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Small business £100m boost to install fast broadband
Small businesses in 10 cities across the UK will be able to apply for grants to install high speed broadband as part of a £100 million scheme to boost growth and exports.
Firms in Belfast, Salford, Portsmouth, Cardiff, Derby, Bristol, Edinburgh, Newport, London and Manchester will be able to access grants worth up to £3,000 to improve their connections, with the scheme due to be extended to 12 more cities next year.
Prime Minister David Cameron said he wanted to give firms the ability to set up or locate anywhere in the UK.
Less than 50% of cancer patients seen in many practices
In around half of the practices in the sample, fewer than 50 per cent of cancer patients were seen through the two-week system. Not all patients with cancer visit their GP with symptoms.
Some are diagnosed in A&E, while others have cancer detected during routine tests, or are referred straight to A&E by their GPs because their symptoms are so bad.
The new data has been published by NHS England as part of a raft of information to help patients work out how well their GP practice is performing.
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Jay Z nominated for best rap album Grammy
Jay Z picked up nominations across nine categories in the pop and rap categories, including best pop duo performance for "Suit & Tie" with Justin Timberlake, and best rap album for his July release, "Magna Carta...Holy Grail."
But the 44-year-old Brooklyn, New York-born rapper failed to land solo nominations in the top Grammy categories for record, song and album of the year, scoring only one as a producer on Lamar's "Good Kid, M.A.A.D City" record, nominated in the album of the year category.
Lamar's album will face off against Sara Barielles' "The Blessed Unrest," French electro-dance duo Daft Punk's "Random Access Memories," Taylor Swift's "Red" and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' "The Heist" for album of the year.
Jay Z and Timberlake lead the charge for Grammys
Rapper Jay Z led the Grammy hopefuls with nine nominations, while pop singer Justin Timberlake and rappers Kendrick Lamar and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis landed seven each.
Jay Z scored nominations across the pop and rap categories, but failed to land any for the top Grammy categories for record, song and album of the year. Timberlake was out of those categories.
Newcomers Lamar, rapper-producer duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and New Zealand singer Lorde dominated in the top categories.
Some GP practices miss cancer diagnosis targets
The target for the NHS says 95 per cent of patients with suspected cancer referred by their GP must be seen by a specialist within two weeks.
The data suggests many are not seen on this basis and are eventually diagnosed another way. While some GP practices show 100 per cent of patients with cancer making it through the fast-track system, others fall far behind.
GP cancer referrals too slow data shows
Thousands of people eventually diagnosed with cancer may be failed by GPs who do not refer them quickly enough, data suggests. Figures from around 4,000 GP practices in England show that, in many cases, only a minority of patients are fast-tracked for investigation by a specialist.
In some practices, only around one in 10 patients eventually diagnosed with the disease saw a specialist within two weeks.
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US welcomes North Korea's decision to release citizen
The United States welcomed North Korea's decision to release American citizen Merrill Newman, who was detained by North Korean authorities in late October on a visit as a tourist to the secretive country, the State Department said in a statement.
"We are pleased that Mr. Merrill Newman has been allowed to depart the DPRK and re-join his family. We welcome the DPRK's decision to release him," said Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman.
Newspapers react to England's tough World Cup draw
Bob Dylan's guitar sells for nearly a million dollars
The electric guitar Bob Dylan played at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when the acoustic troubadour shocked traditionalists with a set of rock and roll, sold for $965,000 (£590,000), a world auction record for a guitar, Christie's said.
The 1964 Fender Stratocaster, along with five song lyrics left on a private airplane by the songwriter and his band in the months after the Rhode Island festival, were part of six lots in a special sale of Dylan material in New York.
"A tremendous amount of international interest was generated at the time of the sale's announcement, and today's result justifies the mythic status of this guitar in the annals of music history," Tom Lecky, a specialist at Christie's, said in a statement.
North Korea deports US citizen Merrill Newman
North Korea said on it has deported Merrill E. Newman, an 85-year old American it has been holding on charges of "hostile acts" against the state, on humanitarian grounds because he has admitted to his wrongdoing and apologised.
The deportation was announced by the North's KCNA news agency.
Mr Newman, who has a soldier during the 1950-53 Korean War and worked with guerrillas fighting against the socialist North, has been held by the Pyongyang regime since late October. He was visiting North Korea as a tourist.
