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Home rental deposits will have to be handed over by private landlords to an independent arbitrator, under Scottish government plans.
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A decision on the future use of the Olympic Stadium, scheduled for Friday, is postponed.
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A US appeals court rules that President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, cannot run to be mayor of Chicago.
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The deal was supposed to announce nearly £200bn in loans to small businesses Attempts by the coalition government to reach an agreement with the UK’s biggest banks on the amount they lend to small businesses have stalled, the BBC has learnt.
The plan known as Project Merlin which was expected to have resulted in an announcement this week but negotiations will now continue.
About £200bn in loans to firms was to have been made available in 2011.
The stumbling block is thought to have concerned governance issues.
BBC’s business correspondent Joe Lynam says bank bosses argue that lending targets for what might be weaker businesses could breach rules that say any decision should be in the best interest of shareholders.
They also say banks’ ability to lend to companies and consumers may be restricted if some of the ideas from the Independent Commission on Banking set up by the government are implemented.
On Saturday, the head of the commission said the failure of banks to efficiently manage risks had been “spectacular” and wide-ranging reform was needed but stressed that no final decisions had yet been made.
In a speech to the London Business School, ICB chairman Sir John Vickers said plans to separate bank trading and retail operations were being looked at.
Sir John, a former chief economist at the Bank of England, also hinted that banks may need to set aside even more capital for emergencies, which might reduce moneys available to lend.
The ICB is looking at financial stability and competition, including the question of what should be done about banks deemed “too big to fail”.
It is also considering issues like whether too few big banks have too much control over the retail banking sector in the UK.
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All schools can now apply for academy status Local councils in England claim they are losing millions of pounds to allow the government to pay for schools to convert to academy status.
Their grants are being cut because these privately-run but state-funded schools will not use the services councils provide to state schools.
The Local Government Association claims ministers are reducing council grants by £350m more than they will save.
The government said the double funding of services was not sustainable.
Local education authorities face cuts of £413m over the next two years tied to the expansion in the academies programme.
However, Department for Education figures suggest they will only save a maximum of £60m from the changes if 200 schools convert to academy status each year.
“It cannot be fair for local taxpayers to subsidise the roll-out of the academies programme”
Baroness Margaret Eaton LGA chairman
This would leave them about £350m out of pocket, says the LGA.
Its chairman Baroness Margaret Eaton said: “We have made it clear that school choice is something that councils support. But it cannot be fair for local taxpayers to subsidise the roll-out of the academies programme.
“As it stands, councils face a bill of £413m at a time when their budgets are already facing an unprecedented squeeze.
“This is unacceptable when the saving from not having to provide central services to academies is less than one seventh of that amount.
“Whatever you think of academies, it cannot be right that other frontline services suffer so that the government’s academies programme can flourish.”
She called on the government to think again about how it pays for academies to be set up.
The claims were supported by the F40 group, which campaigns for fairer funding of education.
Its chief executive Gillian Hayward, who chairs the Gloucestershire Schools Forum, suggested the additional money for academies was being “top-sliced from the money which should be available for all schools”.
She added: “Such practice would also be at odds with government indications that there should be no financial incentive or disincentive to a school becoming an academy.
“Executive members of F40 believe that there is now a significant financial advantage to academy conversion, and that this is unfair to the entire education sector and in particular to low-funded local authorities and the schools in them.”
A Department for Education spokesman said: “Previously local authorities did not lose funding for certain services when schools under their charge became directly funded academies.
“This meant that there could effectively be double funding for some services. Clearly this situation represented poor value for money and was not sustainable in the current fiscal climate.”
He added that funds were being deducted from council grants to address this.
He said it was not possible to say precisely which schools in which local authorities would convert to academy status, so it was not practical to target the reductions at individual local authorities, “and therefore a national top slice has been applied”.
“This means that all local authorities will have certainty over the funding they will receive over the period and will not see unpredictable changes because of variable patterns in the growth of the academy sector.”
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The candidate of the Shia Islamist movement, Hezbollah, and its allies for the Lebanese premiership wins the backing of a majority of MPs.
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A 45-year-old Carrickfergus man must serve at least five years in prison for a range of sex offences with a child and possession of pornography.
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St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast has taken a former Supreme Court Judge to court to stop him publishing the findings of two internal inquiries.
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Two brothers are found guilty of killing two young children and their mother who died in an arson attack at their home.
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By Ross Hawkins
Ministers have withdrawn 18 bodies from the bill they say will lead to a “bonfire of the quangos”.
Bodies that select judges, draw up sentencing guidelines and investigate miscarriages of justice in England and Wales are among those that have been taken off a list of those that could be abolished, scrapped or merged.
The Parole Board, the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the Surveillance Commissioners have also been withdrawn.
This followed criticism by judges.
Ministers announced plans in October to axe 192 public bodies and merge a further 118.
But the government has now amended the Public Bodies Bill, which is currently being considered by the House of Lords, after peers expressed fears that the proposed cull could put the independence of the judiciary at risk.
Liberal Democrat peer Lord Goodhart welcomed the change of heart.
“I thought a lot of the proposals in the bill were wrong but I thought this was the worst of them, because it is an absolutely essential part of our constitution now that it should be a role of an independent body to select the judicial appointments,” he said.
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude conceded the bill was not perfectly drafted, and said the 18 bodies were all removed because they performed some kind of judicial function, and he wanted to protect their independence.
“We’re getting on with this,” he said. “We could do this in a leisurely bureaucratic way and try and get everything completely perfect before we started or we could get on it, and listen to concerns, respond to them where the concerns merit a response and get it done.”
The government has also added new rules forcing ministers who want to get rid of quangos to consult widely, and to tell Parliament about the responses.
Ministers were defeated in a vote before Christmas on an amendment to preserve the roles of the Chief Coroner, Deputy Chief Coroners, Medical Advisers to the Chief Coroner and Deputy Medical Advisers to the Chief Coroner.
Peers scrutinising the legislation have objected to powers that would allow ministers to abolish bodies established by Parliament.
Earlier this month the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said the cull of quangos would not save much money or improve accountability.
Its chairman, Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin, said the removal of some organisations from the legislation “reflected the fact that these powers are so wide-ranging in the bill that Parliament simply is not prepared to allow those bodies to be subject to the bill, which effectively puts ministers in charge of bodies which were set up by primary legislation”.
David Cameron said earlier this year that the “bonfire of the quangos” would save billions of pounds but Labour have accused ministers of “rushing” the bill through Parliament.
“It was one of the first things that came before Parliament, and not enough thought went into the preparation of the bill,” Labour’s leader in the House Lords, Baroness Royall, said.
The following quangos have been removed from the Public Bodies Bill:
Agricultural Land TribunalsCivil Procedure Rule CommitteeSurveillance CommissionersCompetition Appeal TribunalCriminal Cases Review CommissionCriminal Procedure Rule CommitteeFamily Procedure Rule CommitteeHorserace Betting Levy Appeal Tribunal for England and WalesInsolvency Practitioners TribunalInvestigatory Powers TribunalJudicial Appointments and Conduct OmbudsmanJudicial Appointments CommissionParole BoardPlant Varieties and Seeds TribunalSea Fish Licence TribunalSentencing Council for England and WalesTribunal Procedure CommitteeValuation Tribunal for England
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The Paris state prosecutor’s office says it has opened a preliminary investigation into the property assets held by ousted Tunisian leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in France.
Mr Ben Ali fled his country earlier this month following a number of violent protests.
Separately, the head of Tunisia’s armed forces has warned a power vacuum there could lead to a dictatorship.
Rachid Ammar was addressing anti-government protesters.
The investigation in Paris was opened after three NGOs filed a legal case against the former leader over corruption during his 23-year rule.
The three groups – Sherpa, Transparency International France and the Arab Commission for Human Rights – accuse Mr Ben Ali of corruption, misusing public funds and money-laundering, the AFP news agency reports.
They estimate the wealth amassed by the former leader and his entourage at $5bn (£3bn).
Last week, Tunisian prosecutors said they would be investigating the foreign assets of Mr Ben Ali and his family, including possible illegal transactions and foreign bank accounts.
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Shares in UK banknote printer De La Rue have fallen 15% after suitor Oberthur decided to throw in the towel.
The French company cited the “continued refusal of the board of De La Rue to engage in meaningful discussions”.
It follows the board’s rejection of Oberthur’s improved 935p-per-share offer earlier in the day.
Shares in the firm, which was plunged into crisis by production problems last year, ended the day down 125.5p at 694p, 26% below Oberthur’s offer price.
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A former Northamptonshire policeman who committed a string of sex offences against children is jailed for life, and must serve at least 11 years.
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Fifty-two people were killed by four suicide bombers on 7 July 2005 One of the first people on the scene of the 7 July bus bombing has described seeing survivors staggering away from the vehicle like “zombies”.
Carlos Daravina, then head porter at the British Medical Association (BMA) in Tavistock Square, was giving evidence at the 7/7 inquests.
He described seeing victims “crawling on the floor” and others walking into his building “covered in blood”.
Thirteen people were killed by a suicide bomber on the number 30 bus.
Hasib Hussain was one of four suicide bombers who killed a total of 52 people in the four separate attacks on 7 July 2005.
Mr Daravina told the inquests on Monday: “I saw a bus that was blown up and ripped apart.
“There was a lot of mess, a lot of rubbish around, and also a lot of people crawling on the floor.
“And some people were coming into the building like zombies, like they didn’t know where to go.
“There was a lot of smoke and a terrible smell, and people covered in blood.”
Mr Daravina helped carry casualties away from the scene using tables from the BMA’s committee rooms, and ferried medical supplies to those treating the wounded.
The bomb on the number 30 bus was the last of the four to detonate Coroner Lady Justice Hallett thanked him for his actions.
“It wasn’t just the doctors who played a significant part in helping the desperately injured that day,” she said. “Obviously you and some of your colleagues did too.
“You worked tirelessly throughout the day to get equipment – even if it was makeshift – to the doctors and to the casualties.”
Another member of BMA staff, Terry Hughes, told the inquests how he helped to cut a roll of felt used by the association’s events team into 30 makeshift blankets for the wounded.
The inquests are expected to last until March.
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John Swinney agreed to publish the new information after opposition pressure The Scottish government has published its budget figures for the next few years, after opposition pressure.
Finance Secretary John Swinney originally unveiled his spending plans for one year, but has now released illustrative figures for up to 2015.
The figures show every department with essentially the same level of spending up until 2015.
Labour said the figures were disingenuous and claimed Mr Swinney had “refused to engage properly”.
MSPs are voting on the government’s 2011-12 budget – the SNP’s last before May’s Scottish elections – for the first time this week.
Mr Swinney previously brought forward one-year plans, saying a full, three-year budget might have to be altered at a later date because of the uncertain future over public spending levels.
But opposition MSPs accused the finance secretary of putting party political interest before that of the country.
The additional budget information – which has been supplied to the Scottish Parliament’s finance committee and shows small rises in health and falls in administration spending – covers 2012-13 and 2014-15.
Mr Swinney said the new illustrative figures – published amid a £1bn Treasury funding cut for this year’s Scottish budget – were intended to allow the public sector to look at options for the future.
They were published, he said, on the assumption that most government departments and local government would receive flat cash settlements at the same level as proposed in the draft budget for 2011-12.
The finance secretary added that a review of public services was currently underway, adding: “These illustrative figures must be viewed with that firmly in mind.
“They do not represent the results of final decisions taken by the Scottish government but they should provide a framework within which public sector organisations, and stakeholder groups across Scotland, can discuss options and consider the range of possibilities within which they can plan for the future.”
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