London Olympic chiefs defended the salaries of its top executives on Thursday after it emerged some were earning up to 100,000 pounds more than first thought.About seven senior executives at the Olympic Delivery Authority are being paid more than 200,000 pounds. The authority published the salaries of its executives in its annual report for 2006/7, but the report only included the amount earned so far that year.

A mass demand for supplies and services - from builders and plumbers to snack sellers - means that the Olympics has unparalleled short-term earning potential for local business people.

But Haringey has been left out of an elite group of boroughs which will club together to raise training and job opportunities for the people who live there. They are Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Greenwich,

EAST Londoners will not be given preference when going for jobs involved with the 2012 Olympics, a senior Games official has admitted.

Atos Origin has extended its IT services agreement with the International Olympic Committee through to 2012.

The government has said it hopes to use the effects of the London 2012 Olympic Games to eliminate child poverty and unemployment in the capital.

Gordon Brown met with London mayor Ken Livingstone today at an 11 Downing Street reception to underline the achievements the London Child Poverty Commission had made so far. Almost two-fifths of children in the capital live in poverty, a higher proportion than anywhere else in Britain, and the government wants to reduce this number by half by 2010, before completely eradicating child poverty by the end of the next decade.