Scotsman – News in brief. 06.07.06Scotland is to be first to trial mail delivery from the private sector.Watchdogs have welcomed the move, hoping it will improve services and Royal Mail insists it is not afraid of competition. Customers in Glasgow and Edinburgh , along with Manchester, have been chosen for an experiment which will give them the choice of having collection, sorting and delivery carried out entirely in private hands. Royal Mail's biggest rival, TNT, will conduct the trial later this year and thousands of households will be visited by two postal workers. This and could be the beginning of for greater competition throughout the rest of the UK. A TNT spokesman said, "The plans are at an early stage, and even if the trial is successful it will be a long time before we can provide a comprehensive end-to-end service in other areas. Remember, the Royal Mail has a 350-year head start on us." Deputy chairman of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, Graham Birse, said: "Royal Mail has made improvements to its service, but we welcome the arrival of any competition as a matter of principle." However a spokesperson for Royal Mail said TNT was only interested in lucrative business-to-business deliveries. "We sort eight million items and deliver to two and a half million households in Scotland every day, so private operators have a long way to go to match our network." The United Nations condemns North Korea's missile testing and sanctions have been proposed to cripple North Korea's weapons developmentWorld leaders united in their condemnation of the missile tests."Whatever North Korea seeks to achieve or is speculating, nothing positive for North Korea will come out from this." Junichiro Koizumi - Japanese prime minister. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, attacked "this irresponsible act". While the British ambassador to the UN, Emyr Jones Parry added: "All members of the council expressed clear concern about what happened. There was a strong view that we should respond quickly ... and we should be robust in what we say." North Korea's UN ambassador, Pak Gil Yon, did not talk to reporters as he arrived at his country's UN mission.
The US President George Bush, said that the tests did not diminish his desire to solve a standoff over North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes. CONCERNS were again raised over security at Wimbledon yesterday when two fathers' rights protesters ran on to Centre Court during play, the second intrusion at the Championships. Arrests were made after the campaigners for Real Fathers 4 Justice attempted to play tennis during a break in the match between the reigning champion, Roger Federer, and Mario Ancic .An All England club spokeswoman said, "Inside the grounds, it is a tough compromise between containment and allowing the great views and closeness to the action that spectators have traditionally enjoyed." Security fencing around the courts is being considered and the number of security staff at the championship has increased to 480.It emerged yesterday that cracks had appeared in at least one reactor north of the Border and plans to extend the lifespan of Scotland's nuclear stations were thrown into doubt.. A warning has been given by the government's nuclear safety watchdog that a radioactive leak could be "inevitable" if action was not taken after cracks appeared in up to six UK reactors, including the one at Hunterston B in Ayrshire. Opposition politicians said the cracks could end plans to extend the life of Hunterston B and other plants across the UK but British Energy, the owner of the plant, rejected this claim. A former engineer and energy expert, John Busby, told The Scotsman the problems could render a new generation of reactors unviable on economic grounds, as the industry needed the life extension to justify the massive capital investment.