THE highest levels of government will remain off limits to women until the law is changed to allow positive discrimination, according to the Fabian Society. The bid to rescue the men, who were reported missing early yesterday morning, had been hampered by bad weather.. At long last this Government is attempting to cut back bureaucracy. He was taken to Rotherham District Hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival. Tests on his body have established that he had not been hit by a train.A police spokesman said: "The death is being treated as suspicious. We are investigating the circumstances surrounding the boy's presence on the railway line.".

BRITAIN'S air traffic control system could face more near misses because of problems with a new computer centre, the Commons transport select committee will claim tomorrow. In a report the MPs will say the centre at Swanwick, near Southampton, may not open until the end of next year. It should have opened in December to replace outdated facilities at West Drayton, near London - ending thousands of flight delays and also reducing the number of near misses. Since the 1990s there has been a steady increase of near misses, and in 1997 the number came to 46. But the figure of risk-bearing near misses was seven in 1996, the lowest figure since 1993.. THE Government's flagship New Deal jobs programme is extended nationwide today in a big drive to tackle youth unemployment. The pounds 3.5bn scheme has been tested in 12 areas of Britain since January, offering jobs, training or education courses to more than 16,000 people aged under 25 who have been on the dole for longer than six months.

The scheme, which is being heavily advertised in newspapers and on television, will be extended from tomorrow to 118,000 long-term unemployed youngsters across the UK.. FORMER Conservative MP Sir Ian Percival QC has died aged 76. Sir Ian, Solicitor-General in Margaret Thatcher's first government, died at his home near Tenterden in Kent after an illness. He was MP for Southport from 1959 to 1987 and served as Solicitor-General from 1979 to 1983. Sir Ian, who was knighted in 1979 and was a barrister by training, stood down from Parliament in 1987..