Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco were among nine supermarkets and dairy processors today fined almost £50 million for fixing cheese and milk prices over seven years ago.

According to an investigation by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) four supermarkets, Asda, Safeway, Sainsbury’s and Tesco, indirectly co-ordinated increases in cheese and milk prices through five dairy processors, Arla, Dairy Crest, McLelland, The Cheese Company and Wiseman.

Tesco was the only retailer to not receive a reduction in its fine for agreeing to early resolution and was fined £10.43 million for colluding with companies to fix cheese prices in 2002 and 2003. Sainsbury’s was dealt the largest fine of £11.04 million for fixing both cheese and milk prices.

If you need to know the current best buy interest rates then be sure to search around the net every week.

In total eight companies were fined £49.51million, while Arla benefited from compete immunity for being the first company to alert the OFT to the anti-competitive behaviour.

In the past few days, claims have been made that the paper authorised hacking into the mobile phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and the families of 7/7 bombing victims.

Apparently you only need a vocabulary of around 800 words to read the paper. That says it all. Godd riddance to bad rubbish!

A man turning dirt in his back yard stumbled onto buried treasure — hundreds of pieces of centuries-old jewelry and other precious objects that Austrian authorities described Friday as a fairy-tale find.

Austria’s department in charge of national antiquities said the trove consists of more than 200 rings, brooches, ornate belt buckles, gold-plated silver plates and other pieces or fragments, many encrusted with pearls, fossilized coral and other ornaments. It says the objects are about 650 years old and are being evaluated for their provenance and worth.

While not assigning a monetary value to the buried bling, the enthusiastic language from the normally staid Federal Office for Memorials reflected the significance it attached to the discovery.

House prices have lost touch with the first time buyer market and are out of reach for those crucial first timers. In short, the house price to income multiple is far too high.

Indeed, the house price to income ratio is twice its long term average. For it to revert to this long term level requires either a doubling of salaries or a halving of house prices. It is not hard to see which option is the more likely in the current age of austerity.

But this is going to be a major shock to the UK national psyche. The bubble has been forming so long it has become accepted as a new reality. Few younger property owners remember the 1990-3 house price crash. Corrections can and do happen even in a market where supply is as tight as in the UK housing market.

For these canine lifeguards, the doggie paddle does just fine.

Hundreds of specially trained dogs from Italy’s corps of canine lifeguards are deployed each summer to help swimmers in need of rescue.

These “lifedogs” wear a harness or tow a buoy that victims can grab, or a raft they can sit on to be towed back to shore, and unlike their human counterparts, they can easily jump from helicopters and speeding boats to reach swimmers in trouble.

With millions flocking to Italy’s crowded beaches each summer, the Italian Coast Guard says it rescues about 3,000 people every year — and their canine helpers are credited with saving several lives.

The airline has not blamed any of its current or alleged predicted policies such as charging for luggage, charging for checking in, charging to use the toilet, making people stand up or the predicted fat tax on larger passengers.

It is thought that the airline had 10,000 flights grounded because of the cloud and they always protested that too many precautions were being taken.

Is this really a good news story? Well if you have ever flown Ryanair then it probably qualifies as one and proves that every cloud indeed does have a silver lining.

A group of young people, inspired by a similar action in Estonia in 2008, promoted the idea of cleaning up the entire country – in one day! The idea was soon backed up by several partners and supporters, and nation-wide campaign started.

The campaign managed to involve and connect more or less the entire nation, including the Government, the President of Slovenia, local municipalities and organisations, media partners, Olympic committee of Slovenia, tourist organisations, Slovenian Army, Fire-fighters, trash management companies, Slovenian universities, schools and kindergartens, etc. – with several companies and well-known individuals backing up the campaign and the project

Brigitte, said last week it would only publish photographs of “real women” after readers complained they could not identify with the models depicted.

Magazine’s editor-in-chief Andreas Lebert said he was sick of having to retouch photos of underweight models. “For years we have had to use Photoshop to fatten the girls up,” he said. “Especially their thighs and décolletage. But this is disturbing and perverse, and what has it got to do with our real reader?”

This can only be good news and hopefully wannabe models around the world will sit up and take notice.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, and Lech Walesa, founder of Poland’s liberty-seeking Solidarity movement – walked across the Bornholmer Street bridge, which was the first checkpoint along the Berlin Wall to throw open its gates Nov. 9, 1989.

“You made this possible,’’ German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the 78-year-old ex-Soviet premier, as tens of thousands of onlookers chanted, “Gorby! Gorby!’’

Merkel added: “You courageously let things happen, and that was much more than we could expect.’’

The wreckage and their contents have been discovered in grand condition.  They established that the ships never actually capsized.   The wrecks were in much deeper waters away from strong destructive currents,laden with contents  found in exactly in the same positions as when the ships originally set off.

The largest wreck measures more than 65 feet.  A handful of objects were taken out to be studied and will be put on display in Ventotene.