Australian Open champion Gordon Reid made it consecutive tournament successes with victory in the final of the ABN World Wheelchair Tennis Tournament in Rotterdam.

The Scot, who is ranked fifth in the world, defeated world number 10 Stefan Olsson of Sweden 6-3 7-6 (9-7).
To reach the final, Reid beat the new world number one Stephane Houdet of France in three sets.
"It's a strong field and nice to get back-to-back tournament wins," he said.
"I lost my focus at the end of the second set but I'm happy to win and for us to have the chance to play alongside the ATP event."
The 24-year-old contracted Transverse Myelitis - a disease affecting the spinal cord - aged 13 and claimed his first Grand Slam singles title in Melbourne last month.


Plymouth Argyle manager Derek Adams says he will not change his side's defensive tactics when they face Liverpool in their FA Cup third-round replay at Home Park on Wednesday.

Argyle defended deep, had only 23% possession and one shot on target in their 0-0 draw at Anfield on 8 January.
"We have to defend very well again," Adams told BBC Radio Devon.
"I think that we've shown in the first game that we can do that, and we'll have to do exactly the same."
The Scot, whose team are second in League Two, continued: "I can't see that we're going to be too cavalier on our approach. We've got to show respect to the Premier League team.
"They're third in the top flight and we've got to be careful of that."
Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp picked the club's youngest-ever side for the first game, with an average age of 21 years and 296 days, and later said his selection was "not a mistake".
Adams added: "The Liverpool line-up could change, although I don't see it changing a lot from the team that played against us.
"I think they might put in a bit more experience in the team, but I can't see it shifting too much.
"The only difference for them will be that the changing rooms are not as luxurious as Anfield. But the playing surface is excellent, it's a nice stadium, so I don't see it being a problem.
"It'll be milder than they're used to in Liverpool, so from that point of view they might think it's the Mediterranean they're going to," joked Adams, who also said he had a 'Plan B' if Liverpool took the lead.
"We're going to sign (Manchester United's Marouane) Fellaini and hit it long," said the Argyle boss.


Pakistani police have arrested a mentally disabled 11-year-old girl after a mob accused her of desecrating pages of the Koran.

The mob demanded the Christian girl's arrest and threatened to burn down Christian homes outside the capital Islamabad, local media say.
Officials said the girl could not properly answer police questions.
Her parents have been taken into protective custody following threats and other Christian families have fled.
It is thought that the girl has Down's syndrome.
Paul Bhatti, Pakistan's minister for National Harmony, told the BBC that the girl was known to have a mental disorder and that it seemed "unlikely she purposefully desecrated the Koran".
"From the reports I have seen, she was found carrying a waste bag which also had pages of the Koran," he said.
"This infuriated some local people and a large crowd gathered to demand action against her. The police were initially reluctant to arrest her, but they came under a lot of pressure from a very large crowd, who were threatening to burn down Christian homes."
He said more than 600 people have fled from the Christian neighbourhood.
Rights activists have urged Pakistan to reform its controversial blasphemy laws, under which a person can be jailed for life for desecrating the Koran.
Many of those accused of blasphemy have been killed by violent mobs, while politicians who advocate a change in legislation have also been targeted.
Last year, Shahbaz Bhatti, the minister for minority affairs, was killed after calling for the repeal of the blasphemy law.
His death came just two months after the murder of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who also spoke out about the issue.


Canada has revoked the citizenship for the fourth time of a 93-year-old man who has admitted to being a former Nazi death squad member.

Helmut Oberlander says he was forced to act as a translator for the squad and did not participate in atrocities.
He has fought three prior attempts by Canada to strip his citizenship and won.
His lawyer says Mr Oberlander will also fight this latest citizenship revocation, calling it "persecution".
A spokeswoman with Citizenship Canada said in a statement to the BBC that "we don't take citizenship revocation lightly, but it is necessary in cases of fraud and serious misrepresentation".
Canada says that when Mr Oberlander  applied for entry to Canada in 1954, he obtained his citizenship by knowingly concealing that he had been an auxiliary of the Einsatzkommando, a force that operated behind the German army's front line in the Eastern occupied territories.
The squad is responsible for killing more than two million people, many of them Jewish people.
"We are determined to deny safe haven in Canada to war criminals and persons believed to have committed or been complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide," said Citizenship Canada's Lisa Filipps.
Mr Oberlander has argued in court that he was conscripted, had no alternative than to work for the Germans, and would have been subject to the harshest penalties had he disobeyed.
Canada has revoked his citizenship three times since 1995.  Each time it was overturned on appeal.
In 2016, Canada's Supreme Court refused to hear the government's appeal of a lower court ruling that Ottawa should reconsider its decision to revoke Mr Oberlander's citizenship.
His lawyer Ronald Poulton says Canada "appears prepared to hound Mr Oberlander and his family to his grave".
"In order to find Mr. Oberlander complicit in war crimes, given his limited and forced participation with the German military, they had attempted to stretch fiction into fact and to rely on an outdated archaic principle known as guilt by association," he said.
Mr. Oberlander was born in Halbstadt, Ukraine in 1924, and he obtained his Canadian citizenship in 1960.
Shimon Koffler Fogel, with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, praised Canada for its "tireless" efforts to strip Mr Oberlander of his citizenship.
"This latest development is an important milestone in bringing a measure of justice to his many victims and their families," he said in a statement.
Mr Oberlander's case is expected to be back before a federal court within the next six months.


Mexican midfielder Carlos Pena has arrived in Glasgow ahead of his proposed move to Rangers.

The 27-year-old is likely to become Pedro Caixinha's third summer signing, joining the Ibrox club from Chivas Guadalajara.
Pena has 19 caps for Mexico and spent last season on loan at Leon, also in the Mexican top flight.
Rangers have signed Portugal defender Bruno Silva and former Aberdeen captain Ryan Jack in the past week.
Pena can play as a holding midfielder or in a more attacking role.


Snooker player Steve Davis is to play a DJ set at this year's Glastonbury.

Davis, who also presents a show on a radio station in Essex, will perform in the Stonebridge Bar.
Speaking to the BBC, he said: "There's novelty value of some boring snooker player suddenly playing electronic music."
In the 1980s, Davis won the World Championship six times and was ranked world number one for seven consecutive seasons.
Davis added: "I've got my wellies ready and we're going to go down there and bring our records."
It has not yet been confirmed which day of the festival Davis will appear on.
Asked about the genre of music he will be playing, Davis said: "It's not necessarily techno. We're playing some stuff that's electronic and some that will appeal that people who are into IDM [intelligent dance music]."
"Stuff that's a bit more complicated and a little bit more leftfield than 'doof, doof, doof'."
"It's more about trying to introduce some artists that you may not know exist, who are in a like-minded vein. On the radio show, we get a good soundboard for what might go down well.
"Obviously, when you've got to have your foot tapping, you're limited to what you can play. You can't put any stroky beard stuff out there."
Davis started playing dance music on his local commercial radio station, but has since moved on to festivals and gigs.
"It's quite strange. I've been doing a radio show in Brentwood, and I've joined forces with a musician, Kavus Torabi, who's been in a few bands over the years," he said.
"We've got quite a mini following online, it's a little bit culty."
This year's Glastonbury festival begins on 22 June on Worthy Farm, Somerset.


If I had gone for a Sunday morning ride around some of my favourite south Wales roads 10 years ago, I would have passed barely a handful of other pedalling pleasure seekers.

It was an exclusive and often misunderstood, even unwelcome club.
Maybe I would catch up with someone and ride along for a few miles exchanging friendly conversation. Or perhaps there would be a subtle wave or a barely noticeable nod as a rider passed the other way.
We both knew the secret. Cycling is fun. It is healthy, sociable, challenging, invigorating, practical. Cycling is whatever you want it to be.
In the last few years though, the secret is out. Now I never leave my house, on foot, by bike or in the car without passing a seemingly ever increasing number of riders. All ages, genders, shapes and sizes.
Yes, there are the oft-derided "middle-aged-men in Lycra" spending their disposable on flashy steeds instead of sports cars and motorbikes. Sneered at by the old guard for having "all the gear, no idea".
Sniggered at by the public as they clatter across the pub in cycling shoes and skin-tight uniforms that reveal more miles and a fewer pints might be better.
But cycling is truly democratic. Cheap bike, flash bike? It does not matter. All day epic or short spin? Fast or slow? Serious or sociable? It does not matter.
Remember, cycling is whatever you want it to be. Young wannabe racers, middle-aged mothers, weather-beaten old-timers, they will all get a smile from me.
This weekend there will be 15,000 riders on those roads in south Wales, paying Â£50 for the privilege of spending five or six hours in the saddle.
At the same time 100 professionals from around Europe and the UK will cover a greater distance, 120 miles, in far less time.
All around the course the racers, the weekend warriors, the charity riders and those just revelling in riding on temporarily car-free routes will be cheered by thousands at the roadside.
Wales has been bitten by the bike bug.
So why? What has happened in the last decade?  How is it that cycling has gone from the margins to the mainstream?
Back in the 1990s road cycling seemed almost dead in the UK. Bike shops kept themselves open on the back of the new mud and mountains craze.
It was the Noughties before road bikes became really sexy again, all space age titanium, cutting edge carbon and gadget enhanced.
In Wales there was a slow but steady rise in the number of people getting out on their bikes. Whenever Nicole Cooke grabbed more headlines, I would see a few new faces in the lanes.
Then in 2008 she grabbed the Olympic gold that began the avalanche.  From the track to Le Tour, Britain was a successful biking nation.
It was 2012 that really got bums on saddles big time. Sir Bradley Wiggins won France's famous maillot jaune and the crowds flocked to London to see him become an Olympic champion too. And people rode the roads the racers raced.
Can you imagine just anyone who fancies it being allowed to go out and play rugby in the Millennium Stadium just before a Six Nations game? Or turn up and have a kickabout at Wembley or the Bernabeu whenever they feel like it?
With GPS tracking devices feeding social media sites, any ride any day of the week can be compared with friends and even to the performances of "the pros".
This is part of the appeal to the ever growing numbers of riders in recent years crossing the Channel to ride the routes of Europe's Grand Tours.
In 2004 council worker and bike enthusiast Lou Lusardi (the Italian heritage obvious in the name) decided there was an appetite in Wales for Italy's Gran Fondo, and the Dragon Ride was born.
The 12th edition was held over the hills flanking the Rhondda Valleys just last week with one of the 5,000 available places again like gold dust.
It has been joined on a packed Welsh calendar by many others including The Monster (Llangadog, July), The Daisy Chain (Builth Wells, May), The Devil's Challenge (Llanwrtyd Wells, July).
Which brings us back to Velothon Wales. An initial 12,000 places were made available at the end of last year, within weeks they were gone. The ride will be one of the world's largest with more entrants than the famous Etapes du Tour that follow stages of the Tour de France.
The chance to ride with so many others, on carefully marked traffic-free routes backed by feed stations and medical and mechanical back-up is obvious.
And next week there may be a few sore bodies that will not feel like getting back on the bike, but there will be many, many more inspired by what they see this weekend. I am certain the number of cyclists in Wales will grow even more.
Whether it is town or country, the roads and lanes of Wales are full of groups, pairs and individuals riding bikes for fun. No more long hours in the saddle for me with barely a like-minded soul with whom to exchange a knowing acknowledgment. The secret is out.
Intrigued and inspired in the 1970s by Eddy Merckx, Francesco Moser and most of all diminutive Belgian climber Lucien Van Impe, Steve James fell in love with continental cycling and pretty soon after bikes took over his life.
Over the past 40 years he has ridden on road, off-road and on tracks around the world. Besides countless hours watching others ride, he has commuted, raced, written a book on cycling and collected way too many bikes and cycling magazines.
He regularly tweets about cycling (and other things) @GMWalesSport


A 73-year-old who admitted killing his neighbour with a claw hammer because he believed he was involved in witchcraft has been detained in hospital.

Alan Rogers hit retired grandfather Fred Hatch at the Fair Oaks sheltered housing complex at Dinas Powys, Vale of Glamorgan.
Rogers pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, at Cardiff Crown Court.
The court accepted that Rogers was mentally ill when he attacked Mr Hatch.
The hearing was told that Rogers was later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, though he had no previous criminal record or episodes of violence before the killing.
Sentencing Rogers to be detained under mental health laws, judge Mr Justice Warby said: "On the evidence I have read and heard it seems that there is little likelihood that the doctors would ever consider you safe enough to release into the community.
"That will bring little comfort to the victim's family and friends but it will protect the public and ensure that the professional help is devoted to addressing the mental illness that led to this awful crime."
On the day of the attack in October, Mr Hatch's wife Enid, 70, went looking for him after he failed to return from his trip to the garden.
But she discovered Rogers standing over the body of her husband in their shared hallway.
When she fled to press a panic alarm, Rogers phoned police and told them: "I have just killed one of my neighbours and I have hit his head with a hammer."
Mr Hatch was taken to the University Hospital Wales in Cardiff but died from his untreatable head injuries hours later.
The court heard that as Rogers was handcuffed, he told officers: "I have been waiting a long time to kill that man."
He told police that believed his neighbours "were using modern technology, the equivalent of witchcraft, to harm defenceless sentient beings".
Speaking after the hearing, Mr Hatch's family described him as a "loving husband, father, brother and grandfather".
"We are heartbroken as a family that we have been deprived of those final years of Fred's life, sharing precious time and moments," they said.
"Our lives have been changed forever and we are devastated."


An 81-year-old footballer - believed to be the UK's oldest - is looking for a new club to sign him up.

Dickie Borthwick, from Weymouth, Dorset, started playing football in 1947 when he was 12.
He had been a member of Wyke Veterans before it folded but admitted he is now "too old" for the Veteran's League.
He told The Mirror he had been invited to join a walking football team but said he wanted to take part in something more fast-paced.
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Mr Borthwick, who recovered from prostate cancer three years ago, said he was "still mentally and physically fit" and "can still run around".
Ideally, he said he hoped there was a chance "these guys that are playing walking football can get themselves fit and maybe speed up a bit".
He added he was willing to travel anywhere in Dorset to join a team of people aged over 60.
He said he has scored about 400 goals during his 69 years on the pitch, and has never been booked in any of the 1,600 matches he has played.


Housing problems in England are causing people to suffer anxiety, depression and panic attacks, says Shelter.

Of people who had experienced housing worries within the past five years, 69% said their mental health was affected, suggests research for the charity.
The researchers interviewed 1,050 people from across England who reported poor housing, rent problems or being threatened with eviction.
One grandmother, facing eviction, even considered suicide.
"It just felt like all the doors were closing in my face," said Brenda, who is from Oldham.
Her daughter, Helen, and granddaughter, Lily Mae, were living with her so she feared her whole family might become homeless.
"You blame yourself and you feel a sense of total helplessness.
"I remember not wanting to go on and wondering if I should end it."
The polling company ComRes carried out online interviews for the report in February this year with a representative sample of 3,509 adults from across England.
Of these, about 30% or 1,050 people, said they had experienced housing problems within the last five years.
Among this group the most common mental health problems were:
About one in 20 had visited their GP because of their mental state and a worrying minority had contemplated suicide.
Shelter says that if these figures were replicated across the whole of England's population, one million people would have sought medical intervention because of mental health issues brought on by poor housing or worries about eviction or affording rent or mortgage payments over the past five years.
Additionally, one in six said housing worries had also affected their physical health, causing symptoms like hair loss, nausea, exhaustion, dizzy spells and headaches, while damp or mouldy homes can exacerbate respiratory conditions like asthma, says the charity.
Telephone interviews with 20 inner-city GPs highlighted the extent to which housing has an impact on mental health.
Housing difficulties can be particularly harsh for people "on the line of coping or not coping. Then, they really do tip over the edge", said one London GP.
A Sheffield GP said parents could become depressed because "they're unable to provide a nice environment for their children".
"In the children, they tend to get a little bit, sometimes withdrawn, sometimes a bit anxious and angry."
London GP Andrew Carr said housing was a major contributing factor to mental illness.
"With evictions on the rise in my area, I've seen people with acute anxiety or severe stress because they're facing the threat of losing their home."
With support from Shelter, Brenda and her family eventually found stable, rented accommodation.
"It was the beginning of me taking back some control," said Brenda.
Shelter's legal adviser, Liz Clare, said people with problems like Brenda's seek help from the charity on a daily basis.
"We hear from people at breaking point because they can no longer cope with their unstable, unliveable or unaffordable housing.
"From families in fear of falling further behind on the rent to people dealing with the misery of raising young children in a tiny, mouldy, freezing flat, people can feel completely overwhelmed," said Ms Clare.


Two new vaccines against meningitis are to be launched later this year, the Welsh government has confirmed.

A vaccine for meningitis B will be made available for all babies from September.
There were nine cases in Wales in the first five months of 2015.
Meanwhile, students under the age of 25 who are attending university for the first time will get ACWY - a replacement for the existing meningitis C jab - in August.
Health Minister Mark Drakeford said: "Wales is one of the first countries in the world to introduce a nationwide MenB vaccination programme to help tackle the effects of this disease, which can be devastating for children and their families.
"I am very pleased to be able to approve the introduction of the MenACWY vaccine, which will protect teenagers against a number of forms of this disease, ensuring young people are protected at such an important time in their lives."
There will also be a catch-up programme for all 14 to 18-year-olds over the next two years for ACWY and for those children born between 1 May and 30 June, 2015.
Q&A: Meningitis B vaccine


Andrew MacCuish scored a hat-trick of equalisers for Oban Camanachd before the highly-fancied Premiership side eventually edged into the semi-finals of the Camanachd Cup 4-3 at Kilmallie.

Beauly will be the only representatives of the lower leagues in the semi-final draw at BBC Scotland's Pacific Quay on Monday 11 July.
This follows a heroic 1-1 draw away to in-form Kinlochshiel in which Beauly held a lead for more than half the game.
Lochaber also came close to creating an upset when they forced Kyles to come from behind twice to earn a 2-2 draw at Tighnabruich.
Camanachd Cup rules require drawn games to be replayed.
Meanwhile, at The Eilan, Newtonmore cruised to a 4-0 lead over Skye who then struck back with two late goals.
Kilmallie showed little regard for Oban Camanachd's Premiership status and went ahead three times in the first half through Liam MacDonald, Brian MacKay and Duncan Rodger only to be pulled back on each occasion by MacCuish. Connor Howe then got Camanachd's winner just after the hour.
Marc MacLachlan opened for Beauly after just three minutes and it was 11 minutes into the second half before John MacRae struck for Shiel to take the tie to a replay at Braeview.
Ben Delaney got Lochaber's opener and Dunky Kerr Kyles' first equaliser just before half time. Neil MacDonald shot Lochaber ahead again and Grant Irvine secured Kyles' second bite at the cherry at Spean Bridge.
An Evan Menzies double in the first half and one each from Norman Campbell and Iain Robinson in the second had Newtonmore on easy street. Jordan Murchison struck back with two in the last six minutes but by then it was too late for Skye.
In the Marine Harvest National Division a goal in each half from Alan MacDonald helped Inveraray to a 4-1 victory on Bute which extended their lead to four points.
The new second-placers in the five horse race for this title are Glasgow Mid Argyll who have three games in hand. This followed a 12-0 rout at Ballachulish where Gary Luke with a hat-trick headed a list of seven different scorers.


Did the mistakes made in Iraq and Libya kill Western governments' appetite for intervention in subsequent conflicts?

This week's report from the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee  into the Western intervention in Libya made uncomfortable reading for Britain's former Prime Minister David Cameron and his colleagues.
It provided a damning indictment of Britain's part in the intervention that helped to overthrow the Libyan ruler Col Gaddafi and served to precipitate the country into chaos.
The report states that the intervention was undertaken without a full understanding of what was actually happening on the ground.
It says: "The [British] government failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated, and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element. By the summer of 2011, the limited intervention to protect civilians had drifted into an opportunist policy of regime change."
Another fundamental criticism is the absence of any real thought about the aftermath of the conflict.
The report notes that "policy was not underpinned by a strategy to support and shape post-Gaddafi Libya".
The result, it says, "was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of Isil [so-called Islamic State] in north Africa."
In fairness it may be a little unkind to lay all the blame at the former prime minister's door. This was a multinational operation after all, though famously one with the Obama administration "leading from behind".
Indeed, if anything, it was the French who were in the driving seat. The report is damning about the way the then French President Nicolas Sarkozy seized upon the crisis as a way of consolidating and amplifying France's position in the region. It was the French government that largely set the pace of the drumbeat for war.
There was indeed something slightly surreal about the moment.
I remember visiting an airfield in Italy from where the RAF was flying operations over Libya. It must have been an old US World War Two base - it looked like the setting for a movie of the novel Catch-22.
"Do you think [the politicians] have really thought this through?" I was asked. I remember making a bad joke:  "President Sarkozy thinks he's Napoleon, and David Cameron is channelling his inner Tony Blair."
But in a sense there was an element of truth in this. The mention of Tony Blair is important.
Now an object of almost universal condemnation for taking Britain into the Iraq War on dubious intelligence, it is easily forgotten that Mr Blair was a fluent, serious, and outspoken advocate for a new age of intervention in an increasingly globalised world; an age where moral responsibility went hand in hand with national and indeed collective self-interest.
And when you look, for example, at the scale of the international problems provoked by the Syrian crisis, is it really so easy to pronounce him entirely wrong?
Mr Blair set out his new doctrine of intervention in a speech in Chicago in April 1999 in the midst of the Kosovo crisis.
The Balkan wars, for all their horrors - not least the failure to prevent the massacre at Srebrenica - were arguably  manageable crises in a region that was in broad terms European, and where the full resources of both Nato and the EU could be marshalled to tackle both the conflict and its immediate consequences.
The Balkans began an arc of Western intervention that started in Bosnia, moved through the Balkans into Kosovo, and then further afield to Afghanistan after 9/11, and then to Iraq and ultimately Libya. By then, the sheer intractability of managing (many would say mismanaging) the aftermath of conflict, had become painfully apparent.
February 2011 - Violent protests break out in Benghazi and spread to other cities. This leads to civil war, foreign intervention and eventually the ousting and killing of Gaddafi in August.
March 2011 - UK Parliament approves British participation for military intervention alongside a coalition of nations, including France and the US.
2014 - Militants from so-called Islamic State claim responsibility for several attacks in Libya towards the end of the year, as the US finds evidence that the group is setting up training camps.
2016 - Following years of conflict, a new UN-backed "unity" government is installed in a naval base in Tripoli. It faces opposition from two rival governments and a host of militias.
This is where the Commons Libya report comes in, for it eloquently explores the lack of intelligence, local knowledge, and diplomatic experience that frequently left well-meaning Western governments operating in a kind of void.
In a nutshell, nobody ever thought things through. And if they did, they lacked the basic information to do so.
Indeed the West's failures during these interventions are of a piece with the almost bizarre collective leap of faith in responding to the so-called Arab Spring. Far from ushering in a new era of democratic progress, this propelled much of the region into chaos.
And we are living with the consequences today.
Was this a case of hubris? An extension of the false idea that history ended with the collapse of Soviet communism? Was it a product of a curious cultural short-sightedness - a view that everyone was just like us, irrespective of their own tortured histories, economic situation, tribal and religious divisions and so on?
Is it any wonder then that the tragedy of Syria has proceeded for some six years with no significant external attempt to halt the fighting? Indeed the only major intervention - that by Russia - has been intended to maintain the status quo.
The arc of Western intervention - for now - seems to have reached its end. There is no longer an appetite for nation-building. The consequences in blood and treasure have been too great and there have been too many mis-steps along the way.
That may be good news in the short term for the erstwhile peacemakers. But as the consequences of the tragedy in Syria demonstrate, you are damned if you do act and maybe equally damned if you don't.
There are no easy answers and in a globalised and ever more connected world, maybe the much-maligned Mr Blair had a point.


A wood chip fire which first ignited at a Newport dockyard nearly two months ago has been put out.

The fire had been smoking at Alexandra Docks since 20,000 tonnes of wood first caught alight on 5 December.
Residents had been advised to stay indoors and keep windows and doors closed after the initial blaze.
South Wales Fire and Rescue Service said the fire, which was found to be accidental, was put out on Monday.


An organisation which holds more than 15 million drawings, photographs and manuscripts will formally merge with Historic Scotland on Thursday.

Edinburgh-based Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) was set up in 1908.
The Queen, whose great grandfather Edward VII established the body, has been sent its final report, which gives a history of its work.
RCAHMS will become part of new body Historic Environment Scotland.
Historic Scotland manages sites across Scotland including Edinburgh Castle, Stirling Castle, Skara Brae in Orkney, Linlithgow Palace and Urquhart Castle on the banks of Loch Ness.
Historic Environment Scotland was established by the Historic Environment Scotland Act 2014.
RCAHMS' first report involved a survey of Habchester fort in the Scottish Borders.
Since 1908, it has gone on to record thousands of historic places and produce hundreds of books and reports.
In recent years, the commission has documented the remains of a Viking shipyard on Skye, historical sites on St Kilda and taken thousands of images of the Scottish cemetery in Calcutta, India.
RCAHMS also holds one of the largest and collections of aerial imagery in the world.
Among the tens of millions of images there are 1.6 million of Scotland, including some of the earliest aerial photographs ever taken of the country.
In its final report, RCAHMS addresses the Queen.
It said: "Our work has always been driven by an idea - in its simplest form, that the built and historic environment of Scotland must be recorded and researched to ensure that its exceptional cultural value is understood and protected by current and future generations.
"This report, our last as a Royal Commission, documents how we have pursued this idea for over a century."


Hundreds of police community support officers (PCSOs) who faced being axed by the West Midlands force have won a reprieve.

Last month, Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson said that the number could fall from 535 to 119 by 2020.
But he has confirmed that no compulsory redundancies will now take place, with cuts being made elsewhere.
Mr Jamieson said the force was "in a better place than before".
Updates on this story and more from Birmingham & the Black Country
Last month, Chancellor George Osborne confirmed in his Spending Review that police budgets in England and Wales would be protected in real terms.
It followed fears they would face significant cuts.
Mr Jamieson said: "To protect PCSOs we are having to continue with efficiencies elsewhere, like the number of buildings we own and rent.
"West Midlands Police's funding is still going down, that is why we are having to continue to cut elsewhere to protect our PCSOs.
"The truth is that the pressures on the police are growing, we are dealing with issues like radicalisation, cyber-crime and child sexual exploitation in greater numbers than before, and our funding is still falling.
"There are still difficult choices to be made in the future."


As The Divine Comedy return from a six-year break, Neil Hannon discusses parenthood, history books and his inability to resist earworms.

"I've been blessed and cursed with the ability to write a catchy tune," says The Divine Comedy lynchpin Neil Hannon.
"I guess not everyone can do it, so I should feel happy about it. But sometimes the more contrary, artistic part of me is annoyed: 'Oh my God, you've written another catchy chorus! Why couldn't you just stick to expressing what you were trying to express, and not have this earworm?'"
The Irish star is discussing his approach to writing The Divine Comedy's 11th album Foreverland.
Despite Hannon's best efforts, it is stuffed with memorable tunes, delivered in the band's signature baroque pop style. And it comes at a point in his career when most musicians, including his hero Scott Walker, start making what he calls "unfathomable music".
"I'm so proud that somebody's out there making those sorts of records," he laughs. "But I wouldn't want to listen to them myself."
Hannon has been releasing records as The Divine Comedy since 1990, bringing a poetic wit and an orchestral flourish to the top 40 on albums like Casanova, A Short Album About Love and Fin de Siecle.
He also wrote the theme music for Father Ted, as well as the character's "Eurovision entry", My Lovely Horse. In recent years, he's taken on an opera for the Royal Opera House and an organ commission for the Royal Festival Hall before returning to his main job.
In a phone call from Ireland, the pithy and self-deprecating star discussed his career, his new album and playing the David Bowie Prom.
Good morning, Neil. How are you?
I'm very well, thank you.
Were you expecting our call?
I was. I know it doesn't sound like it but that's just my phone manner. I was terrified of the phone as a youth, I must say.
Really?
Well, I was terrified of talking to anyone, really. I found adults in general like great giants who knew how the world worked. But I never became similarly large of stature. I'll always be the shy boy.
The first time you realise that adults are fallible is a life-changing moment, isn't it?
Well, my daughter realised that the first time she beat me at Connect 4, when she was six or seven. It was like, "Hang on, dad, you're not very clever at all."
My son's six and he can actually out-run me. School sports day is just embarrassing.
Never give them the benefit of your humiliation. Just say you've got bad hips.
Anyway, we're not here to discuss our failures as parentsâ€¦
Aren't we? Oh no.
Well, there's the small matter of the first Divine Comedy album in six years. Why did you wait so long?
It was partly by design. Although I have a lovely big set of fans out there, nobody expects me to stick out an album every two years. That would just be ridiculous. So I said to myself I would keep working on it until I was absolutely happy with the way everything sounded.
You've written songs about Napoleon and Catherine the Great. How come?
The reason is simply that, like most middle-aged men, I read quite a lot of history books. Apparently, that's a thing. I read an article about it: middle-aged, middle class men gravitate towards the history section in the book shop.
So what was it about Catherine the Great that caught your attention?
Largely that she had the same name as my girlfriend [Irish musician Cathy Davey], who is also great.
At the end of the song, you sing that you'd like to "bake her a cake". Are you vying for a place on Bake Off?
Ah, you see, I'm not a cake person. I have a lot of problems with cake. I'd bake her a cake, because she likes cake. I quite like carrot cake, I suppose. That's quite nice, even though it shouldn't be.
Other People sounds like a voice memo from your phone, souped up with a string section.
That's exactly what it is! I was in a hotel in London and I came up with those words, so I sang it into my phone and thought no more about it.
When I listened back to it, I really liked the quality of the vocal. It was reasonably in tune, and I thought, "Wouldn't it be funny to have that with a string orchestra coming in underneath?'
There's bit at the end where I just stop and go "blah, blah, blah", and that's simply because I had no more words written. Nowhere else to go!
Both the title track, Foreverland, and the song My Happy Place are about searching for contentment. Do you have a "happy place", real or fictitious, that you retreat to?
When I was a kid, I was very influenced by my grandfather, who had been an estate manager for various odd Irish aristocrats. He would watch these barmy gentry and relate all these stories to us, which was great fun.  But it did give me this longing for a large Georgian house in the country. It all seemed so wonderful and romantic and eccentric. Then, a couple of years ago, I bought a large Georgian house in the country!
How does that feel?
It's a lot of hard work, but it feels great.
Do you have a groundsman?
We do, but I have to ration him. There's such a lot of garden, he could be here all day every day - and that would break me. I'm not having that many hits any more.
Speaking of which, I looked back at the Divine Comedy's chart history, and was surprised to find that National Express was your biggest hitâ€¦ I always thought it was Something For The Weekend or Alfie.
Some people come up to me and say, "That was an amazing number one!" And I'm like, "It was number eight. It got nowhere near number one!"
That is the one slight bugbear of my professional career, is never having had a number one. But you mustn't be greedy.
At least you got to appear on Top of the Pops.
Oh, that was the number one ambition of the childhood Neil - to be on Top of the Pops like Adam Ant and Elvis Costello and Blondie.
I have a weird memory of it because we had choir practice on Thursday night. It would be over by seven, but then we had to get dad out of the church to drive us back home, so we would always miss at least the first 10 minutes. I'm always turning on Top of the Pops [repeats] these days and going, "no I don't remember this one". Then, 10 minutes in, it all comes flooding back.
Would you like to see it return?
When Top of the Pops departed this life it was a miserable day - and yet it had lost its relevance. They were running after the kids instead of the other way round.
The internet is to blame. For everything, really.
You recently sang at the David Bowie Prom, which got very mixed reviews. What did you think of it?
I don't think the reviews were too wide of the mark. It was an odd night and it was well-meant but perhaps, overall, it could have been a bit tighter and a bit more to the point. But that's the price you pay for experimenting.
You're not a stranger to the classical world, having composed an opera, an organ suite and a musical. Will you do more in that area?
I'm not sure how successful I am in these other genres. I think I have a good handle on harmony and melody, but the technique and the theory lets me down a little.  It would be lovely to take 10 years off and actually learn all this stuff. But it's all so boring.
And what if you finish learning it all and get run over by a bus? What a waste of time.
Foreverland is released by Divine Comedy Recordings on 2 September.
Follow us on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, on Instagram at bbcnewsents, or email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.


Mark Ronson's Uptown Funk has been named the biggest-selling song of 2015 in the UK - despite having been released at the end of 2014.

The track notched up a combined sales and streaming total of 1.76 million, the Official Charts Company said.
As well as spending seven weeks at number one from December 2014, it remained in the UK top 40 for 39 weeks.
The second spot in the 2015 chart went to OMI's Cheerleader with a combined total of 1.52 million.
Hozier's Take Me To Church rounded out the top three with 1.25 million combined sales after spending 20 weeks climbing the chart.
It is the only song in the top five that failed to reach the number one spot, however, peaking at two for four consecutive weeks.
The song that pipped him to the top spot was Ellie Goulding's Love Me Like You Do - which ended up as the fourth best-selling song of the year.
Despite only being released last October, Adele's Hello managed to finish sixth place in the list.
You can see the top 40 songs of 2015 on the Official Charts Company website.


At least 12 people died and dozens more were hurt when a small lorry loaded with fireworks exploded in a small village in central Mexico.

The blast happened during a religious celebration in Jesus Tepactepec, a village in Tlaxcala state.
Villagers had been taking part in a procession when a firework accidentally landed on the vehicle, reports say.
Fourteen ambulances, a mobile medical unit and two air ambulances were sent to the village to treat the wounded.
Many of the injured were taken to hospital in neighbouring Puebla state.
"My God, this is a tragedy," said the Bishop of Tlaxcala, Francisco Moreno, who was at the scene of the explosion.
The state governor, Mariano Gonzalez, ordered all hospitals in the region to treat the victims of the explosion.
"People were taking part in a religious procession in Jesus Tepactepec when a rocket landed on a truck carrying a large quantity of fireworks," said the civil protection director for Tlaxcala state, Jose Mateo Morales.
He said the number of victims could increase, as the street was full of people making preparations for the celebration of the village's patron saint, Jesusito.


A 430 million-year-old sea creature apparently dragged its offspring around on strings like kites - a baffling habit not seen anywhere else in the animal kingdom.

Scientists who discovered the fossil have dubbed it the "kite runner".
Ten capsules tethered to its back appear to contain juvenile progeny, all at different stages of development.
Reported in the journal PNAS, the many-legged, eyeless, 1cm animal is not directly related to any living species.
"There isn't an animal today that it's essentially related to," David Legg, a palaeontologist from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, told BBC News.
"It's what we refer to as being on a stem lineage. So it belongs to a group that would have evolved and diversified before the modern groups did."
In fact, Dr Legg added, although it clearly had the segmented body and exoskeleton of an arthropod, it was quite a job to figure out precisely where to position the little beast on the evolutionary tree.
"Often you can look at a particular animal and say, that belongs to this group or that group. This one - we had no clue."
The fossil was dug up from a site in Herefordshire before being taken to Oxford and computerised. This process involved grinding away the specimen, slice by slice, and photographing each of those sections to assemble a 3D reconstruction.
Then, with this outlandish animal on their screens waggling its legs, long antennae and tethered capsules at them, Dr Legg and his colleagues set about categorising it using "compositional phylogenetics".
"You take its anatomy, code it into a data set and then run probabilistic methods on it, which will tell you how likely it is that something evolved in a particular way," he explained.
This process suggested that Aquilonifer spinosus ("aquila" means kite and the "-fer" suffix means carry) was a mandibulate: it belongs to the same broad group as modern insects, crustaceans and centipedes - but is not a direct ancestor.
"Nothing is known today that attaches the young by threads to its upper surface," said co-author Derek Briggs, from Yale University in the US.
"Modern crustaceans employ a variety of strategies to protect their eggs and embryos from predators - attaching them to the limbs, holding them under the carapace, or enclosing them within a special pouch until they are old enough to be released - but this example is unique.
"It shows that arthropods evolved a variety of brooding strategies beyond those around today - perhaps this strategy was less successful and became extinct."
Before settling on the unlikely conclusion that they were tiny, floating, prehistoric prams, the team did consider other explanations for the attached pods; they might have been smaller, parasitic creatures of a different species, for example.
But being tied on to Aquilonifer's tough and rather inedible shell would be a peculiar strategy for a hungry parasite.
It was the variety of shapes seen among the 10 tethered babies that Dr Legg found most convincing.
"We see them develop and begin to resemble the adult form more and more, as they get bigger," he said.
"I'm definitely convinced that that's what they were."
Follow Jonathan on Twitter


Tributes have been paid to rugby league player Danny Jones, who died after suffering a suspected cardiac arrest while playing for Keighley Cougars.

The Wales international 29, collapsed after being replaced during the League one game at London Skolars on Sunday.
North Wales Crusaders coach Clive Griffiths coached him with Wales and called him "the life and soul of the party" and "a really astute player".
He told BBC Radio Wales: "I was fortunate enough to have known him."
The married father of five-month-old twins was treated at the ground before being taken to the Royal Free Hospital.
Mr Griffiths added: "I'm sure that when things like this happen, that the governing body will sit up and take note and see what is best for player welfare for the future."
Bob Wilson was Wales' team manager at the 2013 World Cup and said he is "devastated" at the loss of someone he got to know well.
He last saw Mr Jones a week before his death, and said: "Danny was a real character, good fun and a great man to have in camp.
"He was someone you'd look forward to seeing when you travelled to a game."
The Rugby Football League's chief operating officer Ralph Rimmer described the loss of the "popular and talented" player as "incredibly sad".
A club statement from Keighley Cougars read: "Danny was much loved and highly respected by all at the club and in rugby league.
He was the life and soul in the dressing room, a natural leader, a true professional and irreplaceable."
John Fairclough, professor of sports medicine at Cardiff Metropolitian University, said screening would not be able to detect all the conditions that cause sudden cardiac death.
He added: "There is no magic bullet to stop people having cardiac events on the field. We can try but we can't stop it."
Wales Rugby League chairman Brian Juliff called it "shocking news".
He said: "You can't imagine what it is like for Danny's family. A fit and healthy young man, he goes away and then doesn't come back."


Tennis star Caroline Wozniacki has the crowd, if not necessarily the expensive confectionery, securely in the palm of her hand, as she turns her attentions to chocolate making.

The photogenic 24-year-old Dane is using a day off in the run up to Wimbledon to promote her newest commercial partner, Belgian chocolatier Godiva, and specifically the launch of their tennis-themed Sweet Caroline chocolate.
In front of selected guests in London she tries her hand at some intricate design work, but despite expert hand-eye co-ordination on court she is finding this an altogether trickier task.
"I love having input into the chocolates and spending a day with the team working it all out," she says cheerily, before taking time to pose for pictures and chat with the awe-struck guests.
That unaffected air explains her popularity with tennis fans (she has 1.35 million Facebook likes and 870,000 twitter followers), and also makes her a marketing man's dream.
Indeed Godiva says it believes this partnership will be a fruitful one, not only because of her playing skills, but also her "appeal well beyond the tennis court".
According to Forbes Wozniacki made close to $11m (Â£6.9m) in 2014, with endorsements making up 85% of that total.  Meanwhile, her total career earnings from prize money alone stands at $20m, with $600, 000 won so far this year.
The former world number one has major deals with global brands like Adidas, Babolat, Rolex, Sony Ericsson, Lavazza, and others including Dubai Duty Free, US vitamin firm Usana and Danish company E-Boks.
Her Adidas deal is reputed to be one of the most lucrative in sport, and she wears tennis kit specially designed for the German firm by Stella McCartney.  She says that she only works with companies that she feels comfortable with, rather than concentrating just on the financial bottom line.
"I think carefully about what sort of deals I do. I like to be an ambassador for brands that I believe in, and that are a good fit for me as a person. That is why I am happy with this latest association - it is fun for me," she says.
"I am a tennis player first, and all of this - the commercial partnerships, would not be possible without the work on court. Things like this, it is my day off.  My partners are very good about giving me the time I need for my tennis, and working around that."
Born in Odense, Denmark, on 11 July 1990 to Polish parents
Mother a volleyball player and father a footballer
Began playing tennis aged seven
Speaks eight languages and is fluent in Danish, Polish and English
Owns a Pomeranian dog Bruno - "a guy who understands me"
Was in relationship with golfer Rory McIlroy from 2011 to 2014
Wozniacki first broke into the Women's Tennis Association rankings in 2006, when she was just 16, having turned professional a year earlier.  She ended 2010 and 2011 as the number one player in the world, and has picked up 23 WTA titles in her career.
But she is still looking for a first, elusive, major title, having been twice runner-up in the US Open final, in 2009 and 2014.
And she insists that her impressive financial record of prize money and endorsements come second to success on court.
"I am a tennis player, I don't play for the money, I play for the game and the passion and the crowd and the fans," she says.  "When I started money never entered the equation, without a doubt I play for the game."
Off court she counts Serena Williams among her friends and also spends spare time relaxing with family, watching TV, adding that "I appreciate and value my time to wind down".
Other outside interests also include football - her father was a professional player - and she supports English Premier League team Liverpool.  In 2011 she played in the Qatar Open in a signed Liverpool shirt given to her by club legend Steven Gerrard.
"I want to be positive about next season, but it is sad that Steven Gerrard will no longer be there," she says about the Anfield club's prospects next season.
Wozniacki says she has "a few more business ideas in the pipeline, but I can't say too much about them just now".
She adds: "Another thing I would like to do is a TV, I would like to present a programme or a TV series, that would be exciting. It could be a talent show, anything that was fun to do."
This week she is playing in the Aegon International tournament at Eastbourne as part of her preparation for Wimbledon.
And she is confident of putting on a good show at SW19, despite having yet to progress beyond the fourth round,  which she has reached four times including 2014.
"I always believe I have got a good chance," she says. "Whenever I go into a tournament I want to win it."
The Godiva partnership famously came about after she told a US newspaper that she wanted to have a chocolate deal, and the enterprising Belgian company asked her if she would like to work with them.
So is there any other commercial category where she would welcome a sponsorship partner?
She laughs: "I would like an automotive partner, that would be awesome. as that is one of the categories I don't have."


It is still startling to see the human river now coursing across Europe, streaming through fields, surging over borders or halting at formidable metal barriers.

It is still shocking to see thousands of exhausted travellers sleeping rough, on roadsides or railway tracks, or spread across grassy verges, as they wait for buses or trains to take them further on their journey.
And it raises searching questions: what kind of lives have they fled? What future awaits them somewhere in Europe, if not beyond?
"It's a tragedy to see people moving from border to border, never knowing which border will be open tomorrow," says Antonio Guterres, head of the UN's refugee agency, when we meet in the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York.
"Five thousand people are arriving every day," he says, with palpable frustration over Europe's failure to move on longstanding pledges to establish proper reception and screening centres in Greece and Italy, at the first points where people arrive.
Last week, at a summit in Brussels, there was a promise to set up "hotspots" by the end of November.
For now, "Where are you from?" is the simple question posed by the legions of journalists, aid officials and volunteers who congregate along border crossings.
"Syria" still seems to be the most frequent reply. That's what people tell us, that's what UN officials report.
The UNHCR's latest figures on Mediterranean Sea Crossings this year, which add up to just short of 500,000 by late September, put Syrians at 54%. Afghans fall in second place at 13% arriving.
When you look at Greece alone, the figure for Syrians rises to 71%.
Source: UNHCR
Months into this massive pilgrimage of our time, the face of this flow keeps changing. And the stories people bring are different too.
All told, Syrians tell a story of a country, devastated by four years of punishing war, that is now being depopulated of its educated middle class.
At the railway station in the Croatian border town of Tovarnik, I recently met a microcosm of Syria's young professionals huddled together in the baking heat: an electrical engineer from Latakia on the coast, possibly the safest area under government control; a banker from war-torn Aleppo who said he's pursuing his "destiny;" a young businessman who paid thousands of euros for a 20-minute ride in a speedboat to get to Greece.
They had all left Syria only days before.
They had made a decision to flee a destructive war without end and to pursue the possibility of a future their own country now seems to deny them.
"Many people are saying if we're going to go, we must go now while Europe's door is open," a Western aid official living in Damascus tells me as he lists the people he knows personally that are leaving, week after week.
UN reports say an estimated 5,000-7,000 Syrians now arrive in Lebanon every week from Syria en route to a Mediterranean crossing.
A little more than half that number are said to come from Damascus.
In recent weeks, I kept meeting Syrians who said they had come from Mezzeh, a relatively wealthy neighbourhood in central Damascus which is home to embassies and some popular cafes.
No area of Syria is now untouched by war, but some are ravaged, others much less so.
Others speak of an escape from places in and around Damascus where life is a living hell - besieged and embattled areas like Qudsaya, Yarmouk, Ghouta.
In northern Greece, on the edge of the no-man's land leading to the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, I see another snapshot of Syria today.
An old man, his weary eyes drained of light by a dark war, wore his sadness like a suit.
He tells me he is from the Palestinian camp of Yarmouk, on the southern edge of the capital, which lies in utter ruin.
He pulls his crumpled UN refugee card from his pocket to confirm his identity. It seems to be all he has.
"I will bring my wife and children later," he explains. "There's so little water and food, but I couldn't afford to bring them now."
Next to him, a tall, well-dressed man surrounded by his large extended family tells me he is from Idlib in the north.
When I ask what life is like now after a coalition of Islamist forces took power, he replies vaguely.
Then, when I hear him speaking fluent Greek to local police, he admits he left Syria four years ago to live in Cyprus.
When his family's turn comes to cross the border, he bends to lift a tall, disabled teenage girl to carry her on his back.
A second disabled girl stumbles along behind holding her mother's hand.
Everyone, whatever their circumstances, has a reason to seek what they hope will be better life in Europe.
"Everyone's life is affected by the violence," a local UN official tells me when I ask about concern that wealthier Syrians will find their way to the front of the queue at the expense of the truly destitute, displaced in whatever shelter they manage to find, across Syria or in refugee camps in neighbouring nations.
"We take some of the most vulnerable who don't have the wherewithal to get to Europe." Ann Richard, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Migration, and Refugees explains in an interview in New York.
"The people who are streaming across Europe are largely middle class educated people seeking more opportunities for themselves, and for their children."
But they're also fleeing a devastating war that's taking a terrifying human toll.
And it's not just Syrians who want to escape life's hard limits in harsh lands.
On the railway lines in northern Greece, I met three generations of a large family of Afghans from the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
The youngest child shyly clutched her father's hand. Two young brothers struggled to carry their ailing grandmother in her wheelchair across the pebbly stretches of track.
"Isn't Mazar-i-Sharif one of the safest areas of Afghanistan?" I ask.
Their reply is the same refrain I heard from almost every Afghan I met on this perilous journey across Europe.
There's worry about a growing presence of so-called Islamic State and mounting attacks by Taliban fighters.
This week's startling Taliban advance on the provincial capital Kunduz in the northeast will only swell what is already a steady stream fleeing the area,
This massive displacement is both a journey to safety and a huge jobs fair.
"Where are you from?" I ask a tall African man who stands out in a crowd.
"Somalia," he replies, and then averts his gaze, saying: "Please don't film me."
Minutes later, a man standing behind him breaks away to admit that their group of 20 young men had travelled from Ghana, regarded as one of the most stable countries in West Africa.
"I was about to be arrested for a recent fire in a market which wasn't my fault," he explains. "I had to leave."
Everyone has a reason to leave. Everyone believes they have good reason to be given a chance at a better life - no matter where they come from.
"This uncontrolled movement creates opportunities for people who are not refugees to try to have their chance," admits the UNHCR's Guterres.
"Europe has to realise it will take a massive capacity to assist people when they arrive, to grant them their dignity, to verify their stories, to ensure that when people say they come from Syria, they haven't come from somewhere else."


The pound hit its lowest level against the dollar in almost seven years on concerns about a possible UK exit from the European Union.

At one stage it was down as much as 2.4% at $1.4058, its lowest level since March 2009, before later recovering.
The move follows London Mayor Boris Johnson joining the campaign to leave the EU after Prime Minister David Cameron set a June referendum date.
The steep fall adds to losses made by the pound over recent months.
At 16:00 GMT the pound was trading at $1.4135, down 1.4% from the previous close.
So far this year, fears of a British exit from the EU - dubbed 'Brexit' - have already pushed the pound down by more than 4% against the US dollar.
Analysts said that was likely to continue to direct sentiment until the vote.
"Today's weakness appears to reflect an increased probability of Brexit after political reaction to the new deal on EU membership was more split than the PM would have hoped," said Sam Hill, senior UK economist at RBC Capital Markets.
If the pound finishes at its lows for the day, it will be the biggest one-day loss since the Bank of England cut interest rates to 0.5% in 2009 and started its economic stimulus programme known as quantitative easing.
To an extent sterling's weedy day is down to markets "pricing in" the chance of Britain leaving the EU.
In the short term at least, many market participants believe a "Brexit" would lead to a weaker currency as worries about Britain's Â£229bn annual trade with the EU and the possibility of new trade barriers heave into view.
There are other factors at play.
The dollar has had a strong recent run against the euro and the Swiss franc as well as sterling.
That's down to the Federal Reserve's decision to raise interest rates in December and signal that it may do again during 2016.
Confidence in the US economy may not be boundless, but it is stronger than confidence in the eurozone.
At the same time the European Central Bank and the Bank of England have been sending out very doveish messages on interest rate rises.
Read more from Kamal here.
Against the euro, the pound is down 1% to â‚¬1.2802. Against the yen, the pound has slumped to 160.075 yen, its lowest since late 2013.
"I don't think investors are saying Brexit is good or bad, but it's the uncertainty," said Simon Smith, chief economist at FxPro.
The pound has already dropped more than 17% against the dollar in the last 18 months, partly due to the outlook for UK interest rates.
Whereas the US raised rates last year, Bank of England governor Mark Carney has ruled out such a rise for now.
As a result sterling is seen as less attractive for investors, continuing to fall from the $1.7165 peak seen on 1 July, 2014.
A weak pound helps exporters by making British goods cheaper on international markets.
It also makes the UK a better value destination for tourists.
However, a weaker pound makes imports more expensive, possibly hurting consumers and businesses that rely on foreign goods.
Meanwhile, ratings agency Moody's said: "The economic costs of a decision to leave the EU would outweigh the economic benefits."
Investment would suffer due to political uncertainty and exports would decline unless a new trade deal was struck with the EU, the credit agency said.
Moody's said it would consider downgrading the UK's credit rating - which affects how expensive it is for the government to borrow money - if the country voted to leave the EU.
However, another credit agency Fitch said Brexit would be "only moderately negative" if trade deals were secured.
David Cameron announced on Saturday that the EU referendum would be held on 23 June after he came back from Brussels with a renegotiation of Britain's EU membership.
The intervention by Boris Johnson is being seen as a significant blow to Mr Cameron's campaign to remain in the EU.
Several other senior Conservatives - including Justice Secretary Michael Gove - have already said they would join the Out campaign.


Allowing teachers to formally prepare pupils for unofficial post-primary tests means those who were doing it anyway are now off the "naughty step".

It brings to an end almost a decade of pretence and defiance by schools who had disregarded official guidance.
However, the fact that the exams will remain unregulated means parents are still "stuck in the middle" of one of Stormont's most testing controversies.
There remains little consensus among politicians, parents or teachers.
Ralph Magee, headmaster at Andrews Memorial Primary School in Comber, County Down, leads one of the schools that openly coached pupils for the unofficial transfer tests.
"From our perspective, we were on the naughty step," Mr Magee told the BBC's Good Morning Ulster programme.
"It was public that we were, because we were honest about what we were doing."
Last year, 93% of his P7 pupils completed the unregulated tests in a bid to secure a grammar school place.
The headmaster said the decision by Education Minister Peter Weir to reverse government policy removes the "perceived threat" to schools who had continued to coach pupils since the abolition of the 11-plus exam in 2008.
"What it doesn't change is the fact that testing is still unregulated and we still have two private companies essentially vying for business, and that I don't think is helpful," Mr Magee said.
"Parents in this position can't really be blamed, they're stuck in the middle."
After grammar schools decided to set their own tests, they split into two camps running totally different exams.
The Association of Quality Education and a group of Catholic grammar schools drew up separate entrance tests, now known as AQE and GL Assessment.
Pupils can choose to sit either one of the unofficial tests, both or none.
However, many teachers remain strongly opposed to academic selection at the age of 10 and 11.
They include Pat McGuckian, the principal of St Patrick's High School in Keady, County Armagh, one of the top non-selective schools in Northern Ireland.
She said the minister's decision was a retrograde step.
"It is moving us back from to the 19th Century," she told the BBC. "I expected this to happen but I feel quite depressed this morning.
"Northern Ireland need an education system fit for the 21st Century, not the 19th Century."
She claimed the decision was "not based on any robust educational research".
"All of the research suggests that a child's ability is not fixed at 11 and if you label children at 11 you create a system of haves and have not."


More than $520m (£360m) won by a lottery entrant in the US state of Florida is still unclaimed, officials say, despite massive media coverage.

The ticket is one of three, together worth $1.6bn, which were sold in Florida, Tennessee and California. So far only the winner in Tennessee has come forward.
Winners have 180 days to claim the prize after the 13 January draw.
Florida officials say it is not unusual for winners to be slow coming forward.
Three tickets win $1.6bn US lottery
"The winner [may want] to get their affairs in order, or seek an attorney," Florida Lottery spokeswoman Shelly Gerteisen told USA Today.
"It's a life changing amount of money, so [the winner] just may be seeking legal counsel or maybe waiting for media interest to die down."
Ms Gerteisen said the winner could even be meeting financial advisers before coming forward to claim the prize - and that it is not unprecedented for a jackpot winner to wait six weeks before claiming.
But she said it could also be possible that the winner or winners are not aware they have won the prize.
The winning numbers were 4-8-19-27-34 and Powerball 10.
Lottery rules stipulate that if a winner does not come forward within 60 days to get the prize money, they then have a further 120 days to claim the prize as an annuity which works out to be about $7.9m the first year with 30 annual payments to follow.
Is this really the biggest?
The previous jackpot record was a March 2012 drawing of the US lottery Mega Millions which had a $656m (£457m) prize shared by three winners.  Spain's El Gordo is the world's biggest lottery in financial terms - its prize in 2015 totalled €2.24bn ($2.43bn; £1.68 bn). But as there is no single jackpot - the same series are printed in multiple tickets - anyone who has the numbers wins a share of the prize. In Europe, the largest lottery prizes have been lower than in the US, but the jackpots are given as a lump sum rather than as an annuity and most countries do not tax the winnings. The biggest European prize was won in July 2011 by a ticketholder in the UK. That person took home a lump sum of $260m (£161.7m).
Where do Powerball profits go?
Back to the participating states. For example, New Jersey has sold more than $50m in tickets during the recent jackpot craze, and lottery officials said about $20m of that would return to the state. More than 15 states use the profits to fund education. California officials estimate the lottery money accounts for about 1% of the state's education budget. In Wisconsin, the profits go towards lowering property taxes.
How did the jackpot get so big?
No one had won the draw since 4 November. The prize is based on ticket sales so high jackpots usually create a snowball effect until a winning combination is picked. A new format introduced in October makes these massive jackpots more likely, meaning more records could be broken in future.


That was the first question an investor asked Martha Lane-Fox after she and her business partner pitched him their idea for a dot-com company in a plush office in central London in the late 1990s.
That idea was lastminute.com, a company that would go on to be valued at Â£768m ($1.1bn) when it floated on the London Stock Exchange just two years later - but the investor was too preoccupied with her biological clock to seize the opportunity.
"Couldn't he see beyond his prejudices about a 25-year-old woman to glimpse the inspiring, brave new world ahead?" Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho asked the audience during the BBC Richard Dimbleby Lecture at the Science Museum in London this evening.
In California, Silicon Valley has been gripped by a sexual discrimination case brought by Reddit boss Ellen Pao against her former employer, venture capitalist Kleiner Perkins.
Two separate class-action lawsuits have also been filed against Facebook and Twitter, alleging lack of promotion on the ground of gender.
All companies have denied the claims and on Friday a jury ruled in favour of Kleiner Perkins.
So it was topical for Lady Lane-Fox to use her lecture to call for a new national body in the UK to promote a more diverse and inclusive approach to technology for users and, crucially, its workforce.
"It's time to balance the world of dot-com," she said.
"I would call it Dot Everyone."
Because while it may be 17 years since the peer's excruciating first pitch, there is no getting away from the fact that the tech sector is still overwhelmingly male-dominated.
While just 14% of the UK industry is female, fewer than 10% of its investors are women, Lady Lane-Fox said.
"Yes, there are some impressive senior women in tech, women like Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook, Marissa Mayer running Yahoo - but you can count them on one hand and they're mostly based in the US," she said.
"I reckon it is not misleading to suggest that about 98% of the code that the internet and web technologies rely on was and continues to be programmed by men."
And this is apparent in the product, she believes, suggesting that Apple would not have omitted women's menstrual cycles, relied upon by millions of couples trying to conceive, from its much feted health tracker at its launch last month had women been involved in its design.
Both Apple and its arch-rival Google revealed last year that 70% of their global workforces were male.
But just 17% of Google's tech staff (20% of Apple's), and 21% of its leadership team (28% of Apple's), were women.
"Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity," admitted the company's Laszlo Bock in a blog post.
Amazon, Twitter, Yahoo and Facebook have also published data that indicates they are also predominately white and male.
Despite numerous high-profile campaigns to attract young women into engineering and technology, a recent survey by the Institution of Engineering and Technology found that 93% of parents in England who responded said they would not be keen for their daughters to pursue careers in these areas.
One of the huge recruitment problems facing the industry is that it does not have a reputation for being particularly female-friendly.
As a female technology reporter I know that I am usually in the minority at press events.
It does not bother me - and working for the BBC gives me an edge of authority - but it is not uncommon to be met with thinly veiled surprise that I actually know what I'm talking about.
I am often asked who is looking after my children if I am away at a conference.
My male colleagues are not.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January I soon ran out of conversation with the notorious "booth babes" - very beautiful, semi-clad women employed as brand ambassadors by some tech firms. It was clear that I was not their target audience and, besides, they did not know a great deal about the tech spec of their product.
That said, there were fewer of them at the event than there have been in previous years.
A member of the community website Reddit who said they were a woman who "works on computers" recounted a recent phone interview in which the male interviewer advised her that no "accommodations" could be made for her.
"I'm thinking I filled out the portion where they ask if you have any disabilities incorrectly or something, so I reply, 'Well, I don't have any disabilities, so that's not a problem'," she wrote.
"'No, it's not that. It's just that everyone else in the division are men,' " was the response.
The poster says that she is still looking for work.
Reddit boss Ellen Pao thrust sexism in Silicon Valley into the spotlight when she claimed in her high-profile court case that she was sexually discriminated against during her time as an employee at venture capitalist Kleiner Perkins.
She was repeatedly overlooked for promotion on account of her gender and then fired after she complained, she said.
Kleiner Perkins said its decisions were based on her performance.
Ms Pao lost her case - but that does not excuse the industry from all allegations of sexism.
"The environment definitely is biased against women in technology, and venture capital is even worse," said Erin Malone, an alternate juror who heard all the evidence in the case but was not involved in the verdict.
"But I didn't find her as credible as she should have been."
"While today's outcome is a disappointment, I take consolation in knowing that people really listened," Ellen Pao tweeted after the jury's verdict.
"Hopefully my case will inspire the venture capital industry to level the playing field for everyone, including women and minorities."
The industry will now have to wait and see whether the publicity about Ms Pao's case leads to an increase in discrimination claims, or whether the verdict acts as a deterrent.
Computer scientist Sue Black, who has founded networks for women in computer science, said that she was pleased to see women taking legal action in the face of unfair treatment in the technology sector.
"We hear more and more women's voices about what's been happening to them - and we have more men agreeing it's a problem," she said.
"I have felt in the last two or three years that there is a groundswell around this issue.
"Women are speaking out more publicly, more confidently, and there are more networks of people backing them up."
Of course, diversity is an issue that reaches far beyond gender.
In an authored piece for the Washington Post, openly gay Apple chief executive Tim Cook attacked US legislation that could condone homophobic discrimination on religious grounds.
"Discrimination isn't something that's easy to oppose," he wrote.
"It doesn't always stare you in the face. It moves in the shadows.
"And sometimes it shrouds itself within the very laws meant to protect us."


China has introduced new restrictions in the far western region of Xinjiang in what it describes as a campaign against Islamist extremism.

The measures include prohibiting "abnormally" long beards, the wearing of veils in public places and refusing to watch state television.
Xinjiang is the homeland of the Uighurs, a traditionally Muslim group who say they face discrimination.
Recent years have seen bloody clashes in the region.
The Chinese government blames the violence on Islamist militants and separatists.
But rights groups say the unrest is more a reaction to repressive policies, and argue that the new measures may end up pushing some Uighurs into extremism.
Though similar restrictions have already been in place in Xinjiang, they become legally sanctioned as of this weekend. Reuters news agency reports that the new laws also ban:
The rules also state that workers in public spaces, such as stations and airports, are now required to "dissuade" those who fully cover their bodies, including veiling their faces, from entering, and to report them to the police.
The restrictions were approved by Xinjiang lawmakers and published on the region's official news website.
Chinese authorities had previously imposed other measures, including restrictions on granting passports to Uighurs.
Why is there tension between China and the Uighurs?


The RMT union, which is embroiled in a bitter dispute with Southern Railway, says it is to make an official complaint to Twitter.

It follows a tweet by the rail firm encouraging its passengers to post messages to the union saying how they feel about on-going strike action.
Southern also took out newspaper adverts headlined Let's Strike Back and including the RMT's twitter details.
Most people who responded criticised the company rather than the union.
Southern said on Monday its aim had been "to get the debate going".
The RMT said it believed the advert amounted to "targeted harassment", which contravened Twitter's regulations.
On Monday Southern tweeted: "Time to get back on track. Tweet @RMTunion & tell them how rail strikes make you feel."
Dozens of passengers immediately responded, including Marianne Powell who tweeted: "You brought this on yourselves. We, your customers are suffering."
Another passenger, Simon Cox, posted: "I dislike unions but I dislike incompetent management more."
Commenting on Southern's message, Another Angry Woman tweeted: "Strongly recommend you read this thread, @SouthernRailUK bc the problems are on you."
The next planned strike announced by the RMT is between 00:01 BST Tuesday 11 October and 23:59 BST Thursday 13 October.
Months of industrial action by the RMT and high levels of staff sickness have hit Southern's services, which link London with Surrey, Sussex, Kent and Hampshire.
Last month the RMT announced 14 days of strike action in the long-running dispute over the role of conductors on trains.
On Monday Southern offered conductors a lump sum of Â£2,000 in a bid to bring industrial action to an end.


Sheffield Wednesday cruised past League Two Mansfield Town to reach the second round of the League Cup.

The impressive Lucas Joao gave the hosts an early lead with a good header from Alex Lopez's free-kick before Jose Semedo headed home a first goal since October 2011.
Ryan Tafazolli bundled in for the Stags just before the interval.
Kieran Lee slotted home after the restart and debutant Modou Sougou finished well from Jeremy Helan's pass.


Newport County manager Graham Westley wants his side in the promotion race by Christmas, despite them currently propping up League Two.

Since Westley, 48, took charge in October the Exiles' form has improved.
Newport are eight points off the play-off places, but Westley has issued his players with an ambitious challenge.
"We can look at sixth place and think two or three weeks down the line it's realistic we can put ourselves in contention," said Westley.
"That will be a nice starting point. If we can get to Christmas time and we are in the mix, that's a nice point to be at.
"I've won promotion out of this league from 18th in January, so we all know what's possible."
The Exiles are unbeaten in their last six games, a sequence that has seen them beat AFC Wimbledon in the Checkatrade Trophy and progress to the second round of the FA Cup after a replay against Alfreton.
In the league there has been a draw with Barnet, victory over Accrington Stanley and an impressive three points taken from Carlisle, who were unbeaten at the time.
But, with his sights set so high and a trip to eighth-placed Notts County coming on Saturday, Westley insists keeping the current run going will not be enough to satisfy him.
"We want to improve what we are doing, that's the key," he added.
"If you get into the frame of mind where you want to keep things going, you've lost the plot and are on the road backwards. The route forward has to be improvement.
"We've got a lot of work to do, we don't underestimate it, right now we are producing decent form, but we have to produce that form on a sustained basis if we are going to mount any sort of campaign."


The Welsh Tory leader has said David Cameron's EU deal was not "robust" enough for him to vote for the UK to remain a member in June's referendum.

On Monday, Andrew RT Davies revealed he planned to vote to leave the EU.
Speaking on Tuesday, Mr Davies said there were "very good arguments to stay in" but "stronger arguments" to leave.
First Minister Carwyn Jones accused him of asking Welsh farmers receiving Â£200m of EU subsidies each year to "jump off the edge of a cliff".
Mr Davies told reporters: "I've always said that my instinct has to be out of the European Union as currently constructed.
"I believe that the prime minister negotiated very hard for the United Kingdom and ultimately when he was around the table with the other 27 leaders, obviously he had to make the call as to how he felt the deal was going.
"For me it wasn't the robust deal that I think we should have had.
"I do believe that the deal could have gone further in securing concessions, especially cementing the concessions so that they weren't time limited.
"So on balance - and there are very good arguments to stay in - but I believe there are stronger arguments to come out of the European Union as currently constructed and that's why I stuck to my guns and stuck to my principles and announced yesterday."
He said he would not campaign in the referendum until after the assembly election on 5 May but said it would not be right to go into the election as a party leader without declaring his position.
Later, during First Minister's Questions, Mr Jones told AMs Welsh farming received "more than  Â£200m worth of direct subsidy every year" from the EU.
He said: "Where is that money going to come from in the future?
"It cannot come from Welsh government, it's too much money for us to be able to afford.
"The reality is that Welsh farmers know where they stand at the moment, and they will resist being invited to jump off the edge of a cliff in the hope there's a net on the other side, as they have been invited to do by the leader of the opposition."
On Monday, the prime minister told MPs that leaving the EU would mean poorer parts of Wales would lose out on European grants that had "made a big difference".


A Holyrood committee is seeking opinions on a new bill which would introduce tougher restrictions on air weapons in Scotland.

The Air Weapons and Licensing (Scotland) Bill would require anyone who owns an airgun to have a licence.
The bill will also change the licensing of alcohol, taxis, lap dancing clubs and scrap metal dealerships.
MSPs on the Local Government and Regeneration Committee have launched a call for evidence.
Committee Convener Kevin Stewart said the committee was seeking the views of all of those with an interest in the bill.
Its call for evidence is open until 29 September. The committee will then begin to hear oral evidence later in the year.
Mr Stewart said: "We are aware there is considerable interest from both sides of the debate on the licensing of air weapons as well as the other aspects of this bill. We are seeking information and views to inform our work in scrutinising these proposals.
"This bill will affect every person in Scotland. It is a broad bill that seeks to amend the existing licensing arrangements in many areas, not least alcohol, taxis and private hire cars and public entertainment venues.
"Our committee wants to hear how these changes will improve lives. We also want to understand what these changes will mean in practice for you as an individual, or a business."
There are an estimated 500,000 air weapons in Scotland.
The new bill was introduced in May with a view to "strengthen and improve aspects of locally led alcohol and civic government licensing in order to preserve public order and safety, reduce crime, and to advance public health."
The proposals came after a long-running campaign by the Scottish government to crack down on the misuse of airguns.
It followed the death of two-year-old Andrew Morton, who was shot in the head with an airgun in Glasgow in 2005.
Under the bill, anyone wanting to own an air gun would need to demonstrate they had a legitimate reason for doing so.
These reasons may include pest control, sporting target shooting, or being a collector.
The committee said it was keen to get information on all aspects of the bill including:
Air Weapons
Taxi and Private Hire Vehicles
The Scottish government carried out a consultation on setting up a licensing system for air weapons in 2012.
An overwhelming majority - 87% - of those who responded to the consultation opposed the plan, with some describing it as "draconian" and "heavy-handed".
But the proposals were welcomed by police and victim groups.


A football fan who walked to Wembley wearing his swimming trunks has broken his £50,000 fundraising target.

Everton supporter Michael Cullen, 50, completed the 11-day challenge ahead of his team's FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United on Saturday.
He has now raised more than £53,000 for the Woodlands Hospice in Liverpool, having previously raised £30,000 after swimming the English Channel.
Everton lost the game 2-1, with United scoring a late injury time winner.
Mr Cullen said: "I'm very tired, but elated. On the last day I was very happy all the way and it was great to arrive there.
"I'm back at work tomorrow and I'm actually looking forward to getting back to normality."
Carole Riley, of Woodlands Hospice, said: "We are very proud and appreciative of Michael's efforts.
"Not only has he generated a massive amount of money but he has raised the awareness and profile of Woodlands Hospice and the need for hospice services to such a wide audience.
"We would like to give a massive big and sincere thank you to Speedo Mick and all those who have supported him."


Bank of England governor Mark Carney will call for longer prison sentences for bankers who break the law in an attack on ethics in the City later.

In his Mansion House speech Mr Carney will say individuals acted with a "culture of impunity".
But he will warn: "The age of irresponsibility is over."
Meanwhile, Chancellor George Osborne will say he plans to bind future governments to maintaining a budget surplus when the economy is growing.
Mr Osborne will give the Mansion House audience more details of the proposal he first announced in January.
Mr Carney will say markets responsible for trillions of pounds of global trade were stained by excess, collusion and abuse and "ethical drift" had taken hold.
"Criminal sanctions should be updated, with market abuse rules similarly extended and maximum prison terms lengthened," he will add.
He will say the Bank of England under his predecessor, Lord King, failed in the run-up to the financial crisis because of its arcane and ambiguous rules and its inability to identify risks in the banking system. It failed to effectively control markets where abuse was rife.
"Though markets can be powerful drivers of prosperity, markets can go wrong," according to Mr Carney.
"Left unattended, they are prone to instability, excess and abuse.
"Personal accountability was lacking, with a culture of impunity developing.
"All these factors contributed to an ethical drift. Unethical behaviour went unchecked, proliferated and eventually became the norm."
Mr Osborne, who is also speaking at the Mansion House, will say: "The public rightly asks: 'Why is it after so many scandals so few individuals have faced punishment in the courts?'
"Individuals who fraudulently manipulate markets and commit financial crime should be treated like the criminals they are - and they will be."
The chancellor and the governor will speak as the Fair and Effective Markets Review is published - a report by the Bank, the Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority on strengthening controls in financial markets.
The report recommends a crackdown on rogue traders and a new Market Standards Board that would bring the "age of irresponsibility" to an end.
The review says that criminal sanctions for market abuse should be extended to traders in markets such as foreign exchange, one of the markets hit hardest by manipulation by banks.
It also says that maximum sentences for wrongdoing should be lengthened from seven years to 10.
The report argues that the Senior Managers' Regime of controls already agreed for banks should be extended to more people in financial services, including traders and brokers.
If agreed, that would mean that tens of thousands of people in financial services would be covered by the regulations which can punish wrongdoing with fines.
The Bank said it would immediately agree to be covered by the regime, including the Governor himself.
Mr Carney has reserved some of his harshest criticisms for the Bank of England itself and how it operated ahead of the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008.
"In the run up to the crisis, the Bank's contribution to the effectiveness of markets fell short," the Governor will say.
"Once under pressure, the Bank could not support the banking system.
"The Bank neither identified the scale of risks in the system nor spotted gaps in the regulatory architecture.
"[And] the Bank's arcane governance blurred the Bank's accountability and, by extension, weakened the social licence of markets."
The Bank of England's governance had now been reformed and more would be done to strengthen the way it operated, according to Mr Carney.


The Scottish government has announced funding to help towards the cost of building a railway station near Inverness Airport.

It has committed Â£3.34m to the planned stop at Dalcross, east of Inverness.
In a separate announcement, the government has said a new group is to co-ordinate efforts to improve services on the Highlands' Far North Line.
It connects Inverness to Wick and Thurso. There has been criticism of the performance of services on line.
A station at Dalcross close to the airport has been a long standing aspiration of Hitrans, which promotes improvements to public transport in the Highlands.
It has proposed constructing the station on the Inverness to Aberdeen line.
Earlier this year, Hitrans said it could be open in 2018, if planning permission and funding are secured, and constructed at an estimated cost of Â£2m.
The group said it could become the second busiest station in the Highlands after Inverness.
As well as people travelling to the airport, the group believes the station would be used by residents of a new village being built at Tornagrain.
Announcing the government's financial support for the project, Transport Minister Humza Yousaf said: "This substantial funding package brings a station at Dalcross a step closer to reality is a welcome boost to passengers and communities along the Inverness to Aberdeen corridor.
"The track infrastructure required to support the new station is already being delivered through the Aberdeen to Inverness Improvements project.
"The funding announced today will support the delivery of the actual station facility itself."
There have been concerns from rail experts and politicians about the quality of services on the Far North Line.
But ScotRail Alliance, which involves Abellio ScotRail and Network Rail and operates the line, said it has been investing in the route.
The Far North Line Review Group is being set up by the Scottish government to co-ordinate activities and look at opportunities to improve performance on the line.
It was announced by Cabinet Secretary Fergus Ewing at Hitrans' annual rail stakeholder conference in Inverness.
He said: "The Scottish government is determined to improve overall performance on our longest rural railway line and it is imperative we look at options to achieve that.
"It is essential we make the most of this important asset for passengers, for sustainable freight transport, and for the communities and businesses along the whole route."


Standard Chartered is set to spend about $20m (Â£15.4m) to turn its Frankfurt office into a European base due to Brexit.

The bank plans to create a subsidiary at its German branch to maintain access to the European market after Britain withdraws from the European Union.
German's strong credit rating informed the bank's location choice, said chief executive Bill Winters.
Standard Chartered has about 100 staff in Frankfurt currently.
The bank, which employs more than 86,000 globally, said in May it was in talks with German regulators about the move.
The firm has about 1,700 staff in London, where it opened an office in 1853.
Standard Chartered is the latest financial institution to discuss its planning for Brexit.
Barclays and JP Morgan are looking at expanding Dublin operations and RBS is looking at Amsterdam.
Deutsche Bank warned in April that it might move up to 4,000 jobs - or half of its UK workforce - out of the UK.
HSBC has said it could move 1,000 jobs to Paris, while UBS has said about 1,000 of its 5,000 London jobs could be hit by Brexit.


A 30-yard thunderbolt from Finland international Daniel O'Shaughnessy earned Cheltenham an unlikely draw at Mansfield.

Mitch Rose had put the Stags ahead just four minutes into the second half.
Matt Green wriggled between Easah Suliman and Dan Parslow on the left before setting up Rose from 12 yards with a square pass that he stroked home low first time.
That looked likely to be enough as home goalkeeper Scott Shearer had little to do until he picked O'Shaughnessy's stunner out of his net.
A tight first half saw the game fail to catch alight.
But the Robins wasted the best chance after 22 minutes as Billy Waters crossed from the right and picked out an unmarked Harry Pell six yards from goal.
However, Shearer saved his defenders' blushes with a great save low to his left.
Green almost broke through in the 32nd minute only to see Russell Griffiths get down well to his right to turn away his low drive from 20 yards after winning a tussle for the ball.
Cheltenham striker Danny Wright missed a couple of chances to win it in stoppage time as Mansfield heads dropped.
Report supplied by the Press Association.
Match ends, Mansfield Town 1, Cheltenham Town 1.
Second Half ends, Mansfield Town 1, Cheltenham Town 1.
Attempt missed. Matt Green (Mansfield Town) right footed shot from outside the box is just a bit too high.
Matt Green (Mansfield Town) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Harry Pell (Cheltenham Town).
Attempt missed. Daniel Wright (Cheltenham Town) right footed shot from the centre of the box is close, but misses to the right.
Foul by Ashley Hemmings (Mansfield Town).
Daniel O'Shaughnessy (Cheltenham Town) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Attempt missed. Daniel Wright (Cheltenham Town) header from the left side of the six yard box is close, but misses the top left corner.
Attempt missed. Jack Barthram (Cheltenham Town) right footed shot from outside the box misses to the left.
Foul by Matt Green (Mansfield Town).
Daniel O'Shaughnessy (Cheltenham Town) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Delay in match Rhys Bennett (Mansfield Town) because of an injury.
Substitution, Mansfield Town. Darius Henderson replaces Kevan Hurst.
Chris Clements (Mansfield Town) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Foul by Chris Clements (Mansfield Town).
Harry Pell (Cheltenham Town) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Matt Green (Mansfield Town).
Danny Parslow (Cheltenham Town) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Mitch Rose (Mansfield Town) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Jack Barthram (Cheltenham Town).
Lee Collins (Mansfield Town) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Daniel Wright (Cheltenham Town).
Substitution, Cheltenham Town. James Rowe replaces Danny Whitehead.
Goal!  Mansfield Town 1, Cheltenham Town 1. Daniel O'Shaughnessy (Cheltenham Town) left footed shot from outside the box to the top left corner. Assisted by James Rowe.
Chris Clements (Mansfield Town) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Harry Pell (Cheltenham Town).
Attempt blocked. Ashley Hemmings (Mansfield Town) right footed shot from the centre of the box is blocked.
Corner,  Mansfield Town. Conceded by Daniel O'Shaughnessy.
Foul by Matt Green (Mansfield Town).
Daniel O'Shaughnessy (Cheltenham Town) wins a free kick on the right wing.
Attempt saved. Matt Green (Mansfield Town) left footed shot from the centre of the box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Substitution, Mansfield Town. Ashley Hemmings replaces Danny Rose.
(Mansfield Town) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Dan Holman (Cheltenham Town).
Hand ball by Daniel Wright (Cheltenham Town).
Foul by Lee Collins (Mansfield Town).
Dan Holman (Cheltenham Town) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Mitch Rose (Mansfield Town) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Foul by Matt Green (Mansfield Town).