Today's news

Cardiff tops best value list
Cardiff University has been declared the best value university in Britain, according to a league table that found the city combined low living costs with the highest weekly earnings from part-time work. The research by the Royal Bank of Scotland found that almost half of all students sought part-time work and predicted they would spend £10 billion on living and accommodation costs over the next year. The survey of 26 university towns found the average Cardiff student spent £188 per week on living and housing costs, but earned £131 from part-time work. By contrast the average student at Cambridge University - deemed to be the least cost-effective - £206 a week but made just £69 from part-time work.
Financial Times , The Times

Pupils will get A-level results in July, exams chief predicts
Britain's 250,000 A-level candidates will soon be spared the agonising wait until mid-August for their exam results, according to the head of the Government's exams watchdog. Dr Ken Boston, the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, said that - even this year - the results could have been brought forward by four to five days. In future, he predicts, results will be ready by mid-July - with students applying for university courses after they have received them instead of being awarded places on provisional grades, 45 per cent of which prove to be false. By 2012, they should be out by 3 July, early enough to relax and enjoy that year's London Olympics.
The Independent

From catwalk to Cambridge
Traditional freshers' week conversations should prove diverting for new acquaintances of Lily Cole at Cambridge University later this year. For while her fellow students discuss their A-level grades and their gap year pulling pints at the local pub, the 18-year-old supermodel will be able to regale them with tales of strutting her stuff on the New York catwalks while gracing the covers of the world's top glamour magazines. Having already earned a reported fortune of £10 million in her career to date, the elfin teenager has stunned the modelling world by announcing that she intends to finish her education. The decision could cost her millions in lost fees, but Cole, originally from Brixham in Devon, is said to be adamant that she will spend the next three years studying social and political science at Cambridge - grades permitting.
The Independent

Nodding off after dinner is not your fault
If you love a nap after Sunday lunch then scientists have come up with the perfect excuse - you are programmed to nod off by nature. The discovery heralds the dawn of a new age of guilt-free afternoon snoozing for those who have enjoyed a good roast and perhaps a couple of pints. It was already known the body has a mechanism to make us more alert when we need fuel. But now scientists have worked out why we get sleepy after a meal. Glucose from the food inhibits nerve cells in the brain which send out signals to keep us alert and awake.
Daily Mirror

Butterfly returns to Cotswolds
A butterfly thought to have become extinct in the Cotswolds 40 years ago has returned to the area. Adonis blues are notoriously reluctant to travel more than a few hundred yards from their colony, yet the species travelled up to 25 miles to reach Stroud, Gloucestershire. The grassland sites that the butterfly moved into were being grazed by the National Trust to encourage a range of rare insects and flowers, but the Adonis blue was completely unexpected. “We were preparing the land for other creatures,” Matthew Oates, of the National Trust, said. “The last thing we expected was for the Adonis blue to arrive. It was completely beyond our wildest expectations.”
The Times , The Independent

Letters
The public needs to be told when animal research has been used.
The Independent

From the weekend's papers

Saturday

• Merton announced as the "brainiest college" at Oxford. Financial Times

Sunday

• Fewer jobs for recent graduates. Sunday Telegraph