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Building work on the National Football Centre in Burton will begin in January, the Football Association announces.
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A double decker bus has its roof ripped off after crashing into a railway bridge in Edinburgh.
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England’s national curriculum led to a tick-box approach to teaching and is in need of reform, a report says.
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The GM workers’ health insurance fund will sell much of its 20% stake in the company via the IPO Surprisingly strong investor demand allowed General Motors (GM) to up the size and the price of its initial public offering of shares.
The company, returning to the market after a $50bn government bail-out, said it had sold its stock at $33 each.
The sale could leave GM the biggest share offering in the world.
Seven times more buyers than shares on offer meant the company was able to lift the price from the $26 it initially hoped for.
GM will raise a total of $20.1bn from the sale of the shares – known as common stock – with $4.35bn coming from the sale of preferred shares- which pay a fixed dividend and do not have voting rights.
Including an overallotment option, which will be settled over the next few days, GM looks set to raise $23.1bn, which would put it ahead of the $22.1bn raised by the Agricultural Bank of China’s market launch.
The share sale will allow the US government reduce its current 61% stake in the company to as low as 33%.
Its return to the stock exchange follows recent bankruptcy and delisting from the market.
The new price values the company at about $63bn, just shy of the $66bn valuation that would represent a zero loss to the US Treasury on its rescue takeover of the company.
GM’s vice chairman and chief financial officer, Chris Liddell, said: “As we prepare to enter the equity markets, all of us at GM are excited about this historic milestone. We are especially appreciative of those who stood by us through the toughest times.”
GM returned to profit during the current year for the first time since 2004. The company made $5bn during the first nine months of this year.
Investors in the company are expected to include several Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds courted by GM executives during the marketing period.
Another possible buyer is GM’s Chinese state-owned partner, SAIC Motor Corp, although it is unclear whether Beijing has given the company permission to participate.
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The government wants to allow universities to charge up to £9,000 a year Shadow business secretary John Denham has accused the coalition of “railroading” through its plans to raise university tuition fees.
He said the government had not given enough detail on several issues, such as access for poorer students.
It came as the students union said the government plan was based on a “dodgy dossier” after think thank IFS retracted its analysis of the plan.
The IFS said it was not deliberately misled but had used wrong assumptions.
A vote is widely expected to take place before Christmas on allowing universities to raise tuition fees to up to £9,000.
Mr Denham said it would be “wrong” to ask Parliament to vote to raise the fee cap until more the details of the government’s plans have been published on a series of issues which he outlined:
The details of the access agreements, under which universities will have to commit to help recruit students from disadvantaged backgrounds if they are to charge the highest level of tuition feesWhat is meant by the government’s stipulation that universities will only be allowed to charge £9,000 in “exceptional circumstances”What provision there will be to help equip and recruit students from poorer backgrounds given that the future of the existing body, Aimhigher, is in doubtWhether and how the government plans to limit student numbersThe government’s plans to allow private institutions to offer degreesPlans for a National Scholarship SchemeThe estimated cost to the taxpayer of its plans, given that independent analysts have said the government has been over-optimistic in its assumptions
Mr Denham said that before MPs were asked to vote they should be able to see the government’s planned white paper on higher education, which is expected in early 2011.
“Anything short of this will be seen as a clear attempt to railroad the policy change through without proper public scrutiny,” he said.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a respected economic think tank, retracted its analysis of the government’s proposals.
It had concluded that the richest half of graduates would be better off under the government’s plan, compared to under proposals from the independent review chaired by Lord Browne.
The IFS said it had assumed that the £21,000 earning threshold at which students will have to start paying the funds back was according to 2012 prices, whereas in fact, it was based on expected prices in 2016.
This means that the threshold will be equivalent to £18,500 in today’s money, according to the Million+ group of universities.
The error came to light after the publication Research Fortnight revealed an email from Lorraine Dearden of the IFS.
It quoted her as saying the IFS “has now found out that key parameters of what the government is proposing have changed but this has not been made clear in any of their papers”.
It was unclear exactly what was meant by “have changed”.
The IFS later said it had “not been deliberately misled” by the government, and that Lord Browne’s review had apparently also assumed the threshold was in 2016 prices.
But critics of the government’s plans said it raised further concerns.
Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students, said “plans to rush through a tripling of tuition fees are based on a dodgy dossier”.
“The numbers do not add up and ministers’ claims that their policy will be fair for students or good for taxpayers lie in tatters,” he said.
An analysis by the Higher Education Policy Institute last week said that the cost to the public purse of the government’s plan would be “much higher than expected”.
It said the government had estimated graduate earnings too high, and assumed too few universities would charge the highest level of fees.
Pam Tatlow, chief executive of the Million+ group, which represents new universities, said the coalition’s modelling and ministers’ claim that their proposed system is progressive were “inaccurate and misleading”.
“Ministers need to go back to the drawing board and remodel the implications of their proposals for students, graduates and the taxpayer before they ask MPs to vote for any amendments to the present system and before they ask universities to take another hit in teaching funding,” the group said in a statement.
A spokesman for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills said: “Our student and university finance reforms are fairer and more progressive than the present system, protecting those from low income backgrounds going to university and those who work in low income employment post-university and the IFS analysis supports this view.”
Research published on Thursday by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit showed that nearly eight in 10 final-year students (78.2%) worked, with 42.8% of these working during holidays and term time.
Of those who worked in term-time, 84% said they worked to meet essential living costs, while 62% said they wanted to avoid debt.
Students have been angered by plans to raise fees, particularly as they are supported by the Liberal Democrats who pledged to oppose any hike in degree charges.
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There should be a public holiday to mark Prince William’s wedding to Kate Middleton next year, David Cameron has suggested.
The prime minister said that, should the couple decide to get married on a weekday, then he would like it to be a bank holiday.
There could also be a holiday if they decided on a weekend wedding, he said.
The couple have yet to name the date for their wedding but say it will be in either the spring or summer of 2011.
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The dissident’s wife Liu Xia is under house arrest and his brothers are said to be under surveillance Six countries have declined to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the ambassadors who were not going were from China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Morocco, and Iraq.
Committee secretary Geir Lundestad said they had given no reason for declining.
Mr Lundestad said Beijing had mounted an unprecedented campaign to sabotage participation in the ceremony, which will be held on 10 December.
“I don’t know of any example where a country has so actively and directly tried to have ambassadors stay away from a Nobel ceremony,” he said.
Earlier this month, China warned that there would be “consequences” if governments showed support for Liu Xiaobo at the award ceremony.
The government in Beijing says Mr Liu is a “criminal”.
The 54-year-old dissident received an 11-year sentence last year for “inciting subversion” after drafting Charter 08 – which called for multi-party democracy and respect for human rights in China.
A spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Oslo, Vladimjir Isupov, said the ambassador would not be in Norway at the time of the award ceremony.
“It is not politically motivated and we do not feel we are pressured by China,” he told Associated Press.
Liu Xiaobo is serving 11 years in prison for “inciting subversion” Mr Lundestad said 36 ambassadors had accepted the invitation to attend the ceremony, six had declined and 16 had not yet replied.
It also appears likely that the prize itself will not be handed out during the ceremony because no-one from Liu Xiaobo’s family has said they can attend, the Nobel committee secretary says.
The $1.4m (£900,000) award can be collected only by the recipient or close family members.
Mr Liu’s wife has been under house arrest since the award was announced and friends of the couple told AP that his brothers were under tight police surveillance.
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The technium at Swansea’s SA1 docklands is one of four being retained More than half of the Welsh Assembly Government’s 10 flagship technium business innovation centres are to close.
They have been criticised for not delivering value for money or creating as many jobs as expected.
The six closing are at Aberystwyth, Baglan, Bangor, Pembroke, Llanelli and the Sony plant in Bridgend.
The assembly government said it “would not abandon” the existing tenants and would help them find new premises.
Four other techniums at Swansea University, the city’s SA1 docklands development, St Asaph and Cwmbran will be retained.
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Two previously unknown violin sonatas by Antonio Vivaldi are uncovered after lying hidden in a collection of manuscripts for 270 years.
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David Cameron is being questioned by the chairmen of the various Commons select committees for the first time since he became prime minister.
The session started at 1400 GMT with questions about the spending review and Ireland’s debt crisis.
Mr Cameron defended his decision to ring fence the NHS budget, saying it was the “thing I care about most”.
Prime ministers are quizzed by the committee of chairmen, called the liaison committee, twice a year.
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Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard faces three to four weeks out with the hamstring injury suffered in England’s defeat by France on Wednesday.
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Lady Justice Hallett ruled victims’ relatives should be able to hear all evidence, including top-secret details MI5 is not trying to avoid scrutiny by calling for the London bombings coroner to hear top-secret evidence in closed sessions, its lawyers have said.
They said they wanted to make all relevant intelligence available to the coroner even if it revealed failings.
The home secretary wants a judicial review to overturn the coroner’s ruling not to exclude victims’ families when certain evidence is examined.
The High Court application was heard in the courtroom used for the inquests.
Fifty-two people were killed on 7 July 2005 when four men detonated bombs on London’s transport network.
Earlier this month Lady Justice Hallett, the coroner presiding over the inquests into their deaths, ruled that while the public could be excluded in the interests of national security, this did not extend to “interested persons”, such as bereaved relatives.
But lawyers for the security service and the home secretary have now argued that the coroner would not be able to reach accurate conclusions without seeing the secret documents, which cannot be revealed in open sessions.
James Eadie QC said: “The security service do consider that there is a quantity of material that cannot be disclosed that is important to a proper understanding of judgements about their conduct.”
He said MI5 was seeking a way to make all the information available to the coroner “for good or for ill”, recognising that it could be criticised on the basis of the documents.
“How could it be in anyone’s interests for the wrong lessons to be learned?”
James Eadie QC
“This is not an attempt by the security service to avoid or to minimise the scrutiny of their actions by the coroner by citing the need to protect national security,” he said.
Mr Eadie said the inquests would be “fundamentally flawed” if the coroner could not consider the highly sensitive intelligence evidence, and could result in her making incorrect findings.
“How could it be in anyone’s interests for the wrong lessons to be learned?” he asked.
MI5’s position was supported in court by West Yorkshire Police. Its lawyers said says top-secret material was vital to explain why officers did not prioritise Mohammad Sidique Khan who detonated a bomb near Edgware Road Tube station.
Christopher Coltart, representing 26 of the bereaved families, told the court all but one backed MI5’s stance on closed hearings.
He said after five years of waiting and anguish they wanted whatever conclusions were reached to be based on the entirety of the evidence.
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Prominent Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Soliman is released from jail after four years.
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South African rights groups have expressed shock at a decision to charge a 15-year-old alleged gang-rape victim with having underage sex.
The girl was charged with statutory rape along with her alleged rapists, who are aged 14 and 16.
The alleged rape happened earlier this month in a school east of Johannesburg in front of other pupils who filmed the incident on their phones.
Prosecutors said rape charges were dropped because of a lack of evidence.
However, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said it had decided all three could be charged under South Africa’s Sexual Offences Act, which outlaws consensual sex with a minor.
The Children’s Right Project, a legal advice group at the Western Cape University, said taking the matter to trial would not serve the girl’s interests.
Based on reports by the Medical Research Council, Interpol
“There are other ways to handle to matter, the prosecutors are sending a horrific and harmful message to other rape survivors. That causes great concern,” the group’s Lorenzo Wakefield told BBC News.
Other groups have accused the NPA of failing the 15-year-old school girl, who was reported to have been drugged with a spiked drink before the alleged rape.
“We do feel that this is further brutalization,” South Africa’s Eye Witness News quotes Lynne Cawood from Childline South Africa as saying.
“Secondly, dramatization of a child who is incredibly vulnerable,” she said.
South Africa has one of the highest incidences of rape in the world.
One woman is raped every 17 seconds, child rights groups say.
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Ian Paisley is now Lord Bannside of North Antrim Former DUP leader and first minister Ian Paisley has told the House of Lords he would support Irish reunification – under the British crown.
In his first speech since joining the Lords in July, he cited a letter in Tuesday’s Irish Independent newspaper.
The writer “invited Her Majesty to come over and take the whole of Ireland under her control”.
Mr Paisley – now Lord Bannside – said that it was “a very good thought”.
“If we all came together with Her Majesty at our head, I think we would do very well.”
In an apparent reference to King William III’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 he added: “Another king did that at a certain famous watering place that I will not mention here today.”
Lord Bannside was speaking in a Lords debate, opened by Liberal Democrat Lord Maclennan of Rogart, on the role of active citizenship in society.
He said that rights were easy to list and were enshrined in law, but responsibilities were not so well defined.
“This generation needs to have a study of not only citizenship but to be able to make that study practical and applicable to the places where they live,” he said.
“I appreciate the motive and also the probationary period that is needed for new immigrants coming into our country to carry out their responsibilities.
“They must know that the country to which they come is only such a country as it is because others, in times past, took up those responsibilities and involved themselves to make this land better than it was.”
The former North Antrim MP went on: “I believe we must replace the benefit system by teaching the real benefits that flow from our personal commitment to hard work and I believe that we shall see our country come out of the terrible place it finds itself in today.
“There is hope where there is dedication and there is hope where that dedication is employed with all the strength that we have.”
He said the UK did “need to open our doors to newcomers” and, without past generations of immigrants, it would now be a “poor country”.
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