Update:

Heriot-Watt offers Hong-Kong students e-lifeline
An interactive company is giving students in Hong Kong the chance to study online for exams while schools and colleges are closed because of the Sars outbreak. The Interactive University, set up by staff from Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University, is offering 30,000 students free access to their resources for the next four months. The deal between the IU and the Hong Kong authorities, worth £500,000, provides a lifeline for Hong Kong students sitting A levels and Highers this summer.

Blair acknowledges Cumbria university case
Prime minister Tony Blair agreed in the House of Commons that there was a "very powerful case" for providing university degree-level courses in Cumbria. At Commons questions, Labour's Tony Cunningham (Workington) told MPs that for many of his constituents the nearest university was almost 100 miles away. Sir Brian Fender, former chief of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, is due to report back shortly on higher education in the region.

Oxford Union president is Weakest Link in charity deal
The president of the Oxford Union claimed today that Anne Robinson refused to host a charity version of The Weakest Link after discovering he was the grandson of a judge who denied her custody of her daughter. Ambrose Faulks, 21, admitted that when he asked the star to host the event at the prestigious university debating society, it was "not a good idea" to tell her about his grandfather, the late Sir Neville Faulks.

Soton engineers work to reduce effects of head injuries
University of Southampton engineers believe that monitoring blood flow to the brains of head injury patients could potentially reduce the incidence of brain damage. Robert Allen and his team in the signal processing and control group are using ultrasound to measure blood flow in the brain and to correlate the signal with the arterial blood pressure. This would alert them if there were to be a change in blood flow.