was found in a nearby farm in the area of the village of St. John's.
The animal was found in a nearby farm in the village of St. John's.
The animal was found in a nearby farm in the village of St. John's.
The animal was found in a nearby

A woman thought her husband had "lost the plot" when he woke her up to tell her there was a raccoon on their roof.

Article: He added that "the buck must stop" with LTA chief executive Michael Downey, who he says has done "a poor job".
Following Great Britain's Davis Cup victory, Andy Murray said that speaking to the LTA about the future of British tennis is a waste of his time.
"The LTA do not run the game very well. They haven't for many, many, many years," Lloyd told BBC World Service.
"They have poor management, poor systems."
The former Davis Cup captain and successful businessman said the LTA had invested millions "but not in the right places".
LTA boss Downey said in a statement on Tuesday: "We value the opinions of all of our players on how we grow the game in Britain and our door is always open to Andy, Dan [Evans], Dom [Inglot], James [Ward], Jamie [Murray] and Kyle [Edmund] to hear their views and work collaboratively with them and all of our partners."
Media playback is not supported on this device
Murray criticised British tennis' governing body after inspiring his country's first Davis Cup win in 79 years against Belgium in Ghent over the weekend.
The 28-year-old said he "did not know where the next generation are" and that on a visit to the National Tennis Centre (NTC) in October he found "not one person using any of the indoor courts and not one person in the gym".
Lloyd, 67, who accused Murray of not putting enough back into the British game before the Davis Cup final, said it is "fantastic" that the Scot spoke out as he has "enormous power in controlling the way the game should be run".
"Someone must take the blame," Lloyd added. "Bob Brett was hired [as director of player development] and then left within a year, not because he wasn't good but he was in the wrong job. They hired him for a job that he can't do.
"You've got to put people in the right positions if you're running a company. The buck has to stop at the chief executive's door. He has done a poor job."
Lloyd, who says he twice applied for the LTA chief executive job but was turned down on both occasions, believes the governing body squanders the annual...

Summary: British tennis is "a mess" and the Lawn Tennis Association must make changes, says former player David Lloyd.
###
Article: Mairead McCallion was taken into police custody and her partner was arrested in 2014 after he allegedly attacked her.
She was rushed to hospital hours later after being sick in the back of a police car, and died the next day.
A Police Ombudsman's report says the officers failed in their duty of care.
It says they did not alert a Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) doctor who examined her that Ms McCallion, from Omagh in County Tyrone, had claimed to have suffered a head injury.
This was in spite of the fact police officers are taught to immediately seek medical attention when dealing with a possible head injury.
The family of 36-year-old Ms McCallion said they believe she might still be alive if the doctor had been alerted and she had been taken to hospital immediately.
"She told the police officers her partner had pulled her hair, banged her head against the wall and threw her into the garden," her sister Patricia O'Brien said.
"She had clumps of hair visibly hanging off her shoulders - that should have been taken very seriously.
"Had that have been taken seriously, Mairead should have been given urgent medical attention.
"That did not happen."
Ms McCallion had previously suffered domestic abuse, and had been drinking on the day she told officers she had been assaulted in February 2014.
The Police Ombudsman's report says that made it even more important that a PSNI doctor who examined her at Omagh police station was told about her head injury claims.
As part of their training, police officers are told that alcohol consumption can mask symptoms of a head injury such as slurred speech.
The officers who spoke to Ms McCallion when she claimed to have been assaulted told the ombudsman's investigators that they assumed she would make the doctor aware of her head injury.
The ombudsman says that was wrong, and they had a duty to inform the doctor and other colleagues.
"It was inappropriate that the officers put the onus on Mairead to pass on the details of her injuries in an unfamiliar setting to an unfamiliar...

Summary: Two police officers have been disciplined for not seeking medical attention for a woman who died after telling them her head had been hit against a wall during an assault.
###
Article: A study of 99 men attending a US fertility clinic found those eating junk food diets had poorer sperm quality.
High intakes of omega-3 fatty acids, found in fish and plant oils, were associated with higher sperm concentration.
More work is needed to confirm the findings, the researchers report in the journalHuman Reproduction.
The team, led by Prof Jill Attaman from Harvard Medical School in Boston, questioned men about their diet and analysed sperm samples over the course of four years.
Compared with those eating the least fat, men with the highest fat intake had a 43% lower sperm count and 38% lower sperm concentration (number of sperm per unit volume of semen).
Men consuming the most omega-3 fatty acids had sperm with a more normal structure than men with the lowest intake.
Prof Attaman said: "The magnitude of the association is quite dramatic and provides further support for the health efforts to limit consumption of saturated fat given their relation with other health outcomes such as cardiovascular disease."
However, 71% of participants were overweight or obese, which could have had an impact on sperm quality. Furthermore, none of the men had sperm counts or concentrations below the "normal" levels defined by the World Health Organization of at least 39 million and 15 million per millilitre.
Commenting on the research, British fertility expert Dr Allan Pacey, of the University of Sheffield, said: "This is a relatively small study showing an association between dietary intake of saturated fats and semen quality.
"Perhaps unsurprisingly there appeared to be a reasonable association between the two, with men who ate the highest levels of saturated fats having the lowest sperm counts and those eating the most omega-3 polyunsaturated fats having the highest.
"Importantly, the study does not show that one causes the other and further work needs to be carried out to clarify this. But it does add weight to the argument that having a good healthy diet may benefit male fertility as well as being good general...

Summary: A diet high in saturated fat has been linked with a reduced sperm count.
###
Article: The runaway critter was spotted on top of the house in Cambridgeshire.
Fenland Animal Rescue was called in, but it was "a bit of a wrestle as he was not the friendliest of raccoons", said the charity's Josh Flanagan.
"That said, I've never met one before, and we don't train in raccoon rescue techniques," he added. They are hoping to locate the animal's owner.
Click here for more news from Cambridgeshire
"Raccoons aren't native to this country, so he must have escaped from somewhere," Mr Flanagan said.
"You can imagine their surprise when the householders saw one on their roof.
"The woman thought her husband had lost the plot, but when she looked out, there it was, staring back at her through the window."
With the animal jumping from the house to a garden shed roof, it was a short game of "cat and mouse" as Mr Flanagan tried to catch him.
"At one point I was sat on the rooftop with him, and we were both eating bananas. I don't think I'll ever experience anything like that again, but it's why I do this job," he said.
Eventually the animal was brought down safely, using a control pole.
A few days after its ordeal, the racoon is settling in - but "causing havoc" - at the rescue centre's Whittlesey base.
"He's a devilish boy, a bit vicious," Mr Flanagan said. "They look all cute and adorable, but they're not."
If no one comes forward to claim him, he will be moved to a specialist rescue centre "where he can live his life in a safe and secure environment with other raccoons to call friends".

Summary:


The Queen's decision to leave the country after the 2008 financial crisis was a "monumental mistake" which would be "humiliating" to the king.

Leicester Cathedral has defended its decision to stage Shakespeare's Richard III a few feet from the monarch's final resting place.

Article: Regulators say the reforms will end the phenomenon of "too big to fail" banks.
The proposals, set out by global financial regulators are designed to avoid the need for taxpayers to bail out the banks in a future crisis.
Instead investors will be required to accept a loss on their investments.
Leaders of the G20 group of nations will be asked to endorse the reforms.
Under the proposals drawn up by the Financial Stability Board (FSB), chaired by UK Bank of England governor Mark Carney, banks will be required to issue "buffer bonds" by 2019 equivalent to 16% of the risk-weighted assets they hold, rising to 18% in 2022. Such assets can include government debt and cash.
In the event of a financial crisis the value of those bonds could be written down and used to raise funds for the bank.
As a result investors in those bonds would bear the burden of keeping the bank solvent by taking a "haircut" or loss on their investments.
The reform means investors will be the first to take a financial loss before taxpayers are asked to bail out the bank in question.
The "buffer bonds" are the last major reform to be announced by the FSB since the G20 tasked it with introducing changes to the regulate the banking industry in 2009.
The FSB has since increased bank capital requirements and imposed restrictions on bankers' bonuses.
Mr Carney said many key reforms have already been implemented.
"As a consequence, the financing capacity to the real economy is being rebuilt and significant retrenchment from international activity has been avoided," Mr Carney said in a letter to G20 leaders ahead of their summit next week.
The FSB believes the reforms will allow a big bank to fail without creating the level of panic in financial markets after Lehman Brothers went under in 2008.
The "buffer bonds", known as Total Loss-Absorbing Capacity or TLAC, are on top of the minimum core capital requirements a bank must already hold.
The FSB is also assessing the risks to financial stability from the activities of big asset managers and said it...

Summary: The world's top 30 banks will be required to issue "buffer bonds" as the final part of reforms designed to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis.
###
Article: Malcolm Beer made his comments ahead of a Windsor council aviation forum later.
He said a third runway north-west of the airport could create the need to use greenbelt land for housing.
A Heathrow spokesman said: "There will be little or no need for additional house-building over and above current local authority plans."
The housing concern comes after a recent report by the Airport Commission, which stated the Heathrow expansion would create between 47,400 and 112,400 jobs by 2030, which in turn would require an extra 29,800 to 70,800 homes to be created in the surrounding area, including Windsor, Slough and London boroughs.
Mr Beer said "anxious" Windsor residents associations would be organising a public meeting in the next 10 days ahead of the commission's public consultation deadline on 3 February.
Mr Beer, who is on the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead Borough aviation forum committee, said: "We have an enormous housing problem in the area.
"We are having a real problem considering if we have to release greenbelt land for housing, which is an unpopular suggestion.
"Apart from the noise, the whole area will be urbanised - that's what a lot of people don't realise.
"The impact will be felt across the Thames Valley - it's commercial greed gone mad."
The borough council forum will present its own residents' poll plans after a Heathrow report stated most residents were in favour of expansion.
The Heathrow spokesman said the expansion plans would benefit 700,000 existing residents in the area "who are unemployed, under-employed or are commuting out of the area at present".
The aviation forum takes place at 19:00 GMT at The Guildhall Chamber, Windsor.

Summary: Creating up to 70,800 homes if Heathrow expansion plans go ahead would cause "absolute turmoil", a Windsor councillor has said.
###
Article: She was a regular and enthusiastic visitor to Glamis Castle in Angus, the home of her mother's family, as she revealed in a letter to her grandparents.
"Darling Granny: Thank you very, very much for having us to stay with you at Glamis.
"It was one of the happiest weeks I have ever spent.
"With lots of love, from Lillibet."
That letter was written when the Queen was 11 and staying at Balmoral Castle, another of her favourite places.
Scotland has always also played a significant role in her Royal duties.
When she became Queen, on the death of her father King George VI, one of her first official tasks was to plant a cherry tree at the Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh, the parish church for the Palace of Holyrood House.
And after the Coronation, the first to be televised live, huge crowds lined the streets of the Scottish capital as she received the Honours of Scotland - the Scottish crown, sceptre and sword of state.
When she travelled to Glasgow, the city's George Square was so packed with well-wishers that 300 people were injured in the crush.
But Richard Finlay, professor of History at Strathclyde University, said there was also controversy during the early years of the Queen's reign.
"There was the optimism because she was young, it was after the war, she represented youth and hope and aspiration.
"But her Royal advisors put their foot in it by insisting on the numeral two, and of course there hadn't been an Elizabeth who was Queen of Scotland before.
"And many middle class Scots got quite irate about this, because it was seen to be ignoring Scottish history."
He said there were attempts to blow up pillar boxes with the EIIR emblem on them and anger when, in a Christmas message from New Zealand, the Queen described herself as Queen of England.
Over the years, affection for the monarch, and interest in her visits to Scotland have waxed and waned.
But Professor Christopher Smout, the Historiographer Royal, told the BBC the Queen has embraced the new Scotland and has opened each session of the new Holyrood...

Summary: Scotland has held a special place in the Queen's affections from a very young age.
###
Article: The Richard III Society branded the decision as a "monumental mistake" which would be "humiliating" to the king.
However, the Very Revd David Monteith, Dean of Leicester, said the play would be "sensitive" towards him.
He was reburied at the cathedral in 2015 in a specially designed tomb.
The remains of the last Plantagenet monarch were placed under the cathedral two years ago, after they were discovered under a car park in the city in 2012.
Shakespeare's play is critical of the king, calling him a "poisonous bunch-back'd toad."
Philippa Langley, from the Richard III Society, is not against the play but is opposed to it being performed in Leicester Cathedral.
"To perform this play right beside this man's grave is quite frankly, a deliberate humiliation," she said.
"This is not what the great city of Leicester and its people is about."
Source: Royal Shakespeare Company
The Cathedral has said the show will go ahead as planned in July, despite the criticism.
"King Richard III lies in peace," Revd David Monteith told BBC East Midlands Today.
"What we now know is that he belongs to the whole nation and not just to one section of people particularly committed to his story.
"I've heard most people say how glad they are that Richard III, the Shakespeare play, will be performed here."
The play will also be performed at Peterborough, Ely, Gloucester, Bristol and Salisbury cathedrals in July.

Summary:

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The Scottish government has been working on a feasibility study on linking the rail line with Carlisle, through Hawick.
The new 30-mile Borders Railway is expected to open in September.
In answer to Mr Hume's question, Mr Brown said the government had played an active part in taking forward the Borders Railway Blueprint

Transport officials from the Scottish government have held talks on the possibility of extending the Borders Railway beyond Tweedbank.

Article: The EC's doubts about the arrangement were detailed in a document on Friday.
The EC said that its "preliminary view is that the tax ruling... by Luxembourg in favour of Amazon constitutes state aid."
However, Amazon said it "has received no special tax treatment from Luxembourg".
"We are subject to the same tax laws as other companies operating here [in Luxembourg]," it said.
The Luxembourg finance ministry said: "Luxembourg is confident that the state aid allegations in this case are without merit and will be able to convince the Commission of the legitimacy of the anticipatory decision in question and that no competitive advantage was granted," it said.
The European Commission began a probe of the tax arrangement last year, saying that it had suspicions it broke EU rules.
The Commission document, which was sent to the Luxembourg Ministry of Foreign Affairs in October, gives its rationale for launching the investigation.
The Commission said it had "no indication" that the tax arrangement was "compatible with the internal market".
The current European Commission chief, Jean-Claude Juncker, was prime minister of Luxembourg when the deal was struck.
Mr Juncker has come under pressure over claims that around 340 global companies were granted tax  avoidance deals during his 18 year tenure in Luxembourg.
Commission doubts over the Amazon deal included whether Luxembourg had properly looked into Amazon's "transfer pricing" proposals about how money would be moved between different Amazon subsidiaries.
Doubts also existed about whether the country had assessed that the proposed tax regime was in line with market conditions before agreeing the deal in 2003, the European Commission document said.
The Commission also had questions about how royalty payments between certain Amazon companies were calculated, and whether "Amazon has a financial incentive to exaggerate the amount of the royalty" between its Luxembourg head office company and an Amazon firm that holds shares in the head office company.
"If the royalty is...

Summary: The European Commission has disclosed a preliminary finding that Amazon's tax arrangements in Luxembourg probably constitute "state aid".
###
Article: In 2013, 284 out of every 100,000 people died from cancer. In 2003, it was 312. Improvements in diagnosis and treatment are thought to be the reason.
The death rate for men fell 12% and for women by 8%, narrowing the gender gap.
But the actual number of cancer deaths rose - from 155,000 in 2003 to 162,000 in 2013 - as more people live longer and develop the disease in old age.
"The population is growing, and more of us are living longer," Cancer Research UK chief executive Sir Harpal Kumar said.
Almost half of all the cancer deaths in 2013 were from lung, bowel, breast or prostate cancer.
Although the combined death rate for these four cancers had dropped by about 11% over the past 10 years, some other cancers, such as liver and pancreatic, had increased death rates.
Sir Harpal said: "Too many people are still being diagnosed with and dying from cancer, not just here in the UK but around the world."
He said CRUK was focusing research on how to achieve earlier diagnosis and manage hard-to-treat cancers.
"Our scientists are developing new tests, surgical and radiotherapy techniques, and drugs," he said.
"It's important to celebrate how much things have improved, but also to renew our commitment to saving the lives of more cancer patients."
Cancer Research UK compiled the cancer death rate data, which was taken from cancer registries in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Summary: Cancer death rates in the UK have fallen by about 10% in the past 10 years, the latest figures show.
###
Article: Helen Carmichael is a councillor for Highland Council's Aird and Loch Ness ward.
The earliest reference to a provost of Inverness was a "provost junor" in the 1400s.
In another first for the historic position, Ms Carmichael is also leader of the council's Inverness and Area district.
It had previously been a separate post but has been merged with the role of provost.

Summary: A woman has been elected provost of Inverness for the first time in the 600-year history of the civic role.
###
Article: Infrastructure minister Keith Brown has confirmed that officers have discussed a feasibility study on linking the rail line with Carlisle, through Hawick.
News of the discussions emerged in response to a parliamentary question tabled by MSP Jim Hume.
The new 30-mile Borders Railway is expected to open in September.
In answer to Mr Hume's question, Mr Brown said the government had played an active part in taking forward the Borders Railway Blueprint for the Future.
He added: "Transport Scotland officials have already met with partners and offered initial advice on a scoping document which will explore the possibility of extending the Borders railway towards Hawick and Carlisle."
The announcement was welcomed by the Lib Dem MSP for the south of Scotland.
Mr Hume said: "I have no doubt that such a project would greatly benefit communities not just in the Borders but also in Dumfriesshire, and would draw even further on the already clear tourism opportunities from the line reaching Tweedbank.
"Local campaigners such as the Campaign for Borders Rail have kept the focus on this issue and this positive response from the Scottish government must now be the building blocks for progress on an extended rail link.
"I will continue to encourage Ministers to drive the initiative forward."

Summary:


Japan's Nikkei index closed lower, with shares in Toshiba sinking nearly 10% as the firm predicted record losses.

Article: They include a new setting that filters out age-inappropriate titles, so that youngsters do not see them in Google Play's market places.
The move was announced at the search giant's annual developers' conference.
It follows the firm's decision to hand over responsibility for age-rating its apps to a third party.
Google Play was created just over three years ago, and sells films, ebooks, music, magazines and apps for Android devices.
The store has more than one billion active users, and has recorded more than 50 billion app downloads over the last 12 months.
Last year's release of Android Lollipop added the ability to set up "restricted profiles", which can be used to prevent access to some apps, including the Play service itself.
The new update presents a version of Play that screens out potentially unsuitable content and highlights child-focused material.
Users will not, however, be locked into this version of the store, so parents may still wish to supervise their children's activity.
A new label will be used to flag titles that are ad-supported and new icons will provide information about the age range at which an app is targeted.
It coincides with a switchover to a new grading scheme run by the International Age Rating Coalition.
The body will issue age classifications based on an app's content - taking into account factors such as nudity, violence and references to gambling and drugs.
Unlike Google's earlier self-run system, the ratings will also be location-specific. So, an app might get a different grade for users in North America to those in Europe, Brazil or Australia.
Read more about how the new app rating scheme works
Google is also making other child-focused changes including:
"The character pages will include, for instance, Dora the Explorer where familiar icons can be associated with a broad range of content, including ebooks, TV and video," Mark Bennett, head of Google Play's Europe team, told the BBC.
"Parents will be able to go to those pages and their children explore the franchise."
The...

Summary: Google has added new features to its online media and app store to help parents ensure the content is suitable for children.
###
Article: Peter Neumark said he wanted to turn Classic Motor Cars Ltd in Shropshire into an employee-owned trust, meaning the 60 staff will own and run the firm.
It follows the John Lewis department store model, in which staff share benefits and profits from the business.
Mr Neumark said he "couldn't think of a better set of owners" to run the firm he started 23 years ago.
"If I keel over tomorrow - which I'm not planning to, but you never know - then it was important to me that this business had a good home and I can't think of a better set of owners than the employees themselves," he said.
The Bridgnorth-based company, which turned over more than Â£5m last year, has restored numerous classic vehicles, including many famous Jaguars.
New chairman, David Barzilay, it was important the skilled workforce was able to continue.
"Restoring cars in a traditional manner has been something of a dying art." he said.
"Classic Motors Cars is one of the companies that has brought that back from the brink.
"We have just over 60 people here but we have seven apprentices - one for every 10 members of staff - because we believe these skills are very important and should be maintained."
Mr Neumark said the move was "great for the staff, great for Shropshire and the West Midlands and great for the classic car world, which every year creates several billions for the British economy and is respected worldwide".

Summary: The founder of a classic car restoration company has given the business to his employees.
###
Article: The FTSE 100 in London closed down 2%, or 121 points, at 5,923 - the first time the index has been below the 6,000 mark since February.
The Cac in Paris sank 2.3%, while Frankfurt shed 1.4%.
Jitters sent the interest rate on 10-year bonds issued by the German government negative for the first time.
Recent opinion polls have suggested that there may be growing support for a Brexit vote in the 23 June referendum.
"Markets are on the verge of a full-blown panic sell-off due to rising probability of Brexit," said Rabobank analysts.
PVM Oil Associates analyst Tamas Varga said: "Safe havens are back in fashion. The thought process is that if the UK leaves the EU, then the EU might slip back into recession."
Markets were already jittery over the health of the global economy and worries over when the US may start raising interest rates.
A new survey from Bank of America Merrill Lynch showed fund managers were holding more cash than at any time since 2001 and have reduced the number of shares they own to four-year lows. "Globally, sentiment remains weak," the survey said.
How trade and the UK's economy are affected by membership of the EU.
Returns on 10-year UK government bonds fell by a significant amount - 0.06 percentage points - to a record low of 1.146%, while 20-year and 30-year "gilts" also dropped to record lows.
The decline in yields, or returns, for government bonds reflects strong demand from investors for a safe place to park their money.
In the case of Germany, the yield fell as low as minus 0.032% - meaning investors were prepared to pay, rather than be paid, to own "Bunds".
Luke Hickmore, co-manager of Aberdeen Asset Management's Strategic Bond Fund, said that Bund yields could fall as low as minus 0.1%: "This is just investors getting, very, very, very nervous about the way this [Brexit] vote is going to go."
Ulrich Kater, economist at DeKaBank, said the uncertainty about a possible Brexit was driving investors to the safe haven of German bonds. "The drop in yields below the zero mark once again shows...

Summary: Stock markets across Europe fell on Tuesday as investors weighed up the consequences of next week's EU referendum vote.
###
Article: The Nikkei 225 closed down 0.4% at 18,916.02, although the index had been as much as 1.6% in earlier trade.
Shares in Toshiba fell 9.8% on reports it was expecting record losses for the year to March.
After the market closed, Toshiba said it would cut 6,800 jobs at its consumer electronics division and report a record loss of 550bn yen ($4.53bn).
The news follows findings that Toshiba had overstated its operating profit for the past six years by a total of 151.8bn yen.
The US dollar fell to 121.20 yen, compared with last week's rate of 123 yen after the US rate rise, and the stronger yen weighed on Japan's major exporters.
Toyota shares closed down more than 1% and Honda ended down 0.7%. A stronger yen makes the products Japan's big exporters make more expensive to buy overseas.
Lower oil prices continued to weigh on energy-related shares. The price of Brent Crude fell to its lowest since 2004 in overnight trade to $36.17 a barrel, before recovering slightly to $36.49. West Texas Intermediate prices fell to $34.53 a barrel.
In China, Hong Kong's Hang Seng index closed up 0.2% at 21,791.68, while the Shanghai Composite index closed up 1.8% at 3,642.47 - a four week high.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 index recovered early losses to close just 0.05% higher at 5,109.05.
South Korea's benchmark Kospi index closed up 0.3% at 1,981.19.

Summary:


Bangladesh police say a top gay rights activist and editor at the country's only LGBT magazine is one of two people who have been hacked to death.

Article: Sickness levels have remained "fairly stable", but, anxiety and depression have risen since 2012, it added.
Its figures showed more than 700 days were lost to post-traumatic stress.
The force said life outside work was to blame and the figures "did not reflect the overall trend".
Nigel Rabbitts, chair of Devon and Cornwall Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, said: "Our concern is that there has been a dramatic rise in some of the stress-related psychological disorders which coincides with the reduction in numbers.
"This needs further investigation and early intervention to protect officers and mitigate the cause and effect."
He said an operational shake-up and compulsory retirement over the past five years could also be behind the rise.
In a Freedom of Information request to Devon and Cornwall Police, it said at the end of March it had 2,851 full-time serving police officers, compared to 3,339 in March 2010.
However, if part-time officers and those seconded out of the force or on a career break were included, it would have 420 fewer officers, rather than almost 500, the force said.
The force has been cutting the number of officers because of spending shortfalls and savings plans.
Despite the fall in officers, the number of reported crimes that have ended in a conviction, caution, penalty notice or restorative justice, has stayed between 34% and 37% since April 2011.
Mr Rabbitts said: "With 500 less officers, the resilience within the system has gone.
"In the end, long-term sickness only builds further pressure on those still on the frontline."
Devon and Cornwall Police said the federation's figures did not include "a number of sub categories so did not truly reflect the overall trend".
Ch Supt Steve Swani said: "Devon and Cornwall Police recognise the demands our officers and staff face.
"Absence through psychological disorders has remained consistent.
"We monitor absence closely and we know from staff feedback and our providers, who deliver counselling support to staff, that the...

Summary: A "dramatic rise" in stress-related sickness in Devon and Cornwall Police has coincided with cuts of almost 500 officers, the force's police federation has said.
###
Article: Lords King, Blair, Carlile and West wanted measures on communications data, rejected by the Lib Dems in 2012, to be included in the bill, saying they were vital tools for combating terrorism.
But they withdrew their amendment and it did not go to a vote.
The counter-terrorism bill will give new powers to UK security services.
It will also allow the home secretary to impose temporary exclusion orders on British terror suspects.
The legislation had already cleared its first hurdle in the House of Lords, and undergone detailed scrutiny in committee.
During the first of two days of report-stage scrutiny, Lord King, a Conservative former defence secretary, said there was a "significant gap," exposed by the recent Paris shootings, which could be plugged by a temporary stop-gap measure.
But he said that without the required support the amendment to add communications data powers was doomed to fail.
He said: "We will lose an opportunity to put in place a temporary stop-gap measure that could have reduced the threat to our nation from terrorism at the present time.
"We just have to pray that we don't pay too high a price for that."
Along with former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Blair, former Lib Dem independent reviewer of anti-terror laws Lord Carlile and former Labour security minister Lord West, Lord King wanted to add whole sections of the defeated Communications Data Bill to the counter-terrorism legislation.
The proposed amendments sought to require internet service providers to log more of what people do online and to make that data more easily accessible to law enforcement and security services.
They scaled back the number of agencies that could demand access to the data from the hundreds included in the original bill to just three: the police and the two security services.
Opponents of the so-called snoopers' charter say it would amount to mass surveillance of internet communications by the state.
The Counter Terrorism Bill also includes a requirement on universities and councils to take steps to...

Summary: A cross-party group of peers has dropped a second attempt to add the so-called "snoopers' charter" to the government's counter-terrorism bill.
###
Article: Independent councillor David Clifft said offences committed inside Featherstone Prison were skewing the perceived level of risk in Essington.
The national crime map did not distinguish between offences committed in jail and those outside it, he said.
Staffordshire Police said crime had fallen overall in the area since 2009.
Staffordshire Police investigated 30 crimes at Featherstone Prison in 2008-2009 compared to 24 and 16 in 2009-2010 and 2010-2011.
South Staffordshire councillor Mr Clifft said: "We're calling for those crime stats to be kept separate and also for the Hilton Services crimes to be kept separate too.
"They don't give a true reflection of crime in Essington.
"Essington is quite a safe place to live."
He said the misleading information was having a negative impact on pensioners' insurance premiums.
June Smallman, from nearby Westcroft, said it was "unfair".
"I'm a pensioner. There are a lot of pensioners in Essington and the surrounding districts and when you are on a fixed income you've got to consider every aspect of money," she added.
Mr Clifft said police forces were also potentially misallocating their resources based on the area's skewed crime statistics.
"Police are obviously using their facilities on where it says the crime spots are and they are putting policing in Essington where it is not wanted and really it could better serve somewhere else."
He said with plans to expand Featherstone Prison for up to 2,000 inmates. the situation could get worse.
"Featherstone is soon to become a super prison, and obviously the crime stats are going to be a lot higher," he added.
Graeme Trudgill, from the British Insurance Brokers' Association, said a customer's claims history was still the most important factor in pricing any home or car insurance premiums.
He said there were many insurance providers and anyone who was unhappy with their current broker's service should shop around.

Summary: Crimes committed inside a south Staffordshire prison are adversely affecting home and car insurance in a nearby village, a councillor says.
###
Article: The US ambassador to Bangladesh condemned the killing of Xulhaz Mannan, who also worked at the US embassy.
Another person was also injured when the attackers entered a Dhaka flat.
Since February last year suspected militants have killed several secular or atheist writers and members of religious minority groups.
The two men were murdered two days after a university teacher was hacked to death by suspected Islamist militants.
So-called Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility - but the Bangladeshi government insists there is no IS presence in the country.
Lurching from secularism to sectarian terror?
Who is behind the Bangladesh killings?
"I am devastated by the brutal murder of Xulhaz Mannan and another young Bangladeshi," said US Ambassador Marcia Bernicat.
"We abhor this senseless act of violence and urge the government of Bangladesh in the strongest terms to apprehend the criminals behind these murders," she added.
BBC Bengali Service editor Sabir Mustafa said staff at Roopbaan, a magazine and activist group for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community that had not been condemned by the government and received some support from foreign embassies, had been careful to protect their identities but had not believed their lives were at risk.
Suspected extremists in Bangladesh are gaining a sense of security that they can carry out killings with impunity, he says.
A British photographer who knew Mr Mannan and the other victim, known as "Tonoy" and named in Bangladeshi media as Tanay Mojumdar, said they and other friends had set up Roopbaan with the aim of spreading tolerance.
Homosexuality is technically illegal in Bangladesh and remains a highly sensitive issue in society.
Both men were openly gay and believed that if more gay Bangladeshis came out then the country would have to accept them, the photographer, who asked not to be named, said.
They were also were behind the annual "Rainbow Rally", held on Bengali New Year, 14 April, since 2014. This year's rally was banned by police as part of...

Summary:


The mother of a boy who died after being hit by a car says allowing her "tremendous" son's organs to be donated will let him "continue to help others".

Article: All 89 of the most senior employees whose ethnicity has been declared are white (there are also three senior staff who have not stated this information).
In contrast five out of six workers in the lowest pay grade are ethnic minorities.
The Lord Speaker Baroness D'Souza, a cross-bench peer who chairs House sittings, described the data as "disappointing". She said she would be monitoring progress from now on.
Lord Ouseley, formerly chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, warned that the House's top positions form "a 'no entry' area for BME employees".
The figures have been released by the House of Lords in response to a BBC Freedom of Information request about the ethnic profile of the House's own workforce, numbering nearly 600, from clerks to catering.
It does not include researchers and other staff directly employed by peers themselves, or bicameral staff shared with the Commons.
The seven top pay bands range from £49,083 to £176,226 including the senior clerks and managers of administrative workers. The maximum salary in a pay range containing a declared black or ethnic minority employee is £42,686.
The FOI request revealed black and minority ethnic workers are overwhelmingly concentrated in the House's lower pay bands, with over half the BME workforce employed in housekeeping, catering and retail.
Five out of six workers at the lowest pay level are BME, earning between £17,135 and £17,744 a year. This is just above the annual London "living wage", which based on the Lords' 36 hour working week would be £17,128.80.
Overall, 13% of Lords staff have declared themselves as BME. London's working population is currently 37% BME. But in the chamber itself only 6% of peers are ethnic minority.
The ethnic profile of House of Commons staff follows a similar pattern to the Lords, but is less extreme. It has just 6% BME representation in the top seven pay levels, with 40% at the catering level.
The Commons launched a diversity scheme in 2012, aiming to improve minority representation at senior levels. It issues...

Summary: There are no black or minority ethnic (BME) staff reported in the top seven pay levels of the House of Lords administration, according to data obtained by the BBC.
###
Article: Royston Smith, Conservative MP for Southampton Itchen, said: "I have a lot of important work to do here locally."
He has made five speeches and asked two questions since May, the Independent reported.
The newspaper said this made him the "least active among the 177 MPs elected for the first time last year".
Mr Smith said: "Someone has to be last in the pecking order.
"Southampton is a challenging constituency and I spend my time doing as much as I can locally.
"I don't spend hours in the House of Commons waiting to make a three-minute speech."
On Sunday he posted on Twitter about Labour councillors in the city "trolling" him.
He also said: "While Southampton's Labour Councillors talk to themselves on Twitter I'm having a @SprinklesGelato"
The Independent said Labour's Louise Haigh is the busiest new MP, making 90 speeches and asking 471 parliamentary questions.

Summary: The "least active" of the MPs elected for the first time in 2015 has defended his record, saying he spends as much time in his constituency as he can.
###
Article: The US agency's current policy prohibits anyone working for it who has used cannabis in the past three years.
However, its director James Comey has acknowledged that this is complicating its efforts to recruit hacking experts, according to the Wall Street Journal.
It said he made the announcement at a conference in New York.
"I have to hire a great workforce to compete with those cybercriminals, and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview," the newspaper quoted him as saying at the White Collar Crime Institute's annual meeting.
It added that when one attendee asked how a cannabis-using friend interested in working for the bureau should now act, Mr Comey replied: "He should go ahead and apply."
A spokeswoman for the FBI confirmed Mr Comey had discussed cannabis in unscripted remarks during a question and answer session after his speech at the conference.
However, during a committee hearing at the Senate on Wednesday the FBI director subsequently said he had been trying to be "philosophic and funny" when he made the comments.
"I don't want young people to use marijuana. It's against the law," he added.
"I did not say that I'm going to change that ban. I said I have to grapple with the change in my workforce."
Unlike the FBI, the UK's National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU)'s vetting policy does not make specific reference to cannabis, but does have a wider anti-drugs rule.
"Whilst previous drug taking is not necessarily a barrier to employment provided people are open about it, applicants are told not to apply if they have taken illegal drugs in the preceding 12 months," said a spokeswoman for the National Crime Agency, of which the NCCU is a division.
"Before joining all new entrants have to undertake a drugs screening test before appointment is confirmed.
"Once employed, individuals are subject to NCA policies including random and intelligence-led 'with cause' substance testing. Certain high-risk posts require individuals to take more regular testing as a role requirement."
One expert...

Summary: The FBI has reportedly said it is "grappling with the question" of whether to hire cybersecurity experts who use cannabis.
###
Article: Zachary Barker, nine, died in hospital after the collision in Spring Gardens, Leek, in Staffordshire, last Saturday.
His mother Stephanie said she wanted others to "benefit from his short life".
She said transplants meant "even in death" he could carry on helping.
More updates on this story and others in Staffordshire
In a statement released by police, she said: "Zachary was just a lovely lad, full of life and joy. The whole family are devastated by the loss and we cannot believe that we will not see him again.
"He will remain in our hearts, thoughts and memories forever.
"We took the decision to allow his organs to be used for transplant, so that others may benefit from his short life.
"He was a tremendous son who was always willing to help everyone and even in death, he will continue to help others".
Police said a friend of the family has set up a Just Giving page to assist with the cost of the funeral.

Summary:


Teachers won millions of pounds in compensation last year after suffering discrimination and serious injuries in the line of work, a union said.

Article: "There are material events and conditions that raise substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern," the company said in a statement.
The electronics-to-construction giant reported a loss of 532bn yen (£3.8bn; $4.8bn) for April to December.
However, the results have not been approved by the firm's auditors.
These latest financial results have already been delayed twice and raise the possibility that Toshiba could be delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Toshiba's president, Satoshi Tsunakawa, apologised for the problems facing the firm and called the auditor's decision not to approve the financial report as "truly regrettable".
He said he hoped the company would not be delisted.
Toshiba, originally known for its consumer electronics products, has faced a series of difficulties.
An accounting scandal, uncovered in 2015, led to the resignation of several members of the firm's senior management, including the chief executive, after the company was found to have inflated the previous seven years' profits by $1.2bn.
Its problems came to a head again in January this year, when it became clear its US nuclear unit, Westinghouse, was in financial trouble.
Westinghouse was put into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March, which protects it from creditors while it undergoes restructuring.
This week, Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn was reported to be willing to pay up to $27bn (£21.7bn)  for Toshiba's computer chip business, a move which could help shore up the losses if it went ahead.
But that has not been enough to resolve Toshiba's difficulties.
The firm's auditors, PriceWaterhouseCooper Aarata, have refused to sign off the company's accounts, resulting in their publication being delayed twice.
Now, faced with a deadline, Toshiba has made the unprecedented move of publishing the results without the auditor's approval.
Toshiba's statement added: "At the present time, substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern exists as of the filing date of the...

Summary: Toshiba has filed its delayed financial results, warning that the company's survival is at risk.
###
Article: Battling record fuel costs and unrelenting competition from subsidised rivals, Qantas has just announced 5,000 job cuts alongside an underlying pre-tax loss of 252m Australian dollars (Â£135m; US$225m) for the second half of 2013.
The cuts are part of the airline's ruthless make-or-break plan to revive its wilting fortunes by reducing costs by A$2bn over the next three years.
"Hard decisions will be necessary to overcome the challenges we face and build a stronger business," chief executive Alan Joyce said in a statement.
So can Australia's national carrier turn things around?
An airline that began with flimsy planes ferrying passengers in windy open cockpits in the 1920s has been lobbying the government in Canberra to ease limits in foreign investment or provide state intervention to boost its financial health.
While unwilling to pour taxpayers' dollars into the country's ailing car industry, Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey appears sympathetic to Qantas's plea for help.
Ministers are drafting new laws to allow foreigners to buy a majority stake in the airline and to strip away other restrictions.
The Qantas Sale Act, brought in under a Labor administration in 1992, prevents overseas interests owning more than 49% of the company.  It also blocks any single foreign investor holding more than a quarter of its shares.
Qantas management has argued that the legislation distorts the market and stifles its ability to grow.
"The government is philosophically attracted to levelling the playing field," said the federal Transport Minister, Warren Truss.
The Labor opposition has insisted that Qantas should be supported by the state, because it would be against the national interest for it to fold.
Earlier this month, Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson took out a full-page advertisement in Australian newspapers urging Canberra not to give a financial leg-up to its arch-rival.
"Should the Australian taxpayer be forced by the Australian government to prop up the Qantas Group, as federal Treasurer Joe Hockey is suggesting,...

Summary: Australia's Flying Kangaroo is facing the most tempestuous times in its long history.
###
Article: Timothy Tyrone Foster was convicted of molesting and killing a white 79-year-old retired schoolteacher in 1987.
But the court on Thursday overturned his conviction after ruling that the prosecution had broken the law.
Foster may now face a retrial, 29 years after his death sentence.
A law introduced in 1986 made it illegal in the US to pick jurors based on the colour of their skin.
But the following year all four black members of the potential jury pool in Foster's case were struck from the pool by prosecutors, leaving an all-white jury.
Non race-related reasons were given for striking the black members of the pool, but prosecution notes released to Foster's lawyers in 2006 revealed racial motivations, the Supreme Court said.
The notes show that the prosecution marked the names of black prospective jurors with a "B", highlighted them in green, and circled the word "black" on their juror questionnaires, Reuters news agency reported.
According to Foster's lawyer, Stephen Bright, one handwritten note titled "Definite Nos" listed six people, of whom five were the remaining black prospective jurors, the Associated Press reported.
The sixth was a white woman who made clear she would never impose the death penalty, Mr Bright said.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the notes "plainly belie the state's claim that it exercised its strikes in a 'colour blind' manner".
The eight justices of the Court voted 7-1 in Foster's favour. The sole dissenter was Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative and the only black member of the court.
Foster, who was 18 at the time of the murder, was accused of breaking into the home of Queen Madge White, breaking her jaw, sexually molesting her and then strangling her, before stealing items from her house.

Summary: The US Supreme Court has ruled in favour of a black death-row inmate, finding that state prosecutors in Georgia unlawfully excluded potential black jurors from his trial.
###
Article: A 59-year-old teacher from London received £185,000 after she slipped a disc in her back after she was knocked to the ground by two unruly pupils.
A member of teaching staff in north Wales was given £100,000 compensation when the chair he sat on collapsed.
The NASUWTteaching union said it had won £16,077,328 for members last year.
A Department for Education spokesperson said:  "School employers are responsible for the health and safety of staff and pupils whether the local authority, governing body or academy trust, and they must adhere to the Health and Safety Act 1974."
Teachers also received smaller payouts over accidents in the workplace, including a £55,000 package for a female member of staff in north-west England who tripped on a tear in the lino surface of her science classroom.
She was later diagnosed with chronic back syndrome.
NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said many of the injuries would be reduced if employers "took the welfare of staff seriously" and followed good health and safety practices.
She said: "The consequence of negligence is careers, lives and health blighted and millions of pounds of public money spent in compensation.
"Unfortunately, there is no incentive for employers to take health and welfare seriously when they witness the government cutting funding for inspection and failing to take steps to secure compliance with the law.
"Failure to respect the rights of employees and to comply with employment law is also prevalent.
"Employers flout the law, but it's the teachers and the taxpayers who pay the price.
"While compensation is important, it can never make up for the fact that teachers suffer permanent physical and mental injury and often cannot continue in their chosen career."
Separate data from the NUT, which keeps its overall compensation figures private, said there were two cases of personal injury compensation paid to its members last year.
One included a £46,000 payout to a teacher who suffered "severe psychological injury" following "a sustained campaign of bullying...

Summary:


The government has been trying to make the world a better place for business, but the government has been trying to make the world a better place for business.
The government has been trying to make the world a better place for business, but the government has been trying to make the world a better place for business.

The pace of hiring permanent staff in the UK slowed down in May, according to a report.

Article: Mr Obama had previously released an official "certification of live birth" showing he was born in Hawaii.
But the White House has now published copies of the president's original birth certificate along with a statement on its website.
The document shows that Mr Obama was born in Hawaii on 4 Aug 1961 at 7.24pm.
"We don't have time for this kind of silliness," the president said in a statement to reporters.
Why has he chosen to do this now?
The issue has been back on the news agenda in recent weeks, mainly due to potential presidential candidate Donald Trump expressing his doubts about the president's birthplace.
He said he sent a team of investigators to Hawaii to try to find out more.
In response, CNN this week announced the results of its own investigation, in which it spoke to the former director of the health department on the island who said she had seen Mr Obama's original birth certificate herself.
The persistence with which the story kept resurfacing has prompted the White House to act.
In his statement, the president said it was particularly frustrating that the news about the Republican plan to cut the deficit was overshadowed by further allegations about his own birthplace.
But Mr Obama's opponents may question why it has taken the White House two years to yield to demands to see his original birth certificate.
What allegations were being made about Mr Obama?
For years, the "birthers" - as those who doubt Mr Obama's eligibility for the presidency are known - have been expressing their doubts about his place of birth.
The principal allegation was that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and that he is therefore ineligible to be president, according to the US constitution, which states that "no person except a natural born citizen... shall be eligible to the office of President".
It was further alleged that any documents purporting to prove Mr Obama's eligibility were either insufficient or fraudulent.
Some of those challenging Mr Obama's eligibility allege that he was actually born in...

Summary: President Barack Obama has released his original birth certificate in response to allegations that he was not born in the US and not eligible to be president.
###
Article: The stars of the silver screen walk the red carpet as they make their way into the Dolby Theatre for the  89th Academy Awards in Los Angeles.

Summary: All photographs subject to copyright.
###
Article: The World Trade Organization's first comprehensive agreement involves an effort to simplify the procedures for doing business across borders.
There will also be improved duty-free access for goods sold by the world's poorest countries.
The deal, which could add about $1tn to world trade, gives developing nations more scope to increase farm subsidies.
"For the first time in our history, the WTO has truly delivered," said WTO chief Roberto Azevedo, as the organisation reached its first comprehensive agreement since it was founded in 1995.
Bureaucratic barriers to commerce can be a big problem.
Africa, for example, has the longest customs delays in the world. The African Development Bank says it can take 36 hours to get goods through the customs post at the Victoria Falls crossing from Zambia into Zimbabwe.
And there are often more barriers to negotiate once goods are over the border. The highway between Lagos and Abuja in Nigeria has 69 official checkpoints.
It takes time and costs money dealing with these delays.  It can be disastrous for a cargo of perishable goods.  These are exactly the kind of barriers that the WTO deal is intended to tackle.
Dealing with them would certainly make it cheaper for business to move goods across borders. And if it's cheaper, they will do more of it.
"This time the entire membership came together. We have put the 'world' back in World Trade Organization," he said.
Indonesian Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan said the deal would "benefit all WTO members".
UK Prime Minister David Cameron said the "historic" agreement could be a "lifeline" for the world's poorest people, as well as benefiting British businesses to the tune of more than $1bn (Â£600m).
However, the "Bali package", as the WTO calls the agreement, was criticised by some development campaigners who said it was not going far enough.
It is worth spelling out what is not covered by this: tariffs or taxes on imported goods.
Dealing with them has been the bread and butter of past trade rounds - but not for this deal.
The core of...

Summary: Ministers from 159 countries have reached a deal intended to boost global trade at a meeting in Bali, Indonesia.
###
Article: KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) reported that the rate of expansion in hiring employees sank to a four-month low.
The rate of growth in short-term jobs however had sped up since April, the report addded.
It suggested that companies needed time to "digest the election result", which saw the Conservatives win a majority.
The number of job vacancies made available also fell to their slowest in 2015.
Although starting salaries for permanent employees continued to grow, the pace of growth sank to its lowest since April's nine-month high.
Recruitment agencies reported that the pay of temporary and contracted staff also continued to grow, although at its slowest since January.
The availability of temporary staff saw its fastest drop in seven months, leading recruitment consultants to report difficulties in hiring suitable people.
KPMG partner Bernard Brown said: "The UK job market saw a slight slowdown in May, as those on boards took time to digest the election result and work out the ramifications for their business.
" The public sector continues to suffer, with pay growth rising by just 0.2% in the last reported quarter."

Summary:


The pro-independence blogger behind the Wings Over Scotland website has been arrested for alleged online harassment.

Article: Nick Hardwick, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, said in a report that remand prisoners were treated less well than convicted inmates.
The rule that they should not be housed with convicted inmates was not being observed in practice, he added.
The prison service said it was addressing issues in the report.
Mr Hardwick said remand prisoners were often treated worse than other inmates, even though there was a long-standing principle that those on remand should have rights and entitlements not available to convicted prisoners.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said remand prisoners often got "less help" preparing for life after their release.
Case Study: Jacques More, Kent
"On remand you're not treated differently to convicted prisoners - especially in terms of sharing facilities or cells.
"In the first cell I was put in there were three of us and I was with two convicts who both smoked and I did not. Only when I began to have sore throat was I then moved.
"The only thing you can get on remand is more visits - but how can you do this if you can't contact the outside world?
"Worst of all you are unable to prepare a defence properly whilst in prison. Only after complaining and going to senior officers was I given help.
"Once you understand the system you can work it, so it's convicted prisoners who explain to you what you need to do.
"I've met guys on remand who were accused of all sorts of things and then proved not guilty - but they get treated like everyone else."
Jacques was on remand for about three months in May 2011.
Mr Hardwick said remand prisoners received fewer entitlements  "because they have not been found guilty they simply don't get things like visits, letters, and the ability to see their solicitor".
There were two reasons for this, he continued: "One is because I think often prison officers don't know the rules that apply to remand prisoners. And secondly, they simply get muddled up in the general population, so even if prison officers do know the rules, they sometimes don't know who the...

Summary: The way prisoners on remand in England and Wales are held should be changed to improve fairness and reduce costs, a report has said.
###
Article: Europe's competition commissioner accused the firm of abusing its dominance in search in April.
Her intervention followed complaints from price comparison services that they were being unfairly disadvantaged by the prominence of Google's own ads.
The US firm has now filed its formal response.
Google says its shopping service - which appears as a box of images and links displayed at the top or right-hand side of other results - benefits customers and businesses without unlawfully distorting the market.
And it rejects the EU commissioner Margrethe Vestager's suggestion that it should show ads sourced and ranked by other companies within the facility.
Its defence rests on three arguments:
Google accounts for more than 90% of EU-based web searches.
Four months ago, the 28-nation bloc's competition commissioner issued a "statement of objections" against the company, beginning a process that could ultimately lead to a large fine and compulsory measures to make it change its behaviour.
"I'm concerned that Google has artificially boosted its presence in the comparison shopping market with the result that consumers may not necessarily see what's most relevant for them, or that competitors may not get the commercial opportunity that their innovative services deserve," declared Ms Vestager.
A spokesman for Ms Vestager confirmed she had received Google's reply.
"We will carefully consider Google's response before taking any decision on how to proceed and do not want to prejudge the final outcome of the investigation," Ricardo Cardoso told the BBC.
FairSearch Europe, a lobby group that represents Microsoft and Expedia, among others, was one of the complainants against Google. It said it saw nothing in the search firm's defence that would change its mind.
"The Commission has properly defined the market into which Google has leveraged its overwhelming dominance in search, namely the shopping (price) comparison market," said its spokesman Thomas Vinje.
"Google has decimated competition in that market by preferencing its own...

Summary: Google has rejected the EU's objections to how it displays shopping links in its search results as "wrong as a matter of fact, law and economics".
###
Article: Graduates will work alongside frontline staff after an intensive training course in the summer and complete a master's degree at the same time.
Trainees will earn £20,545 - a prison officer's starting salary - during the two-year scheme in England and Wales.
The Prison Officers Association said the scheme was "barmy".
The initiative is being launched by charity Unlocked and is backed by Justice Secretary Liz Truss.
She said: "Prison officers are some of our finest public servants. It is a unique role, which is both challenging and rewarding.
"There are very few jobs where you genuinely get the opportunity to reform and transform the lives of offenders, and the lives of their families, creating a safer society.
"I want to ensure that we attract the most talented and dedicated individuals, from the widest possible pool, and I want to see improved promotion and leadership opportunities for all our prison staff."
Natasha Porter, chief executive of Unlocked, said: "Prison officers are too often seen as 'turn-keys'. The opposite is true.
"They deal with some of the most challenging situations and work with some of the most vulnerable people in society.
"They are effectively mentors, counsellors, teachers, police officers and social workers.
"The aim of Unlocked is to help raise the status of the profession and to help reduce reoffending.
"While many of the scheme's participants will stay and develop long-term roles within the prison system, others will go into the outside world and act as ambassadors to drive forward rehabilitation."
The launch of the scheme, backed by Ms Truss's predecessor Michael Gove, follows a spate of major disturbances in prisons in England and Wales and comes on top of a separate recruitment drive for 2,500 new officers.
Dwindling staffing levels have repeatedly been highlighted by campaigners and unions amid soaring levels of violence and self-harm behind bars.
But Andy Darken, assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers Association, said he thought asking graduates to start work in...

Summary: The government is backing a new scheme to get graduates working in the prison service, only days after disturbances at HMP Birmingham.
###
Article: Stuart Campbell was arrested in the west of England on Friday following a complaint from a woman in south London.
She had made allegations of harassment taking place over a two-year period.
Mr Campbell, who was released on bail, said it concerned some tweets and insisted they were not threatening.  He accused the media of "innuendo" designed to encourage "speculations".
The blogger, a former computer games reviewer who was born in Stirling but lives in Bath, has been a vocal campaigner for Scottish independence and launched the Wings Over Scotland blog in 2011.
On Friday he tweeted that he would be posting less frequently than usual because of "reasons totally outwith my control (don't ask)".
End of Twitter post  by @WingsScotland
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: "Police are investigating an allegation of online harassment.
"The allegation was made after a woman, aged in her 30s, attended a south London police station. The harassment is said to have taken place over the past two years."
Mr Campbell has been bailed, pending further inquiries, to a date in mid-September.
In a statement on the Wings Over Scotland website, Mr Campbell responded to a report of his arrest which appeared in The Herald newspaper.
He said that piece "has been written for maximum innuendo to allow the wildest speculations on social media - which are of course duly taking place - but the alleged events relate entirely to some tweets from our Twitter account, none of which have been deleted and all of which are still publicly visible.
"Nothing more sinister or serious than some tweets has occurred or been alleged to have occurred. None of the tweets involved are in ANY way threatening, not even in a joking sense. That's all we'll be saying on the subject at this time."

Summary:


The US sanctions are a "torture" to the US, and the US is a "torture" to the US.
The US sanctions are a "torture" to the US, and the US is a "torture" to the US.
The US sanctions are a "

The US government has imposed sanctions on 13 senior Venezuelan officials as pressure mounts on President Nicolás Maduro ahead of a controversial vote for a new constituent assembly.

Article: For Chinese shares though, the first trading session of 2016 has resulted in more of the same.
More panic, more pessimism and more people selling their shares because of - well frankly, other people selling their shares.
So why did Chinese shares fall by 7% today, causing trading to be halted? And what does it say about confidence in the Chinese market and more importantly - the economy?
Here are four things you should know about the stock market falls in China today:
This was what most analysts said was the reason behind why shares fell. Manufacturing data contracted again - for the tenth straight month. The figures are further demonstration of the ongoing narrative about China's economy, that state led investment into manufacturing is slowing down and that the economy is transitioning into services. China releases services data on Wednesday - which should show things are improving.
This was the first day that China's new "circuit breaker" came into effect, and that's why when shares plunged by 5% trading was halted by 15 minutes. When trading resumed, and shares continued to fall by 7%, trading was suspended altogether. The measures were created last year after the stock market crash in China, but only came into effect today. Circuit breakers in themselves aren't unusual - lots of countries have them for individual stocks, or for a few minutes - but it is unusual to stop trading altogether for a share fall of 7%. An indication perhaps of just how much the authorities want to avoid another crash.
There was a sharp depreciation in the yuan just ahead of the plunge in Chinese shares. China cut the yuan's value against the dollar, making it weaker than 6.5 for the first time in more than four-and-a-half years. There's speculation that the People's Bank of China has abandoned trying to hold the yuan up against the dollar, which means it's signalling that it won't step in to shore up the yuan. There are concerns that this indicates money is flowing out of China, and that the fall could get out of control. Some...

Summary: A new year usually implies a fresh start, a chance to set things right, and begin anew.
###
Article: In order to return the card to its owner, a man who found it on the bus in Eccles, Greater Manchester last October decided to look at its contents.
After finding a number of sexual images of children, he reported it to police.
Salford man Anthony Jolly, 50, admitted possession of thousands of indecent images of children and was sentenced to three years at Manchester Crown Court.
Among the images were photographs of children which appeared to have been taken from a bedroom window.
Detectives were able to trace the pictures back to Jolly's home address on Rosa Grove, Higher Broughton and arrested him.
A number of electronic devices were seized which contained thousands of indecent images of children.
Det Con Jill Vescovi of Greater Manchester Police said: "Anthony Jolly is a depraved predator who obviously doesn't care and hasn't given a second thought to the children in the images he kept and the impact this abuse will have had on their lives.
"Whilst none of the children who appear in the indecent images were directly abused by Jolly, the downloading and sharing of vile images like this fuel the trade of child sexual abuse."
As well as a jail term, Jolly was also given a sexual harm prevention order.

Summary: A "depraved" paedophile who was caught after mistakenly leaving his camera's memory card on a bus has been jailed.
###
Article: Its introduction has so far been blocked by the veto power despite attracting the support of a narrow majority of MLAs.
However, no-one should leap to the assumption that the Stormont parties will drop the controversial petition system in isolation, without revisiting all of the rest of the Good Friday Agreement's "ugly scaffolding".
Back in 2014, a Stormont committee reviewed the petition of concern system and concluded that there was no consensus for reform.
The committee considered whether the use of such petitions should be restricted to certain key areas.
It also discussed whether petitions should be triggered by weighted majorities of 65%. Again it could not achieve consensus.
Then last year the Alliance party tried to stipulate reforms to the petition of concern system as a precondition for taking the justice department again in a DUP and Sinn FÃ©in led coalition.
The former Alliance leader David Ford claimed Arlene Foster thumped the table in exasperation at this suggestion.
The cross-community voting system, which is triggered by petitions of concern, was introduced as a guarantee against majority rule in Northern Ireland.
Nationalists had long argued that the border was an effective gerrymander in order to guarantee a unionist majority. So they were never going to be prepared to participate in an assembly which might look like a recreation of the old pre-Troubles Stormont parliament.
If the petitions of concern were dropped in isolation, then same-sex marriage might progress. But equally there would be nothing to stop, for example, a unionist majority changing, say, the definition of a victim.
Some argue that the system should be changed so cross-community voting can only apply to constitutional or Troubles related matters.
But some politicians will baulk at any attempt to tightly define what they might regard as a "key area".
As the DUP leader put it, she thinks her critics want to keep the veto power for what they think is important but prevent her party deploying it in relation to its...

Summary: Arlene Foster's indication that she would like to see the Stormont petition of concern scrapped has focused attention on issues like same-sex marriage.
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Article: The sanctions freeze the US assets of those affected, and stop US entities from doing business with them.
Those targeted include the interior minister and the head of the army.
Last week, President Donald Trump vowed "strong and swift economic actions" if Mr Maduro held the poll, due on Sunday.
"Who do these imperialists in the United States think they are?" Mr Maduro said on Wednesday. "The government of the world?"
He also called the sanctions "illegal, insolent and unprecedented".
The vote, which Venezuela says will proceed as planned, is to choose the 545 members of a new constituent assembly that would rival the opposition-held National Assembly.
Critics say the president is trying to cement a dictatorship. He argues it is the only way to bring peace back to the divided nation.
The US sanctions also target the head of Venezuela's National Electoral Council, Tibisay Lucena, and former vice president Elías Jaua, who is leading the presidential commission organising Sunday's vote.
The inclusion of senior figures from the state oil company PDVSA underlines a further threat from Washington that sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector could be next.
Announcing the sanctions, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the US "will not ignore the Maduro regime's ongoing efforts to undermine democracy, freedom, and the rule of law".
"Anyone elected to the National Constituent Assembly should know that their role in undermining democratic processes and institutions in Venezuela could expose them to potential US sanctions," he said.
Mr Maduro has accused the US of stoking unrest against his government, but President Trump said last week that Washington "will not stand by as Venezuela crumbles".
A 48-hour general strike is currently under way in Venezuela, in protest at the planned vote.
A 30-year-old man was killed on Wednesday at a protest in Ejido, in the western state of Mérida. The cause of his death was not initially given.
More than 100 people have been killed in protest-related violence, since almost daily...

Summary:


crackdown by sending proxies to exchange their banned rupee notes.
The government has been trying to get around the crackdown by sending proxies to exchange their

India is using indelible ink on fingers to ensure people get only one chance to change their big bank notes.

Article: The 38-year-old has taken on billions of dollars of vested interest on Wall Street, and won for the little guy.
His successes were detailed in the best-selling book Flash Boys by Michael Lewis, and apt for a tale that could read like a Hollywood movie script, Sony Pictures bought the film rights.
Brad's story started in 2002 when he began working as a stockbroker in New York for the Royal Bank of Canada, aged 24.
Buying shares for his clients, Brad kept running into the same problem.
It went something like this - his team would go to purchase a bundle of stocks at a certain price. But once they pressed "buy", only part of the order was available, and the price for the rest had gone up.
After some investigation he found that the problem was caused by something called "high frequency trading" (HFT).
But what is HFT? And why should we care?
HFT is a system that uses complex computer programs to execute millions of trades per second.
Using information generated at speeds many times faster than the blink of an eye, super-fast computers installed with HFT software can estimate the rising value of a stock before the increase takes place.
Utilising HFT since 1999 has enabled some large investment banks, hedge funds, and other institutional investors to buy stocks microseconds before everyone else. They then make a profit - billions of dollars over the years - by selling the shares on at a higher price.
Brad, who was trading for the likes of pension funds, and didn't have access to HFT, thought it was completely unfair. And he was determined to do something to prevent it.
So with a team of colleagues Brad started work on a way to disable HFT.
Leaving Royal Bank of Canada with its blessing, in 2012 Brad established a stock brokerage called IEX that would utilise a method to remove the advantage of HFT.
What they devised was a "speed bump", a system whereby trades are slowed down by 350 microseconds by using 38 miles of fibre optic cable stored in a compartment the size of a shoe box.
This doesn't sound like much of a...

Summary: As David and Goliath stories go, Brad Katsuyama's is a pretty good one.
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Article: During the same time, there has been little coverage in the newspapers and news channels about yet another deadly bout of flooding in the north-eastern state of Assam.
More than a million people have been affected and 60 have died in flood-related incidents so far. Officials say more than 1,600 villages have been inundated. Some 120,000 people have left their homes and taken shelter in more than 300 relief camps.
All the major rivers in the state  - the Brahmaputra, Jia Bharali, Dhansiri, Puthimari, Beki, Katakhal and the Kushiyara - were flowing above the danger mark for more than three weeks.
The local media have run single word headlines like proloy (cataclymic disaster) to capture the fury unleashed by the floods. But the national media has remained unmoved.
Writing in the media site The Hoot, analyst Kakoli Thakur says while the murder mystery in Mumbai "involving a woman from Assam was hogging the limelight but the state itself, where thousands of people were hit by the worst spate of floods in decades, was reduced to fillers in the newspapers and small news capsules on TV channels".
Ms Thakur argued that if a similar situation happened in any other state, the government and the media would have lost no time in declaring it a national calamity.
Assam is possibly India's most flood-prone state: since 1950, the state has seen at least 12 major floods.
So why does the state which is regularly hit by floods, not get national media attention?
"What is seen as usual rarely gets importance as news in Indian media. And floods in Assam seem to be the usual thing," says Ashis Biswas, a veteran journalist who has worked in Assam.
Mr Biswas recalls senior editors telling him during his days in Assam, "Please, no flood stories again".
Assam has always been prone to floods, but the 1950 Great Earthquake in the region led to massive changes in its topography and made things worse.
The state's Brahmaputra valley has, thereafter, been seeing increased devastation due to floods , says environment expert Partha J Das.
Mr...

Summary: For weeks on end, a sensational murder mystery involving a prominent media industrialist has hogged the media limelight in India.
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Article: The panel will supersede the role of chief scientific advisor that was controversially abolished last year by new EC President Jean-Claude Juncker.
The commission wants also to strengthen its relationship with the national academies across Europe.
Mr Juncker believes the reforms will be a better mechanism to ensure EU policies are evidence-based.
The former Luxembourg prime minister outlined the new system when he met a group of Nobel Laureates on Wednesday in Brussels.
These eminent scientists, who included UK Royal Society President Sir Paul Nurse, have been highly critical of the decision to drop the CSA role.
They interpreted the post's demise as a downgrading of the value of scientific advice within the commission.
After the meeting, Sir Paul said the delegation was encouraged by the development but that its success would depend on the detail and the execution.
The outgoing CSA, Scottish biologist Anne Glover, often complained about a lack of resourcing and staff.
The laureates believe the secretariat supporting the incoming expert panel must be given sufficient funding.
Implementation of the new mechanism will be the job of Carlos Moedas, the European commissioner for research, science and innovation.
He has spent the past few months investigating the routes to scientific advice for the EC.
Mr Moedas has taken the view that the EU's executive arm already has some excellent internal guidance - for example from the EC's in-house science service, the Joint Research Centre.
He has, however, always recognised the need for an additional layer of assistance - one that is truly independent of the Brussels machine, and transparent.
Mr Moedas will now set about recruiting the new expert group and better linking the EC to the expertise found in Europe's academies and learned societies.
The commissioner has given himself an autumn deadline.
The panel will have seven individuals on it, and they will come from a range of disciplines, including the social sciences.
"One of the things about science advice is that it...

Summary: A high level group of scientists is to be recruited to provide independent advice to the European Commission.
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Article: Prime Minister Narendra Modi scrapped 1,000 (Â£11.8) and 500 notes in a surprise move last week as part of a tax evasion and corruption crackdown.
People have a limited time to exchange the notes for smaller denominations, but will have their fingers marked.
The government wants to stop holders of "black cash" offloading their old rupee notes in small tranches.
Authorities often use indelible ink to stop people from voting more than once in Indian elections.
People were told they should deposit their high denomination notes in the banks, or could only exchange up to 4,500 rupees, ($65; Â£52) for smaller notes.
But to clamp down on holders of unlawfully held or untaxed cash, depositors can only make such transactions once and so the banks are using the ink to prevent them from making multiple deposits.
India scraps 1,000 rupee notes overnight
Chaos at banks over India money ban
Supporters say it is a handy way for the Indian government to tackle corruption.
The finance ministry suspects "unscrupulous" people have been trying to get around the crackdown by sending proxies to exchange their banned rupee notes.
The withdrawal of the big notes is aimed at 'black money' and targets people who have been dodging taxes by holding stockpiles of cash.
While the authorities say people will not be allowed another cash swap, critics are wondering what happens if the ink wears off?
During elections, people have used chemicals to remove the ink from their fingers so that they can vote more than once.
The government's ban on big bank notes first received widespread approval because less than 3% of Indians file tax returns.
But the switch has caused chaos with tens of millions of Indians queuing for hours to exchange and withdraw cash.
The government was ill-prepared for the ban which suddenly put 86% of the country's money supply out of circulation.
Many businesses only accept cash and hundreds of millions of Indians do not have bank accounts and only use cash.

Summary:


The UK's largest economy is now in the hands of the UK, with the UK's largest economy in the world.
The UK's largest economy is now in the hands of the UK, with the UK's largest economy in the world.
The UK's largest economy is now in the hands of the UK,

All but one council area of Nottinghamshire, including Nottingham city, has voted to leave the EU.

Article: The motion on Jim Logue's position was rejected by 40 votes to 33.
A call for the council to publish internal audit investigation reports was defeated by the same margin.
Mr Logue, a Labour councillor, has faced criticism over the management of subsidiary companies of North Lanarkshire Leisure.
Police Scotland has started an investigation.
North Lanarkshire Council deputy leader Paul Kelly said: "The council decided today that the leader should do what he has been doing since this smear campaign started: focus on what's important to the people of North Lanarkshire.
"Councillor Logue has spent his political career fighting against precisely the kind of practices he is now falsely accused of being involved in."
But SNP leader David Stocks said: "We have put our case to the council on behalf of the public and the council has made its decision.
"The police must now be allowed to carry out their investigation without hindrance and we will not be making further comment on this issue until the police release their findings."

Summary: Councillors in North Lanarkshire have voted down a call for the leader of the council to step aside while he faces a police investigation.
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Article: The limit per transaction for the wave and pay cards, which do not require a PIN or a signature to authorise payment, was previously £20.
The move follows a huge rise in the number of people using contactless cards in the UK.
Transactions for the first half of this year totalled £2.5bn, already higher than the £2.32bn spent in 2014.
The UK Cards Association, the trade body for the card payments industry, said the increase meant that the average supermarket spend of £25 would now be covered.
"The growth in contactless payments shows people want to use contactless cards, and increasing the limit gives customers even more opportunities to pay in this way," said chief executive Graham Peacop.
In July, consumer group Which? warned that data from contactless cards could be easily stolen by determined fraudsters.
But the trade body said fraud via the cards was "extremely low", at less than one penny for every £100 spent.
The increase also comes after technology giant Apple allowed users of its latest devices to make contactless payments.
Kevin Jenkins, managing director UK and Ireland at Visa Europe, said contactless payments were becoming the "new normal".
"We've seen unprecedented growth in this area, with the number of Visa contactless transactions more than trebling in the past year in the UK," he added.
The increase was first announced in February.

Summary: Shoppers in the UK will now be able to spend up to £30 using contactless cards after the limit was increased.
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Article: Scientists who discovered the fossil have dubbed it the "kite runner".
Ten capsules tethered to its back appear to contain juvenile progeny, all at different stages of development.
Reported in the journal PNAS, the many-legged, eyeless, 1cm animal is not directly related to any living species.
"There isn't an animal today that it's essentially related to," David Legg, a palaeontologist from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, told BBC News.
"It's what we refer to as being on a stem lineage. So it belongs to a group that would have evolved and diversified before the modern groups did."
In fact, Dr Legg added, although it clearly had the segmented body and exoskeleton of an arthropod, it was quite a job to figure out precisely where to position the little beast on the evolutionary tree.
"Often you can look at a particular animal and say, that belongs to this group or that group. This one - we had no clue."
The fossil was dug up from a site in Herefordshire before being taken to Oxford and computerised. This process involved grinding away the specimen, slice by slice, and photographing each of those sections to assemble a 3D reconstruction.
Then, with this outlandish animal on their screens waggling its legs, long antennae and tethered capsules at them, Dr Legg and his colleagues set about categorising it using "compositional phylogenetics".
"You take its anatomy, code it into a data set and then run probabilistic methods on it, which will tell you how likely it is that something evolved in a particular way," he explained.
This process suggested that Aquilonifer spinosus ("aquila" means kite and the "-fer" suffix means carry) was a mandibulate: it belongs to the same broad group as modern insects, crustaceans and centipedes - but is not a direct ancestor.
"Nothing is known today that attaches the young by threads to its upper surface," said co-author Derek Briggs, from Yale University in the US.
"Modern crustaceans employ a variety of strategies to protect their eggs and embryos from predators -...

Summary: A 430 million-year-old sea creature apparently dragged its offspring around on strings like kites - a baffling habit not seen anywhere else in the animal kingdom.
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Article: Labour MP for Bassetlaw, John Mann, a Leave campaigner, said people voted to leave because of immigration, zero-hour contracts and job prospects and said a "divide in Britain" had been exposed.
Mansfield voted most strongly to leave, with 70.9% backing Brexit.
Rushcliffe, which includes the towns of West Bridgford and Bingham, was the only area to vote for Remain.
It saw the East Midland's highest turnout.
Meanwhile, the turnout in Nottingham was the fifth lowest in the UK at 61.8%.
Leave won by a tiny margin of just over 2,000 votes in the city.
Mr Mann said his party was "somewhat out of touch".
"With the middle classes largely voting remain because they see it as benefiting them and the working classes largely voting to leave because it dis-benefits them - that's the divide in Britain," he said.
Latest reaction and updates from Nottinghamshire
Like large parts of England, Nottinghamshire overwhelmingly voted to leave the European Union.
The margin of victory in Bassetlaw, Ashfield and Mansfield was huge, with less than a third of people voting remain.
Arguably the biggest surprise came in Nottingham, which narrowly backed Brexit.
Affluent Rushcliffe was the only area to vote Remain.
Overall Nottinghamshire voted 57.9% for Leave and 42.1% for Remain.
Conservative Anna Soubry, the MP for Broxtowe and a Remain campaigner, tweeted it was "a dreadful decision".
"People like me were told you're scaremongering, we don't want to listen to the experts," she said.
"All that has been unfortunately proved to be accurate. We have made a very, very, very bad mistake."
Labour MP for Nottingham North, Graham Allen, said David Cameron had "gambled with Britain's future" by calling for a referendum, saying people voted to leave "in protest" at the current government.
Turnout was 81.5% in Rushcliffe - the highest in the East Midlands and the only council area to vote Remain.
The vote was close elsewhere, including in Nottingham, where the split was 50.8% Leave, 49.2% Remain.
Alice, a caller to BBC Radio Nottingham from the...

Summary:


The British Museum of Natural History has been closed for the last two years.

Displays by the last two airworthy Lancaster bombers from World War Two have been cancelled after one suffered engine problems.

Article: Lower oil prices, weak growth across Europe, the upcoming general election and political unrest in parts of the world have been identified as contributing factors.
The latest business confidence monitor shows Scottish businesses recorded a confidence score of 3.6.
That was down on 22 in the last quarter and below the UK average of 16.8.
Companies were asked how they would describe their confidence in the economic prospects facing their business over the next 12 months, compared to the previous 12 months.
They scored zero for stating "as confident", positively up to 100 for more confident, and negatively down to -100 for less confident.
An average score was then calculated from all the responses.
The business monitor is conducted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and Grant Thornton UK.
More than a third of respondents to the survey said that competition is a greater challenge than it was a year ago, while customer demand is also a growing issue.
Grant Thornton's Scotland managing partner Kevin Engel said: "Given the impact of lower oil prices, UK elections, weak European economic growth and overseas political unrest, it is not surprising confidence has dropped.
"While such a significant drop in confidence is naturally concerning, there are reasons to be optimistic.
"Our research shows that despite low confidence levels in the past, the Scottish business community is resilient, innovative and in good shape to face these challenges.
"Scottish business output continues to grow, as does long-term employment and remuneration. Whether low confidence translates to a drop in economic performance is yet to be seen."
ICAEW Scotland president Paul Adderley said: "Whilst it is always disappointing to see confidence amongst Scottish businesses decline, we should be encouraged by the fact that Scottish confidence is still in positive territory.
"Factors such as the current uncertainty in the oil and gas sector and the fact that we are in the run-up to a general election have surely...

Summary: Business confidence in Scotland has fallen to its lowest level in more than two years, according to a report.
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Article: It means all pupils currently in P3 at Greenwood, Belmont and Dundela feeder schools will be guaranteed a place at Strandtown Primary.
A situation arose because the three feeder schools are consistently oversubscribed.
As a result more pupils expect to transfer to Strandtown than the approved P4 admissions number.
In a statement, the department said: "A temporary variation to the enrolment number for Strandtown PS has been granted for the 2015/16 academic year.
"This will ensure that every child who wishes to transfer to Strandtown PS from the local Infants schools will be able to do so.
"In approving the temporary variation, the education minister made clear that he expected the Belfast Education and Library Board, and subsequently the Education Authority, to ensure a long term solution to this problem is brought forward."
Welcoming the decision, East Belfast Alliance Party MLA Judith Cochrane said: "I would like to thank the education minister for approving this variation and hope that he will continue to take a keen interest in the school as we look to resolve this problem.
"The infant-junior model is unique in Northern Ireland and therefore needs an individual approach to ensure the continuation of this excellent educational provision in east Belfast.
"As a member of the board of governors at Strandtown, I know the hard work that has gone on behind the scenes to secure this solution and to reassure parents."

Summary: The education minister has granted a temporary variation to admittance rules for an east Belfast primary school.
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Article: Its veterbra was discovered after it fell from a cliff face onto a beach near Whitby.
Tests by University of Manchester scientists indicate it is about 176 million years old, dating from the Middle Jurassic period.
The fossil is to go on display at the Yorkshire Museum from 8 June.
Sauropods, often referred to as brontosaurs, included some of the largest plant-eating dinosaurs to have walked on Earth.
They had long necks and tails, small heads, a large body and walked on all fours. Some species, such as the Argentinosaurus, grew up to 115ft long and possibly weighed as much as 80 tonnes.
The museum said the fossil was "an extremely rare find" because Middle Jurassic rocks are only exposed in a few areas such as China and Argentina, where similarly aged dinosaur fossils originate.
Prof Phil Manning and his team used X-rays to study the fossil bone.
He said: "It was a splendid surprise to come face-to-face with a fossil vertebra from the Jurassic rocks of Yorkshire that was clearly from a sauropod dinosaur.
"This fossil offers the earliest 'body fossil' evidence for this important group of dinosaurs in the United Kingdom but it is impossible to define a new species based upon this single bone."
The team have nicknamed the dinosaur Alan, after the man who found the fossil.

Summary: Britain's oldest sauropod dinosaur has been identified from a fossil bone discovered on the North Yorkshire coast, experts have revealed.
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Article: A Canadian Lancaster, currently on a UK tour, performed an engine shutdown during a flight in County Durham.
Its owners said it landed safely at Durham Tees Valley airport following the "precautionary" shutdown.
It had been due to fly to Bournemouth to take part in weekend displays with an RAF Lancaster bomber.
An airport spokesman said the plane had experienced an "issue" with one of its engines as it was approaching the runway at the end of a 30-minute demonstration flight for invited guests.
"The aircraft landed safely and nobody was injured and it taxied to stand.
"The Lancaster has been returned to the hangar and engineers are conducting tests to determine the cause of the fault," he added.
The last remaining flying Lancasters - owned by the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum - were due to fly at the Bournemouth Air Festival as well as the Shoreham Air Show and the Gedling Show in Nottinghamshire, as part of a two-month UK tour by the Canadian aircraft.
The aircraft are based at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire for the duration of the visit.
There were over 7,000 of the type of aircraft produced between 1941 and 1946.
A statement from Bournemouth Air Festival said: "We share the disappointment of all the Canadian Lancaster fans but we understand that she is over 70 years old and these sort of things can and do happen.
"We hope she's airworthy again soon."
An airworthy Merlin engine is being shipped from the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre near Skegness and this will be fitted over the weekend.

Summary: