Spotify has announced it is adding more non-music content to its app.

Article: Between 2008 and 2016 investors quintupled the amount of money they put into such platforms, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said.
Companies such as Hargreaves Lansdown, Nutmeg and Interactive Investor now manage £592bn of savers' money.
The FCA will examine whether such firms help investors make good decisions.
It follows a previous inquiry into those who manage the funds that are sold on investment platforms, which found high levels of profitability.
The study found typical profit margins in the industry of 36% - and concluded that investors should be quoted a single fee, rather than a complex mix of charges.
Savers putting money into investment platforms pay a fee to each fund manager, as well as to the platform itself.
"With the increasing use of platforms, and the issues raised by our previous work, we want to assess whether competition between platforms is working in the interest of consumers," said Christopher Woolard, the FCA's executive director of strategy and competition.
"Platforms have the potential to generate significant benefits for consumers, and we want to ensure consumers are receiving these benefits in practice."
The FCA will look at:
One of the UK's biggest investment platforms, Hargreaves Lansdown, saw its share price hit in May when US firm Vanguard announced a cut-price service for UK investors.
Vanguard plans to charge investors a maximum fee of 0.15% on its tracker funds, capped at £375 a year.
Hargreaves Lansdown charges 0.45% to hold investments in its Vantage service.
The FCA will also look at investment platforms' "model portfolios" where they suggest recommended funds to their clients.

Summary: The City regulator is to examine whether savers get value for money from so-called investment "platforms" - otherwise known as fund supermarkets.
###
Article: In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 closed down 0.95% at 5,226.40.
Analysts said iron ore prices were continuing to move towards the decade low reached earlier this year.
The commodity is Australia's biggest export and was trading at $44.20 a tonne in China on Monday.
Independent economist and commodities specialist Andy Xie has predicted that iron ore prices will fall below $40 a tonne before the end of the year.
He said prices could even sink as low as $30 for much of next year as demand from China continues to decline.
Three of the biggest iron ore producers recorded falls in their Sydney-listed shares. BHP Billiton closed down 1.8%, Rio Tinto fell 1.5%, while Fortescue Metals was the biggest loser, sinking 3.2%.
Japan's Nikkei index spent much of the day flat but made gains late in the day to close up 0.23% at 19,924.89 points.
Shares in the country's troubled electronics maker Sharp surged more than 35% at one point on reports its lenders may waive some of its debts.
Without citing sources, Kyodo News said a state-backed fund may invest in Sharp if Japanese lenders agreed to write off an unspecified amount of its debt.
Investors seem to shrug off fresh numbers released earlier on Tuesday that showed Japan's manufacturing activity expanded in November as new orders and output increased.
The Markit/Nikkei Japan Flash Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) rose from 52.4 in October to 52.8 in November. A reading above 50 indicates expansion.
The PMI figure was the highest it had been since March last year - ahead of the introduction of the country's sales tax.
Marcel Thieliant from Capital Economics said the reading suggested Japan's economy had returned to growth this quarter.
"Today's survey confirms that economic activity is on the mend. But with large amounts of spare capacity dampening price pressures, we still think that the Bank of Japan may have to step up the pace of easing in coming months," he added.
In China, the Shanghai Composite index closed up 0.2% at 3,616.11, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng...

Summary: Asian markets experienced mixed fortunes on Tuesday following declines in the US and as slumping iron ore prices continued to hurt mining companies.
###
Article: A report for the Department of Environment and Climate Change (Decc) estimates that greenhouse gas emissions would be similar to home-grown gas but lower than imported gas or coal.
Shale gas could benefit the UK, through energy security and jobs, Secretary of State Ed Davey told the Royal Society.
Greenpeace said low carbon renewables were a better way to meet energy needs.
The new report, by Decc chief scientific advisor Prof David MacKay and Dr Timothy Stone, senior advisor to the Secretary of State, looked at the potential greenhouse gas emissions from the production of shale gas in the UK.
It concluded that the net effect would be "relatively small".
Prof MacKay told BBC News: "The emissions from shale gas in the UK will be similar to those of liquefied natural gas.
"And secondly, as with any fossil fuel reserve if you put extra fossil fuel into play, if you don't also have global climate policies then we think it's credible that global cumulative emissions could increase.
"So we think it's essential that shale gas use should be accompanied by continued global climate policy action."
In a speech to the Royal Society, Ed Davey responded to the findings.
He said: "Gas, as the cleanest fossil fuel, is part of the answer to climate change, as a bridge in our transition to a green future, especially in our move away from coal.
"We have to face it: North Sea gas production is falling and we are become increasingly reliant on gas imports. So UK shale gas could increase our energy security by cutting those imports.
"Home-grown gas, just like home-grown renewables and new nuclear, also provides jobs for our people and tax revenues for our society."
He added that regulation to protect the local environment must be followed "to the letter".
However, Leila Deen, energy campaigner at Greenpeace, said Mr Davey was "endorsing the use of a fuel that remains highly polluting, damages our countryside and scientists say must be largely left underground".
"The solution to our energy problems is still a roll-out of high-tech...

Summary: UK shale gas exploration would have a "similar" carbon footprint to other fossil fuels, according to a new study.
###
Article: A drop in coach parties and fewer stallholders have been blamed for the event making just £4,000.
The figures follow a £100,000 loss in 2012, but the City of Lincoln Council maintains the event's future is secure.
It is however, proposing a 12% rise in pitch fees, which a business leader said could drive stallholders away.
Linda Wardale, chairman of the Bailgate Traders' Group, said traders may not be able to afford the increase.
"There will not be the variety of stalls there and it could be a potential flop," she said.
The 2012 event was heavily criticised for a one-way system, introduced to tackle overcrowding.
While coach numbers have declined in recent years, a council report said there was "a significant decrease" in 2013. The council said there were 438 in 2012, compared to 314 last Christmas.
There was also a fall in the number of stalls - from 243 to 199 - and parts of the castle were unavailable.
The report admits "it is increasingly clear that a fundamental review of the business plan is required" and recommends a 12% increase in pitch fees - to a maximum of £1,411.
Council leader Ric Metcalfe, said that some stall holders were making a "significant amount of money" at the Christmas market and should contribute to the running costs.
"Given there are very significant overhead costs falling on the council primarily but other public authorities as well, it's only fair that those businesses should share the infrastructure costs of maintaining the event," he said.

Summary: Lincoln Christmas market risks becoming a "flop" after it was revealed the 2013 event made nearly £80,000 less than predicted.
###
Article: The accounts appear to be controlled by bots - automated software - that uses a variety of names and photos.
They respond to users' greetings and then engage in a brief conversation before recommending the app and providing a download link.
Tinder told Techcrunch news site it was taking steps to remove the accounts.
But one security expert said it would be difficult for the firm to stamp out such abuse of its service.
Internet Gaming Gate (Igg), the China-based company that publishes the game, said it had taken action to address the problem after discovering the culprit was an advertising publisher registered in the English town of Farnham
"Using the information provided in the [Techcrunch] article, we were able to trace the source of the spam bots and narrow [it] down to a few advertising providers within an hour, and firmly requested that all such campaigns be stopped immediately," said spokesman Deyang Zheng.
"Igg strives to deliver fun, quality experiences to our players with fairness and utmost professionalism, and we are angered by the unfair and unethical conduct of the individual who was behind this selfish act. Our sincere apologies go to the Tinder users who were affected."
Tinder is a free-to-use smartphone app that has seen rapid growth since it launched 18 months ago.
People sign up by giving the app permission to access their Facebook account, from which Tinder obtains pictures and information about their interests.
Members then select profiles they find attractive. If two people pick each other they can begin messaging each other.
At the end of February Tinder's founder, Sean Read, said that the service was generating about 10 million such introductions each day, and that each active user was logging in about seven times over the 24-hour period.
This highly engaged user-base presents a tempting target to spammers who now struggle to avoid email junk folders.
"Spam is becoming a lot more sophisticated, and to be effective it has to be targeted," explained Alan Woodward, an independent security...

Summary: Dating app Tinder's members have complained of being spammed by fake profiles that urge them to download a video game.
###
Article: The new offerings include news bulletins from National Public Radio, the BBC and others as well as longer video and audio podcasts and clips.
Spotify has more than 60 million regular users across 58 countries. It says about 20% pay for its premium ad-free subscription services.
Chief executive Daniel Ek said that represents more than half of the global market in "streaming dollars".
The company said it had also taken steps to match the music tracks it suggests to the various activities users engage in throughout their day.
This includes a new running mode, which matches music to the pace of the subscriber based on feedback from their smartphone's built-in sensors.
The firm said it had also created a new type of audio format that allows a song's tempo to be altered to match a runner's footsteps while keeping it in tune.
And it has commissioned new track from composers and DJs including Tiesto, who made a brief appearance at the firm's New York press conference.
"If it works, the ability of Spotify to adapt what it plays you as the day progresses is interesting," commented Andy Malt, editor of the music business news service Complete Music Update.
"Being faced with a choice of tens of millions of tracks is daunting for a lot of users when they open the app, and while that catalogue is a big sell for the engaged music fans who were streaming's early adopters, it's less appealing to mainstream users.
"The less users have to interact the more music the app can serve up to them. Adding non-music content, including podcasts and video, also has the potential to keep users within the Spotify app for longer."
One of the new pieces of audio content is BBC Minute - an "alternative" round-the-clock news service, aimed at a youth audience, already offered to other digital platforms.
Launched in April, it is a 60 second conversation of shareable news, updated every half hour.
In addition, for a year-long period, overseas Spotify users will be able to listen to around 50 speech-only podcasts from BBC stations.
"These...

Summary:


Not for the first time over the five years of Greece's euro crisis - or the eurozone's Greece crisis - I am confused.

Article: We know that stars slow down over time, but until recently there was little data to support exact calculations.
For the first time, a US team has now measured the spin speed of stars that are more than one billion years old - and it matches what they predicted.
The finding resolves a long-standing challenge, allowing astronomers to estimate a star's age to within 10%.
The work was presented in Seattle at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society and also appears in the journal Nature.
Establishing the age of stars is a central question in astronomy - much like dating fossils is crucial to studying evolution.
This method applies to "cool stars" - suns about the size of our own, or smaller. These are the most common stars in our galaxy and they also last for a long time.
"They act as lamp posts, lighting up even the oldest parts of our galaxy," said senior author Dr Soren Meibom from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Cool stars also host the vast majority of earth-like planets that we have spotted in the distance.
Most properties of a star like ours - like its size, mass, brightness and temperature - stay about the same throughout most of its life.
This makes figuring out a star's age decidedly tricky.
The solution of measuring spin was first proposed in the 1970s and was dubbed "gyrochronology" in 2003.
"A cool star spins very fast when it's young, but just like a top on a table it gets slower and slower as the star grows older," Dr Meibom said.
But it is difficult to see a star spinning. Astronomers use sun spots, travelling across the surface, and these only dim its brightness by much less than 1%.
Old stars are particularly problematic, because they have fewer and smaller spots.
Dr Meibom's team used images from the very sensitive Kepler space telescope, which has been trailing Earth around the Sun since 2009.
They managed to measure spin speeds for 30 stars in a specific cluster known to be 2.5 billion years old.
This cluster, known as NGC 6819, plugs what Dr Meibom called a...

Summary: Astronomers have proved that they can accurately tell the age of a star from how fast it is spinning.
###
Article: BBC Wales revealed five Welsh Tory MPs have urged George Osborne to reverse the announcement, made in November.
They said the policy change was "disrespectful" and breached the Conservatives' 2015 election manifesto.
But Cardiff North MP Craig Williams said there was no "big row" and AMs needed "some fiscal responsibility".
Welsh Secretary Stephen Crabb has said devolving income tax powers would mean "better government for Wales".
Some of the MPs opposed to the move hope to raise the issue at a meeting with Mr Osborne on Wednesday.
The five - Byron Davies, Chris Davies, David Davies, James Davies and David Jones - have written to him on the issue
"This is a line in the sand for many of us," one MP said.
Another said it would be "very embarrassing" for the Conservative UK government if almost half of the party's 11 Welsh MPs were to vote against the measure.
The letter said that during the general election campaign Tory candidates "were able to reassure people that the assembly would not get tax raising powers without the consent of the people of Wales".
"To drop the commitment to a referendum would put us in breach of a clear manifesto commitment," it continued.
The Welsh Conservative manifesto for the 2015 general election made reference to an "expectation that the Welsh government will hold a referendum on income tax powers".
The five MPs said people in Wales should not be "treated differently in this respect from the people of Scotland, who did have a separate vote on the issue of tax varying powers" in the 1997 referendum on devolution.
"We frankly feel that to impose such powers without a referendum would be disrespectful to the Welsh people," they added.
Mr Williams responded: "You're going to have cases with business rates being devolved to areas like Manchester, where Manchester City Council might have more fiscal responsibility than the entire Welsh nation," Mr Williams said.
"It's about time they [the assembly] had some responsibility for income of money as well as spending it on their pet...

Summary: A Tory MP backing plans to devolve some income tax powers to Wales without a referendum has said he does not expect the chancellor to reverse his decision.
###
Article: George, a male swan, was shot with a crossbow in Pittville Park, Cheltenham, last week, leaving him seriously injured.
The creature has now been released back into the wild after he was treated at Vale Wildlife Hospital near Tewkesbury.
A Gloucestershire Police spokeswoman said a 48-year-old man was arrested under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. He has been released on bail.
The swan, along with his breeding partner Zelda, has been a fixture on Pittville lakes for a number of years.
A fundraising campaign to pay for George's treatment and a reward to catch the person responsible has raised over £6,000.

Summary: A man has been arrested on suspicion of shooting a swan.
###
Article: The Liberal Democrat AM voted with Plaid Cymru against Article 50 despite the Labour group opposing the motion.
Mr Davies suggested some Labour AMs were "sore" over the Senedd vote.
Mr Jones's spokesman said it was recognised the Lib Dems were in a different position on the matter.
Article 50 of the European Union Lisbon treaty is the trigger that would allow UK ministers to start the process to leave the EU.
The UK government wants to set Article 50 in motion by the end of March.
Mr Davies himself campaigned for Vote Leave at the referendum last year - his group joined Labour and UKIP in voting against the Plaid Cymru proposal in the Senedd on Tuesday.
Only 10 AMs supported the motion to oppose Article 50 being triggered without assurances over the single market, versus 46 against.
The vote if passed would have been advisory and would not have affected the process.
Mr Davies questioned whether collective responsibility - the principle that ministers should always support the government - had been lifted in the Labour-led Welsh Government for the Lib Dem minister.
He told BBC Wales he had no issue with how Ms Williams voted, but questioned how he "could have her continuing in his cabinet".
"I want to know from the first minister, is he going to allow that to stand, or is he going to sack Kirsty Williams?"
"I think the question needs to be asked, was collective responsibility the order of the day yesterday, or had he lifted that," he said.
"In which case, if he lifted it for Kirsty Williams, I know of several Labour backbenchers who would have voted differently if they didn't have the whip imposed on them.
"It seems one rule for Labour backbenchers, another rule for Kirsty Williams".
Mr Davies, who said he spoke to three Labour backbenchers, said they had "expressed soreness to me because obviously they had an emergency group meeting last Wednesday where this was discussed".
"They were led to believe it was the government position and lo and behold after the vote they found that a member of that government, a...

Summary: Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies has questioned how First Minister Carwyn Jones can keep Kirsty Williams as education secretary after she voted against triggering Brexit.
###
Article: John Whittingdale said the licence fee would be extended so it no longer just applied to live television viewers.
He told the Oxford Media Convention he would bring forward the legislation "as soon as practicable", later adding it could be in this parliamentary session.
The BBC said it was "happy to have reached an agreement" on the issue.
Only UK TV licence holders can use the iPlayer to watch BBC programmes as they are broadcast live, but currently those without a licence can view the shows at a later date.
Mr Whittingdale said: "When the licence fee was invented, video on demand did not exist.
"And while the definition of television in the legislation covers live streaming, it does not require viewers to have a licence if they watch BBC programmes through the iPlayer even if it is just a few minutes after transmission.
"The BBC works on the basis that all who watch it pay for it.
"Giving a free ride to those who enjoy Sherlock or Bake Off an hour, a day or a week after they are broadcast was never intended and is wrong."
An agreement was reached between the government and the BBC last July that the government would update licence fee legislation, as part of negotiations that saw the corporation agreeing to cover the cost of providing free licences for over-75s.
In his keynote speech, Mr Whittingdale said: "Having discussed this with the BBC and the BBC Trust, I will be bringing forward, as soon as practicable, secondary legislation which will extend the current TV licensing regime, not only to cover those watching the BBC live but also those watching the BBC on catch-up through the iPlayer."
Speaking later, Mr Whittingdale said an order would have to be drafted and agreed by Parliament on the licensing change, which he would try to get passed "as soon as we can".
He added: "It could be this session if I can get it done and get a slot."
The current parliamentary session ends in July.
A BBC spokeswoman said: "We are happy to have reached an agreement with the Secretary of State on how to close the iPlayer...

Summary: The culture secretary has vowed to end the iPlayer "loophole" soon, so those watching catch-up TV do not get "a free ride".
###
Article: My confusion stems from the proposals for tax, benefit and economic reform submitted by the Greek government to secure, at the very last minute of the last hour, a deal from their creditors to avoid tumbling out of the euro.
Having obtained a copy of this paper, headed "Greece: Prior Actions - Policy Commitments and Actions to be taken in consultation with the EC/ECB/IMF staff", it feels very familiar.
That familiarity stems from its great similarity to the bailout proposals put to Greece by the creditors - the eurozone governments, the European Central Bank and the IMF - last month.
Pretty much everything wanted by the creditors is there - with the odd tweak or softening, but nothing which looks as though it ought to be noxious to them.
So there is a pledge for budget surpluses rising in steps to 3.5% of GDP or national income by 2018; VAT would be raised to three rates of 23% (the standard rate), 13% (for food, energy, hotels and water) and 6% (for medicine and books) - increases that would raise revenue equivalent to 1% of GDP; and Athens is eating the dust of comprehensive reforms of pensions to make them more affordable; and so on.
So here's why I am a bit baffled.
Only a few days ago the Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras won an overwhelming mandate from the Greek people, in a referendum, to reject more-or-less these bailout terms.
And today, on the back of that popular vote, he is signing up to the supposedly hated bailout.
This is big politics that would make Lewis Carroll proud.
Does that mean the eurozone can go back to life as normal, of inadequate economic performance but Greek Armageddon deferred (again)? Is a rescue done and dusted?
Not yet.
Tsipras has to get these proposals through the Greek parliament today - though his pax of earlier this week with the main opposition parties will surely deliver that (at the price of the splintering away of some of his own supporters).
Then there is the small question of whether eurozone ministers will stump up the 35bn euros requested by Greece from the...

Summary:

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A prototype patch could help the repair the damage caused by a heart attack, scientists say.

Article: Fighting between pro-Russia separatists and government troops in the area has prevented access to the site, they add.
Earlier, Malaysia said it had struck a deal with the rebels to allow international police at the site.
MH17 crashed on 17 July, killing all 298 people on board. The rebels have been accused of shooting it down.
Russia has suggested the plane could have been shot down by the Ukrainian military - an allegation Ukraine denies.
The investigators, who are currently in Donetsk, have struggled to gain access to the rebel-controlled crash site.
"There is fighting going on. We can't take the risk," said Alexander Hug, of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
"The security situation on the way to the site and on the site itself is unacceptable for our unarmed observer mission," he added.
The eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk have been gripped by heavy fighting as government forces try to retake rebel strongholds.
In the latest fighting in Donetsk, at least 13 civilians were reported to have been killed in Horlivka, north of the regional capital, as troops try to seize the town.
Shelling was also reported close to the MH17 crash site, near the town of Grabove, on Sunday.
Rebels have prevented journalists going to the site and Ukrainian government forces are said to be nearby, says the BBC's Tom Burridge, in eastern Ukraine.
A total of 227 coffins containing the remains of the victims have been sent for identification to the Netherlands, which is leading the crash investigation.
The first MH17 victim has been identified, though officials did not reveal any details.
Officials say the exact number of bodies already collected will be determined only after forensic experts have completed their examination.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Sunday that he had reached an agreement with Ukrainian separatist leader Aleksander Borodai to allow international police access to the site in order to "provide protection for international crash investigators".
Australian Prime...

Summary: Dutch experts have cancelled plans to head to the site of the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine, international officials say.
###
Article: Andrew Burgess had more than 1,000 illegal images and videos on his laptop, Carlisle Crown Court was told.
One of the videos featured a woman and a dog, while almost 200 of the images were in the most serious category.
The 57-year-old of Ridley Road in the city told the court he was "deeply sorry" for what he had done.
Burgess, who admitted six offences, including three counts of making indecent photographs of children, was handed an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for a year.
The court was told that police visited his home in April 2014 and recovered material from his laptop and a memory stick.
The supermarket shelf stacker, was not represented by a lawyer in court, told Judge Barbara Forrester: "I am deeply sorry and ashamed for what I have done."
Burgess was also given a rehabilitation requirement and made subject to the terms of a sexual harm prevention order for five years.
He must sign the sex offenders register for the same period.

Summary: A man caught with indecent images of children and pornography including a still featuring a woman and an octopus has been given a suspended jail term.
###
Article: South Yorkshire Police officers filled up with the incorrect fuel on nine occasions and Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust staff 19 times.
The ambulance service said devices to prevent mistakes had been fitted in 2013, cutting errors by 66%.
The police force is looking at ways to cut the "unnecessary expense".
Details of the repair bills were uncovered by the Sheffield Star under the Freedom of Information Act.
Ambulance bosses spent £3,605 repairing 19 vehicles from its 900-strong fleet between April 2010 and March 2014.
A spokeswoman said "fuel angels" had been fitted to vehicles to stop the wrong nozzle being inserted.
"As a result, the number of instances of an incorrect fuel type being used reduced by 66%, to only two occurrences in the 2013/14 financial year," she said.
South Yorkshire Police, which has a fleet of more than 750 vehicles, spent £4,506 during the same period.
Sarah Gilding, head of fleet management, said that while nine vehicles being affected was a "very small number in proportion to the size of our fleet", the force was looking at ways to "prevent incorrect fuelling of police vehicles".
South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service said it had no record of any vehicles being damaged by being wrongly fuelled.
Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "Damage caused by refuelling mistakes is a waste of taxpayers' cash and it also means fewer patrol cars are available when they are being fixed.
"Simple measures, such as reminders on fuel caps, should ensure officers do not make this simple but expensive error.
"Perhaps making repeat offenders responsible for the costs would see more care being taken."

Summary: Police officers and ambulance staff have run up an £8,111 repair bill by filling emergency vehicles with the wrong fuel in the past four years.
###
Article: The CPS Inspectorate found that CPS barristers in England and Wales were in danger of "losing" the jury because of how they presented cases.
Standards of CPS advocacy had taken a "step backwards" over the past three years, the report said.
The CPS said it disputed this and said conviction rates had been maintained.
Chief inspector Michael Fuller said the review took place against "a significant background of change" for the CPS with budget cuts and a reduction in the number of CPS advocates.
But he said a reliance on outside barristers to present cases posed a "real threat to in-house prosecutors' courtroom skills".
"This is compounded by the lack of exposure to Crown Court advocacy and scant opportunity to progress to crown advocacy," he said.
"This means with things as they are, there will be an inevitable drop in prosecution standards in the courts.
"The CPS needs to evaluate its advocacy provision."
A CPS spokesperson said: "We dispute criticism of the quality of CPS advocates and are disappointed that this finding has been made when the Inspectorate undertook no observations of advocates in action.
"The report's findings are based on our own assessment of advocates, which is specifically targeted at those that we believe need it most.
"It is, therefore, an inaccurate picture of the overall quality of our advocates."

Summary: Too many Crown Prosecution Service barristers lack "presence, self-confidence and flair" in Crown Court trials, a report has said.
###
Article: Both countries are blaming the other for the incident.
Vietnam's coast guard said the boat was encircled by 40 Chinese vessels before it was rammed, reports said.
But Chinese state media outlet Xinhua said Vietnam's boat collided with its vessel after "engaging in harassment".
The BBC's Martin Patience says that whatever the truth, the sinking is likely to further escalate tensions between the two countries, given that for the past few weeks they have engaged in skirmishes at sea.
The two are locked in an intensifying dispute over South China Sea territory.
Vietnam has protested against China moving its Haiyang Shiyou 981 rig to waters also claimed by Hanoi, at a spot near the disputed Paracel Islands.
Monday's incident happened just 17 nautical miles from the rig, Vietnamese reports said.
Xinhua on Tuesday claimed that Vietnam had "on many occasions dispatched various boats with the sole intention of harassing Chinese-linked companies drilling in that part of the ocean".
It said China had made serious representations to Vietnam to request that it "halt its harassing and destructive activities".
Vietnamese media meanwhile reported that China deployed "a fast attack missile boat and a minesweeper" around the rig on Monday.
China's refusal to move the rig sparked anti-China protests in Vietnam earlier in May, which left at least two people dead and several factories burnt.
Vietnamese legislators are preparing to sue China in an international court over the rig and other attacks on Vietnamese ships, according to local media.
China in recent days has upped its rhetoric on the South China Sea.
On Monday, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry addressed a recent attempt by Vietnam to list its historical claims to the Paracel Islands, saying it was "absurd and laughable".
On the same day, Xinhua published a commentary in English which accused Vietnam of wanting to "disturb and play up the normal drilling of Haiyang Shiyou 981".
Written by Chinese law professor Yang Zewei, the commentary states: "Hanoi should know...

Summary: A Vietnamese fishing boat has sunk after it collided with a Chinese vessel near a controversial oil rig in the South China Sea, amid tensions between the two nations.
###
Article: The early work, carried out on mice and pigs, reveals the protein-infused patch encourages the growth of healthy cells and leads to less scarring.
Scarring can be common after a heart attack, making the heart pump less effectively and sometimes fail.
Writing in the journal Nature, researchers say the patch may one day revolutionise treatment.
During an attack, muscle cells in the heart die because of a lack of blood flow and scientists believe repairing or replacing some of these cells may help reduce long-term damage.
In this trial an international team of researchers soaked a collagen patch in a protein known as Fstl1 and stitched it on to the hearts of animals who had experienced heart attacks.
Though the protein occurs naturally in healthy hearts, it becomes depleted in a key layer of the heart after an attack.
Two weeks later the hearts began to grow fresh muscle cells and new blood vessels, while showing signs of pumping more effectively.
Prof Pilar Ruiz-Lozano at Stanford University (which has patented the patch), said: "Many were so sick prior to getting the patch that they would have been candidates for heart transplantation.
"The hope is that a similar procedure could eventually be used in human heart attack patients who suffer severe heart damage."
Commenting on the study in Nature, Prof Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic at Columbia University, said the work "could lead to entirely new modalities for treating heart infarction".
But she cautioned that further studies needed to be done to understand whether this type of approach would work on larger animals and ultimately humans.

Summary:


A "boiling hot" water pipe burst above two classrooms at a new school, an MSP has revealed.

Article: Mr Nuttall, who was viewed as one of the favourites to succeed Mr Farage, said he had achieved his objective of getting the UK out of the EU.
The North West England MEP also said he would resign as deputy leader at the party's next national conference.
He would keep his European Parliament seat to "hold the government's feet to the fire" during Brexit talks, he said.
The UKIP leadership contest was triggered last week when Nigel Farage announced he was standing down.
He said his "political ambition has been achieved" in the wake of the EU exit vote, and he wanted his "life back".
Mr Nuttall had been backed by Neil Hamilton, UKIP group leader in the Welsh Assembly, as being "streets ahead" of anyone else in the contest.
Speaking at the party's North West conference in Liverpool, Mr Nuttall said: "I have been at the forefront of the campaign to leave the European Union for a decade now, and I believe I can step aside with my objective achieved and my head held high."
He added: "I will however remain leader of the UKIP delegation of MEPs in the European Parliament so that I can continue to hold the government's feet to the fire during the Brexit negotiations."
Mr Nuttall, who has also served as UKIP's chairman, was elected to the European Parliament in 2009.

Summary: UKIP deputy leader Paul Nuttall has ruled himself out of the race to replace Nigel Farage as party leader.
###
Article: Politically, one of the most significant announcements alongside the Co-op Group's annual results is the publication of the motions to be put before the annual general meeting on May 16.
Now, this may all seem horrendously dull until you arrive at Motion 9: "political donations".
Effectively, the board is asking the members of the Co-operative Group (that's its customers) whether they want to continue financially supporting the Co-operative Party. Or any party for that matter.
The Co-op Party includes among its members a number of prominent Labour MPs including Ed Balls, Stella Creasy and Chris Leslie. They stand as candidates of both the Co-operative Party and the Labour Party, and the two political movements have strong historical ties.
Last year Co-op Group gave Â£625,000 to the Co-op Party, a figure that was already down on previous years.
The motion says: "To determine the Society's policy on Political Donations
The board has carefully not given a view. But it is interesting to note that the new Co-op chairman, Allan Leighton, did sign a letter backing Labour in 2001.
There is also what is called a Members Motion, put forward by those who support continuing political donations of up to Â£1m a year to "support the objectives of the co-operative movement".
If that is voted through, that would mean the Co-op Group would continue financial support for the Co-op Party.
It is a fascinating debate, which brings together the very different membership model of the Co-op Group and the correct financial balance between business and politics.

Summary: The UK's biggest mutual organisation will vote on whether to stop financially supporting the Co-op Party, which has strong ties to Labour.
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Article: The 24,518 bitcoins will be sold mostly in blocks of 2,000 - each with a value of about £680,000.
Ernst & Young, the firm organising the auction, said the bitcoins had been "confiscated as proceeds of crime" but did not elaborate on the case.
One expert said the authorities had chosen a "safe" time to sell.
Australian newspapers have previously reported that 24,500 bitcoins were seized by police in the state of Victoria in 2013, after a man was arrested for dealing illegal drugs online.
In 2015, Victoria's Asset Confiscation Operations department "confirmed it had recently taken possession of 24,500 coins and would try to make the most of it", according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
"This is a significant amount of Bitcoin," Dr Garrick Hileman, economic historian at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, told the BBC. "It's about a week's worth of new Bitcoin that comes onto the market through mining."
Currently about 4,000 new bitcoins are generated a day as a reward for "miners" who offer their computer power to process Bitcoin transactions.
"Generally the view is that any time 10,000 bitcoins sell, the market price can be moved significantly."
The price of bitcoin rose to $530 (£362) on Friday, its highest level since August 2014.
Dr Hileman said the Australian authorities had chosen a "safe" time to sell because there is some uncertainty about what will happen to the value of Bitcoin in July.
"The Bitcoin protocol is designed to reduce the number of new bitcoins miners are given as a reward for processing transactions every four years.
"The reward will be halved on 14 July, so prices could go up due to the reduced supply of new bitcoins.
"But there is a question about whether security could decline, if rewards for miners are reduced significantly. So it's a safe time to sell, as there is no guarantee about what might happen in July."
The Australian Bitcoin auction, which will be open to bidders worldwide, is the first such sale outside of the US.
In 2014, the US Marshals Service began auctioning a...

Summary: A collection of bitcoins worth about £8m, which had been confiscated by police in Australia, will be auctioned off in June.
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Article: Mehdi Karroubi stopped eating and drinking to press the authorities to give him a public trial and remove security agents from his house.
The 70-year-old cleric was taken to a hospital in Tehran in the early hours of Thursday due to high blood pressure.
He suffers from heart disease and has required hospital treatment before.
Mr Karroubi and fellow reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi, 75, were candidates in Iran's disputed presidential election in 2009, which was won by the hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Millions of opposition supporters took to the streets to demand a re-run of the vote amid allegations of widespread fraud.
But Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insisted the result was valid and ordered a crackdown on dissent that saw dozens of opposition supporters killed and thousands detained.
Mr Karroubi and Mr Mousavi were placed under house arrest six years ago after the Arab Spring sparked fresh protests. They have never been formally charged.
Mr Karroubi's wife, Fatemeh, told the Saham News website on Wednesday that her husband would end his hunger strike only if the authorities met two demands.
The first was the removal of intelligence ministry agents inside their home as well as recently-installed security cameras, which she said had "no precedent before or after the [1979 Islamic] Revolution in any house arrest".
The second demand was for a date for a public trial to be set in accordance with the constitution. Mrs Karroubi said her husband would respect the verdict even though he "does not expect a fair trial".
But early on Thursday, his son Mohammad Taghi tweeted: "At 01:00, father was sent to hospital due to the hunger strike. Pray a lot."
He later told BBC Persian that his father was in intensive care and was still not accepting food or water.
In response, the doctors had put him on an intravenous drip, he added.
His father had a pacemaker fitted earlier this month and is prescribed heart medication, which he continued to take after starting the hunger strike.
Mohammad Karroubi also said...

Summary: An Iranian opposition leader held under house arrest since 2011 has been admitted to hospital a day after he began a hunger strike, his family says.
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Article: The Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) has written to ACNI to confirm the further cut in its budget.
The BBC understands that ACNI will hold an emergency board meeting next week to discuss how to deal with the reduction which will amount to around £800,000.
Its annual DCAL funding for 2015/16 was cut by 11% or £1.38m in March and now it has received a further in-year cut.
Earlier this year, the department asked ACNI to prepare for possible funding reductions.
As a result, last month, ACNI told 32 of Northern Ireland's largest arts organisations to plan for in-year cuts of up to 10%.
Those affected included the Lyric Theatre, the MAC, Playhouse Theatre in Londonderry, the Grand Opera House, NI Opera and the Ulster Orchestra.
Subsequently, in a statement, DCAL minister Carál Ní Chuilín said she had "no plans to reduce budgets to the organisations funded by my department".
However, DCAL has now confirmed that ACNI will, in fact, face an in-year cut of 8%.
There is no confirmation yet that ACNI will pass that cut on to the 32 arts organisations which receive core funding from ACNI's revenue funding stream, which is money the council receives directly from DCAL.
However, as the money they receive is paid in stages, each organisation may not now receive its full grant allocation.
No-one from ACNI or DCAL were available for comment, but the BBC spoke to a number of sources in arts organisations, who said that the impact of a further 8% cut would would be 'potentially calamitous' for many arts groups.

Summary: The Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) faces an in-year budget cut of approximately 8%, the BBC has learned.
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Article: Noss Primary in Wick is closed until 30 May following what Highland Council described as a "significant failure" at the Â£15.4m building on Tuesday.
Gail Ross, who is the local MSP and a councillor, said it was "a saving grace" that pupils were having their lunch and not in the rooms at the time.
The new school only opened to pupils last month.
It was built as a replacement for Wick's North and Hillhead primary schools.
Ms Ross, who helped to unveil the name for the new school in 2014, described Tuesday's burst as "worrying" and "concerning".
She told BBC Radio Scotland: "I spoke to the headmaster yesterday. He told me he came upon it in the corridor and its was like a sauna - a boiling hot water pipe had burst above two classrooms.
"The only saving grace was that the children were in the dining hall at the time because it doesn't bear thinking about the consequences of that if the kids had been in the classrooms."
Highland Council said the school was closed "due to a significant failure" of a hot water connection to the heating system in the ceiling of the east wing of the building.
The local authority said work repairing and testing the system was expected to take three days.
Graham Nichols, an officer at Highland Council, said: "While this is disappointing, the testing will give us confidence in the integrity of the water systems, and allow additional time for the building to dry out."

Summary:


Arriva Trains Wales drivers are set to go on strike for the second time this year, the Aslef union has said.

Article: The bank's researchers found that a number of coastal towns had seen "substantial" increases since 2005.
Of 59 coastal towns surveyed, 15 recorded price increases of at least 50% in that time.
Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire experienced the biggest rise with a 109% jump from an average price of £63,540 in 2005 to £132,920 last year.
Lerwick in Shetland, and Peterhead, also in Aberdeenshire, recorded increases of 102%.
Average prices in Lerwick rose from £77,500 to more than £156,000, while Peterhead jumped from £69,000 to £139,000.
Partly due to the substantial rises in the top performing towns, the average house price in Scotland's seaside communities rose by 38% between 2005 and 2014 - exceeding the 31% increase for Britain as a whole.
Nine of the 10 most expensive seaside towns are on the east coast and the 10 least expensive seaside towns are in western Scotland.
Nitesh Patel, housing economist at the Bank of Scotland, said: "Seaside towns are highly popular places to live in Scotland as they offer a unique lifestyle with a typically high quality of life and a healthy environment.
"A number of seaside towns have recorded substantial house price increases over the past decade, predominately on the east coast. The boom in the Scottish oil sector during the period also provided a boost to house prices, particularly in several towns along the Aberdeenshire coastline."

Summary: House prices in three Scottish seaside towns have doubled in 10 years, according to the Bank of Scotland.
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Article: PCC Sue Mountstevens, from Avon and Somerset, said, from June, the practice would be used only "in exceptional circumstances".
She said co-ordinated work would be done with hospitals and social workers.
Avon and Somerset Police said up to half its daily business was mental health-related and more should be done.
Ms Mountstevens said changing the policy was "absolutely the right thing to do".
"I have been working on this with our partners, for what feels like years and years, about taking someone [into a police cell] who is suffering from a mental illness, who has committed no crime," she said.
"And we should never be taking them into police cells. It's Dickensian that we're still doing this and that has to stop."
She also stressed that officers "are not nurses".
"They are not psychiatrically trained and we need to work with our partners in health to be able to those experts in to helping those officers make those decisions which are very critical," Ms Mountstevens explained.
The force is also running a street triage project at Bridewell police station in Bristol, which involves a mental health nurse monitoring calls as they come in.
Rebecca Aston, from Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, who is in charge of the triage team, said the workload "depended on what's reported over the airwaves".
"If the police officers felt they needed a fuller assessment, we would attend," she said.
An Avon and Somerset Police spokesman said up to 50% of its daily business was linked to mental health issues.
"That could be people going missing because of mental health problems, people running out of hospitals because they're not seen because of mental health problems or people in the community who should be getting more help and somehow it's failed for them," he said.

Summary: Putting mentally ill people suspected of no crime in police cells is "Dickensian", a Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) has said.
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Article: Opponents claim this right, known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), poses a threat to democracy.
But what is ISDS and why does it provoke such controversy?
Investor-state dispute settlements were devised by industrialised nations in the 1960s as a way to protect their companies' overseas investments against threats such as nationalisation by the country they invested in.
Supporters of ISDS say it offers a fair and impartial forum for the settlement of disputes between investors and states and, if appropriate, for deciding the amount of compensation an investor should get.
They claim that ISDS encourages companies to invest in a country they might otherwise shun through fear that, in a dispute with that nation, they would be unable to get a fair hearing in its domestic courts.
For an investment to be covered by ISDS, both the country where it is located and the investor's home nation must have agreed to its use. This is normally done through countries signing investment treaties with ISDS provisions.
There are now about 3,200 investment treaties globally. Most of these empower investors to launch ISDS actions.
So far, approximately 600 actions have been launched - though not all are reported. The number of cases has risen significantly in recent years.
Each case is judged by a panel of three arbitrators, selected by the government and the investor involved in the case from a small pool of specialist lawyers. The tribunals can meet anywhere convenient to the parties, with decisions based on the wording of treaties rather than national laws.
Cases can last for years and are costly. In addition to paying arbitrators' fees, each side has to employ a team of lawyers to argue its case.
Even when governments win, as they have in around 40% of the known cases, they often have to pay their own costs - averaging  around $4.5m per case.
When investors win, arbitrators can award damages. There is no appeal against the level of damages, which can amount to hundreds of millions and, in some cases, billions of...

Summary: Those protesting against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the proposed new trade treaty between the European Union and the United States, are part of a growing international opposition to pacts that allow multinational companies to sue governments whose policies damage their interests.
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Article: Google has filed a patent suggesting users stick out their tongue or wrinkle their nose in place of a password.
It says requiring specific gestures could prevent the existing Face Unlock facility being fooled by photos.
The Jelly Bean version of Android introduced the need for users to blink their eyes as a check, but users soon demonstrated it could be fooled.
A spokesman for Google was unable to comment on when the suggested technology might be implemented.
The document - which was filed in June 2012 but has only just been published - suggests the software could track a "facial landmark" to confirm a user not only looks like the device's owner but also carries out the right action.
It says examples of the requests that might be made include:
It says the check would work by comparing two images taken from a captured video stream of the user's face to see if the difference between them showed the gesture had been made.
The filing also notes several ways the software might check that the device was being shown a real person's face rather than doctored photographs.
These include studying other frames from the captured video stream to check that the person had made a sequence of movements to achieve the commanded gesture, and confirming all of the frames actually showed the person's face.
In addition it says the software could monitor if there were changes in the angle of the person's face to ensure the device was not being shown a still image with a fake gesture animated on top.
Such efforts might help address criticism that its current face detection software is insecure.
Last year Google introduced a "liveness check", requiring users to blink at their device to prevent its facial recognition program being fooled by a photograph.
However, a group of security researchers from the University of British Columbia posted a video online showing the feature could still be tricked.
They showed that an image of one of their members could be copied from Facebook, then - using graphics editing software - treated so that...

Summary: Users could soon be asked to pull a series of faces to unlock their Android phones or tablets.
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Article: "Hi, are you busy? I need you to process a wire transfer for me urgently. Let me know when you are free so I can send the beneficiary's details. Thanks."
Many of us would jump to it, eager to please.
But this message has all the hallmarks of CEO fraud, one of the most common forms of business email fraud targeting thousands of companies around the world every day.
Last year, Barbie manufacturer Mattel sent more than $3m (£2.3m) to a fraudulent account in China, after a finance executive was fooled by a message supposedly sent by new chief executive Christopher Sinclair.
Mattel eventually got its money back from China - where the company has significant business interests - but most companies usually have to take the hit after falling victim.
Earlier this year, for example, Austrian aerospace parts maker FACC fired its president and chief financial officer after losing a thumping €42m (£36m) in a business email fraud.
Some smaller companies targeted have gone bust as a result.
"Criminals have realised that hitting businesses rather than individuals can mean much bigger wins," says Orla Cox, director of security response at cyber security specialist Symantec.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says CEO fraud has shot up by 270% since January 2015 and has cost businesses around the world at least $3bn (£2.3bn) over the past three years.
Simply tricking companies into sending invoice payments to the wrong people costs UK companies about £9bn a year, according to research from invoicing company Tungsten Network.
And procurement fraud - charging for stuff that was never delivered; taking a bribe for awarding a contract to a particular supplier; or encouraging suppliers to charge over the odds then creaming off the difference - accounts for 88% of total UK fraud losses.
"Procurement fraud is becoming a big problem, with at least 20% of corporate spend categorised as 'unmanaged'," says Philip Letts, chief executive of enterprise services platform, Blur Group.
'Unmanaged' means there is insufficient...

Summary: What would you do if you received an email from your boss like this?
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Article: The 24-hour strike, on 1 February, comes as part of a row over conditions.
Members of the RMT and Aslef unions walked out on 4 January this year, the day many returned to work after the Christmas break.
The pay side of the dispute has been accepted, but Aslef previously claimed Arriva was trying to "railroad through" changes to terms and conditions.
A union statement read: "Aslef today announced that, in the light of Arriva Trains Wales' failure to offer a satisfactory resolution to the long and ongoing dispute with its drivers, our members will withdraw their labour for 24 hours."
Arriva said it "regretted" the disruption January's strike caused to more than 1,000 services it runs each day, when people complained of queues for tickets, long delays and overcrowding.

Summary:


A former professor at a prestigious music school used his "power and influence" in order to rape a female student, a court has heard.

Article: The two sides meet in a Championship play-off semi-final first leg on Sunday 1 May, with the second leg on 8 May.
The 29-year-old back row will now not feature in the play-offs.
"I appreciate supporters will feel very disappointed but the club has been put in a compromising position due to Nick's decision," Bedford chairman Geoff Irvine told the club website.
"As such, we feel that this is the correct course of action to take given the circumstances."
Bristol finished the regular Championship season top of the table, with Bedford fourth.
South Africa-born Fenton-Wells joined Bedford from Saracens two years ago and was named captain in 2014.

Summary: Bedford Blues have confirmed captain Nick Fenton-Wells will join Bristol at the end of the season.
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Article: The cubs lost their mother in February in the Ranthambore tiger reserve. Officials there say they believe the male tiger, named T25, is their father.
Wildlife experts say cubs are usually raised by their mothers and male tigers often kill cubs they come across.
Officials believe there is no recorded evidence of males behaving like this.
Photographs taken by hidden cameras in the forest reserve in India's northern Rajasthan state have documented the tiger's behaviour. The most recent images show the male tiger walking just a metre behind one of the cubs, Ranthambore field director Rajesh Gupta told the BBC.
The cubs, who are believed to be about eight months old now, were first seen on 29 January with their mother T5, a forest official in Ranthambore told the BBC.
He said after the tigress died on 9 February, the cubs were being reared in the wild by forest department staff.
The cubs are too young to make a kill on their own and are being provided with bait by forest staff.
"During my visit to the park on Monday 30 May, I was standing on the top of a cliff and I saw one of the cubs down below eating the kill," Mr Gupta says.
"It is seen in good health," he said. It appears as if the male tiger is allowing the cubs to eat their kill and not taking it for himself."
"It's very unusual," UM Sahai, Rajasthan's Chief Wildlife Warden, told the BBC from the state capital, Jaipur.
"Normally the tigress keeps an eye on the cubs while the father is a visitor, who is seen off and on, especially when he comes to mate with the tigress," he said.
Wildlife experts say that it is common for male tigers to never even set eyes upon the cubs they father - especially when the mother is not present and many male tigers will simply see cubs as food.
Ranthambore, one of India's best known tiger parks, has about 40 tigers, including about a dozen cubs.
According to the latest tiger census figures released in March, India has 1,706 of the big cats.
The country had 100,000 tigers at the turn of the last century but there has been a...

Summary: Forest officials in northern India say a male tiger appears to be caring for two orphaned cubs in an extremely rare display of paternal feeling.
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Article: The butterfly was brought back to the Daneway Banks site at Sapperton near Stroud 16 years ago.
Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust heralded the reintroduction as "incredibly successful" and launched a Â£50,000 bid last year to buy the reserve.
The trust said the chance to own it was "too tempting to ignore".
Roger Mortlock, trust chief executive, described the reserve as "one of our most treasured and diverse limestone grassland sites".
"We had been managing the site for over 40 years, so the opportunity to secure its future was too tempting to ignore," he said.
According to the trust, the reserve supports one of the largest known colonies of the large blue butterfly and it is estimated that up to 2,000 large blue butterflies may have emerged last year.
It is a stark difference from last century when numbers fell so dramatically that it was declared extinct in the UK in 1979.
A project was launched in the 1980s and 1990s to bring it back using larvae and eggs from Sweden to a few sites in the UK.

Summary: A "treasured" nature reserve which has seen a reintroduction to the Cotswolds of the rare Large Blue butterfly has been bought by a wildlife trust.
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Article: This year alone there have been two nationwide referendums on executive pay, one of which approved strict limits on bonuses and banned golden handshakes.
Now two more votes are on the way, the first on the introduction of a minimum wage, and the second, and most controversial, on a guaranteed basic income for all legal residents, whether they work or not.
A universal basic income sounds very radical, but it is not a new idea - Thomas More proposed it in his work Utopia in the 16th Century.
On the left, universal basic income is thought to be fairer, while on the right it is seen as the policy that would make welfare payments obsolete.
For Enno Schmidt, a key supporter of universal basic income, Switzerland is the perfect place, and 2013 the perfect time, to launch a campaign to introduce it.
"Switzerland is the only place in Europe, and maybe in the world, where the people have the right to make something real, [through] direct democracy," he says.
That system of direct democracy means the Swiss could vote for free beer if they wanted to.
To hold a nationwide referendum, all citizens have to do is gather 100,000 signatures calling for a vote, and the ballot must be held - the result is binding.
The anger among many Swiss voters at the news that some of their biggest banks, such as UBS, had continued paying top executives huge bonuses while also reporting huge losses, has led to a heated debate about salaries, and more widely, about fairness.
In that context, it was easy to gather the 100,000 signatures to hold the vote on universal income, and the government is expected to name a date for the referendum soon.
Swiss business leaders have reacted with dismay, one calling it a "happy land" proposal, the product of a younger generation that has never experienced a major economic recession or widespread unemployment.
Many have also suggested it could provide a major disincentive to working at all, something that could pose problems for Swiss companies already finding it hard to recruit skilled workers.
Mr Schmidt...

Summary: Switzerland, one of the world's wealthiest countries, is engaged in an intense process of soul searching - about money.
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Article: Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) latest figures show a man from Liverpool is driving with 45 penalty points on his licence, the IAM said.
Drivers are fined and face a temporary ban if they accumulate 12 points on their licence over a three-year period.
In exceptional cases, magistrates can use their discretion to avoid bans.
The motorist from Liverpool had committed speeding offences and failed to declare the name of the driver of the vehicle, the IAM said.
A man from Warrington has the second highest number of points at 36 for driving without insurance.
Other drivers who avoided bans include:
All points were accrued from 2011 to December 2013.
A total of 7,293 motorists had 12 points or more on their licences, the IAM said.
Simon Best, its chief executive, said: "DVLA must rapidly overhaul their systems and working relationships with the courts to ensure that the whole principle of 12 points and you are off the road is not undermined.
"Any suggestion that some drivers may be able to speed with impunity and then talk themselves out of a ban puts our whole approach to enforcement into question."
The HM Courts and Tribunals Service said the "vast majority" of drivers were disqualified if penalty points reach or exceed 12.
A spokeswoman said: "Magistrates can use their discretion to not enforce a driving ban if doing so would cause exceptional hardship, such as losing a job or the ability to care for a dependent. A fine will still be enforced."
A DVLA spokesman said: "DVLA's role is to record the information provided by the courts.
"The courts are able to use their discretion to decide whether or not to disqualify a driver."

Summary: Almost 7,300 motorists with 12 points or more on their licences have not been banned from driving, the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) has claimed.
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Article: Malcolm Layfield, 63, denies raping an 18-year-old from Chetham's School of Music in the early 1980s.
Manchester Crown Court heard the attack occurred during a trip to Cornwall.
Prosecutor David Cadwallader said the alleged victim didn't complain at the time "because nobody would have believed her back then."
She said Mr Layfield plied her with drink, took her to a remote spot in his car and raped her.
The court heard the student went on to have a consensual relationship with Mr Layfield.
But Mr Cadwallader said she only "went along" with it despite her reluctance, because the teacher was "critical" to her success at the school and future career.
"It is alleged, in short, that he used his power and influence improperly," the prosecutor said.
"He admits that he had inappropriate sexual relationships with a number of female students.
"The complainant in this case was one such student."
During a filmed interview shown to the jury, the woman described the encounter alleged to have taken place in Mr Layfield's car.
"He was going to have sex with me and there wasn't a thing I could do about it.
"I gave in and I have hated myself for that ever since."
Mr Layfield, of Castle Quay, Castlefield, also taught at Manchester's Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM).
In 2001, the woman wrote to RNCM alleging Mr Layfield had been involved in inappropriate relationships with students.
He was later promoted to head of strings, Mr Cadwallader said.
The trial continues.

Summary:


Organic farms act as a refuge for wild plants, offsetting the loss of biodiversity on conventional farms, a study suggests.

Article: Public support for extending the vaccine grew after the mother of two-year-old Faye Burdett shared pictures of her dying from the infection.
The jab is offered to children in their first year of life.
But more than 800,000 people signed a petition for it to be given to all children under 11.
Faye, from Maidstone, died on Valentine's Day after fighting the infection for 11 days. Her mother Jenny said the family had endured "a pain you cannot describe".
And soon after ex-England rugby captain Matt Dawson talked about how his two-year-old son Sam survived meningitis W after "two weeks of hell".
In response to the most popular petition in parliamentary history, the Department of Health said it was following the expert advice of its Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
It said: "With this programme, our priority is to protect those children most at risk of Men B, in line with JCVI's recommendation.
"The NHS budget is a finite resource, it is therefore essential that JCVI's recommendations are underpinned by evidence of cost-effectiveness.
"Offering the vaccine outside of JCVI's advice would not be cost effective, and would not therefore represent a good use of NHS resources which should be used to benefit the health and care of the most people possible."
It added: "When any new immunisation programme is introduced, there has to be a cut-off date to determine eligibility.
"While this is extremely difficult for parents whose children aren't eligible, there is no other way of establishing new programmes to target those at highest risk without introducing inequalities."
The UK is the only country in the world to offer the vaccine routinely to children of any age.
It is offered only in the first year of life when infants are most vulnerable to the infection.
The issue is still scheduled to be debated in the House of Commons.
Lee Booth, who set up the petition, said: "It's very disappointing that that's the initial sort of reaction to the campaign.
"Y'know there's 817-thousand people that have...

Summary: Offering the meningitis B vaccine to all children is "not cost effective" and would be a waste of NHS money, the UK government says.
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Article: Animal rights campaigners Peta claimed they saw "frightened owls [in] tiny cages" when they visited the attraction in Leavesden, Hertfordshire.
Warner Bros Studio Tour London said: "It is essential the welfare of the birds... is of the highest standard."
It added it had asked the company which owns the birds to "review this matter".
The tour allows Harry Potter fans to meet Harry's owl, Hermione's cat and other "animal stars" from the film franchise.
A Peta investigator secretly filmed the attraction, apparently showing handlers encouraging visitors to touch the owls and making them perform "demeaning" tricks.
"Confining frightened owls to tiny cages where they can only chew at their tethers in frustration goes against every message of respect and kindness that JK Rowling's wonderful books taught us," Peta director Mimi Bekhechi said.
"Peta are calling on Warner Bros Studio Tour London to make sure that the Harry Potter tour stays magical - and not cruel - by keeping live animals out of it."
In response, Warner Bros Studio said: "The owls that appeared in the Harry Potter film series occasionally come to the studio tour.
"They appear for short periods and are exclusively handled by the experts at Birds and Animals, the company that owns and trains them. We have asked them to review this matter."
A spokeswoman for Birds and Animals said: "The welfare of our birds and animals is our number one priority and we want to ensure they remain stress-free and healthy.
"The owls are always given regular breaks and closely monitored by a vet. Now that we have had the opportunity to see the footage, we have instigated a review of the issues raised.
"We will take appropriate action to ensure that the birds and animals always receive the very best care."
The Making of Harry Potter attraction at Warner Bros Studios opened in March 2012.
Located where the successful movie franchise was filmed for more than 10 years, the tour features sets, costumes and props from the series.

Summary: The welfare of animals at a Warner Bros Harry Potter studio tour is to be reviewed after concerns about their treatment.
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Article: Keith Heslop's victim lost a tooth and was left covered in bruises following the attack at the Premier Inn at Airth, near Falkirk, in March 2011.
Heslop, 45, formerly of Spennymoor, County Durham was jailed at the High Court in Edinburgh.
Judge Lord Malcolm told him: "Only a substantial prison sentence is appropriate."
Lord Malcolm said it was clear from a victim impact statement prepared by the woman that the attack had "a devastating effect on her".
The victim was in a distraught state when she spoke to a relative on the phone after the attack and was still upset when she later saw her.
The woman later told a friend in a text that Heslop "wouldn't take no for an answer."
The victim's friend told the trial: "She did say that he had raped her after that.
"She said a tooth was missing and that she was covered in bruises."
Defence counsel Margaret Breslin said Heslop continued to maintain that he was innocent of the rape.
She said: "There is no record for violence and certainly no record for offences similar to this - nothing of a sexual nature."
Heslop was also placed on the sex offenders' register.

Summary: A radiographer who raped a woman in a hotel room during a business trip has been jailed for seven years.
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Article: The system will analyse, in real time, whether a posting online is true.
It will also identify whether social media accounts have been created just to spread false information.
The aim is to help organisations, including governments and emergency services, to respond more effectively to events.
The project grew from research based on the use of social media during the London riots in 2011. The data being analysed will include posts on Twitter, comments in healthcare forums and public comments on Facebook.
The researchers say that online rumours will be classified into four types:
"There was a suggestion after the 2011 riots that social networks should have been shut down, to prevent the rioters using them to organise," said Dr Kalina Bontcheva, lead researcher on the project at the University of Sheffield.
By Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent
Jony Ive has resigned from Apple, Justin Bieber is dead and the army has been mobilised to deal with riots in London. No, none of these stories is true, but they are all rumours that have been spread via social media in recent years.
Twitter, Facebook and other social networks have played an increasingly vital role in breaking stories rapidly, from an earthquake in China to the emergency landing of an aircraft on the Hudson River in New York. But journalists are also learning to their cost that just because it is on Twitter that does not make it true.
The other big trend is the use of a technique called sentiment analysis to comb through vast amounts of social media output and detect patterns, whether it is predicting which movie will be a hit or determining which candidate has won a presidential debate.
The record so far has been distinctly mixed - so relying on similar techniques to separate truth from falsehood on social media may be somewhat optimistic.
"But social networks also provide useful information. The problem is that it all happens so fast and we can't quickly sort truth from lies.
"This makes it difficult to respond to rumours, for example, for the...

Summary: A lie detector for social media is being built to try to verify online rumours.
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Article: The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said aircraft taking off from Gatwick would be more concentrated following advances in aviation navigation.
It said the aim was to reduce the environmental impact of flights, with fewer people affected by the noise.
Sally Pavey, of the Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign, said it would be like having "a superhighway of planes".
There are an average of 350 daily flights from Gatwick's single runway.
The CAA's approval follows its review of the impact of a 2013 airspace change for departures.
Advanced satellite navigation technology means aircraft no longer have to fly over ground-based beacons, allowing planes to fly closer together and use less airspace.
New European legislation requires the UK to maximise this technology and the concentrated flight paths are Gatwick's response to this.
Phil Roberts, the CAA's head of airspace, air traffic management and aerodromes, said: "We absolutely understand that aircraft noise disturbs many people and we have taken the required amount of time to fully assess the considerable amount of feedback we have received from across the local communities.
"As we have done throughout this review, we will continue to consider the environmental impact of all our airspace decisions."
Opponents have claimed Gatwick is blighting some parts of the south east.
Tonbridge and Malling Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat said he would have to look into the changes in more detail but urged Gatwick to "become a better neighbour".
"There are communities as far over as Hildenborough and Tonbridge, running through Leigh and Penshurst, Chiddingstone, Edenbridge and even over my own home, just south of Edenbridge, who are very badly affected by the noise and it is absolutely unbearable."
Gatwick Airport said in time the narrowing of the flight paths would allow it to switch some of them on and off, providing some respite for people facing a "concentrated over-flight".

Summary: Gatwick Airport has been given approval to run six narrower flight paths to allow planes to fly in less airspace.
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Article: Fields around organic farms have more types of wild plants, providing benefits for wildlife, say scientists.
The research is likely to fuel the debate over the environmental benefits of organic farming.
Studies suggest that organic farming produces lower yields than conventional methods but harbours more wildlife.
The new study, by researchers at the University of Swansea and institutes in France, looked at fields sowed with winter wheat in the region of Poitou-Charente.
They found that organic farming led to higher weed diversity on surrounding conventionally farmed fields.
"Wild plants are important for birds, bees and other farmland species," said Dr Luca Borger of the department of biosciences at Swansea University.
"Organic farming has advantages in maintaining these, but even a mixture of organic and non-organic farming in an area can help maintain this biodiversity.
"Even only 25% of fields being organically farmed can make a difference."
Farmland provides essential habitat for many animals but intensification of agriculture has led to a loss of biodiversity.
However, in order to provide the extra food needed by the bigger human population of the future, without destroying forests and wetlands, farming needs to be made more intensive.
Supporters of organic farming say the method could be a potential compromise between meeting food security needs and providing habitat for bees, birds and other wildlife.
The researchers say land-sharing between organic farms and non-organic farms could have benefits for both crop production and biodiversity.
This theory needs to be tested in follow-up studies, they say.
The study is published in the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B- Biological Sciences.

Summary:


Two people have been re-arrested after a toddler suffered serious injuries in a dog attack.

Article: In an article published in a book by the Holocaust Educational Trust, the Most Reverend Justin Welby called anti-Semitism an "insidious evil".
He added: "It is a shameful truth that, through its theological teachings, the Church, which should have offered an antidote, compounded the spread of this virus."
The president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jonathan Arkush, called the archbishop's words "powerful and timely".
In the article, Archbishop Welby said Christians should be "deeply repentant" for the fact that anti-Semitism had "infected the body of the Church.
"We live with the consequences of our history of denial and complicity," he said.
Christians' public attitudes to Jews have changed since the middle of the 20th Century.
Catholics still pray on Good Friday that Jews will convert to Christianity. But references to "perfidious Jews" and "blindness" - which once formed parts of Church services - have been removed.
Pope John XXIII intervened more than 50 years ago, ordering that the Latin word "perfidis", meaning "faithless", be removed.
The word was controversial because of its similarity to the English term "perfidious", which is used as a synonym for "treacherous".
And in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI altered the prayer used in the Tridentine rite, or extraordinary form of the liturgy, removing a reference to "the blindness of that people".
The Church of England's Good Friday liturgy now asks God to take "all blindness and bitterness of heart" from both Jews and Christians.
Mr Arkush said Christians had sometimes been to blame for anti-Semitism "permeating European thought" for thousands of years.
He said that in modern times, it became evident in the debate about Israel and the Palestinians.
"You have such incidents as anti-Israel Christians appropriating Jesus as a Palestinian and saying that Israel (or the collective Jew) is crucifying Jesus anew," he said.
"Such language is inflammatory and untrue."
Dr Ed Kessler, the director of the Woolf Institute in Cambridge for the study of relations...

Summary: Jewish leaders have welcomed a statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who said the Church had been partly responsible for the spread of anti-Semitism.
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Article: In this last respect, Hungary, and the rise in political extremism there, is a case in point.
Europe has a problem with Hungary, so much so that the European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, was recently overheard calling Hungary's leader a "dictator" upon his arrival at an EU summit.
The remark was hastily dismissed as a joke, even though it betrays wider European concerns about an apparent weakening of civil institutions and a backlash against civic groups in the country.
Hungary's Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, is an interesting political case study.
He began as a darling of those on the side of political freedoms, with his strident anti-Communist background.
Yet that all seems a long time ago now.
He hasn't been helped by Hungary's economic problems.
The global economic crisis of 2008 hit Hungary hard, leading to an international bailout.
All this helped Mr Orban sweep to power in 2010.
He has presided over an impressive economic turnaround (of sorts), with measures including taxes on banks and other sectors such as energy.
The public debt is coming down slowly and the economy has returned to growth.
His supporters credit him with leading the country through the crisis.
But foreign investors fight shy of Mr Orban's rhetoric and grandstanding, particularly his skirmishes with big business.
And the public have yet to feel much improvement in their purchasing power - as recent by-election defeats for Mr Orban's Fidesz party show.
Unemployment of just over 7% has been exacerbated by a controversial government work scheme, which does little to retrain participants for the market place.
And Hungarians - the young in particular - in search of a better life are still leaving the country in significant numbers.
Since the local elections last October, Mr Orban has seen his popularity plunge and that of the radical nationalist party Jobbik soar.
His response so far has been a series of measures to win back the far-right vote.
Last month, his government launched an immigration questionnaire asking Hungarians...

Summary: European Union leaders face many intractable problems: what to do about Russia, the growing Islamist threat within and beyond its borders, and last but not least the populist backlash shaking the political landscape in a number of countries.
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Article: The first of two sections of a high-voltage subsea cable has been laid in the Moray Firth as part of the £1.1bn Caithness-Moray transmission project.
A new ship purpose-built for the work, the NKT Victoria, laid the cable from Noss Head in Caithness to a midpoint in the firth.
The vessel has sailed to Sweden to reload the remaining cable to be laid from Portgordon in Moray to the end of the previously-laid cable later this month.
The cable will have capacity to carry up to 1,200MW of electricity generated by renewable energy projects in the north of Scotland to other parts of the country to power homes and businesses.
Led by Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN), the £1.1bn Caithness-Moray Project is to be completed next year.
NKT Victoria, described by SSEN as "state-of-the-art", is being used for the first time.
It has capacity to hold 10,000 tonnes of cable and has remotely-operated vehicles for checking the laying of the cable in a trench ploughed by another ship in March.
In total, NKT Victoria will lay more than 70 miles (113km) of subsea cables.

Summary: All images are copyrighted.
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Article: Documents published with the Autumn Statement forecast a rise in the price of both oil and gas of 10-15%, generating bigger taxable profits for offshore operators.
The independent body predicts nearly Â£6bn revenue over the next four years.
In March, it forecast a tax allowance giveaway by the Treasury of Â£4bn.
The main factor in its revised forecast has been a faster than expected rise in dollar oil prices.
At the end of October oil prices averaged $50.8 a barrel, 32% higher than the assumption it made in drawing up its March forecasts.
The OBR now expects prices to make a slow recovery to $44 a barrel next year, and to about $60 a barrel in 2022.
But that is still significantly lower than its March 2014 forecast, prior to the oil price crash, of about $100 a barrel, the OBR report points out.
The OBR has also revised up its estimates of production, reflecting recent investment in the sector.
"We now assume that oil production will be flat until 2019 (rather than until 2018) partly reflecting returns on high levels of capital expenditure over the past few years," it said.
The report says the fall in the value of the pound since the Brexit vote has led to higher Sterling oil prices, increasing revenue for the Treasury.
In the current financial year it still expects petroleum revenue tax repayments to more than offset receipts from corporation tax but from 2017 onwards it predicts a surplus, reaching Â£2.5bn by 2020.

Summary: Revenue from oil and gas tax is expected to rise over the next four years, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.
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Article: But Asda's regular income tracker found some other parts of the UK saw a faster rise, reflecting a better jobs market.
Real spending power, after accounting for household essentials, has risen for two years, helped by low inflation.
But the growth has slowed up between the second quarter of this year and the third, falling from 9.8% to 6.7%.
The analysis, carried out by the Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR), starts with a weekly income for the average household of £740. Various taxes reduce that to take-home pay of £622.
Essential costs include food, housing, utility bills, children's schooling, communications and transport, at a total weekly outlay of £430.
That leaves discretionary spending of £192 for the average UK household to cover leisure, sport, entertainment, eating out, savings, holidays and luxury goods.
For Scotland, that discretionary spending was £190 in the third quarter of this year, up from £178 a year before, and £171 in the same part of 2013.
With UK net incomes up by 3.1% in the past year, prices have been falling. The CEBR reckons mortgage costs are down 1.3% in the year to September, food by 2.3%, vehicle fuels by 14.9%, and household energy by 4.3%.
Commenting on the findings, Asda's chief customer officer Barry Williams said: "Two years of solid growth on discretionary income shows real stability in the economic recovery.
"It's interesting that people continue to spend differently - carrying their savvy shopping habits from the financial crisis with them, and re-prioritising their spending on treats and activities with their families, making the most out of their new-found spare income."

Summary: Household spending power in Scotland has risen by £12 per week to £190 over the past year, according to an analysis of income and prices.
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Article: The girl was attacked in the Jenkins Dale area of Chatham on 4 April and is still in hospital with serious injuries, Kent Police said.
The dog was shot by firearms officers.
A man and a teenager have been re-arrested on suspicion of offences under the Dangerous Dogs Act. Both had been detained on the day of the attack but released later.
Live: More news from Kent
The teenager was previously arrested over the same offences and the man has been now also been detained on suspicion of supplying cannabis.
A woman arrested on 5 April on suspicion of dangerous dogs offences answered bail on Wednesday and was released pending further inquiries, a police spokeswoman said.
Kent Police confirmed they had received a call from a member of the public shortly before the attack at 17:10 BST about a dog pulling its handler nearby.
They said there was no information "the dog was behaving aggressively or was of a dangerous breed as described under the Dangerous Dogs Act".

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