French authorities are seeking €356m (£276m) in unpaid taxes from Booking.com, according to documents filed by parent company Priceline.

Article: The best savings involve taking out a "dual fuel" deal, where one provider supplies both forms of energy.
Many people have been put off switching, but Ofgem maintains the process is very simple.
Not everybody is able to switch their supplier. If you are in debt to a supplier, you might not be able to.
If you have a pre-payment meter and you owe more than £500 for gas or electricity, you might not be able to switch.
There are two main types of energy deal, a fixed-term contract, typically lasting a year or 18 months, and a standard variable tariff.
If you are one of the two-thirds of householders on a standard variable tariff, the potential for savings is larger.
However, over the past few years the gap between standard variable tariffs and fixed rates has narrowed, as can be seen from the graph below.
You will need:
The change should take no longer than 17 days. That includes a 14 day cooling-off period. Your supply will not be interrupted during that time.
If you are on a fixed-rate deal and decide to switch before it ends, you may be charged an exit fee. But if you are within 49 days of the end of the deal, you should not be charged.
You can contact your supplier directly, and ask if they can give you a better deal. But there will be a wider choice of deals through price comparison websites.
Ofgem provides this list of approved sites: Quotezone, The Energy Shop, Runpath, Simply Switch, My Utility Genius, Switch Gas and Electric, Energylinx, Unravel It, Money Supermarket, Energy Helpline and Uswitch.
These sites do not always point consumers in the direction of the cheapest deals. They tend to promote those that you can switch to straight away, and with whom the websites have made an agreement.
Better deals may be available if you are prepared to wait. However any site approved by Ofgem has to include a clickable option to see all tariffs available, not just preferred suppliers.
Such sites have a "whole of market" button, allowing you to see all the deals on offer.
Citizens Advice: Help for switching...

Summary: According to the regulator, Ofgem, it is possible to save about £300 a year if you switch your gas and electricity provider.
###
Article: Property consultant Colliers International found 76 out of the UK's main towns and shopping centres will see an increase in their rates bill.
Some parts of London will see an increase of more than 400%, it says.
The winners, mainly in the Midlands and north of England, will see business rates plummet, it adds.
Newport in south Wales could see bills fall by some 80%, the report found.
"The business rates losers are found only in London and the South East and it could turn highly profitable stores, including independent retailers, into failing businesses," said John Webber, ratings expert at Colliers International.
Business rates are a tax based on property values. They are usually revalued every five years.
The last revaluation in England and Wales was in 2010 but this year's revaluation was controversially postponed to 2017.
The Government's Valuation Office Agency is busy updating its figures but Colliers has done its own research on how the rating revaluation will affect High Street retailers, based on analysis of rental data from 2010 to 2015.
It says it found big variations across the country:
Marlow faces an increase of 58% in rateable value, followed by Guildford at 42%, and Brighton up by 18.5%.
But Rochdale in Greater Manchester, hit hard by the economic downturn,  will see a decrease of 30%. Kidderminster in the West Midlands is down by 42%.
And in London, it is Dover Street which is the biggest loser, with an increase of 415%. Brixton faces a potential 128% increase in rateable value, although Ealing will see a decrease of 46%.
Mr Webber believes some retailers are going to be in for a nasty shock when the business rates change in 2018.
"Business rates is a major cost for retailers and it's really important that they are able to budget for these once-in-a-generation changes," he adds.
The government has promised a review of the current system and will deliver its findings by next year's Budget.
Business rates are expected to raise around £28bn for the Treasury's coffers this year, more than the sum...

Summary: High Streets in the UK are set to face radical changes in the amount of money they pay in business rates in future, new research suggests.
###
Article: We know that.  So, of course, does President Xi Jinping.
It is one of the major issues - shadows even - hanging over his visit to the United States.
After an average annual growth rate of 10% for three decades, that pace has cooled substantially.  Last year it was 7.4%.
There are many economists who are profoundly sceptical about China's official data, who think the true figure is a good deal lower.
For next year the IMF forecasts 6.8%. And the slowdown was bound to happen.
The IMF described the transition under way in China as "moving to a 'new normal', characterized by slower yet safer and more sustainable growth".
A new normal is needed because the forces behind China's previous dynamism are weakening.  The ageing population means there's a limit to the contribution that a growing labour force can make to the economy.
All that previous strong growth means the technological gap compared with the rest of the world has narrowed. That in turn limits the scope for rapid gains from catching up.
Investment is another source of growth, which adds to the productive capacity of the economy. But China's investment level is already extremely high. Indeed IMF research suggested even in 2012 that it was excessive.
Why excessive? Because it diverts resources from other sectors of the economy including household spending, and if a country over invests an increasing number of projects are likely to be economically inefficient.
The question that has been worrying financial markets intermittently for the past few weeks has been - will the transition be a smooth one, or will China suffer what's called a hard landing, that's to say an abrupt slowdown or even a recession?
The answer really does matter for the rest of us.
China is by one measure the biggest economy on the planet. It accounts for 17% of global economic activity.
The US economy is almost as big but is not growing so rapidly. Things are likely to stay that way for years or even decades after China has settled to a more sustainable rate of growth.
That means that...

Summary: China's economy is slowing down.
###
Article: For the UK economy, one of the most important passages of Theresa May's speech yesterday was when she signalled that George Osborne's "fiscal rule" (to produce a budget surplus by 2020) was for the Treasury shredding machine.
"While it is absolutely vital that the government continues with its intention to reduce public spending and cut the budget deficit, we should no longer seek to reach a budget surplus by the end of the parliament," Mrs May said.
Now the chancellor has said he agrees, arguing that the government must be "realistic" about its fiscal targets and that austerity policies could be eased.
My Treasury sources point out that the "rule" can be varied in "non-normal" times.
And these are pretty "non-normal" times.
The abandonment of the fiscal target suggests the government could borrow more, presumably for investment in infrastructure and to mitigate the need for tax rises and spending cuts, if the economy does take a turn for the worse as some predict.
There are some interesting politics at work here as well.
Matt Hancock, the Cabinet Office minister, has backed Mrs May for the leadership.
He was formerly Mr Osborne's chief of staff and is about as close to the chancellor as it is possible to be.
Now Mr Osborne has backed Mrs May's fiscal position.
My sources insist the  chancellor has made no decision on whom to back in the leadership election, if he comes out for anyone at all.
But Westminster's rune readers will only be leaning in one direction.
Mr Osborne's tone on the fiscal rule is sharply different from that struck by David Cameron on Wednesday.
When the prime minister was asked by Jeremy Corbyn to abandon the fiscal rule, the Prime Minister said it was not necessary and that the confidence of investors need to be maintained.
Well, with government borrowing costs falling as investors seek out "safe haven" assets in an uncertain world, that argument has withered.
The developing position of Mrs May and Mr Osborne is backed by many economists, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies saying that...

Summary: It is sometimes easy in these incredible political times to forget that for most people "it's the economy, stupid" still holds true.
###
Article: It is part of three days of industrial action by members of the Public and Commercial Services union.
Union leaders said picket lines were in place at all major court locations between 07:00 and 10:00.
The Scottish Court Service said contingency plans were in place and all courts opened for "essential business".
A spokesman added: "At a number of locations public counters have closed or a reduced service has been provided. An early estimate indicates that 31% of SCS staff are taking part in industrial action."
The PCS began a UK-wide three-month campaign of protest over pay, jobs and conditions on 20 March - the day of the Budget.
The union said members faced being worse off after a pay freeze, a pay cap and increased pension contributions.
The latest industrial action in Scotland is being staggered over three days, with different departments and government agencies staging whole or half day strikes.
The PCS said its members at the Scottish Courts Service, the Scottish Prison Service and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service were involved in an all-day walkout. Members from the Registers of Scotland were joining the action in the afternoon.
On Tuesday PCS members at bodies including Creative Scotland, Historic Scotland, and the National Museums and Galleries are due to stage strikes.
On Wednesday civil servants at the Scottish government, Audit Scotland, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Airports will also take part in the industrial action.
PCS Scottish Secretary Lynn Henderson said: "I am very proud of our members in the justice sector who are leading the way at the start of the Scottish rolling three-day action.
"They, like all members working under Scottish ministers, are facing pension attacks, pay that is lagging far behind inflation and job losses.
"The Scottish government's proposed closure of local courts really highlights how attacks on PCS members and attacks on the services they provide are not separate things but are all part of a concerted onslaught against the public sector. "

Summary: Civil servants who work at Scottish courts and in prisons are among those taking part in a strike over pay and pensions.
###
Article: Documents filed with US regulator said French authorities recently completed an audit of Booking.com's accounts from 2003 to 2012.
The French government said Booking.com had a base in France and was obliged to pay income and value-added taxes.
The company said the majority of funds being sought are penalties.
"In December 2015, the French tax authorities issued Booking.com assessments for approximately €356m, the majority of which would represent penalties and interest," the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said.
The company said believed it complied with local tax law, and would contest the ruling in court if it could not reach a settlement with the French government.
In the same filing Priceline said Italian tax authorities were examining "whether Booking.com should be subject to additional tax obligations in Italy".
Last week, Google's headquarters in Paris were searched as part of an investigation into possible tax evasion.

Summary:


An American basketball player has been banned from South Korea's domestic league for life after prosecutors said she forged her birth documents.

Article: NHS trusts in Merseyside and Cheshire face a funding gap of nearly £1bn by 2021, the health service has confirmed.
A report leaked to the Liverpool Echo included the proposal to merge the Royal Liverpool, Broadgreen, Aintree and Liverpool Women's hospitals.
Louise Shepherd, leading work on the plan, said it was in the "early days" and the public would be consulted.
All local health and care providers in England have come together into geographic areas called 'footprints' for which they must create a five-year sustainability and transformation plan (STP).
The Merseyside and Cheshire STP suggests merging the four hospitals to help meet a predicted £999m financial shortfall.
"It's a big challenge... We anticipate that we will have a £999m cumulative gap in our finances by 2021 if we do nothing", Ms Shepherd said in a statement.
The Merseyside and Cheshire STP is "the second largest in the country" with "32% of people living in the most deprived areas and more over 75s than elsewhere," she said.
"We need to close these gaps to provide the standard of care we believe the public deserves".
She said an "initial document has been pulled together" and public consultations would be undertaken "once some further work has been done".
Paul Summers, from public service union Unison, said people were "astonished and astounded" at the scale of savings needed as they had "not been anticipating such a shortfall in funding for the NHS".
"They're really worried about it, the NHS staff that I've spoken to today are concerned - they don't know what's coming.
"They understand that they operate in services that have to make cuts as they're going along - and they have done since 2010 - but after today's leaked report, they're really worried and shocked at the scale for these demands for savings," he said.
The Merseyside and Cheshire STP area covers 12 Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs):

Summary: Four hospitals in Merseyside could merge under cost-cutting plans being considered by the NHS.
###
Article: Jordan Winn drove at almost 100mph in a 30mph zone during the pursuit in County Durham in October last year.
The 23-year-old, from Murray Park, Stanley, admitted dangerous driving.
But during mitigation at Durham Crown Court he claimed his Staffordshire bull terrier, Buster, had become stuck in the footwell of his Volvo.
Judge Christopher Prince described as "ludicrous" Winn's claims that the dog made the car speed by sitting on the accelerator pedal, and then moved to the brake, causing it to swerve to avoid another vehicle.
The court heard that an officer spotted Winn driving at speed in Chester-le-Street before pursuing him.
CCTV footage showed the police car travelling at 88mph in an attempt to keep up with Winn as he drove at close to 100mph.
At one point, Winn's Volvo was seen to brake hard, and turn, just missing an oncoming vehicle.
When he eventually stopped and got out of his car, the bull terrier also leaped out.
Following his arrest Winn pinned the blame for his excessive speed on Buster.
Winn claimed the car accelerated and braked "because the dog's backside was on the pedals of the vehicle", Judge Prince said.
He added: "You advanced an utterly ludicrous account on which you were to insist for over a year."
Winn was also disqualified from driving for three years.

Summary: A driver who claimed his excessive speed during a police chase was due to his dog sitting on the accelerator pedal has been jailed for 13 months.
###
Article: In his first speech as leader to the party's Welsh conference, Mr Farron questioned the UK government's commitment to green energy schemes.
David Cameron has said the prospect of large subsidies being needed for the lagoon had reduced his enthusiasm.
Lib Dems should also challenge Labour's "sense of entitlement to rule" at the assembly election, Mr Farron said.
"We have been a world leader in this field and maintaining that status is now in jeopardy," he told the conference in Cardiff on Saturday.
"The tidal lagoon is a litmus test for the government. Do you care about this agenda? Or was it all for show?
"For five years we fought sceptical Tories to ensure the coalition was the greenest government ever.
"In the last six months this progress has been unravelled at an alarming pace."
Referring to Mr Cameron's visit to a Norwegian glacier in 2006 to underline his green credentials, Mr Farron said "the huskies, kind of shot by Cameron ages ago when their usefulness to him had run its course, will be turning in their graves".
He added: "It is shameful that the work we began in coalition to deliver this is being unpicked."
The proposals in Swansea are for 16 turbines, placed roughly a mile out to sea, to generate 320 megawatt of power - which would then be converted into electricity.
In January, BBC Wales heard there were reservations relating to the proposed lagoon's modelling and turbine engineering.
But Tidal Lagoon Power said questions on the engineering and environmental impact had been addressed in depth.
In his speech, Mr Farron also accused the Welsh Labour government of failing to deliver in its 17 years in office.
He said: "We need to challenge Labour's arrogant sense of entitlement to rule.
"They act like they are the landlords of Wales, that you have no right to vote any other way.  We will not have that."
On the European referendum, he said: "Given the scale of international challenges of a global economy, climate change and the refugee crisis - are we better to face these together or alone?
"They are...

Summary: Delays to a £1bn tidal energy project in Swansea are "shameful", Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron has said.
###
Article: Rada graduate Kenneth Branagh was already an established stage and television star when he directed and starred in his 1989 film of William Shakespeare's history play Henry V.
The critically acclaimed result earned him Oscar nominations for his work both behind and in front of the camera, a best director award from Bafta and a slew of other honours.
Branagh's association with the Bard continued with big-screen versions of Hamlet, Much Ado about Nothing and several other plays.
Away from Shakespeare, though, he has had mixed fortunes, typified by the drubbing he received for his unsuccessful 1994 film of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
In recent years he has had better success with his acting performances, being praised for his starring role in the BBC TV series Wallander and in stage plays such as Chekhov's Ivanov and David Mamet's Edmond.
Yet he has now made a spectacular return to directing with Thor, a comic book blockbuster inspired by Marvel's hammer-wielding warrior.
The project, he says, was "daunting but exciting and, in the end, sort of irresistible".
Branagh acknowledges he might not be everyone's first choice for a film about the Norse god of thunder who first swooped into the Marvel comics universe in 1962.
However, he suggests his experience of "heightened language, period drama and the dynastic sagas of the great and the good" stood him in good stead.
"Marvel were terrified about it sounding too solemn or too ornate or too self-conscious," he says.
"They didn't want Thor to be some sort of sword and sandals thing that would be out of step with a modern audience."
One way to avoid this, Branagh argued successfully, was to set part of the story in contemporary America.
Thus we see the headstrong and belligerent Thor - played by Australian actor Chris Hemsworth - banished from the distant realm of Asgard by his father Odin to modern-day New Mexico.
Stripped of his powers and his mystical hammer Mjolnir, he joins forces with a sceptical astrophysicist - played by Natalie Portman - to stop his nefarious...

Summary: Noted Shakespeare director and actor Kenneth Branagh talks about his latest film -  a comic-book blockbuster about Marvel superhero Thor.
###
Article: At least 1,338 of the iconic animals were killed for their horns in Africa last year.
This is the greatest loss in a single year since an intense wave of poaching began recently.
Since 2008, as many as 5,940 rhinos have been killed although scientists fear that could be an underestimate.
The findings were compiled by researchers from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The losses come despite a drive to fight poaching gangs by strengthening patrols, harnessing satellite technology and boosting intelligence-gathering.
The IUCN blames continuing demand from South East Asia - where rhino horn is wrongly believed to have medicinal properties - fed by increasingly sophisticated international crime networks.
Officials say that amid the killings there are some helpful developments.
Overall, the rate of increase in poaching has fallen slightly and in South Africa, home to the greatest number of rhinos, the numbers killed in a single year fell slightly for the first time since 2008.
Dr Richard Emslie, of the IUCN's African Rhino Specialist Group, told the BBC:
"Any increase in poaching is alarming but there are some positives. When poaching started to escalate in 2008, we saw year after year of exponentially increasingly poaching.
"But over the last couple of years we've seen a decline in the rate of increase."
Dr Emslie described this as "an encouraging trend" and he highlighted how South Africa has managed to reduce the number of rhinos slaughtered from 1,215 in 2014 to 1,175 last year.
But success in one area can lead to further poaching elsewhere and while South Africa can point to a slightly improved picture, other countries have seen sharp increases in losses.
According to the new data, the number of rhinos killed in Namibia has quadrupled in just the last two years while losses in Zimbabwe doubled over the same period.
Dr Emslie described the fight against poaching as like squeezing a balloon.
"If you clamp down on poaching on the one side of the Kruger National Park beside the...

Summary: The mass slaughter of rhinos has increased for the sixth year in a row, according to grim new figures from international researchers.
###
Article: Chelsey Lee, 26, played for Bucheon KEB Hana Bank in the Women's Korean Basketball League (WKBL), whose teams are allowed only two foreign players.
Prosecutors were asked to investigate after the Korean Olympic Committee pushed for Lee's naturalisation.
The WKBL says Lee will be suspended for life and her records annulled.
The Miami-born centre won the league's rookie of the year award in the 2015-16 season after helping her team reach the championship series.
However, Lee and her two agents are suspected of fabricating her and her father's birth certificates to show she had a South Korean grandmother.
Bucheon KEB Hana Bank issued a public apology, vowing to take legal action against Lee and her agents.
The club's owner and head coach will step down.
WKBL commissioner Shin Sun-woo said the team's records and ranking will be nullified and the league will scrap the extra quota for international players with a Korean parent or grandparent.

Summary:

Article: {{document}}

Summary: ||| {{target}}


Reported sightings of leatherback turtles are increasing off Wales, with the reptiles thought to be drawn by high numbers of jellyfish.

Article: It will likely lead to a large X-ray telescope being launched in 2028, and to an orbiting observatory to detect gravitational waves going up in 2034.
Together, these two ventures will cost in excess of 2bn euros (Â£1.7bn).
They join a mission already approved known as Juice, which will see a big satellite sent to observe Jupiter and its icy moons in 2022.
The path ahead was set by the Science Programme Committee (SPC) of the European Space Agency (Esa), which is meeting in Paris, France.
The committee's decision should now give clear direction and certainty to Europe's research and industrial base.
"These big missions take a long time to put together - of the order of 20 years," said Dr Fabio Favata, head of Esa's Science Planning and Community Coordination Office.
"Of course, when you fix things you trade flexibility for stability, but this gives the community the opportunity to plan. They now understand what will be the 'pillars', what will be the 'cornerstones'," he told BBC News.
The SPC gathering was asked to approve a set of scientific "themes" that will guide the selection of Esa's next Large Class mission opportunities. The agency tries to launch one of these flagship endeavours every six years.
The themes are titled the "hot and energetic Universe", and the "gravitational Universe".
And although these themes do not endorse a specific X-ray telescope or gravitational wave detection concept, their prescription is so tight that only two candidates can have real confidence of making it through the forthcoming selection process.
These are the two consortia that narrowly lost out to the Juice team in the last L-Class competition in 2012.
The X-ray telescope proposal currently goes by the name of Athena+. It would be roughly four tonnes in mass and have a 12m focal length. With a survey capability and sensitivity a hundred times better than today's best space telescopes, Athena+ would be used to study the origin of the monstrous black holes that reside at the centres of galaxies, among other objectives.
The...

Summary: Europe has fixed a broad plan for the big space science missions it will launch over the next two decades.
###
Article: Gross domestic product in the world's third-largest economy grew at an annualised pace of 1.7%.
The better-than-expected growth rate came after higher government spending helped to offset weakness in business investment and exports.
It marks a rebound from the previous quarter but is not thought to lessen the pressure for more economic reform.
Japan's economy had shrunk in the final three months of 2015, so the expansion in the first quarter meant it avoided falling into recession - usually defined as two successive quarters of contraction.
The past four quarters have been volatile, alternating between growth and contraction.
In January, the Bank of Japan introduced negative interest rates in an attempt to stimulate the economy.
"One of the lessons over the past year is that monetary policy isn't as effective as it was in the past and might have reached some limits," Martin Schulz from Fujitsu Research Institute told the BBC.
"So what we will probably see this year is that the Bank of Japan will keep buying government bonds and the government will probably start to spend even more than it did before to support the economy."
Analysts remain concerned about the outlook for consumer spending, which accounts for about 60% of economic growth.
The surprisingly strong economic growth between January to March was partly attributed to an extra day because of 2017 being a leap year.
There are fears that consumer spending could take a hit if Prime Minister Shinzo Abe moves to increase the country's sales tax to 10% from the current 8%.
Japan's Nikkei newspaper reported this week that Mr Abe plans to postpone the move and will announce his decision after the G7 meeting later this month.
The country's government has for years been desperate to boost its stagnating economy and push consumer spending.
Tokyo's reform package - dubbed Abenomics - kicked off in 2012 but has so far failed to spur economic growth in the way its supporters had hoped for.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic policy, which quickly became...

Summary: Japan's economy has dodged a recession after it grew faster than expected in the first three months of the year.
###
Article: A combination of 40 factors, including brain structure, personality and major life events, were used to produce the test.
It can predict, with 70% accuracy, which 14-year-olds are likely to binge-drink at 16.
But a simpler method would be needed to make the test practical because of the prohibitive costs of brain scans.
Studies have already looked for the differences between binge-drinking teenagers and those choosing a path of sobriety.
However, they cannot tease out what makes someone more likely to consume copious amounts of alcohol from the changes caused by the drink.
An international group of scientists have now conducted the largest study of its type to find a way of predicting which teenagers will go on to binge-drink.
They looked at a huge array of variables, including family history, exposure to alcohol, neuroticism, extravagance, conscientiousness and other personality traits, a suite of genes, brain volume, how the brain responds to reward and many more.
Dr Robert Whelan, of University College Dublin, told the BBC: "There is no one really big thing. It's a bunch of little things adding up to give you this prediction.
"There are three main areas: brain activity and brain structure; personality, so seeking out new things to do increases the risk, whereas conscious tends to make you less likely to binge-drink; and then life events, such as a boyfriend or girlfriend, is highly predictive."
However, he cautioned the test would have limited value in testing one individual as it was not accurate enough.
"It is very broad, but you could identify a group of people - say, take 1,000 kids and find the top 200 at a higher risk - to give them special intervention."
Dr Whelan added that it was important to identify those at risk of binge drinking because studies had shown alcohol has "neurotoxic effects which carry on into adulthood".
However, brain scans cost thousands of pounds per person. A simplified version of the test, focusing on relatively cheap personality and family history factors, is more likely to...

Summary: Scientists claim to have developed a way of predicting which teenagers are likely to binge-drink.
###
Article: Three decades ago, it was referring to itself as part of the Muslim Brotherhood and laying out its aim to obliterate Israel, creating an Islamic state on "every inch" of historic Palestine.
In its 36 articles,  the 1988 document often uses anti-Semitic rhetoric to describe its struggle as a confrontation between Muslims and Jews.
Now, after years of internal wrangling, Hamas has produced a new policy document, which softens some of its stated positions and uses more measured language.
There is nothing so dramatic as recognition of Israel.
In fact, Hamas restates the Palestinians' claim to all the land "from the River Jordan in the East to the Mediterranean Sea in the West".
However, the new document does formally accept the creation of a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem - what are known as pre-1967 lines.
This idea has been the basis for previous rounds of peace talks with Israel.
At a press conference in Doha, where he lives in exile, the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal also stressed a change in approach to the Jewish faith.
"Hamas believes our struggle is against the Zionist occupation, the Zionist enterprise.  It's not a struggle against Jews or Judaism," he said.
The indications are that Hamas wants to improve its international standing.
It has dropped all references to the Muslim Brotherhood since Egypt and some Gulf Arab states decided to categorise the wider organisation as a terrorist group.
And yet, the new declarations will not see Hamas itself removed from the terrorist lists of the United States and the European Union any time soon.
They make clear that Hamas remains committed to what it calls "armed resistance" against Israel.
The Israeli prime minister's spokesman, David Keyes dismissed the new Hamas document.
"When you look at what they tell their own people on Hamas's TV stations, in their mosques, in their schools, they are calling on a daily basis to destroy Israel," he said.
There has been speculation that Hamas is seeking entry to the Palestine Liberation...

Summary: There have long been reports of possible changes to the 1988 founding charter of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, best known by its acronym, Hamas.
###
Article: Tory AMs will travel to Westminster on Thursday for what is described as their regular annual meeting at No 10.
David Cameron is expected to be present despite German Chancellor Angela Merkel visiting parliament the same day.
The gathering follows the sacking of four shadow cabinet ministers by Welsh Tory leader Andrew RT Davies.
There are also tensions between him and the Secretary of State for Wales David Jones.
Mr Davies's chief of staff, Antony Pickles, was called to a meeting in Downing Street on Tuesday evening as No 10 tries to resolve the rows.
There is said to be puzzlement in Downing Street over the sackings and a desire to find out what happened and why.
Tuesday's meeting was said to be about finding a way through the tensions and to prepare for Thursday's gathering.
One MP said they were traditionally not invited to the annual meeting between AMs and the prime minister, although Wales Office Minister Stephen Crabb has cancelled an official visit to promote tourism so he can be in Westminster on Thursday.
Secretary of State David Jones is also expected to attend the meeting at Downing Street.
Last week, Mr Cameron said plans to hand restricted tax powers to Wales are the "starting point" for a debate.
UK ministers want to hold a referendum on allowing the Welsh government to vary income tax rates.
Each income tax band could only be moved at the same time and by the same amount - the so-called "lockstep".
A row over whether to back the lockstep or not led to Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies sacking four members of his shadow cabinet.
Mr Davies has criticised the lockstep while the four colleagues he sacked said they were supporting the policy of the UK coalition government.
Mr Cameron made his comments on the issue while visiting flood-hit areas of Pembrokeshire last Wednesday.
He did not comment directly on divisions within his party's assembly group, but said: "What we believe is that we need further devolution here in Wales.
"We want the Welsh assembly to have the power over taxes and...

Summary: The prime minister will meet Welsh Tory AMs later this week as the fallout continues over the party's divisions over income tax devolution.
###
Article: Three sightings have been reported in recent days, in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, north Pembrokeshire and Anglesey.
Dr Peter Richardson, of the Marine Conservation Society (MCS), said Wales' waters were currently "turtle heaven".
The turtles nest in the Caribbean before travelling to UK waters to feed.
Dr Richardson said there had been high numbers of jellyfish - the food source of the leatherback - reported in the Irish Sea this year.
He added: "The waters around Wales are absolutely perfect at the moment for turtles - turtle heaven."
"What we have seen in the last few weeks is a sudden increase in the number of leatherbacks reported off the coast of the UK, mostly the south west, but in the last few days we have had three reports of leatherbacks off Wales."
Describing the leatherback as a "spectacular animal," he added: "Wales boasts the largest leatherback ever recorded anywhere on the planet.
"In 1988, a dead one washed up at Harlech... and it measured just under 3m (10ft), nose to tail, and weighed just under a tonne."
In 2002 and 2005 there were about 70 sightings of leatherback turtles around the British coast, but since 2007 there have been 20 or fewer reported annually, according to the MCS.

Summary:


Further tests will be carried out on a man who died while suffering from measles after post-mortem examination results were inconclusive.

Article: Those farming the highest hills in Wales were being offered ten times less in subsidy payments than those on lower slopes and moors.
But as subsidy budgets are fixed "some redistribution" of the money is now inevitable, warned Rebecca Evans.
She said options were being drawn up for debate later in January.
The Welsh government's stance was formally quashed by the courts in December following a challenge by a Welsh farmers' campaign group, Fairness for the Uplands (FFTU).
While the farming money comes from the EU, the rules on how it is allocated in Wales were drawn up by the Welsh government.
Under the original agreement, the Welsh government ruled that land above the 400m (1,300ft) line was worth £16-a-hectare or €20 in EU subsidies to farmers, while below the line land was worth £160 or €200 a hectare.
According to FFTU, about 300 hill farmers out of 15,000 in Wales were affected by the ruling.
Ms Evans said in a statement on Monday that it was "inevitable that this revised situation will result in change to the payments that farmers might have expected in the years ahead".
Options will be presented to union leaders and countryside organisations later in January.

Summary: Some Welsh farmers could see EU cash cut after upland farmers won a legal challenge, the deputy farming minister has warned.
###
Article: Steven Davenport, 18, from Chelmsford, admitted murdering Ashley Woolley in the city's Oaklands Park last December.
Mr Woolley, also 18, died in hospital after being stabbed in the neck and body.
Davenport, who is understood to have had a fantasy about murdering somebody, was jailed for life at Chelmsford Crown Court and will serve at least 18 years.
Mr Woolley's father Trevor Woolley said he would have liked to see the death penalty for people like Davenport.
Mr Woolley told how he was wrapping up presents for his children when he learned Ashley had been murdered.
"Our world stopped at that point and it has never started since," he said.
"Ashley had befriended him because he was the loner of the class and Ashley, being Ashley, said 'come on, join the party'.
"We know that his killer had a fantasy about murdering someone and Ashley, being the only one in the class that had befriended him, well he then chose him as his victim.
"We went and saw the CCTV of it and you see Ashley coming out and he runs up behind him and stabs him.
"Ashley knew nothing about what was about to happen. He stabbed him in the neck and then, on the floor, and stabbed him in the kidney and liver.
"I am still trying to get through the loss of Ash. He loved life, he was cheeky, he was funny and if he saw somebody down he would tell a joke and try and make them laugh."
Mr Woolley said he would like to see a return of the death penalty for cases such as his son's, as Davenport had shown no remorse and because of the way in which his son was lured to his death.

Summary: A loner who lured a student who had shown him friendship to his death has been jailed for life.
###
Article: Some big cat exerts say their population has stabilised and increased in a number of places.
This, they claim, has slowed the overall rate of decline.
Others argue that there has been no robust scientific study to prove either that the population has stabilised.
Amid the disagreement, top officials from 12 countries within the snow leopard range are meeting in Kyrgyzstan to further strengthen conservation of the elusive big cats.
The differences of opinion among scientists have intensified as a downgrading of the threat to snow leopards - from "endangered" to "vulnerable" - is expected from the IUCN Red List soon.
The Red List is the most comprehensive inventory of the conservation status of different species.
The list maintained by the international nature conservation body is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the status of biological species.
Scientists who believe that the number of snow leopards has gone up say the information is based on people working in the field.
"Experts from each range countries were asked to come up with best estimates of snow leopard population by country and the total was between 7,400 and 8,000 animals," says Dr Tom McCarthy, snow leopard program executive director for Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organisation.
"You have to stress there that's still what people call guesstimates, I like to call it a very educated guesstimate."
The figures have been quoted by a recently published book on snow leopards that kicked off the debate.
Before these latest figures, the widely quoted population for snow leopards since the 90s was between 3,500 and 7,500.
"But I just can't see why we would cling to the figure of the 90s," said Dr McCarthy.
Conservationists say snow leopards have been threatened by poaching, retaliatory killing by farmers, declining prey species, shrinking habitats, and climate change.
"Although it is difficult to capture an overall trend, there is a general lack of evidence of a significant continuing decline in the global snow leopard population,"...

Summary: Scientists are deeply divided on whether snow leopards are still endangered species, a BBC investigation has found.
###
Article: Scientists hope to launch the Solar Probe Plus (SPP) sometime before 2018.
Before it is destroyed by the sizzling temperatures exceeding 1,400C (2,550F), the craft will have to obtain valuable data about our parent star.
The solar probe project is expected to cost in the region of about $180m (Â£120m).
To withstand the temperatures and the radiation, the instruments will be protected by a huge carbon-composite heat shield that still needs to be built.
Researchers say that the Sun is one of the few places people have not yet sent a spacecraft.
"Trying to understand how the Sun influences the Earth is quite a big thing these days," Richard Harrison, a solar physicist from the UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, told BBC News.
"The one thing we've never done is actually go there. You think of a spacecraft flying past Mars or Venus, but with the Sun, it is a little bit different.
"[But we are capable of sending] spacecraft near the Sun and that's the plan for the next generation of spacecraft."
Lika Guhathakurta, Solar Probe Plus programme scientist at Nasa Headquarters in Washington DC, said that "for the very first time, we'll be able to touch, taste and smell our Sun."
The spacecraft will be equipped with various instruments, among them a solar wind particle detector, a 3D camera, and a device to measure the magnetic field.
The Sun's outer atmosphere is called the corona and it is several hundreds of times hotter than the photosphere, or the visible surface of the star.
Professor Harrison said that to many people, it might seem strange that the Sun actually has an atmosphere.
But it does, he explained: "It's this million-degree plasma [that consists of] charged particles, trapped in magnetic loops, sort of super-magnetic fields."
One of the aims of the SPP mission is to understand the nature of the "solar wind", the mass of charged particles that billows away from the Sun into space.
"The experiments selected for Solar Probe Plus are specifically designed to solve two key questions of solar physics: why is...

Summary: Nasa is aiming to get closer to the Sun than ever before, with plans to plunge a car-sized unmanned spacecraft into the star's outer atmosphere.
###
Article: The LGA says the current structure, with councils responsible for most schools but academies and free schools answering to Whitehall, is confusing and lets issues "slip through the net".
It wants local education "trusts" to oversee all types of state school.
The Independent Academies Association called it "a step back into the past".
The LGA says the current system is so complicated that parents often don't know how to make complaints or raise issues.
Academies and free schools, which now number about 3,500, are independent of local authority control and accountable directly to Whitehall which, says the LGA, "acknowledges it lacks the capacity and local knowledge to provide oversight". It says that local authorities, while responsible for 84% of schools, lack adequate powers to hold the growing number of these other schools to account.
A new LGA document sets out a wish list for the first 100 days of a new government, following the 2015 election.
It urges the government to set up local "education trusts" for all schools, including academies and free schools, which would bring together head teachers and governors, "supported and held to account" by local councils.
Good and outstanding schools would share expertise and support improvement, says the LGA, "leaving Ofsted free to focus on schools which require improvement".
"The current two-tier system of accountability is confusing for mums and dads to navigate... there are too many possibilities for issues to slip through the net," said David Simmonds, chairman of the LGA's children and young people board.
"Education trusts would strip away this bureaucracy and provide an easily identifiable place which parents can turn to.
"Someone has to take responsibility for accountability of schools and with local knowledge and links to the community councils are ideally placed to take this role," said Mr Simmonds.
Traditionally, local authorities have had a role in monitoring standards in the schools they control, acting as a "middle tier" between schools and the...

Summary: Parents in England should have access to a single local body responsible for standards in all state schools, says the Local Government Association (LGA).
###
Article: Gareth Colfer-Williams, 25, died last week at his home in Swansea, the city at the centre of an epidemic of the disease which has reached 942 cases.
But the examination was unable to establish whether measles was the main cause of his death.
An inquest will be opened and adjourned on Tuesday to allow further tests.
Since the outbreak began in November, 83 people have needed hospital treatment for the illness.
Mr Colfer-Williams' mother, Angela Colfer said her son had recently been treated at Swansea's Morriston Hospital for asthma.
A few days after he was discharged he became unwell and developed a rash.
Mrs Colfer said her son went to see an out-of-hours GP on 17 April with a rash "from head to foot" but not on his arms.
The following morning, Mr Colfer-Williams was found dead at his flat.
Public Health Wales said on Friday that laboratory tests confirmed a diagnosis of measles but further tests were needed to determine the cause of death.
The family said they had no idea how Mr Colfer-Williams got measles as no close family member has it, including his three-year-old daughter who has been vaccinated.

Summary:


Westinghouse, Toshiba's US nuclear unit, has filed for US bankruptcy protection.

Article: The process of beatification, or declaring the late pontiff to be "blessed", is a crucial step towards making him a saint.
John Paul II died in 2005 after a papacy of nearly 27 years.
The Vatican credits him with the miraculous cure of a nun said to have had Parkinson's Disease.
Church officials believe that the Polish pope, who himself suffered from the condition, interceded for the miraculous cure of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, a Frenchwoman in her late forties.
She has said her illness inexplicably disappeared two months after John Paul II's death, after she and her fellow nuns had prayed to him.
Church-appointed doctors agreed that there was no medical explanation for the curing of the nun, although last year there were some doubts about the validity of the miracle.
The 'miracle' that clinched the  beatification
A Polish newspaper said that a doctor who scrutinised the nun's case had concluded that she might have been suffering not from Parkinson's, but from a nervous disorder from which temporary recovery is medically possible.
Up to a million people are expected to gather in Rome for the beatification.
Mourners at John Paul II's funeral on 8 April 2005 chanted: "Santo subito!" - or "Make him a saint right now!"
Have your say
The following month, Pope Benedict put him on a fast track to sainthood by dispensing with Church rules that normally impose a five-year waiting period after a candidate's death before the beatification procedure can start.
Work is under way in St Peter's Basilica to make space for John Paul II's tomb since, in accordance with tradition, the remains of popes who are beatified are moved up from the crypt to the nave.
"John Paul II's coffin will be moved in St Peter's Basilica from the Vatican crypt without being opened," said Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi.
His body will not be displayed but placed in a tomb under a simple marble stone reading "Beatus Ioannes Paulus II" (Blessed John Paul II).
In order for John Paul II to be canonised as a saint, a second miracle would have to be...

Summary: Pope Benedict XVI has formally approved a miracle attributed to his late predecessor, paving the way to John Paul II's beatification on 1 May.
###
Article: The AlphaBay and Hansa sites had been associated with the trade in illicit items such as drugs, weapons, malware and stolen data.
According to Europol, there were more than 250,000 listings for illegal drugs and toxic chemicals on AlphaBay.
Hansa was seized and covertly monitored for a month before being deactivated.
The agency said it believed the bust would lead to hundreds of new investigations in Europe.
"The capability of drug traffickers and other serious criminals around the world has taken a serious hit today," said Europol's executive director Rob Wainwright.
It was a "landmark" operation, according to US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) acting director Andrew McCabe.
AlphaBay has been offline since early July, fuelling suspicions among users that a law enforcement crackdown had taken place.
"We know of several Americans who were killed by drugs on AlphaBay," said US Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
"One victim was just 18 years old when in February she overdosed on a powerful synthetic opioid which she had bought on AlphaBay."
He also said a 13-year-old boy died after overdosing on a synthetic opioid bought by a high school classmate via the site.
Mr Sessions cautioned criminals from thinking that they could evade prosecution by using the dark web: "You cannot hide," he said, "We will find you."
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) said that illegal drugs listed for sale on AlphaBay included heroin and fentanyl.
It added in a court filing that $450m (Â£347m) was spent via the marketplace between May 2015 and February 2017.
Investigations were led by the FBI, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Dutch National Police.
Police in other countries, including the UK, France and Lithuania, also contributed.
The Dutch National Police took over the Hansa marketplace on 20 June after two men in Germany were arrested and servers in Germany, The Netherlands and Lithuania were seized.
This allowed for "the covert monitoring of criminal activities on the platform" until it was eventually shut down a...

Summary: Two of the largest dark web marketplaces have been shut down following a "landmark" international law enforcement investigation.
###
Article: So when she received a letter accusing her of illegally downloading first-person shooter Metro 2033, she was surprised.
She had never heard of the game and did not understand why she faced a fine of thousands of dollars.
The firm that sent the letter said the incident was "an unfortunate anomaly".
It is now mandatory for Canadian ISPs to forward copyright infringement notices to customers whose IP address has been identified by content owners as being the source of illegal downloads.
It is part of the Canadian government's Notice and Notice regulations, introduced under last year's Copyright Modernisation Act.
The regulation requires that infringement notices issued by content owners are forwarded to users.
"I found it quite shocking. I'm 86, no-one has access to my computer but me, why would I download a war game?" Mrs McMillan told Go Public - an investigative news team from Canada's CBC TV network.
Metro 2033 was released in 2010 and is based in the ruins of Moscow, following a nuclear war. Players must defeat an evil mutant race, which some gamers refer to as zombies.
At first, she thought it was a scam but after calling her internet service provider Cogeco, she realised that the notices are perfectly legal.
Mrs McMillan told Go Public: "It seems to be a very foolish piece of legislation."
Thousands of Canadians are likely to have received similar notices, which warn them that they have been identified as having downloaded content without paying for it and offer a one-off payment to avoid the case going to court.
Copyright holders such as game developers and film studios are typically hiring third-party firms to collect money from the alleged pirates.
In this case, the private firm Canadian Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement (CANIPRE) sent the letter.
It read: "In the event that this matter remains unresolved and/or you continue to engage in the unauthorised copying and distribution of copyrighted works, you could be in violation of the Acceptable Use policy you may be party to with your ISP."
In...

Summary: Canadian grandmother Christine McMillan does not include killing mutants among her hobbies, neither does she play the games that would allow her to do so.
###
Article: A large team of ants does the heavy lifting but they lack direction, while a small number of "scouts" intervene and steer for short periods.
They appear to have a mathematically perfect balance between individuality and conformism, the researchers said.
The discovery was made by analysing videos of ants carrying oversized food items, including Cheerios.
Published in the journal Nature Communications, the study used a very common species known as the longhorn crazy ant.
The species' name refers to the way the little creatures dash about, frequently changing direction with apparently aimless abandon.
But the new findings suggest that the level of aimlessness in these ants' behaviour is in fact very finely tuned.
"The group is tuned to be maximally sensitive to the leader ants," said the paper's senior author Dr Ofer Feinerman, a physicist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.
He said the ants seem to have just the right amount of erratic individualism. About 90% of the time, they will "go with the flow" and pull in the same direction as everybody else; the other 10% of the time they live up to their name.
That means that on the whole, each ant transport team works together and avoids a fruitless tug-of-war. But crucially, their erratic streak leaves a degree of instability - and this allows a single ant with new information to join in and change the direction.
"This leader that comes along, she doesn't have to introduce herself, she doesn't have to be stronger than the rest - she just has to pull in the correct direction," Dr Feinerman told BBC News.
"The only communication in the system is the forces that they feel through the object."
So while it is the sheer number of ants on the team that determines how fast the tidbit gets transported, the navigation is supplied by these "scouts".
To test out their model, Dr Feinerman and his colleagues tried the ants in some extreme situations - giving them objects much bigger than anything they would normally shift.
"The prediction that the model gave us is...

Summary: Scientists in Israel have discovered how ants co-operate to move big chunks of food back to their nests.
###
Article: Each December, meteors appear to radiate from a point near the star Castor, in the constellation Gemini.
In early morning hours, that is located westward and overhead in the northern hemisphere and nearer the horizon in the southern hemisphere.
Many sky watchers saw dozens of "shooting stars" per hour, made easier to see by darkness provided by the "new moon" phase of the lunar cycle.
The shower comes about each year as the Earth passes through the path of an asteroid called 3200 Phaethon.
The asteroid leaves behind a trail of rocky debris that the Earth ploughs into - debris moving at 35km per second through the atmosphere, burning up in what have been described as spectacular displays.
"The sky was completely clear here," reported Ivan Hawick in the Shetland Islands.
"I could see eight meteors in one minute at times. One I saw was burning so bright - it was a lovely blue colour."
According to the International Meteor Organization, the "radiant" - the apparent point from which the meteors seem to come - was visible from sunset in far north of the equator; the constellation rose above the horizon at about midnight local time in the southern hemisphere.
The Geminids are less well-known relative to other annual meteoric performances such as the Perseids, in part because December weather often threatens a clear view of the show.

Summary: The annual Geminids meteor shower peaked overnight into Friday morning.
###
Article: The US firm has struggled with hefty losses that have thrown its Japanese parent into a crisis, putting the conglomerate's future at risk.
Westinghouse has suffered huge cost overruns at two US projects in Georgia and South Carolina.
Toshiba said the bankruptcy would not affect Westinghouse's UK operation, which employs more than 1,000 workers.
However, the firm warned that the writedown of its US nuclear business could see Toshiba's total losses last year exceed 1 trillion yen ($9.1bn; £7.3bn), almost triple its previous estimate.
The Japanese government confirmed on Wednesday that it was aware of Toshiba's plans.
Toshiba President Satoshi Tsunakawa said the move was aimed at "shutting out risks from the overseas nuclear business."
"We want to make this our first step toward recovering our solid business," he said.
Toshiba initially alerted investors in December 2016 that it faced heavy losses linked to a deal done by Westinghouse.
Assets that it took on are likely to be worth less than initially thought and there is also a dispute about payments that are due.
As a consequence, Toshiba initially hoped to sell its majority stake in Westinghouse.
The Japanese company was also twice given permission to delay reporting its earnings until 11 April.
The nuclear services business brings in about one-third of the industrial giant's revenue.
Toshiba says it expects a 712.5bn-yen ($6.3bn; £5bn) writedown because some of its US nuclear assets were worth far less than estimated.
A Westinghouse bankruptcy filing should help limit future losses for Toshiba.
The difficulties at Westinghouse have sent Toshiba shares into freefall, losing more than 50% since the company first unveiled the problems in December 2016.
In February, the company's chairman stepped down and the firm delayed publishing its results over disagreements with its auditors.
The financial problems have some analysts speculating over whether the Japanese conglomerate can even survive the crisis, as it will probably be forced to sell many of its premium...

Summary:


Singer-songwriter Peter Sarstedt, best known for the song Where Do You Go To (My Lovely), has died at the age of 75, his family has said.

Article: James Seevakumaran, 30, was found with explosives and firearms in his room at the University of Central Florida.
Officials said he pointed a gun at another student, who called the police, before pulling a fire alarm and shooting himself.
Hundreds of students were evacuated early on Monday but classes were held after the explosives were removed.
The incident occurred as the US holds an emotionally charged debate about how to curb its gun violence epidemic.
At a news conference on Monday, authorities said writings found in his dorm room suggested Seevakumaran was planning a massacre on the scale of the horrific US school and university shootings of recent years.
Campus Police Chief Richard Beary said he believed Seevakumaran shot himself as police answered the emergency call shortly after midnight on Monday.
"His timeline got off," Chief Beary said. "We think the rapid response of law enforcement may have changed his ability to think quickly on his feet."
Four explosive devices were found in a back pack, the police chief added.
Investigators think Seevakumaran may have triggered a fire alarm in the building in order to push students outside into the open so he could massacre them, Chief Beary said.
His roommates told investigators he had at times been anti-social but had not displayed violent tendencies.
But a spokesman said the university, based in Orlando, had been in the process of removing him from his dorm after he failed to register for classes.

Summary: A US university student may have been planning a massacre before he killed himself instead, authorities have said.
###
Article: The claim: The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts include an extra £10bn each year from 2019-20 for public spending as a result of leaving the EU - this could be spent on the NHS.
Reality Check verdict: If the UK manages to stop completely its contributions to the EU budget in 2019-20 then there may be some extra money to spend on other things - but in that same year the OBR is predicting that the government will have to borrow an extra £14.7bn as a result of the Brexit vote.
What they are talking about is the amount of money saved if the UK stops making contributions to the EU budget.
The £32bn is what you get if you add up the figures for the net contribution to the EU budget in 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22, contained in Chart 2.26 of the OBR report accompanying the Autumn Statement.
Change Britain would perhaps have been better off using a slightly less "buried" figure, which is to be found in table 4.27.
That table gives the amount of domestic spending that the OBR assumes could be done if the government abruptly stopped making any contributions to the EU budget. Over three years, those figures add up to £40bn.
There are several things to say about this figure before describing it as a Brexit dividend.
The first is that the reason it is of relatively little interest to the OBR is that the independent forecasting group assumes that if that money stops being sent to Brussels it will be spent elsewhere by the government, which means that it makes almost no difference when forecasting future borrowing.
But clearly, for the population as a whole, the idea of having an extra £13bn spent on the NHS in 2019-20 is of much greater interest. Is that possible?
Not all of that money can be spent on the NHS because the government has promised that groups such as universities and scientific researchers who currently receive money from the EU will continue to do so, at least until we leave the EU, with continuing funding at least until projects already under way are finished.
Also, some of the money that the UK...

Summary: A campaign group called Change Britain, led by Leave supporters, has claimed that: "Buried deep in the Office for Budget Responsibility Economic and Fiscal Outlook yesterday was the £32bn 'Brexit dividend' that the UK will receive when it leaves the EU."
###
Article: The firm says the MacBook Pro's Touch Bar provides software-specific commands that are more "intuitive" to use than the function keys it replaces.
The announcement was not a surprise, however, because of an earlier leak.
Apple had not updated its MacBook Pro laptops since May 2015. Its MacBook Air models were two months older still.
That has impacted sales. Earlier this week Apple revealed that it had sold 10% fewer Macs in the year ending 24 September than over the prior 12 months.
Researchers suggest the wider PC market has also shrunk, but to a lesser extent.
"The lack of updates was part of the problem, but it's also the case that the competition has got a lot stronger," commented Roberta Cozza from the tech consultancy Gartner.
"Over the past year we've seen more interest from both business customers and consumers in Windows 10 computers, which have benefited from both the new operating system as well as better designs and better pricing from their manufacturers.
"For some time, Apple's main focus has been the iPhone - which accounts for much of its revenue - and making the iPad a better productive tool. But there are still many users who want PC-grade performance, and they needed this Mac refresh."
There was no update to the MacBook or MacBook Air laptops, nor to the firm's iMac or Mac Pro desktop PCs.
Source: Gartner
The figures include desktops and laptops - including hybrid models with detachable touchscreens - but not dedicated tablets such as the iPad Pro
Apple's software chief Craig Federighi gave several examples of how the new Touch Bar could be used, including ways to:
The innovation helps address the fact the laptops' main displays are not touchscreens and cannot be used with a stylus, as is the case with many Windows 10 PCs as well as Apple's iPad Pro.
"It works as a miniature tablet built into the keyboard, allowing users to seamlessly move between keys and a much more nuanced touch interface without lifting a hand," commented Rhoda Alexander from the tech consultancy IHS Markit.
"By...

Summary: Apple has unveiled new high-end laptops that feature a thin interactive display above their keyboards and a fingerprint sensor.
###
Article: Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby's show Nanette shares the Best Comedy Award with British stand-up John Robins' The Darkness of Robins.
The winners saw off competition from seven other nominees, including Ahir Shah, Sophie Willan and Spencer Jones.
The comedians will each receive £10,000 in prize money.
Mr Robins' show focused on the end of his relationship with fellow comedian Sara Pascoe, while Ms Gadsby said Nanette would be her last outing as a stand-up.
Awards director Nica Burns said the decision to have two winners was "fitting that in the 70th anniversary year of the Fringe something extraordinary has happened".
He added: "Both shows, which could not be more different, were hotly debated and fiercely fought for.
"Comedy has many possibilities and audiences [have] very different funny bones. These two incredibly talented winners make you laugh and touch your heart.
"And yes, they will both receive £10,000 each so it's been an expensive year. In the 37 years of the lastminute.com Edinburgh Comedy Awards this has never happened before and it is unlikely it will ever happen again."
LA-based Natalie Palamides won the Best Newcomer Award and £5,000 for her show LAID - a dark comedy about a woman who lays an egg every day and has to decide whether to raise it or eat it.
The judges decided not to award the annual Panel Prize.

Summary: Two separate acts have been named joint winners of the Edinburgh Comedy Awards for the first time in the history of the city's Fringe festival.
###
Article: The Mid Antrim 150 club say inclement weather this year, combined with a poor attendance at the event, has forced the decision.
The event was dogged with heavy rain prior to race day, which resulted in the paddock turning into a quagmire.
Plans are in place for the race to return in 2018 and to become a regular event on the calendar.
The race has been dogged by setbacks over the past eight years and 2016 was the first time the meeting returned to the Irish road racing calendar since 2013, due to a shortfall in finances.
The Mid Antrim was the first national road race of 2016 after being moved to a new slot at the beginning of April.
The 2017 Irish national road racing season will begin with the Tandragee 100 on 21-22 April, followed by the Cookstown 100 on 28-29 April.
The Armoy road races will be staged on 28-29 July.

Summary: The organisers of the Mid Antrim 150 road races have confirmed that the meeting will not take place in 2017.
###
Article: The song topped the UK singles charts in February 1969 and remained number one for four weeks.
It was also number one in many other countries and won the Ivor Novello award for best song composition.
He died peacefully after a six-year battle with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, a family statement said.
The statement said his closest family were "with him to the last" and that many people would miss his songs and his music.
Where Do You Go To (My Lovely), a song about a girl born in poverty who becomes a member of the European jet-set, was replaced as number one by Marvin Gaye's I Heard it Through the Grapevine.
It was included in the compilation programme One-Hit Wonders at the BBC, which was broadcast on BBC Four last year, although Sarstedt also reached number 10 in the charts with Frozen Orange Juice in June 1969.
He wrote more than a dozen albums in a career that spanned more than 50 years, releasing his last, Restless Heart, in 2013
Born into a musical family in India, Sarstedt was one of three brothers who all enjoyed success in the UK singles chart.
His older sibling, Richard Sarstedt, who performed under the stage name Eden Kane, also topped the charts with Well I ask You in 1961, while younger brother Clive, performing under the name Robin Sarstedt, reached number three in 1976 with My Resistance is Low.
Sarstedt's music reached new audiences when Where Do You Go To (My Lovely) was included in the Wes Anderson films Hotel Chevalier and The Darjeeling Limited, which were both released in 2007.
According to his website, he retired in 2010 because of his illness - a rare, progressive neurological condition.

Summary:


Children with severe epilepsy could be helped by a new treatment derived from the cannabis plant.

Article: Sarah Sobka, a pupil at Sheffield High School, was selected by a panel of experts ahead of 2,000 other hopefuls.
Sarah presented her work at an event in Birmingham and said she was "really grateful to win the award, but it was a bit of shock".
She did the work during four weeks last year at the University of Sheffield's Department of Biomedical Science.
Working in a team, she helped examine a drug which is commonly used to treat women with Irritable Bowel Syndrome to see if it could be used on cystic fibrosis.
The incurable disease is one of the UK's most common life-threatening inherited diseases, affecting over 10,000 people, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.
It affects internal organs, especially the lungs and digestive system, by clogging them with thick sticky mucus, making it hard to breathe and digest food.
Ms Sobka said she had become "attached to cystic fibrosis" after her work placement and hoped to pursue a career in medicine and research.
"I was a small part in a really big paper," she said.
"But, every small step is important. The more we know the more help that gives us in synthesising new drugs.
"Every little bit of understanding helps."

Summary: A student has been named UK Young Scientist of the Year for research into new drugs for cystic fibrosis patients.
###
Article: "Beach Bums" is the first UK project of its kind, teaming researchers with the action group Surfers Against Sewage.
Surfers are being asked to volunteer to provide rectal swabs to help scientists to find out the effects of marine pollution on human health.
Tests have shown water may contain antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Lead researcher Anne Leonard is from the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at Exeter University.
"We know that surfers regularly swallow lots more seawater than other beach users - around 170 ml per session, which is more than ten times that of sea swimmers," she said.
"We've already shown that this water may contain antibiotic-resistant bacteria but we have no idea how this might affect the microbes that live in our guts, or how it could impact upon health."
There are an increasing number of bacteria that have evolved to become immune to even the most powerful antibiotics.
The superbugs make common infections much harder to treat.
The threat is considered to be so serious that US President Obama recently launched a five-year action plan to reduce the use of antibiotics in treating humans and animals.
In the "Beach Bums" project, the swabs will give researchers an insight into the microbes which colonise surfers' guts.
By comparing these samples with others from people who don't regularly spend time in the sea, they will learn more about how superbugs in the environment can affect people.
According to Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), this is the first time that the surfing community has got so closely involved with a scientific study.
Andy Cummins from SAS said: "We have been laughing about swab parties going on around the country, but this is set against the background of a really important project.
"Whilst water quality has improved dramatically in the last 20 years, coastal waters can still be contaminated by sewage from both animals and humans, introducing billions of potentially harmful bacteria into the ocean environment.
"We will give this data to the scientists, to find...

Summary: Scientists are launching an investigation into antibiotic-resistant bacteria, known as "superbugs", by gathering data from surfers' rectums.
###
Article: It measures the extent adults are affected by repetitive behaviours - a criteria used to diagnose the condition.
Currently diagnosis relies on parents, carers or teachers reporting behaviour, but the test will allow people to assess themselves at clinics.
It will now be trialled before it is rolled out in clinics across the UK.
The research, published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, focuses on how much people indulge in common habits and routines such as lining up objects, arranging them into patterns and fiddling obsessively with things to help clinicians diagnose them.
It found consistently higher scores for people with autism after it was trialled on 311 people.
Autism is found in more than one in 100 people.
Meleri Thomas of the National Autistic Society Cymru called the test "a useful new resource".
She said: "Although, as the researchers make clear, it's not a diagnostic tool in itself, it could help some adults explore whether they should seek a full diagnostic assessment."

Summary: A self-assessment test for autism has been developed by psychologists at Cardiff University.
###
Article: The British Medical Journal work looked at trends in quit rates and support in England from 2006 to 2015.
E-cigarettes seem to have had no effect on the number of people trying to quit, but more have actually managed to stop.
The authors say vaping may have helped about 18,000 extra people in England successfully give up smoking in 2015.
The team, from University College London and Cancer Research UK, say theirs is an observational study, and therefore cannot prove direct cause and effect.
One smoking expert said it appeared e-cigarettes were a "major contributor" to the trend.
But health professionals say the most effective way to quit smoking remains through prescription medication and professional support from free local NHS stop-smoking services.
Electronic cigarettes are not yet widely available on the NHS.
Sales of e-cigarettes have been rising steadily since they first went on sale in the UK, in 2007. They are now used by nearly three million people in the UK.
In the past few years, they have replaced nicotine patches and gum to become the most popular choice of smoking cessation aid in England.
The BMJ research looked at data from the Smoking Toolkit Study from 2006 through to 2015.
The study also took data from the NHS Stop Smoking Service.
During the period studied, just over eight million people set dates to quit smoking.
'Something is working'
And the number of smokers who successfully managed to stop smoking increased by just under 1% for every 1% rise in the number of smokers using e-cigarettes.
Use of prescribed nicotine-replacement therapy also fell as e-cigarette use rose.
The team, led by Prof Robert West at UCL, said: "The increased prevalence of e-cigarettes in England does not appear to have been associated with a detectable change in attempts to stop smoking.
"However, the increase in e-cigarette use has been associated with an increase in success of quit attempts."
Writing in the BMJ, John Britton, director of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies at the University of...

Summary: The rise in popularity of e-cigarettes in the UK may have resulted in more successful attempts to quit smoking, according to UK researchers.
###
Article: A report by the National Research Council says the debris could cause fatal leaks in spaceships or destroy valuable satellites.
It calls for international regulations to limit the junk and more research into the possible use of launching large magnetic nets or giant umbrellas.
The debris includes clouds of minuscule fragments, old boosters and satellites.
Some computer models show the amount of orbital rubbish "has reached a tipping point, with enough currently in orbit to continually collide and create even more debris, raising the risk of spacecraft failures," the research council said in a statement on Thursday.
Hopes of limiting the amount of space junk in orbit suffered two major setbacks in recent years.
By Jonathan AmosScience correspondent, BBC News
Read Jonathan's thoughts in full
In 2007, China conducted an anti-satellite weapon test which destroyed a decommissioned weather satellite, smashing the object into 150,000 pieces larger than 1cm.
Two years later, two satellites - one defunct and one active - crashed in orbit, creating even more debris.
"Those two single events doubled the amount of fragments in Earth orbit and completely wiped out what we had done in the last 25 years," said Donald Kessler, who led the research.
There are 22,000 pieces of debris large enough to track from the ground, but smaller objects could still cause serious damage.
The International Space Station must occasionally dodge some of the junk, which flies around the Earth at speeds of up to 17,500 mph (28,164 km/h).
In June, some debris narrowly missed the space station, forcing its six crew to go to their escape capsules and prepare for an emergency evacuation back to Earth.
The situation is critical, said Mr Kessler, a retired Nasa scientist, because colliding debris creates even more of the junk.
"We've lost control of the environment," he said.
The report makes no recommendations about how to clean up the field of debris.
But it refers to an earlier study for the Pentagon's science think-tank, the Defence Advanced...

Summary: Scientists in the US have warned Nasa that the amount of so-called space junk orbiting Earth is at tipping point.
###
Article: The medicine does not contain the ingredient that produces the high associated with recreational cannabis.
The treatment, called Epidiolex, is based on one of the non-psychoactive components of the cannabis plant, CBD.
Early studies in the US have shown treatment with CBD may reduce the frequency and severity of seizures in children with severe forms of epilepsy.
The new trial marks the first time the treatment has been tested in the UK.
Patients are being enrolled for a trial of the treatment at Edinburgh University's Muir Maxwell Epilepsy Centre, based at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh, and Great Ormond Street Hospital.
The Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow and Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool are also driving the study.
There are further centres in the US, France and Poland.
Their initial focus will be on children with Dravet Syndrome, a rare but serious type of epilepsy that is difficult to treat. Some children will receive the treatment while others will receive a placebo.
In a further phase, researchers will also study the effect on children with Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome.
Only children whose seizures cannot be controlled with existing medications will take part in the trial.
Dravet Syndrome usually takes hold in the first year of life. It causes seizures that are often prolonged, lasting longer than five minutes.
They then develop other seizure types. This has a significant impact on the child's development and can be fatal in some cases.
Epidiolex has been developed by the British biotechnology company GW Pharmaceuticals, which is sponsoring and funding the trial.
Dr Richard Chin, director of the Muir Maxwell Epilepsy Centre, said: "Many children with serious forms of epilepsy do not respond to the medications that we currently have available.
"We need new means of treating these conditions so that we can give back some quality of life to these children and their families."

Summary:


An MP says he "has to take some responsibility" over an unpaid £10.25m loan to a football club.

Article: Shadow chancellor John McDonnell told the BBC that over a five-year Parliament borrowing would only be allowed for investment.
Labour sources said it was aimed at regaining "economic credibility".
But the government said it was clear Labour had not learned its lesson.
Mr McDonnell said the deficit on "current spending" would be eliminated. Labour insisted that the new rule was not a commitment to spend more money than the present government.
Chancellor George Osborne has put in place rules saying that the government will create an overall budget surplus "in normal times".
Labour voted against the rule in Parliament, and Mr McDonnell said any future Labour government wanted to invest more than the Conservatives.
Which could mean more borrowing.
The Office for Budget Responsibility - the government's economic watchdog - will be given new powers to "whistle blow" when it believes that the "credibility rule" has been breached.
And under the Labour plans it will also report to Parliament rather than the Treasury.
"We know now from the world's central banks that the world economy is looking at stagnation, and there needs to be a new rule," Mr McDonnell told me.
"And we want people to have confidence in a Labour government. That means we are introducing a new fiscal credibility rule.
"First, that a Labour government will always balance day to day expenditure.
"Second, that we will only borrow for the long term, and that means for investment - investment in our infrastructure, in the homes that we need, the railways, the roads, the renewable energy.
"And in new technology to grow our economy.
"Third, debt will fall under a Labour government over a five year period.
"And then finally all this will be supervised independently by the Office [for] Budget Responsibility, reporting directly to Parliament.
"This is a new iron discipline for a Labour government," he said.
Labour Party sources have admitted to me that "economic credibility" is one of the key reasons why people did not support the party at the last election.
I...

Summary: Labour is to announce a new "fiscal credibility rule" which will oblige any future Labour government to balance "day-to-day" spending with the amount it raises in taxes.
###
Article: A video appeared to show Jill Stein preparing to spray-paint a bulldozer.
She was protesting over the Dakota Access Pipeline, which is opposed by environmental and Native American groups who fear its impact.
"I approve this message," she is accused of writing on the blade of an earth-moving machine.
In a statement following the news of criminal charges, Mrs Stein said she hopes "the North Dakota authorities press charges against the real vandalism taking place at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation: the bulldozing of sacred burial sites and the unleashing of vicious attack dogs".
A judge has issued a warrant for her arrest but it is not known whether she intends to turn herself in.
She and her Green Party running mate Ajamu Baraka are charged with misdemeanour counts of criminal trespass and criminal mischief.
Since April over 3,000 people have been protesting about the pipeline. In recent days, private security forces have been using attack dogs to clear protesters.
Mrs Stein was also arrested during her 2012 campaign. She was protesting outside a debate to which she was not invited.
The 1,100 mile (1,770 km) crude oil pipeline passes close to Native American burial groups and is opposed by over 200 tribes.
A judge has temporarily forced the Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners to halt construction, and is due to decide on Friday whether to withdraw the company's building permits.

Summary: The Green Party candidate for president has been charged with criminal trespass after being accused of vandalism at an oil pipeline protest in North Dakota.
###
Article: Four Costa Rican companies that have volunteered their help say they possess the skills to create a prosthesis for the injured bird.
They say they will use 3D printing to create the first prosthesis of this kind in the region.
In the US, prosthetic beaks have been created for an eagle and a penguin.
The male toucan, named Grecia after the area where it was found, was taken to an animal rescue centre in January.
Pictures of its mutilated beak caused outrage after they were circulated in Costa Rican newspapers and on social media.
A campaign to provide the bird with a prosthetic beak quickly raised thousands of dollars and a number of local companies offered their help.
Four of them, Elementos 3d, Ewa!corps, Publicidad Web and Grupo Sommerus, said on Tuesday that they were confident they could design a suitable prosthetic for Grecia and fit it.
Toucans use their beaks to eat and also to regulate their body temperature.
Veterinarian Carmen Soto, who looks after Grecia at the Zoo Ave rescue centre, said the toucan was recovering well and had even started eating on its own.
"The quantity he manages to eat on his own is very small, so we have to help him," she said.
Designer Nelson Martinez said the priority was to create a prosthesis which would help Grecia eat.
He told newspaper La Nacion that he and his team had been studying toucan beaks to come up with a suitable design for Grecia.
He said they were working on a model that would have "a fixed part and a moveable part so it can be cleaned or replaced as the toucan is still growing".
Ms Soto said Grecia's wound was scarring well and that within the month it would be possible to scan its stump.
This will be key to ensure the prosthesis fits Grecia and will also influence how it is fitted.
"We couldn't use any type of adhesive with chemical components as it could compromise the structure of the beak," Mr Martinez said.
The team is studying if it could be fixed with screws instead.
Ms Soto warned that the prosthesis would have to be both lightweight and...

Summary: A toucan in Costa Rica which lost the upper part of its beak after being attacked by youths looks set to be fitted with a prosthetic replacement.
###
Article: The Centre for Cities said the Granite City and the Scottish capital were both doing well because of high-skilled jobs.
But it warned that competitive salaries were also driving up housing costs.
No Scottish cities were in the top 10 for "low-wage, high-welfare" economies.
The 2016 report - described as a "health check" for the 63 largest UK cities - focused on Chancellor George Osborne's vow to build a "higher wage, lower welfare" economy, as set out in the Summer Budget 2015.
It argued that nearly a million new jobs had been created in cities since 2010 - but that the average salary had also dropped by £1,300 per resident.
London topped the list of "high-wage, low-welfare" city economies, with an average weekly salary of £629 and welfare spend per capita of £3,045.
Aberdeen sat at number four with an average weekly salary in 2014 of £548 and welfare spend of £2,513. Edinburgh was eighth, with figures of £524 and £2,809, respectively.
The think tank said the two areas' ability to attract high-skilled jobs - in the oil and professional services industries for example - was the key to their success.
It argued that cities with high wages had seen faster jobs growth, with employment rising by 10% since 2010, compared with 3% in low-wage cities.
But it also found welfare spending had grown at a much faster rate in high-wage cities, with benefit payments more than 50% higher than in other places.
The report attributed this largely to high demand for housing, resulting in increased housing benefit payments.
The report added that welfare spending in high-wage places like Milton Keynes and Cambridge had risen by 4% since 2010, but had fallen in low-wage cities like Liverpool and Glasgow.

Summary: Aberdeen and Edinburgh are among the top 10 UK cities for their high wages and low welfare payments ratio, according to a report from a think tank.
###
Article: The provincial announcement comes amid fears that Toronto's red-hot real estate market is fuelled in part by foreign speculation.
British Columbia brought in a similar tax for Vancouver in 2016.
The new measure applies to non-Canadian citizens, non-permanent residents, and corporations buying residential properties containing up to six units.
Premier Kathleen Wynne announced the new speculation tax on Thursday as part of a series of measures to help stabilise the price for property and for rental units in and around Toronto.
She said the tax is aimed at "people looking only for a quick profit, not a place to call home".
The tax, which is effective immediately, is aimed at preventing foreign investors from driving up real estate costs.
It applies to property in the Greater Golden Horseshoe area - one of North America's fastest growing regions, comprised of the Greater Toronto Area and surrounding municipalities.
The average cost of a Toronto home jumped 33.2% over the past year, from an average of $688,000 (US$510,600/£398,000) in March of 2016 to $917,000 (US$680,000/£530,500) in March of 2017.
The average home price in Canada increased 8.2% over the same period.
Home ownership costs are at their highest level as a share of household income since 1990, according to RBC Economics.
Canada's central banker, Stephen Poloz, warned earlier this month that investor speculation is increasingly driving the cost of Toronto home prices.
The foreign buyer's tax in British Columbia appears to have helped bring that skyrocketing market under control.
Housing affordability has eased in metro Vancouver for the first time in over three years, says RBC Economics.
Sydney, Singapore, Switzerland, and Hong Kong have also introduced restrictions on foreign buyers.
Last October, the federal government closed a tax loophole used by foreign homebuyers and announced a more robust mortgage stress test on all new insured mortgages in an effort to cool the real estate markets in Toronto and Vancouver.

Summary: Canada's largest province is implementing a 15% foreign buyer's tax in Southern Ontario.
###
Article: David Mackintosh was the leader of Northampton Borough Council when the authority authorised the loan to Northampton Town in 2013.
The money has never been paid and the council is in the process of trying to get it back.
Mr Mackintosh said "due diligence was carried out" before the loan was granted.
The Conservative MP for Northampton South said he felt "angry, frustrated and upset" about the ongoing financial problems at the Cobblers.
The club currently faces a winding-up petition from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) over £166,000. This is due to be heard on 16 November.
The £10.25m loan was originally given to the club for the re-development of its Sixfields stadium.
Mr Mackintosh said all decisions over the loan were taken at the borough council's cabinet and followed "a lot of work" by officers.
He said safeguards were put in place and were now being deployed by the council to recover the money.
Mr Mackintosh said: "Clearly as leader I have to take some responsibility for what happened.
"It is very frustrating because at the same time there are other things that haven't happened at the club.
"There are serious questions to be answered."
Club chairman David Cardoza previously told the BBC he expected the loan issue to be resolved by the end of last month.

Summary: