Two-year study finds area of woodland in Devon to be ideal habitat to support a controlled release of the creatures

The prospect of European wildcats prowling in south-west England has taken a leap forward after a two-year study concluded a reintroduction was feasible – and most local people were positive about the idea.

Having been absent for more than a century, mid-Devon has been judged to have the right kind of habitat to support a population of Felis silvestris.

The south-west contains enough woodland cover connected by other suitable habitat to support a sustainable wildcat population.

Two surveys were conducted by researchers at the University of Exeter. In one, 71% of 1,000 people liked the idea of wildcat return. In the other, 83% of 1,425 who responded expressed positivity.

Wildcats pose no significant risk to existing endangered wildlife populations such as bats and dormice. Wildcat diets concentrate on widespread commonly found species, with 75% of their prey consisting of small mammals including voles, rats, wood mice and rabbits.

Wildcats pose no threat to people, domestic pets or farming livestock such as lambs. Commercial and domestic poultry can be protected from wildcats with the same precautions deployed for existing predators such as foxes.

Security minister Dan Jarvis says scrapping immunity scheme would give relatives a renewed chance for answers

The families of more than 70 people killed by the IRA and other paramilitaries in unsolved attacks on English soil can once again hope for justice under the new Northern Ireland Troubles bill, the UK government has claimed.

As MPs in the House of Commons prepared to debate the bill for the first time on Tuesday, the Home Office said there remained 77 unsolved killings, including 39 British armed forces personnel in English towns and cities, from the time of the Troubles. It said more than 1,000 people were injured in the attacks.

Navigation aid from 16th century was on seabed for centuries before being bought and sold in US and Australia

It spent hundreds of years languishing on the seabed off the Isles of Scilly in the far south-west of Britain before being hauled back to the surface by divers and setting off a circumnavigation of the world.

Finally the Pednathise Head astrolabe – a rare example of a 16th-century navigational instrument once used by sailors to determine latitude – is back on Scilly after being rediscovered on the other side of the Atlantic.