Новости за 24.04.2015

Not for the first time AIM is under fire. Its hostile army of critics has alighted on the speculation that accompanied suggestions of a spectacular oil discovery in Sussex to attack the junior share market's record as an investment platform.

Problem gambler; that's me. Obviously my problem is not so much gambling as winning. I jest! Anyway, my gambling habits are fairly modest, and focused on the National Lottery. This, I cannot justify. Recently I have taken to doing it online, and I seemed to have had more success – but only seemed.

Q. I booked a hire car in January with Auto Europe, paying £204.76. On 15 March I noticed my credit card had been charged a further £204.70 with a payment to Avis.

From Monday, the independent energy supplier First Utility will offer a free portable home-heating thermostat worth £279 to anyone signing up to its new three-year fixed tariff, iControl Fixed May 2018.

Payday lenders are finding life tough amid tighter regulation and a cap on charges, with major player Wonga this week reporting a £37.3m loss and warning of an even bleaker picture for the year ahead.

RBS has become the latest credit-card provider to axe lucrative perks for cardholders, sparking fears that reward and cashback credit cards could soon be history.

The funeral of Derrick Prance was held on Thursday. The 89-year-old former war veteran died from cancer in Perth, Australia, where he had moved with his wife Ivy in 1997. He died having failed in a long-running campaign to get justice for overseas British pensioners.

Despite their perceived complexity, new pension freedoms have highlighted a simple fact – pensions are just a tax efficient savings plan. Real freedom can only be achieved if, by retirement, your pension pot is large enough to sustain your lifestyle. While investment growth should provide your savings with a boost, it is also necessary to contribute a sufficient sum throughout your working life.

I reported in February that tens of thousands of people with a Scottish Provident insurance policy could be in line for a refund of thousands after the life company Phoenix, which had snapped up a number of Scottish Provident's funds, was forced to admit that it overcharged.

Is it going up again?

Anyone who missed the January tax returns deadline has until Thursday to get their last year's forms in or be hit with additional fines. Some 890,000 people missed the cut-off and faced an instant £100 fine.

They had never met, not even exchanged a single word as they turned towards The Mall for the finish of the inaugural London Marathon. American Dick Beardsley and Norway’s Inge Simonsen had each tried to pull away from the other, to make him crack, at various points over the 26.2-mile course. But in a race-defining moment, Beardsley turned to Simonsen to suggest they share the spoils and, although initially silent, Simonsen agreed to the gesture and the pair crossed the line hand-in-hand to share the victory. Читать дальше...

Encourage the kids to don their mini chef hats and get involved in the kitchen with our pick of books for budding cooks

The man who set up one of the world’s first Sharia-compliant “sensual boutiques” in Amsterdam has spoken of his ambition to expand across the Middle East and to the heart of Islam.

Morgan revealed more details about their 2004 bust-up on Play to the Whistle

‘I sleep alone/ You have forgotten me/ I stare into midnight/ Neither honey nor bee’: Sappho’s fragmentary poems of love and loss continue to reverberate through the millennia, and are currently doing so with pristine force in a brilliantly-staged song-cycle by the Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas at the Linbury. We have seen the soprano Claire Booth directed by that lighting-magician Netia Jones before, and here they were joined by dancers Laure Bachelot and Rachel Maybank, but never has their creative chemistry worked so effectively.

Earlier this week, Denmark passed a law making bestiality a criminal offence from July 1st in a move to tackle animal-sex tourism. Bestiality (also known as zoophilia) is typically defined as relating to recurrent intense sexual fantasies, urges, and sexual activities with non-human animals. At present, there are still a number of countries where zoophilia is legal including Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, Finland, Hungary, and Romania. In the US there is no federal law against zoophilia although most... Читать дальше...

Frederick Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée, one of The Royal Ballet’s signature works, is a springtime delight. This performance was gorgeously led by star ballerina Natalia Osipova and Steven McRae, but the joy of Fille is that it’s a company triumph.

It is a rivalry that traces its origins to the orange-baked surfaces of Iten in Kenya.