Breaking news

The sporting types at Villeneuve Wines on Broughton Street have been celebrating yesterday’s win of the 101st Tour de France by Vincenzo Nibali.

The 29-year-old Italian won with a margin of 7 minutes and 39 seconds, and is one of only six men to win the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana.

Respected by professional riders for his uncompromising determination, he is known among them – not altogether affectionately – as 'The Shark of Messina'.

Well done, Kimberley Reed! The high-flying Broughton hammer thrower last week won through to the Final of the World Juniors Championships in Eugene, Oregon.

Kimberley qualified from her heat with a best throw of 58.57m.

In the Final itself on Thursday, she began with 59.96m in the first round, extending this to 60.17m before getting a red card in the third round and so losing the chance of a further three throws.

This was her best throw in around two months, and a welcome return to form on the big occasion.

Earlier this year, Spurtle reported the Post Office’s consultation on a likely move out of the St James Centre and into Unit 5/6 Princes Mall (Breaking news, 14.2.14). 

That relocation has since been confirmed for 22 September 2014, prompting Mark Lazarowicz MP to again ask questions about:

Archaeologists say skeletons discovered during tramwork preparations have told them a lot about how people lived and died in Leith hundreds of years ago.

City of Edinburgh Council and Headland Archaeology dug up the remains of nearly 400 people from beneath Constitution Street in 2009. All are now in permanent storage.

They constitute what City Archaeologist John Lawson describes as ‘one of the largest and most important urban excavations of human remains undertaken in Edinburgh and Scotland in recent years’.

In January of this year, City of Edinburgh Council refused permission for Batleys Limited (the wholesale cash and carry on McDonald Place) to permanently extend its delivery and loading hours from 7am–8pm on Monday–Saturday and 8.30am–noon on Sundays (Breaking news, 21.1.14).

They wanted to preserve the amenity of local residents, some of whom had complained of disruption by lorries and crashing cages.

Tesco PLC plans to open a new ‘local’ store at 30–30a Dundas Street.

It is a delight to discover the second exhibition of cardboard sculpture by Charlotte Duffy at Concrete Wardrobe on Broughton Street, writes John Ross Maclean.

Entitled HIGHBROW, the core of the show features heads of five out-of-work philosophers magically fashioned from recycled cardboard.

At once lugubrious, funny and oddly poignant, they make startling statements, such as ‘My name is Nietzsche: May I take your order?’ (right).

Below: ‘Out of work Mill had an interest in a field he had no interest in.’

Since 1991, Broughton-based charity The Rock Trust has worked with young people aged 16–25 who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless across Edinburgh and the Lothians.

This includes young people in transitions, leaving care or home, and those involved in offending, alcohol or drug misuse.

Mist hung under the trees of Warriston Cemetery this afternoon.

Rain dripped steadily from the canopy above, gathered into rivulets, gurgled into the black loam beneath J. Dick Peddie’s Gothic arches.

Compartment Z, beside the Water of Leith, never attracted the same number of grand monuments one finds elsewhere in the cemetery. Perhaps its lack of popularity had something to do with a damp location at the foot of the hill, its proximity to the service entrance bridge from Warriston Road, or its former closeness to the Edinburgh and North Leith Railway track.

Summer is here and the Festival is upon us.

Soon the lanyard brigade will be strutting around like they own the place. We’ll be swamped by happy tourists whose faces turn sour when they see the rubbish, can't make fun of the trams, get pecked by gulls and drenched by the rain.

Soon the pavements will be clogged with over-enthusiastic snappers trying to take selfies on their oversized iPads with the castle or a faunlike bagpipe-playing man in the background.