more is done on the stimulation side, can those benefits come through faster?"
In a statement the Welsh government said: "We are at an early stage in the programme and the marketing activity.
"Current take up figures for cabinets that have been in place for over one...

Summary: Wales is not making the most of a £425m contract to roll out superfast broadband in rural areas, according to the former head of BT in Wales.
###
Article: Its deficit rose to 11.5 trillion yen ($112bn; Â£68bn) in 2013 - a 65% jump from a year ago.
Japan has seen its energy imports rise in recent years after it shut all of its nuclear reactors in the aftermath of the tsunami and earthquake in 2011.
But it is having to pay more for those imports after a series of aggressive policy moves weakened the yen sharply.
The Japanese currency fell more than 20% against the US dollar between January and December last year.
The latest trade data showed that while Japan's imports of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) rose 0.2% by volume in 2013 from the previous year -  the value of those imports surged nearly 18%.
This is the third year in a row that Japan - traditionally known for the strength of its exports - has reported an annual trade deficit.
Japan, the world's third-largest economy, has seen its growth stagnate over the past two decades.
In an attempt to change that, policymakers have unveiled a series of aggressive moves over the past few months, including doubling the country's money supply.
The measures, led by Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, have come to be known as 'Abenomics'.
The steps have had a big impact on Japan's currency - which has fallen sharply against the US dollar.
A weak currency bodes well for Japan's exports - a key driver of its growth - making them cheaper for foreign buyers.  A weak yen also boosts profits of exporters when they repatriate their overseas earnings back home.
The hope has been that a rise in exports, coupled with a jump in earnings of exporters, will aid Japan's economic recovery.
However, the weak currency has also made imports more expensive and affected the country's trade balance.
"This is the costly flip side of Abenomics," Martin Schulz of Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo told the BBC.
"The overall cost of imports is going up, but the exports are not rising enough to offset that."
Mr Schulz said a key reason behind that was the fact that "the yen's weakness has yet to have a strong and positive impact on small and...

Summary: Japan has reported a record annual trade deficit after the weak yen pushed up the cost of energy imports.
###
Article: They made the discovery by looking at a rare group of patients given a transplant while their own damaged liver is left in the body.
Sometimes the original liver recovers.
A study, in the American Journal of Transplantation, suggests doctors can predict which patients do not need a transplant as their liver is healing.
King's College Hospital has a leading liver transplant centre and is one of few places to perform "auxiliary transplants".
They are performed in sudden cases of liver failure caused by overdoses or viral infections, rather than the long-term damage caused by alcohol abuse.
Normally in organ transplants one organ comes out and a new one goes in. However, in this complex operation the transplant is put in beside the old liver.
After any transplant a patient needs to take a lifetime of drugs to suppress the immune system in order to avoid rejection. The drugs leave the body vulnerable to infection.
However, if the patient's liver does eventually recover then they can come off the immunosuppressant drugs and their body will get rid of the transplant.
The transplant is used to get the patient past the critical stage of the illness.
But the recovery happens only in some patients. In the study, the transplant was no longer needed in seven out of 11 patients.
So doctors analysed the detailed chemistry inside the liver cells of patients and looked for differences between those who recovered and those who did not.
Dr Varuna Aluvihare told the BBC: "There was a big difference right from the point of transplantation in the expression of some very small molecules between the group that would, three years down the line, regrow their liver versus the group that never did."
Those molecules regulated the way cells in the liver grow.
"Some of them were already starting to regrow. So what we may be able to do is come up with a better set of tests to allow us to identify those patients who are already regrowing and may not need transplantation.
"So we may be able to remove a group from the transplant list."
The...

Summary: Some patients with severely damaged livers may not need a transplant as their own organ is actually regrowing, say doctors at a hospital in London.
###
Article: He told MPs the UK would never be a world-beating economy unless young people were better educated.
And he called for "much bigger devolution to the people who know where the [failing] schools are".
On improving literacy and numeracy, he added: "We need it across the country and we need it yesterday."
The Conservative grandee, who was deputy prime minister in the 1990s and subsequently advised David Cameron on regional strategy, made the comments as he gave evidence to the Commons Business Innovation and Skills Committee alongside former chancellor George Osborne.
Claiming that the UK is "29th as a country in the world league of education" - it was 23rd in reading in 2015, according to the OECD's Pisa rankings and 26th in maths - he stressed: "If we accept that - we'll never be a world beating economy in the future because it's all about people - it's about education and then about skills.
"And if you want to have skilled people, you'd better educate them properly before you start making them skilled."
Lord Heseltine, whose leadership challenge helped trigger Margaret Thatcher's departure from Downing Street in 1990, said standards need to be set by a strategic commission, chaired by the prime minister "that are relevant to the best in the world and not the 29th".
"If I could design an industrial strategy it would start in the primary schools," he said, adding that about a quarter of children leaving primary schools are "illiterate and innumerate" by modern employment standards.
"My own view is clear - there needs to be a much bigger devolution to the people who know where those schools are and they know the people that run them and they know where the inadequate results are coming from - in my personal experience of life: show me the problem, show me the person in charge."
Lord Heseltine cited one success story - Northamptonshire's "Race to the top" initiative - which aims to make Northamptonshire one of the highest performing counties for education by 2020.
"We spend a lot of time discussing the theories of...

Summary:


On 23 August 1994, The KLF - one of Britain's most incendiary bands, in more ways than one - burned £1m on a remote Scottish island.

Article: Update 10 June 2016: Following an investigation by the party, Mark Gettleson and the other volunteer were cleared.
One volunteer has resigned and another is understood to have left over the claims, in the Independent on Sunday.
The paper says some party members claim they were polled by phone by someone they believed to be from Lib Dem HQ rather than Mr Lamb's personal team.
The party is considering referring the matter to the Information Commissioner.
Mr Lamb, the MP for North Norfolk and former care minister, is running against Tim Farron, former party president, for the Lib Dem leadership following the resignation of Nick Clegg.
Mark Gettleson, a strategic communications and research professional, confirmed he had resigned, saying he regretted "any harm done to Norman Lamb and his campaign".
The Independent on Sunday reported accusations that the line of questioning in the apparent "opinion poll" may have gone into territory which could have cast doubt on Mr Farron's suitability.
A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said: "We have been made aware of an alleged breach of party rules and are looking into the issue as a matter of urgency.
"The Liberal Democrats take any alleged breaches of party rules extremely seriously. The party has contacted both teams to reiterate rules on the leadership process."
Mr Lamb told the newspaper: "Volunteer members of my team acted without my authority. As soon as it was clear what had happened, I had to be decisive and removed them from my campaign.
"As soon as I saw Tim I talked to him about it and said I won't tolerate it from my campaign.
"In a situation we [the Lib Dems] are in at the moment we cannot allow ourselves to fall out or behave irresponsibly."
It is understood there will be a formal discussion with the party's data controller on Monday regarding a potential referral to the Information Commissioner.
Mr Gettleson said the poll in question - which was conducted on Thursday and Friday last week - had been carried out to gauge the state of the race between the two...

Summary: The Liberal Democrats have launched an investigation into allegations Norman Lamb's leadership campaign team may have breached data protection rules.
###
Article: The Samsung Galaxy S7 Active stopped working after being put in a tank that simulated the effect of being about 5ft (1.5m) underwater.
Consumer Reports repeated its test on a second model, which was also damaged.
Samsung said it was possible defective devices were "not as watertight" as they should have been.
When removed after half an hour, the first phone's display was non-responsive and marred by green lines. Bubbles had also formed in its two camera lenses.
The second handset subjected to the same test suffered similar faults.
Samsung's website stated the Galaxy S7 Active, which is sold in the US but is not available in the UK, is IP68-certified.
The international protection rating signifies the phone can withstand "continuous immersion in water".
Consumer Reports made headlines six years ago when it flagged a problem with the iPhone 4's antenna before Apple had acknowledged the issue.
The non-profit organisation said neither handset was usable following its experiments.
It noted the standard Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge models, which are also IP68-certified, had not sustained water damage during the same test conditions.
"While Consumer Reports generally doesn't evaluate phones for this feature, we do perform an immersion test when a manufacturer claims that its product is water-resistant," it said.
"When we recently evaluated the Galaxy S7 Active, it failed this test."
Samsung said it had received "very few complaints" about the issue, and that handsets should be covered under warranty. The Active model first went on sale in June.
"There may be an off-chance that a defective device is not as watertight as it should be," it said, adding that it would investigate the issue.
Last year Sony warned owners of its waterproof Xperia smartphone range against using the devices underwater.
"The IP rating of your device was achieved in laboratory conditions in standby mode, so you should not use the device underwater, such as taking pictures," advice on its water and dust protection page states.
Samsung is expected...

Summary: A Samsung smartphone advertised as being water-resistant has failed a water immersion test by a leading product review site.
###
Article: It follows the publication of A-level results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Using Facebook Messenger's chatbot technology, students would be able to "assess their suitability" for different courses, the university said.
But if they would prefer to speak to a human, "phone lines will continue to be open throughout the clearing process".
The university's head of digital experience and engagement, Dougal Scaife, said: "We know that our prospective students already use lots of messaging software for communicating with their friends, such as Snapchat, WhatsApp, as well as texting, so developing a chatbot was a natural evolution in order to engage with our prospective students in a medium that is ubiquitous, familiar, and comfortable for them."
Pamela Clark-Dickson, an analyst at research firm Ovum, thinks it is a good use of the technology.
"More and more organisations are using chatbots and for quite simple tasks they can be useful and effective."
"It frees up human agents to deal with more complex enquiries."
Leeds Beckett is not the first university to employ chatbot technologies.
Georgia Tech University used a chatbot to answer questions from students enrolled in an artificial intelligence course last year.
It is dubbed Jill Watson because it is based on IBM's Watson technology.
The chatbot was one of nine teaching assistants answering thousands of questions on the course's online forum.
And Prof Ashok Goel, who hired Jill Watson, did not reveal that she was not human until after the students had completed their final exams.

Summary: Leeds Beckett University has launched a chatbot to help prospective students find the right course.
###
Article: Dolphins are one of Aberdeen's biggest tourist attractions, with the city regarded as being among the best places in Europe to spot them.
Volunteers from RSPB Scotland's Dolphinwatch expect thousands of visitors to try to catch a glimpse of the spectacular sea antics over the summer.
The Dolphinwatch project was pioneered in 2013.
The team will be at Torry Battery from 11:00 to 18:00 every Thursday to Sunday until 16 August.
Dolphinwatch team member Helen Hiley said: "Aberdeen is such a fantastic place to see dolphins and it's amazing to have a wildlife spectacle like this so close to a city centre.
"You often get great views of them feeding and playing at the harbour entrance."
Amateur photographer David McCulloch, who took a recent dramatic shot which has proved popular on social media, described the experience of capturing the image as "out of this world".

Summary: Aberdeen's annual Dolphinwatch project is getting under way.
###
Article: They then vowed to put their careers on hold for 23 years.
That time is now up.
So at 23 seconds past midnight on Wednesday they made their comeback at a book launch in Liverpool.
The duo were greeted by 500 fans as they arrived at the News From Nowhere book shop in an ice cream van that played their hit What Time Is Love? and O Sole Mio.
That marked the start of a three-day festival of talks, performance and live art, which will continue on Wednesday with a debate on the topic "Why Did the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid?"
However, fans have been told that The KLF's Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond will not be performing any music.
Their new novel 2023, described as "a utopian costume drama set in the near future written in the recent past", is due to be performed in full in the city on Thursday.
The event will finish on Friday with a "Graduation Ball" headlined by a hitherto unknown artist named Badger Kull, who is billed as having just one three-minute song, titled Toxteth Day of the Dead.
The KLF - who also went by names including The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The K Foundation and The Timelords - had hits like 3AM Eternal, Last Train to Trancentral and What Time Is Love? in the late 1980s and early '90s.
As well as their electrifying pop-trance hits, Cauty and Drummond became known for sabotaging their own success and subverting the music business in a serious of infamous stunts.
Here are four of them:
The duo were ordered to destroy all copies of their 1987 debut album after a complaint from Abba, who objected to the unauthorised sampling of Dancing Queen.
Cauty and Drummond travelled to Sweden to try to track Abba down in person. But they failed, so they presented the gold disc they had brought with them to a Swedish prostitute instead.
As you do.
They burned some of the LPs in a field before throwing the rest overboard from the ferry on the way home.
The album was eventually released with large stretches of silence where the samples had been.
After getting to number one as The Timelords with Doctor...

Summary:

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The film was released in the UK on March 4, 2014.

The film was released in the UK on March 4, 2014.

The film was released in the UK on March 4, 2014.

The film was released in the UK on March 4, 2014.

The film was released

Hugh Grant has been cast in Guy Ritchie's big-screen adaptation of the 1960s TV show, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Article: The Parliamentary Assistance Allowance, currently €21,379 (£15,250; $23,460) per month, will rise to €22,879.
The European Parliament's 751 MEPs also raised the parliament's total budget to €1.84bn for 2016, from €1.75bn now.
Some MEPs want stricter monitoring of MEPs' expenses. But a report urging greater transparency was watered down.
The spending increases come despite many calls for the EU to rein in spending on its own administration - including strong calls from the UK Conservatives. The parliament's costs account for about 1% of the total EU budget.
The 2008 financial crisis forced national governments across Europe to cut administrative spending, and fuelled demands for the EU to do likewise.
Another EU institution, the European Court of Justice, has asked for 21 extra judges to be appointed. That would almost double the current total of 27. The change would cost an estimated €13.8m annually.
The ECJ says more judges are needed because of a "dramatic increase" in the court's caseload - from 398 in 2000 to 912 in 2014.
But some ECJ judges themselves oppose the proposal, calling it too expensive, the EUobserver website reports.
On Wednesday MEPs approved a report by a French Socialist MEP, Gilles Pargneaux, including a clause saying the parliament "stresses the need for greater transparency as regards the general spending allowances for members".
They said parliament officials should establish "more precise rules" for MEPs' spending.
But an amendment removed a strong demand by Mr Pargneaux for more transparency concerning the General Expenditure Allowance (GEA), a €4,320 monthly payment to each MEP to cover office costs, such as rent and phone calls.
One of the two deleted clauses expressed astonishment that MEPs "do not have to account for the way they have used the allowance and that for members who wish to do so, verification of their accounts by the Internal Auditor of Parliament is not possible".
That clause had also called for "the introduction of obligatory annual reporting by the members of...

Summary: Euro MPs have voted to increase their allowances to cover staff costs while rejecting a move to subject their expenses to an obligatory audit.
###
Article: Hugh Wade began attacking the girl at an address in Springburn, Glasgow, in August 2008, when she was aged 11. The abuse continued until she was 14.
The 48-year-old, from Cumbernauld, denied the charge but was convicted at the High Court in Glasgow.
Judge Kenneth Maciver QC ordered that Wade should be supervised for two years following his release from prison.

Summary: A man who was convicted of raping a schoolgirl over a three-year period has been jailed for eight years.
###
Article: A report said last week that chlorine had been used by President Bashar al-Assad's forces on two occasions.
But Russia, a close ally of Mr Assad, told the UN Security Council a number of questions still had to be clarified.
The UK and France, which back the rebellion against the president, called for sanctions to be imposed on Syria.
A September 2013 resolution states that the Security Council will impose measures under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which permits military action, in the event of "any use of chemical weapons by anyone" in Syria.
The resolution, which endorsed the destruction of Syria's declared stockpile of chemical weapons, was adopted a month after hundreds of people were killed when shells filled with the nerve agent sarin were fired at rebel-held suburbs of Damascus.
Western powers said only government forces could have carried out the attack, but Mr Assad and Russia blamed rebels.
In August 2015, following further deadly chemical attacks on rebel-held areas, the Security Council established a Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) to identify those responsible.
The international team of inspectors looked into nine cases in seven towns and determined that the Syrian air force was behind two attacks involving chlorine - in Talmanes on 21 April 2014 and Sarmin on 16 March 2015 - and that jihadist militants from Islamic State (IS) carried out one attack involving sulphur mustard.
Chlorine is a "dual-use chemical". It has many legitimate industrial functions, but its use as a weapon is banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). If high concentrations of the chemical enter the lungs it can cause death.
At a meeting of the Security Council on Tuesday, US permanent representative Samantha Power called the JIM report a "landmark" and called for swift action.
"It is the first official independent confirmation of what many of us... have presented substantial evidence of for a long time, and that is a pattern of chemical weapons use by the Syrian regime," she said.
But Russian Ambassador Vitaly...

Summary: Russia has said it does not accept the findings of a UN-led investigation that concluded Syria's government had used chemical weapons against civilians.
###
Article: The statistics show the Welsh NHS spent more than £6m on private treatment in the last two years.
Hywel Dda health board spent six times more than any other board - £3,676,211 between April 2013 and March 2015.
It said it had used private providers after facing recruitment problems, to avoid patients suffering longer delays.
Five out of the six health boards in Wales all paid for so-called "spot contracts" during the period - short-term, unplanned contracts awarded to private healthcare providers to carry out NHS work.
Winter pressures, long waiting lists and staff vacancies are all reasons given for why this was necessary.
Figures uncovered using a Freedom of Information Inquiry show Hywel Dda health board paid for 22 spot contracts over the two years, to reach the £3,676,211 total figure for private spending.
Most of the other health boards spent in the region of hundreds of thousands of pounds, but Aneurin Bevan spent nothing.
Welsh Institute for Health and Social Care director Marcus Longley questioned whether the decision to pay the private sector amounted to good value for money.
"In Wales the policy is to do everything in-house within the health service whenever possible.
"The difficulty is that if you go to the private sector in January wanting lots of operations done by March you'll pay through the nose for that."
Hywel Dda health board said difficulties with recruitment had led it to use external providers, but it was continuing to review this.
In a statement the board added: "The decision to allocate additional funding was in recognition of the importance of ensuring our patients received planned treatment, such as hip or knee replacements, when demand for emergency services was significant.
"Without this immediate solution more patients would have waited longer for treatment."

Summary: There is a wide variation in how much Welsh health boards spend on private healthcare, figures uncovered by BBC Wales have revealed.
###
Article: The Love Actually star will have a supporting role in the spy film, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander and Man of Steel actor Henry Cavill will also feature in the adaptation of the TV series, which ran from 1964 to 1968.
Grant, who most recently starred in Cloud Atlas with Tom Hanks, will play the head of British Naval Intelligence.
The film follows special agents Napoleon Solo, played by Cavill, and Illya Kuryakin - Lone Ranger star Hammer - who work for the mysterious United Network Command for Law Enforcement (U.N.C.L.E.).
Swedish actress Vikander, known for her role as Kitty in Joe Wright's Anna Karenina, has been cast as the female lead, while The Great Gatsby's Elisabeth Debicki will also star in the adaptation.
Tom Cruise had been tipped for the role of Solo, originally portrayed by Robert Vaughn in the TV series, while George Clooney was set to play the lead role in director Steven Soderbergh's earlier version of the film.
However, Clooney withdrew from the film and Soderbergh subsequently dropped out of the project.
Director Ritchie will co-write the script with Lionel Wigram, who wrote both of Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films, starring Robert Downey Jr.
Production is due to begin in September with a release planned for 2014.
There were 105 episodes of the multi-award winning TV show, The Man From U.N.C.L.E, with the first series broadcast in black-and-white.

Summary:


The team is associated with the Angels, a major league team in California.
The team is associated with the Angels, a major league team in California.
The team is associated with the Angels, a major league team in California.
The team is associated with the Angels, a major league team in California.

A minor league baseball team in Utah has cancelled plans to host a "Caucasian Heritage Night" in August, according to the team's website.

Article: That is according to statistics released by the UCAS.
In 2016-17, 4,060 students from Northern Ireland were accepted into English universities - a rise from 3,430 in 2014-14.
Overall, 5,380 Northern Ireland students were accepted by universities elsewhere in the UK this year.
That is a rise of 17% since 2013-14.
According to additional figures released by the Department for the Economy (DfE), fewer than a third of those who graduate elsewhere in the UK return to Northern Ireland to work.
In 2014/15, according to DfE figures, only 31.5% of Northern Ireland students returned home to work after graduation.
According to UCAS, there has been a 1% increase across the UK in the number of young people accepted to university this year, compared to 2015-16.
While Queen's University and Ulster University have a cap in the number of students they can admit, the student numbers cap for English universities was lifted in 2015.
As a result, there has been increased competition to attract students in England.
However, tuition fees are higher at English universities at Â£9,000 per year, compared to Â£3,925 in Northern Ireland.

Summary: There has been an increase of almost 20% in the number of Northern Ireland students beginning university in England since 2013-14.
###
Article: French rail operators say modernisation work on the French Riviera network is desperately necessary.
But in an open letter, the luxury brand said it would be a disaster for its "artisanal activities" in Grasse.
The company says it takes about 1,000 jasmine flowers to make a 30ml bottle of its famous No 5 perfume.
The iconic perfume was created by Coco Chanel when she met local perfumer Ernest Beaux in Grasse during a summer holiday on the Cote d'Azur in 1920.
Part of Chanel's perfume production has been located in the region for decades and the town near the Cote d'Azure is often considered the world capital of perfume.
But French state-owned railway company SNCF has said its whole network in the region is in dire need of investment and wants to route a TGV line through the area.
According to the rail operator, the route from Marseilles to Nice is the most congested in the country outside of Paris.
The 6.7bn euro ($7bn; Â£5.5bn) investment is expected to cut an entire hour off the trip between the two towns.
But Chanel said "the construction of a viaduct and the regular passage of high-speed trains over these fields of flowers" would force the company "to cease supporting its artisanal activities in the region".
The firm describes the quality of the flowers in the region as "unique and exceptional" and "indispensable for the creation of Chanel perfumes."

Summary: Chanel has said it will leave a historic perfume site in France if plans for a high-speed train line affecting its jasmine fields go ahead.
###
Article: Six smaller providers fear that only gas and electricity deals from the "Big Six" will show up in searches under proposed new Competition and Markets Authority rules.
They fear that such a move would discourage competition.
The CMA proposals follow the watchdog's energy market review earlier this year.
Consumers can provide basic details to price comparison websites, which then provide what they believe to be the best options.
Sometimes these websites allow consumers to switch immediately, but it was often not clear that they only showed options for firms that have paid the site a commission or fee.
Following the CMA's investigation into the energy market, the watchdog published its initial recommendations for ways to encourage consumers to switch energy suppliers more often.
It concluded that price comparison websites such as Uswitch, Energyhelpline or Go Compare should no longer have to show all available energy offers.
However, it did find that such sites should make it clear whether they received a commission from the energy firms whose offers were being recommended.
The CMA believed the ability to switch energy suppliers online without delay might lead to a rise in instant switching, helping to drive down prices.
Smaller independent suppliers have rejected this analysis, which is out for consultation.
"We are deeply worried about the lack of transparency in the proposed system," according to a letter to the Energy Secretary, Amber Rudd, signed by the chief executives of GB Energy Supply, COOP Energy, Go Effortless Energy, Bulb, So Energy & Zog Energy.
"Millions of people go to price comparison websites believing them to be transparent shop windows for the cheapest prices rather than 'brokers' in an increasingly skewed market."
The independent suppliers said that removing the obligation to show all tariffs would mean price comparison sites would end up only showing offers from the Big Six suppliers who had paid a fee.
The six smaller suppliers called on the Government to think again about the "serious...

Summary: Independent energy companies want consumers to be able to see all available tariffs when using price comparison websites.
###
Article: Sadiq Khan will set out a business case for services running into the capital to be devolved to TfL.
He claims it would improve passenger service and tackle delays and overcrowding.
TfL's board will consider the proposals on Thursday before seeking approval from the government to move forward.
The first franchises up for renewal - services in southeast London and Kent - will be this autumn with further franchises involving South West Trains, Southeastern and Govia Thameslink Railway due for renewal by 2021.
Every mayor so far has wanted more control over suburban rail services and Sadiq Khan is no different.
Certainly beleaguered commuters and politicians of all ilks, including Kent County Council, want TfL to control their lines using the concession model where TfL pays an operator to run the service (like the Overground).
There are sticking points though - the politics.  This is a Conservative government and a Labour Mayor. How can TfL run services outside the area of jurisdiction? (Clue: look at the Met line). And capacity - lines into places like Waterloo are already full; whoever runs it and Network Rail will still control the infrastructure.
And TfL can only take over when contracts come up. So while the intentions are clear, this won't happen overnight.
Mr Khan said: "Passengers on London's suburban rail routes simply aren't getting a good enough service. They face increasing rail fares year after year, yet face daily delays, cancellations and overcrowding.
"Ahead of the Autumn Statement,  I'm looking forward to presenting the full business case for how a transformed and modernised suburban rail network could also unlock new homes and provide other substantial economic benefits for London."
Earlier this year think tank Centre for London called on the Department for Transport to devolve the network due to "strained" rail services in south London.
When it was first raised the Rail Delivery Group, which represents train operators and Network Rail, said the current system produced some of "the best...

Summary: A new map revealing how London could look if the mayor took over the running of suburban rail services has been released by Transport for London (TfL).
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Article: "Caucasian Heritage Night: Irish, Italian, Scandinavian, German --- or even Utahn! Whatever your background, celebrate it at the Home of the Owlz!" a calendar entry reads.
Other promotions included "Christmas in August" and "Throwback Night".
The team is associated with the Angels, a major league team in California.
"Our goal in this promotion, like any of our promotions, is to have fun and make fun of everyday normalcies," the team said.
"Our night was to include wonder bread on burgers with mayonnaise, clips from shows like Friends and Seinfeld and trying to solve the vertical leaping challenge.
"We understand, in light of recent tragic events, that our intentions have been misconstrued. For that, we sincerely apologise."
On Wednesday night, nine people were shot dead in an African-American church in South Carolina in what police termed a hate crime.
The Owlz are a rookie-league team - the most entry level division of the minor leagues. The league is designed for new players hone their skills.
On Friday, "Caucasian Heritage Night" quickly became a top trending term on Twitter in the US.

Summary:


The wreath-laying ceremony is being investigated by the Irish Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking areas).
The wreath-

The centenary of the Easter Rising, the rebellion that began on Easter Monday 1916, is to be marked in Irish towns and cities with wreath-laying events.

Article: Activate Learning want to build a three-storey technical facility offering vocational-based education for about 300 14 to 19-year-olds.
It plans to use 0.29 hectares (0.71 acres) of sports field at Bicester Community College.
Sport England objected to the "net loss" of outdoor recreational space for the school and community.
The sports body said no land was offered as a replacement.
It said if the plan is approved, it will refer the decision to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.
A report by Cherwell District Council said the council's own local plan highlighted a "shortfall of sports and recreational facilities in Bicester".
But it said in balance, the loss of land was "comparatively small" and represented a "relatively under-used corner" of the playing field, while the new college brought benefits to the town.
The technical college will employ up to 30 people and will be operated by Activate Learning, who will also oversee Bicester Community College which is converting to an academy.
Bicester Town Council "strongly supports" the application.
Concerns have also been raised about increased traffic.
Cherwell councillors are due to decide on the planning application, which has been recommended for approval by officers, on 3 September.

Summary: Plans to build a new college on a playing field at an Oxfordshire school have been opposed by Sport England.
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Article: President Barack Obama had hoped that an alternative remedy might help him alleviate some of the Middle East pain he and his administration have felt in recent months.
Alas, the test results are back - the pain is not going away and will actually become more acute and more difficult to manage during his remaining time in office.
A major source of the pain is well established - Mr Obama's problematic relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who pulled out a hard-fought electoral victory and appears to have the inside track to form a new Israeli government.
The campaign produced complications that will undermine a crucial pillar of American policy in the Middle East, but in a different area than was anticipated just two weeks ago.
Heading into the elections, the foremost issue for Israeli voters appeared to be the rising cost of living and expanding gap between rich and poor.
Beneath the surface was the palpable tension between the Israeli prime minister and the US president, as well as its implications for the US-Israeli relationship and the broader region.
The New York Times' opinion page harshly criticises Mr Netanyahu's last-minute moves in the campaign - "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's outright rejection of a Palestinian state and his racist rant against Israeli Arab voters on Tuesday showed that he has forfeited any claim to representing all Israelis."
Slate's Joshua Keating  likens the outcome to the 2013 Israeli election and Mr Netanyahu's split with former rival that set up this election - "In other words, while Israeli voters may have chosen continuity, there's a good chance they'll be voting again pretty soon."
Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute writes at CNN that Mr Netayahu's re-election will make it more likely President Obama make "even more concessions to ensure a deal between Tehran and Washington".
Confronting a tougher political battle battle than he anticipated, Mr Netanyahu made the election about security, primarily the threat posed by Iran.
Breaking...

Summary: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's election victory provides a headache for the White House, writes PJ Crowley.
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Article: Ministers want to begin the process of reducing the 22 councils to eight or nine after May's assembly election.
The local government committee has urged the Welsh government to consider lending councils money for the mergers.
Ministers said options to pay for mergers include using reserves or other "borrowing approaches".
Merger plans have had a hostile reception from political opponents and some Labour council leaders.
An assessment for the Welsh government of how much local authorities would need to spend preparing for mergers in 2019-20, the year before new authorities would be established, puts the costs at between £54m and £90m.
The total cost of the merger process, from 2019-20 to 2023-24, is estimated to be between £97m and £246m.
The Welsh Local Government Association has warned it would be "impossible" for councils to meet the costs of mergers without significant cuts to services.
The committee's report, published on Wednesday, said: "While we recognise the potential for savings in the medium to long term, we consider it unrealistic to expect authorities to meet the upfront costs without any assistance from the Welsh government."
The report said the committee was "pleased to hear" Public Services Minister Leighton Andrews would "not rule out" giving councils repayable grants.
"While this may not be the preferred solution for local government, we believe it would be more acceptable than the current position and a positive step forward," the report said.
The Welsh government said: "The minister for public services has previously highlighted the net savings of up to £650m over 10 years which would arise from mergers.
"He has made it clear that there are a number of routes open to local authorities in paying for mergers including using reserves, invest-to-save and other borrowing approaches."

Summary: It is "unrealistic" to expect councils to find the £246m upfront costs of merging them, a committee of AMs has warned.
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Article: The company, which was owned by Rutland Partners, was sold to food tycoon Ranjit Boparan in September.
Mr Boparan also owns the 2 Sisters Food Group, which produces about a third of all poultry products eaten in the UK.
The Boparan Private Office has declined to comment on the inquiry.
Bernard Matthews was bought by investment company Rutland Partners in 2013.
The take-over by the Boparan Private Office, Mr Boparan's private investment arm, was done under a deal struck prior to administration, but the sale has left former suppliers unlikely to get back what they are owed.
The CMA said it would be looking at whether the deal would lead to a "substantial lessening of competition" in the UK markets.
While this review takes place, the company has been told to stop any further integration but it will still continue to operate.
Sebastian Chrispin from the BBC's business unit said the CMA has a number of methods at its disposal if it finds the merger is anti-competitive.
"[These range from] blocking the merger, unwinding the transaction, ordering the company to sell bits of its business to competitors, or get the company to promise it will behave in a certain way," he said.
"But they are only things it will deploy if, after this quite intensive review, it finds there is a risk to competition by the merger going ahead."

Summary: The sale of the Bernard Matthews turkey company is being investigated by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to see if the merger will damage competition in the poultry industry.
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Article: Synchronised wreath-laying ceremonies will take place in counties Cork, Meath, Wexford, Galway and Dublin, beginning at 09:45 local time in Cork.
Thousands of people lined the streets of Dublin on Sunday for a parade to mark the centenary.
The commemoration events have been organised by the Irish government.
The rebellion is viewed as a seminal event in the founding of the state.
The Easter Rising was quelled within six days by British troops, but despite its failure it is seen as a significant stepping stone to the eventual creation of the Republic of Ireland and the partition of Ireland.
More than 450 people were killed and 2,500 injured during the fighting.
A weekend of events to mark the centenary of the Rising began on Saturday with a remembrance ceremony in Dublin at which Irish president Michael D Higgins laid a wreath.
Wreaths were also laid in Dublin at Kilmainham Gaol, where 14 of the Rising's leaders were executed, and at the Sigerson Monument in Glasnevin Cemetery, which is dedicated to to all those who lost their lives in the Rising.
The synchronised wreath-laying ceremonies on Monday have been organised by the Irish Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking areas).
The locations and times are:
Then, at 12:30 local time, wreaths will be laid at various buildings and landmarks around the Irish capital that became focal points during the rebellion.
They include Boland's Mill, Jacob's Factory, Dublin Castle/City Hall, The Four Courts, Royal College of Surgeons and Moore Street.

Summary:


Restrictions on bus operator First Bristol, put in place almost 20 years ago, are to be reviewed to "see if they are still appropriate".

Article: But the study shows occasional use does not seem linked to reduced achievement.
The research is based on a long-term study tracking the health of people born in the Bristol area in the 1990s.
But the study warns it is difficult to distinguish the specific impact of cannabis from other overlapping "risky behaviours" such as drinking alcohol.
"It's hard to know what causes what. Do kids do badly at school because they are smoking weed, or do they smoke weed because they're doing badly? This study suggests it is not as simple as saying cannabis is the problem," says lead researcher Claire Mokrysz, from University College London.
The research, from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, tracked more than 2,000 teenagers to examine links between cannabis use and poorer educational performance.
The research looked at intelligence tests taken by the young people when they were aged eight and then compared the results with tests at the age of 15 and GCSE exams a year later.
It concluded that for occasional users, there is no relationship between cannabis use and a loss in achievement. But for heavier users, youngsters who had used cannabis at least 50 times by the age of 15, there was a link to poorer exam results.
That suggests that adolescents using cannabis once a week were associated with a decline in educational performance.
But the tracking study, also known as Children of the Nineties and using self-reported drug use, shows it is difficult to separate the use of cannabis from other factors in these teenagers' lives.
Young people using cannabis were "associated with decreased intellectual performance".
But these teenagers were also likely to be involved in other types of behaviour, such as drinking alcohol or taking other types of drugs.
Once these other risk factors were taken into account, there was no discernible impact on intelligence from occasional cannabis use.
But for heavy cannabis users, there were slightly poorer exam results at age 16, even when other factors such as alcohol use were...

Summary: Teenagers who are regular cannabis users by the age of 15 risk "impairing" their educational ability, suggests a study of young people in the UK.
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Article: As the Bank of England has noted, around 40% of all annual pay settlements will be decided in the next four or five weeks. If 2015 is going to be the year that pay really starts to rise, then we should have some strong clues soon.
Now it's important to remember that there is a big difference between "wages" and "living standards". Wages are the biggest driver of household incomes, but the tax and benefit system (and other sources of income like bank interest or private pensions) also play a role.
But given the importance of wages in determining overall household incomes, there are good reasons to focus on them. Whilst real wages are picking up at the moment, the big driver of that has been falling inflation rather than nominal wage growth. With inflation forecast to gradually rise in the coming years back towards 2%, real wage growth will require a pickup in cash earnings.
The big squeeze in UK living standards after the 2008 crash has been driven by a historically large squeeze in real wages (wages taking into account inflation). This was all set out in a new report from the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) yesterday, which emphasised that falling real wages have driven living standards down for working households, whilst the income of pensioner households has actually risen since 2008.
Looking at the data, there are two stories that can be told - both of which contain important elements of truth - that offer more encouragement.
The first is that the real wage squeeze has been accompanied by rising employment. That's especially important if discussing average (meaning in this case "mean") wage levels.
Imagine an economy with ten workers, nine of whom earn £25,000 a year and the last of whom is unemployed. The average wage is £25,000. Now imagine that the nine in work get a pay rise of 2% and the unemployed worker finds a job on £15,000 a year.
The average wage would now be £24,450, a fall of 2.2% from £25,000. But is that a meaningful number? All ten workers are clearly better off, and what has driven...

Summary: As is almost always the case, living standards look set to be a key issue in the general election, and we are now heading into April, which is the key month for wages.
###
Article: John Norwood was cleared of the attempted murder of Lance Sergeant James Warnock.
The jury at Winchester Crown Court is still considering alternative charges of wounding with intent and attempting to wound with intent.
L/Sgt Warnock suffered wounds to his shoulder, hands and wrist after being allegedly attacked by Norwood.
Norwood, of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, said he wanted to "put the fear of God" into L/Sgt Warnock, 24, after the pair had a drunken brawl at a pub in Aldershot.
He said: "I knew I would be the butt of a lot of jokes because I had been beaten by a junior non-commissioned officer (NCO).
"It's unheard of in my line of work for a senior NCO to be beaten up by a junior NCO, I wanted to minimise the jokes by scaring Mr Warnock."
He added that he did not intend to harm L/Sgt Warnock.
The 38 year old, of Priesthill Road, Glasgow, has been accused of "hunting" his victim.
He is also accused of attempting to wound Craftsman Nicholas Wood, 24, whose room Norwood went into by mistake.
He swung the machete on to the bed, "shredding" the duvet but stopping once he realised the room was not L/Sgt Warnock's.
The trial continues.

Summary: An Army sergeant has been found not guilty of trying to kill a fellow soldier with a machete.
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Article: The in-vitro fertilisation success paves the way for conserving endangered breeds and could help in the fight against human and animal diseases, say researchers at Cornell University.
The seven beagle and cross-bred beagle-spaniel puppies were born to a surrogate mother.
They were from the same litter but have three sets of parents.
Frozen embryos were implanted in a female dog using techniques similar to those used in human fertility clinics.
Problems with freezing embryos have caused difficulties in the past, but the group say they have perfected this and other techniques.
Lead researcher Dr Alex Travis, from Cornell's college of veterinary medicine, said: "We have seven normal happy healthy puppies."
He added: "Since the mid-1970s, people have been trying to do this in a dog and have been unsuccessful.
"Now we can use this technique to conserve the genetics of endangered species."
The researchers say IVF is a powerful tool to help endangered species of dog such as the African wild dog.
It could also be used in the study of inherited human and dog diseases.
Dogs share many similar diseases with humans - almost twice as many as for any other species.
Dr Travis said the work was an important milestone.
"In vitro fertilisation is a really powerful tool to help preserve endangered species of dog," he told the BBC.
"IVF is also important for the health of our pets because it opens up the possibility that we could identify certain genes that cause disease and then fix those."
The puppies were born in the summer.
Their existence was kept secret until the findings were formally announced to the scientific world this week.
They have reportedly been named Ivy, Cannon, Beaker, Buddy, Nelly, Red and Green, and all but one has gone to a new home.
The research, published in the journal PLoS One, has been described as a "major step forward" in medicine.
Prof David Argyle, head of the school of veterinary medicine at the University of Edinburgh, which was not part of the study, said the new techniques would help...

Summary: The world's first "test tube" puppies have been born after years of attempts, say scientists in the US.
###
Article: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) applied them in 1989, after fears two firms, taken over by FirstGroup in 1996, could have too strong a bargaining position with the council.
The CMA said it was seeking views from a number of groups.
First Bristol said it "welcomed the decision to review these undertakings".
The company added it had "already assisted" the CMA as part of the review process.
The restrictions were implemented following the 1989 merger of two local bus companies Badgerline and Midland Red West.
The Monopolies and Mergers Commission, at the time, ruled the merger would remove competition for bus services contracted by the former Avon County Council.
The CMA said the merged company was "therefore required to sign up to a number of restrictions".
These included a cap on the amount they could receive from the local authority for running a tendered service - and a requirement to return any excess profit from such services.
The CMA said it was carrying out the review "to see if there has been a change in circumstances which justifies their removal or variation" and was "seeking views" from local authorities, bus operators and bodies representing bus passengers in Bristol and the surrounding area.
It said it aimed to publish the results of the review in the summer.

Summary:


Downton Abbey will be coming back for a sixth series in 2015, ITV has confirmed.

Article: The UK government has applied for the county's new potatoes and the "Ayrshire earlies" brand to be granted Protected Geographical Indicator (PGI) status by Brussels.
The proposal was put forward by a growers' group based in Girvan.
If successful, Ayrshire new potatoes would join more than 70 UK food and drink products with PGI status.
These include Arbroath smokies and Stornoway black pudding.
Only three other types of potato in the UK, including the Jersey Royal, already have the status.
In November, applications were also lodged for Dundee cake and Forfar bridies to be protected.
The Ayrshire application went through a Scottish government consultation last year, without objections being lodged.
The application cites evidence of commercial potato farming in Ayrshire as far back as 1793.
The sandy soil and milder weather made it ideal for early sowing and early harvests, with potatoes typically getting to market within seven days of harvesting.
Farmers traditionally used seaweed from Ayrshire beaches as fertiliser, and manure from local dairy farms.
From 1859, they adopted growing practices learned in Jersey. The following year, the trade was helped by a rail link from Girvan to Glasgow.
In 1918, records show a peak of potato farming in the county, with 11,400 acres under potatoes.
The protected status application says that in 1951, the main occupation in the town of Maybole was in South Ayrshire early potatoes - planted in February, and harvested from early May until the end of July.

Summary: Ayrshire new potatoes are in line to have their identity protected under European law.
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Article: Recent examples have included offensive tweets aimed at Olympic diver Tom Daley and Bolton footballer Fabrice Muamba.
Stuart Hyde, of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said forces should take a "common sense" approach.
The Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, said police could not be expected to investigate every instance of abuse on Twitter.
Only this week Blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton said she was closing down her Twitter account because of the negative comments she was receiving.
Cumbria Chief Constable Mr Hyde, who speaks on e-crime for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said police should get involved if people's lives were being made a misery.
But asked if new laws were needed, he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "No, I think we have got quite a lot of legislation, dating back to the Malicious Communications Acts of 1998 and 2003. There is a lot there that helps us and gives us the power to do stuff.
"This is a new technology, a new way of communicating, it has grown exponentially. There hasn't been separate legislation so we are using legislation that wasn't particularly created for this but it works reasonably well most of the time."
He continued: "We are learning from it, there are things that have sometimes gone wrong and I think sometimes it is important that we make sure we provide the service people need.
"If people come to us and say 'I am really upset, I've been offended, my life has been made a misery and I want somebody to do something about it', then yes the police should, whenever possible, try to help."
Mr Hyde said abuse on Twitter did not appear to be a huge problem, based on the number of complaints police were receiving.
"I don't want police officers dragged off the streets to deal with frivolous complaints. Where these complaints are pretty serious then it is quite right that we should intervene, and we do that," he said.
"It is important to look at the whole context. It is not just about one tweet, it is a whole range of tweets. Look at...

Summary: New laws to help police deal with cases of abuse on social website Twitter are not needed, senior officers have said.
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Article: Experts believe it could be "Scotland's Glastonbury", a reference to the lake village in Somerset.
The excavation was part-financed with Â£15,000 from Historic Scotland.
Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop described the village discovery at Black Loch of Myrton as "an exciting and unexpected find".
The dig was carried out this summer by AOC Archaeology Group, which hopes to use the pilot excavation as the starting point for a broader programme of archaeological activity.
It is one of 55 archaeology projects to receive more than Â£1m in funding from Historic Scotland for 2013/14.
The Wigtownshire dig was a small-scale pilot excavation of what was initially thought to be a crannog in the now-infilled Black Loch of Myrton, which was under threat of destruction as a result of drainage operations.
However during the excavation, AOC - which worked on the dig in conjunction with local volunteers - discovered evidence of multiple structures making up a small village.
What initially appeared to be one of a small group of mounds before excavation was revealed to be a massive stone hearth complex at the centre of a roundhouse.
The timber structure of the house has been preserved, with beams radiating out from the hearth forming the foundation, while the outer wall consists of a double-circuit of stakes.
The most surprising discovery was that the house was not built on top of an artificial foundation, but directly over the fen peat which had gradually filled in the loch.
Rather than being a single crannog, as first thought, it appears to be a settlement of at least seven houses built in the wetlands around the small loch.
This type of site is currently unique in Scotland and there are few other comparable sites elsewhere in the British Isles.
Similar lake villages - including Glastonbury and Meare, which is also in Somerset - have been found in England, but this is the first "loch village" to be uncovered in Scotland.
Experts hope that its discovery will help to improve knowledge and understanding of Iron Age Scotland.
Ms...

Summary: Archaeologists have discovered the remains of an Iron Age "loch village" in Wigtownshire, the first of its kind to be found in Scotland.
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Article: Alexander Perepilichnyy had collapsed on a road early on the evening of 10 November, Surrey Police said.
Police are treating the 44-year-old's death as unexplained, pending toxicology tests after an inconclusive post-mortem examination.
Reports have connected Perepilichnyy to the Sergei Magnitsky affair.
Magnitsky, a lawyer for London-based Hermitage Capital Management, died on remand in a Moscow prison three years ago after allegedly uncovering a web of corruption involving Russian tax officials.
According to an article in the Independent newspaper on Wednesday, Perepilichnyy had been giving evidence to Swiss investigators about Russian fraud involving Swiss-based bank accounts.
He had sought sanctuary in the UK three years ago after "falling out with a powerful crime syndicate", the paper said.
A Russian media report described Perepilichnyy as a former business partner of one of the people accused by Magnitsky of fraud.
News of Perepilichnyy's death more than two weeks ago only emerged on Wednesday.
Police were called to Granville Road in Weybridge shortly after 17:15 GMT, following a report a man had collapsed there.
An ambulance had attended, but Perepilichnyy had been pronounced dead just before 17:40 GMT, Surrey Police said. The force would not confirm suggestions he had been out running.
"We were made aware of Mr Perepilichnyy's link as a witness in an ongoing trial during the course of the investigation," the police said.
According to an article in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Perepilichnyy had lived on a "luxury private estate shared with seven multi-million pound properties".
The Swiss Attorney General's office told the Independent Perepilichnyy had given evidence to federal prosecutor Maria Antonella-Bino.
The paper quoted a "source with knowledge" of the Swiss fraud inquiry as saying Perepilichnyy had "brought all the evidence they needed to open the investigation".
Evidence he had reportedly provided included records of shell or "front" companies - which serve as vehicles for business...

Summary: A Russian businessman linked as a witness to a high-profile corruption scandal has been found dead near his home in Weybridge.
###
Article: The drama, which focuses of the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants, will go into production next year.
This is in addition to the special one-off episode which will air at Christmas.
Created by writer Julian Fellowes, who is set to return for the next series, the show first aired in 2010.
"It is fantastic that Downton continues to be such a phenomenon - still the most popular drama on ITV in its fifth series - and we are thrilled to have commissioned a sixth series," said Steve November, ITV's director of drama commissioning.
"We don't know yet what Julian has planned, but we are looking forward to working with him, the fantastic cast and Carnival again, and have no doubt series six will be unmissable."
Producers have yet to confirm the full cast.
Earlier this week Hugh Bonneville, who plays Lord Grantham, talked to Newsbeat about some of the celebrities, including Kim Kardasian and Kanye West, who are said to be fans of the show.
"It's only a matter of time before they are on the show," joked Bonneville about the pair.
"Hillary Clinton and John Kerry [United States Secretary of State] are fans of the show too.
"To have them like the show as well as trying to run countries and economies is great."
The fifth series of Downton Abbey ends on Sunday 9 November.
Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter and Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube

Summary:


The PSNI has failed in an appeal against an order to disclose police documents related to two murder attempts on a Catholic taxi driver.

Article: Employment charity - Shaw Trust Scotland - delivered the scheme at HMP Low Moss near Bishopbriggs.
Of the 11 participants taking part in the programme, six are now in employment with the other five securing jobs ahead of their release.
Shaw Trust said the scheme was designed to help tackle re-offending in Scotland.
Those taking part in the scheme were offered advice and training in CV writing and interview skills starting 12 weeks prior to their release.
The scheme took into consideration their own individual ambitions and skill sets, along with their employment history.
The charity also arranged for suitable employers to visit the prison to interview participants for roles upon their release.
Commenting on the success of the pilot, Ashley McCloy, Operations Manager for Shaw Trust in Scotland, said:
"Offenders are less likely to commit crime after release if they are given the tools to change their lives for the better and can see a clear route into employment.
"Given the success of the pilot, Shaw Trust Scotland is looking to offer the programme to more prisoners at HMP Low Moss, with a long-term view of integrating it into the core services offered at prisons across the country."
Shaw Trust Scotland is a national employment, disability, learning and skills charity which manages and delivers the Department for Work and Pensions' national disability employment programme, Work Choice.

Summary: A new scheme aimed at getting prisoners into employment upon release has seen all of its participants find work.
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Article: It found the total spending in 2015 on agency midwives, overtime and the NHS's flexible "bank" midwives was £72.7m.
The RCM described it as an "incredibly expensive and wasteful way to staff maternity units".
An NHS spokesman said it was committed to cutting agency staff costs so patients "get the right care".
Some 123 NHS trusts in England with maternity units responded to the RCM's Freedom of Information requests, which revealed that 46 had used agency midwives last year to fill gaps on hospital rotas.
In 2015 the government introduced a cap on NHS trusts' spending on agency staff, but the figures show that for many trusts some costs continue to rise.
The £25m spent on agency midwives represented a 40% increase compared with 2014, and a 146% increase over four years.
The report also said that on average agency midwives were paid £41 an hour, about half of which went to the agency.
Additionally, overtime pay for NHS midwives cost an average of £23 per hour, while bank staff - in-house workers who want to work flexibly across health trusts - cost £25.63 per hour on average.
Jon Skewes, from the RCM, said spending on this scale "simply cannot continue".
He went on: "An over-reliance on temporary staff is clearly more expensive than employing the correct number of permanent staff and needs to be corrected sooner rather than later."
But a spokesman from NHS Improvement - which combines a number of health monitoring and improvement bodies - said trusts "have made good progress" and saved over £600m on agency staff since last year.
"We are committed to helping the NHS cut the cost of agency midwives and all agency staff, so that patients get the right care, from the right staff, at the right time," he added.
The overall budget for NHS England in 2015-16 year was £101.3bn.

Summary: The NHS in England spent £25m on agency midwives last year - more than double the figure for 2013, the Royal College of Midwives has reported.
###
Article: The award winning show returns for a one-off special in December.
Gervais, who also wrote and directed the show, told Newsbeat there'll be a "big confession" from Derek's best friend Kev.
Once he's finished filming the finale, the 53-year-old comic will then concentrate on his next project, the David Brent movie.
Speaking about the final Derek episode the actor said: "It's always been my favourite episode, the finale of The Office, Extras and this is probably my favourite episode of Derek.
"There's a scene where Kev confesses something to Derek, that's quite shocking for him."
Could a hidden romance be on the cards?
"No that's not the confession! That would...no, no, no."
Once filming is complete Gervais will return to one of his most loved roles, that of office manager David Brent.
But this time the wannabe rock star will be starring in his own movie.
"It's half written. You get to see what happened after The Office, his life and what he went through," Gervais said.
The movie will see Brent working as a sales rep, selling cleaning products, and following him as he struggles to attract an audience to a self-financed UK tour.
"He thinks this film is like [Martin] Scorsese following The [Rolling] Stones round, but he soon finds out it's a more of a 'where are they now?' So it's quite sad, funny and tragic."
The multi-award-winning actor has already brought Brent back for a series of videos on YouTube called Learn Guitar With David Brent, which led to him bringing the character back to life for a series of unlikely gigs.
But he doesn't think people are getting tired of the character.
"I think if I went back to doing Brent in The Office, that would be a bit cringey," he said.
"I've purposefully taken it away from that because things move on.
"In the day and age when everyone wants to be famous, it's not out the question that someone out there is still trying to be a rock star and thinks that someone like Simon Cowell will come along and make him in to a star for 15 minutes.
"There's no sure thing. You should...

Summary: Ricky Gervais has revealed there will be a big "revelation" in the final episode of his Channel 4 comedy, Derek.
###
Article: Wildlife enthusiast Lucy Dunn was ski touring with her partner when they spotted the bird of prey on 17 February.
Their sighting has been reported on the nature website iSpot.
RSPB Scotland and the Scottish Wildlife Trust said snowy owls made rare appearances in Scotland. The birds are native to Arctic regions.
Ms Dunn and her partner were on their way back from Carn Etchachan and were heading towards Feith Buidhe, in the Northern Cairngorms, when they had their encounter.
She said: "The owl spotted us first, heard us coming and took off.
"I caught a glimpse of large white wings and was unsure what it was. I remember thinking - that's too big for a ptarmigan.
"Fortunately the owl did not go far and settled down again to watch us, which is how I managed to get the photos. Eventually after a short while it did fly off."
Ms Dunn added: "We felt very privileged to spot such a wonderful bird."
In 2011, a male snowy owl appeared on the Western Isles for the eighth year running in a search for a mate.
The large white owl first visited the islands in 2003 and had previously flown around North Uist, Lewis, Harris and St Kilda.
In 2008, birdwatchers' hopes of snowy owls breeding in the UK for first time in more than 30 years were raised when the bird was joined by a female.
However, the pair were later spotted 50 miles apart.
The last pair of snowy owls to breed in the UK was on Shetland in 1975.

Summary: Images have been published of a snowy owl's rare appearance in the Cairngorms.
###
Article: The police admitted a claim of wrongdoing in public office in 2015 after being sued by John Flynn over two attempts on his life in the 1990s.
However, it appealed against an attempt to access police documents.
Judges dismissed the appeal and said it was hard to contemplate a more grave subject matter.
Mr Flynn has said the PSNI did not fully examine claims of security force collusion with loyalists.
A notorious UVF unit, based in Mount Vernon, north Belfast, is believed to be responsible for two attempts to murder Mr Flynn.
A gunman tried to ambush him as he picked up a taxi fare, and a bomb was placed under his car. It is alleged the attacker was a police informer.
The PSNI argued that it had already admitted liability in the case and that producing the documents would be irrelevant, costly and divert resources from other cases.
However, judges at the appeal court said the full extent of police misconduct needed to be established before compensation for Mr Flynn can be decided.
The judges said discovery of documents in the case has a long and tortuous history, and that the PSNI should provide the papers as quickly as possible.
Mr Flynn's claim is linked to an investigation in 2007 by former police ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan.
That report found that members of the RUC Special Branch had allowed UVF informers to act with impunity, and that the Mount Vernon gang may have been involved in up to 15 murders.
Mr Flynn claimed Mrs O'Loan's successor, Al Hutchinson, did not adequately implement recommendations from the 2007 report to examine whether agents' handlers committed any crimes.

Summary:


The Belgian king has provoked a sharp response to a Christmas message in which he drew parallels with the rise of fascism in the 1930s.

Article: The 15-year-old pleaded guilty to one count of inciting terrorism by encouraging the murder of police officers during the event in Melbourne in April. No attack ever took place.
The boy appeared at the Old Bailey via video link from Manchester Crown Court, speaking only to enter his plea.
He cannot be named for legal reasons.
The Old Bailey heard the boy, who was 14 at the time, sent thousands of instant messages to 18-year-old Sevdet Besim in Australia over a 10-day period in March.
They both supported the Islamic State militant group, also known as IS or Isis, the court was told.
The boy sent a message to the older teenager suggesting he got his "first taste of beheading," prosecutor Paul Greaney QC said, to which Besim replied that this seemed "risky".
Anzac Day, held on 25 April each year, commemorates the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps' World War One battle in Gallipoli, with this year marking its centenary.
The boy was initially arrested on 2 April in connection with an alleged plan to stage an attack in Melbourne and was detained again after officers examined electronic devices and discovered his communications with a man in Australia.
Outlining the case, Mr Greaney said: "Those messages reveal the intentions of the plotters and their targets, along with their motivation which may be summarised as support for Isis and their enthusiasm for the attack.
"The messages also set out the plotters' preparations for the attack. On 18 March 2015, as part of those preparations, the defendant sent Sevdet Besim a message that read, 'suggest you break into someone's house and get your first taste of beheading'.
"Sevdet Besim responded to say that this seemed 'a little risky' and that aspect of the preparations appears then to have drifted away."
That exchange was the subject of a second charge, of inciting terrorism overseas in relation to beheading a person in Australia, which has now been dropped by the prosecution.
Mr Greaney said the charge was deleted as the prosecution was dealing with it as "part and...

Summary: A teenager from Blackburn has admitted involvement in a terror plot targeting police at an Anzac Day remembrance parade in Australia.
###
Article: If given the go-ahead it would allow HMRC to release anonymous tax data to third parties including companies, researchers and public bodies.
But former Conservative minister David Davis told the Guardian the plans were "borderline insane".
An HMRC spokesman said "no final decisions" had been taken, and it was committed to "confidentiality".
The newspaper reported that "charging options" were being examined by officials, suggesting that firms could pay to access the data.
But concern has been raised over the plans in the wake of the Care.data initiative - a proposed anonymous sharing of NHS medical records - which is currently suspended after fears were raised as to exactly what information would remain anonymous.
Plans to relax the laws around HMRC data-sharing - which are being overseen by Treasury minister David Gauke - were first consulted on in July last year, but HMRC said "further consultations" would also be taking place.
Mr Davis told the Guardian: "The officials who drew this up clearly have no idea of the risks to data in an electronic age.
"Our forefathers put these checks and balances in place when the information was kept in cardboard files, and data was therefore difficult to appropriate and misuse.
"It defies logic that we would remove those restraints at a time when data can be collected by the gigabyte, processed in milliseconds and transported around the world almost instantaneously."
Emma Carr, deputy director of civil rights campaign group, Big Brother Watch, said: "The ongoing claims about anonymous data overlook the serious risks to privacy of individual level data being vulnerable to re-identification.
"Given the huge uproar about similar plans for medical records, you would have hoped HMRC would have learned that trying to sneak plans like this under the radar is not the way to build trust or develop good policy."
A HMRC spokesman said: "HMRC would only share data where this would generate clear public benefits, and where there are robust safeguards in place.
"Last year's consultation...

Summary: Taxpayers' personal data could be shared with private firms under plans drawn up by Revenue & Customs (HMRC).
###
Article: A 49-year-old died on Friday evening after the attack at Marian Court flats in Archdeacon Street, Gloucester.
Two male suspects, aged 30 and 42, who were arrested on Friday night, have both now been released without charge after being questioned.
Gloucestershire Police said detectives were continuing to "pursue a number of inquiries" to find the killer.

Summary: Two men who were arrested on suspicion of murder after a man was stabbed to death have been released by police.
###
Article: The report said the ban at the Bridgend site had been well-managed and some prisoners had since stopped smoking.
But it said tobacco and other contraband was still getting in and it was concerned about drones being used.
The prison's director Janet Wallsgrove said the number of violent incidents increased but were now dropping.
Although no analysis has been carried out, the review said the ban "might be a factor" in the rise in violence.
The 2016-17 report by the prison's independent monitoring board said despite initial resistance to the April 2016 ban, some prisoners had "seized the opportunity to stop smoking" and said they felt fitter as a result.
However, it said it was concerned drones were being used to deliver tobacco and other banned substances - sometimes direct to prisoners' cell windows.
The annual review said there was a worry about a general increase in violent incidents at Parc - a "disproportionate percentage" of which happened in the young offenders' unit, where there were also a number of assaults on staff.
But it said staff had a good working relationship with young offenders and the prison had introduced mentors and violence reduction representatives to work with inmates to cut the number of incidents.
The board said no study had been carried out to analyse the impact of the smoking ban on prisoners, but it was concerned it "might be a factor in the increased level of incidents of self-harm and violence".
Overall the review found Parc Prison was well managed and said the safety of prisoners was of "paramount importance".
It said education provision was satisfactory, with useful links to Bridgend College, and purposeful activities for inmates was generally very good.
Parc Prison director Janet Wallsgrove said it has faced "an upward trend in violent incidents" over the past year, particularly in the juvenile unit.
She said new methods used by staff had seen levels drop back since their peak in 2016.
"While this report recognises the challenges we face, it also makes clear that our team...

Summary: A rise in the number of violent and self harm incidents at Parc Prison could be linked to the smoking ban, a review has found.
###
Article: Albert II warned against the dangers of populists seeking scapegoats for current economic difficulties.
Flemish separatist leader Bart De Wever assumed the remarks were aimed at him and said he had overstepped his role.
Belgian political experts and commentators argued that the broadcast had intervened in political debate.
In his broadcast, the king said that "in these troubled times we live in, we should remain vigilant and see through populist arguments".
Populists were, he said, "trying to find scapegoats for the crisis, whether foreigners or compatriots from another part of the country".
Such thinking persisted in Belgium as much as in other European countries and "the crisis of the 1930s and the populist reactions of that time must not be forgotten", the king said.
Belgium has a deepening divide between its Flemish (Dutch-speaking) north and French-speaking south, and there has been speculation that the country could ultimately break up.
Mr De Wever, whose New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) party made big gains in elections in October and is now the biggest political force in Flemish-speaking Flanders, accused the king of "implicitly" referring to the N-VA in his speech.
In a newspaper article in De Standaard, he accused the king of choosing "the path of a royalty of division", adding in a later broadcast interview that he could no longer see the monarch as playing the constitutional role of referee.
On Belgian radio he accused Belgium's French-speaking PM, Elio Di Rupo, of "hiding behind the throne", arguing that he must have seen an advance copy of the speech and given it the green light.
"[Di Rupo] won't say I'm a fascist but apparently believes it and lets the king say it," Mr De Wever said.
The separatist leader also took a swipe at a predecessor of Albert's, Belgium's wartime King Leopold III (then a prisoner of war), who met Adolf Hitler "for coffee" at Berchtesgaden in Bavaria in 1940 and took Belgium "to the brink of civil war".
Mr De Wever's angry remarks followed a series of objections from political...

Summary:


A New York City warehouse celebrated for its graffiti art has been painted over in preparation for demolition, angering locals.
The building is set for demolition by the end of the year as part of a $400m project to build more than 1,000 luxury apartments, the New York Times reports.
The building is

A multi-vehicle crash has taken place during a heavy hail shower on the A74(M) after a spate of incidents in similar conditions on Sunday.

Article: UK researchers say more trees and other vegetation at street level would clean air in areas that are normally exposed to higher pollution levels.
Plants in towns and cities have been shown to remove nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter (PM), both of which are harmful to human health.
The findings
          appear in the journal Environmental Science and Technology
.
"Up until now, every initiative around reducing pollution has taken a top-down approach, [such as] scrapping old cars, adding catalytic converters, bringing in the congestion charge - some of which have not had the desired effect," said co-author Rob MacKenzie from the University of Birmingham.
"The benefit of green walls is that they clean up the air coming into and staying in the street canyon," Prof MacKenzie observed.
"Planting more [green walls] in a strategic way could be a relatively easy way to take control of our local pollution problems."
Street canyons refer to the effect created by high buildings lining a street, preventing much of the pollution escaping.
Previous studies have shown that greening urban spaces can cut pollution, but only by about 5%. This study suggests that strategic placement of vegetation in street canyons can cut air pollution by up to 30%.
Green walls, consisting of climbing plants such as ivy, built on billboard-like structures could act as air pollution filters, the team said.
Nicola Cheetham, head of environment (surface transport) for Transport for London (TfL), welcomed the findings.
"Our own research, conducted by Imperial College London, shows the ability of different plants to trap particulate matter," she said.
Ms Cheetham added that TfL had just installed its second green wall in the capital to help mitigate the pollution associated with heavy flows of urban traffic.
The team reached their findings about the effectiveness of green walls by using a computer model that showed the effect of street canyons trapping air at street level and the accumulation of pollution.
The model also showed that...

Summary: The creation of "green walls" in urban areas could cut pollution by up to 30%, scientists have suggested.
###
Article: Doddle is a joint venture between Network Rail and Lloyd Dorfman, who made his fortune from the Travelex currency exchange business.
According to Mr Dorfman, Amazon will begin using Doddle in September.
Last year Amazon was in talks with Transport for London about using tube stations as collection points.
It is not clear how the deal with Doddle will affect Amazon's plan to link up with London Underground.
Network Rail and Mr Dorfman are investing Â£24m in Doddle and hope to expand the business to 300 stations.
A pilot operation has been running at Milton Keynes station and Doddle's website said shops in London Cannon Street, Woking, Bromley South, Brighton and Chelmsford stations would "open soon".
But reaching an agreement with Amazon would be a huge boost for the business.
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Dorfman said: "They're sorting out the systems issues and have agreed to begin using Doddle in September."

Summary: Amazon customers will be able to pick-up their parcels from railways stations under a deal struck with a new click-and-collect firm, Doddle.
###
Article: The owners of the building in Queens nicknamed "5Pointz" covered more than a decade's worth of spray-paint art in the middle of the night.
Artists likened it to an act of vandalism, as they had fought to have the building designated a landmark.
The area is scheduled to be developed into luxury condominiums.
More than 1,500 artists reportedly used the 5Pointz warehouse as a canvas, turning the formerly derelict brick building into a tourist attraction.
Even celebrated British street artist Banksy, in New York recently for a month-long residency, called for the building to be saved.
The building is set for demolition by the end of the year as part of a $400m project to build more than 1,000 luxury apartments, the New York Times reports.
Artists and locals appealed against the plan and tried to have the warehouse designated a landmark under the Visual Artists Rights Act.
But a federal judge officially rejected the effort last week, allowing for the demolition to move forward.
Supporters described their shock upon seeing the building's newly white facade, which was painted in the middle of the night.
"It's cruel", local tour guide Hans Von Rittern told the New York Times. "I don't know how you can erase 12 years of spectacular art."
The building's owner, Jerry Wolkoff, expressed sadness as he watched his crews paint over the building in preparation for the massive development project.
"I cried this morning, I swear to you," he said.

Summary: A New York City warehouse celebrated for its graffiti art has been painted over in preparation for demolition, angering locals.
###
Article: The Shining Lights scheme aims to initially fund four awards for refugee students.
Prof Sir Ian Diamond, the university principal and vice-chancellor said: "Our community has been shocked and saddened by the plight of those fleeing violence and repression.
"This university has always opened its doors to the world."
He added:  "The Shining Lights Scholarships we are providing will cover tuition fees, year round accommodation, and support for living costs."
Businesses and the public can donate to the scholarship scheme.

Summary: A scholarship scheme for students with refugee status has been launched by the University of Aberdeen.
###
Article: The incident was reported near junction 16 at Johnstonebridge at about 14:20.
Police said that six vehicles had been involved and lanes on the southbound carriageway were blocked for a time but the route was subsequently cleared.
In another incident a car was reported to have ended up on its roof on the northbound carriageway.
It follows a string of incidents on the motorway on Sunday in similar weather conditions.
Policing units attended about 40 crashes - primarily on the A74(M) - throughout the day.
A number were also reported on the A75 near Carrutherstown.
"Thankfully the majority of the crashes were fairly minor in nature and as a result there were only three persons slightly injured," said a police spokesman.
"The crashes occurred as a result of freak hail showers in various locations throughout the region making driving conditions hazardous.
"Please remember that although it is now March and temperatures are generally higher, weather conditions are still very changeable so please take time to have a look at the weather forecast prior to your journey so that you may be better informed of the conditions ahead."

Summary: