THREE new takers for space in Witney's £50m Marriotts Close redevelopment have been announced - and more are expected to sign leases shortly.

New Look, currently in Market Square, is to relocate to a larger store, while the others are Cafe Rouge and Frankie and Benny's, French and Italian cafes and restaurants.

This week, Simons Developments - which won the contract for the town centre scheme - said that the leasing of four other shop units were in the hands of solicitors. Luke Pickering, managing director, said: "The level of interest has been very encouraging.

"The Witney area has been leaking shoppers going to Swindon and Oxford. Only 20 to 30 per cent of what people have available to spend has been spent here, in the home town of Witney."

New artist's impressions of how the development will look when completed, expected to be spring 2009, have been released.

WEST Oxfordshire has the highest increase in the level of crime in the county - up 11 per cent on last year - but it is still one of the safest places in the Thames Valley area.

That is the message from the area's top police officer, Chief Insp Dennis Evernden, as he released the recorded crime figures for 2006-7 on Monday.

The three categories where crimes have gone up are domestic burglary, common assault, and criminal damage.

The rise in assault was high - up by 78 per cent - but both Mr Evernden and Bill Oddy, head of community services for the area, say it is because people are more prepared to report minor incidents, such as one child hitting another and domestic violence.

One in 10 web pages scrutinised by search giant Google contained malicious code that could infect a user's PC.

Researchers from the firm surveyed billions of sites, subjecting 4.5 million pages to "in-depth analysis".

About 450,000 were capable of launching so-called "drive-by downloads", sites that install malicious code, such as spyware, without a user's knowledge.

A further 700,000 pages were thought to contain code that could compromise a user's computer, the team report.

To address the problem, the researchers say the company has "started an effort to identify all web pages on the internet that could be malicious".

POLICE are appealing for witnesses after a 23-year-old man was robbed in Witney today.

The man was walking home across Langel Common, in the direction of Church Lane, at about 1.30am. He was near Cogges Farm Museum when two men approached him.

They demanded that he hand over his phone and wallet and threatened him, telling him that they were carrying a knife.

HOMEOWNERS in Oxford face the prospect of finding room for yet another recycling box, this time for food waste.

Almost every property in the city qualifies for six bins, boxes and bags, but Oxford City Council has revealed early plans to introduce a weekly food waste collection.

And with some households opting to buy extra recycling containers and boxes, it could mean some properties have as many as ten receptacles to store waste in.

Oxfordshire County Council, the waste disposal authority, has gone out to tender to build a food waste composting plant - but it is unlikely to be built before 2009.

Chipping Norton-based company Agrivert is proposing to build a £5m composter between Yarnton and Cassington.

STRIKING park-and-ride staff joined scores of other protesters in a rally to defend public services in Oxford.

Six security staff from the Redbridge and Seacourt park-and-ride sites took part in the Oxford and District Trades Council's annual protest on Saturday.

The park-and-ride staff had been due to picket the Westgate car park - but changed their plans after claiming Oxford City Council had threatened to take out a High Court injunction if they did so.

Alan Lewis, of the newly-merged Transport and General Workers Union, said he received a letter on Friday threatening to hold picketing staff legally responsible for their actions, as well as any loss, damage or expenses they incurred.

He added it warned a High Court order would be sought to remove any future unlawful pickets.

THE Conservatives ran riot at the elections for Witney Town Council, winning 14 out of the 17 seats.

The non-blue voice is now solely in the hands of one Independent, one Green and one Liberal Democrat.

The position before last Thursday was six each to the Tories and Lib Dems and three independents, with two vacant seats.

Talks to try to resolve a row over working conditions for security staff at three of Oxford's park-and-ride sites have broken up without agreement.

City council chiefs and union bosses met on Thursday to see if they could end ongoing strike action.

Guards at Oxford City Council-run sites at Pear Tree, Redbridge and Seacourt are unhappy about the recent introduction of lone-working at night.

The UK's supermarkets may be exploiting their "monopoly position" to increase prices, a study claims.

Two Royal Bank of Scotland economists compared recent food price rises in the UK with those seen on the continent.

Coffee and tea prices, for example, rose 10.2% in the UK in the year to 31 March, but only increased by 1% in the eurozone area, they found.

The British Retail Consortium, which represents the supermarkets, rejected the survey's findings.

An earthquake has shaken parts of Kent, damaging buildings and disrupting electricity supplies.

Homes in five streets in Folkestone had to be evacuated because of structural damage including cracked walls and fallen chimneys.

The magnitude 4.3 tremor struck at 0819 BST and experts said its epicentre was a few miles off the coast in the English Channel.

One woman was taken to hospital with a neck injury.

Chief Superintendent Ally Hope said: "Given the time this happened and the number of people that were about we should be genuinely thankful that so few

THE first major store has been announced for the Marriotts Close shopping development in Witney.

Retail company Debenhams will be a major occupier of the Marriotts Close.

The company will be opening one of its 'Desire by Debenhams' shops, specialising in women's clothing and accessories.

The number of new pieces of malicious software has doubled in the last year with the web being used increasingly to distribute the code, a report says.

In the first quarter of 2007, security firm Sophos identified 23,864 threats, up from 9,450 on this time last year.

In the same period the firm said it was identifying 5,000 web pages per day infected with so-called malware.

THAMES Valley Police are taking part in a European campaign to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured on the roads.

Roads Policing officers will be running Operation Speed this week, carrying out speed safety checks throughout Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. The campaign is co-ordinated by TISPOL - the European Traffic Police Network.

Sgt Chris Appleby, Road Safety Team, said: "We are doing what we can to let young people know how they can keep themselves safe.

ELEAGUERED market traders say their businesses are suffering because of changes to a town farmer's market.

Traders in Witney, who are already struggling against competition from supermarkets, condemned the launch of a farmers' market in the town, on the day before their traditional market.

The traders, who set up stall on Saturday and Thursday, said the arrival of a farmer's market on a Wednesday presented unfair competition, and was taking away customers.

OXFORD has been named as one of the worst places in the country to bring up a family.

A survey carried out by Reader's Digest magazine asked 1,000 parents to list the things which make for a family-friendly environment with issues such as crime, affordable housing and schools among the criteria.

Researchers then ranked places on how they scored on these issues with Oxford coming 399th out of 408 local authorities.

A businessman from Norfolk has recovered a record £35,987.94 from NatWest after accusing it of charging him unlawful overdraft fees.

The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, had challenged the fees that the bank had levied for bouncing cheques from his company.

NatWest said it was settling the case only because its legal costs were becoming too high.

It is just the latest example of a bank repaying such penalty charges.

STAFF at park-and-ride car parks run by Oxford City Council are planning to step up industrial action because they do not want to work alone at night.

Today, 12 customer care staff, who work at Redbridge, Seacourt and Pear Tree car parks formed a picket line at Redbridge, off Abingdon Road, between 7.30am and 8.30am.

Staff handed out leaflets to drivers on their way into the car park and buses had to pick up passengers from a nearby stop in Abingdon Road.

The action led to long delays for drivers.

Windows XP will stop being available on new PCs from the end of January 2008.

Microsoft is keeping to a plan to stop selling the operating system even though surveys show a lukewarm response to Windows Vista among consumers.

A poll by US market research firm Harris Interactive found that only 10% of those questioned were planning to upgrade to Vista in the near future.

Identity fraudsters are increasingly targeting wealthy people, credit rating agency Experian has warned.

Of 2,124 people who used its helpline in 2006, company directors and business people were the most common victims.

Nearly half of all victims had not realised their identities had been misused until contacted by a financial services firm.