All in all, a surprising set of announcements for Big Red -- in one fell swoop, it's gone from the most locked-down carrier being at least on par with the GSM networks, and potentially even more flexible if these pricing plans actually pan out.

ENGADGET: Verizon opens up about "Any Apps, Any Device" Mobile

The council asked market specialists PricewaterhouseCoopers to look at investment opportunities with one option being a possible sell-off.

BBC: Newquay airport

The minister added that extra funding and support was being targeted at schools with low results, while more one-to-one and small group tuition would help children "at risk of falling behind".

BBC: Child abuse 'lessons not learnt'

The allocation of top-up members to the areas within each of those parts should ensure that each area has at least one top-up member with the remainder being allocated to those areas with the greatest number of electors.

BBC: The Jenkins Report: What it says

Economic liberals can look at the eleven year reign of Alexei Kudrin at the finance ministry with a great deal of satisfaction: Russia went from being a bankrupt basket-case to one of the most financially stable countries in the entire world.

FORBES: Richard Sakwa's Outstanding Analysis of the Putin System's Past, Present, and Future

For the time being, the ways of dealing with ethnic rivalry extend along a spectrum with, at one end, a colour-blind, race-blind and religion-blind democracy and, at the other, a more or less despotic system in which one lot sits on the other.

ECONOMIST: Forlorn Fiji

"The point about Shepton Mallet - along with with Kingston prison at Portsmouth, which is one of the others that is being closed - is they were the top two performing prisons in the country according to the last round of HMI (Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons) inspections in 2010, " he said.

BBC: Shepton Mallet prison closure marked with special service