Houses being sold in Northern Ireland from the end of next month will have to have an energy performance certificate.

The certificate is an indication of how energy efficient a home is and the system is already in place in England and Wales.

Anyone selling their home from 1 July will have to pay for a special energy assessor to survey it and give it a formal certificate.

From October, all new homes will have to have one as soon as they are built.

The certificates are seen as a way to encourage NI home owners to make their houses more energy efficient and to provide some guidance to prospective buyers on how much it will cost to heat a home.

The Department of Finance and Personnel has said from next week, it will run public seminars acros

An explosion at a restaurant in Exeter is understood to have left several people injured.

Police have sealed off parts of the city centre following the incident at the Princesshay shopping mall.

Emergency crews are at the scene of the incident in the Giraffe restaurant in the mall, which opened last year.

An employee, who works at a nearby shop, said a man walked into the restaurant with some kind of explosive device.

A Leeds man accused of helping the 7 July 2005 suicide bombers has told a court that he had been prepared to fight British troops in Afghanistan.

Waheed Ali, 25, told his trial he saw it as his religious duty to liberate a Muslim land - but that was not the same as "putting on a rucksack in London".

In heated exchanges, he said he was not stupid enough to be part of the plot and then remain in the UK.

Mr Ali and two others deny scouting for targets in London during December 2004.

Starting his third day in the witness box at Kingston Crown Court, Mr Ali told prosecutor Neil Flewitt QC that he stood by his beliefs that Muslims were under an obligation to liberate any occupied Islamic land.

More parents lodged appeals over being refused places in England's primary schools for last year than in 2005-06.

Official statistics show there were 26,440 appeals in 2006-07: 3.1% of all admissions, up from 2.6%.

The success rate of those that were heard by an independent appeal panel dropped from 36.1% going in parents' favour to 32.2%.

In secondary schools the number of appeals was down a little as was the success rate, from 36.4% to 35.3%.

Schools Minister Jim Knight said the statistics showed the system was "working for parents".

'Toughened'

"It is absolutely right that parents have the legal right to appeal to an independent panel," Mr Knight said.

"I want every child to have a fair and equal chance of getting

A 47-year-old woman has been seriously injured in a shooting in Glasgow, Strathclyde Police have revealed.

She was found with a gunshot wound in an office building on New City Road at about 1440 BST on Wednesday.

The woman is currently being treated in hospital, where her condition is described as "serious".

Police are treating the attack as attempted murder and have appealed to anyone with information on the shooting to get in touch.

Det Insp John Mellon, the officer in charge of the investigation, said: "I would urge anyone who may have seen a person or person acting suspiciously in New City Street around the time of the incident to come forward.

"The surrounding area would have been busy with both pedestrians and motorists and we are keen to speak