Northern Ireland's economic growth will remain the lowest of the 12 UK regions in 2015, a new report has said.

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: Mr Ward tweeted on Tuesday: "The big question is - if I lived in #Gaza would I fire a rocket? - probably yes."
In a statement subsequently released by the Lib Dems, he said: "My comments were not in support of firing rockets into Israel. If they gave the opposite impression, I apologise."
A Lib Dem spokesman had said the party "utterly condemned" the MP's tweet.
The spokesman later added: "In light of this apology, the party and the whips will decide in due course if further disciplinary action should be taken."
Mr Ward, the MP for Bradford East, was suspended from the Lib Dem parliamentary party in July 2013 and had the whip withdrawn for three months over comments he made about Israel.
He was asked on Wednesday morning by BBC Radio 5live if he stood by his tweet on Tuesday or would apologise for it.
Declining to apologise, he said he condemned violence on both sides of the conflict, but had been seeking to understand the motives of those firing rockets at Israel.
"The question is why would they want to fire missiles when they know that the missiles will result in further Palestinian deaths, to a disproportionate level? Why are they doing it?" he said.
"They are doing it because they are absolutely desperate and politicians in the West are failing them."
He continued: "The people in Gaza cannot escape... I understand the plight of the people firing the rockets."
Referring to his original tweet, the Lib Dem MP later added, in another BBC interview: "What I was saying was, if I was there, if I had been living for year after year after year, hemmed in by air, land and sea by a mighty military force that was brutally killing my people, and the world was not responding, I think I would have to do something."
Asked if he might decide to leave the Lib Dems in protest over the official party line on Gaza, he said: "I am not going to walk away from the Liberal Democrats. They may decide to walk away from me, but I certainly am not going to walk away from them."
His later statement released by the party, containing...

Summary: The Lib Dems say David Ward has given a "categorical apology" for his comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
###
Article: Hundreds of fans had queued outside London's Prince of Wales theatre on Monday to see the first UK performance.
The Book of Mormon, which lampoons religion and musicals, has already been a huge Broadway hit.
To deafening cheers, Parker said: "It's very cool to be here for the fan performance."
He added: "We heard that a lot of you lined up overnight for tickets... and we want to say from the bottom of our hearts, you're... crazy. We don't know that any show can live up to that."
By Will GompertzArts editor
The Book of Mormon's reputation is built on its biting satire, crude humour and the mocking of Mormonism. There is plenty of all three.
But having now seen the show twice, I suspect that at least some of its success is down to its rather conservative nature.
Strip away all the vulgarities and what you are left with is a traditionally structured, feel-good musical, which is chock-full of catchy show tunes.
The Book of Mormon follows the story of two missionaries who are sent from Salt Lake City to preach in a remote Ugandan village.
Written by Stone, Parker and Avenue Q's co-creator Robert Lopez, the show is directed by Parker and Casey Nicholaw.
The Broadway show won nine Tony awards last year. It recouped its $11.4m (Â£7.3m) investment in nine months, making its money back in part by charging up to $477 (Â£304) for tickets.
The West End show is sold out until the end of July, with a small number of daily tickets available via a lottery system.
The show's content is not for the faint-hearted, with strong language and jokes about religion, Aids and female circumcision.
"We never sit down and say how can we shock," Parker told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme.  "It is unconventional material for a musical. That's the sort of stuff that we love."
Stone added: "It's about two white Mormon boys who grew up in Utah and are sent to a place with Old Testament problems - and nothing they've been taught helps them at all with these problems."
Elder Clifford Herbertson, a senior spokesman for the Church of Jesus...

Summary: South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have taken to the West End stage to introduce their satirical musical The Book of Mormon.
###
Article: The former Tory MP has denied a suggestion by a senior UKIP source that he will try to change party rules giving UKIP leader Nigel Farage sole power to appoint the leader in Wales.
Current UKIP rules allow different politicians to lead the assembly group and the party in Wales.
A source close to Mr Gill said he was confident most UKIP AMs would back him.
Mr Hamilton and Mr Gill were among seven new UKIP AMs elected on Thursday.
Gareth Bennett, Mark Reckless, David Rowlands and Mr Gill took the oath of office at the Senedd in Cardiff Bay on Saturday.
Mr Hamilton and another newly-elected AM - Caroline Jones - were present but were not sworn in.
Party sources expect Mr Hamilton to make the leadership challenge on Tuesday to Mr Gill, who was appointed UKIP Wales leader by Mr Farage in 2014.
Mr Hamilton and Ms Jones are expected to take the oath on Tuesday morning, after attending a meeting of UKIP's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) on Monday.
At the meeting they will stand down from the NEC, which is required under UKIP's rules now that they have become elected politicians.
A senior UKIP source suggested Mr Hamilton might use the meeting to attempt to change party rules stating that UKIP's national leader has the sole power to appoint the party's leader in Wales.
Mr Hamilton has denied he has such a plan.
Earlier on Saturday, Mr Hamilton told BBC Radio Wales that UKIP AMs would agree next week who should lead their group.
He stressed that Mr Gill was not automatically in charge and said there were "many people in UKIP" with the right skills for the the job.
"We're going to have a collective discussion when we all meet together and we'll come up with a decision as to which of us is likely to be the most effective leader in the assembly," he said.
Asked if he would be the best candidate, Mr Hamilton added: "I, of course, have a lot of parliamentary experience and so has [fellow UKIP AM and ex-Tory MP] Mark Reckless.
"I've been around in politics for a very long time at quite a high level, and we have many...

Summary: Neil Hamilton is expected to challenge Nathan Gill to lead UKIP's new assembly group, sources have told BBC Wales.
###
Article: The European Union must become more "flexible" and responsibility for areas such as industrial strategy should return to member states, he suggested.
He also told the BBC he backed holding a referendum if further powers were transferred to Brussels in the future.
But he said an in-out referendum now would have "big costs" for the country.
He was speaking ahead of a long-awaited speech in which David Cameron was due to set out his view of the UK's future relationship with the 27-member union. However, the speech was postponed due to the Algerian hostage crisis.
He is expected to call for a renegotiation of the UK's existing relationship and to guarantee a referendum on its outcome after the next election.
Asked about the circumstances in which he would back a referendum, Mr Miliband said his party would not hand over any more powers to Brussels without first consulting the public.
If Labour were re-elected, he said he would not repeal the coalition government's so-called "referendum lock" - a law passed in 2010 which means a public vote would be triggered if substantial further powers were delegated to the EU.
He said "urgent changes" were needed in the EU and Labour would seek to repatriate certain powers - including funding for industry and infrastructure that are part of the EU's regional policy - to ensure the EU "worked better for Britain".
"Regional policy, the way a national government can have an industrial policy, I think there are areas where Britain needs powers back," he told the BBC's Radio 4's Today programme.
But he said Labour would not seek to limit co-operation in other areas, for instance by opting out of the European Arrest warrant.
He did not say during the interview whether he would rule out a referendum in the future to approve any return of powers to the UK from the EU.
A group of Conservative MPs called on Wednesday for powers over employment and social legislation to be returned to the UK and safeguards in other areas such as financial regulation but others want to go further and...

Summary: Ed Miliband has said a future Labour government would seek to return some powers from Brussels to Westminster to make the EU "work better for Britain".
###
Article: PwC's Northern Ireland economic outlook said this was despite overall unemployment having fallen by more than 10,000 since June 2014.
It said poor productivity remains the single biggest challenge to Northern Ireland's sustained recovery.
PwC's Esmond Birnie said the pace of recovery was "decelerating".
"Over the past seven months business confidence has been mixed, sometimes negative but always lagging the GB regions," Mr Birnie, who is PwC's chief economist in Northern Ireland, said.
"There have also been recent mixed messages around consumer confidence, with June 2015 seeing the first rise in unemployment for more than two years; this may simply be a blip - or it may be indicative of a deeper malaise.
"Currently, Northern Ireland's output is still 8% below the pre-crisis peak of 2008 and is something of a two-speed economy with employment contracting in public sector and financial services but growing fairly rapidly in advanced manufacturing, pharma, food processing and tourism.
"PwC forecasts that Northern Ireland's economic growth will remain the lowest of the 12 UK regions at around 1.8% in 2015 - lower than the 2.2% growth experienced in 2014 - and will fall again in 2016 to around 1.7%."
The report said that Northern Ireland's unemployment claimant count increased by 200 between May and June, the first month-on-month increase since December 2008.
It said that 62% of those registered as unemployed have been out of work for more than 12 months, while 19.7% of young people aged 18-25 are unemployed - well above the UK average of 13.2%.
PwC said the recent budget "confirmed that welfare reform and austerity will continue and that Northern Ireland probably faces a further four years of challenging economic circumstances, particularly around public spending".

Summary:


Mafia criminals who are better educated tend to earn more, research suggests.

Article: Catriona Bhatia claimed that despite major investment the service was failing to live up to its name.
She said there were big differences in speeds being received by homes and businesses covered by the provision.
BT said it had invested heavily to ensure the service reached premises which would not have received it on a commercial basis.
Ms Bhatia was speaking after a report highlighted the progress made and challenges faced in improving broadband access in the south of Scotland.
Scottish Borders Council has invested Â£8.4m in the rollout of services across the region.
You shouldnt be getting 2MB when somebody down the road is getting 20MB and youre paying exactly the same amount of money.
However, she said the results were variable.
"If you pay for your electricity, you get 240 volts delivered to your house - it should be the same for your broadband speeds," she said.
"You shouldn't be getting 2MB when somebody down the road is getting 20MB and you're paying exactly the same amount of money."
Ms Bhatia said she felt the local authority was not getting the provision it had paid for.
"We have also invested a large sum of public money in this to get a contract that would deliver 94% superfast broadband across the Borders," she added.
"Not everybody within that 94% is getting the same level of service - I think it is actually a bit of a scandal and some further investigation needs to be done."
A BT spokeswoman said it had invested Â£126m in the Digital Scotland rollout on top of its commercial investment.
She said that the four-year programme was only just past its halfway point and had already benefited more than 23,600 premises in the Borders and more than 41,000 in Dumfries and Galloway.
"Every phone line is different and many factors can affect the speed of broadband, ranging from the length of the line from the fibre-enabled street cabinet, to faulty routers and existing wiring or equipment in people's homes," she said.
"When someone decides to move to a fibre-based service, their service provider should...

Summary: A Borders councillor has said she believes people are being short-changed by a superfast broadband rollout.
###
Article: However the study suggests performance has improved in other areas and there is no evidence that Wales is "lagging behind" any other part of the UK.
The research - comparing England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - shows a significant deterioration in Welsh waiting times since 2009.
This was during an "unprecedented squeeze" on finances.
Those behind the research claim the performance on waiting times should "set alarm bells ringing amongst policy makers" at a time when governments across the UK are considering how to prioritise spending in a time of austerity.
But across a number of other measures - such as rates of avoidable deaths - the research suggests the NHS in Wales is broadly in line with the rest of the UK or has improved to a "similar level to England".
According to Health Minister Mark Drakeford the study proves Prime Minister David Cameron's recent attacks on the performance of the Welsh NHS had been "utterly unfounded".
"I would say this report shoots Mr Cameron's fox good and proper," he told BBC Wales.
The research, jointly commissioned by Nuffield Trust and The Health Foundation, also concludes that "the performance gap between England and the rest of the UK has narrowed in recent years" and that "there is little sign that one country is moving ahead of the others consistently across the available indicators of performance".
It also suggests differing health policies, introduced across the UK since devolution, may have had less effect on performance than may have been expected.
WAITING TIMES
In the years leading up to 2009/10, the length of time patients had to wait for a wide range of common procedures improved significantly in Wales and across the UK.
But since then waiting times in Wales for many of those procedures have lengthened substantially. This is in contrast to the trends England and Scotland.
The research notes that in 2012/13 patients in Wales waited on average about 170 days for a hip or knee replacement, compared to 77 days in England and 67 days in Scotland.
The study...

Summary: The Welsh government's decision to cut NHS funding may be responsible for longer waiting times, a report claims.
###
Article: Anyone walking into a busy pub in Manchester may well be confronted with a rather shocking sight.
At one table it looks like a group of friends are smoking, but there is no smell in the air and no ashtrays on the table. What they are using are e-cigarettes.
One of the women, Steph, says the e-cigarette has helped her to stop smoking.
"I've tried patches and inhalators," she says. "They're a lot better because you feel like you're having a cigarette."
"They're a great idea," says another woman, Lisa. "You've got the health benefits from it and it does taste like a cigarette."
The e-cigarette comes in two parts.
In one end there is liquid nicotine, in the other a rechargeable battery and an atomiser. When the user sucks, the liquid nicotine is vaporised and absorbed through the mouth. What looks like smoke is largely water vapour.
Because there is no tobacco in e-cigarettes, there is no tar and it is the tar in ordinary cigarettes that kills.
The e-cigarette market is growing fast. A survey by the charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) suggests 700,000 people in the UK were using e-cigarettes last year.
The charity estimates that number will reach a million in 2013 and some medical experts see huge potential benefits.
"Nicotine itself is not a particularly hazardous drug," says Professor John Britton, who leads the tobacco advisory group for the Royal College of Physicians.
"It's something on a par with the effects you get from caffeine.
"If all the smokers in Britain stopped smoking cigarettes and started smoking e-cigarettes we would save 5 million deaths in people who are alive today. It's a massive potential public health prize."
There are however concerns about the safety and regulation of e-cigarettes.
They can legally be sold to children. There are few restrictions on advertising. Critics say some of the adverts glamorise something that looks like smoking.
Unlike patches and gum, e-cigarettes are not regulated like medicines. It means there are no rules for example about the purity of the nicotine in...

Summary: The number of people using e-cigarettes in the UK is expected to reach a million this year but while some believe the electronic alternative to tobacco could help save hundreds of thousands of lives others think they normalise what looks like smoking and may be unsafe.
###
Article: Thousands of the small seabirds have been driven from wintering grounds off Scandinavia by stormy easterly winds.
RSPB Scotland said the event was on a "massive scale" and auks have appeared as far inland as Lentran near Beauly.
While large numbers of birds have survived the ordeal, others have been found dead including at Rosemarkie.
The birds discovered at Rosemarkie in the Black Isle were thought to have tried to find shelter among large clumps of seaweed on the beach.
Stuart Benn, of RSPB Scotland, said many of the birds were finding shelter in the Moray Firth.
He said: "What is going on is on a massive scale. I've never known anything quite like it.
"To get this number of birds so close inshore is unprecedented."
Another ornithological organisation, Rare Bird Alert, has been recording sightings of little auks at other locations in Scotland and the rest of the UK, including Orkney, Shetland, Caithness and Fife.
The birds winter in the North Sea off Denmark and also off the coast of Sweden, feeding on plankton.
They breed in colonies numbering hundreds of thousands of birds in the Arctic, including on Svalbard and Spitsbergen.
Mr Benn said the wind-blown little auks should eventually find their way back to their usual territories once the weather calms down.
Dozens of the seabirds have been rescued. The Scottish SPCA said it was caring for more than 100 of the auks at its National Wildlife Rescue Centre in Fishcross.

Summary: The numbers of wind-blown little auks appearing in Scotland have been "unprecedented", a bird conservation charity has suggested.
###
Article: Lacey Spears, 27, of New York, administered salt into her son Garnett's feeding tube from infancy while writing a blog about his illness.
Prosecutors described her actions as evil, inhuman and despicable.
The judge said she was suffering from a rare mental disorder and so was spared the maximum 25-year sentence available.
Garnett died in 2014 at Westchester Medical Centre after he was treated for gastrointestinal symptoms that Spears had induced.
His feeding tube had been in place since infancy when Spears told doctors he could not keep food down.
When she took him to hospital saying he was having seizures, doctors found his sodium levels to be extremely high.
The prosecution said that having administered him salt at their home in suburban New York, she twice took Garnett into a bathroom at the hospital to do the same.
They said she posted pictures of him dying on her Facebook account.
Acting state supreme court justice Robert Neary called Spears' crime "unfathomable in its cruelty'', bringing Garnett "five years of torment and pain".
Assistant district attorney Doreen Lloyd said: "She continued to portray him as a sick child for her own bizarre need for attention.
"She used that feeding tube as a weapon to kill him."
Spears had told investigators that her son, whose father was killed in a car accident, suffered from a number of medical problems from Crohn's disease and Celiac diseases to ear abnormalities.
The judge described her as mentally ill and identified her condition as Munchausen by proxy syndrome, in which a person, usually a parent, sickens a child to gain attention from the child's plight.
Her defence lawyers had refused to raise the disorder as a defence and said she had not been diagnosed with any mental illness.
They had asked for the minimum sentence of 15 years. They have filed an appeal against her conviction.

Summary: A US woman has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for making her five-year-old son sick and eventually killing him to gain attention online.
###
Article: The University of Essex study of 712 Italian-American mafia members in the 1960s showed their income had risen by 7.5-8.5% per extra year of education.
Those involved in complex crimes such as charging exorbitant rates for loans or extortion saw three times the boost of those who committed violent crimes.
But, on average, the 712 left education a year earlier than other white men of a similar age in their neighbourhoods.
"Criminal careers are known to start very early and are likely to be interwoven with schooling choices," the study says.
Lead researcher Prof Giovanni Mastrobuoni said education tended to have a protective effect against getting involved with crime, but he added: "It is also true that if you decide to be a criminal it's better to be a better-educated one."
The study says: "Private returns to education exist not only in legitimate but also in the illegitimate activities that imply a sufficient degree of complexity,"
"Mobster returns (in terms of income) to a year of schooling are around 7.5 to 8.5%, compared to 9-10% for the neighbour sample.
"Moreover, for mobsters who, according to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics records, were involved in white-collar crimes that require running an illegal business (ie racketeering, loan sharking, bootlegging et cetera) we found returns to education that are about three times as large as for those who are involved in violent crimes (ie robberies, murders et cetera)."

Summary:

Article: {{document}}

Summary: ||| {{target}}


The Scottish town which 'won' two Carbuncle honours for its ugly shopping centre has scooped Best Town at the Scottish Design Awards.

Article: The Treasury said that the "extensive" review would make sure that shoppers got the discounts they are entitled to.
Tax-free shops should not charge VAT, if passengers are going outside the EU.
In August it was revealed that some airside retailers were not always passing VAT savings on to customers, but were keeping the money instead.
The Treasury said some shops were keeping as much as half the money they should be giving to consumers.
"VAT relief at airports is intended to cut prices for those travellers - not be a windfall gain for shops," said Chancellor George Osborne.
"But many people could be paying over the odds for their purchases because the government's VAT concession isn't passed on. This is simply unacceptable," he said.
At the moment airport retailers are not legally obliged to provide a VAT discount, so it would need a change in the law to make them do so.
Some retailers have claimed it would be too difficult to introduce dual-pricing for EU and non-EU travellers - and that such a requirement would lead to delays for passengers.
WH Smith, one of the shops originally criticised, said it would co-operate with the inquiry.
Boots, which also came in for criticism, has already announced a review of its own policy.
"Since taking our decision in August 2015 to no longer ask customers to show us their boarding passes we have been continuing with our strategic review and, working together with the Airport Authorities, we are nearing conclusion," the retailer said.
"We will participate with the government review as we receive further details," it added.
Who is entitled to VAT savings?
Anyone travelling outside the 28 countries of the European Union (EU). Travellers within the EU or the UK have to pay existing rates of duty and VAT.
Do you have to show a boarding pass?
If you are buying cigarettes or alcohol in a duty free shop, you are legally obliged to show your boarding pass, to prove you are travelling outside the EU. If you are buying other goods - say books, snacks or cosmetics - you are still...

Summary: Airport shops could be forced to give VAT discounts to passengers travelling outside the European Union, following the launch of a government inquiry.
###
Article: Mr Burnham told the Guardian the role was "a cabinet-level job, which needs cabinet-level experience".
The Leigh MP said Westminster had "become a bit of an irrelevance for some people" adding that "we really need to change the way politics works".
The first elections for the role, currently filled by interim mayor Tony Lloyd, will be held in 2017.
Mr Lloyd and another former Labour minister, Ivan Lewis, are also seeking Labour's nomination.
Mr Burnham, the former health secretary, had been expected to announce his candidacy on Thursday but his intentions became clear when one of his Twitter profiles was rebranded as "Andy4Manchester".
As a national political figure over many years, Andy Burnham will be seen as the first genuine big hitter to throw his name in the hat to become Greater Manchester mayor.
The Leigh MP's move will be read by many as him giving up on a Labour return to government in 2020, but it's also a sign of the shift in power from Westminster to the North West.
Mr Burnham wasn't part of any negotiation for devolution to Greater Manchester and he was completely taken by surprise by the deal to merge health and social care, claiming the area was taking responsibility for an "NHS funding crisis" rather than anything else.
But time passes quickly in politics and Mr Burnham now sees opportunity where he once predicted disaster.
He'll be up against two well-established candidates for Labour who have spent months visiting local party groups to garner support.
He may find that being a big player in the national game doesn't particularly endear you to those who've stayed home to hold the fort but he's a formidable addition to the panel Labour members will eventually choose from.
The race to be the mayor of Greater Manchester has just got a bit more interesting.
Powerful regional mayors are a key part of the government's drive to devolve more responsibility to local authorities for Whitehall.
About 2.7 million people live in Greater Manchester, which has been at the forefront of the devolution project...

Summary: Shadow home secretary Andy Burnham will put himself forward to become the mayor of Greater Manchester.
###
Article: A firm in north Wales wants to bring the PooPrints service from the United States to the UK with up to 15 councils reportedly interested in the scheme.
Councils could make owners in problem areas register their dogs to a database which involves a mouth swab taken.
Then, DNA could be taken from mess left on a street, path or grass and used to find a match on the database.
Gary Downie, managing director of Streetkleen Bio in Ruthin, Denbighshire, believes local authorities can use new powers granted by the Antisocial Behaviour and Policing Act 2014 to force dog owners to comply.
"The purpose of the system is to get cleaner, safer open spaces," he said.
Councils the company is in talks with include Kingston-upon-Thames in south-west London, Aberdeen and Cheshire East.

Summary: DNA in dog mess could be used to catch owners who fail to clear up their pet's mess.
###
Article: A study, by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), analysed university applications made in 2008 by 50,000 would-be students.
Degree applications from 12 minority groups analysed were "significantly" less likely to result in an offer.
Universities UK said institutions were "actively addressing" the issue.
The report found that even after academic achievement, family social background and the type of school a student attended were taken into account, most minority groups were still much less likely to win a university place.
The only exceptions were mixed white/Asian and Chinese university candidates, who did not have a significantly lower chance of getting an offer.
The academics  calculated that on average, Pakistani candidates received seven fewer offers for every 100 applications compared with white British applicants, whilst Bangladeshi and black African students received five fewer offers and black Caribbean youngsters received three fewer.
The research also found that around 71% of applications from white British students to elite institutions - those with the most competitive entry requirements - resulted in an offer, more than for any other group.
At the other end of the scale, around 49% of applications to these universities from Bangladeshi students resulted in offers, along with 52% of those from Pakistani young people.
The LSE researchers also looked at the types of universities to which different ethnic groups were likely to apply.
They found that once qualifications, socio-economic status and schooling were taken into account, there was "very little" evidence that candidates from black and minority ethnic groups were reluctant or unwilling to apply to high-status institutions.
"When other variables are taken into account, candidates from most black and minority ethnic groups are just as, if not more, likely to target elite universities than comparable white British candidates," the report concludes.
All the applications examined by the LSE researchers were under 21 years of...

Summary: Ethnic minority students are less likely than their white British peers to receive offers from UK universities, research suggests.
###
Article: Through some complex calculations, they have shone a light on the processes governing how coffee is extracted for grains in a filter machine.
This could help drinkers optimise their cuppa by applying a more precise - and scientific - approach.
The work is published in the SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics.
Composed of over 1,800 chemical components, coffee is one of the most widely consumed drinks in the world.
Estimates put the number of cups drunk around the world at more than a couple of billion each day.
Brewing the perfect cup of coffee is always going to be a subjective endeavour. But the work by Kevin Moroney at the University of Limerick, William Lee at the University of Portsmouth and others offers a better understanding of the parameters that influence the final product.
While past studies have looked at the maths of coffee extraction, there hasn't been that much work on drip filter machines.
These make up more than half of the 18 million coffee machines sold yearly in Europe, and involve pouring hot water over a bed of coffee grounds housed in a filter.
Gravity pulls the water through the filter, extracting soluble compounds from the coffee grains during the flow.
"Our overall idea is to have a complete mathematical model of coffee brewing that you could use to design coffee machines, rather like we use a theory of fluid and solid mechanics to design racing cars." Dr Lee told BBC News.
He said this study was a step towards that goal, adding: "We looked at the effect of coffee grain size on the way that coffee comes out of a filter coffee machine.
"The really surprising thing to us is that there are really two processes by which coffee is extracted from grains. There's a very quick process by which coffee's extracted from the surface of the grains. And then there's a slower tail-off where coffee comes out of the interior of the grains."
It had previously been known that grinding beans too finely could result in coffee that is over-extracted and very bitter. On the other hand not grinding them...

Summary: Mathematicians are a step closer to understanding what makes a perfect cup of coffee.
###
Article: Cumbernauld has the dubious distinction of winning the Plook on the Plinth title for having Scotland's "most dismal" town centre in 2001 and 2005.
Judges have compared it to Kabul and described its shopping centre as a rabbit warren on stilts.
Now an online poll has seen it top a public vote for civic pride.
The Scottish Design Awards is organised by Urban Realm - which also organises the Carbuncle awards.
During the past few weeks of online voting, Cumbernauld residents helped the town move ahead of rivals such as Broughty Ferry, Dunkeld, East Kilbride, Eaglesham Linlithgow, Peebles and Pitlochry.
When the polls closed at midnight on Thursday, Cumbernauld had narrowly beaten Peebles.
The prize will be collected by a delegation from the town at a ceremony in Glasgow on Friday evening.
The Carbuncle Awards were created by Gordon Young, now editor of The Drum, one of the sponsors of the Scottish Design Awards.
He said: "The initial complaints against the town concerned the disastrous design of the town centre.
"There has been some investment in that area but the level of improvement is not great.
"However, Cumbernauld's real success story is how it has prospered despite these problems."
Mr Young said "the surrounding countryside, the high demand for housing, rich and diverse suburbs, transport links to Glasgow and Edinburgh and a vibrant community spirit" had all helped make Cumbernauld "a decent place to bring up a family".
He added: "Basically, economic success plus people power have made it a nice place to live."

Summary:


SeaWorld has been banned from bringing wild killer whales to its park in San Diego, America.

Article: With more than 10,000 people aged 11 to 25 responding, 53% wanted votes at 16, with 29% saying no and 18% unsure.
Presiding Officer Dame Rosemary Butler said it gave a "crucial insight" into young people's views.
But Conservative Monmouth MP David Davies has warned votes at 16 would undermine the legal protection 16 and 17-year-olds currently receive.
The report comes as the UK government plans further devolution which will including giving the assembly control over its own elections, including the voting age currently set at 18.
Supporters of a lower voting age claim it will boost young people's interest in politics, pointing to the Scottish independence referendum in which 16 and 17-year-olds were allowed to vote.
Dame Rosemary said she was "inspired" by many of the comments given by young people in the survey, including one who spoke of "citizens playing their part as equally as politicians".
"Young people are integral to the process of shaping the future of our nation - we must give them the right support so that we optimise their contribution," she said.
But she added politicians had to tackle the "information vacuum", as many young people said they wanted to vote but did not understand the political process.

Summary: Most young people in Wales want the voting age lowered to 16, according to consultation by the Welsh assembly.
###
Article: Over the year, export volumes fell 2.1% compared to the previous 12 months.
Meanwhile, separate figures showed the value of retail sales remained flat between April and June, with growth much lower than levels across the UK.
The number of retail sales rose 1% in Britain in the second quarter of 2016, but north of the border the rise was 0.2%
Business minister Paul Wheelhouse said the export figures showed Scotland's place within the European single market was "absolutely vital".
He said: "These statistics remind us that Scotland's economy continues to face substantial challenges.
"Subdued global demand and the impact of a lower oil price environment have contributed to a drop in first quarter export volumes for companies working in several parts of the Scottish economy."
Mr Wheelhouse added: "While Scotland's economy is fundamentally strong, our continued EU status - and, thereby, our place in the world's biggest single market - is absolutely vital when it comes to promoting trade and protecting jobs, investment and long-term-prosperity, and this why we are committed to pursuing every possible avenue to maintain our place in the EU."
The figures showed a 3.3% increase in food and drink exports while the amount of textiles, clothing and leather goods sold abroad from Scotland went up by 2.1%.
The decline in exports was recorded ahead of the UK's vote for Brexit, which some economists have suggested could make British goods and services more attractive to overseas buyers as a result of falls in the value of the pound.
The Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC) said the latest retail figures continued the recent "trend of effectively flat retail sales".
SRC head of policy and external affairs Ewan MacDonald-Russell said: "This comes against the backdrop of an industry going through an intense period of structural, economic and regulatory change.
"Retailers are responding to this environment by becoming more innovative and productive through investment in people, technology and more efficient logistics...

Summary: Scottish manufactured exports fell by 0.5% in the first three months of 2016, according to the latest figures.
###
Article: He had an immune disorder that mean the weakened polio virus used to vaccinate him in childhood survived in his body.
Over time it has mutated into a form of the virus that can cause paralysis and he had no idea the jab had not worked.
Polio is only endemic in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria although Nigeria has now gone more than a year without a case.
The discovery was made by a team from the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire.
They now warn that similar cases could trigger new outbreaks and hamper efforts to eradicate the disease.
They wrote in the journal PLOS Pathogens: "While maintaining high immunisation coverage will likely confer protection against paralytic disease caused by these viruses, significant changes in immunisation strategies might be required to effectively stop their occurrence and potential widespread transmission."
The man had a full course of polio vaccinations, including three doses of weakened live virus at five, seven and 12 months old, followed by a booster when he was about seven.
He was later diagnosed with a condition that suppresses the immune system, affecting its ability to kill viruses in the gut.
His stool samples contained high levels of polio virus - the researchers estimated the man had been shedding live polio in his stools for as long as 28 years.
The virus had also mutated dramatically and were no longer the weakened, or "attenuated", versions of the virus which are used in the vaccinations.
The infection was neutralised by using blood plasma taken from people with healthy immune systems who had been immunised against polio.
According to the scientific team, several highly mutated polio strains, originating from vaccines, had recently been isolated from sewage samples in Slovakia, Finland, Estonia and Israel.
All bore the molecular fingerprints of "iVDPVs" - vaccine-derived polio viruses from immunodeficient individuals.
The researchers are calling for enhanced surveillance including sewage sampling and stool...

Summary: A British man who was vaccinated against polio has been producing the virus for nearly 30 years.
###
Article: Reform Scotland also said health and police boards should be scrapped, and their responsibility added to councils.
It wants to see local authorities reduced from the current 32, to 19.
The think tank said the "crisis" in local government was highlighted by poor turnouts at the 3 May council elections.
The recommendations were dismissed by local authority umbrella group Cosla and the Scottish government.
In a
          new report on renewing local government
, Reform Scotland also proposed the election of mayors and the devolution of local taxes, all under plans to bring power closer to the people and "reverse the trend" of centralising power with government.
Under Reform Scotland's proposals, some city councils and ones with large areas, like Edinburgh and Highland, would stay the same.
But other neighbouring authorities, like North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire, would be merged into a new area simply known as "Lanarkshire".
The new councils under the proposed structure would be:
Reform Scotland chairman Ben Thomson said: "It is clear from the recent disappointing local election turnout that we have to take action against the erosion of local democracy in Scotland.
By Brian TaylorPolitical editor, Scotland
"This is not a party-political issue, and we hope to start a vital debate in this country which will result in a solution being found which empowers our councils, and which engages people at election-time.
"It is certainly the case that there is too much confusion caused by the inconsistent number of councils, police boards and health boards, and, by making these boundaries the same and making local authorities more responsible for these essential services, we will take a big step in the right direction."
A Cosla spokesman, described the Reform Scotland report as "disappointing" and said some of the thinking behind it was "woolly and piecemeal".
He added: "It is also interesting and somewhat odd that a think tank that champions localism is trying to deny councils the opportunity to be truly local with...

Summary: The number of Scottish councils should be cut by almost half and their powers boosted to revitalise local government, a think tank has said.
###
Article: Researchers from Oxford and Bristol universities looked at the IQ scores of 4,000 children as well as recording the alcohol intake of their mothers.
They found "moderate" alcohol intake of one to six units a week during pregnancy affected IQ.
Experts said the effect was small, but reinforced the need to avoid alcohol in pregnancy.
Previous studies have produced inconsistent and confusing evidence on whether low to moderate levels of alcohol are harmful in pregnancy, largely because it is difficult to separate out other factors that may have an effect such as the mother's age and education.
But this research, published in the PLOS One journal, ruled that out by looking at changes in the genes that are not connected to social or lifestyle effects.
The study found that four genetic variants in alcohol-metabolising genes in children and their mothers were strongly related to lower IQ at age eight.
On average, the child's IQ was almost two points lower per genetic modification they possessed.
Source: BBC Health
BBC Health: Alcohol in pregnancy
But this effect was only seen among the children of women who drank between one and six drinks a week during pregnancy and not among women who abstained when they were pregnant.
The researchers said although a causal effect could not be proven, the way they had done the study strongly suggested that it was exposure to alcohol in the womb that was responsible for the differences in child IQ.
Dr Ron Gray, from Oxford University, who led the research added that although the differences appeared small, they may well be significant and that lower IQ had been shown to be associated with being socially disadvantaged, having poorer health and even dying younger.
"It is for individual women to decide whether or not to drink during pregnancy, we just want to provide the evidence.
"But I would recommend avoiding alcohol. Why take the risk?"
A Department of Health spokesman said that since 2007 their advice had been that women who are trying to conceive or are pregnant should avoid...

Summary: Drinking one or two glasses of wine a week during pregnancy can have an impact on a child's IQ, a study says.
###
Article: It has also been told to stop breeding orcas in captivity in a ruling from the California Coastal Commission.
They gave the park permission to double the size of its orca enclosures on the condition that breeding and bringing in new whales stopped.
It comes after criticism of the way the whales are treated there, something SeaWorld has always rejected.
Animal rights activists have welcomed a ruling by the California Coastal Commission, an agency that makes big decisions on major building projects in that area of America.
SeaWorld had put in plans to spend $100m (Â£65m) to expand its orca facility, which the commission approved.
But their decision came with several conditions. SeaWorld cannot add any new whales from the wild to its San Diego tanks, and none of the 11 orcas currently at the park will be allowed to breed there.
SeaWorld said it was disappointed with the ruling. They issued a statement that said: "Breeding is a natural, fundamental and important part of an animal's life and depriving a social animal of the right to reproduce is inhumane."
Groups that have criticised the park said they were pleased with the decision.
The group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said: "The commission's action ensures that no more orcas will be condemned to a nonlife of loneliness, deprivation and misery."
The breeding ban will not apply to the 13 other whales at SeaWorld attractions in San Antonio and Orlando.

Summary:


Being overweight in adolescence is linked to a greater risk of bowel cancer later in life, a study suggests.

Article: The team at Anglia Ruskin University analysed translations from ancient Iraq or Mesopotamia.
Accounts of soldiers being visited by "ghosts they faced in battle" fitted with a modern diagnosis of PTSD.
The condition was likely to be as old as human civilisation, the researchers concluded.
Prof Jamie Hacker Hughes, a former consultant clinical psychologist for the Ministry of Defence, said the first description of PTSD was often accredited to the Greek historian Herodotus.
Referring to the warrior Epizelus during the battle of Marathon in 490BC he wrote: "He suddenly lost sight of both eyes, though nothing had touched him."
His report co-authored with Dr Walid Abdul-Hamid, Queen Mary College London, argues there are references in the Assyrian Dynasty in Mesopotamia between 1300BC and 609BC.
In that era men spent a year being toughened up by building roads, bridges and other projects, before spending a year at war and then returning to their families for a year before starting the cycle again.
Potential triggers for post-traumatic stress disorder
How is PTSD diagnosed?
Prof Hacker Hughes told the BBC News website: "The sorts of symptoms after battle were very clearly what we would call now post-traumatic stress symptoms.
"They described hearing and seeing ghosts talking to them, who would be the ghosts of people they'd killed in battle - and that's exactly the experience of modern-day soldiers who've been involved in close hand-to-hand combat."
A diagnosis and understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder emerged after the Vietnam War. It was dismissed as shell shock in World War One.
Prof Hacker Hughes said: "As long as there has been civilisation and as long as there has been warfare, there has been post-traumatic symptoms. It's not a 21st Century thing."

Summary: Evidence of post-traumatic stress disorder can be traced back to 1300BC - much earlier than previously thought - say researchers.
###
Article: At least 80 people died in the fire on 14 June, although the final toll will not be known for many months.
Nearly 400 holidays have been offered by the Grenfell Tower Holiday Appeal Facebook Group, set up by Angie Mays and Kay Gilbert from Devon.
The man and his family will have a week in a cottage in Marsden, Yorkshire.
More on the holiday offer for Grenfell victims and other Devon news.
The firefighter's wife, who wishes to remain anonymous to protect her husband, said: "What Kay and Angie have done from the kindness of their hearts will help so many families at such a distressing time in their lives.
"This has been the most horrific job of my husband's career and he has been utterly broken by it - as we all have - trying to support him emotionally, and trying to understand what he has been through, not to mention praying he comes home in one piece.
"Thanks to the utter kindness of these wonderful ladies and all of the generous donations to this cause, we will be able to go away for a week as a family for some much needed R&R.
"This means the world to me that I can take them away from it all, if just for a moment."
Ms Mays, a fundraiser from Ilfracombe, said short-stay offers have come mainly from small businesses, B&Bs and guesthouses all over the UK, but also in Spain and Cyprus, adding that other firefighter families are also in the process of taking up offers.
Other donations include counselling sessions, beauty treatments and meals.
Separate Facebook groups have been also set up to provide holidays in Cornwall and the Highlands.

Summary: A firefighter "utterly broken" by the Grenfell Tower blaze is to take up the offer of a free holiday with money raised by members of the public.
###
Article: Because I have been told that Labour's leader, Ed Miliband, wants to next month announce an eye-catching policy of cutting maximum university fees for students by a third, from £9,000 to £6,000.
But this would not be cheap: it could cost around £2.5bn a year, based on the £7.6bn that is expected to be lent to students this year to pay for their tuition fees.
In practice the cost might turn out to be less, because the current system imposes a hidden charge on government - in that many thousands of students are expected to be unable to repay their loans over coming years. The IFS calculates this hidden cost to the public purse, the disguised public sector subsidy, as 43.3p for every £1 lent.
This cost, of expected loan write-offs, might be lower under Labour's lower-fee system, since the smaller loans might be more affordable for more students
Even so, to be a credible commitment - at a time when the public sector deficit is £91bn - Labour would have to find a new tax to cover the significant cost.
So the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, has been asked to make the sums add up.
As I understand it, he has not yet done so.
Ed Miliband told Labour's conference in the autumn of 2011 that he would cut student fees by a third if the party was in power then. But it has never been a manifesto commitment.
At the time, he said it would be paid for by increasing corporation tax paid by banks - but those funds are no longer available because they have already been tapped by George Osborne.
The preferred option, I am told, is to find an equivalent tax to the raid on the banks. But I understand that Ed Balls and Ed Miliband are also examining whether to replace the system of funding via student loans with a new tax on new graduates - by which those who benefit from a university degree would pay a higher tax rate.
The fee reduction would be aimed at reinforcing Labour's support among younger voters, especially those who turned against the Liberal Democrats when - as part of the government - they abandoned their opposition to fee...

Summary: We may be about to learn how much of a constraint Labour's promise to make no unfunded spending promises really is.
###
Article: Meath were presented with the trophy after the referee calculated that they had won by a point - 2-18 to 1-20.
However, it quickly became apparent that the correct score in the second-tier hurling final was 2-17 to 1-20.
Antrim had called for a replay after a result which saw the Saffrons missing out on a return to the top tier.
The rematch will take place at Newry's Pairc Esler with a 19:00 BST start.
Speaking after Tuesday morning's All-Ireland Football qualifiers draw, GAA president Aogan O Fearghail acknowledged that the the controversial hurling decider was likely to be replayed.
"If it ended in a draw, then there is only one action they can take," the GAA president told RTE.
Antrim had officially sought a replay after meeting to discuss the controversy on Monday night.
"Our expectation is the match will be replayed this weekend," Antrim chairman Collie Donnelly told BBC Sport NI on Monday.
The GAA president has ruled out the possibility that both Meath and Antrim could be promoted to next year's Leinster Championship as a compromise following Saturday's fiasco.
The Christy Ring Cup winners earn promotion to the Leinster Championship in addition to the possibility of clinching a place in the All-Ireland qualifiers.
Meath did not offer a replay, a decision which Antrim GAA chairman Donnelly described as "disappointing".
"If it was the other way round, we would have offered it straight away," he said.
"At the the end of the day nobody won the match, so it's disappointing they haven't come forward."
Donnelly suggested the match be replayed as a curtain-raiser to Meath's Leinster senior football championship match against Louth in Parnell Park, Dublin on Sunday but the GAA's Central Competitions Control Committee instead decided to schedule the game for Saturday at Pairc Esler.
There are suggestions that the problem arose when the stadium scoreboard incorrectly Meath an Antrim point in the 63rd minute.
The scoreboard was quickly adjusted to register an Antrim point but there is a suggestion that the Meath...

Summary: The Christy Ring Cup final will be replayed on Saturday in Newry after GAA bosses acted on Tuesday following last weekend's scoreline controversy.
###
Article: The homework asked: "Angelou was sexually abused by her mother's _______ at age 8, which shaped her career choices and motivation for writing."
Pupils in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, were given an algebra formula with the assignment to solve the problem.
Parents complained to Pennridge High School officials about the homework.
A subsequent question in the same homework asked about a single mother who is trying to support her son by working as a pimp and a prostitute.
It asked what was her other means of support, including another formula for the options, bookie, drug dealer and nightclub dancer.
The questions were based on the life of the famed American poet Maya Angelou, but many parents complained the subject matter was not appropriate for young teenagers or a maths equation.
The same assignment surfaced two years ago in a Florida school, sparking similar controversy.
Pennridge School District said it had received a number of complaints about homework "which contained adult content without a proper context".
"The homework worksheet in question was downloaded from a website that allows teachers around the world to share educational resources.
"It is not part of our approve curriculum."
But a Twitter user, @PennridgeReform, who tweeted an image of the assignment, commented: "How can we trust the teacher with the kids' education when these questions are permitted?"

Summary: A US secondary school has apologised after setting a maths questions that asked students about a girl being sexually abused by family members.
###
Article: Researchers followed nearly 240,000 Swedish men for 35 years.
The analysis, published in the journal Gut, showed overweight teenagers went on to have twice the risk of bowel cancer. The figures were even higher in obese teens.
The World Cancer Research Fund said the link between obesity and cancer was "strong".
Bowel cancer is the third most common cancer in the world, with nearly 1.4 million new cases each year.
Processed red meat and abdominal fat have been linked to the disease.
The participants in the study were aged between 16 and 20 at the start.
The overwhelming majority were a normal weight, but 6.5% were overweight and 1% were obese.
There were 855 cases of colorectal cancer in the study.
However, the results showed not all weights were affected equally.
Those who were obese were 2.38 times more likely to have developed a bowel tumour.
The study, led by Orebro University Hospital in Sweden and Harvard University, said: "Late adolescence marks the transition from childhood to adulthood and is a period of accelerated growth, especially among men, thus this period may represent a critical window."
"It is important that we understand the role of exposures in childhood and adolescence in the development of colorectal cancer.
"In fact, the strong association observed between adolescent obesity and early-to-mid-life colorectal cancer, coupled with the increasing prevalence of adolescent obesity, may shed light on the increase in colorectal cancer incidence among young adults," he added.
Rachel Thompson, from the World Cancer Research Fund, said the evidence suggested that obesity was a risk factor for bowel cancer.
"This finding is interesting because it gives an indication that bowel cancer risk might be affected by our lifestyle habits throughout the life course," she said.
"In some ways, research into the relationship between factors like obesity and cancer risk is still in its infancy.
"It will be interesting to see if further research emerges in the future to back up the apparent relationship between...

Summary:


The Lebanese authorities have foiled an attempt to smuggle a huge quantity of drugs to Saudi Arabia, officials say.

Article: Peter Logan, 45, from Glasgow, committed the rapes over 18 years at addresses in Glasgow and Carnoustie.
He was found guilty of two rape charges, one of indecent assault and two of assault at the High Court in Glasgow.
Logan was finally brought to justice after the daughter told her mother that Logan had raped her when she was aged between 15 and 18.
The mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, confronted Logan and both women went to the police.
Logan, whose science fiction novel Pen was published in 2015, claimed the women were liars and denied all the charges against him.
Defence counsel John Scullion said: "He was convicted of very serious offences.
"It is fair to say the jury also acquitted him of very significant aspects of the indictment.
"Given the nature of the convictions, the accused accepts your lordship must impose a significant sentence of imprisonment."
Judge Lord Kinclaven said: "As was rightly said there is no alternative to a significant custodial sentence."
A spokesman for children's charity NSPCC Scotland said: "Logan has been proven to be a sexual monster who inflicted pain, fear and misery on a mother and daughter over a prolonged period of time.
"The seriousness of his crimes is reflected in the lengthy prison sentence handed down and we now hope that his victims are given the help and support needed to recover from what has happened to them."

Summary: An author who raped a woman and her daughter has been jailed for 11 years.
###
Article: The Republican People's Party (CHP) accused broadcaster TRT of "abusing public office" and vowed to take legal action.
It has previously protested at TRT "bias" towards President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP).
The election will take place on 7 June.
In a statement on the CHP website (in Turkish), deputy leader Bulent Tezcan said: "By taking the decision not the broadcast the advertisement, TRT has created a new scandal.
"The main purpose of state-funded television in all democratic countries is fairness of broadcasting. TRT's direction are committing the crime of abuse of public office," he added.
Mr Tezcan also reminded the broadcaster that it is "owned by the public".
TRT has so far declined to comment.
The opposition advert featured the slogan "we applaud as a nation" and criticised the "oppression" of justice, freedom and secularism in the country.
It urged voters to attend the party's first mass election rally on Saturday.
The controversy follows a ruling by a court in Ankara on Thursday, which ordered CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu to pay damages for insulting President Erdogan in a speech in 2013.

Summary: Turkey's state television has banned the main opposition party's election campaign advert because it directly targets the government.
###
Article: Large majorities in the state House and Senate dismissed objections by Democratic Governor Pat Quinn.
The state had been under court order to adopt a concealed carry law.
The debate over gun rights in the US has raged since December, when a gunman killed 26 people, including 20 children, at a school in Connecticut.
Gun rights proponents say the US constitution protects an individual's right to carry guns, while opponents of the concealed carry law feared it would allow virtually unregulated possession of handguns in the city of Chicago, which is grappling with a severe gun violence epidemic.
In December, a federal appeals court struck down Illinois' ban on carrying a concealed weapon as a violation of the US constitution's guarantee of the right to bear arms. The court gave the state six months to write a law legalising it.
Mr Quinn vigorously opposed a concealed carry law, but the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal.
In May, the state legislature passed a bill despite his objections. He vetoed the bill, suggesting restrictions on concealed weapons that would satisfy him.
On Tuesday, legislators in the House and Senate easily mustered a two-thirds majority needed to override Mr Quinn's veto, barely beating the court deadline.
"Following a weekend of horrific violence in Chicago in which at least 70 people were shot and 12 killed, this was the wrong move for public safety in Illinois," Mr Quinn said in a statement after the vote.
He said legislators had "surrendered" to the National Rifle Association, a powerful gun rights lobby funded in part by weapons manufacturers.
He warned the new law would allow people to carry guns in pubs and bars, and allow people to carry virtual arsenals on their persons.
Gun rights proponents, meanwhile, celebrated.
"This is a historic, significant day for law-abiding gun owners,'' Representative Brandon Harris, a southern Illinois Democrat said, according to the Associated Press.
Referring to the clause in the US constitution that refers to gun ownership, he said, "They...

Summary: Illinois has become the last state in the US to allow residents to carry concealed handguns, after lawmakers overrode the governor's veto.
###
Article: It is said to result from ScotRail's plan to introduce 200 new services, providing 200,000 additional seats each day.
The timetable changes are the result of the Scottish government's decision to retain 13 Class 170 diesel trains.
Public transport campaigners have welcomed the announcement.
However, they insisted additional track capacity would be needed if the Scottish government was to meet its promise of "the largest programme of benefits to rail passengers seen in a generation".
Scotland's Transport Minister Derek Mackay said: "From 2018 passengers will benefit from more seats, more services and faster journey times as a direct result of the increased funding that we are putting into the rail network.
"The retention of these units will complement the arrival of our new High Speed Trains, which will allow for new and improved intercity connections.
"They will also make our rail network more resilient, creating opportunities to run faster services on key commuter routes and offering better connectivity for regional areas."
Phil Verster, Managing Director of Abellio ScotRail, described the announcement as "a really significant moment in our mission to transform Scotland's railway".
He added: "In three years' time, the service that we provide to our customers will be unrecognisable."
The plan also promises;
Colin Howden, from public transport campaign group, Transform Scotland, welcomed the announcement, but he said unless there were "concrete commitments" to upgrade routes then the network might not be able to take the added services.
He explained: "It's certainly going to be difficult to get more trains on the route from Dundee to Aberdeen unless there is a clear and transparent decision by government to upgrade the single track rail line at Montrose.
"Services from the Edinburgh to Perth are severely constrained by capacity limitations on the Fife Coast and the long single track section on the approach to Perth.
"In our view, the most significant single improvement that could be made would be the...

Summary: Rail passengers in Tayside, Stirlingshire, Perthshire, Aberdeenshire and the Borders are being promised a "revolution" in travel.
###
Article: Scott Snowden, 39, and Robert Jennings, 51, set the fire that killed Thomas Sharkey Snr, 55, his son Thomas Jnr, 21, and daughter, Bridget, eight.
Snowden was jailed for a minimum of 33 years and Jennings for 29 years.
Appeal judges have rejected their claims that the judge did not give fair balance to defence and Crown evidence.
The pair raised challenges against their convictions and maintained that the trial judge Lord Matthews did not give fair balance to defence and Crown when he came to address the jury at the end of the trial.
But Lord Carloway, who heard the appeal with Lady Smith and Lord Brodie at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh, have now unanimously rejected the challenges.
The Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Carloway, said: "The whole tenor of this charge [address to the jurors by the trial judge] was one of balance."
The senior judge said: "The court is quite unable to sustain a submission of a lack of balance.
"No doubt the trial judge did not mention every point made by the defence in the speeches made on behalf of the appellants."
Lord Carloway said it "would not have been appropriate to do so, partly because such an exercise in itself may have been open to criticism as tarnishing the power of the speeches within the dramatic context of the trial as it developed live".
The judge continued: "A contention that a miscarriage of justice has occurred, which is supported only by pointing to a judge's failure to mention a particular point or points raised by the defence, will not, of itself, suffice.
"The criticism must be a substantial one of imbalance going to the whole whole tenor or purport of the charge."
He added: "Put simply, an appellant will require to demonstrate that, looking at the charge as a whole, its tenor was unbalanced in the sense of demonstrably favouring the Crown upon a contentious issue of fact raised in the trial."
Lord Carloway said: "The question then is one of whether, looking at the whole tenor or purport of this charge, the trial judge said, or failed to say, something...

Summary: Two men serving life terms for murdering three people in a deliberate house fire in Helensburgh have lost appeals against their convictions.
###
Article: Five Saudis, reportedly including a prince, were detained at Beirut's airport after two tonnes of pills branded as Captagon were found in cases due to be loaded onto a private jet.
It was the largest drug smuggling operation yet uncovered at the airport.
Captagon pills, which typically contain amphetamine and caffeine, are consumed widely in the Middle East.
The drug has helped fuel the conflict in Syria, generating millions of dollars in revenue for producers inside the country as well as being used by combatants to help them keep fighting.
NNA reported that 40 bags of Captagon pills were found by inspectors from the Gendarmerie in cases due to be put on board a jet bound for Hael, in northern Saudi Arabia.
It did not identify the Saudi citizens who were detained, but sources told the Associated Press and the AFP news agency that they included a Saudi prince.
In April 2014, Lebanese security forces foiled an attempt to smuggle 15 million Captagon pills hidden in shipping containers full of corn from Beirut's seaport, according to AFP.
Captagon, originally the trade name for the synthetic stimulant fenetylline, was first produced in the 1960s to treat hyperactivity, narcolepsy and depression.
However, it was banned in most countries by the 1980s because of it was too addictive.
In 2013, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said 64% of global seizures of amphetamine took place in the Middle East, and that most of the amphetamine was in the form of Captagon pills.

Summary:


A fake video report about Kenya's election that is made to appear as if it is from the BBC's Focus on Africa programme has been circulating on social media.

Article: The increase is particularly pronounced among middle-age white people who now account for a third of all US suicides.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report did not offer an explanation for the steep rise.
However, other experts have pointed to increased abuse of prescription opiates and the financial downturn that began in 2008 as likely factors.
The report did not break down the suicides by education level or income, but previous studies found rising suicide rates among white people without university degrees.
"This is part of the larger emerging pattern of evidence of the links between poverty, hopelessness and health," Robert D Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard, told the New York Times.
CDC reported on Friday that suicides have increased in the US to a rate of 13 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986.
Meanwhile, homicides and deaths from ailments like cancer and heart disease have declined.
In the past, suicides have been most common among white people, but the recent increases have been sharp.
The overall suicide rate rose by 24% from 1999 to 2014, according to the CDC. However, the rate increased 43% among white men ages 45 to 64 and 63% for women in the same age-range.
In 2014, more than 14,000 middle-aged white people killed themselves.
That figure is double the combined suicides total for all blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, American Indians, and Alaska Natives.
The suicide rate declined for only two groups: black men and all people over 75.

Summary: The suicide rate in the US has surged to its highest level in almost three decades, according to a new report.
###
Article: The EU home affairs sub-committee said that net migration - immigration minus emigration - was consistently higher from outside the EU.
An immigration system for when the UK leaves the EU has not yet been outlined by ministers.
The government said it was considering "various options" as to how EU migration might work.
It has pledged to reduce net migration to below 100,000 by 2020.
Prime Minister Theresa May has said she aims to trigger Article 50, to begin the two-year process of leaving the EU, by the end of this month.
In the report, the committee said: "Until end June 2016, migration to the UK from outside the EU was consistently higher than EU migration, even though the relevant policy levers are under national control.
"Restoration of national control over EU migration may or may not, therefore, deliver a reduction in overall net migration."
In the most recent official figures, covering the year to the end of September, both immigration and net migration from the EU were higher than that for the rest of the world for the first time.
Overall, net migration to the UK dropped to 273,000 in the year to September, down 49,000 from the previous year.
The committee said that cutting EU immigration is unlikely to provide a "quick fix" for low wages.
Factors such as the National Minimum Wage, National Living Wage and inflation were more significant in driving or impeding real wage growth for low earners, the report said.
It also said that extending the work permit system used for non-EU nationals to those from the EU would disproportionately affect some employers' ability to sponsor EU workers, and could result in labour shortages in areas including the NHS and horticulture.
The report endorsed the pursuit of a "two-way agreement", suggesting that offering preferential treatment to EU nationals in the UK's future immigration regime could increase the likelihood of securing a reciprocal approach to UK nationals in the EU.
Committee chairwoman Baroness Prashar said: "The precise manner in which the government...

Summary: Net migration to the UK may not fall as a result of ending EU free movement post-Brexit, a Lords report has said.
###
Article: John Falconar Slater was best known for his paintings of land and seascapes in the north-east of England.
Painting with a distinct impressionist style, one of his most celebrated works was Stormy Sea at Cullercoats.
Mr Slater was also part of the Cullercoats Colony - a group of professional artists from the North East who captured the character of the fishing community and the surrounding coastline throughout their work.
Born in 1897 in Rye Hill, Newcastle, in his later life Mr Slater lived in Whitley Bay before moving to Cullercoats 12 years before he died in 1937.
Now, on the 75th anniversary of his death, the current owners of the artist's final home are commemorating his life with a Blue Plaque.
Steve and Alwyne Barrigan approached North Tyneside Council earlier this year to request the blue plaque at their house on St Oswin's Avenue.
Blue plaques commemorate the links between notable figures of the past and the buildings in which they lived and worked.
Mr Barrigan said: "We have lived here for many years and when we discovered that John Falconar Slater had lived here we were inspired to mark his legacy in some way.
"This is a great achievement for us, Cullercoats and the North East."
Elected Mayor Linda Arkley was due to officially unveil the £300 plaque on Wednesday.
She said: "It is fantastic that we have been able to honour such a great artist and also fulfil a longstanding wish of Alwyne and Steve.
"The commemorative plaques are just one of the ways in which we are able to celebrate the borough's talent and heritage."

Summary: The life of a Tyneside artist is being honoured with the unveiling of a commemorative plaque at his former home.
###
Article: In an address to Greens' autumn conference, party leader Natalie Bennett said Britain was a low-wage economy and people deserved "a decent return on their labour".
Under the plans, wages would rise by £1.15 to £7.65 an hour next year before increasing each year until 2020.
The party also proposes a "wealth tax" on those with assets of more than £3m.
The party, which currently has one MP, is promising a "progressive alternative" to the austerity agenda which it says the other Westminster parties have all embraced.
Under its plans, everyone over the age of 16 would earn a minimum of £10 an hour by 2020 and the current age-based differential rates would be abolished.
The minimum wage for workers over 21 is set to rise to £6.50 next month, the first real-terms cash increase since 2008. Rates for 18-20 year olds, under-18s and apprentices are set to go up to £5.13 an hour, £3.79 an hour and £2.73 an hour respectively at the same time.
MPs from all parties have called for the UK to move towards a "living wage", which campaigners have calculated to be £7.65 an hour outside London and £8.80 an hour in the capital.
Ms Bennett, an Australian-born former journalist who was recently re-elected as leader, told delegates in Birmingham that the policy showed the Greens were "the party of real change, the party with plans and policies for how to transform our economy so that it works for the common good".
Earlier, she told the BBC that the "gradual, plannable increase" her party was proposing would benefit 5.2 million people and rejected claims the move would cost jobs.
"We are not talking about a sudden increase," she told the BBC News channel.
"What we really have to do is rebalance our economy. At the moment, wealthy individuals and particularly big multinational companies aren't paying their taxes and aren't paying adequate wages.
"Britain is a low-wage economy. We have to allow people to get a decent return on their labour."
Ms Bennett also outlined plans to ask those with more than £3m in assets to pay an annual levy...

Summary: The Green Party of England and Wales is calling for the minimum wage to rise to £10 an hour by 2020.
###
Article: The MV Isle of Arran, launched in 1984, serves routes connecting Arran and Campbeltown with Ardrossan.
It suffered technical problems in May and was returned to service after temporary repairs were made, due to the difficulty in sourcing spare parts.
Although seaworthy, the ferry now has a lower tolerance for certain conditions, resulting in more frequent disruption.
For the past few summers the MV Isle of Arran has been used to double the number of sailings between Ardrossan and Brodick and provide six sailings a week on a new summertime route between Ardrossan and Campbeltown.
At the start of this season the ferry suffered a serious technical breakdown. It went into dry dock for more than a week for repairs.
BBC Scotland understands that, because of the age of the vessel, sourcing some replacement parts has proved very difficult.
Rather than take the vessel out of service and cause months of disruption to Arran - and potentially abandon the Campbeltown service completely for the moment - a decision was made to make temporary repairs to ensure the vessel was safe and seaworthy and able to resume service.
However, because full, permanent repairs could not be made, the threshold for cancellations because of the wind is now significantly lower than normal for legal and licensing reasons.
This has led to a number of cancellations on the lifeline Ardrossan to Brodick route in what may appear to be relatively good weather.
Instead passengers have had to wait an hour or so for the next sailing on the other vessel which covers the route.
It also means that the Campbeltown service has been cancelled on several occasions - sometimes at short notice and risking significant problems for foot passengers.
If the ferry is cancelled at short notice, foot passengers in Ardrossan have no other way of reaching Campbeltown easily.
This is because the last scheduled bus of the day from Glasgow will already have left, although CalMac has run replacement bus services from Ardrossan.
John Armour, the SNP member for South Kintyre in...

Summary: Problems with an elderly vessel are leading to an unusually high number of cancellations on two CalMac services.
###
Article: The report contains a bogus poll indicating that President Uhuru Kenyatta will win August's election.
The BBC has urged Kenyans to verify stories by visiting the BBC website.
A recent survey suggested that 90% of Kenyans had seen or heard false news in the run-up to the poll.
Many of the people surveyed felt that some news items had been deliberately misleading.
It also found that while traditional media remained the most trusted source of information, large numbers of people got their news from Facebook and WhatsApp.
The origin of the fake BBC news story is not clear but it began to be shared on WhatsApp on Friday morning.
A fake report made to look as if it came from CNN has also been circulating.
The presidential election on 8 August will see incumbent President Kenyatta run against seven candidates including his main challenger, opposition leader Raila Odinga.

Summary:


A large hole that appeared behind a row of houses was in one of the UK's most susceptible areas for sinkholes, the British Geological Survey has said.

Article: Eight thousand yuan ($1,300; Â£830): That was the price for a cute four-year-old Burmese girl from a broken home.
Crouched in the doorway of her bamboo house, Khin Khin Oo's grandmother Ma Shan told me the story. "I grow corn and rice but my son is a heroin addict so we have no money," she said.
Ma Shan's family life is in disarray. Just a couple of metres away in the dark of the house, her son sits listening to us talk about him, staring blankly ahead.
Ma Shan's daughter isn't in much better shape. She ran off with another man (according to Ma Shan, having been drugged with spiked orange juice), leaving her two small children to live with her parents.
One of them, an energetic boy, plays in the mud by the stilts of the bamboo house, as we look at pictures of his sister Khin Khin Oo.
"One day her father Soe Khine came back for her," Ma Shan recounted. "But after she'd been away four days I knew something was wrong."
Fearing the worst, Ma Shan turned detective and, with a village elder, went to speak some of Soe Khine's friends. They quickly found out he was in financial trouble.
"He'd lost all his money playing cards," she said, shaking her head.
At that point, the Burmese police became involved. They found Soe Khine and he confessed that with the help of a local Kachin woman, he had sold his daughter to a Chinese trafficker.
The police followed the trail to the Chinese border town of Ruili, where they discovered that Khin Khin Oo had been traded again, this time for 12,000 yuan ($2,000; Â£1,277), to a childless couple who wanted to adopt.
After a week and a joint operation with the Chinese police, Khin Khin Oo was rescued and returned to her grandmother.
"While she was gone, I didn't even want to eat. I was so worried," she said.
Luckily Khin Khin Oo had been well treated, with the Chinese couple seemingly unaware that she'd been trafficked.
She was returned to her grandmother in Hankan who, fearing for her safety, sent her back to China this time to live with an aunt.
The trafficking of Burmese children...

Summary: It's been a year since Khin Khin Oo was sold by her father.
###
Article: And if you have ever experienced a scorchingly hot Brazilian day, you'll know that this is actually a wise thing. You really do want your lager to be super-chilled in such climatic conditions.
While you can easily buy a cold beer from a supermarket or beach vendor, for many Brazilians their preferred port of call is still a boteco, the humble bar or pub.
Most botecos are small, family-run businesses, which, for reasons lost in the mists of time, don't actually serve draft beer. Instead the beer - always lager - typically comes in large 600ml bottles.
The idea is that friends share a bottle - or many - between them, which they drink while eating plates of petiscos (snacks).
The petiscos are typically something deep fried, such as breaded cod balls, or a pastel, which is a type of small pasty that also gets the hot oil treatment.
Imagine an authentic Spanish tapas bar, only with no sherry, and more use of a fryer.
With hundreds of botecos in Rio de Janeiro alone, the more ambitious ones try to boost their business by standing out from the crowd.
One way many do this is by entering an annual Brazil-wide competition to find the best botecos in the country.
Now in its 15th year, and free to enter, the Comida di Buteco contest judges bars according to four criteria - the quality of the food, the hygiene standards, the service, and crucially - the temperature of the beer.
Each boteco is judged by both a panel of judges, who visit anonymously and provide 50% of its final score, and by popular vote.
This year 45 bars in Rio entered the competition, which ran for a month until the middle of May. Each puts forward one dish upon which their food should be marked.
Botecos that take part generally enjoy a big boost in trade during the four weeks of the event, and then over the longer term if they win a prize.
David Bispo, owner of boteco Bar do David, says that entering Comida di Buteco "transformed" his business.
The 43-year-old opened his bar five years ago when he found himself out of work.
A fisherman by trade, and...

Summary: There is a saying in Brazil for how most people like their beer to be served - estupidamente gelada (stupidly cold).
###
Article: Jody Williams, from the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, told the BBC such weapons, which do not yet exist, would be regarded as "repulsive".
But some scientists argue existing laws are sufficient to regulate their use, should they become a reality.
The UK government has said it has no plans to develop such technology.
Weapons with a degree of autonomy, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - commonly known as drones - are already widely used on the battlefield.
Such weapons are described as "human-in-the-loop" systems because they can only select targets and deliver lethal force with a human command.
But organisers of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots - a global effort being launched on Tuesday - say advances in robotic technology mean it is only a matter of time before fully autonomous "human-out-of-the-loop" systems - capable of firing on their own - are developed.
They argue that giving machines the power over who lives and dies in war would be an unacceptable application of technology, and would pose a fundamental challenge to international human rights and humanitarian laws.
Estimates vary over how long it could be before such weapons are available, but the group says a new treaty is needed to pre-emptively outlaw their development, production and use.
Campaign leader Ms Williams, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work in bringing about a ban on anti-personnel landmines, told BBC News: "As people learn about our campaign, they will flock to it.
"The public conscience is horrified to learn about this possible advance in weapons systems. People don't want killer robots out there.
"Normal human beings find it repulsive."
But some experts have questioned the need for a ban, arguing instead for an open debate about the legal and ethical implications of such weapons.
Roboticist Professor Ronald Arkin, from the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, told the BBC: "The most important thing from my point of view is that we do not rush these systems into the battlefield.
"A moratorium as opposed to ban...

Summary: A pre-emptive ban is needed to halt the production of weapons capable of attacking targets without any human intervention, a new campaign has urged.
###
Article: The sale of the brand by Berry Bros and Rudd brings it into the same ownership as the distillery where it is made.
Nearby is the cooperage, which is also owned by Edrington.
It joins other leading brands owned by the Glasgow-based distiller, including Highland Park and The Macallan, as well as blended whisky Famous Grouse.
Berry Bros and Rudd, established in 1698, bought the Glenrothes Speyside brand in 2010, as part of a portfolio including bourbon, gin, rum and ginger liqueur.
It will continue to distribute Glenrothes in the UK, while Edrington already sells it overseas.
Paul Ross, of Edrington's super premium division, said the company was "very much looking forward to accelerating growth" of Glenrothes Speyside in export markets.
In other whisky news, Loch Lomond Distillers has sealed a deal with a large Chinese food and drink distributor, Cofco, with hopes for strong growth in that market.
It is based in Dunbartonshire and has a distillery in Alexandria and another in Campbeltown.
Its brands, in addition to Loch Lomond whisky, include Glen Scotia, High Commissioner, Glengarry, Inchmurrin, Clansman and Littlemill single malt.
The company was bought three years ago from long-time family ownership, and is seeing new investment in distribution.

Summary: The Glenrothes Speyside single malt whisky has been bought by the Edrington Group from its previous owner, a long-established wine and spirits merchant.
###
Article: Badreddine's death near Damascus airport was announced on Friday and initially blamed on Israel, Hezbollah's chief enemy.
Badreddine was believed to have run all Hezbollah's military operations in Syria since 2011.
Thousands of Hezbollah troops are supporting President Bashar al-Assad.
This has pitted it against several groups of anti-Assad rebels - from so-called Islamic State (IS) to the al-Nusra Front.
Without naming any group, the Hezbollah statement said: "Investigations have showed that the explosion, which targeted one of our bases near Damascus International Airport, and which led to the martyrdom of commander Mustafa Badreddine, was the result of artillery bombardment carried out by takfiri groups in the area."
Takfiri is used to describe militants who believe Muslim society has reverted to a state of non-belief.
However, the BBC's Arab Affairs Editor Sebastian Usher says questions still remain over Badreddine's death.
A monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said there had been no recorded shelling or firing in the area for more than a week, although Hezbollah has not said when Badreddine died.
Many political assassinations involving Lebanese and Syrian political figures have remained unsolved, our correspondent says.
Obituary: Mustafa Badreddine
Profile: Lebanon's Hezbollah
Who stands accused of Hariri killing?
The Lebanese Shia Islamist movement has played a major role in helping Iran, its main military and financial backer, to prop up the government of President Assad since the uprising erupted in 2011.
Thousands of Hezbollah fighters are assisting government forces on battlefields across Syria, particularly those near the Lebanese border, and hundreds are believed to have been killed.
The Hezbollah statement said Badreddine's death "will increase our determination... to continue the fight against these criminal gangs and defeat them".
Born in 1961, Badreddine is believed to have been a senior figure in Hezbollah's military wing. He was a cousin and brother-in-law of Imad...

Summary: Hezbollah's top military commander in Syria, Mustafa Amine Badreddine, was killed in artillery fire by jihadists, the Lebanese group says.
###
Article: Twelve homes were evacuated after the hole opened in Ripon, North Yorkshire, at 22:30 GMT on Wednesday.
The hole measured about 20m (66ft) by 10m (33ft) and 9m (30ft) deep.
The BGS said Ripon lies in one of the most susceptible areas of the UK for sinkholes because of its "Permian gypsum deposits".
It said these can dissolve more quickly than surrounding limestone, leading to the enlargement of underground caves.
Experts are still examining data from the site behind the houses in Magdalen's Road but, releasing its initial findings, the BGS said sinkholes were often caused by surface water penetrating the ground, or fluctuations in groundwater levels.
In 2014, a 100-year-old detached house in an adjoining street was demolished after a 25ft-wide (8m) sinkhole opened.
According to the report, the wider area of Ripon periodically encounters sinkholes and in the 1980s and 1990s a hole was appearing every two to three years.
No-one was injured in the latest collapse with the back gardens of two properties the worst affected.
A sewerage system connected to several of the properties on the terrace fell in as the hole appeared.
One resident described seeing the ground moving and finding her steps leading into the garden had gone.
On Friday, further cracks appeared in the ground and on walls at the site.
Ben Cairns, North Yorkshire Fire Service station manager, said: "Our main concern at the moment is what impact the weather is going to have for the next few days."
The BGS is continuing to analyse data from the site.

Summary: