A council has been accused of a "major administrative cock-up" after failing to make an insurance claim for up to £1m.

Article: The Lothians MSP and former deputy leader of the party said she would "stand up to vested interests".
She is going up against Eastwood MSP Ken Macintosh, who launched his campaign on Friday.
Glasgow City Council leader Gordon Matheson and MSPs Alex Rowley and Richard Baker are standing as deputy.
Ms Dugdale said: "Now more than ever, Scotland needs a voice that will stand up to the vested interests.
"Scotland needs a strong opposition that asks tough questions, not a one-party state where every institution and every cause is linked to just one political party.
"That wouldn't be good for Scotland. People need a champion against the cosy consensus in Scottish politics."
Ms Dugdale also argued that there was a need to "think outside the box" when it came to reforming Scotland's state schools.
She also said she would end the charitable status of private schools, saying it was a "question of fairness".
She told BBC Scotland: "Twenty-four per cent of people here in Edinburgh go to private schools and I don't begrudge any parent that wants the best for their children.
"But the reality is that private schools get charitable status, they get tax relief because of that status, and at a time when state schools are really struggling for resources, when teachers are at their wit's end, I think this is fundamentally a question of fairness."
On state education, she said: "Education is everything. It can lift people out of poverty, help them live a healthy lifestyle and open up doors that would otherwise remain shut.
"If we are to compete with the big economies around the world in future then we need people finishing school with the skills they need to get on."
She added: "There can be no sacred cows in Scottish state education. The inequality is too ingrained, the problems too deep to tip-toe around vested interests. It's time to be bold and radical."
The leadership contest was sparked by the resignation of Jim Murphy after Labour lost all but one of its 41 seats in Scotland in May's general election.
In a change from...

Summary: Kezia Dugdale has launched her campaign to become the new leader of Scottish Labour with a pledge to "shake things up".
###
Article: "Since that famous telephone call you made, you have changed the course of Nigeria's political history," Muhammadu Buhari said.
He was referring to the moment President Jonathan conceded victory and put paid to the daunting prospect of a disputed and probably violent aftermath to the election.
It was the first time ever in Nigeria's history that an opposition politician had won an election and both men were ready for the historic transition.
Many Nigerians have huge expectations of their next head of state, but one man who has worked for three different presidents including the former military ruler Sani Abacha says Muhammadu Buhari needs to be aware that it is easy to get cut off from reality once ensconced in "The Villa".
"As cocooned as Abacha was, I remember he was very fond of talking to the gardener. He would ask him 'Danzaria, what is happening in town?'" former minister Dr Aliyu Modibbo Umar told the BBC.
"'Today there are a lot of queues at the fuel stations', Danzaria would say or 'We have not been paid our salary'," said Dr Modibbo recalling the early 1990s when he was a special advisor in the presidency.
"If you are taciturn like some of the heads of state it is very easy to be in a cocoon and to only listen to a few people," Dr Modibbo said, adding that another President, Olusegun Obasanjo, was one of the few former heads of state to have kept his finger on the pulse of the country.
He put this down to his exuberant and outgoing nature.
As well as working as a minister under President Obasanjo, Dr Modibbo was also in Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's government.  He believes that like Mr Yar'Adua, Goodluck Jonathan had also allowed himself to become isolated with just a few officials around him.
"How could you come out and not believe the Chibok girls had been kidnapped if you were not cocooned?" he said, referring to the fact that the president and his ministers were at first reluctant to admit that more than 200 schoolgirls had been seized by jihadists in April 2014.  The 219 girls are still missing.
Some...

Summary: They may not have been slapping each other's backs and smiling ear-to-ear but as Goodluck Jonathan welcomed the man who defeated him in the election, he did give Muhammadu Buhari a sneak preview of the presidential villa and presented him with a box containing the outgoing president's handover notes.
###
Article: The technique involves binding the arms and legs with blankets and is used to help calm a baby and prevent crying.
But Prof Nicholas Clarke, of Southampton University Hospital, said swaddling was damaging developing hips.
The Royal College of Midwives and other experts advised parents to avoid tightly swaddling a child.
Swaddling has been widely used in many cultures globally. It is thought the blanket wrapping can simulate the feelings of being in the womb and calm the child.
But the technique holds the legs out straight and restricts movement, which can alter the development of the hip joint.
Writing in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, Prof Clarke argued: "There has been a recent resurgence of swaddling because of its perceived palliative effect on excessive crying, colic and promoting sleep.
"In order to allow for healthy hip development, legs should be able to bend up and out at the hips. This position allows for natural development of the hip joints.
"The babies' legs should not be tightly wrapped in extension and pressed together."
Jane Munro, of the Royal College of Midwives, said it was a "seemingly innocuous" thing to do, but it posed "significant problems" for the baby.
She said there was also the risk of the baby overheating and a raised risk of cot death.
She added: "We advise parents to avoid swaddling, but it is also crucial that we take into account each mother's cultural background, and to provide individualised advice to ensure she knows how to keep her baby safe, able to move and not get overheated."
Andreas Roposch, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital, said: "Similar effects may be seen in all devices or manoeuvres that place the legs in a purely straight position for prolonged periods in this critical age of early infancy.
"Swaddling should not be employed in my view, as there is no health benefit but a risk for adverse consequences of the growing and often immature hips."
Rosemary Dodds, of parenting charity the NCT, advised against tight...

Summary: Parents are risking their babies' health because of a surge in the popularity of swaddling, according to an orthopaedic surgeon.
###
Article: Thanet District Council (TDC) was court ordered to lift a ban on live animal exports through the Port of Ramsgate.
It paid more than £5m in compensation to traders but has not submitted an insurance claim to retrieve any money.
Campaigners said taxpayers had been left to foot the bill as the council missed the deadline.
Ian Driver, a community campaigner and former councillor, said the figures had only just come to light after a Freedom of Information request.
Mr Driver, said: "So there you have it: a major administrative cock-up by TDC means that taxpayers have been forced to foot a £5.1 million bill some, if not all, of which would have been covered by insurance payments had the claim been submitted in time. But it wasn't."
TDC said the maximum payment under the policy was £1m.
A spokesman said: "The legal claims against the council have all been settled and accounted for in previous year's budgets."
TDC banned live animal exports in 2012 after the deaths of more than 40 sheep.
The decision was overturned by the High Court in 2014 after a long legal battle.
Mr Justice Birss said the council was liable to pay damages to three companies affected by the ban.
Two sheep drowned at Ramsgate in September 2012 and 44 had to be destroyed as they were sick and lame.
The animals were put down after the lorry carrying them was stopped at Ramsgate by animal health inspectors.
In a separate incident, a loading area floor also collapsed while sheep were taken off a lorry carrying 548 animals.
Six fell in the water, with four rescued by RSPCA officers while two animals drowned.
The live animal export trade resumed through Ramsgate in July 2015.

Summary:


The number of people who have been caught driving while using a mobile phone has risen by more than a third in the last four years, according to a new report.
The number of people caught three times for using a mobile phone while driving has risen by more than a third in the last four years, according to a

Syrian refugees facing their first Christmas in Wales are sure to get a "warm Welsh welcome", the first minister has said.

Article: The Council of the Isles of Scilly says it has been told it will need to borrow up to £3.5m to cover costs until April.
Debts have been building up for several years and the council says it only has £500,000 in the bank.
The authority governing about 2,200 inhabitants said it underestimated its income and was also hit by new environmental laws.
More on the Scilly finances story, plus more Devon and Cornwall news
The council has been issued with a Section 24 notice by its external auditors Grant Thornton under the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 saying its had "inadequate financial controls".
The council has said it will need to review its financial strategy for the next few years.
The authority has also voted to take out a loan of up to £3.5m because council tax is collected for only the first 10 months of the year, with no income for the last two.
The authority expects to have overspent this year by nearly £500,000 and may have just over £40,000 left in the bank at the end of this financial year, it said.
Steve Sims, the council's vice chairman and chair of the finance, audit and scrutiny committee, said the council had been running at a deficit of about £400,000 "for about four years" and "it has hit us now".
"We have made £500,000 of savings," he said.
"But we underestimated the income we were going to get."
Debts have been mounting since 2013 because the council "has to be compliant with environmental laws which we've ignored before," Mr Sims added.
He also blamed a "pretty creaking software system of finance" which it was working with Cornwall Council to improve.

Summary: A remote group of British islands is about to run out of money for the day-to-day running of the community.
###
Article: More than 600 people were caught three times and one driver five times, data from a BBC Radio 5 live freedom of information request to the DVLA shows.
Road safety charity Brake says the findings show authorities are not taking the offence "seriously enough".
The government says it is pushing ahead with plans for tougher penalties.
The data refers to the number of drivers who have received CU80 endorsements in the past four years, which is how long the DVLA keeps its records.
CU80 endorsements cover a range of breaches in requirements regarding the control of a vehicle, and include being distracted by a mobile phone.
Although 238,694 people have been caught driving while distracted at least once, just 284 have received a ban as a result, the DVLA said.
The findings come in the same week that Tomasz Kroker was jailed for 10 years for causing a crash which killed a mother and three children.
He was filmed using his mobile phone just before his lorry ploughed into a queue of vehicles on the A34 in Berkshire.
How many times drivers have received points for CU80 offences from 2012-2015:
The data for 2012-2015, released to the Emma Barnett programme on BBC Radio 5 live, shows the total number of drivers being caught is falling: in 2014, 68,409 motorists received a CU80 endorsement, however in 2015 this fell to 42,950 drivers.
According to campaigners, this is caused by a reduction in the number of road policing officers in the UK.
The total number of traffic officers in the police dropped from 5,635 at the end of March 2010 to 4,356 by the end of March 2014, according to Brake.
SOURCE: HOME OFFICE
Gary Rae, campaigns director for Brake, described the statistics as "astonishing and worrying".
"It's further evidence that the authorities are not taking illegal use of mobiles behind the wheel seriously enough.
"We need tougher sanctions on drivers who use their devices when driving, and that includes increasing both the fines and penalty points," he said.
So why do people feel the need to use their phones so frequently,...

Summary: Almost 10,000 drivers have been caught twice for being distracted while driving, including using a mobile phone, in the last four years.
###
Article: The companies, which place the adverts on patient advice leaflets, say NHS trusts are paid up to £200,000 a year, with some using the money to cover staff overtime and buy heart monitors.
Some hospitals are also given gifts of items like uniforms and tea trolleys.
The Department of Health says its discourages the adverts, but it is ultimately for trusts to decide.
NHS England has declined to comment.
Legal claims against NHS clinical services rose last year by 27% to £1.48bn.
Advice cards
Blackpool-based BOE Publishing and Pro Vision Systems, in Lytham St Annes, are two of the leading providers of NHS patient advice cards.
The companies have contracts with hospital trusts across the UK - including in Blackpool - to provide racks of cards in accident and emergency wards, giving information on problems such as head injuries and nose bleeds.
The front of the cards are branded with the logos of the NHS and the local trust and the reverse show adverts, most commonly for personal injury lawyers.
One senior NHS manager described the leaflets as "ethically, not ideal," adding: "You know we're not the only ones doing this."
Pro Vision Systems has told You and Yours it has over 200 NHS contracts to supply and maintain the A&E unit racks.
BOE Publishing claims to be contracted to 129 sites in addition to other NHS supply agreements.
Visitors to the Royal Lancaster Infirmary, which carries the leaflets, expressed confusion at who had published them and one person described them as "very misleading."
University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust declined to comment.
'Royalties'
Pro Vision Systems says its "royalty" payments to NHS trusts vary from a few thousand pounds per annum up to £200,000, with contracts lasting an average of eight years.
"The only advertisers who will spend the money required to fund this free service are personal injury lawyers," Pro Vision told You and Yours.
"Certain hospital A&E departments, especially around the North and Midlands, can generate very large numbers of claims.
"Companies have...

Summary: Hundreds of NHS hospitals are hosting adverts for personal injury lawyers, marketing agencies have told the BBC.
###
Article: Carwyn Jones said Wales had a "proud tradition of being a friendly and hospitable nation".
"The message of peace and hope is particularly poignant this year," he said, referring to the terrorist attacks in Tunisia and Paris.
About 50 refugees from Syria have been re-settled in Wales with more to come.
Torfaen, Ceredigion, Neath Port Talbot and Caerphilly have been the first councils to welcome refugees, with more to be dispersed to other areas in the new year.
In his seasonal message to the nation, Mr Jones said:  "At Christmas, it's more important than ever that we spread the message of togetherness and unity in our Welsh communities.
"We have a proud tradition of being a friendly and hospitable nation.
"As fifty Syrian refugees make their home in Wales, they will be experiencing their first festive season in the UK - I'm sure they'll get a warm Welsh welcome and we wish them well in their new lives."
The first minister also asked people to "spare a thought" for those working over Christmas - such as the emergency services, medical professionals, charities, care workers and the armed forces - who "all deserve our thanks".
"They work tirelessly while we enjoy ourselves," he said.

Summary:

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A woman has been charged with preventing the lawful and decent burial of a body after police discovered the remains of a baby at her home in Fryent Crescent, West Hendon in north London.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, appeared at Wimbledon Magistrates' Court on Monday afternoon.
She

A woman has been remanded in custody charged with covering up the death of a one-year-old for more than a decade.

Article: The Older People's Commissioner for Wales has expressed concerns that people will not get a hot meal every day or see another person.
In some areas private companies have filled the gap but provision is patchy, with no service in some council areas.
The Welsh Local Government Association said councils faced Â£300m budget cuts.
The freedom of information request by Radio Cymru showed a fall of 32% from 2009 to 2014 across the 19 councils which responded.
Some local authorities now only provide a fortnightly service and deliver frozen meals.
Iwan Williams, from the Older People's Commsioners' office, said: "The meals on wheels service is vital to the health and wellbeing of older people across Wales, not only for physical reasons but also mentally.
"In terms of the meals, it's important old people have a warm nutritious meal at least once a day.
"It is imperative not only for their physical health, but also the relationship they develop over time with meals on wheels providers.
"It is also important in terms of mental health and how to combat loneliness."
The WLGA said councils in Wales were facing huge financial challenges.
A spokesman said: "With public sector austerity expected to last well into the future it is unavoidable that all councils in Wales will need to consider new ways of delivering services, new ways of charging for services and, where unavoidable, ways they can scale back existing levels of provision."

Summary: The number of meals being provided by council meals on wheels services has dropped by a third in five years, a BBC investigation has found.
###
Article: But supporters making it impossible for the referee to do his job?
Well, Zimbabwean football fans have taken to social media to vent their spleen following the abandonment of the country's biggest derby on Sunday.
There was plenty of confusion and a smattering of anger when the Premier League match between Highlanders and Dynamos, the most famous and successful clubs, was called off just before the break.
The match commissioner took the decision with the score at 1-1 as he feared for the safety of one of the assistant referees at a packed Barbourfields Stadium in Bulawayo.
With the game shown live on Africa-wide broadcaster SuperSport, the difference of opinion among viewers centred over whether goal-scorer Christian Epoupa was onside or not.
Epoupa was in an offside position, but replays showed that a pass deflected off a Highlanders defender and into his path.
In yet another incident that raised questions over issues of crowd control, Highlanders fans furious with the Dynamos equaliser hurled abuse and started throwing objects at assistant referee Thomas Kusosa, accusing him of allowing an "off-side" goal to stand.
Disturbances went on for an hour as fans and Highlanders players demanded that the assistant referee be replaced.
"I guess that we should have accepted that the referee has the final say, but we are a mixed multitude, and not all of our supporters will accept such a decision," said Highlanders chairman Modern Ngwenya.
Zimbabwe's biggest derby has a history of crowd trouble but anti-violence banners at the stadium and pleas before the match for supporters to remain calm were of little benefit.
Eddie Chivero, the president of the Zimbabwe Soccer Supporters Association, feels that CCTV cameras are needed to monitor and identify troublemakers.
"We condemn violence in our football, but there is no way that we are going to identify the culprits unless we have CCTV cameras in our stadiums," said Chivero.
"It's supposed to be priority number one, and stadiums without CCTV should not be allowed to host...

Summary: Football fans disagreeing with the referee's decisions is nothing new.
###
Article: At present, people who were adopted in the Republic of Ireland do not have an automatic right to access details about their original identity.
The cabinet discussed a draft outline of the new legislation on Wednesday.
But campaigners fear it will not go far enough as birth parents may still be able to prevent access to information.
The Minister for Children, Dr James Reilly, has been working on the Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill for some time.
His department has previously said he wants to provide greater access to birth records "in so far as is possible, in line with legal advice in relation the balancing of rights of those involved".
The state is legally required to register the birth of every child born in the Republic of Ireland, and copies of all short-from birth certificates can be accessed for a fee.
However, because many adopted people do not even know the name they were given at birth, often they cannot supply the information needed to apply for their birth certificate in the usual way.
For most of the 20th Century, having a baby outside marriage in an Ireland heavily influenced by the Catholic Church was regarded as scandalous and led to many children being given up for adoption.
The adoption process, which often involved unmarried mothers being put under pressure from the church, was shrouded in a secrecy that continues to this day.
Adopted people have to apply to the agency that dealt with their adoption and/or the Adoption Authority of Ireland to request information about their biological family and the circumstances of their birth.
Currently, the Adoption Authority takes into account the wishes of the birth mother before it releases information to adoptees.
If the mother objects to her details being handed over to the person she gave birth to, the Adoption Authority can then also refuse the adoptee's request, but such objections are considered on a case-by-case basis.
However, campaigners have argued that all citizens should have an equal right to know their family of origin and have...

Summary: New Irish legislation that could give adopted people greater rights to access information about their birth parents is due to be published shortly.
###
Article: Victoria Gayle, 31, was charged with preventing the lawful and decent burial of a body after police discovered the remains of a baby at her home last month.
Ms Gayle, previously of West Hendon, north London, appeared at Wimbledon Magistrates' Court on Monday afternoon.
She spoke only to confirm her name, address, and date of birth.
The court heard a post-mortem examination took place at Great Ormond Street Hospital on 2 June but the cause of death could not yet be determined.
Ms Gayle was also charged with perverting the course of justice.
She was not asked to submit a plea and will appear at Kingston Crown Court on 8 July.
The charge follows a case review of an investigation into a child who went missing in 2004, which was sparked by the death of another child at an address in Barnet in 2015.
The investigation led to the arrest of a 50-year-old woman in Fryent Crescent, West Hendon in north London.
A 52-year-old man was also arrested on suspicion of preventing a lawful and decent burial.
Both were bailed until mid-July.

Summary:


A man has been jailed for four years after he was caught using his phone while driving.
The court heard that the man was driving a lorry on the A34 near Oxford when he was caught by police.
He was caught using his phone while driving and was sentenced to four years in prison.
The court

Police have used a "covert lorry" to spy on drivers using their phones.

Article: Eight-year-old Harapan, born in Cincinnati, was the last Sumatran rhino in the Western hemisphere.
Conservationists hope he will mate with females in a rhino sanctuary.
The Sumatran rhino has been threatened by rampant deforestation and poaching. Researchers believe there are fewer than 100 left in the wild.
Harapan, whose name means hope, travelled more than 16,000km (9,941 miles) over land, air and sea to reach the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary at the Way Kambas National Park.
His sister, Suci, also lived with him in Cincinnati Zoo but died from an illness last year.
Harapan's trip marked the end of a programme by his zoo to breed rhinos in captivity.
Sumatrans are the smallest of the rhino species and the only Asian rhino with two horns. They are prized by poachers as their horns are used in traditional Chinese medicine.
The rhinos natural habitat in the forest of Sumatra is being devastated illegal logging and forest fires by farmers clearing land for palm oil and pulp plantations.

Summary: A critically endangered male Sumatran rhino born in a US zoo has been flown to Indonesia to mate, as part of efforts to save his species.
###
Article: More than 4,000 pages have been scanned, including his annotated copy of Principia Mathematica, containing Newton's laws of motion and gravity.
Newton wrote mainly in Latin and Greek, the scientific language of his time, and was reluctant to publish.
The university plans to put almost all of its Newton collection online.
The papers mark the launch of the Cambridge Digital Library project to digitise its collections.
As well as Principia and Newton's college notebooks, the Newton Papers section of the online library contains his "Waste Book".
The large notebook was inherited from his stepfather, and scholars believe it helped Newton to make significant breakthroughs in the field of calculus.
Newton had to be persuaded by fellow scientists Halley and Hooke to publish his works on gravity, mechanics, calculus and optics.
Several of the manuscripts in the collection contain the handwritten line "not fit to be printed", scrawled by Thomas Pellet, a fellow of the Royal Society.
He had been asked to go through Newton's papers after his death and decide which ones should and should not be published.
The university had to undertake conservation work on some of the manuscripts, which were considered too fragile to be scanned.
Grant Young, digitisation manager at the university library said Newton's works were chosen for the site because they were "perhaps some of the most important papers and documents in the history of science".
"Anyone, wherever they are, can see at the click of a mouse how Newton worked and how he went about developing his theories and experiments," he said.
"Before today, anyone who wanted to see these things had to come to Cambridge.
"Now we're bringing Cambridge University Library to the world."
A further 8,000 pages of Newton's works are to be added over the next few months.
Other works which will become part of the digital library include the university's Charles Darwin collection.
The digital library project was started in 2010 with a grant from the Polonsky Foundation, a charity that supports...

Summary: The notebooks in which Sir Isaac Newton worked out the theories on which much classical science is based have been put online by Cambridge University.
###
Article: Le Monde says the controversy, which has erupted at a time of high tension in France over the influence of Islam, "is political in origin".
The paper points out that two of the main figures who have objected to the event - Valerie Boyer, a member of the centre-right party The Republicans, and Stephane Ravier, a member of the far-right National Front - will be contesting parliamentary seats in Marseille in 2017.
The left-leaning Liberation echoes this line, saying the controversy "has nothing to do with the law" but is being stoked by conservative and far-right politicians seeking to gain political advantage by suggesting that fundamentalism is in the ascendancy in France.
The paper says that a ban on the event could be counter-productive, by creating a sense of injustice.
In a piece headlined "The burkini day is making waves", Le Parisien also points out that there is "nothing illegal" about holding such an event in private.
"But yesterday it caused an outcry, fuelled mostly by elected representatives from The Republicans and the National Front," the paper notes.
Remi Godeau, writing in the liberal Paris-based paper L'Opinion, dismisses the controversy as being "as vain as it is empty".
He accuses certain politicians of seeking to make an already tense atmosphere worse by acting as "sorcerer's apprentices, pyromaniacs and fear merchants" and of "stigmatising the entire Muslim community in the run-up to the election".
La Provence points out that the event has been advertised by its organisers since mid-July, but that the controversy only broke out "after elected representatives on all sides took a stand on the issue".
Meanwhile, the news website of France's main commercial TV channel BFMTV declares that "There's no summer break for religious controversies.
"A sign of communalism or the exercise of the right to practise one's religion? This is the question posed by the 'burkini day'."
However, at least one commentator approves of the idea of a ban on burkini-clad swimming sessions.
Gilles Debernardi, writing in...

Summary: Plans to hire a waterpark in Marseille for a "burkini day" attended only by women wearing the all-over swimming garment have sparked criticism from right-wing politicians, but the French media are on the whole suspicious of their motives.
###
Article: Thames Valley Police caught 12 drivers on the A34 and M40 in Oxfordshire using phones on a single day during the operation.
It comes after a lorry driver was sentenced to four years for killing a family-of-four by getting distracted when using his phone on the A34.
Police said that one driver was filmed for 30 seconds driving with no hands on the steering wheel.
Chief inspector Henry Parsons said: "Sometimes HGV drivers think as they are high up we cannot see them using a device, but with this tactic we definitely can."
On 31 October Tomasz Kroker was sentenced to four years after he pleaded guilty to using his phone while in charge of a lorry.
After getting distracted he ploughed into a number of cars killing Tracey Houghton, her two sons and her stepdaughter.

Summary:


The Scottish government has announced a £1.5m investment in a new golf course in the Highlands.
The Scottish government has announced a £1.5m investment in a new golf course in the Highlands.
The new course, at the site of the former RAF base at Coul Links, near Dornoch

The developers of a planned 18-hole championship golf course have sought to allay concerns about their proposal's impact on a protected coastal area.

Article: Sir Stanley Wells, who lives in Stratford-upon-Avon, has dedicated his career to studying the life and works of England's most famous playwright.
The 86-year-old is also a professor emeritus of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Birmingham.
He said he was "delighted" by the honour.
"I feel myself most fortunate in having been able to spend so much of my life in the company of Shakespeare and of those who admire and enjoy his works," he said.
"Throughout my career as teacher and scholar I have enjoyed and benefitted enormously from collaborating with fellow scholars from all over the world, and I hope they will share my pleasure in receiving this award."
Peter Kyle, chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, said Sir Stanley's knighthood comes at a "particularly wonderful time in the year" as the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death is marked.
"We offer him the warmest congratulations on this very prestigious honour."

Summary: The honorary president of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has been awarded a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours.
###
Article: The haul included plastic knuckle dusters and what are suspected to be printed gun parts.
If confirmed, the state's police force has said it would be the first time it had discovered 3D-printed firearm components in a home.
Australian authorities released a series of videos in 2013 highlighting the dangers of using 3D-printed guns.
"We've obviously got to get it through our ballistic experts but we can identify most if not all of the major components of a weapon," detective inspector Scott Knowles of Queensland Police Service told ABC News following the arrest of a 28-year-old suspect in Mudgeeraba.
"To us, it appears that they are complete weapons just requiring assembly.
"The technology's dangerous [because] the materials they're using aren't able to sustain the sorts of forces that come as a result of the weapons they're trying to discharge."
He added that the owner of the printer thought to have been involved had given the machine to the suspect to be calibrated, and was not aware that it was going to be misused.
Last year, Australia's Senate held an inquiry into gun-related violence, during which there were calls for the country's laws to be updated to take account of new technologies.
"We're going to have a situation where someone is going to be shot and injured with the use of a 3D device," warned Howard Brown from the Victims of Crime Assistance League at the time.
It was suggested that it be made an offence to own computer files that would allow 3D-printed weapons to be manufactured.
However, DI Knowles noted that Queensland's current laws were already adequate to prosecute a case if ballistics experts confirmed the 3D-printed parts involved were designed for use in firearms.
"With weapons and parts manufactured this way still being classified as a firearm under current legislation, people can also see themselves before the courts for manufacturing and possessing these items" he said.
3D-printed weapon arrests are still a relatively rare occurrence.
However, a Japanese man was jailed for two years in...

Summary: Police in Australia have seized 3D-printed weapons after a raid in a suburb of Gold Coast City, Queensland.
###
Article: Plaid Cymru leader Ieuan Wyn Jones inherited the Arriva Trains Wales contract in 2007.
He told BBC Wales of his frustration at the franchise and said it should undergo a radical overhaul in 2018.
Arriva said it had invested tens of millions in services, in many cases over and above its commitments.
The Welsh government said it was looking at how to get better value for money.
BBC Wales has been examining spending on rail subsidies as part of an analysis of government expenditure.
The Welsh government is committed to paying Arriva Trains Wales (ATW) a subsidy of £170m a year under the terms of a 15-year deal signed in 2003. It is due to expire in 2018.
According to figures from the Office for Rail Regulation, last year ATW received the highest public subsidy per passenger mile of any franchise across the UK.
Mr Jones said: "What was obvious is that this wasn't a contract that recognised the substantial increase in train passengers that there's been since 2003.
"It was predicated on the basis that it would grow far more slowly than it has, so you have the examples of many trains, particularly the Valley Lines services, where you had severe overcrowding and you hadn't got more services available."
He added: "Because the franchise was written in the way it was, Arriva was under no obligation to provide extra services, and because we felt that it was necessary to meet some of the demand, we had to pay for that under our own revenue, so we were paying over and above the franchise money simply to order to deal with capacity issues.
"The original contract was flawed because it didn't anticipate the increase in passenger numbers."
The former minister now wants to see major changes, including a "not for dividend" model for the franchise after 2018, where profits would be re-invested in the service, rather than being paid to shareholders.
Transport expert Prof Stuart Cole, from the University of Glamorgan, said the model could deliver real improvements for Welsh travellers.
"It has the potential to keep the profits that...

Summary: A £170m railway franchise is "flawed" and has led to a decade of overcrowding, a former transport minister has said.
###
Article: US-based golf course designers Mike Keiser, Bill Coore and Todd Warnock have proposed creating the course at Coul Links, near Dornoch.
Four conservation charities have joined forces to oppose the project.
The developers said they were aiming for "minimal intrusion on the landscape".
The Scottish Wildlife Trust, RSPB Scotland, Buglife and Plantlife have concerns the course will result in the loss of a protected sand dunes habitat and rare wildlife.
The developers, who have held two meetings in the local area as part of public consultation on the plans, said the building of the course would involve laying turf over less than 55 acres (22ha) within a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).
SSSIs are areas indentified as having a diverse range of wildlife and geology.
The developers said their planned new course, close to Embo, would compliment nearby Royal Dornoch golf course and others in the East Sutherland area.
Mr Keiser, who owns Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, said: "This is a wonderful opportunity to deliver a spectacular championship links golf course which represents all that is natural about golf, in the home of golf.
"Our golf course developments aim for minimal intrusion on the landscape and the utmost care and respect for the environment.
"Our team of environmental advisors is ensuring complete sensitivity to the land, and its location."

Summary:


A woman who was sectioned under the Mental Health Act after she killed her mother has been found guilty of manslaughter.
The jury at Winchester Crown Court found that Jo Deering, 52, killed her mother, Mary, in their home in New Milton, Hampshire, in 2011.
The jury was told that Ms De

The family of a woman who killed herself after being discharged from hospital has labelled a report into her death "psycho babble and twaddle".

Article: The 25-year-old, who has played for Gloucestershire since 2010, has agreed a three-year contract with Middlesex.
"We have been looking to sign a fast bowler with white-ball pedigree," said Middlesex managing director of cricket Angus Fraser.
"In James I believe we have found a bowler that will add extra bite and quality to this area."
Fuller was a key part of Gloucestershire's winning One-Day Cup campaign this year, taking 15 wickets including 2-34 in the final at Lord's.
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, he holds a UK passport and has taken 101 first-class wickets at an average of 33.90 with best figures of 6-24.
He also has 58 List A one-day wickets at an average of 25.17 and 62 Twenty20 wickets in 46 games.
"I have watched James bowl on numerous occasions and have been impressed with what I have seen," added Fraser.
"He is a fine athlete with a strong, easy action that allows him to bowl with good pace. James is extremely ambitious and is the sort of character that fits what Middlesex are looking for."

Summary: Middlesex have signed James Fuller after the fast bowler turned down a new deal with Gloucestershire.
###
Article: Stephanie Embley, 35, of Pine Road, Cantley, South Yorkshire, was investigated after the parents of one of the boys raised concerns about her.
She admitted four charges of sexual activity with a child and was found guilty of a further two at Sheffield Crown Court on Friday.
She was jailed and given a 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
That means she can have no contact, either directly or indirectly, with children under the age of 16, police said.
Speaking after the sentencing, Det Con Brian Thompson said: "Embley preyed on and took advantage of teenage boys for her own sexual gratification, which is a despicable crime.
"I am pleased that she has been found guilty of, and pleaded guilty to, these horrific offences and that she is behind bars where she poses no further risk to children.
"The victims and their families have been supportive of our investigation and I thank them for their patience and bravery throughout this inquiry."

Summary: A woman found guilty of sex offences against teenage boys has been jailed for four years.
###
Article: They say the 12.4 sq km section is among the largest ever witnessed to come away from the ice stream's calving front.
Satellite imagery suggests the break-up occurred sometime between 13 and 19 August.
Jakobshavn is a major drainage channel for the Greenland ice sheet, producing roughly 10% of its icebergs.
Once discarded, the ice travels down a long fjord before entering the Davis Strait and heading towards the Atlantic.
It is widely speculated that the source of the berg that sank the Titanic was Jakobshavn.
Scientists say the glacier moves at tens of metres a day in Summer months, making it one of the fastest flowing ice streams in Greenland, if not the fastest.
The European Space Agency has been following events with the EU's Sentinel satellites.
Sentinel-1a is a radar platform. Not only can it see through cloud, it can also be used to map flow and elevation changes.
The Sentinel-2a satellite is Europe's new optical spacecraft and can provide context imagery.
Esa says that if the glacier lost a total area of 12.5 sq km, and assuming the ice is about 1,400m deep, then the volume calved would equate to about 17.5 cu km, "which could cover the whole of Manhattan Island by a layer of ice about 300m thick".
It has certainly moved the calving front of the glacier back several km.
Although big in Greenland terms, the ice calving event is still quite small when compared with Antarctica.
Great tabular bergs can break away from the southern polar ice sheet that are thousands of sq km in area.

Summary: Scientists are studying a big mass of ice that has broken off the Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland.
###
Article: Jo Deering died in 2011, aged 52,  just months after being sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
Under-fire Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust admitted it could have made better decisions about her care.
However, Ms Deering's sister, Maureen Rickman, said the trust's findings "deserved to be binned".
In December, the BBC revealed that the trust, which provides services to about 45,000 people in Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, had failed to investigate hundreds of unexpected deaths since 2011.
Ms Deering, from New Milton, Hampshire, had paranoid schizophrenia and was discharged from hospital two weeks after being sectioned.
She was sent home where she was the main carer for her 89-year-old mother, who had dementia. Four months later she took her own life.
Her family said the trust should not have allowed her to go home while she was still ill.
In its 2012 report, the trust said the medical team based at Waterford House who cared for Ms Deering should "be commended for their ongoing efforts to work with Joanna and her whole family in as an inclusive a way as possible, despite significant complications".
Ms Rickman said: "There isn't an investigation here, nothing of the sort. I could have carried out a better investigation myself to be quite frank."
She added: "It deserves to be binned - nobody would have known anything from this at all, there is nothing to take away from this other than a load of psycho babble and twaddle."
In a statement, Dr Lesley Stevens, medical director at the trust, said the report found its "decision-making process about granting leave, and how we communicated this with Jo and her family, could have been better".
"Robust actions to learn from this incident were fully implemented at the time," she added.
She said the trust had provided community support to help Ms Deering with her role as a carer.
"The way we investigate and learn when things go wrong, has changed substantially," she added.

Summary:


The US Geological Survey (USGS) has issued a tsunami warning for the Pacific Ocean.
The USGS said the quake was a magnitude 7.3 and was centred about 50km (30 miles) south-west of Kumamoto, the capital of the island of Kyushu.
The USGS said

A more powerful earthquake has rocked the southern Japanese city of Kumamoto in the middle of the night, a day after an earlier tremor killed nine people.

Article: It was an understated reaction from the woman likely to go down in history as the person who rattled President Jacob Zuma more than any other figure in contemporary South Africa, exposed the growing fissures in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and went from being a shy trade unionist to an internationally feted global leader.
Ms Madonsela's inquiries over her years in office as public protector have led to the sacking of some of the most senior figures in the country.
She has investigated police chiefs, opposition politicians - and even the president himself over multi-million dollar security upgrades to his private Nkandla home.
It was probably not a surprise that on Friday, the woman many just call Thuli spent her final hours in office in court, seeking to defend her country's hard won democratic ideals and the release of her interim report on corruption and cronyism - what's rather clumsily called "state capture" here.
In short, it expected to describe how unelected businessmen - who allegedly wield huge influence over President Zuma - were able to call the shots on who should and should not get a ministerial job.
Much of her interim report is believed to focus on a family known as the Guptas, but the practice of patronage politics and opaque practices over the awarding of government contracts and jobs goes much deeper than just one family.
For some, it is perhaps surprising that the softly spoken mother of two has survived seven years in her role. But it is a credit to South Africa's robust constitution that the public protector has withstood attempts to remove her, harm her physically with death threats and smear her name.
If anything, her popularity has grown, with a prominent international think-tank recently voting her among the world's top five most "extraordinary women".
In her most recent investigation, she has been accused by the Guptas' lawyers of abusing her position and overshadowing the legal process.
Others say she has overstepped the mark, with the ANC Youth League dismissing her...

Summary: When Thuli Madonsela's daughter asked her over breakfast how it felt to be "South Africa's biggest tell-tale", the public protector just smiled.
###
Article: The garment is the most popular women's wear in India and is sold in big and small shops across the country.
But Delhi-based fashion designer Rimzim Dadu took nearly two years to create her silicon Jamdani sari as part of an initiative to "reinvent" Indian textiles.
The Jamdani weaving tradition comes from the Bengal region in eastern India and Bangladesh. It is one of the most time and labour-intensive forms of handloom. Jamdani is a fine muslin cloth on which decorative motifs are woven on the loom, typically in grey and white.
But Ms Dadu used silicon sheets and cut them into fine threads to weave her Jamdani sari.
"Silicon is a very delicate and elastic material. I took long silicon rubber sheets, shredded them into very fine yarns and then hand-wove them into a Jamdani sari," she explains.
Her work is part of an ongoing exhibition called "Fracture: Indian textiles, new conversations" in a Delhi suburb. It seeks to redefine Indian craft for global and domestic audiences.
Indian textiles are known and loved all over the world for their detail and craft.
The exhibit's message says that Indian textiles are unparalleled because of their extraordinary diversity in aesthetics and techniques. They straddle the multiple genres of arts, design and manufacturing.
Then why reinvent?
Ms Dadu says India has a brilliant heritage of textiles and craft "but felt the time was right to have a fresh perspective".
"The exhibit is about exploring our own potential and pushing our own boundaries. We are trying to find out what more can we do with our heritage," she adds.
Exhibition curator Mayank Mansingh Kaul agrees.
"There is a great sense of nostalgia about Indian textiles. But we wanted to find out what breaking away from traditions means," he says.
"We want to tell the world that India is just not a manufacturing hub for global brands, but it can emerge with its own innovations and compete with the world," he adds.
Swati Kalsi, another participating textile artist, has been practising the craft of Sujani for many years...

Summary: Can it take two years to make a piece of traditional Indian garment sari?
###
Article: Claire Sugden said the review would look at the "legislative framework" for certain categories of crime and other issues, such as unduly lenient sentences.
The minister said sentencing did not just affect the offender, but victims, families and the wider community.
Ms Sugden said recommendations would be put out to consultation.
She said sentencing played a "major part" in how the criminal justice system as a whole was perceived and "impacts on public confidence in the delivery of justice".
"I am aware of concerns that have been expressed from time to time about sentencing in some individual cases," she said.
"While such cases represent a very small part of the everyday work of the courts, they can have a significant impact on public perception and confidence in the justice system and the sentencing process.
"That is why I have decided that a comprehensive review of sentencing policy is needed."
The review will consider the following areas:
The minister stressed it was not a review of sentencing decisions, as in each individual case it was a matter for the judiciary and the courts.
"It is essential that their independence is maintained," she added.
"However, it is my responsibility to ensure the effectiveness of the legislative framework within which individual sentencing decisions are made, and, along with the Lord Chief Justice's programme of action, to seek to ensure that there is confidence in how those decisions are reached."

Summary: The justice minister has announced a major review of sentencing in Northern Ireland.
###
Article: The magnitude-7.3 quake hit at a depth of 10km (six miles) at 01:25 on Saturday (15:25 GMT on Friday) in Kyushu region. At least three people died and hundreds were injured.
A village has been evacuated after a dam collapsed, media reports say.
A tsunami warning was issued, and lifted some 50 minutes later.
Japan is regularly hit by earthquakes but stringent building codes mean that they rarely cause significant damage.
This new earthquake in Kyushu was much bigger and hit a wider area than the one that struck Kumamoto on Thursday night, says the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Tokyo.
In one town near the coast, the city hall has been so badly damaged there are fears it could collapse. A hospital has been evacuated because it is no longer safe.
Thousands of people have fled on to the streets and into parks - where they are huddled under blankets looking dazed and afraid, our correspondent says.
But there are numerous reports of people trapped inside buildings, including at least 60 inside an old people's home.
Public broadcaster NHK says the dam collapsed in the Nishihara village.
Television pictures showed thousands of people filling streets and parks, looking dazed across the region.
NHK had warned of sea waves of up to 1m (3ft).
Japan's nuclear authority said the Sendai nuclear plant was not damaged.
The quake was originally assessed as magnitude 7.1 but revised upwards to 7.3 later.
Gavin Hayes, a research geophysicist with the US Geological Survey (USGS) in Colorado, told the BBC that the latest earthquake would hamper the earlier rescue operation that was already under way.
He said more damage could be expected as the earthquake had been shallower and the fault-line had been much longer.
"The ground surface would have moved in the region of 4-5m. So, you are talking very intense shaking over quite a large area. And that's why we'll probably see a significant impact from this event."
The Associated Press news agency said guests at the Ark Hotel near the Kumamoto Castle, which was damaged, woke up and...

Summary:


At least 150 Syrian dissidents have met publicly for the first time at a hotel in the capital, Damascus, to discuss the current crisis in their country.

Article: The new group's leader has been named as Hashim al-Sheikh, who previously served as the head of the powerful Islamist rebel group, Ahrar al-Sham.
Ahrar al-Sham itself has refused to join the new body and has been at loggerheads with JFS in northern Syria.
On 9 February, al-Shaikh delivered the group's first leadership message in which he insisted the new entity was independent and not an extension of former organisations and factions.
By reinventing itself again, JFS appears to be trying to distance itself from its al-Qaeda past and embed itself more deeply within the Syrian insurgency.
No mention has been made of JFS leader Abu Mohammed al-Julani in any of the new group's communications. But he is widely believed to be serving as its military commander.
JFS announced the creation of "Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham" (which translates in English as Liberation of Levant Organisation) in a statement that was released on 28 January via its channel on the messaging app Telegram.
The statement indicated that the groups which had agreed to join would dissolve themselves and "merge fully" into the new entity.
This was further reiterated in al-Shaikh's recent message which described the new body as a "melting pot for all factions".
In addition to JFS, Tahrir al-Sham founding groups included: Nur al-Din Zinki Movement (one of the most important opposition factions in Aleppo); jihadist Ansar al-Din Front; the Homs-based Jaysh al-Sunnah; and Liwa al-Haqq (operates in Idlib, Aleppo and Hamah).
The new entity also received the endorsement of six prominent Syria-based jihadist clerics, including the charismatic Saudi-born Abdullah al-Muhaisini. The clerics signed a separate statement announcing their intention to join Tahrir al-Sham.
Since the creation of the new entity, JFS has issued no new propaganda under the JFS brand, suggesting that it has been dissolved.
The head of the new group, Abu-Jabir, had been appointed as Ahrar al-Sham leader after the group's entire leadership was wiped out in a bomb blast in September 2014. He held...

Summary: The Syrian jihadist group Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS), known as al-Nusra Front until it broke off formal ties with al-Qaeda last July, has merged with four smaller Syrian factions and rebranded itself as "Tahrir al-Sham".
###
Article: McNamara, 44, has just led England to a 2-1 series win over New Zealand.
His part-time contract expires on 31 December and a two-year deal to remain as assistant coach with NRL side Sydney Roosters will not be signed until McNamara's England future is resolved.
"We will talk about what has worked for me and what has worked for the RFL," he said. "Then the decision will be made."
It had been reported that McNamara's extension with the Roosters had been agreed.
The former Bradford Bulls boss initially took charge of England on a full-time basis but has combined the position with being attack coach at the Roosters since 2013.
"The RFL were happy with me doing both jobs last time round," said McNamara, who is set to return home to Sydney on Thursday.
Media playback is not supported on this device
Saturday's 20-14 win at the DW Stadium completed a 2-1 series win for England against the world's number one ranked side.
It was England's first series triumph against a major nation since 2007 and came after McNamara presided over narrow losses against the Kiwis in both the 2013 World Cup and 2014 Four Nations.
Those defeats led to McNamara's position being questioned by some, and last week former Great Britain international Garry Schofield called for his removal.
The Kiwis had a number of players, including half-back Shaun Johnson and captain Simon Mannering, missing through injury on their recent tour but McNamara shrugged off the criticism.
"When you are an international coach people criticise and have opinions. People call for your head," McNamara told BBC Sport.
"I understand that. Does it interest me? Not one bit.
"Who was the inexperienced team anyway? On Saturday, New Zealand had 255 Test caps between their 17 players. We had 206."
Including the record 84-4 win against France on 24 October, England conceded 39 points in their four autumn internationals.
And McNamara feels that strong defence is crucial to success against Australia and New Zealand.
"In England, teams tend to get rated by how many points they...

Summary: England coach Steve McNamara will speak to the RFL about his future this week before returning to Australia.
###
Article: Labour had argued that the move was necessary to "restore public trust" in politics following a cash for access scandal.
But the government said the motion was "unclear" and more about creating headlines than providing a solution.
MPs sided with the government to defeat the Labour motion by 287 to 219.  The government's amendment was approved.
Labour said it would honour its commitment and amend its own standing orders to ensure the ban applied to its candidates and MPs.
The debate in the House of Commons was sparked by allegations against Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind.
The two former foreign secretaries deny wrongdoing after being secretly recorded apparently offering their services to a private company for cash.
Introducing the opposition motion, shadow Commons leader Angela Eagle said it was time to make a "decisive break" with the status quo on members' remunerated interests.
She said the public deserved to be "safe in the knowledge" that every MP was working and acting in their interests - and not for somebody paying them.
Ms Eagle said the current situation was "untenable", adding that the rules were "riddled with grey areas and open to endless convenient interpretation".
That is why the House should support Labour's plan to stop MP from holding  a directorship or paid consultancy from the next Parliament, she argued.
But the Conservative leader of the House, William Hague, contended that "by far the greatest single outside influence" on MPs was union influence on the Labour Party.
He said out of the candidates selected for 150 Labour target seats, 83 were linked to the unions, and 49 of those to Unite.
Labour's motion was calculated to create a headline rather than to solve a problem, he argued, adding that it showed little understanding of business and was "unclear".
He warned that it could create a House of Commons "consisting entirely of people who are either rich or professional politicians throughout their lives".
While not mentioned in the motion, Labour is said to be mooting the idea of...

Summary: The House of Commons has defeated Labour's call for a ban on MPs holding paid directorships or consultancies.
###
Article: The meeting's organiser, Louai Hussein, called for an end to the government's brutal crackdown on protesters and for a peaceful transition to democracy.
The event took place after government officials said they would not object.
Afterwards, the opposition was invited to joint talks to discuss the framework for a national dialogue conference.
The state news agency, Sana, said amendments to the constitution would be on the agenda at the conference on 10 July, including Article 8, which grants the Baath Party unique status as the "leader of state and society".
Participants would also examine proposed new laws on political parties, elections, local administration and the press, it added.
Sana said there was no alternative but to "open the door wide" to all Syrians, and to take part in building a "democratic, pluralistic society meeting the aspirations of the people".
The BBC's Lina Sinjab in Damascus says the government is making a show of looking for the middle ground to solve the crisis, but they are also seen to be playing for time.
Monday's meeting at the Semiramis hotel in Damascus was attended by several leading opposition figures, including Mr Hussein, Anwar al-Bunni and Michel Kilo, who have served time in prison for their political activities.
They began by singing the national anthem and holding a moment of silence to honour those killed in the revolt, which represents the most serious challenge to President Bashar al-Assad's rule since he succeeded his father in 2000.
In the opening address, Mr Hussein said it was an unprecedented event, and that no such conference had been held in Syria for decades.
"Those attending this meeting are not armed, [as they are not] terrorists or saboteurs," he said.
"We are meeting today... to put forward a vision about how to end tyranny and ensure a peaceful and secure transition to the hoped-for state: the state of freedom, democracy and equality."
In a final communique, the participants declared their support for the "popular uprising seeking a peaceful transition to...

Summary:


The former Ulster Unionist MLA Adrian Cochrane-Watson has said he would "break the legs" of any drug dealers he caught.
He was speaking after a family emergency in which a young relative became unwell after smoking cannabis.
Speaking in the Radio Ulster discussion on Wednesday, Mr Cochrane-Watson

A former deputy chief constable has said it may be time to reconsider de-criminalising cannabis.

Article: Tories Michael Gove and Boris Johnson and Labour's Gisela Stuart wrote in the Sun that the tax on energy bills cannot be scrapped because of EU rules.
But Chancellor George Osborne accused them of "fantasy land" economics.
Remain campaigners said Vote Leave were promising a "make-believe land of milk and honey" if the UK left the EU.
There is one week left to register to vote in the EU referendum on 23 June.
In their article, the Vote Leave politicians said they would seek to spend some of the cash saved by quitting the EU on cutting VAT from household gas and electricity bills, a tax imposed by the then Conservative government in 1993.
This issue covers energy availability and environmental protections.
"The least wealthy are hit particularly hard," they wrote.
"The poorest households spend three times more of their income on household energy bills than the richest households spend. As long as we are in the EU, we are not allowed to cut this tax.
"When we Vote Leave, we will be able to scrap this unfair and damaging tax.
"It isn't right that unelected bureaucrats in Brussels impose taxes on the poorest and elected British politicians can do nothing."
VAT on domestic fuel bills was cut to 5% under the Labour government - the lowest rate allowed under EU rules.
In 2014, the average bill for a customer of a big six energy firm was £1,190.
Mr Gove told the BBC it had been a "mistake" of the previous Major government to introduce the tax, adding: "The Conservative government at the time did so because of the economic damage that the exchange rate mechanism of the European Union had caused.
"I think it is now time to acknowledge that that was an error."
The justice secretary said it would be up to the prime minister and the chancellor to axe VAT, but said he backed such a move because it was "an unfair tax that hits the poorest people hardest".
Mr Osborne tweeted his attack on Vote Leave's claim, saying leaving the EU would lead to a smaller economy, "a hole in public finances" and higher taxes including...

Summary: Leading figures in the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union say they want to be able to scrap VAT on fuel to help the poorest households.
###
Article: A review of the college at Garverville, east Belfast, was ordered after 54 student officers were found to have cheated in their exams.
It described the culture as "pseudo-militaristic", with "an unhealthy leaning towards punitive discipline".
The PSNI accepted 50 recommended changes.
Chief Constable George Hamilton and other members of the senior PSNI members will meet members of the Policing Board to discuss an implementation plan to address concerns raised.
A number of changes to the 22-week training course were introduced immediately.
These included the practice of students marching to and from classes and the use of military-style "show parades" as a form of discipline.
Groups of students will in future be referred to as "classes", and not "squads".
The PSNI plan sets out 34 changes it hopes to have implemented by the end of March next year.
In a statement earlier this week, the Policing Board said the report's conclusion, that the pervading culture in the college was "not conducive to a safe and professional learning environment", was "a matter of most serious concern".
A special meeting of the board was convened for Thursday to discuss the report's findings and the police response.
All training at Garnerville has been suspended since the exam-cheating scandal was uncovered on 7 August.
More than 200 new recruits have had their training delayed, and a planned recruitment drive was also put on hold while this review was completed.
The Chief Constable has said several times in recent months that a failure to recruit new officers will have a serious impact on the operational capability of the PSNI.
George Hamilton is expected to ask for the approval of the Policing Board to restart training at the college, and to proceed with a recruitment campaign in January.

Summary: PSNI commanders will meet the Policing Board later to discuss a report that said training for new officers was at times like a military-style boot camp.
###
Article: The Care Quality Commission (CQC) found that care at Gloucestershire Care Services NHS Trust was "good" but it judged safety in the urgent care service "to be inadequate".
Inspectors said people were waiting too long to be assessed at minor injuries units and there were safety concerns.
The trust said it had taken on board the CQC's findings.
The trust runs hospitals at Cirencester, Stroud General and Tewkesbury Community Hospital, Minor Injuries and Illness Units (MIIU), dental clinics and community services.
The inspection, carried out in June, July and August, found that patients were being seen by "unregistered practitioners".
Sir Mike Richards, the CQC's chief inspector of hospitals, said community teams were "overstretched" because there were not enough experienced nurses and it was concerned about safety in the urgent care service.
"We were not assured that people were adequately protected from the risk of harm, and we were not convinced that this had been addressed adequately yet by the trust board," he said.
"While there are many good services, we have also been very clear about those areas for improvement, which I expect the trust to address as a priority."
Dr Marion Andrews-Evans, from the NHS Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group, said the trust was working to ensure patients "receive the right care, in the right place at the right time".
"We know that the trust has taken immediate action to improve arrangements for initial triage of patients within Community Minor Injury and Illness Units," she said.
"We also know that they are working hard to recruit and train additional emergency nurse practitioners to support increased use of MIIU services."

Summary: An NHS trust that runs seven Gloucestershire hospitals has been rated as requiring improvement.
###
Article: Alan McQuillan told the BBC the current attitude to drugs was "creating a cash cow for organised crime, especially in relation to cannabis".
He said police needed to focus on paramilitaries as the source of the drugs problem in Northern Ireland.
The former policeman was taking part in a BBC Talkback discussion about drug dealing in Northern Ireland.
"I think there is real scope for de-criminalising cannabis," he said. "The time has come to consider it."
Mr McQuillan said the focus needed to be on teaching parents and children about the reality of the drugs trade.
"We need to invest in education, to be aware that often the people who are dealing drugs are corrupted young people who are paying for a habit by dealing to other children," he said.
Former Ulster Unionist MLA Adrian Cochrane-Watson told a local newspaper on Wednesday he would "break the legs" of any drug dealers he caught.
He was speaking after a family emergency in which a young relative became unwell after smoking cannabis.
Speaking in the Radio Ulster discussion on Wednesday, Mr Cochrane-Watson said he made no apology for his outspoken remarks.
He said: "When I see drug dealers driving about in their fancy sports cars - money to burn - it does make me angry.
"When I know who these people are, it makes me frustrated.
"If I had got my hands on the guy who dealt these drugs to 13-year-old kids, I'd rather the police would have gotten there before me."

Summary:


The inquiry will examine the role of the Russian state in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.
"The inquiry will examine the role of the Russian state in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko," said the Metropolitan Police.
"The inquiry will also examine the role of the Russian state in the murder of Sergei Sk

For three weeks Alexander Litvinenko desperately tried to fight off the radiation that was destroying his body from within.

Article: Sherratt worked with Blues head coach Danny Wilson at Bristol.
"I'm thrilled to be able to take the opportunity to work at Cardiff Blues and alongside Danny once again," said Sherratt.
Paul John will take on the role of skills coach while he studies for a master's degree, and Graham Steadman will continue as defence coach.
Steadman will be assisted by Richard Hodges.
Sherratt joined Bristol's coaching staff in 2011 having previously worked with Worcester.
"I'm delighted that Matt Sherratt will join us," said Wilson.
"I worked closely with him at Bristol and he always impressed me with his attention to detail and we share a similar coaching philosophy and view of the game."

Summary: Bristol's Matt Sherratt will join Cardiff Blues as attack and backs coach at the end of the season.
###
Article: Final details are still being worked out, but the companies said the deal had "compelling strategic logic" and boosted their market position.
Paddy Power shareholders would own 52% of the combined business, with Betfair investors owning the remaining 48%.
The combined business would have annual revenues of some £1.1bn.
"Discussions remain ongoing regarding the other terms of the possible merger," a statement said on Wednesday.
The new group would be the UK online market leader with a 16% share, according to industry data, passing a merged Ladbrokes/Coral on 14%, as well as William Hill and the privately owned Bet365.
Shares in Betfair soared 17% to £30.60 on Wednesday, while Paddy Power jumped more than 18% in Dublin.
If the deal goes ahead, Breon Corcoran, boss of Betfair, would become chief executive of the combined group, while his counterpart at Paddy Power, Andy McCue, would become chief operating officer.
The combined company plans to retain the "distinctive and complementary" Betfair and Paddy Power brands in Europe.
Mr Corcoran said: "We fundamentally believe this industry is all about scale. By putting together two distinct but phenomenally strong brands, we'll have a market leading position in the UK, Ireland, Australia and in the United States."
Cormac McCarthy, Paddy Power's chief financial officer, said the combination was an "attractive opportunity".
"The scale and capability is unsurpassed and would leave us in a much better place to compete in our current markets, where competition is intense," he said.
Given the complementary nature of the two companies, he was confident that any competition concerns could be overcome.
Paddy Power was founded in 1988, when three Irish bookmakers merged. It has 350 betting shops and is the third-largest online bookmaker.
Betfair, in contrast, is offering a marketplace - or betting exchange - that lets customers bypass the need for a traditional bookmaker.
Based on their closing prices on Tuesday, Betfair was worth £2.4bn and Dublin-listed Paddy Power was worth...

Summary: Betfair and Paddy Power are set to merge in a £5bn deal that would create one of the world's biggest online betting and gaming companies.
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Article: Bridgend MP Madeleine Moon said a constituent found he had lost Â£50 from his month's pay for "toilet visits".
She said it seemed staff were "fined" for comfort breaks despite being given "copious amounts of water" to help them keep speaking to customers.
Trade unions have called for workers to be given specific legal rights to use toilets without pay deductions.
During business questions at Westminster, Ms Moon told House of Commons leader William Hague: "A constituent found his payslip contained a deduction of Â£50.
"When he asked why he was told it was for toilet visits.
"It appears that call centre staff, while provided with copious amounts of water to keep their voices lubricated, are also then fined for going to the toilet.
"Can we have a debate on the toilet tax?"
Mr Hague replied: "Well, that is a new proposition for the House to have a debate on.
"I'm sure you will wish to pursue this directly - I'm sure you are doing, you're nodding to that - with the company concerned.
"If it was a widespread issue or problem there might well be demand for this in the House but I hope you're able to resolve this for your constituents without us having to debate it on the floor of the House."
The TUC recently noted that workers do not have a legal right to go to the toilet during working hours without losing pay, and called for the law to be changed.
It said: "There is also a need for a specific legal right to use toilets in the employer's time [as opposed to the employee's time] without a deduction in pay, and without any harassment."

Summary: Call centre staff are being hit with a "toilet tax" for leaving their desks, an MP has claimed.
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Article: His wife Marina can still recall the last time she saw him. He was smiling in what she recalls was a sad way. She said she would be back tomorrow.
"He suddenly just said 'I love you so much'," she remembers.
"I said 'Yes, of course. I love you too'."
But when she got home, she received a call from the hospital telling her to rush back in. She did not get the chance to speak to him again.
As he lay dying in his hospital bed, Alexander Litvinenko had remained the trained operative he had always been and tried to recall for police every detail that might hold a clue to his poisoning.
For the police, he was something unique - a living murder victim - a man who was going to die but had time to talk to them.
So who did he hold responsible for the mysterious illness which was taking such a terrible toll on his body? "Everything that happened to him and he was able to speak - able to sign - he said Putin was responsible for his death," his widow told the BBC.
The public inquiry will examine the central question - who was responsible for what was described by a lawyer in a previous hearing as 'an act of state sponsored nuclear terrorism on the streets of London'?
It was one of the most remarkable and sensitive murder cases in modern times.
"This inquiry was different from any other investigation that I've ever been involved in," says Peter Clarke, who at the time ran the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism Command which handled the investigation.
"It was not only a murder inquiry but there were other key areas that we had to think about: public safety - over 40 sites of radioactive contamination in public places, on public transport, aircraft, offices, restaurants... And then there are the international dimensions, the diplomatic dimensions and the intelligence areas that came into this inquiry."
Much is already known about the broad brush of events - that Alexander Litvinenko was killed by radioactive Polonium 210 and that two Russians, Alexander Lugovoi and Dimitri Kovtun, are believed by police to be...

Summary:


The Syrian army has recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra from the Islamic State group, the army said on Thursday.
The army said it had taken control of the city, which was seized by IS in May, after a fierce battle.
The army said it had also captured the nearby town of al-Q

Palmyra, one of the archaeological jewels of the Middle East, is said to be under threat from Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria.

Article: Mohammed Rehman, 25, discussed targeting the London Underground and Westfield shopping centre on social media under the name "Silent Bomber".
He and his wife Sana Ahmed Khan were convicted of preparing terrorist acts.
Jailing them both for life at the Old Bailey, Mr Justice Baker told Rehman he had been "determined to fulfil the Islamic State's call for jihad".
The couple's trial had heard how bomb-making chemicals were found at Rehman's Reading home, where he had filmed himself setting off a small explosion in the back garden.
He had been planning an attack to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the 7 July London bombings, the trial was told.
The role of 24-year-old Khan was to fund the chemicals needed to make a "huge" bomb.
Rehman, who was also convicted of possessing an article for terrorist purposes, was a "prolific" user of Twitter, the trial was told, posting extremist rhetoric alongside images of homemade devices and instructional material.
One tweet from his account read: "I have rigged my house to blow at the push of a button by my bedside if the popo [police] try to raid man. Nobody gets in the way of my jihad."
The judge told Rehman that the reason for his conversion "may never be fully known", adding that he was satisfied he had intended to carry out an act of terrorism within the United Kingdom.
"The type of act which you envisaged not only encompassed the use of explosive substances which would be used to maximum effect so as to cause multiple injuries and fatalities, but specifically included a suicide bombing; an act which envisaged martyrdom, a notion specifically resurrected by Islamic State in order to encourage this type of venture," Mr Justice Baker said.
Ahead of the sentencing hearing, Khan had sent the judge a handwritten letter saying she had divorced Rehman a couple of weeks previously and that she should have "distanced myself from him a long time ago".
The judge rejected her argument, telling Khan: "I am satisfied that it was you who became interested in the theological...

Summary: A husband and wife who plotted a terror attack in London have been jailed for a minimum of 27 and 25 years.
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Article: The drop comes after Argentine Finance Minister Alfonso Prat-Gay said he would eliminate the foreign exchange restrictions that have propped up the peso since 2011.
After his announcement, markets opened with one dollar buying 14 pesos.
Analysts had predicted a fall of up to 30% from the previous controlled rate of 9.8 pesos to the dollar.
They said they expect it could fall to 14.5 pesos to the dollar. That is the rate at which the currency has been trading on the black market.
Argentine Finance Minister Alfonso Prat-Gay said that the country's central bank had been given the right to buy pesos if the exchange rate fell too rapidly.
But he said the restrictions needed to be removed to improve the country's ailing economy. Exchange controls would end for all businesses, who would be allowed to buy as many dollars as they needed.
But ordinary Argentines would still face restrictions on the amount of dollars they could buy a month.
Shop owners said consumers could cut spending in the short term as they see their purchasing power reduced, especially when it comes to dollar-denominated imports.
The previous government of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner tried to end the buying of dollars four years ago, but prohibition simply fuelled the black economy.
Since then, informal street sellers in Buenos Aires offer foreign currency at much higher rates than the official one.
Argentines also found other creative ways to circumvent restrictions, from organised day-trips to neighbouring Uruguay to get US dollars from cash machines to Bitcoin trading.
The new policy may satisfy middle and upper-class Argentines who will now be able to get their dollars freely.
But they are also fearful of the consequences: higher prices and a potential devaluation of their currency.

Summary: Argentina's peso has lost about 30% of its value after the country lifted currency controls.
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Article: Attorney General Eric Holder said the alleged breaches were "significant" and demanded "an aggressive response".
US prosecutors say the officers stole trade secrets and internal documents from five companies and a labour union.
China denied the charges and warned the case would harm US-China relations.
By Carrie GracieBBC China editor
China always insists it is a victim of hacking, not a perpetrator. And when US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden appeared in Hong Kong a year ago with evidence of US hacking into Chinese networks, Beijing felt vindicated.
The US acknowledges that it conducts espionage but says unlike China it does not spy on foreign companies and pass what it finds to its own companies.
Beijing typically shrugs this off as a smear motivated by those who find its growing technological might hard to bear. But to see five named officers of the People's Liberation Army indicted by a US grand jury is not something that can be brushed aside so easily. China has already announced the suspension of co-operation with the US on an internet working group. And once it has had time to digest this loss of face, it is likely to consider more serious retaliation.
In Washington on Monday, Mr Holder said a grand jury had laid hacking charges against the Chinese nationals, the first against "known state actors for infiltrating US commercial targets by cyber means".
He identified the alleged victims as Westinghouse Electric, US Steel, Alcoa Inc, Allegheny Technologies, SolarWorld and the US Steelworkers Union.
"The alleged hacking appears to have been conducted for no reason other than to advantage state-owned companies and other interests in China, at the expense of businesses here in the United States," Mr Holder said.
He said the US government rejected economic espionage as a trade tactic.
"As President Obama has said on numerous occasions, we do not collect intelligence to provide a competitive advantage to US companies, or US commercial sectors," Mr Holder said.
In response to the charges, the Chinese...

Summary: The US has charged five Chinese army officers with hacking into private-sector American companies in a bid for competitive advantage, in the first cyber-espionage case of its kind.
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Article: The jihadists seized buildings on the eastern edge of the adjacent city of Tadmur on Thursday, but their push was reportedly halted by the Syrian army.
Syria's antiquities chief warned that if IS seizes the Unesco World Heritage site it will destroy everything there.
The group has ransacked and demolished several ancient sites in Iraq.
Palmyra has already suffered some damage during the four-year civil war.
It is situated in a strategically important area on the road between the capital, Damascus and the contested eastern city of Deir al-Zour, and close to gas fields
On Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that IS militants were mounting an assault on Tadmur, the modern town next to the ruins of Palmyra.
Twenty-six civilians in a village outside Tadmur were summarily killed by IS - at least 10 by beheading - on Thursday after being accused of collaborating with President Bashar al-Assad's government, Mr Abdul Rahman said.
IS itself claimed on Twitter that it had taken control of northern and eastern parts of Tadmur, and that it had shot down a Syrian air force MiG jet in the area.
Homs provincial governor Talal Barazi confirmed that al-Sukhanah, a town to the north-east, had fallen on Wednesday and said 1,800 families from the town were sheltering in Tadmur.
The Syrian Observatory said more than 70 soldiers and 40 militants had been killed in the battle for al-Sukhanah.
Rising out of the desert and flanked by an oasis, Palmyra contains the monumental ruins of a great city that was one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world, according to Unesco.
The site, most of which dates back to the 1st to the 2nd Century when the region was under Roman rule, is dominated by a grand, colonnaded street.
At the southern end of the 1.1km street is the great temple of Bel, considered one of the most important religious buildings of the 1st Century in the East and of unique design.
Syria's director of antiquities, Maamoun Abdul Karim, said that if Palmyra were to fall to IS, it would be an...

Summary:


The UK government has announced a new £1.5bn fund to help the UK's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) grow.
The fund will be available to businesses that have been trading for at least three years and have a turnover of less than £50m.
The fund will be

A petition calling for residents of the Chagos Islands to be allowed to return to their Indian Ocean homeland has been handed in to Downing Street.

Article: The scandal erupted less than two weeks after Michel Temer took over as the acting president of Brazil.
The story dominates the top headlines of the country's major media outlets, with many newspapers devoting several articles to the latest revelation.
Right-leaning newspaper O Globo leads with the headline "11 days later: Recording topples Juca, challenges Temer and alarms the PMDB", in reference to upheaval now facing the country's largest political party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), to which both the president and the minister belong.
O Globo's online coverage takes a different approach and highlights interim President Temer's reaction to the scandal.
The site features an editorial entitled "Temer's hour", which argues that Mr Temer's presidency is legitimate but that he would be better off removing Mr Juca from office permanently.
Many see this latest revelation as a serious challenge for the interim president.
Carolina Bahia, a columnist for newspaper Zero Hora, writes that "Michel Temer has hardly started to govern and already faces his first scandal" in a piece entitled "Juca is just the beginning".
Centre-left publication Carta Capital takes the same view, with the headline "Juca: Understand the first crisis of Temer's government".
The article notes that Mr Juca saw President Dilma Rousseff's impeachment as an opportunity to divert attention away from the massive corruption investigation dubbed Lava Jato, or Operation Car Wash.
Folha de Sao Paulo, which first published news of the leaked recordings, also notes the link to Ms Rousseff's impeachment.
In his weekly column for Folha, left-wing politician Marcelo Freixo says the recordings "show that the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff had nothing to do with combating corruption".
Several publications feature Ms Rousseff's reaction to the leaked tapes.
Centre-right daily Correio Braziliense writes "Dilma says the recording shows the need to remove her from post so as to stop the Lava Jato corruption investigation", in an article...

Summary: Brazilian press have been provided with yet more drama to dissect, following the leaked recordings of Planning Minister Romero Juca allegedly conspiring to obstruct a huge corruption investigation.
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Article: How and when water got trapped in volcanic lunar rocks is a huge and open question for planetary scientists.
This international team has compared the chemistry of Apollo mission samples with various types of space rock.
They say that icy, early asteroids were the likely source of most of the water.
After such impacts the Moon's developing crust could have trapped the water in the cooling magma.
Much later, volcanic activity spewed some of that magma back onto the surface and, much later again, a precious few of those volcanic rocks were bagged by Apollo astronauts.
Tightly bound up in the rocks is a trace of water: somewhere between 10 and 300 parts per million (0.001-0.03%).
"It's not pools of water, it's not lakes of water, it's not frozen ice. When we're talking about interior - or magmatic - water, we're talking about water that is locked up in minerals," said Dr Jessica Barnes from the Open University in the UK, first author of the new paper in Nature Communications.
The source of that water is a topic of ongoing debate.
Previous research revealed that some of these watery deposits have a similar molecular signature to water-rich "carbonaceous chondrite" meteorites that occasionally reach the Earth from the asteroid belt.
So was water brought to the Moon by chunks of asteroid? Perhaps via the very early Earth, which was similarly bombarded before the brutal collision that created our satellite?
Or, as other researchers have suggested, did lunar water arrive in comets - the Solar System's more distant, icy travellers?
Working with colleagues in the US and France, Dr Barnes modelled various scenarios to explore what could have produced the chemistry of the Moon's water as we know it. To run these tests, they surveyed all the published results about the make-up of lunar rock samples and various possible contributors - from Earth rock to comets.
"We've taken an approach that's the most quantitative so far, in terms of deciphering which types of objects would have been impacting the Moon," she told BBC...

Summary: A smattering of water is buried deep inside the Moon and it arrived during the satellite's very early history, a new study concludes, when asteroids plunged into churning oceans of magma.
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Article: It is understood Supt Gerry Murray, who is head of road policing in Northern Ireland, was suspended from his post last month.
The 60-year-old, who recently featured in a BBC documentary, is one of the PSNI's longest serving police officers.
Last year, he led a group of officers as they marched for the first time at the St Patrick's Parade in New York.
The officers walked alongside members of An Garda Siochana.

Summary: A senior police officer has been suspended following an investigation by HM Revenue and Customs.
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Article: They were evicted from the British overseas territory in the 1960s to allow the UK government to lease Diego Garcia to the US to use as an airbase.
Many residents of what is the largest of the Chagos Islands ultimately resettled in Crawley, West Sussex.
The petition demands the islanders' right to return home is respected.
TV presenter Ben Fogle, patron of the UK Chagos Support Organisation, handed in the petition, which had been signed by more than 2,500 people.
"Diego Garcia, which is one of the main prohibiters to the islanders returning, is up for renewal in the next year or so," Mr Fogle said.
"We're asking this government to think about whether these islands should belong to the people who inhabited them for a very long time, or to the US government who have used it for renditions - for effectively torture."
He said he had visited the islands and found "houses still as they were left" and "the graveyard strangled by vegetation having been left untended".
"For me, being a Brit, it was probably one of the things I'm most ashamed about, that I'm part of a country that forcibly evicted these people and is now refusing their right to return," he said.
Mr Fogle added: "How wrong is that, that I've been able to be there and they can't?"
Henry Smith, the Conservative MP for Crawley, said: "I think we can't turn back time but what we can do is rectify the problem as soon as possible."
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "The government is committed to its ongoing review of resettlement policy towards the British Indian Ocean Territory."

Summary:


The Bank of England has cut its base rate by 0.25 percentage points to 0.5 per cent.
The Bank of England has cut its base rate by 0.25 percentage points to 0.5 per cent.
The Bank of England has cut its base rate by 0.25 percentage points to 0.

Continued expectations of an interest rate rise are prompting more homeowners to lock into a new mortgage deal, figures suggest.

Article: NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) said only those under 40 who had not previously been treated for a drink problem would be eligible.
Severe alcohol-associated hepatitis patients would account for 1% of all liver transplants each year.
One in five liver transplants currently performed in the UK is alcohol-related.
Transplanting livers in heavy drinkers has always been a controversial issue.
In the past, debate has focused on the fact that alcohol-related liver disease is self-inflicted, and concerns that patients would not look after their new liver post-transplantation.
This has led the public and the medical profession to be wary of supporting transplantation in patients with alcoholism.
People with severe alcohol-associated hepatitis (SAAH) had not previously been considered for transplants because the severity of their illness meant they were often very ill when first seen by a clinician and were unlikely to survive a period of abstinence before transplantation.
However, a French study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2011 suggested that early transplantation in some patients with SAAH could produce positive outcomes and increase survival rates.
As part of the pilot scheme run by NHSBT, 20 people with severe alcohol-associated hepatitis will be identified and put on waiting list for a liver transplant, provided they meet the strict criteria.
This process could take up to two years, NHSBT said.
An NHSBT spokesperson said: "We are looking at a small group of people in the UK who are eligible for the scheme and we want to see if the results we get are similar to those of the French study."
Around one in five liver transplants currently performed in the UK is alcohol-related.
Approximately 900 liver transplants are carried out every year.
The government's chief medical officer said recently that growing numbers of people in England were dying from liver disease caused by heavy drinking and unhealthy eating.
Andrew Langford, chief executive of the British Liver Trust, said he welcomed the...

Summary: People with a severe alcohol-related liver disease will be eligible for liver transplants for the first time in the UK under a pilot scheme.
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Article: Daniel Seggie, 31, inflicted multiple knife wounds on Geoff, 59, at the house in Marylebone Crescent, Mackworth, Derby.
Geoff Seggie, described by his family as a "hero", was found dead at the house on 1 December.
His son, who admitted murder at a hearing on 18 May, was given a life sentence at Nottingham Crown Court.
The prosecution described how Daniel Seggie carried out the "vicious assault" in his father's bedroom, using a knife and hammer.
The court heard how he then tried to cover his tracks, making calls from his father's phone and lying to his own family.
Two days later Mr Seggie's body was found with 80 separate injuries. Police said the evidence showed he was alive and struggling for at least part of the assault.
Geoff Seggie's son Ben said in a statement: "Geoff was an amazing dad. He was always there for his family and friends.
"Life will never be the same without him. We miss him so much."
Det Con Insp Emlyn Richards, who led the investigation, said: "Daniel Seggie has never spoken about the reasons this attack took place or his motivation for doing so.
"This has left Geoffrey's family, friends and associates second guessing about the events that unfolded at Marylebone Crescent on the evening of Tuesday, November 29."

Summary: A man who stabbed his father to death at their home has been jailed for a minimum of 20 years.
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Article: What are the main changes?
The aim is to slim down the content of the curriculum in almost all subjects, though not in primary English, maths or science.
The government says the new curriculum does not tell teachers "how to teach", but concentrates on "the essential knowledge and skills every child should have" so that teachers "have the freedom to to shape the curriculum to their pupils' needs".
The new curriculum covers primary school pupils, aged five to 11, and secondary schools pupils up to the age of 14.
A new curriculum for 15- and 16-year-olds will come into force from September 2015.
Which subjects are affected?
There are changes to the content of all subjects in the national curriculum. A summary can be found on the Department for Education website.
The government appointed a panel of experts, which included subject specialists and teachers, to devise the new curriculum.
Their brief was to emulate the world's most successful school systems, including those in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Canadian state of Alberta and the US state of Massachusetts, in international tests.
The aim was to combine best international practice with best practice from schools in England.
The government says the curriculum has a strong focus on basic skills "plus real freedom for teachers to decide how best to teach".
It says it wants pupils to leave school with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in the real world.
Some experts have complained the new primary curriculum will require children to cover subjects, particularly in maths and science, up to two years earlier than their peers in top-performing nations.
Children in England will start looking at fractions aged five or six - but in Finland they do not start using fractions until they are about nine years old.
The history curriculum has also divided experts, with some academics welcoming it and others complaining it is list like and narrow.
Yes. Academies, state-funded schools in England outside local authority control, have significant freedoms in what they...

Summary: A new curriculum will be taught in all local authority schools in England from the start of the autumn term.
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Article: Remortgaging loans approved in July hit the highest level for nearly seven years, the Bank of England data show.
Mortgage approvals for house purchases also rose to a 17-month high.
Both remain far below the peak of housing market activity, but signal an assumption of imminent rate rises despite market turmoil in recent days.
The economic situation in China created a shock across world markets and some analysts suggested this could delay a rise in the Bank rate in the UK.
The governor of the Bank of England was more circumspect in a recent speech and has hinted that a rate rise could be seen next year.
Homeowners have been increasingly signing up to mortgage deals, especially by remortgaging, in anticipation of a rate rise. This has been encouraged by competition between lenders battling over borrowers' custom.
Howard Archer, chief UK economist for IHS Global Insight, said the Bank's latest figures were "compelling evidence" that housing market activity was firming up.
"It is possible that July's performance may have been lifted by some house buyers looking to move quickly to try and lock in a low mortgage interest rate before they start rising," he added.

Summary: