9am Briefing: Tram peace talks won't take place until March

Peace talks to resolve Edinburgh's bitter trams dispute will not begin until March at the earliest, it emerged today.

Councillors agreed at the end of last year to last-ditch mediation in a bid to end the long-running wrangle between the council's tram firm TIE and lead contractor Bilfinger Berger.

A spokeswoman for TIE confirmed the process was not expected to start until March.

She said: "It is do with the availability of the mediator."

She added that once they got under way, the talks should last no more than a week.

• SCOTLAND'S "Mr Judo" has been named the winner of this year's Edinburgh Award.

Judo master George Kerr, 73, has been practising the martial art since he was eight and once taught Mick Jagger.

He was made a CBE in the New Year's Honours List just two weeks ago for services to the sport. And he has also recently been awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, one of Japan's highest honours.

He said: "The Lord Provost phoned me himself to tell me I'd won the Edinburgh Award and I was just thrilled.

"I think it's amazing. It's the nicest thing in the world to be honoured by your own town."

• A REPEAT drugs trafficker who played a "significant role" in an organised crime gang had his jail sentence cut by almost a third by appeal judges.

Mark Richardson was jailed for ten years last year after police found him in a makeshift crack cocaine factory.

Yesterday he challenged the length of his jail term and judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh reduced his prison sentence to six years and nine months.

Lady Paton, sitting with Lord Clarke, said they accepted a submission by Richardson's defence that too much may have been read into the phrase "significant role" in the original proceedings.