The chair has been recalled after reports of injuries.
The chair has been recalled after reports of injuries.
The chair has been recalled after reports of injuries.
The chair has been recalled after reports of injuries.
The chair has been recalled after reports of injuries.
The chair has been recalled after reports of injuries

Ikea is recalling a beach chair sold in the UK after reports that it can collapse and cause injury.

Article: The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) backed moves to reject a new wave of grammars in the absence of proof that it aids social mobility.
Its conference heard how Conservative plans to expand selection would add to pressures on schools.
Prime Minister Theresa May argues grammars boost opportunities for bright but disadvantaged children.
But Labour and the Liberal Democrats disagree.
The NAHT argued that investment in early-years education is a more effective way of ensuring that poor children get as good an education as their richer peers.
It said that by the time children leave primary school, the advantages of coming from a wealthy background are entrenched.
Proposing the motion at the NAHT conference in Telford, Robert Campbell said: "The government is fixated with delivering a policy for the few at the expense of the many."
However, it is not clear exactly how head teachers would actually oppose the planned expansion of selective schools.
The union is using its conference to highlight what it describes as a "perfect storm" of difficulties for secondary schools this summer which could have "dire consequences for pupils and standards".
Issues range from a new secondary exam system, struggles with recruitment or retention, and the Â£3bn real term cuts to schools budgets by 2020.
On funding, General Secretary Russell Hobby said there was a sense that the pleas of head teachers, teachers and parents over school funding were still not being heard by ministers.
He said: "All that's left is for us to make it a general election issue.
"We need to make sure that all our parliamentary constituencies are asking questions on school funding."
NAHT heads said schools were increasingly being required to fill the gaps left by under-funded public services, as finances become progressively stretched at local level.
Past president Kim Johnson said schools in his area, Medway, were being asked to part-fund police officers working in schools but they simply did not have the funds to do so.
He said out of the Â£6m...

Summary: Head teachers have agreed to "vigorously" oppose the expansion of grammar schools in England.
###
Article: Bedfordshire chief constable Colette Paul said collaboration brought budget savings but force mergers could happen.
The number of forces could reduce if local links could be maintained and forces collaborated on providing expensive specialist units, she said.
Ms Paul said she had decided to step down for family reasons after two years heading the county's police force.
Her family had supported her during her career and she was now going to give them more time, she said.
She told the BBC Bedfordshire Police did not have enough resources and she had supported Police and Crime Commissioner Olly Martins' decision to hold a referendum asking for a budget increase.
This was refused in the vote and Ms Paul said she accepted that and the force now had to bear its share of government cuts.
"Bedfordshire crime levels are more like a London borough and that means we are underfunded," she said.
"My personal view is that there should be a significantly smaller number of police forces and I would always support more collaboration."
Ms Paul said she was proud her force had taken the regional lead on the fight against terrorism, which she saw as a significant risk in Bedfordshire, and it had brought a great deal of collaboration with neighbouring constabularies.
"This helped us to get the right intelligence and to use it to cut the risk," she said.
The force had been criticised over being remote and Ms Paul recruited more officers and based them in local communities "to build confidence" and hold the frontline, she said.
"This local presence is very important. Even forces closer than others to merger retain this important local element."

Summary: A police chief taking early retirement believes the number of forces in England should be cut significantly.
###
Article: The People's Pier project, which is also looking at Hastings Pier in East Sussex, is a joint scheme between the universities of Bristol and Brighton.
The £48,000 Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded study started this month and will run for 10 months.
Clevedon Pier in North Somerset is the only operational Grade I-listed pier in the country.
Dr Olu Jenzen, senior lecturer at Brighton's College of Arts and Humanities, and lead researcher, said it was important to "gain an updated understanding" of 21st Century pier culture.
"Piers are more than just metal and wood, more than treasured architectural landmarks," she said.
"They are lived experiences shaped by the mood of the time and the socio-cultural make-up of their location."
Dr Jenzen said she hoped the study would highlight "innovative ways" of using piers as urban community spaces, and to empower local communities.
Dr Nick Nourse of Bristol's department of history, who is also involved in the project, said it was important to preserve Clevedon Pier's "unique and varied" history.
"The people of Clevedon are right to be proud of their pier; it is a beautiful reminder of Victorian engineering and the then new concept of leisure," he said.
"And although the pier itself remains largely as it was when it opened in 1869, leisure, and how the pier has accommodated leisure activities, has changed many times since."
The Clevedon Pier and Heritage Trust raised the funds to help rebuild and repair the 1869 pier between 1984 and 1998 after its partial collapse in 1970.
Hastings Pier, which opened in 1872, was badly damaged in a fire in 2010. It is due to reopen in 2016 following a £14m redevelopment.

Summary: Clevedon Pier is the subject of a study looking into Victorian seaside piers and how they fit with today's society.
###
Article: The Swedish giant asked customers who bought any model of the Mysingso chair to return it for a full refund.
The global recall comes after Ikea received reports from Finland, Germany, the US, Denmark and Australia that users had received injuries to their fingers that needed medical treatment.
Ikea's statement said the chair had a "risk of falling or finger entrapment".
It said: "After washing the fabric seat it is possible to re-assemble the chair incorrectly leading to risks of falls or finger entrapments.
"Ikea has received five incident reports in which a Mysingso beach chair collapsed during use due to incorrect re-assembly. All five reports included injuries to fingers and required medical attention.
It added that a full investigation had led to an improved design "to further mitigate the risks of incorrect re-assembly and injuries" and the updated chair would be available from next month.
Ikea has more than 300 stores in 27 countries.

Summary:


The BBC has announced it will be launching a new digital news service, BBC Three, in March.
The new channel will be available on BBC iPlayer and will be available on mobile devices.
BBC Three will be available on BBC iPlayer from March, the broadcaster has announced.
The channel will be available on

PC gamers will have to wait a little bit longer if they want to play Grand Theft Auto V.

Article: The plans come as the government is to due publish its White Paper on the future of the BBC on Thursday.
The organisation has faced criticism for under investment in the city, once home to the fabled Pebble Mill studios.
The BBC said the plans meant a Â£10m boost for "fresh talent and innovative digital content for young audiences".
The new investment is on top of an existing Â£125m already tied to the second city base in The Mailbox, it said.
Under the plans, the commissioning, publishing and some production of BBC Three's short-form content, along with the social media team that supports it, would relocate to Birmingham by 2018.
The channel, which targets 16 to 34-year-olds with a mix of comedy, documentaries and current affairs, went online only in February, to save Â£30m. It will also still be based in London.
A new youth team will also be set up at The Mailbox site, which will be the main suppliers of news content for the channel's Daily Drop, BBC Three's new, mobile-first platform.
The local newspaper partnerships - outlined in September by director general Tony Hall as a pool of local reporters who will share work with local papers - are expected to be based in Birmingham alongside the English Regions HQ.
"These teams, together with Birmingham's young and diverse demographic, will be harnessed to act as part of the hub for the identification, development and commissioning of new diverse talent and programmes as announced in the BBC's Diversity and Inclusion strategy last month," a spokesman said.
"To support this, the BBC Academy will launch a new scheme, the Birmingham Production Apprenticeship, for new off-air talent from diverse backgrounds."
Lord Hall said Birmingham had benefited from recent extra investment, but there was more to do.
"Now we're putting Birmingham at the heart of our innovation with BBC Three and making it home to a new youth team for BBC News.
"The city's incredible diversity also means it's the perfect place to lead our work to ensure we reflect the changing face of...

Summary: A new base for BBC Three is to be created in Birmingham, alongside a hub for the corporation's proposed partnerships with local newspapers.
###
Article: Julie Harris died in hospital after a brief illness from a chest infection, a close friend confirmed.
Harris designed clothes worn by the Beatles in the films A Hard Day's Night and Help! and by Sir Roger in the James Bond film Live and Let Die.
She won an Oscar in 1966 for the Julie Christie film Darling.
Her Bafta came the following year for her work on The Wrong Box.
Harris's many other credits included the James Bond spoof Casino Royale, Carry On Cleo and 1981's The Great Muppet Caper.
In 1965, after working with the Beatles, she said: "I must be one of the few people who can claim they have seen John, Paul, George and Ringo naked."
"Julie worked with some of the greatest international stars in the history of the cinema, and for some of its most legendary directors and producers," said friend Jo Botting.
It was Botting, a senior curator at the British Film Institute National Archive, who confirmed Harris's death at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in central London on Saturday.
"Her outstanding work was constantly nominated for awards," Botting continued, remembering her friend as "an amazing woman".
Harris's other Bafta nominations came for her work on the horror film Psyche 59, Help!, Casino Royale and The Slipper and the Rose.
Speaking in 2010, Harris recalled working with such Hollywood legends as Jayne Mansfield - a buxom actress, she said, who had been blessed with "quite a figure".
"She came to a fitting one day in her mink coat with only her underclothes underneath," she told an audience at the Cinema Museum in London. "I couldn't believe it."

Summary: An Oscar and Bafta-winning costume designer who designed clothes for the Beatles and Sir Roger Moore's James Bond has died in London, aged 94.
###
Article: A leaked report from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) revealed patient data was stored unencrypted by Birmingham company Diagnostic Health.
The company, which carries out ultrasound scans for the NHS, said it had voluntarily suspended services.
Diagnostic Health added it had now completed an action plan that had been agreed with the ICO.
Jonathan Leonard, chief executive of Diagnostic Health Systems Ltd, based on Birmingham Research Park, said the company was planning to resume services for Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs).
The data protection breaches date back to June 2013.
The Care Quality Commission watchdog was alerted to the breaches last year by a whistle-blower and passed them on to the Stafford and Surrounds CCG, which commissioned services from the firm.
The CCG's Chief Executive Andy Donald said: "We conducted our own investigation. There were concerns of a serious nature so we informed the information commissioner."
Diagnostic Health first won a contract from the now defunct South Staffordshire Primary Care Trust.
It was soon providing scans from GP surgeries to clients in Staffordshire, The Wirral, Kent and Medway, Berkshire and West Yorkshire. In March 2014 it was approved to supply services to Wandsworth.
While the ICO refused to show the BBC its report, a leaked copy showed Diagnostic Health was aware it was breaching data protection guidelines by 26 June 2013, but continued adding to the database until 22 July.
The ICO audit, prepared in the summer, revealed a company laptop stolen from a member of staff's home had not been originally reported to the information commissioner.
It also showed staff at the company shared the same password to access files on a web-based storage account.
GP referrals, meanwhile, were being emailed directly to staff inboxes, while there was no audit trail of who accessed the system and when.
At the time of the ICO report, Diagnostic Health was also unable to delete personal data from an ex consultant's laptop and had no control as to how it was being...

Summary: As many as 10,000 NHS patients may have been affected by a series of data protection breaches by a private firm.
###
Article: Rockstar have announced the game's release has been delayed until 24 March.
The latest version of the open world adventure was due to go on sale on 27 January.
A statement from Rockstar said: "The game requires a few extra weeks of testing and polish to make it as good as can be."
"Moving a release date is never a decision we take lightly and is a choice we make only when we know it is in the best interests of the game and our fans.
"Thanks everyone for your understanding and we assure you these few extra weeks will be worth it when the game does arrive in March."
It's not all bad news though. The company announced that eagerly-awaited online heists are coming to consoles before the PC release date.
Screenshots from the PC version of GTA V have been released, with Rockstar promising "even greater levels of detail".
Los Santos and Blaine County will be visible in 1080p at 60fps, with up to 4K resolution and support for up to triple monitor configurations.
While you're waiting for the game to be released you can make sure your PC is up to scratch.
Minimum specifications required to run GTA V have also been published.
Grand Theft Auto V became the fastest-selling entertainment product ever when it was released on 17 September 2013, taking just three days to generate $1bn (Â£620m) in revenue.
Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter, BBCNewsbeat on Instagram and Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube

Summary:

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Summary: ||| {{target}}


Reaching its centenary amidst a general chorus of vilification around the region, the legacy of the secret Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 has never looked more under assault.

Article: The Salvation Army said it had helped 151 suspected victims in the 12 months before summer 2015, compared with 37 in 2012.
One woman it helped said she had her passport confiscated and was fed scraps from her "employer's" dinner table.
It is not clear whether the rise is due to greater awareness of existing cases or there are more victims.
Anne Read, the charity's director of anti-trafficking and modern slavery, said victims were tricked into following their dream and then trapped.
"It doesn't always involve keys and chains and locks," she said.
"People are held by the threats of the traffickers. They're told this will happen to you, maybe you'll be thrown in prison, or 'something dreadful will happen to your family if you try to escape'."
Maria, who did not want to give her real name, left the Philippines to work as a maid because she needed to buy medicine for her dying mother. But her salary was not paid.
Instead, her Saudi employers brought her to London and confiscated her passport and told her she was expected to look after the children round-the-clock.
Maria was then told to sleep on the floor and was fed on leftovers from her employer's dinner table.
On one occasion, the family took Maria, who had not had a meal, to the park.
"They bought a special bread," she said.
"I thought it's a yummy lunch for me. But I was shocked when they called the ducks and then they gave the bread to the ducks.
"They treated me like a slave."
Another victim was forced to sleep in a "duck pen" on a housing estate in Nottingham, by Gavin Pascoe and Vicki Jepson, who forced her to cook and clean for them and look after their children.
Pascoe and Jepson, who were both jailed last December, used beatings and threats to control the 24-year-old, who had learning disabilities.
Det Con Chris Berryman of Nottinghamshire Police said he was very shocked by what he saw.
"She looked quite malnourished, quite underweight," he said.
"They threatened to cause injury to her child if she escaped."
Tackling all forms of modern slavery has...

Summary: A charity helping victims of domestic slavery says it has seen a four-fold increase in referrals since 2012.
###
Article: The region includes Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Neath Port Talbot.
It has been set up to develop tourism and inward investment and is about growth and not words, says the boss.
It comes after a report commissioned by the Welsh government showed economic growth increasingly happens in regions centred on a city, attracting higher skilled jobs and pay.
There are also plans for a Cardiff city region to include Merthyr Tydfil, Aberdare, Pontypool, Newport, Bridgend and Barry.
The idea is to remove boundaries that exist between council areas and organisations to allow for more joined-up thinking as experts found city areas create a big part of the UK's economic output.
Dr Elizabeth Haywood, who chaired a panel looking at new city regions in Wales last year, told BBC Radio Wales that Welsh cities have not been "punching at their weight" until now.
Following that report, business leaders and local authorities have joined forces with the Welsh government to create the Swansea Bay city region, pledging to work together to create jobs and promote economic regeneration.
Economy Minister Edwina Hart said a collective approach with a region coming together could deliver.
"I am sure we can boost economic growth and create a sustainable future where the economy can grow and where opportunity can be created for the people of the region, and Wales," she said.
The minister will be at Thursday's strategy launch at Parc y Scarlets in Llanelli along with Swansea council leader David Phillips who will chair the Swansea Bay city region board.
"This is an important day for the 700,000 people who live in this first Welsh city region," he said.
"This will not be about words. It will be about jobs, investment and transformational projects which benefit the people and businesses of south west Wales."
Steve Penny, who chairs Swansea's economic regeneration partnership, said: "It demonstrates that as communities, businesses and government we can and will collaborate to promote our joint aspirations for jobs and economic regeneration."

Summary: Swansea Bay has been launched as Wales' first "city region" in an effort to boost investment and job opportunities.
###
Article: Sir Nicholas Soames said he would not sign a motion of no confidence in Mr Bercow, following his opposition to President Trump speaking in Parliament during a future state visit.
The MP said Mr Bercow was too outspoken but had been "very good" in many ways.
Mr Bercow has face criticism from other Conservatives, although only one MP has signed the motion so far.
Former Foreign Office minister James Duddridge tabled the early day motion ten days ago, arguing that Mr Bercow had overstepped the mark in voicing his opposition to the US President speaking in Parliament.
He said the Speaker's intervention had compromised his neutrality and independence.
Although Mr Duddridge is the only signatory so far, focus on the issue is expected to increase when MPs return from their week-long recess on Monday.
MPs will debate the merits of President Trump's proposed state visit on Monday when they consider rival public petitions opposing and supporting the event - which is likely to take place later this year.
Mr Bercow, who was a Conservative MP before being elected in 2009, will not chair the proceedings as they will be taking place in Westminster Hall, the Commons secondary debating chamber.
Sir Nicholas, one of the longest-serving Tories in the Commons, told ITV's Peston on Sunday he was not sure about the strength of feeling on the Tory benches against Mr Bercow, but he would not take part in any no confidence vote, should there be one.
"I have had an e-mail from both sides of the argument and I replied no to both of them," he said.
"John Bercow has in many ways been a very good Speaker. He does tend to shout off on occasions when it would be better if he didn't."
He added: "I will not be taking part in any campaign, one way or another.
"I think it is a really undignified and unattractive. The Speaker's office is one of the most important in the country."
Several Tories have voiced concerns about Mr Bercow's stance on Mr Trump's visit - which he announced without consulting his counterpart in the House of Lords Lord...

Summary: A campaign to unseat John Bercow as Commons Speaker is "undignified and unattractive", a senior Tory has said.
###
Article: As Iraq lurches deeper into turmoil and disintegration, Kurdish leaders in the already autonomous north are threatening to break away and declare outright independence.
And the militants of the self-styled Islamic State (IS), bulldozing the border between Iraq and Syria in June 2014, declared their intention to eradicate all the region's frontiers and lay Sykes-Picot to rest forever.
Whatever the fate of IS, the future as unitary states of both Syria and Iraq - central to the Sykes-Picot project - is up in the air.
In fact, virtually none of the Middle East's present-day frontiers were actually delineated in the document concluded on 16 May 1916 by British and French diplomats Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot.
The Iraq-Syria border post histrionically erased by IS was probably several hundred kilometres from the famous "line in the sand" drawn by Sykes and Picot, which ran almost directly from the Persian border in the north-east, down between Mosul and Kirkuk and across the desert towards the Mediterranean, veering northwards to loop around the top end of Palestine.
The region's current borders emerged from a long and complex process of treaties, conferences, deals and conflicts that followed the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and the end of World War One.
But the spirit of Sykes-Picot, dominated by the interests and ruthless ambitions of the two main competing colonial powers, prevailed during that process and through the coming decades, to the Suez crisis of 1956 and even beyond.
Because it inaugurated that era, and epitomised the concept of clandestine colonial carve-ups, Sykes-Picot has become the label for the whole era in which outside powers imposed their will, drew borders and installed client local leaderships, playing divide-and-rule with the "natives", and beggar-my-neighbour with their colonial rivals.
The resulting order inherited by the Middle East of the day sees a variety of states whose borders were generally drawn with little regard for ethnic, tribal, religious or linguistic...

Summary:


The European Commission has approved the proposed merger between O2 and Three.
The European Commission has approved the proposed merger between O2 and Three.
The European Commission has approved the proposed merger between O2 and Three.
The European Commission has approved the proposed merger between O2 and Three.
The European Commission has

Ofcom is to delay the start of its auction for another chunk of 4G spectrum, after threats of legal action from Telefonica and Hutchison, parent companies of O2 and Three.

Article: AB InBev, the owner of Budweiser, agreed last year to buy SAB Miller, the FTSE 100 beermaker that counts Peroni and Grolsch among a stable of brands that spans the world. It agreed to pay investors with shares of the new combined company - and gave them a less valuable alternative of taking cash and shares.
The cash element was in sterling. Since the Brexit vote, the pound has fallen about 10% against other big currencies, leaving shareholders demanding more. On Tuesday AB InBev delivered, increasing its offer by £1 a share to £45 a share - an increase that will in aggregate cost it about £2bn more. It said that its offer was final, preventing it from making another increase.
That was still not enough for some. Aberdeen Asset Management, a top-10 shareholder in SABMiller, said the offer "remained unacceptable".
SAB directors now face a turbulent few days as they decide whether to recommend the final AB InBev offer. Later this week the final, and arguably most important, remaining regulatory clearance is expected when China's competition authority, Mofcom, rules on the takeover.
If the Chinese give the go-ahead, the SAB board is expected to meet this weekend. If they reject the offer, they face the unenviable task of placating all those shareholders who have already agreed to back it, including the two big investors - Altria, the American tobacco giant that owns Marlboro cigarettes, and Colombia's Santo Domingo family. Together the two own nearly 40% of SAB.
There is also the unenviable task of withdrawing from giant disposals that have been agreed to get the deal past other competition regulators. In Europe, for example, Asahi of Japan has agreed to buy Peroni and Grolsch.
If the SAB board accepts, they risk alienating institutional investors such as Aberdeen Asset Management ahead of possible shareholder votes to approve or reject the deal.
On top of that, there is still a risk that a British court could upset their plans.
SAB told the stock market last year that because there were two different offers -...

Summary: The £50bn takeover of one of the world biggest brewers is expected to receive a vital green light from China this week - but remains under threat from the double threat of the Brexit vote and a UK court ruling.
###
Article: The particle accelerator is best known for identifying a particle believed to be the Higgs boson in late 2012.
But following technical faults shortly after it first switched on, the machine has never been run at the full energies for which it was designed.
A programme of repairs and upgrades to the accelerator and its infrastructure should allow that in late 2014.
The LHC's beams were "dumped" early on Thursday morning, but it will take until Saturday morning for the machine's 1,734 magnets to warm up to room temperature.
Then an unprecedented period of upgrade and repair - dubbed "Long Shutdown 1" - will begin.
The machine ran at particle energies of 8 trillion electron-volts (teraelectronvolts; TeV) in 2012, up from the prior high point of 7TeV in 2011.
But when the shutdown concludes, slated for the end of November 2014, it should be set to run at 14TeV - far and away the highest-energy collisions ever attempted by scientists.
"We have been running successfully, but only at half the maximum energy, because we can only safely  run the magnets at half the design current," said Tony Weidberg, a University of Oxford physicist who works on the LHC's Atlas detector.
How does the LHC recreate the first moments after the Big Bang?
The problem has been the connections between the giant magnets that help steer charged particles around the LHC's 27km-long ring.
A fault in 2008, just nine days after particle beams first circulated at the LHC, caused what is known as a "quench" in a number of the magnets, in turn resulting in a leak of liquid helium and sparking a repair operation that took more than a year.
"After the incident, the long-term plan was to get some running at intermediate energy and then have a long shut-down when we improve the connections between the magnets," Prof Weidberg told BBC News.
"That's a major operation, because you have to warm up all these superconducting magnets and go in and do repairs."
But the shut-down schedule also includes upgrades to all four of the LHC's detectors, the shielding...

Summary: The Large Hadron Collider has turned off its particle beams ahead of a shut-down period that will last two years.
###
Article: Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust also revealed the permanent loss of 12 beds for dementia patients.
The trust said the plans, which go before the clinical commissioners on Thursday, followed a "long and difficult process".
Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk expressed concern at the loss of the beds.
A spokesman for the group said the new beds would be welcomed but questioned why it appeared the reopening of the Carlton Court ward, in Lowestoft, was only a temporary measure.
Carlton Court had been earmarked for closure as the trust struggled to save Â£20m. It was a move opposed by campaigners and the Unison union.
The trust said Carlton Court could become a centre for excellence for both older people and younger people with mental health issues, but have not committed to extra beds.
It said the 10-bed Laurel Ward would be re-opened for older people with conditions such as bi-polar, depression and schizophrenia until services were in place to support the patients in the community.
The proposals also include permanently closing 12 dementia beds on Larkspur Ward in Carlton Court, while adding 10 more assessment beds in Hellesdon Hospital, near Norwich.
The trust said inpatient services would be consolidated at Northgate Hospital in Great Yarmouth, reducing the number of adult mental health beds from 28 to 20.
Michael Scott, chief executive of the trust, said: "This has been a long and difficult process.
"However, the seriousness of the decision and the impact of changes being considered to how we deliver our services, made it important for us to engage fully with service users, carers and our staff."

Summary: Plans for 10 new mental health beds and a ward's temporary reopening have been announced by a mental health trust.
###
Article: They want Ofcom to wait until a decision is made about their plan to merge the two mobile companies.
BT and EE are also planning to merge.
The spectrum, formerly used by the Ministry of Defence, would provide 4G services for mobile companies.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has provisionally approved the proposed merger between BT and EE.
But the European Commission has announced its decision to launch an in-depth investigation into the proposed merger between O2 and Three.
And Ofcom has previously cast doubt on this merger winning regulatory approval.
In a statement on Thursday, Ofcom said it had received letters from Telefonica and Hutchison stating their intention to bring legal action against the regulator over its decision to begin the auction before the outcome of the European Commission's findings.
"After careful consideration, given these specific circumstances, we have decided for reasons of good public administration to delay commencing the auction process," it said.
Legal action also held up the previous 4G auction - as mobile companies disagreed about how spectrum should be distributed.
Ofcom had been due to start accepting applications for the spectrum this month, with plans for the auction to take place in February or March.
Now, it looks unlikely to begin before the summer - with the European Commission's judgement on the O2-Three merge expected in May.
The spectrum on offer could add capacity to 4G networks, but it is considerably smaller than the previous chunk of 4G spectrum.
It has a reserve price of Â£70m, compared with Â£1.3bn for the previous portion of the airwaves.
Matthew Howett, an analyst with research company Ovum, said: While Ofcom doesn't have spectacular form when it comes to awarding spectrum on time, in this instance it probably makes sense to delay things.
"Should the merger between Three and O2 be approved, then remedies around spectrum holdings will almost certainly take time to work out and any future spectrum award would need to be reconsidered...

Summary:


launch a new service in the US that will allow users to listen to music on their mobile phones without having to pay for it.
Spotify has signed a deal with Warner Music Group to offer its premium service on the Warner Music Group's Warner Music Unlimited service.
The

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: 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:


A new study has found that the number of people in the UK who are obese has doubled in the last 30 years.
The study, published in the journal Obesity, found that the number of adults in the UK who are obese has doubled in the last 30 years.
The study, led by researchers from the University

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: 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:


A new study has found that a protein found in the heart of mice and humans is involved in the development of scar tissue.
The protein, called Fstl1, is found in the heart muscle and is thought to be involved in the repair of damaged heart tissue.
The researchers found that Fstl1

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 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:


The Scottish Government has announced a new £1m fund to help schools and colleges improve their facilities.
The Scottish Government has announced a new £1m fund to help schools and colleges improve their facilities.
The fund, which is part of the Scottish Government's Building Schools for the Future programme, will be available to

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.
###
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.
###
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:


The RMT union has called for a 24-hour strike on 1 February, the first of a series of industrial action planned for the coming months.
The union said the action was being called to "reclaim the power" from the company.
The RMT said the action was being called to "reclaim

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.
###
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.
###
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.
###
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 man has been jailed for three years for the murder of a man in a "savage" attack in a "sickening" act of "cowardice".
The court heard how the victim, a man in his 30s, was walking along a country lane in the early hours of the morning on

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.
###
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: 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:


A new study has found that the number of people who have been diagnosed with a mental health problem has fallen by more than a third in the past 30 years.
The study, by researchers at the University of Oxford, found that the number of people with a diagnosable mental health problem has fallen by more than a

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: 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:


A man has been arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm with intent to a man in a pub in the early hours of this morning.
The incident happened at the Crown in the Square in the town centre at around 1.30am on Monday.
A man in his 20s was taken to hospital with

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: 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".

Summary:


The number of children who have gone missing in Northern Ireland has risen by more than a third in the past five years.
The number of children who have gone missing in Northern Ireland has risen by more than a third in the past five years.
The number of children who have gone missing in Northern Ireland has risen by

An "urgent inquiry" is needed into separated children who have gone missing from care, the Social Democratic and Labour Party has said.

Article: The tournament was set to replace the Champions Trophy, a one-day competition that was last held in 2009.
"I am disappointed it is not going to take place sooner," said International Cricket Council (ICC) chief executive Haroon Lorgat.
The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) described the announcement as "a setback for Test cricket".
The Test Championship, due to involve the top four teams in the ICC rankings, had been planned as a way of reviving international interest in the five-day format.
England currently lead the rankings, with South Africa second, India third and Australia in fourth.
Lorgat added that the proposed 2017 Championship, also scheduled to be held in England, would be "the first opportunity" to resurrect the tournament.
The delay comes because of a lack of "support and consent" from the ICC's broadcast partner.
England were originally awarded the 2013 Champions Trophy, which would have made way in the international cricket calendar for the Test Championship.
Lord's was set to be the venue for the final of Test Championship, but after missing out on welcoming the touring New Zealand team for a five-day game, the ground may only host one Test in 2013.
MCC head of cricket John Stephenson said: "The club's priority, given there will be a gap in the calendar in 2013, will be to secure the best possible major matches it can for Lord's to supplement the Australia Test and the New Zealand one-day international being played that year."

Summary: The first Test Championship, expected to take place in England in 2013, will not now be played before 2017.
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Article: The firm's own internet services are now valued to be worth a fraction of its stake in the e-commerce giant Alibaba.
So, after the US tax authorities effectively blocked Yahoo's sales of shares in the Chinese business, chief executive Marissa Mayer opted for plan B: sell off Yahoo's core business.
Since February, dozens of US-based companies have been linked to a potential bid.
But the UK-based owner of the Daily Mail newspaper has now confirmed it is in discussions with unnamed parties to make an offer - an announcement that caught many by surprise.
In much of the world, Yahoo may be considered a marginal internet brand.
But in the US, it is still a force to be reckoned with.
In February, it was the States' third most visited online platform, attracting more than 204 million people, according to research firm Comscore.
To put that in context, Facebook had only 1% more users and Google's apps and websites only 17% more.
Yahoo's news and sports are read by about one in four people at least once a week in the country, according to a University of Oxford study.
And there are reports that its personal finance coverage is proving popular with millennials - those born in the 1980s and later - thanks to it mixing articles about how to deal with debt with more traditional earnings coverage.
Other properties, including its blogging platform Tumblr, photo-sharing service Flickr, web-based email accounts and Q&A site Yahoo Answers continue to have international appeal.
All of which means the firm can state that "more than one billion people" regularly use its products.
Investors are getting restless because Yahoo's share of users doesn't match its share of online advertising sales.
Last year, Yahoo accounted for only 1.5% of marketers' mobile online spend, according to a study by eMarketer.
By contrast, Google scooped up 35% and Facebook 19%.
Furthermore, Yahoo's position appears to be getting worse.
The firm has predicted that its overall revenues will drop by about 15% this year, according to documents seen by the...

Summary: Recently, there have been more stories about Yahoo shutting bits of its business than celebrating successes.
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Article: Wearing black T-shirts and yellow ribbons, the symbols of the city's democracy movement, they have taken to the streets in response to a decision by the senior Chinese leadership to set out clear limits on who can run for the position of chief executive, Hong Kong's top leader, in 2017.
The rules make it virtually impossible for anyone not trusted by the Chinese government to stand for election.
As a result, the protesters accuse Beijing of reneging on decades of vows to give Hong Kong people genuine democracy.
But although there is widespread anger that Beijing may have violated the spirit of the agreements it has made, there is intense debate over whether it has violated the letter of the law.
Alan Hoo, a top barrister and expert on the Basic Law, the city constitution, told BBC News that China had not broken any promises.
"I think that its position is grossly misunderstood," he says. "Firstly, it's not a promise. It is a legal obligation, a constitutional obligation that they put in the Basic Law."
Mr Hoo, chairman of the Basic Law Institute and a well-known pro-Beijing figure in Hong Kong, is referring to Article 45 of the Basic Law, which refers specifically to one person, one vote.
"The ultimate aim is the selection of the chief executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures," it says.
It is Beijing's conservative interpretation of that line that has brought tens of thousands of protesters onto the streets.
According to the rules announced at the end of August by the Standing Committee of China's parliament, candidates for chief executive must gain the support of a majority of a nominating committee.
There can be only two to three candidates.
CY Leung, the current chief executive, has further clarified that the nominating committee will be modelled on the existing election committee - composed of members largely loyal to Beijing - that selected him in 2012.
"The people on the streets are asking for the right to...

Summary: The young demonstrators occupying four areas of Hong Kong frequently chant "Give me real universal suffrage" in rousing unison.
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Article: On Tuesday, a BBC Spotlight programme revealed that eight children had gone missing in Northern Ireland.
Two of the girls were Somali teenagers who disappeared in 2005 and 2012.
The Health and Social Care Board has said new guidelines are in place and add that no children have gone missing since 2014.
Separated children are children outside their country of origin and separated from their parents or legal guardian.
The term can also include unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and trafficked children.
When they arrive in Northern Ireland they are taken into the care of the local health trust.
Eight children have gone missing since 2005 and they remain missing.
The SDLP's health spokesman Mark H Durkan said he would be raising the issue at the Northern Ireland Assembly's health committee and his party colleague Alex Attwood would be raising it at the justice committee.
"The number of children who cannot be accounted for is something that needs urgent inquiry and investigation," he said.
"There is a lot of very good work being done to look after the welfare of unaccompanied young people, but clearly we now have some very big questions that need to be answered."
Ulster Unionist MLA Jo-Anne Dobson said it was "frankly appalling" to hear that eight children had gone missing.
"I have written to Health Minister Michelle O'Neill on this issue to seek further clarification and to demand details of how the department, health trusts and the Health and Social Care Board have sought to address each of the cases involved in the investigation," she added.
The Green Party leader Steven Agnew also said it was extremely worrying that children can disappear without a trace.
Paula Bradshaw from the Alliance Party added that the health trusts and police "need to work closer over the handling of these cases".
In a statement, the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland said: "Our director of investigations will be reviewing the contents of the programme to ascertain if there are any issues of police conduct which may need further...

Summary: