COURT: Former mine boss Malcolm Fyfield broke down in tears as a jury cleared him yesterday of four counts of manslaughter in 2011 Gleision disaster. 

Prosecutors argued Philip Hill, Charles Breslin, David Powell, and Garry Jenkins drowned due to Mr Fyfield’s negligence when 650,000 gallons of water were unleashed by a controlled explosion. 

A jury at Swansea Crown Court took less than two hours to deliver a not guilty verdict. 

EDUCATION: Universities should be free to charge what they like as long as they help poorer students, a vice-chancellor has suggested.

Liverpool University boss Sir Howard Newby told Times Higher magazine that the “most rational” way to fund higher education in the future would be to lift the current £9,000 cap and replace it with a “sliding scale” of fees.

COURT: Jurors in the trial of performer Rolf Harris retired to consider their verdicts yesterday after hearing evidence that he committed a string of 12 indecent assaults on four women between 1968 and 1986, all of which he denies.

Prosecutors claim the entertainer was a “Jekyll and Hyde” character who used his fame to abuse under-age girls with impunity.

But his defence team say Harris’s reputation has been “trashed” by a prosecution that did not reach the standard of criminal proof.

POLITICS: Parliament should be moved out of the Palace of Westminster and into a new building fit for the 21st century, a Labour peer said yesterday. 

Former MP Lord Maxton said the current building was “riddled with the class system” and “is falling apart at its seams.”

He added: “We really ought to be thinking of building a brand new parliament somewhere else which is relevant to the modern age.”