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37,955,826 | In My Mother and Other Strangers, the peace of a small Tyrone parish is disturbed when an American airbase opens nearby.
The five-part series is set in the forties and was written by well-known musician and screenwriter Barry Devlin.
"It's like a big spaceship floating into this rural place," he said.
"It's set in a parish called Moybeg, which might or might not be something to do with a real parish called Ardboe.
"In 1942 this enormous airbase was dropped right into the middle of it, which let all of these exotic creatures with ray-bans and proper uniforms out into the parish."
The series stars Hattie Morahan as Rose Coyne and Owen McDonnell as her husband Michael.
However, Hattie falls in love with the American Captain Ronald Dreyfuss, played by Aaron Staton, best known for his role as Ken Cosgrove in Mad Men.
According to Staton, playing Dreyfuss meant learning more about his own grandfather, who fought in the battle of the Bulge in 1944.
"I've always been very proud of his service and it made me think about my grandfather although his experience was probably very different," he said.
"But it certainly made me wonder about what he saw.
"This actually happened, these bases in Northern Ireland.
"You've got these kids who've left home to possibly go off and die, and they're coming and disturbing what was a peaceful community.
"They feel at times entitled to a bit of fun as part of their service, but it's disrupting what would have been a quiet parish.
"It's my character's position to try to help these two worlds understand one another."
The character Rose is English, although she has lived in Moybeg for nearly two decades since marrying Michael.
According to Barry Devlin, that means she also has to confront different attitudes to the war and the Americans from some of the other villagers.
"There's a certain amount of resistance to the Americans coming in," he said.
"Some of that is just the kind of envy young men who don't have much money feel for young men who do.
"That's a kind of a volatile and potent mix."
Devlin has previous written episodes of hit series like The Darling Buds of May and Ballykissangel.
Did he have to change elements of Northern Irish life for a UK audience?
"It is a universal story but it's also very unique and is about a particular place," he said.
"I'm hoping that people will become part of Moybeg rather than Moybeg trying to simplify itself.
"I've slightly modified the language, but the quirks and uniqueness of a parish is something I've celebrated."
The BBC Northern Ireland production was filmed in early 2016, in locations around Strangford Lough.
For Aaron Staton it meant some time to enjoy Northern Ireland with his family when he was not working.
"I think it's maybe the most beautiful place that we've ever seen," he said.
"We went up to the Giant's Causeway and we drove down the coast.
"The people were refreshingly sweet and direct too."
'My Mother and Other Strangers' begins on Sunday 13 November at 21:00 GMT on BBC One | It is a drama about what happens when two very different worlds collide in wartime. |
36,771,022 | The firm had said it was halting operations in Venezuela as it was unable to obtain raw materials.
But the labour minister said on Monday that the factory closure was illegal and it had re-opened "in the hands of the workers".
Kimberly-Clark, which makes hygiene products including tissues and nappies, said it had acted appropriately.
Over the weekend it became the latest multinational to close or scale back operations in the country, citing strict currency controls, a lack of raw materials and soaring inflation.
General Mills, Procter & Gamble and other corporations have reduced operations in Venezuela as the country is gripped by economic crisis and widespread shortages of basic household goods.
What has gone wrong in Venezuela?
Labour Minister Oswaldo Vera, from the ruling Socialist Party (PSUV), visited the factory in Maracay and said it was illegal.
Almost 1,000 workers had asked him to re-start production, he said.
Mr Vera said: "Kimberly-Clark will continue producing, now in the hands of the workers.
"We've just turned on the first engine."
The Texas-based company said in a statement: "If the Venezuelan government takes control of Kimberly-Clark facilities and operations, it will be responsible for the well-being of the workers and the physical asset, equipment and machinery in the facilities going forward."
Venezuelans cross in to Colombia to buy food
There are daily protests against shortages at the moment in Venezuela.
A growing opposition blames President Nicolas Maduro of wrecking the oil-rich economy and is seeking a referendum to remove him.
Mr Maduro has previously threatened to jail the owners of factories that have stopped production.
A private supermarket chain and an electronic goods shop have been seized in recent years after Mr Maduro accused many businessmen of conducting an economic war in collusion with the country's opposition. | The government of Venezuela has said it has seized a factory owned by the US firm Kimberly-Clark. |
39,360,012 | Media playback is not supported on this device
After reaching the semi-finals at their first major international tournament for 58 years, Wales have won once in four World Cup qualifying games since.
Chris Coleman's side are third in Group D and face leaders the Republic of Ireland in Dublin on Friday.
"There is a long way to go, but of course, the next two games are vitally important," Davies said.
He continued: "There has been no hangover from the Euros. It was always going to be hard to match our efforts from the summer, but as a group we are determined to give it every effort and to push as far as we can.
"It is difficult to say what exactly has been going on in this group, we've put our best foot forward in every game and hopefully our luck will be in going forward and we can pick up a few wins."
After beating Moldova 4-0 in their first qualifier in September of 2016, Wales have gone on to draw against Austria, Georgia and Serbia.
"We are not surprised Ireland are top, they are a good team and it is a good group, any one of us could have been leading at this stage," Davies added.
"We will do what we usually do. We've been in games of massive magnitude, we've been there before." | Wales have not experienced a "hangover" in form since their Euro 2016 success, according to defender Ben Davies. |
36,934,384 | The 31-year-old won two caps between 2008 and 2009 and has played in all three divisions of the English Football League, as well as the Chinese Super League and Cypriot top flight.
He was on the scoresheet when AEL Limassol beat Marseille 3-0 in a Europa League tie in 2012.
He has previously played for Dagenham & Redbridge, Charlton Athletic and Shanghai Dongya.
Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page. | Sutton United have signed former Ghana striker Chris Dickson. |
35,636,122 | Lesley Bothwell, from Letham in Fife, had been accused of seizing the boy by the body, dragging him from under a table and forcing him onto a chair.
The incident was alleged to have happened at the Barnton Nursery in Queensferry Road on 2 July last year.
Ms Bothwell, 55, was found not guilty at Edinburgh Sheriff Court. | The owner of an Edinburgh children's nursery has been cleared of assaulting a four-year old boy while he was in her care. |
38,990,505 | The A3055 Undercliff Drive suffered landslips in February 2014 after heavy rain, creating a three-mile detour.
Isle of Wight Council leader Dave Stewart said: "The island needs to have this road open."
Works include drilling the ground to see if it would allow water build up to escape.
Mr Stewart, who has approved the feasibility study, said: "The situation cannot continue - the road needs to be back in operation.
"We have over 7,000 houses and business spread along the length of the undercliff from Ventnor to Niton but the economic damage of the closure has spread well beyond these areas with businesses as far away as the West Wight also noticing a drop in trade and tourism following the closure."
It is understood the authority will be working with Bournemouth University and an environmental consultant on the exploration works.
The landslide between Niton and St Lawrence, which happened during work to repair the road, caused eight homes to be evacuated.
In 2016 a temporary route to provide full access for local residents was put in. | A geological study of a landslip which caused an Isle of Wight road to collapse three years ago has been given the go ahead. |
31,484,119 | But friends of introverts, especially if they are extroverts, can find it difficult to understand the need for this "me time" which is often spent alone or at home.
So designer Rebecca Evie Lynch has come up with a new range of emojis to help introverts communicate their feelings.
Called "introjis", the images include actions such as reading and gaming.
They also describe some social activities or situations, such as a person feeling anxious in a group or feeling out of sync with other people.
Rebecca has told Co Create that she first came up with the idea after a relationship ended.
"My boyfriend of three years broke up with me, citing the need for more time alone," she said.
"I was surprised, as I've always considered myself an introvert, too, but I realized that my enthusiasm about being in a relationship sometimes overshadows my ability to read others' signals."
Some of the emojis are also designed to be used by extroverts who want to talk with an introverted person.
"Introverts tend to find the company of others draining," explained Rebecca.
The system is designed so that the "activity" emojis - which are green and blue in colour - can be combined with a "no company" one - coloured red and yellow.
Rebecca says this will hopefully make it a bit easier to answer the question "Can I come and be social with you now?"
Some people can mistake introversion for signs of mental health problems, such as depression.
"While introversion and depression are entirely different things—introversion is decidedly not a disorder—the need to be alone can often be mistaken for depression by others. Having these complex, distinctive emotional states represented in the toolkit can hopefully help clarify the difference," Lynch said.
The designer is hoping to make her emojis into a free app and is currently working through prototypes on her Facebook page, where she is also asking for people to submit ideas.
Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter, BBCNewsbeat on Instagram and Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube | It's important for introverts to have time to themselves to unwind and recharge. |
38,829,855 | Captain Eoin Morgan criticised the umpiring in England's defeat in the second T20 after Joe Root was given out lbw in the last over of the match despite an inside edge.
Shamshuddin will act as third umpire in Bangalore, switching with Nitin Menon.
The three-match series is level at 1-1, with Wednesday's match the decider. | Umpire Chettithody Shamshuddin has voluntarily withdrawn from on-field duties in England's third Twenty20 international against India. |
35,389,264 | The Dane opened the scoring early on from Zakarya Bergdich's cut back before Chris Burke levelled for the home side.
Angolan Igor Vetokele then finished off a well-worked counter-attack to put Jose Riga's side ahead at half-time.
Makienok headed in to make it 3-1, then Jonson Clarke-Harris blazed over a Millers penalty before Ademola Lookman rounded off victory in added time.
Media playback is not supported on this device
The away side had not won a Championship game since beating Birmingham City on 21 November but took the lead after just four minutes when Bergdich cut the ball back for Makienok to smash in.
They did not stay in front long as Rotherham's Burke scored his first goal for the club on his home debut, receiving Danny Ward's pass before slotting under goalkeeper Stephen Henderson.
After Grant Ward had shot wide for the Millers, Johann Berg Gudmundsson crossed for Vetokele, who turned in from close range after a rapid counter-attack.
Henderson then produced a diving save to keep out Danny Ward's left footed strike before Makienok met Gudmundssen's pinpoint delivery to give Charlton a two-goal lead.
Rotherham had a chance to get back into the game when Clarke-Harris was brought down by Jorge Teixeira, but the striker smashed his attempt over.
Substitute Lookman slid in a fourth to complete a hat-trick of Gudmundssen assists.
It gave Riga his first win first since rejoining on 14 January, leaving the Addicks 23rd, just a point behind 21st-placed Rotherham.
Match ends, Rotherham United 1, Charlton Athletic 4.
Second Half ends, Rotherham United 1, Charlton Athletic 4.
Goal! Rotherham United 1, Charlton Athletic 4. Ademola Lookman (Charlton Athletic) right footed shot from the centre of the box to the bottom left corner. Assisted by Johann Berg Gudmundsson with a through ball.
Attempt missed. Luciano Becchio (Rotherham United) header from the centre of the box misses to the right. Assisted by Andrew Shinnie with a cross.
Offside, Rotherham United. Kirk Broadfoot tries a through ball, but Luciano Becchio is caught offside.
Substitution, Charlton Athletic. Ademola Lookman replaces Igor Vetokele.
Delay over. They are ready to continue.
Delay in match Johann Berg Gudmundsson (Charlton Athletic) because of an injury.
Attempt missed. Danny Ward (Rotherham United) header from the centre of the box is close, but misses to the left. Assisted by Joe Mattock with a cross.
Attempt saved. Luciano Becchio (Rotherham United) header from the centre of the box is saved in the bottom left corner. Assisted by Andrew Shinnie with a cross.
Corner, Rotherham United. Conceded by Stephen Henderson.
Corner, Rotherham United. Conceded by Chris Solly.
Attempt blocked. Jonson Clarke-Harris (Rotherham United) left footed shot from outside the box is blocked. Assisted by Kirk Broadfoot.
Attempt missed. Richard Smallwood (Rotherham United) right footed shot from outside the box is high and wide to the right. Assisted by Joe Mattock.
Attempt missed. Jonson Clarke-Harris (Rotherham United) header from the centre of the box is close, but misses to the left. Assisted by Richard Smallwood with a cross following a corner.
Corner, Rotherham United. Conceded by Chris Solly.
Attempt blocked. Jonson Clarke-Harris (Rotherham United) left footed shot from the left side of the box is blocked. Assisted by Grant Ward.
Kirk Broadfoot (Rotherham United) wins a free kick on the left wing.
Foul by Reza Ghoochannejhad (Charlton Athletic).
Hand ball by Jonson Clarke-Harris (Rotherham United).
Attempt missed. Jonson Clarke-Harris (Rotherham United) left footed shot from outside the box is close, but misses to the right. Assisted by Andrew Shinnie.
Foul by Luciano Becchio (Rotherham United).
Jordan Cousins (Charlton Athletic) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Igor Vetokele (Charlton Athletic) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Grant Ward (Rotherham United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Igor Vetokele (Charlton Athletic).
Substitution, Charlton Athletic. Reza Ghoochannejhad replaces Simon Makienok.
Penalty missed! Bad penalty by Jonson Clarke-Harris (Rotherham United) left footed shot is too high. Jonson Clarke-Harris should be disappointed.
Penalty Rotherham United. Jonson Clarke-Harris draws a foul in the penalty area.
Penalty conceded by Jorge Teixeira (Charlton Athletic) after a foul in the penalty area.
Joe Mattock (Rotherham United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Simon Makienok (Charlton Athletic).
Goal! Rotherham United 1, Charlton Athletic 3. Simon Makienok (Charlton Athletic) header from the centre of the box to the top left corner. Assisted by Johann Berg Gudmundsson with a cross following a corner.
Corner, Charlton Athletic. Conceded by Lee Camp.
Attempt saved. Johnnie Jackson (Charlton Athletic) left footed shot from outside the box is saved in the top left corner.
Foul by Farrend Rawson (Rotherham United).
Igor Vetokele (Charlton Athletic) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Jonson Clarke-Harris (Rotherham United).
Zakarya Bergdich (Charlton Athletic) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Attempt missed. Grant Ward (Rotherham United) right footed shot from outside the box is high and wide to the right. Assisted by Andrew Shinnie. | Simon Makienok scored twice to help Charlton Athletic end their 11-game winless run by beating Rotherham. |
38,872,802 | A male driver and female passenger died after the yellow Volkswagen Beetle they were travelling in crashed on the B4314 near Narberth at about 01:25 GMT on Sunday.
A male passenger was taken to Glangwili hospital in Carmarthen, where he is in a serious but stable condition.
Dyfed-Powys Police is investigating and urged witnesses to contact 101.
The car crashed on the junction for Llanmill-Lampeter Velfrey and the road between Narberth and Princes Gate.
The road, which was was closed afterwards, was reopened by about 07:20.
Officers said next of kin had been informed and were being supported by specialist officers. | Two people have been killed in a single-car collision in Pembrokeshire in the early hours of the morning. |
36,142,600 | The victim was found with stab wounds at a property in Hailey Avenue, Chipping Norton, on Monday.
She suffered serious injuries and was taken to hospital where she remains in a stable condition, Thames Valley Police said.
A 44-year-old man arrested on suspicion of GBH on Monday has been re-arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.
Updates on this story and more from Oxfordshire
The force is appealing for witnesses to what it believes is an "isolated incident".
Hailey Avenue was closed while house-to-house enquiries took place but has since reopened. | A man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a woman in her 70s was stabbed. |
39,043,528 | Europe's elite men and women are set to compete together for the first time.
Glasgow and Berlin are jointly hosting the event, which will be staged every four years, from August 2-12.
It will also combine the existing European Championships of athletics, aquatics, cycling, gymnastics, rowing and triathlon.
The European Golf Team Championships is the only new event in 2018 and will include a men's and women's event along with a mixed competition.
While Berlin will host the European Athletics Championships, the aquatics, cycling, gymnastics, rowing and triathlon competitions will be in Glasgow.
The golf will be held 43 miles from the city in Perth and Kinross on the famous resort's PGA Centenary course.
The PGA Centenary is the newest of Gleneagles' three outstanding courses and hosted the Ryder Cup in 2014.
Glasgow City Council leader Frank McAveety said: "The European Championships will be a new highlight on the global sporting calendar, set to be played out in front of a potential television audience of up to one billion people."
Gleneagles managing director Bernard Murphy said the course was "proud to be associated with what will be a ground-breaking moment in sporting history". | Gleneagles is to host the first European Golf Team Championships as part of the new multi-sport European Championships in 2018. |
37,641,634 | Alex Farmer volunteered at a veterinary practice alongside her day job before starting the Whitby Wildlife Sanctuary.
The herring gull is the most common bird the sanctuary rescues, with vets often treating shot or poisoned birds.
Ms Farmer will receive her Animal Action Award from broadcaster Bill Oddie at the House of Lords on Tuesday.
The sanctuary cares for more than 300 animals and receives food donations from Whitby Fish Market and local shops.
The International Fund for Wildlife Rescue said the gull was a "much-maligned species which is often the target of cruelty".
Ms Farmer, 27, said: "The end goal for me is always to have a successful rehabilitation and release back into the wild.
"People often say don't you get sad to see them go when it's time for release, but that moment is the most rewarding of all." | A former teacher-turned animal rescue worker is due to receive a wildlife award for her work to protect the herring gull. |
34,114,486 | Google said it had taken the step to help web pages load faster and preserve battery life on mobile devices.
It has introduced tools that help people convert Flash adverts to ones that use an alternative technology.
Many technology companies have turned against Flash in recent months, saying it slowed down web-browsing and was a security risk.
The option to block or pause Flash-based adverts was added to a test version of Chrome earlier this year.
The change was aimed at all add-ons for the Chrome browser that were hogging resources.
Many of these handle content, such as adverts or browsing aids, not directly connected to the main page being viewed.
This option has now been switched on by default and could mean that many adverts built with Flash do not run. Clicking on the advert will make it run.
Anyone who wants Flash adverts to run by default will be able to turn off the option.
The change could mean many organisations have to rework their advertising content if it is not served up to web pages using Google's AdWords system that automatically converts Flash adverts to HTML5.
HTML is the basic language of the web and is used to describe how web browsers should display text, images and video.
In early July, security problems with Flash led to it being blocked by default by Mozilla - the organisation that develops the Firefox browser.
Flash has been used to make many online banner adverts, pop-ups and video ads since the early days of the web.
However, the technology industry has steadily been turning against Flash, especially as many criminal hackers target it or create malicious ads to hijack victims' computers.
Apple was one of the first to block the software on portable devices in 2010. | Google's Chrome browser will start blocking some internet adverts that use Adobe's Flash technology, from Tuesday. |
23,125,962 | The resistant strains of the bacterium, which can cause urinary tract infections and blood poisoning, are harder to treat and more deadly than non-resistant E. coli.
The spread of resistance in healthy people, patients, farm animals, sewage and slurry will be assessed.
Experts said it was a growing risk in hospitals.
The series of studies will look at ESBL-producing E. coli. They make enzymes called Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamases which can break down antibiotics such as penicillin.
The levels of ESBL-positive E. coli started increasing around a decade ago.
Now, of the 30,000 cases of E. coli blood infections reported each year, 10% are thought to be resistant.
Prof Neil Woodford, head of antimicrobial resistance at Public Health England, said: "The risks posed to human health by resistant E. coli from non-human reservoirs are not fully understood.
"This study is very important because its results will help to shape future intervention strategies to reduce the spread of these antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria and to reduce the numbers of infections that they cause."
Infections can be treated with other classes of antibiotics but doctors do not know with which strain a patient has been infected.
It means patients could be given inappropriate drugs which will not clear the infection, increasing the risk of death.
Dr David Wareham, a consultant microbiologist at Queen Mary, University of London, said: "It takes several days to grow the bacterium and at least another 24 hours to get a resistance test so without better diagnostics we are pushed by the fear of ESBLs into using more broad spectrum antibiotics which exacerbates the problem and drives resistance.
"It is certainly moving up the risk register in hospitals."
Prof Peter Hawkey, from the University of Birmingham, said international travel was "undoubtedly" a major risk factor for picking up resistant E. coli infections.
"If you all went to India and were perfectly well, no diarrhoea, 85% of you would be carrying these resistant organisms.
"In India if you take all the E. coli, 60% of all E. coli-causing infections are ESBLs. At the moment it's about 10% in the UK.
"We don't really want to wind up with a 60% scenario because then we have to use these last-resort antibiotics." | A UK-wide investigation into the spread of antibiotic-resistant E. coli has been launched by Public Health England. |
29,456,091 | Ancient settlements were found on the nature reserve off the Pembrokeshire coast using a number of techniques, including taking "X-rays" of the land.
Tests on a mound of stones used for cooking date one site to around 500 BC.
Experts from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales (RCAHMW) said the island appears to have been "well settled and farmed".
Skomer, famed for its bird life and particularly its puffins, also has some of the best preserved prehistoric field systems and hut settlements anywhere in Britain.
A geophysical survey carried out in 2012 used technology to measure through the earth, creating an "X-ray" picture of what is under the ground.
It found that unrecorded prehistoric fields and settlements survive beneath the modern fields in the centre of the island.
In April 2014 a small team had permission to cut an excavation trench at a prehistoric mound of burnt and fire-cracked stones outside the remains of a roundhouse on north Skomer.
Such mounds are found at these dwellings as the stones were heated in a fire and then dropped in a trough of water to bring it to boil for cooking purposes.
Dr Toby Driver from the RCAHMW said: "Despite half a century of modern archaeological interest, we still had no scientific dates for the roundhouses and fields on Skomer.
"Our excavation discovered a cattle tooth from within the mound of stones, which has now been radiocarbon dated to the late Iron Age.
"Beneath the mound we found a sealed land surface containing Neolithic or Bronze Age worked flint tools.
"A second radiocarbon date from blackthorn charcoal in the upper soil layers gave an early Iron Age date."
The tests - dating the mound to between 520-458 BC - are accurate to within 62 years, he said.
Dr Driver added: "These new dates confirm pre-Roman settlement on Skomer.
"Even so, the burnt mound covers a substantial earlier field wall showing that the island was already well settled and farmed in previous centuries." | Prehistoric remains on Skomer Island date from at least the early Iron Age, say archaeologists. |
32,115,785 | This research from the High Pay Centre is likely to put executive pay high up on the agenda during April's annual general meeting (AGM) season.
While exorbitant levels of pay at the top may stick in the craw of hard-pressed workers trying to cope with falling wages and job insecurity, it seems that even business leaders themselves are growing concerned.
A recent poll of Institute of Directors members found that more than half thought excessive pay packets were eroding people's trust in big companies.
So how can we curb boardroom wage inflation?
Tim Bush of pension consultants Pirc says: "Whenever you try to create a fixed metric for pay, just like a tax system, people try to get around it…We need to get back to what's the least manipulable thing.
"Directors have legal duties, so fundamentally they should be lucky they are not sued for doing a bad job."
If taking bosses to court sounds a little drastic - and expensive - there are subtler forms of coercion.
AGMs are often noteworthy for rows about executive pay, with individual shareholders expressing displeasure at the latest eye-watering bonus scheme.
But most large companies' biggest shareholders are pension and mutual funds whose managers are "well paid themselves and sometimes more than CEOs [chief executive officers]," says Sir Mike Darrington, who ran baker Greggs from 1984 to 2008 and is now concerned about excessive boardroom pay.
"Therefore they are loath to take a stand. It would mean cutting off their noses as well."
That said, some activist shareholders have managed to curb excessive pay and some bosses do bow to public pressure.
For example, in December 2014 oil and gas giant BG Group revised the proposed pay package for its incoming chief executive, Helge Lund, after a shareholder revolt over his £12m upfront shares bonus.
And Ross McEwan, the boss of state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland, said in February he would forgo a share award worth £1m to stop it being "a distraction from the task of building a great bank".
On the other hand, feisty WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell this month defended his £36m share plan payout, saying it was "pay for performance" given that the advertising giant's market value had risen by £10bn over the plan's five-year period.
Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at the University of Essex, believes a wider group of people should have a say on pay, not just directors on "remuneration committees".
"We know we live in a world where profit matters, but the weight to which we attach profit could be diluted. Get employees and customers to vote on executive remuneration. If they are treating people well, all well and good.
"Trust forms of democracy."
Whether such radical change would happen voluntarily seems doubtful under current corporate governance structures, however.
So how did we get into this situation?
Sir Mike thinks bad practice set in when the state-owned utilities were privatised from the 80s onwards.
"The same people running [these companies] were given a big hike in salary. It was the same person doing the same job," he says.
In 1991, for instance, British Gas chairman Robert Evans came under fire for accepting a pay rise 10 times the rate of inflation.
Outrage at "fat cat bosses" began to grow.
The Greenbury report in 1995 sought to lay down a code of practice, recommending that a group of directors should set pay levels after taking "professional advice".
This had two consequences.
These directors on remuneration committees were always tempted to over-pay. "No one will thank you for losing a good chief by being mean," says Sir Mike.
No remuneration committee wanted to appear as if it had chosen a worse candidate because it couldn't afford the better one.
And it boosted the role of pay consultants who tended to suggest that higher salaries and bonuses were necessary to attract and keep top personnel in a global market.
"The quantum just went up and up," says Sir Mike.
And when remuneration committees met, they would have to compare the pay packages of bosses at similar companies.
"If you were in oil, you saw what the chiefs in oil were paid. Suddenly, there was leapfrogging," he says.
Over the years, pay packages have become more convoluted as well.
Where once salary and a small bonus sufficed, a board-level executive can now expect a monthly pay cheque, an annual bonus and a long-term incentive plan, or LTIP.
These LTIPs are usually paid in cash and shares and are triggered when longer-term performance targets are met.
While an annual bonus can double a director's salary, an LTIP can sextuple it.
"These long-term packages are often very complicated and are based on various performance measures over many years," says Dame Alison Carnwath, chairman of Land Securities and a previous chairman of the pay committee at Barclays.
The problem for shareholders deciding whether to approve an LTIP is that there can often be "no real confidence in what the payout will be", she says.
Escalating pay for bosses can also trigger wage inflation across the board, she warns.
From the CEO's point of view, life at the top is short, so the temptation to make hay is very strong, says Olly Watson, an executive at recruiter Page Group.
"To use a football analogy, you are not going to play for very long, so when you do, you have to earn as much as you can."
The boss of a FTSE 100 company only stays in the job four years on average, says David Ellis, head of reward at KPMG in the UK.
For Robert Kelsey, a writer on motivation, the problem is that money is the only yardstick bosses seem to be measured by.
However, not everything is about money and not everyone is motivated by it - but they are afraid to tell anyone, he believes.
"Companies should be very grown up about careers," he says.
For the moment, many people are trapped in a culture characterised by the "trite sales and marketing language seen in The Apprentice." | The average chief executive trousered £4.5m in 2013 - more than 160 times the pay of the average Briton, and up 5% from 2012. |
36,662,600 | The analysis of nearly 20,000 Danish couples found 65% had children within three years and 71% within five years.
Doctors, presenting their data at a fertility conference, said the odds were heavily influenced by age.
But experts said the findings were very encouraging for couples struggling to have babies.
There is strong evidence that about one in three cycles of IVF is successful in women under the age of 35.
But what happens in the long run, when some couples try over and over again, others give up and some have problems that cannot be treated, has been uncertain.
Researchers at the Copenhagen University Hospital used rigorous registry records in Denmark to follow 19,884 women from the moment they started fertility treatment.
The results, presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, showed that more than half had given birth within two years, rising to 71% after five years.
For women under 35, 80% had children within five years. But the figure fell to 61% in those between 35 and 40 years old; and fell again to 26% in women over 40.
Dr Sara Malchau, one of the researchers, told the BBC News website: "There is a very good chance of having a child, even if you have difficulties conceiving on your own.
"Most causes of infertility can be overcome, but age is the most important factor to predict if treatments are going to be successful or not.
"Also women with a body mass index under 30 had better outcomes as well as women who didn't smoke."
The study also found that nearly a fifth of the women under 35 ended up conceiving as a result of sex - despite having sought fertility treatment.
However, Dr Malchau cautioned Denmark prioritised fertility treatments that made it easier for women to keep trying. Many other countries are less generous.
Women:
Men:
Source: HFEA
Prof Nick Macklon, from the University of Southampton, said: "It really does provide some encouraging news for those who are about to embark on the journey of fertility treatment - the chance of having a baby is good.
"There will always be individual factors that affect an individual's prognosis, but overall it shows us fertility treatments are working.
"There's been a lot of debate about whether women should be having their children earlier, most of the people in my field would be of the view that if you can start earlier then your chances of completing the family you desire is going to be much higher."
Follow James on Twitter. | Nearly three out of four couples that begin fertility treatment will eventually become parents, long-term studies suggest. |
31,807,674 | Mothers and young children were feeding bread to squawking ducks by the riverbank, but Suzie was anxious and emotional.
She cried as she told me her story, but it's clear she has turned the appalling situation she was handed into a clear-sighted fight for justice. And now she wants others to learn from her experience.
Her nightmare started when she answered an advert in a shop window to help care for two disabled children.
What she didn't know was that the man advertising for a carer, the children's father, David Cullen, was on the Sex Offenders' Register.
He was supposed to be actively monitored by Oxfordshire social services and Thames Valley Police. And despite that he was able to abuse her young son 25 times in six months.
"It was all because one of his daughters said her dad didn't cook curries" Suzie explained. "I offered to make them one. When I brought it around my son was with me and Cullen was obviously interested in him."
As part of his conviction for sex offences 10 years earlier Cullen was on a Multi Agency Protection Programme. Police and social workers regularly came to the house.
Internally they raised concerns about his new carer and her young family. But Suzie insists they were not made clear to her.
"A police inspector rang me, but just asked me if I was aware of Cullen's previous convictions. I said yes. Cullen had told me he'd 'done time' - but for theft"
Just the memory of that phone call brings Suzie to tears. "Why just phone me? Why didn't they call round? They were watching him, and knew where I lived. I would never have taken my son there again.
"Later, they told me they knew he had lied to parents. If you knew he was lying and you had all this information on this man that I clearly knew nothing about then why did you not come and discuss this with me?
"They told me he had human rights. And I said what about my human rights, what about my son's human rights. I had the right to protect my son. And they failed that - why does his human rights come above any other child?
David Cullen was jailed for life after admitting offences against Suzie's son and eight others.
It's a shocking story. Suzie has spent years rebuilding her life, and her son's. And she says she could accept that mistakes were made and move on, if she felt lessons had been learned.
She's coming forward to talk now after listening to the harrowing stories from Rotherham and of mothers in Oxford whose daughters were raped by a gang of Asian men. Mothers who grew desperate dealing with the same police and social services departments. And Suzie questions whether even now there is insufficient will at the top of Thames Valley Police to put their house in order.
Oxfordshire Social Services and Thames Valley Police say they are the best placed to learn from their mistakes from the past - not just the management of sex offenders and cases involving them but also the culture around what is right and wrong.
Even now though in Suzie's case social services deny they failed to pass on warnings. Thames Valley Police said: "We did raise our concerns and make disclosures to warn parents and guardians of the risks associated with allowing Cullen access to their children.
"The legislation around third-party disclosures is now even stronger after Section 140 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 introduced a legal presumption that a disclosure will be made where it is necessary to do so to protect a child from serious harm, which has given our officers a more clear positive framework to make disclosures to third parties to safeguard children."
Oxfordshire Social Services said: "This was a very complex case and we cannot go in to detail due to client confidentiality. The council would always make strenuous attempts, alongside other agencies, to protect a child from individuals who it is thought would pose a danger to them."
In 2009 a serious case review into Cullen's case has clear criticisms of the Oxfordshire agencies for failing to share information, sometimes not attending case conferences, being over-dependent on expert opinions, and not responding to changing circumstances.
Recommendations were made for improvements, but Suzie says the culture within the organisations hasn't changed.
And in a foretaste of last week's Bullfinch serious case review the woman's MP claims he had veiled threats from Thames Valley police officers when he tried to raise questions about the case in parliament.
The Conservative MP for Reading East Rob Wilson, who is now a minister, says he was shocked at the tone of the phone calls.
"They said things like 'really Mr Wilson? So early on in your Parliamentary career? Do you want to make an error about getting involved in raising this issue? There may be more to this than meets the eye. You could be getting into a very difficult situation'.
"There were all sorts of darkly veiled threats if I went head-to-head and toe-to-toe with Thames Valley Police. I had phone calls from at least two members of Thames Valley Police who rang me up directly about this and tried to stop me raising this matter in parliament even though it was quite clearly the right thing to do."
Mr Wilson says one of those who tried to stop him raising the treatment of David Cullen was the current Chief Constable Sara Thornton, and the MP questions whether sufficient action has been taken within the force.
"I just wonder whether there is something systemic within the police, that where difficult, very trying types of personal cases are involved they don't really want to get involved. I question whether there is a real appetite to get involved with those difficult cases."
Sarah Thornton would not respond to requests to comment from the BBC. But a press officer told us that "On 8 November 2008 a Detective Chief Inspector contacted Rob Wilson MP to provide him with a background briefing to the case."
Watching the coverage of recent inquiries into Oxfordshire Social Services has re-opened painful wounds for Suzie. But she says she wants more questions asked.
"They're not transparent. They're never going to win the trust of the public or the parents unless they start putting their hands up when they've made mistakes and be very honest with the parents about that."
Most importantly she wants to know who will take the blame for failing to protect Oxfordshire children, even from convicted paedophiles. | It was a clear sunny day when I met Suzie in a park next to the River Thames. |
37,193,583 | The body of Shana Grice, 19, was found at a house in Chrisdory Road, Mile Oak, Portslade, after she failed to turn up for work on Thursday morning.
Sharon Grice and Richard Green, from Hove, said she was "our beautiful girl... who always thought of others".
A 27-year-old Portslade man was arrested on Thursday afternoon at an address in Burgess Hill, West Sussex.
Sussex Police said magistrates granted a warrant authorising his continued detention until Sunday if necessary.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) was notified of Ms Grice's death as police had been in contact with her and "other people" previously, Sussex Police said.
No one else was in the house when her body was found. The cause of death has not yet been established but it is being treated as suspicious.
Residents said fire engines as well as police were called to the scene and that one man tried to get into the property to rescue Ms Grice.
"He said he heard a lot of shouting," the resident said.
"They broke in and there was smoke inside the property.
"He could see somebody in one of the bedrooms but he could see she had died."
Ms Grice worked in the accounts department of Palmer and Harvey, a company in Hove.
Director Brian Hurley said everyone was "extremely shocked and saddened" to hear of her death.
"Whilst Shana only worked with us for a few months, she was a very well-liked and popular member of the Palmer and Harvey family.
"We have set up counselling for staff and will support them as best we can, as we all come to terms with the tragic news," he said. | The parents of a teenager found dead at her Brighton home have paid tribute to a "kind thoughtful, caring daughter". |
36,010,361 | A hotel's ground floor was flooded in St Mawes after waves smashed windows.
Ferries were cancelled in Cornwall and there were delays on trains out of the South West after waves topped sea defences at Dawlish in Devon.
Ferry firm Condor said the Liberation was unable to berth in Guernsey and passengers to Poole were advised to book alternative services.
The ground floor including the cafe at the Ship and Castle Hotel in St Mawes was flooded for several hours until the fire service pumped out the water.
Firefighters were also called to deal with flooding at three homes in Penzance and flooding was also reported in Looe.
A spokeswoman at the Ship and Castle said: "There was nothing we could do, the force of the storm pushed in the windows.
"Now we are concerned about what is going to happen at the next high tide this evening."
Spring tides were forecast for about 21:00 BST but the wind is expected to subside, according to forecasters.
Twelve flood warnings - the second highest category - and 16 flood alerts have been issued by the Environment Agency for the South West.
Part of the esplanade in Exmouth, Devon was closed to protect people from flying debris.
The Sandbanks chain ferry between Poole and Studland in Dorset was halted for two hours.
The second day of the two-day Fish and Ships food and boat festival in Portland, where gusts of up to 50mph were predicted, was also abandoned. | Huge waves whipped up by winds that reached 65mph have caused flooding in a number of seaside towns in Cornwall. |
38,464,885 | The 40-year-old man was arrested at Sydney Airport on Thursday after arriving on a plane from London.
The alleged threats were made on social media, said Acting Deputy Commissioner Frank Mennilli.
Police also raided a house and a storage facility in Sydney, seizing documents and computer hard drives.
There was no remaining threat to the community, police said. However, they would not provide details of the alleged threats while the matter was before the court.
The arrest comes a week after police said they foiled a major terror attack planned for Melbourne on Christmas Day.
Mr Mennilli said the man did not have links to any groups.
"He has been charged with a crimes act offence, not a terrorist offence," he added.
More than one million people are expected to attend Sydney's annual New Year's Eve fireworks party on the harbour.
Officers from the NSW Police Force Terrorism Investigation Squad made the arrest after a tip-off from the public.
Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said police believed it was an isolated incident.
"As a consequence, we are confident that there are no current or specific threats to New Year's Eve and, while we ask people to remain vigilant, people should enjoy the celebrations," she said in a statement.
"The community should be also reassured that we will take swift action to ensure the ongoing safety of the public." | Australian anti-terror police have charged a man for making threats against Sydney's New Year's Eve celebrations. |
19,706,272 | Followers of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek would say exactly the opposite. In their view, it happened because the markets weren't free enough.
A few of you wrote to say last week's film on Keynes helped convince you of the case for Keynesian policies. I can't decide whether to be flattered or alarmed.
But if you were turned into a Keynesian last week, you should be sure to tune into Hayek. He could well change your mind again.
Hayek was the great free-market thinker who argued with Keynes in the 1930s over government intervention in the economy.
Hayek had the intellectual firepower to take on Keynes. He was often exasperated by the inconsistencies in Keynes' work and his tendency to change his mind - something the Cambridge economist did quite regularly, and not only "when the facts changed".
But Hayek did not have Keynes' charisma and famous powers of persuasion. (The Austrian accent didn't help.)
Also, Keynes was telling politicians that intervention by policymakers could make things better, whereas Hayek was saying they would only make things worse. In the end, that made all the difference.
Hayek wrote a best-selling polemic railing against economic planning, The Road to Serfdom, shortly after World War II.
In it, he warned that the dead hand of the bureaucrat could threaten a free society almost as much as the iron boot of Stalin. (If he had written it today, I suspect modern health and safety regulations would have featured.)
After that, Hayek had years in the intellectual wilderness, while the Keynesians bestrode the world. But there was a last great burst of fame and influence in the 1970s, when he was awarded a Nobel Prize for economics and feted by free-market politicians on both sides of the Atlantic.
Lord Patten reports in the programme how Margaret Thatcher would pull favourite Hayek quotations from her handbag at key moments during cabinet meetings.
So far, so interesting, but what can Hayek say to us right now? And why would I choose him as a Master of Money, not the other great free-market economist, Milton Friedman, who was almost certainly more influential?
In fact, I very much wanted to do a programme on Friedman too. There are modern monetarists who have interesting things to say about the crisis. But, amazingly, BBC Two did not want to broadcast four hours of economics at 21:00 on a Monday. Three was challenging enough.
Friedman has been profiled and lauded many times over the years. For this series I chose Hayek because, like Keynes - and unlike Milton Friedman - he focused on the great complexity of markets and their inherent unpredictability.
And because, unlike Keynes or Friedman, Hayek did not think policymakers could master those complexities well enough to guide the economy in the right direction.
More often than not, Hayek said, politicians would only make things worse.
Politicians had some sympathy with that view in the 1930s, when Hayek's arguments often did get a better hearing than Keynes'. But it has been very hard for post-war leaders to swallow - even, it turns out, politicians who claim to be free-marketers.
These leaders might pay lip service to liberalising the economy and setting markets free, but in practice it has been difficult for them truly to give up the urge to meddle, even when they are convinced of the intellectual case for doing so.
Witness the difficulties that coalition ministers have had letting go of day-to-day power over the NHS, or local councils. Or, to take a very different example, the US government's decision to rescue the people who had invested in Mexican bonds, in the "Tequila Crisis" of 1994.
The free-market economist and then Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, supported that massive US-IMF rescue package for Mexico, even though he had previously warned that protecting investors from the consequences of their mistakes would build up problems for the future, by encouraging institutions and investors to take excessive risks.
Of course, that is what many people think happened in the financial markets generally, in the years leading up to the financial crisis.
The financial system might have seemed free, these critics argue, but it was really a dangerous hybrid. In fact, the banks were free to do anything, except fail in large numbers.
That encouraged them to take out some pretty risky bets, which ended up costing us all dear. And lest there be any doubt that the safety net was there, the massive bailouts of 2008 made it crystal clear.
All of which explains why Hayek and some other Austrian economists have acquired a new generation of fans - including the Republican Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul. They find in Hayek's writing both a convincing explanation of the financial crisis and a bracing solution.
The Hayekian explanation for the crisis says it's all down to government meddling, to policymakers not giving markets the benefit of the doubt. And the worst kind of meddling, Hayek thought, came in the government's determination to control the price of money - also known as the interest rate.
In the Austrian view, the US Federal Reserve and other central banks helped cause the financial crisis, by always cutting interest rates when the economy showed signs of faltering; for example, after the bursting of the dotcom bubble.
That might have staved off a more serious downturn. But only at the cost of encouraging people to take on debts they couldn't afford - and giving banks an incentive to take excessive risks.
This, in effect, is the argument that Hayek made against Keynes in the late 1920s and 1930s: he said the Fed caused the crash, by keeping interest rates too low and encouraging a lot of "malinvestment" - investment in projects or assets which were not economically worthwhile.
He also said that further efforts to stimulate the economy would only make things worse - especially if they meant more borrowing by government.
When it comes to the 1930s, history has not looked kindly on Hayek's arguments. The classic study of the depression by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, decades later, made a convincing case that it was caused by the US central bank pumping too little money into the economy, not too much.
What's interesting to note is that Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes are on the same side of that argument - united against Friedrich Hayek.
Given a bump in the road, Friedman and Keynes each thought policymakers could come to the rescue. And each thought, in normal times, that monetary policy was the best way to do it.
The difference between them - much exaggerated in the historical record - was that Keynes saw a big role for fiscal policy too, particularly in the aftermath of financial crises.
What makes Hayek a different kind of free-market economist is that he distrusted both sets of policy machinery for guiding the economy - monetary and fiscal.
Maybe it was the hyperinflation he'd lived through as a young adult in Austria, in the 1920s, but he simply did not believe governments should or could iron out the bumps in the economic cycle. The only government power he had confidence in was the power to make things worse, by debauching the currency.
Hayek's view has resonance for anyone who feels uneasy about governments bailing out bankers and central banks pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy.
Whether it's the European central bank lending trillions to European banks, or a third bout of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve, it feels, to many, like these institutions are simply kicking the can down the road - deferring the moment of truth.
So you can understand why many would be turning to Austrians like Hayek for a different kind of answer. But whether any government or mainstream politician is really prepared to step back, and let the system "heal itself" - whatever the short-term consequences - is another matter. They certainly weren't in 2008.
I asked Ron Paul whether he thought Americans were ready to be "Austrians". He paused. "Well, I think you'd have to change the name," he deadpanned. "But you know, I went to Austria last year. They're completely devoted to their welfare state. I turns out, even the Austrians aren't very Austrian."
Are you? Watch the programme and find out.
Masters of Money was made with help from the Open University and is broadcast at 21:00 on Monday 24 September on BBC Two. | You might think the financial crisis was caused by letting markets get too free - the financial markets, in particular. |
13,197,280 | Profits rose to $2.55bn (£1.54bn; 1.75bn euros) in the first three months of 2011, compared with $2.09bn at the same period the year before.
"Our team delivered a great quarter, with solid growth in all regions," said Ford president Alan Mulally.
Ford said the 2011 outlook was good, despite higher commodity costs.
Revenue for the first quarter was $33.1bn, up from $28.1bn a year earlier, a much bigger jump than analysts had expected.
The firm said it had seen a strong performance in its home North American market, as well as "solid improvement" in Europe, where revenue had risen by $1bn to $8.7bn.
US sales had climbed 16%, while market share in the Asia Pacific and Africa regions had also increased, the carmaker said.
It added that it had made "significant progress" in strengthening its balance sheet by reducing debt levels.
Ford said it was confident sales would keep rising "despite uncertain economic conditions".
"We expect our annual volumes to continue to grow substantially," said Mr Mulally.
Ford also said that it had seen "minimal" impact on its business following last month's earthquake in Japan, which has affected many Japanese car manufacturers.
Some analysts said the carmaker could actually take business away from Japanese rivals.
"I think Ford and a lot of the other American automakers will take market share from the Japanese," said Channing Smith at Capital Advisors.
Ford has recovered strongly since it was forced to cut tens of thousands of jobs and close factories during the height of the global financial crisis.
Unlike its great Detroit rivals General Motors and Chrysler, it has done so without any direct government funding. | Ford has unveiled its strongest first quarter profits for 13 years, helped by increasing demand for more fuel-efficient cars. |
35,492,433 | Inspectors say that almost half of pupils at secondary schools run by the Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) are in schools that are "less than good".
Ofsted warns that poorer pupils do "particularly badly" in AET schools.
In response the trust said it was disappointed that its "significant achievements" had "not been sufficiently recognised".
The Department for Education is threatening that unless standards are raised there will be "further action".
AET runs 67 academies across England. Such academy chains are independent but publicly funded to run schools. AET has charitable status and a financial report up to August 2014 said there was annual expenditure of £333m.
Inspectors say that 40% of pupils in primary schools run by AET are in "academies that do not provide a good standard of education".
"It is even worse in secondary, where 47% of pupils attend academies that are less than good," says Ofsted.
The performance of AET's secondary schools is described as "mediocre" and there has been a lack of progress since Ofsted highlighted weaknesses in the chain's schools two years ago.
The report says there is a particular weakness in the progress of disadvantaged pupils.
Inspectors also warned about "unacceptably low" attendance levels.
And there was criticism of "insufficient detail" about how the trust is governed.
Ofsted cannot give a judgement on an academy chain, but inspectors can carry out multiple inspections of individual schools it runs.
In this "focused inspection", inspectors visited seven academies and there were discussions by telephone with a further 18 schools.
AET runs schools across a wide geographical area - including the Isle of Wight, Hull, Birmingham, Essex, Leicestershire and Gloucestershire.
The trust's financial report says its expenditure of £333m included more than £9.5m on "fundraising expenses and other costs".
Ofsted's breakdown says four academies are rated outstanding, 35 are good, 20 require improvement, seven are inadequate and one has still to be inspected.
In response to Ofsted's findings, a statement from AET said that its "strong leadership" had seen a doubling in the number of good or outstanding academies and a reduction in those rated as inadequate.
The academy trust says the improvements made so far will be a "springboard which we are confident will enable us to achieve our vision to ensure all our pupils receive an excellent education. We have robust systems in place to sustain and accelerate progress".
Two years ago a report from inspectors accused the academy chain of "low expectations" and said that too many pupils were "not receiving a good enough education".
The chain had responded in 2014 by criticising inspectors' findings as "unfairly negative" and that "turning a school around takes time".
In response to this latest report, AET says the inspection process has "fallen short" in terms of the "consideration of achievement" by the academy chain.
Christine Blower, leader of the National Union of Teachers, said the academy chain had been allowed to expand too quickly and "this speaks to a wider problem with the chaotic system of academies and academy chains".
"The government continues to promote the expansion of academies and the growth of chains against all the evidence."
A Department for Education spokesman said: "While Ofsted's findings show that AET has made some progress, particularly in its primary academies, the trust is letting down too many of its pupils.
"The academies system allows us to spot and intervene in underperformance far more quickly than in council-run schools.
"AET must now show us how they will address the issues identified by Ofsted and we are working with them to raise standards. If we are not satisfied we will take further action." | The biggest academy chain in England has been accused by Ofsted of "failing too many pupils". |
35,744,904 | "Although we didn't take the three points, I'm sure the fans are delighted with the performance," he said.
The U's twice led their fellow League Two promotion chasers but were denied a fourth successive league win by Craig Tanner's equaliser at Home Park.
Oxford sit level on points with Plymouth in second place.
"I'm delighted with the way we've played, coming here and putting on a performance," Appleton told BBC Radio Oxford.
"We've got to be positive for the remaining 11 games. We looked like we'd score every time we attacked."
Oxford's five remaining league games in March see them face four teams in the bottom half of the table and just one midweek fixture following seven games in three weeks.
"We've got a little bit of a break now for the first time in a while, so hopefully we'll be ready for Leyton Orient on Saturday," Appleton added.
"It's nice sometimes to refresh the mind and for 24 to 48 hours have some down time before refocusing." | Oxford United manager Michael Appleton said his side created enough chances to win "four or five games" in their 2-2 draw at Plymouth Argyle. |
35,824,840 | The US president's UK stay - part of a tour including Saudi Arabia and Germany - is likely to be his last before his term in office ends in January.
He will have a private dinner with the Queen at Windsor Castle and stage a joint press conference with David Cameron at 10 Downing Street.
The White House said the visit would allow Mr Obama to offer his gratitude for Britain's "stalwart partnership".
The president is expected to arrive in the UK just after the Queen celebrates her 90th birthday on 21 April.
A spokesman said: "The visit will allow the president to offer his gratitude to the British government and people for their stalwart partnership with his administration and the American people throughout his presidency."
He will visit Saudi Arabia on 21 April for a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council, including leaders of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
They will discuss the fight against the so-called Islamic State terror group and other regional security concerns.
Following his UK visit, Mr Obama will travel to Germany to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel and visit Hannover Messe, the world's largest trade show for industrial technology. | Barack Obama will visit the UK next month, the White House has confirmed. |
13,613,455 | The 82-year-old, who was born in Rome, has scored more than 500 film and TV productions, including The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and The Untouchables.
Italian ballet dancer Roberto Bolle will join him on the panel to select the winners of the Marc'Aurelio awards.
The festival, now in its sixth year, runs from 27 October to 4 November.
Morricone has received numerous awards and accolades throughout his career, including a lifetime achievement Oscar, five Baftas and two Golden Globes.
Cinema Paradiso, The Mission and Once Upon a Time in America are among the many films to which he has contributed. | Celebrated composer Ennio Morricone will serve as president of the jury at this year's International Rome Film Festival, organisers have announced. |
32,689,752 | The Shawshank Redemption star said he had been taking the drug for medicinal purposes since a car crash in 2008.
It "has many useful uses", the 77-year-old said, adding: "I have fibromyalgia pain in this arm, and the only thing that offers any relief is marijuana."
He told the Daily Beast: "How do I take it? However it comes. I'll eat it, drink it, smoke it, snort it."
Following the car accident, the Oscar-winning actor had four hours of surgery to repair the nerves in his arm - but he still has not regained full use of his left hand.
He said: "They're talking about kids who have grand mal seizures, and they've discovered that marijuana eases that down to where these children can have a life.
"That right there, to me, says, legalise it across the board."
Freeman said of the campaign to legalise the drug: "This movement is really a long time coming, and it's getting legs - longer legs. Now, the thrust is understanding that alcohol has no real medicinal use."
The drug has been legalised for use for both medicinal and recreational purposes in four US states - Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Alaska.
In 12 further states, the possession, sale, transportation and cultivation of marijuana is permitted only for medical purpose. | Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman has called for marijuana to be legalised in US and "across the board". |
33,283,599 | Emergency services, including HM Coastguard and the RNLI, were called to Trevaunance Cove at 18:25 BST.
Paramedics attempted to treat the man, who was found on the beach, but he was pronounced dead at the scene and taken to Treliske Hospital, Truro, by helicopter.
Police are not treating the death as suspicious and the next of kin have been informed. | A 42-year-old man died on Thursday when he fell from cliffs in St Agnes. |
39,885,975 | The black-tailed godwits - which have fewer than 60 UK nests - are being hand-reared, in the joint RSPB and Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) scheme.
The majority of the birds are found in the Nene Washes in Cambridgeshire and the Ouse Washes on the Cambridgeshire and Norfolk border.
The ground-nesting birds are vulnerable to spring flooding and predators.
Staff from Project Godwit were granted a licence from Natural England to collect 32 eggs, which were incubated at WWT's Welney centre on the Ouse Washes in a method known as "headstarting".
They believe it is the first time the method has been used to help a species in decline in the UK.
Rebecca Lee, WWT principal conservation breeding officer, said: "Headstarting young birds is a big intervention and it has already proved to be a huge help [in Russia] in a bid to save another species - the spoon-billed sandpiper - from extinction."
Hannah Ward, RSPB LIFE's recovery manager for the project, said the future of the species in the UK, and globally, was very uncertain.
Their numbers crashed to fewer than 30 pairs in the mid-1980s due to a series of spring floods and they are on the UK Birds of Conservation Concern red list for species at risk.
The hand-reared chicks will be moved into an enclosed aviary at about three weeks-old and when they are about five weeks-old, the gate will be opened to allow them to disperse into the wild.
The parent birds should then lay a second clutch and raise a brood themselves.
Source: RSPB | Conservationists bidding to save one of the UK's "red-listed" endangered bird species have hatched 26 chicks. |
39,243,696 | Ibenge, who is also coach of DR Congo side AS Vita Club, was speaking from The Gambia ahead of Sunday's African Champions League match between Vita Club and Ports Authority.
The 55-year-old has combined both roles since 2014 and says he needs a new challenge.
I've been here for three years already, so I think that by the end of my contract it will be four years. It's enough. And I think someone else can take this team and go further
"My contract ends after the World Cup, so, I want to do things with my family and I don't have to continue with the national team - I want to do something else," Ibenge told BBC Sport.
"I've been here for three years already, so I think that by the end of my contract it will be four years. It's enough. And I think someone else can take this team and go further" Ibenge added.
As he prepared for the first leg of AS Vita Club's African Champions League last 32-tie, Ibenge admitted that combining two roles - for club and country - had been challenging.
"It's really difficult because when you have the national team, you're supposed to be on the move, to meet all the players, to attend a lot of matches. But when you are with a club, you can't travel. You have to stay for training. So it's really difficult to do both. And I'm also tired" said Ibenge.
During his three years with The Leopards, Ibenge took the national team to a third place finish at the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations.
In 2016 he helped DR Congo become champions of the CHAN - the tournament which is only open to footballers who play in their own local leagues.
Most recently Ibenge guided the national side to a quarter-final place at the Nations Cup in Gabon where they lost to Ghana.
The DR Congo coach says he will leave the team in a healthy state with the likes of Everton star Yannick Bolasie in the ranks alongside fellow English Premier League players Dieumerci Mbokani of Hull and Bournemouth's Benik Afobe.
But Ibenge wants more Congolese footballers to progress at club level and show ambition in the future.
"We have a lot of players, young players, and what I hope is that firstly we qualify for Russia 2018, but the other thing I want is for Congolese players to play for the best teams in the world.
"At the moment, a lot of players play in the second division. And I want them to play in the first division and for big teams like Manchester City or Manchester United, or Bayern Munich, or Real Madrid or Barcelona.
"We don't have these kinds of players. And I hope in the future we can have top players who can play in these teams. I'd be proud to see all these players playing for these teams."
Florent Ibenge says he is targeting a World Cup campaign in Russia with The Leopards, and as things stand, their chances of finishing as Group A winners and thereby bagging one of the five African spots, remain strong.
"We've played two matches, we have six points. The same points as Tunisia. And at the end of August and beginning of September, we'll play against Tunisia.
"We are really concentrating on being there [the 2018 World Cup], because the last time we reached this level, it was in 1974. It's been too long for our Congolese people - so we really want to be in Russia." | The Democratic Republic of Congo coach, Florent Ibenge, said he would leave his post with the national team in 2018 and praised the current crop of players saying he hoped more would turn out for the world's top clubs in the future. |
20,053,678 | Jason Roberts, a Laurent Koscielny own goal, Mikele Leigertwood and Noel Hunt put Reading 4-0 up after 35 minutes.
Walcott found the net before the break and in injury time, while Olivier Giroud and Koscielny also struck.
Marouane Chamakh scored in extra-time before Pavel Pogrebnyak levelled, but Walcott and Chamakh had the final word.
It was an extraordinary cup tie, the archetypal game of two halves. Reading were magnificent for 44 and a half minutes before Walcott scored his first goal to give the Gunners hope.
During the first half, Arsenal looked set to be on the end of a Sunday League scoreline with what resembled a Sunday League performance.
And yet somehow Arsene Wenger's side produced a scarcely believable comeback to recover from three goals down for the first time in their history and take their place in the quarter-finals for the 10th successive season.
They created for themselves an utter disaster and somehow rose to find hope, and with it, power, purpose and direction.
When they were trailing 4-0 Saturday's Premier League trip to Old Trafford, the scene of last season's 8-2 humbling at the hands of Manchester United, looked a daunting prospect but now this result has the hallmarks of a turning point.
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That it was left to Chamakh, starting his first Arsenal match since January, to score two crucial goals made it all the more incredible.
At the club's annual general meeting last week, Wenger had made it clear the League Cup was fifth on his list of priorities and during the first half his players appeared to have taken those words a little too literally.
Arsenal made 11 changes but that did not excuse the naivety with which Carl Jenkinson, Johan Djourou, Koscielny and Ignasi Miquel defended before half-time.
The Reading onslaught began in the 11th minute when Hunt, midway inside the Arsenal half, swept the ball wide to Hal Robson-Kanu on the left flank and his delightful low cross was thumped into the net by Roberts, who left Koscielny, his marker, all too easily.
Six minutes later, Reading were two up as Chris Gunter's low cross deflected off Koscielny's leg and beyond Arsenal goalkeeper Damian Martinez at the near post.
Premier League, Newcastle 4-4 Arsenal, 5 February, 2011
Arsenal led 3-0 inside 10 minutes at St James' Park and 4-0 at half-time but were pegged back with Cheick Tiote's stunning late volley capping the comeback.
Champions League final, Liverpool 3-3 AC Milan, 25 May, 2005
Liverpool were down and out after going into half-time 3-0 down but scored three times in six minutes to turn the game on its head.
FA Cup fourth round, Tottenham 3-4 Manchester City, 4 February, 2004.
Spurs were 3-0 ahead at half-time before Joey Barton was sent off. But somehow City fought back and Jon Macken scored a dramatic late winner.
Premier League, Tottenham 3-5 Manchester United, 29 September 2001.
Again Spurs went in at half-time 3-0 ahead but were ripped apart in the second half by a breathtaking United performance.
FA Cup final, Blackpool 4-3 Bolton, Wembley, 2 May, 1953.
Bolton had led 3-1 and, were still leading with three minutes to go until Stan Mortensen and Bill Perry struck.
The full house at the Madejski could scarcely believe its eyes as Leigertwood fired in from the edge of the area, thanks in large part to an awful error by Martinez.
And a fourth followed 15 minutes later when Hunt headed in Garath McCleary's right-wing cross.
The travelling support had seen enough. Chants of "we want our Arsenal back" rang round the stadium and the response was immediate, Walcott reducing the arrears in first-half stoppage time as he raced on to Andrey Arshavin's through ball before lifting his shot over Reading goalkeeper Adam Federici.
Walcott raced forward time after time following the break, and the England winger drove in a corner which Giroud headed beyond Federici to make it 4-2.
With a minute left the hosts looked to have done their job, only for an unmarked Koscielny to head in Walcott's corner, and five minutes into injury time Walcott levelled the scores with a shot which crossed the line despite the desperate attempts of Nicky Shorey to keep it out.
Jenkinson stabbed the ball home seconds later but the goal was given to Walcott.
The momentum felt irreversible in extra time and Chamakh fired a low shot through the legs of Kaspars Gorkss to put Arsenal ahead for the first time, but with Reading fans heading for the exits the game burst into life once more.
Pogrebnyak headed beyond Martinez to level the scores again but the drama was still not over.
Walcott crashed home from eight yards to put Arsenal back in front and as Reading crumbled, Chamakh completed a famous victory with a lob that floated up and over Federici to finally decide an incredible football match.
The whistle goes and the game ends after extra time.
The assist for the goal came from Theo Walcott.
Goal! - Marouane Chamakh - Reading 5 - 7 Arsenal Marouane Chamakh finds the net with a goal from just outside the penalty box to the bottom right corner of the goal. Reading 5-7 Arsenal.
Centre by Jobi McAnuff, save made by Damian Martinez.
Andrey Arshavin takes a shot. Blocked by Nicky Shorey.
Andrey Arshavin provided the assist for the goal.
Goal! - Theo Walcott - Reading 5 - 6 Arsenal A goal is scored by Theo Walcott from inside the six-yard box high into the middle of the goal. Reading 5-6 Arsenal.
Chris Gunter produces a cross, comfortable save by Damian Martinez.
Olivier Giroud produces a left-footed shot from just outside the box that misses to the right of the goal.
Unfair challenge on Hal Robson-Kanu by Francis Coquelin results in a free kick. Free kick taken by Nicky Shorey.
Carl Jenkinson crosses the ball, Sean Morrison manages to make a clearance.
Nicky Shorey takes the direct free kick.
Booking Thomas Eisfeld goes into the referee's book.
Unfair challenge on Hal Robson-Kanu by Thomas Eisfeld results in a free kick.
Assist by Chris Gunter.
Goal! - Pavel Pogrebnyak - Reading 5 - 5 Arsenal Pavel Pogrebnyak scores a headed goal from inside the six-yard box. Reading 5-5 Arsenal.
The ball is crossed by Hal Robson-Kanu. The ball is delivered by Chris Gunter,
The ball is delivered by Jernade Meade, save made by Adam Federici.
Booking Damian Martinez receives a caution.
A cross is delivered by Hal Robson-Kanu.
Andrey Arshavin produces a cross, clearance made by Nicky Shorey.
Jernade Meade takes the direct free kick.
Booking The referee shows Sean Morrison a yellow card.
Unfair challenge on Jernade Meade by Sean Morrison results in a free kick.
Free kick awarded for a foul by Johan Djourou on Simon Church. Nicky Shorey delivers the ball from the free kick left-footed from right channel. The offside flag is raised against Sean Morrison. Indirect free kick taken by Damian Martinez.
Corner taken by Nicky Shorey, Header from close range by Sean Morrison clears the bar.
Theo Walcott takes a shot. Save by Adam Federici.
The referee blows to get the second half of extra time under way.
Free kick awarded for an unfair challenge on Jay Tabb by Olivier Giroud. Kaspars Gorkss takes the free kick.
Substitution (Arsenal) makes a substitution, with Jernade Meade coming on for Ignasi Miquel.
Jobi McAnuff sends in a cross, Pavel Pogrebnyak takes a shot. Damian Martinez makes a comfortable save.
The ball is sent over by Olivier Giroud, Nicky Shorey makes a clearance.
A cross is delivered by Theo Walcott, save made by Adam Federici. Andrey Arshavin takes a shot. Adam Federici makes a comfortable save.
Assist on the goal came from Andrey Arshavin.
Goal! - Marouane Chamakh - Reading 4 - 5 Arsenal A goal is scored by Marouane Chamakh from just outside the penalty box to the bottom left corner of the goal. Reading 4-5 Arsenal.
Free kick awarded for an unfair challenge on Marouane Chamakh by Chris Gunter. Ignasi Miquel restarts play with the free kick.
Unfair challenge on Hal Robson-Kanu by Marouane Chamakh results in a free kick. Adam Federici takes the direct free kick.
A cross is delivered by Theo Walcott.
Corner taken right-footed by Andrey Arshavin.
Unfair challenge on Pavel Pogrebnyak by Marouane Chamakh results in a free kick. The ball is sent over by Nicky Shorey, Header from deep inside the area by Sean Morrison goes harmlessly over the crossbar.
Andrey Arshavin delivers the ball, Nicky Shorey makes a clearance.
The ball is sent over by Chris Gunter.
The ball is sent over by Jobi McAnuff, Laurent Koscielny manages to make a clearance.
Andrey Arshavin has an effort from just inside the box that misses to the left of the goal.
The assistant referee flags for offside against Simon Church. Carl Jenkinson takes the free kick.
Jobi McAnuff takes a shot. Save by Damian Martinez.
The whistle goes for the end of normal time.
Assist on the goal came from Marouane Chamakh.
Goal! - Theo Walcott - Reading 4 - 4 Arsenal Theo Walcott finds the back of the net with a goal from inside the six-yard box to the bottom right corner of the goal. Reading 4-4 Arsenal.
Substitution Simon Church joins the action as a substitute, replacing Jason Roberts.
Foul by Laurent Koscielny on Pavel Pogrebnyak, free kick awarded. Jay Tabb takes the direct free kick.
Corner from the right by-line taken by Theo Walcott, Pavel Pogrebnyak makes a clearance.
Theo Walcott takes a shot. Blocked by Kaspars Gorkss.
Laurent Koscielny gives away a free kick for an unfair challenge on Jason Roberts. Free kick taken by Jobi McAnuff.
Assist by Theo Walcott.
Goal! - Laurent Koscielny - Reading 4 - 3 Arsenal Laurent Koscielny scores a goal from close in to the bottom right corner of the goal. Reading 4-3 Arsenal.
Corner from the left by-line taken by Theo Walcott,
Shot on goal comes in from Nicky Shorey from the free kick, save by Damian Martinez.
Booking Laurent Koscielny is cautioned.
Free kick awarded for a foul by Laurent Koscielny on Jason Roberts.
Olivier Giroud takes a shot. Chris Gunter gets a block in.
Andrey Arshavin takes a inswinging corner from the left by-line played to the near post, clearance by Chris Gunter.
Thomas Eisfeld takes a shot. Blocked by Kaspars Gorkss. A cross is delivered by Carl Jenkinson, Jobi McAnuff makes a clearance.
The assistant referee flags for offside against Jason Roberts. Johan Djourou restarts play with the free kick.
Foul by Francis Coquelin on Jay Tabb, free kick awarded. Direct free kick taken by Nicky Shorey.
Shot by Andrey Arshavin from deep inside the penalty area misses to the left of the goal.
Corner from the left by-line taken by Andrey Arshavin, Header from close range by Marouane Chamakh misses to the right of the target.
Andrey Arshavin sends in a cross, Sean Morrison manages to make a clearance.
Inswinging corner taken left-footed by Nicky Shorey from the right by-line, Sean Morrison produces a header from close range which goes wide of the left-hand post.
Adam Federici takes the free kick.
Booking Olivier Giroud is cautioned.
Thomas Eisfeld delivers the ball, Olivier Giroud takes a shot. Adam Federici makes a fantastic save. Unfair challenge on Kaspars Gorkss by Olivier Giroud results in a free kick.
Effort from outside the penalty box by Thomas Eisfeld goes wide right of the target.
Pavel Pogrebnyak concedes a free kick for a foul on Thomas Eisfeld. Shot on goal comes in from Olivier Giroud from the free kick.
Substitution Garath McCleary goes off and Jobi McAnuff comes on.
Substitution Pavel Pogrebnyak replaces Noel Hunt.
The ball is swung over by Ignasi Miquel.
Drilled left-footed shot by Olivier Giroud. Kaspars Gorkss gets a block in. Olivier Giroud takes a shot. Save made by Adam Federici.
Theo Walcott has a direct shot on goal from the free kick.
Booking Mikele Leigertwood receives a yellow card.
Thomas Eisfeld fouled by Mikele Leigertwood, the ref awards a free kick.
Unfair challenge on Johan Djourou by Jason Roberts results in a free kick. Direct free kick taken by Carl Jenkinson.
Jason Roberts is flagged offside by the assistant referee. Laurent Koscielny takes the free kick.
The ball is crossed by Ignasi Miquel, clearance by Sean Morrison.
The assist for the goal came from Theo Walcott.
Goal! - Olivier Giroud - Reading 4 - 2 Arsenal Olivier Giroud grabs a headed goal from inside the area. Reading 4-2 Arsenal.
Corner taken right-footed by Theo Walcott,
The offside flag is raised against Noel Hunt. Free kick taken by Laurent Koscielny.
Substitution Serge Gnabry goes off and Thomas Eisfeld comes on.
Substitution Emmanuel Frimpong leaves the field to be replaced by Olivier Giroud.
Unfair challenge on Johan Djourou by Jason Roberts results in a free kick. Johan Djourou takes the direct free kick.
Andrey Arshavin produces a cross.
Foul by Noel Hunt on Andrey Arshavin, free kick awarded. Theo Walcott takes the direct free kick.
Carl Jenkinson crosses the ball, Kaspars Gorkss makes a clearance.
Foul by Mikele Leigertwood on Andrey Arshavin, free kick awarded. Francis Coquelin takes the direct free kick.
Carl Jenkinson crosses the ball, Effort from inside the six-yard box by Theo Walcott goes wide left of the target.
Jason Roberts is caught offside. Laurent Koscielny takes the indirect free kick.
Adam Federici takes the free kick.
Booking Caution for Marouane Chamakh.
Chris Gunter fouled by Marouane Chamakh, the ref awards a free kick.
Close range effort by Serge Gnabry misses to the right of the goal.
Noel Hunt is penalised for a handball. Emmanuel Frimpong takes the direct free kick.
Theo Walcott takes a shot. Save by Adam Federici. Inswinging corner taken by Andrey Arshavin from the left by-line played to the near post, clearance by Noel Hunt.
Garath McCleary delivers the ball, Ignasi Miquel gets a block in.
Effort on goal by Mikele Leigertwood from just inside the penalty box goes harmlessly over the target.
Johan Djourou gives away a free kick for an unfair challenge on Jason Roberts. The free kick is delivered left-footed by Nicky Shorey from left wing, clearance by Laurent Koscielny. Shot from long range by Chris Gunter goes wide of the left-hand post. The assistant referee signals for offside against Noel Hunt. Free kick taken by Damian Martinez.
Outswinging corner taken by Nicky Shorey, Unfair challenge on Damian Martinez by Sean Morrison results in a free kick. Damian Martinez takes the free kick.
Inswinging corner taken by Nicky Shorey from the right by-line, clearance made by Ignasi Miquel.
The ball is sent over by Mikele Leigertwood, clearance by Ignasi Miquel.
Outswinging corner taken left-footed by Nicky Shorey from the left by-line.
Garath McCleary fouled by Ignasi Miquel, the ref awards a free kick. Free kick crossed by Chris Gunter. Hal Robson-Kanu takes a shot. Save made by Damian Martinez.
The match restarts for the second half.
Half Time The ref blows to signal half-time.
Assist on the goal came from Andrey Arshavin.
Goal! - Theo Walcott - Reading 4 - 1 Arsenal Theo Walcott gets on the score sheet with a goal from just inside the area to the bottom left corner of the goal. Reading 4-1 Arsenal.
The referee blows for offside. Laurent Koscielny takes the free kick.
Carl Jenkinson has an effort at goal from just inside the box that misses to the left of the target.
Corner taken right-footed by Andrey Arshavin. Effort from outside the area by Emmanuel Frimpong goes wide right of the goal.
Serge Gnabry takes a shot. Blocked by Mikele Leigertwood.
Marouane Chamakh takes a shot. Save by Adam Federici.
Ignasi Miquel delivers the ball, blocked by Garath McCleary.
Free kick awarded for a foul by Jason Roberts on Laurent Koscielny. Direct free kick taken by Damian Martinez.
Free kick awarded for a foul by Johan Djourou on Jason Roberts. Nicky Shorey takes the free kick.
Garath McCleary provided the assist for the goal.
Goal! - Noel Hunt - Reading 4 - 0 Arsenal Noel Hunt finds the net with a headed goal from close in. Reading 4-0 Arsenal.
Garath McCleary delivers the ball,
Garath McCleary produces a cross, clearance by Laurent Koscielny.
A cross is delivered by Carl Jenkinson, save made by Adam Federici.
The referee blows for offside against Jason Roberts. Johan Djourou restarts play with the free kick.
Booking Ignasi Miquel is shown a yellow card for unsporting behaviour.
Noel Hunt takes a shot. Save made by Damian Martinez.
The ball is delivered by Theo Walcott, save by Adam Federici.
Theo Walcott takes a shot. Blocked by Kaspars Gorkss.
Free kick awarded for a foul by Serge Gnabry on Chris Gunter. Adam Federici takes the free kick.
The assist for the goal came from Jay Tabb.
Goal! - Mikele Leigertwood - Reading 3 - 0 Arsenal Mikele Leigertwood finds the net with a goal from the edge of the penalty area to the bottom left corner of the goal. Reading 3-0 Arsenal.
Corner taken by Nicky Shorey, clearance made by Ignasi Miquel.
Garath McCleary takes a shot. Blocked by Laurent Koscielny.
Assist on the goal came from Chris Gunter.
Goal! - Laurent Koscielny - Reading 2 - 0 Arsenal Laurent Koscielny concedes an own goal. Reading 2-0 Arsenal.
A cross is delivered by Chris Gunter, blocked by Laurent Koscielny.
Andrey Arshavin challenges Hal Robson-Kanu unfairly and gives away a free kick. Free kick crossed left-footed by Nicky Shorey.
Inswinging corner taken left-footed by Nicky Shorey, Ignasi Miquel manages to make a clearance.
The ball is delivered by Garath McCleary, blocked by Serge Gnabry.
Chris Gunter crosses the ball, clearance by Ignasi Miquel.
Corner taken by Nicky Shorey.
Chris Gunter sends in a cross, clearance by Laurent Koscielny.
Assist by Hal Robson-Kanu.
Goal! - Jason Roberts - Reading 1 - 0 Arsenal Jason Roberts gets on the score sheet with a goal from inside the six-yard box high into the middle of the goal. Reading 1-0 Arsenal.
Hal Robson-Kanu sends in a cross,
Andrey Arshavin takes a inswinging corner from the left by-line played to the near post, Kaspars Gorkss manages to make a clearance. Andrey Arshavin takes a shot. Chris Gunter gets a block in. Corner from the left by-line taken by Andrey Arshavin, Adam Federici makes a save.
Outswinging corner taken by Nicky Shorey from the left by-line, Noel Hunt concedes a free kick for a foul on Damian Martinez. Direct free kick taken by Damian Martinez.
Jay Tabb takes a shot. Save by Damian Martinez.
Corner taken by Andrey Arshavin.
Free kick awarded for a foul by Jay Tabb on Emmanuel Frimpong. Emmanuel Frimpong takes the direct free kick.
Unfair challenge on Francis Coquelin by Mikele Leigertwood results in a free kick. Andrey Arshavin takes the direct free kick.
Corner from the left by-line taken by Nicky Shorey, Sean Morrison produces a header from deep inside the area and strikes the post.
The ball is swung over by Hal Robson-Kanu, blocked by Carl Jenkinson.
Corner taken left-footed by Nicky Shorey from the left by-line, Johan Djourou makes a clearance.
Free kick awarded for an unfair challenge on Serge Gnabry by Chris Gunter. Ignasi Miquel restarts play with the free kick.
The game begins.
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Live text commentary | Theo Walcott scored a scintillating hat-trick as Arsenal produced one of the great comebacks to take their place in the last eight of the League Cup. |
35,115,466 | A joint statement by the university and Queen's Students' Union said 'Fossil Free QUB' had agreed to the move after a "constructive meeting" with senior management.
It said Queen's University would undertake a comprehensive review of its investment policy.
This would involve engagement with "all relevant stakeholders in this process, including the Students' Union and Fossil Free QUB".
It said a timetable for completion of the review had been agreed, with recommendations on any proposed policy changes scheduled to come to senate, the university governing body, on 21 June next year.
The statement said the objective of the review, was to ensure that the university's investment policy is aligned with best practice in the area of "socially responsible investment" and with the university's vision.
The statement said Queen's University Belfast and QUB Students' Union were "committed to the development of a socially responsible investment policy that represents best practice, is consistent with Vision 2020 and the university's Carbon Management Plan, and will underpin investment decisions made by the university".
Students had been occupying part of the administration building since Friday. | Students who have been occupying part of Queen's University Belfast's administration building, calling for the university to sell shares it holds in fossil fuel firms, have agreed to end their sit-in. |
22,690,321 | Clark has not recovered from an ankle injury and is ruled out of England action for a third time in 12 months.
Slater suffered a recurrence of a tricep injury during his side's Premiership final win against Northampton on Saturday.
Sale's Wasps-bound lock Kearnan Myall has been added to the squad.
Clark was ruled out of England's 2012 summer tour of South Africa and the autumn internationals that followed after receiving a record 32-week ban for breaking the arm of Leicester of hooker Rob Hawkins.
He was recalled for the Six Nations only to suffer a shoulder injury in January that sidelined him for the whole tournament.
England will now be taking a squad of 31 players for Sunday's tour match in Montevideo and the two Tests against the Pumas in Salta on 8 June and Buenos Aires on 15 June.
Head coach Stuart Lancaster said: "It's unfortunate for both Calum and Ed that they won't be able to join up with England this summer but I'm sure they will be back and pushing for places next season.
"Calum has been unlucky with the injuries. I had a good chat with him yesterday - he came in and we assessed his ankle and it clearly was not going to be right until beyond the first Test and as a consequence it would take him out of contention.
"Kearnan did well in a good team performance against the Barbarians and now has a great chance to continue his progress with us on tour.
"It means we travel with one player less than originally selected, but we have lots of options in the second row and back row to cover for that." | Northampton flanker Calum Clark and Leicester lock Ed Slater have been ruled out of England's tour to Uruguay and Argentina. |
34,624,321 | Jermaine Anderson's low shot from Conor Washington's cross opened the scoring for Posh before Erhum Oztumer doubled the visitors' lead from 25 yards.
Coventry got one back through Romain Vincelot on the rebound, before Adam Armstrong equalised from close range.
Armstrong then slotted home again to win it, as City repeated last year's victory over Posh by the same score.
Sky Blues boss Tony Mowbray told BBC Coventry & Warwickshire:
"I'm delighted for the fans to see the team play with the heart they showed in the second half, and I'm delighted for the players as well. Hopefully everyone's going home happy.
"The supporters dragged the team along in the second half. We attacked with purpose and we got the first goal of the half which was crucial.
"As for Armstrong's second goal, if any player in the world scored that we'd be eulogising and purring at the talent. It was an amazing turn, he chopped the two defenders, then rifled into the bottom corner." | Coventry maintained their unbeaten home record in League One this season as they fought back to beat Peterborough. |
20,320,780 | Secretary of State Theresa Villiers has said the report will be published, in full, in the week of 10 December.
Mr Finucane was shot by loyalists in front of his family in his north Belfast home in 1989.
His family have said that the report falls well short of the full public inquiry they have campaigned for.
Sir Desmond de Silva QC was asked to undertake a legal review of the case, amid long-running allegations of state collusion in the murder.
Mr Finucane's widow, Geraldine, said the announcement that it would be published in full was not a guarantee of openness and transparency.
"Vital information has already been removed from the report by the de Silva review team prior to checking by security officials, MOD personnel and the PSNI," she said.
"By the time the report is made public it will have been sanitised completely, to ensure that the least possible amount of discomfort is caused to the government and the British state." | The family of murdered solicitor Pat Finucane have said they believe government vetting of a report into the killing will have "sanitised it". |
38,227,976 | A total of 64 snowdogs, each with a unique design, were created earlier this year and displayed on a public art trail across Tyne and Wear.
The trail closed last month and the sculptures have been sold at the Sage Gateshead.
The £259,200 raised will go to St Oswald's Hospice in Newcastle.
The highest price was paid for a dog known as Disco Dog, designed by mosaic artist Natalie Guy, which went for £9,200.
The first lot of the event, Arthur, was bought for £5,200.
Standing 1.5m tall (4ft 9ins), the colourful sculptures included several with North East-related designs, including two in the colours of Newcastle United and Sunderland football teams which made up the final lots.
Four smaller previously unseen pups were also sold off. | Dozens of sculptures based on a character from the animated film The Snowman and the Snowdog have sold for almost £260,000 at auction. |
40,276,691 | Smith, 34, returns to Germany to face Tyron Zeuge for the WBA world super-middleweight title on Saturday, having lost there to WBO champion Arthur Abraham in both 2014 and 2015.
"He has the experience now," said Gallagher.
"It's not like a kid fighting for the world title for the first time."
Abraham was a convincing points victor over Smith in February 2015, five months after securing a more controversial verdict over the Liverpool fighter.
"This is now his third attempt, and at this stage of his career, it's the last roll of the dice," said Gallagher.
Smith has won his past three fights to take his career record to 38 wins and six losses. | Britain's Paul Smith faces a "last roll of the dice" as he attempts to win a world title at the third time of asking, says his trainer Joe Gallagher. |
38,301,270 | Bill Bowman will take over from North East MSP Mr Johnstone, who died last week after being diagnosed with cancer.
Kincardineshire-born former dairy farmer Mr Johnstone, 55, was the longest-serving Scottish Conservative MSP at Holyrood.
Mr Bowman stood for the Conservatives in Dundee City East earlier this year. He becomes a regional list MSP.
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said Mr Johnstone was "a big man with a big heart" who "embodied politics at its best".
It has been announced that Mr Johnstone's funeral will be at Glenbervie Parish Church on Friday at noon. | The replacement for the late Scottish Conservative MSP Alex Johnstone has been announced. |
32,850,671 | Zelmerlow won with his upbeat pop track Heroes, which was accompanied by innovative animated visuals.
Italy were third, followed by Belgium. Australia finished fifth in the country's first Eurovision appearance.
The UK's 1920s-influenced swing act Electro Velvet finished 24th out of the 27 participants with five points.
A record number of countries took part, including Australia - which was invited to compete for the first time to mark the event's 60th anniversary.
The top of the leaderboard:
The bottom of the leaderboard:
Electro Velvet said: "Obviously it is disappointing to finish on the right hand side of the board, but we have had the most amazing, brilliant, unforgettable time being part of this unique competition in this special year.
"We put our hearts and souls into representing our country and would like to thank everyone back at home and around the world that got behind us.
"It really means a lot and of course we also want to congratulate Sweden and Mans Zelmerlow on their well-deserved victory."
Zelmerlow was the bookmakers' favourite throughout the build-up to this year's contest.
"I'm so happy and I want to say thank you for voting for me," he told the crowd. "I want to say we are all Heroes, no matter who we love, who we are or what we believe in - we are all heroes."
It was Sweden's sixth Eurovision win - meaning they are now just one victory behind the contest's record holders Ireland, who have won seven times.
The result also means the annual extravaganza will be held in Sweden next year - just three years after it last hosted the show.
This year's contest was held in the Austrian capital's Wiener Stadthalle following Conchita Wurst's win last year.
But this year, the hosts, along with Germany, finished with zero points - the first time since 2003 that any country has drawn a blank.
Russian contestant Gagarina was beaten by Zelmerlow after being neck-and-neck for much of the voting.
Italian pop opera trio Il Volo, who have enjoyed chart success around the world, finished third. Belgium's 19-year-old Loic Nottet managed fourth.
And it was a respectable night for Guy Sebastian, one of Australia's biggest pop stars, who came fifth after being sent to represent his country.
After the show, Eurovision organisers revealed there had been irregularities with the votes from the juries in Macedonia and Montenegro.
The points awarded by each country are normally determined by a combination of a jury and a public vote.
A statement said: "The jury results of FYR Macedonia and Montenegro for the grand final have been excluded after consultation of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the contest's independent voting observer, and upon the decision of the executive supervisor and the chairman of the reference group.
"In both countries, televoting applied for 100%. The exclusion of two juries will be further discussed in the next reference group meeting in June."
Around 200 million viewers were thought to have tuned in to the event on television, and it was screened live in China for the first time. | Swedish singer Mans Zelmerlow has triumphed at this year's Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, beating Russia's Polina Gagarina. |
38,974,391 | It also heard that Stormont's prime minister at the time, Brian Faulkner, was briefed on the torture techniques.
One of those held said the measures used left him praying for death.
It was also claimed that a government minister visited a training exercise for the interrogation methods in 1971.
Controversy still surrounds the Army's use of what it called "deep interrogation" techniques during the Troubles.
The government is facing a legal challenge from several men, who claim they were tortured by the Army during the conflict, for its failure to fully investigate their case.
Known as the Hooded Men, they were arrested on suspicion of terror offences and imprisoned without trial in August 1971.
Five techniques are said to have been used against the group as part of "deep interrogation"; being hooded and made to stand in a stress position against a wall and beaten if they fell; being forced to listen to constant loud static noise; and being deprived of sleep, food and water.
Barristers representing all but one of the group said the military taught the torture methods to RUC Special Branch officers who sought assurances of immunity from prosecution before carrying them out.
"The allegation in this case is that the decision to sanction that torture was taken by senior ministers," he said.
Action is being taken against the chief constable, secretary of state and the Department of Justice, over alleged failures to properly probe and order a full inquiry.
In a statement, one of the group recalled collapsing and being punched in the stomach to revive him.
He was against the wall for three days, subjected to kicks or beatings every time he dropped to the ground or fell asleep, the court heard.
"The applicant described suffering hallucinations and prayed for death," his barrister said.
His treatment was said to have resulted in serious psychiatric and psychological consequences, including treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
The man said that he still wakes in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
"On one occasion he awoke crouched in his wardrobe in a deeply distressed state," his barrister added.
Two of the men behind the legal challenge were said to have been subjected to the torture methods a month later.
The case continues. | Former British Prime Minister Edward Heath was involved in the decision-making process which led to the torture of the 'Hooded Men', the High Court has heard. |
39,133,329 | Brian McMahon, who was with Mr Johnston when he was shot, was sentenced to three years and three months.
DNA from McMahon, 30, was found on a bag of drugs worth £17,600 recovered from a car in Glasgow in March 2014.
Gary Bradburn, 39, was sentenced to five years and three months for running a drugs factory in his home.
Police found items used to bulk-out and package drugs, as well as two bags of heroin with purity of 45% and 49% with an estimated total street value of £640,000.
McMahon and Bradburn admitted heroin dealing. Their former co-accused, Mr Johnston, died before he could be brought to justice, the High Court at Livingston heard.
Mr Johnston, 26, was shot while sitting in a black Audi RS4 in Shields Road, Glasgow, last November.
The drugs case is the latest linked to Roy Dunstance, who is serving 11 years for running a £9m drug and gun empire from Spain.
An earlier hearing was told McMahon was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after witnessing the murder of Mr Johnston.
McMahon's defence advocate David Nicolson said his client had played a "limited role" by dropping off one bag containing drugs of "limited value".
He described factors which pointed to him "being at the very bottom end of the spectrum" of the drugs trade.
Tony Lenehan, defending Bradburn, said his client had got into debt and he had been "vulnerable to the sort of offer that was made and accepted".
He said: "It is he who was preyed upon to shoulder the eventual blame simply so people like Mr Johnstone would not.
"The value of the drugs here would be of direct relevance to Mr Johnston, who would profit from the sale.
"Mr Bradburn would be the one exposed at risk of exposure using his property. But he knew what he was getting involved in."
Passing sentence, judge Lord Clark said he accepted that both accused had been operating at the lower-end of the drug-dealing scale.
However, he said the offences were aggravated by being connected to serious and organised crime. | Two drug dealers associated with murdered Glasgow man Euan Johnston have been jailed for their roles in a £600,000 heroin trade. |
34,043,838 | The incident took place during their Rogers Cup match earlier this month.
An ATP review found the 20-year-old guilty of "aggravated behaviour".
The Australian had already received a $10,000 (£6,400) tournament fine for the "unacceptable comments", which were picked up by on-court microphones.
The fine and ban will be imposed if Kyrgios incurs any fines for verbal or physical abuse over the next six months, or accumulate fines totalling more than $5,000 (£3,200) for any other offences at ATP-sanctioned tournaments.
Although world number 41 Kyrgios apologised for the comments, Switzerland's French Open champion Wawrinka, 30, called for major action to be taken.
The ATP's head of rules and competition Gayle David Bradshaw said: "This incident reflected poorly on our sport.
"Nick has expressed regret. The best result would be that he learns a lesson and that he understands he is responsible to the tour and to fellow players for both his actions and his words."
Kyrgios also received a $2,500 (£1,600) fine for unsportsmanlike conduct relating to a comment made to a ball person during the Rogers Cup match in Montreal.
He previously came under heavy criticism for his behaviour after appearing to stop trying when he was given a code violation during his defeat by France's Richard Gasquet at Wimbledon in July. | Nick Kyrgios has been given a suspended 28-day ban and $25,000 (£16,200) fine by the Association of Tennis Professionals for making lewd remarks about Stan Wawrinka's girlfriend. |
35,125,273 | Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said the deal was reached at UN-brokered talks in Geneva, Switzerland.
The south-western city has been the scene of months of fierce fighting between Houthi rebels and forces backing the government.
Local residents are now enduring dire shortages of all kinds, reports say.
Mr Ahmed described the agreement as a "major step forward".
There are hopes that aid deliveries will be sent to other Yemeni cities in the coming days.
At least 5,700 people, almost half of them civilians, have been killed in air strikes and fighting on the ground since a Saudi-led coalition launched a military campaign in March in support of the government.
The campaign was launched after the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa and advanced towards the second city of Aden.
The already dire humanitarian situation in Yemen has also deteriorated severely, with more than 21 million people - four-fifths of the population - now requiring aid.
Since March, coalition and pro-government forces have retaken Aden and the city of Marib. | Negotiators from Yemen's warring sides have agreed to allow the resumption of aid deliveries to the besieged city of Taiz, the UN special envoy has said. |
37,743,661 | Gordon Anglesea, 79, from Old Colwyn, was convicted of one indecent assault against one boy and three indecent assaults against another on Friday.
He was bailed pending sentence on 4 November.
A source within his defence team said: "Of course we will appeal. He is an innocent man."
Convicted on four charges, Anglesea was found not guilty of an alternative count of serious sexual assault at the end of a six week trial at Mold Crown Court.
He was told by Judge Geraint Walters "there can only be one sentence and that is a prison sentence".
Anglesea, a former superintendent in the Wrexham area, had denied the charges, with his defence funded by the Police Federation.
He claimed the allegations were simply "lies and inventions" but he was disbelieved by the jury.
The Crown Prosecution Service Wales said he had been in "a position of power and authority" in order to "prey on very young and vulnerable victims", with North Wales Police apologising to his victims.
In 1994, Anglesea was awarded £375,000 in libel damages after media organisations ran stories about his links to abuse at children's homes in north Wales.
Private Eye was among the publications sued by Anglesea.
Speaking after the verdicts were returned, its editor Ian Hislop said he had taken a "certain grim satisfaction" in justice having eventually been done, but confirmed the satirical magazine did not intend to revisit the libel case. | A former north Wales police chief found guilty of historical child sex offences is to consult with his lawyers over appealing against his convictions. |
40,724,397 | A woman has been arrested for destroying her former partner's violin collection and 70 bows, together worth 105.9m yen ($950,700, £770,000).
The 34-year-old suspect broke into his apartment in Nagoya and wrecked the instruments, police said.
The incident took place in 2014 in the midst of their breakup but the woman has only just been arrested.
Her 62-year-old former husband is said to have been both a maker and collector of violins.
The most valuable instrument among the 54 casualties is an Italian-made violin worth 50m yen, the Kyodo news agency said.
According to Japanese media, the woman is a Chinese national and was arrested on Tuesday upon returning from China to Tokyo. | Divorces are known to break a heart or two but in one case in Japan, an extra 54 violins were left in tatters. |
39,001,703 | A suicide bomber blew himself up among devotees at the Sufi shrine in the town of Sehwan.
Pakistan has reacted with raids across the country and by lashing out at Afghanistan which it accuses of tolerating militant sanctuaries.
So-called Islamic State said it had carried out the attack.
It was the latest in a string of bombings by the jihadist group.
In response, some 18 militants were killed in southern Sindh province, where the Sufi shrine is located, and another 13 in the north-west, officials said. It is unclear where the other alleged terrorists were killed.
Border crossings with Afghanistan have been closed and rockets have been fired into two Afghan provinces.
Funerals for victims have been taking place on Friday and the Sindh provincial government has announced three days of mourning.
Some 250 people were also wounded in the attack.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the bombing and immediately vowed to track down those behind it.
Pakistan's army chief, Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, said in a statement: "Each drop of the nation's blood shall be avenged, and avenged immediately. No more restraint for anyone."
Armed forces spokesman Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor said more than "100 terrorists" were killed and many others arrested in 24 hours as part of operations across the country, including Punjab province.
He said more details would be shared later.
Correspondents say crackdowns of this type are a regular response from the state following a major militant attack.
However the number of militants the army is claiming to have killed this time is higher than normal, says the BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad.
The military needs to offset the impression that it is losing the war against militants, he adds.
Earlier, the paramilitary Rangers said they had targeted militants overnight in Sindh, while police said further raids were carried out in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the north-west.
The army also summoned officials from the Afghan embassy to its headquarters in Rawalpindi, protesting that Afghan soil was being used as a base for militants to carry out attacks in Pakistan.
The army said it handed over a list containing the names of 76 "most wanted terrorists", insisting that Afghanistan take immediate action against them.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Friday condemned the shrine attack, saying: "Terrorists once again proved that they have no respect for Islamic values."
Devotees continued to flock to the shrine of Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan on Friday.
The mood was defiant, with the customary naqqara (drum beating) taking place at daybreak as usual, and worshippers vowing to hold their routine dhamal (sacred dance) in the evening.
There were also angry scenes, with some worshippers complaining to police that they had not provided enough security despite previous threats to the shrine.
The shrine attack was the most deadly in a series of militant attacks since Sunday that have killed more than 100 people across Pakistan, including civilians, police and soldiers.
A number of militants, especially many members of the Pakistani Taliban group (TTP), moved to Afghanistan after the Pakistani military's operation in North Waziristan in 2014.
They are mostly based in eastern Afghanistan in areas considered to be outside the Afghan government's control. Some of these militants later joined the Islamic State group. The Afghan government insists it has been targeting them and has killed several Pakistani Taliban commanders over the past two years.
When an attack takes place in Pakistan, officials generally point the finger at Afghanistan. Pakistanis blame elements in the Afghan intelligence agency and India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) for supporting militants who carry out attacks against Pakistan.
Afghan officials view this as hypocrisy, accusing Pakistan of discriminating between "good" and "bad" militants. They accuse Pakistan of allowing on its soil militant groups that attack Afghanistan and India. They also point to the presence and killing of a number of top-ranked militant leaders, including Osama Bin Laden and the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, in US strikes in Pakistan.
The "blame game" has become a norm as the countries accuse each other of using militant groups as proxies. The border closure and fresh allegations by Pakistan will further erode the little trust that exists between the two governments. | Pakistan says it has killed more than 100 militants in a security crackdown following Thursday's attack on a shrine that left at least 80 people dead. |
25,387,340 | With almost all the votes counted, Ms Bachelet had 62% against 38% for Evelyn Matthei, a former minister from the governing centre-right coalition.
Ms Bachelet first served from 2006 to 2010, but under Chile's constitution she could not stand for a second consecutive term.
She narrowly missed out on outright victory in the first round last month.
By Gideon LongBBC News, Santiago
Winning Chile's presidential election was pretty easy for Michelle Bachelet. She led the contest from the start and never faced much of a challenge from her bickering centre-right opponents. The hard part will start in March when she takes office.
Even Ms Bachelet's closest aides acknowledge her education reforms will be costly, eating up an extra 1.5% to 2% of gross domestic product each year. She says that money will come from taxes, particularly on big business.
The other big pledge of Ms Bachelet's campaign is constitutional change. She says Chile needs a new constitution to replace the one drawn up under Gen Augusto Pinochet in 1980, as well as a new electoral system.
But perhaps the biggest challenge facing her is the weight of expectation. After four years of centre-right rule marked by huge street protests, Chileans are clamouring for change.
Read Gideon Long's analysis in full
BBC Mundo's Ignacio de los Reyes said that hundreds of people applauded Ms Bachelet when she took to the stage outside the headquarters of her coalition in the centre of Santiago, some even cried with joy.
Many of them were women, members of the gay and lesbian community and environmentalists - some of the core groups that supported Ms Bachelet throughout her campaign.
In her victory speech, Ms Bachelet, 62, said she would carry out "deep reforms needed in Chile", but she assured voters she would do so "responsibly".
"Today in Chile we're in the majority and it's time we moved forward to fulfil the dream we all have, to again believe in ourselves, and to believe that there's strength in unity," she said.
"I am proud to be your president-elect today. I am proud of the country we've built but I am even more proud of the country we will build."
Ms Bachelet is now set to become the first leader in Chile to serve two terms since the military rule of Gen Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990.
Upon hearing the news, her supporters took to the streets to celebrate, waving flags and sounding car horns in the capital, Santiago.
Her rival, Evelyn Matthei, 60, conceded defeat and congratulated Ms Bachelet in person.
Coming close to tears, Ms Matthei told her supporters that her "deepest and honest desire is that things go well for her [Michelle Bachelet]".
"No one who loves Chile can want anything else," Ms Matthei said.
Ms Bachelet thanked Ms Matthei for her good wishes and said that both shared a love for their homeland and a willingness to serve its people.
A paediatrician by training, Ms Bachelet won 47% of the vote in the first round on 17 November. Ms Matthei secured 25%.
Ms Bachelet leads an alliance of her Socialist Party, Christian Democrats and Communists and has campaigned on policies designed to reduce the gap between rich and poor.
Chile is one of the richest countries in Latin America, but millions have staged protests over the past few years to push for a wider distribution of wealth and better education.
Ms Bachelet wants to increase taxes to offer free university education and reform political and economic structures dating from the dictatorship of Gen Pinochet.
Her manifesto this time is much more radical than before, the BBC's Gideon Long in Santiago reports.
Ms Bachelet was constitutionally barred from serving a second successive term but was very popular when she left office.
Ms Matthei entered the race after two candidates of the centre-right alliance resigned earlier this year - one for alleged financial irregularities, the other one after struggling with depression.
She called for a continuation of the policies of outgoing President Sebastian Pinera, asserting that Chileans are "better off" now than when he came to power four years ago.
As children in the 1950s, the current rivals were neighbours and used to play together on the airbase where their fathers, both air force generals, worked.
Ms Matthei's father, Fernando, rose through the ranks to run a military school.
Michelle Bachelet's father, Alberto, had a job in the Socialist administration overthrown by Gen Pinochet in the 1973 coup.
He died in 1974 of a heart attack while in custody. An investigation concluded that the 51-year-old general had probably died of heart problems aggravated by torture at the military academy.
A judge ruled earlier this year that Gen Matthei had no knowledge of or involvement in the torture. | Left-wing candidate Michelle Bachelet has been elected Chilean president for a second time by a wide margin. |
33,303,285 | Irish broadcaster RTÉ said the couple had been named locally as Laurence (Larry) and Martina Hayes.
They were in their 50s and came from Athlone. They had one daughter.
Irish woman Lorna Carty, a mother-of-two from County Meath, was also among 38 people killed when a gunman opened fire at a beach resort in Sousse.
At least 15 of those who died were Britons.
The attack started at about noon on Friday when the gunman began shooting on a beach close to two tourist hotels.
He was then shot dead by police. He was named later as Seifeddine Rezgui, a student from Tunisia who had links with Islamic State.
It has emerged that one of the Irish victims worked for transport company, Bus Eireann, for the last 20 years.
A spokeswoman said Larry Hayes was "highly regarded on both a personal and professional level, by all his colleagues at Bus Eireann".
She added: "Our thoughts and prayers are with the couple's daughter at this difficult time, and all the extended family."
Ireland's Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan said he was not aware of concerns about any other Irish citizens.
In an interview with RTE Radio One, he added: "I myself have been in contact with family members of the citizens who I understand and believe have lost their lives.
" It is a particularly sad and difficult time for the families."
The British foreign minister, Tobias Ellwood, warned that the death toll of UK citizens was likely to rise because several people had been "seriously injured in this horrific attack".
The Tunisian prime minister Habib Essid said the majority of those killed were British.
Tunisia's tourism minister called the attack a "catastrophe" and authorities vowed to toughen security, drafting in army reserves and arming tourism police at beaches and hotels.
Sousse's tourism commissioner said more than 3,000 foreign tourists had left the town on Saturday.
More than 1,000 British tourists have returned to the UK, while it is thought 2,500 more could fly home on Sunday.
Ms Carty, who was in her 50s, was on holiday with her husband Declan.
He was uninjured but is said to be "absolutely distraught".
Irish politician Ray Butler said he had spoken to Ms Carty's husband.
"It was one of the hardest phone calls I've ever made and it's so sad to hear what happened," Mr Butler told RTÉ.
Tunisia is a popular destination for Irish tourists.
Some holidaymakers who returned to the Republic of Ireland on Friday night said their break had "turned into hell".
The Irish government is warning people travelling to Tunisia to "exercise extreme caution". | A couple from County Westmeath have died in Friday's terror attack in Tunisia, bringing the number of Irish people killed to three. |
31,896,550 | Amedy Coulibaly killed four hostages at the Hyper Cacher supermarket before he was shot dead by security forces.
He had pledged loyalty to Islamic State militants and had links to two men who attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine in January, killing 12 people.
The reopening of the kosher supermarket was praised as a sign of resilience.
"This foodstore reopens bravely to show that life is stronger than everything," French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said, as he attended the reopening.
Meanwhile, the families of the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack are to receive proceeds from the sale of original artwork for an Asterix cartoon.
The 1971 storyboard was sold for €150,000 (£106,782) by auction house Christie's, in Paris.
The supermarket at Porte de Vincennes has been fully renovated since the 9 January siege.
New workers have been hired, covering for staff who were on duty at the time of the attack and are still on extended leave.
The attacks in January triggered fears of further unrest in France, which has Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities.
The supermarket, like other Jewish sites in France, is now under constant police guard.
Coulibaly shot dead four Jewish men at the supermarket before security forces stormed the building, killing him and freeing the remaining hostages.
The previous day, he had shot dead a policewoman in Paris.
The gunman had a criminal record and is believed to have met Cherif Kouachi, one of the Charlie Hebdo attackers, while in prison.
Kouachi and his brother shot dead 10 journalists and two police officers in an attack on the offices of the satirical magazine in Paris.
The militants were killed at the end of a police manhunt. | A Paris Jewish supermarket has reopened two months after a gunman, linked to militants who had attacked a satirical weekly, staged a hostage crisis there. |
38,928,626 | The UK-based maker of Durex and Dettol said the purchase would help it grow in China, and provide "a significant step forward" in its efforts to become a "leader in consumer health".
Mead Johnson makes infant formula under the Enfa brand and had sales of $3.7bn in 2016.
The deal is worth $17.9bn once Mead Johnson's debt is taken into account.
Mead Johnson chairman James Cornelius said Reckitt's offer provided "tremendous value" to shareholders.
They will receive $90 per share, 29% more than its $69.50 share price on 1 February, before bid speculation began.
Why is Asia demanding so much baby formula?
China's 2015 decision to scrap its one-child policy could be an opportunity for consumer goods companies.
Couples are now allowed to have two children after concerns about China's ageing population led the government to reverse the decades-long rule.
Last year, China's birth rate was the highest this century, with the number of newborns rising by 7.9%, or 17.86 million, on 2015.
As a result of this baby boom, analysts expect demand for food, formula, clothes and medicine to grow.
Reckitt Benckiser said it would fund the purchase with loans from its banks Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and HSBC, and through selling bonds.
The deal will need the approval of shareholders for both companies and regulators. If Reckitt Benckiser shareholders reject the deal, the company will pay Mead Johnson $480m. | Household goods giant Reckitt Benckiser has agreed to buy US baby formula maker Mead Johnson for $16.6bn (£13.2bn) |
40,157,137 | "It was exactly what I hoped for. I felt so good. It went pretty much perfectly," Alex Honnold said.
His ascent of the 3,000ft (1,000m) rock-face in Yosemite National Park on Saturday has been described as one of the greatest solo climbing feats.
It took Mr Honnold four hours to scale it without ropes or other safety gear.
In places the 31-year-old Californian had to dangle from the mountain by his fingertips.
"At the bottom I was slightly nervous," he told the National Geographic magazine. "I was slightly tense, but felt really good."
"I didn't have much of a backpack, and the climbing just felt amazing.
"Not dragging 60 meters of rope behind you for the whole mountain, I felt so much more energetic and fresh."
Mr Honnold set off it was "still quite dark", disturbing a wild bear as made his way to the base of the rock's huge granite wall.
He said the hardest part of the climb occurs about 700m (2,300ft) up, where there are only very small handholds.
The climber has been ropeless climbing for about 20 years and had been preparing for the El Capitan ascent for more than 12 months - with time spent training in the US, China, Europe and Morocco.
Only a small group of people knew of his plans to make the ascent and they had promised to remain silent.
"Physically [the climb] is not that hard to execute," he said. "It's more you have to be in exactly the right [mental] place, so I was trying to create the right place," he said.
Experts say the climber's achievement is all the more impressive because it used to take weeks to reach the top even with the aid of a partner and climbing aids.
But speed climbers have more recently made the ascent faster by working in tandem.
In 2015 two climbers made it to the the top without aids, except for harnesses and ropes to prevent deadly falls. But it still took them more than two weeks. | A climber who has become the first person to reach the top of California's El Capitan rock without a rope has described his intense satisfaction. |
32,031,383 | Police said a man armed with an imitation firearm stepped in front of the car on North Street around 20:30 GMT on Monday.
The man was treated in hospital for a suspected broken leg.
He was later arrested and has been charged with attempted hijacking, disorderly behaviour and possession of a firearm or imitation firearm.
He is due to appear in court on Wednesday.
In a separate incident, a woman has been assaulted by two men in a multi-storey car park in Belfast city centre.
She had just got into her car at Hardcastle Street at about 18:30 GMT on Monday when she was approached by the men, who forced her out of the vehicle and drove off in it. | A 23-year-old man has been hit by a car he was allegedly attempting to hijack in Belfast. |
32,936,810 | Zafran Nawaz, 34, from the Yardley area of Birmingham, was discovered in a property on Carlton Road on 22 May. He had been missing for one day.
Akbar Khan, 20, of Carlton Road, Bordesley Green is due to appear at Birmingham Magistrates' Court on Saturday, West Midlands Police said.
In a statement, Mr Nawaz's family said he was a "loving son".
"While the circumstances were beyond comprehension, we will choose to remember him for what he meant to us all," the family said.
Three men aged 28, 23 and 24, three women aged 19, 25 and 50 and a 15-year-old boy remain on police bail in connection with Mr Nawaz's death. | A man has been charged with the murder of a man found stabbed to death in a shed. |
39,758,807 | Prosecutors suspect the animals became ill through neglect.
The investigation will also look into the death of a zebra at the same location earlier this month.
Those deaths follow that of a hippo called Gustavito at the National Zoo in February, which caused outrage in El Salvador and beyond.
Staff initially said that the hippo had been stabbed and beaten by unknown assailants.
Following the death, zoo director Vladlen Hernandez said he did not believe employees were involved in any attack and added that the zoo had received no threats from any of the street gangs that terrorise the Central American nation.
Police later questioned employees of the zoo to try to establish who could have entered the premises to carry out such an attack.
But investigators later concluded that the animal had died as a result of poor care.
A detailed examination showed that the hippo had apparently died of a pulmonary haemorrhage, or bleeding from the lung, state prosecutor Mario Salazar said.
The animal had been ill for 17 days before dying.
The latest deaths at the zoo happened on Thursday night.
The authorities say puma Soberana (Sovereign) was old and ill, and being treated for a gut problem.
Reports say the baby monkey died in an accident.
But prosecutors decided to look into the circumstances of the deaths.
On Friday, El Salvador's Culture Ministry also announced it will revamp the National Zoo.
"The traditional zoo concept is already obsolete," said the ministry in a statement.
El Salvador's National Zoo will be transformed into a wildlife park, it added. | Prosecutors in El Salvador have opened an inquiry following the suspicious deaths this week of a puma and a young monkey at the National Zoo. |
19,083,815 | Full medals table at London 2012 official site | Final table |
37,753,771 | Media playback is not supported on this device
The fourth-ranked team in the competition are traditionally the whipping boys for the big guns of Australia, New Zealand and England.
In the four previous editions of the tournament in its current guise, no team outside the big three has been able to spring a shock on the international heavyweights.
Scotland have qualified for the tournament for the first time thanks to their victory in the 2014 European Cup.
On the face of it, they appear to be lambs to the slaughter, but the Scots are determined to succeed where France, Papua New Guinea, Wales and Samoa failed before them - by winning a Four Nations match.
"We're not going to be in this competition to just lie down, get autographs and swap jerseys at the end of it," said Scotland head coach Steve McCormack.
"We're here to have a good crack at it."
Scotland's European Cup victory came the year after an excellent showing at the World Cup in England. They progressed from their pool to reach the quarter-finals for the first time, where they lost to eventual runners-up New Zealand.
McCormack believes his team are stronger now, although he is fully aware of the scale of their challenge in the Four Nations.
"This competition is one of the most difficult in the world," McCormack told BBC Scotland. "It's one of the biggest challenges in sport.
"We're in this competition to do well. We've always been underdogs. We've always batted above our average as far as doing well in competitions.
"We've earned the right to play against the big three. We're aware of the challenge, the best three teams in the world. But we're confident. We've always thrived on that kind of challenge."
Scotland's debut in the Four Nations comes two decades after they were officially granted full international status by the International Rugby League Board.
Alan Tait was already an established rugby league star by 1996. His performances for Widnes and Leeds had earned him international honours with Great Britain, including an appearance off the bench in the 1992 World Cup final loss to Australia at Wembley.
Despite playing at a higher level, Tait had no qualms about answering Scotland's call to lead the side in their first full international against Ireland at Firhill in August 1996.
"They had obviously played a few warm-up games with mainly students, guys from the forces and whatever," Tait recalled.
"It was an honour. When somebody asks you to captain your country you grab it with both hands. I didn't know what I was walking into, but I couldn't have been more proud.
Media playback is not supported on this device
"We had to dig deep and search hard to find 13 professional Scottish players but we did. We played Ireland up at Firhill. It was a great occasion.
"Going to the game on the bus I can remember switching on a Braveheart track that was on the go at the time and saying to the guys, 'this is what we're all about'.
"We turned over Ireland pretty convincingly. They had a good team - guys like James Lowes and Terry O'Connor - so it was nice to put one over on them. That was the end for me but the start for Scotland as a professional team."
Tait would depart soon after, switching to rugby union where he enjoyed tremendous success, including Scotland's last Five Nations title in 1999 and a key role in the British and Irish Lions series win in South Africa in 1997.
Two decades on and McCormack boasts of "world-class players" in his squad such as Lewis Tierney (son of the dual code legend Jason Robinson and himself a Grand Final winner with Wigan), Lachlan Coote of the North Queensland Cowboys, Warrington's Matty Russell and the long-serving captain Danny Brough.
The absence of Scottish voices in the camp is conspicuous, but the commitment to the Scotland cause is plainly evident. Nobody encapsulates that better than Brough, the Huddersfield Giants half-back who has represented Scotland since 2004.
"I started in 2004 and we have grown as a nation since then," said Brough, named Super League's 'Man of Steel' in 2013 and shortlisted for the International Player of the Year award the same year.
"It's totally different. In 2004 it basically cost us to play. You're just wearing your heart on your sleeve, but it's moved on since then. We're actually getting some kit that fits us!
"We didn't have that much support from 2004 to 2010 but the last four or five years we've really grown as a nation. We go up to Scotland to have training camps and people actually know who you are. Back in 2004 nobody had a clue."
Scotland are using this Four Nations as preparation for next year's World Cup in Australia, whom they face in the tournament opener in Hull on Friday (20:00 BST kick-off).
"We are massive underdogs, we won't tell tales about that," Brough added.
"Nobody expects us to win one game, but if we can compete, progress again for that World Cup next year, hopefully we can have a little shake-up in there and win a game. That's the plan. We're always underdogs - typical Scotland. Always come out fighting and give our best.
"We want to compete and be as close as we can. We want to cause an upset along the way and that's what we'll be trying to do.
"That's our main aim, to win one game. If we do that it would be a great success and hopefully we could kick on from that." | In the minds of many, rugby league's Four Nations is more akin to the Three Nations plus one. |
11,486,528 | A couple of miles east of Alizai town in the Kurram tribal district, north-western Pakistan, boundary walls of two large compounds are rising fast.
Elders of the region's largest tribe, the Turi, say they are building homes for eight families from western parts of Kurram who have volunteered to resettle here.
"Apart from a house, each family will get four acres of land for agricultural use," says Haji Hashim Ali, a Turi elder and in charge of the community project.
"We hope to attract more than 200 families to this colony in a year's time," he says.
The idea is to boost Turi presence in an area that belongs to the tribe but where the population has thinned out.
That has allowed others to step in and bring Taliban militants with them, Mr Ali explains.
The Turi tribe, which belongs to the Shia sect of Islam, has traditionally abhorred the Taliban - who adhere to a hardline Sunni form of the faith and many of whom consider Shias to be non-Muslims.
Two years ago, the Turis fought a major battle with the Taliban in the surroundings of Alizai.
They are now consolidating their hold on the region.
To the south of Alizai, across the Kurram river, the tribe is building a 14km (8.6 miles) road to link Alizai with the Turi stronghold of Parachinar in the west.
The Shurko road detours the Sunni-dominated town of Sadda, which is located on the region's main road that links Parachinar with Alizai and the rest of Pakistan.
In Parachinar, the district centre, and all along the Shurko road, community volunteers man checkpoints and also guard the region's airport.
There are no military checkpoints anywhere in the Turi lands from Parachinar to Alizai - and no Taliban.
To a casual observer, this comes as a surprise because Kurram is the most important strategic site from where to launch guerrilla attacks inside Afghanistan.
Its western tip is only 90km (56 miles) from the Afghan capital, Kabul.
Local people say that Taliban started pouring into the area in 2006 and set up base at a mosque in Parachinar.
"When we came to know of their presence, we took up the matter with the authorities, but they refused to expel them, saying the decisions were taken at a much higher level," says Ali Akbar Turi, another local elder.
Fighting between the locals and the Taliban erupted in April 2007, and dozens of people were killed over the next year.
Devoid of local support, the Taliban were forced to retreat to their bases in Sadda and Alizai in eastern Kurram, but from there they enforced a blockade of Kurram's only road link to Pakistan.
"Our traders lost millions of dollars worth of merchandise when our trucks were bombed and burned down, and dozens of our people were beheaded," recalls Haji Hashim Ali.
In August 2008, local elders decided that if the army wasn't prepared to deal with the Taliban, it was time to raise a tribal force and storm the militant bases themselves.
Najib Hussain, a Kurram resident, fought on a front that finally led to the fall of Bugzai, a village that housed the Taliban's main base in the region, just across the river from Alizai.
"We had about 100 to 150 fighters. We would rotate them in four hourly shifts," he says.
"Fighting was intense. During the first 27 days I only came down twice from my position on the hill to take a bath. On the 27th day, I was hit and had to be carried away to the hospital."
It took the tribal force 46 days of fighting - and the loss of around 400 fighters - to inflict a final defeat on Taliban.
Nearly two years after the war, this entire area remains free of Taliban.
But further east, the Taliban continue to block their exit route.
People can only leave Kurram in convoys, and only when the government provides security. Even then, they are regularly attacked.
In the last attack in July, suspected Taliban gunmen killed 18 people travelling in a passenger van from Parachinar to Peshawar, the regional capital.
Syed Abid Jan, 75, was one of four survivors.
"We started in the convoy but our van fell behind," he says.
"In Charkhel area, some 20km (12.4 miles) east of Alizai, about 10 gunmen fired at the van, causing it to overturn. Then they came closer and fired at the passengers trapped inside from all sides."
Mr Jan was hit in the back.
"When they went away, I looked around. My grandson was dead. He had fallen on me. I had fallen on my wife. She was also dead."
After three years of road blockades, the intensity of war has left a mark on the people of Kurram.
Trading and development work have come to a halt, much of the infrastructure of health, education and agriculture has been destroyed, and there is of course the emotional toll.
"A friend of mine told me to beware of going mad. I think that warning has kept me from going mad entirely," says Aqeel Hussain, the owner of a petrol station in Alizai.
"But sometimes I think I'm half mad. My blood pressure shoots up sometimes. It never used to happen before."
After the fall of Bugzai, the Taliban twice offered to guarantee the safety of the road from Kurram to Peshawar in return for access for their militants through Kurram into Afghanistan.
But this is an offer which the people of Kurram say they are determined never to accept. | The BBC's M Ilyas Khan is one of the few journalists in recent months who has been able to travel to the remote north-western Pakistani tribal district of Kurram, where members of the Turi tribe are waging a war of attrition with the Taliban. |
40,620,072 | Tributes have been pouring in for 20-year-old Abdelhak Nouri who collapsed in a game in Austria a week ago.
The club says the midfielder suffered "serious and permanent brain damage".
Nouri, known as Appie, has been transferred to an Amsterdam hospital for further treatment.
In an emotional display of support for the player, Ajax fans gathered outside his parents' home in the Geuzenveld district of Amsterdam, applauding, lighting flares and chanting "Appie, Appie".
Nouri suffered cardiac arrhythmias - heart rhythm problems - during the game against German team Werder Bremen, Ajax said in a statement,
He received emergency treatment on the pitch and was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Innsbruck.
The club has said there is no chance of him recovering from the damage.
"The diagnosis was made that a lot of [his] brain is not functioning. All this probably occurred due to a lack of oxygen supply," the statement said.
Shock at the news has been reflected in Dutch media.
"News that the Ajax super-talent Abdelhak Nouri has suffered severe brain damage burst like a bombshell," the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper said.
"It doesn't get more bitter than this," commented De Telegraaf, adding that the "friendly, soft-spoken but roguish Appie who once put a smile on everybody's face has now become the centre of dismay and sadness".
Nouri made his debut for Ajax last September and played 15 league and cup games, scoring a goal in a cup tie. | Hundreds of fans of the Dutch football team Ajax have staged an emotional rally outside the family home of a player who suffered brain damage after collapsing in a friendly match. |
38,215,839 | Mark Lafferty and Adeline Clark allegedly attacked Mark McCowan, 45, and Dennis McCowan, 71, on 2 December.
Mr Lafferty, 53, and Ms Clark, 40, are accused of repeatedly stabbing them at a house in Baillieston.
Both are also accused of presenting a knife at Christine McCowan, 68, demanding money, forcing her upstairs and robbing her of £35.
The pair, both from Glasgow's east end, appeared in private from custody at Glasgow Sheriff Court.
They made no plea or declaration.
Sheriff Allan Findlay remanded Mr Lafferty, who will appear again next week for a full committal hearing.
Ms Clark was granted bail and is expected to return to court at a later date. | A man and woman have appeared in court charged with the attempted murder of a father and son in the north of Glasgow. |
39,472,390 | Ilkeston had no service for 50 years and while plans were approved in 2013, the project was delayed by flooding and the discovery of protected newts.
Derbyshire County Council has estimated 160,000 people will use the £10m station in the first year.
Enthusiasts, community groups and the local MP all met the 09:45 Nottingham service, which arrived slightly late.
The town, which was one of the largest in the UK without a railway station, once boasted three - the last one closed in 1967 as a result of the Beeching Report, published in 1963.
MP for Erewash, Maggie Throup, said: "I haven't been able to walk round the town for years without people asking me 'When is the station going to open?'.
"The station will not only transform the way local people travel, but will undoubtedly give a significant boost to the local economy and attract new business to the area." | Crowds have turned out to celebrate the first train to stop at a town's new station. |
31,837,969 | English MPs suggest voters in marginal constituencies hate the idea of Scottish Nationalist MPs dictating their futures.
So as Prime Minister's Questions demonstrated in a noisily grisly session on Wednesday, David Cameron will try to ram in a reference to the supposed 'deal' between Labour and the SNP at every possible opportunity.
Whether that is based on actual fact is quite another question.
At this stage the idea of any formal arrangement with the SNP makes most Labour MPs snort.
The long-held hostility and recent bitterness over the referendum makes them working together seem fanciful.
One well-placed Labour MP told me this week: "We will rule it out eventually, they hate us and we hate them."
So why does Ed Miliband not just say simply, it won't happen? He and his colleagues on Wednesday, when asked repeatedly, can't quite form the words.
One source close to the leadership has - in the way only Westminster creates these bizarre scenarios - just ruled out ruling it out.
So why not? First, the arithmetic.
This is the most unpredictable election in many years.
What does appears certain is that the SNP will gain a slew of seats at Labour's expense.
Ed Miliband is unlikely to win the election outright. So if he has any hope of getting a government together, he is likely to need the nationalists' support.
So, while it is a long way short of signing any kind of pact, Labour cannot deny that they would potentially ask for Nationalist backing on particular issues to get anything done.
For their part, the SNP is delighting in reminding us there is a potential offer on the table.
Their leader in Westminster Angus Robertson said on Wednesday: "If the numbers are such that the Labour Party cannot command a majority they will have to work with the SNP."
But there is a bigger line that Labour is trying to hold.
If the party makes a categoric statement ruling out working with the SNP, what happens next?
The fear is they would have to indulge a giant Westminster parlour game about who would play with who, and rather than concentrate on trying to get their own message out the party leaders would get stuck answering endless hypothetical questions.
What about working with the Lib Dems? What about working with the Greens?
One member of the Shadow Cabinet suggested "we're not going to fall for that" - but wondered aloud why the Conservatives hadn't been yet pressed on a similar question on their attitude to working once more with the Lib Dems.
Another dismissed what's going on as just "a silly game".
But Labour's difficulty is the Tories believe the charge has traction, and the SNP is enjoying every moment.
Refusing to get involved in a conversation doesn't always silence your opponents.
UPDATE:
Labour doesn't want to talk about the political realities but sources suggest the Commons authorities are taking the practical realities of big gains for the SNP very seriously indeed.
In the last few weeks I'm told they have had a series of meetings with the party to discuss how they would cope with a large influx of MPs.
Conversations are being had not just about physical office space, but how a much bigger SNP might be represented on Westminster's powerful committees, whether they would be able even to have one of their representatives in charge of one, in the chair.
Of course we won't know how the SNP poll surge translates into actual seats until 8 May, but this preparation suggests Parliament's authorities are preparing carefully for the prospect of them becoming the third biggest party - unthinkable a few months ago, now being discussed as a realistic possibility. | Conservatives in Westminster believe they are on to something. |
30,324,812 | The programme claims that Russian officials systematically accepted payment from athletes to supply banned substances and cover up tests.
The documentary, shown by Das Erste, also implicates the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in covering up the abuse.
The Russian Athletics Federation (RAF) says the allegations are "lies".
However, both the IAAF and the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) have said they will look into the claims.
The IAAF said it had "noted a number of grave allegations" and revealed that an investigation into some of the claims was "already ongoing".
The BBC has not independently verified the documentary's allegations and is awaiting responses from athletes targeted in the programme.
In the documentary, broadcast on Wednesday, former discus thrower Yevgeniya Pecherina claimed that "most, the majority, 99%" of athletes selected to represent Russia use banned substances.
"You can get absolutely everything," added the 25-year-old Russian. "Everything the athlete wants."
Pecherina is currently serving a 10-year doping ban that is due to end in 2023. She had already been handed a two-year suspension in 2011.
Liliya Shobukhova, who won the London Marathon in 2010, is also interviewed in the programme and admits paying the Russian Athletics Federation 450,000 euros (£350,000) to cover up a positive doping test.
She is currently serving a two-year ban after irregularities were detected in her biological passport.
The documentary also included an undercover video purporting to show 800m runner Mariya Savinova, who won gold at the 2012 Olympics in London, admitting to using the banned steroid oxandrolone.
The video was dubbed into German with the original audio track absent, but the channel said it possessed an unedited version.
The claims of widespread wrongdoing stem principally from former Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) official Vitaly Stepanov and his wife Yulia (nee Rusanova), formerly an 800m runner who was banned for doping.
They allege that leading Russian athletics officials supplied banned substances in exchange for 5% of an athlete's earnings and colluded with doping control officers to hush up and falsify tests.
Yulia Stepanova said it was also common for Russian athletes to avoid out-of-competition testing by using false names while training abroad.
Wada said that the claims would be "carefully scrutinised", adding that it had "already received some information and evidence of the type exposed in the documentary".
It added it had passed the information on to be investigated by "the appropriate independent body" within the IAAF.
A Wada statement concluded: "If action is warranted, Wada will take any necessary and appropriate steps under the code."
According to some reports, the RAF will hold an emergency meeting later on Thursday, but RAF president Valentin Balakhnichev told news agency Reuters that the documentary's allegations were "a pack of lies".
Rusada managing director Nikita Kamaev added: "We believe that the speculation and the statements are completely unfounded."
But International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams told the Associated Press: "These are serious allegations. Should there be anything affecting the IOC and our code of ethics, we will not hesitate to take any and all action necessary."
Russia, which hosted the Winter Olympics in Sochi earlier this year and finished top of the medal table, currently has 67 athletes serving sanctions for doping offences, according to the latest IAAF report.
In September, Wada banned the gas xenon following allegations, in another German TV documentary, it had been used as a performance-enhancing substance by Russian competitors at Sochi.
Rusada has said it has a rigorous testing system and conducts around 20,000 tests per year.
Last year, there were calls to boycott the World Athletics Championships in Russia because of links to doping. | As many as 99% of Russian athletes are guilty of doping, a German TV documentary has alleged. |
30,735,370 | The cut, equivalent to nearly £50m, was revealed by NHS England in a parliamentary answer.
Labour, which had asked for the figures, accused the government of breaking its promise to make mental health a priority.
Ministers point to an extra £7m spent this year on more psychiatric beds.
In addition, they say new investment is also planned to prevent eating disorders and self-harm.
Child and adolescent mental health services are under increasing pressure, juggling tight resources and with increasing demand.
In November, a 16-year-old girl from Devon spent two nights in a police cell as no psychiatric bed was available.
Investigations by BBC News and the online journal Community Care last year revealed an increasing number of children were being treated on adult wards while others were travelling hundreds of miles to get care.
Care Minister Norman Lamb has previously described children's mental health services in England as "not fit for purpose".
According to a parliamentary answer this week, NHS spending on children's mental health services in 2009-10, the final year of the Labour government, was equivalent to £766m (at 2013-14 prices).
In 2012-13, the last year for which figures are available, it had fallen to the equivalent of £717m.
The cuts by the NHS in England come on top of reduced spending by councils.
An investigation by the charity Young Minds last year found more than half of councils in England had cut or frozen budgets for child and adolescent mental health between 2010-11 and 2014-15.
Commenting on the funding cuts by the NHS, the chief executive of Young Minds, Sarah Brennan said: "These are deeply worrying figures.
"Children and young people's mental health services have been chronically underfunded for decades and the current cuts to their funding have just added to the crisis that many local services face.
"These figures along with YoungMinds' previous research demonstrates the 'double whammy' that children and adolescent mental health services face as both local NHS services and local government cut funding."
Luciana Berger MP, the shadow public health minister said: "These figures prove the government has broken its promise on mental health.
"Instead of making it a priority, ministers have cut the spending on children's mental health services each year since they came to power.
"The impact of these disastrous decisions has been devastating with increased waiting times, children having to travel hundreds of miles to get the help they need or being detained in police cells because there isn't a bed available for them.
"The government must take urgent action now to get to grips with this crisis."
Ministers say that overall NHS spending has been protected by the government and point to a five-year investment to prevent self-harm and eating disorders.
Mr Lamb said: "We have legislated for mental health to get its fair share of local funding but too often children's mental health still loses out.
"That's why I have brought together experts from across health, education and social care to look at how we can give children the best possible mental health care."
He said the government was also investing £150m in services for young people with self-harming and eating disorders. | NHS spending on children's mental health services in England has fallen by more than 6% in real terms since 2010, according to official figures. |
34,062,880 | The researchers say in an economic decline, with pressure on employment, teaching attracts more talented staff.
Academics analysed results in more than 30,000 schools in Florida in the US and found higher scores in classes taught by teachers hired in the recession.
They also say it shows higher pay "would improve teacher quality".
The study from the National Bureau of Economic Research in the US examines how the recession and a tighter jobs market affected the quality of recruits into teaching.
The analysis, to be presented at the the European Economic Association in Mannheim in Germany, found that teaching attracted more talented graduates at times when other employment opportunities were worsening.
And when looking at exam results, pupils on average did better in classes taught by teachers hired during a recession.
This compared 5,200 teachers in Florida state schools who started during a recession and 27,800 teachers who started in non-recessionary times.
"Teachers who entered the profession during recessions are significantly more effective than teachers who entered the profession during non-recessionary periods," concluded the study.
During a recession, other careers could seem more insecure, offered fewer opportunities or could have reduced pay, which would push a higher number of "able individuals" towards teaching.
This economic analysis argues that this suggests that increasing teachers pay would attract higher-quality recruits, which is linked to higher results.
"Our results provide the strongest evidence to date that making teaching wages more attractive would improve teacher quality," said authors Markus Nagler, Marc Piopiunik and Martin West.
"What's more, while no-one would hope for an economic downturn, recessions do seem to provide a window of opportunity for the government to hire teachers who would otherwise have not chosen this career path."
A separate study for the National Bureau of Economic Research, also being presented at the European Economic Association conference, shows how the level of learning of teachers influences the outcomes for pupils.
Research into the value of "smarter teachers", such as their ability levels in literacy and numeracy, can mean a year's difference in the results of pupils. | Teachers recruited during a recession and a tougher jobs market are more likely to get better results for their pupils, says a study. |
37,998,618 | The final section of the Selkirk defences was slid into place at Shaw Burn last week.
The works to protect nearly 600 properties have seen burns rerouted and an "intelligent water management system" created at St Mary's Loch.
New embankments and walls have also been constructed as part of the project which began nearly two years ago.
Contractors will remain on site until next month for small engineering jobs.
Remedial works on roads, which include resurfacing, patching and line painting will also be carried out.
An official opening of the scheme is expected to take place early next year. | Work on a £31m flood protection scheme for a town in the Scottish Borders has been completed. |
14,723,010 | Rooney, 25, signed a new five-year contract in October just 48 hours after announcing his intention to leave, also issuing a statement casting doubt on the quality of Sir Alex Ferguson's squad.
The striker, with the England squad for the Euro 2012 qualifiers against Bulgaria and Wales, has since helped United win a record 19th domestic title and reach the Champions League final, where they lost to Barcelona.
And Rooney has started this season in devastating form, with five goals in three successive Premier League wins that have put United at the top of the table.
He said: "I'm thankful I ended up staying and signing because I said at the time after I signed my new contract that I had made a mistake and I owed performances and goals to the fans for what happened.
"It's the best decision I've made in football career. To still be there and enjoying it, winning things and seeing the team coming through and playing the way it is, is fantastic. The average age of the side in the last two games has been 23. That's great for the future for us and hopefully we can bring more success to Old Trafford.
"What I did say at the time was wrong and I admitted that. We've brought players in, which is great. I'm enjoying playing with these younger players. It is not only going forward where they help us, they do a bit more running as well which is always good for me.
"I'm enjoying it. I'm in a happy place both on and off the pitch. We're playing a different way, a lot more high pressure on the opposing team and playing with a lot more energy and pace and that's certainly helping us."
Rooney also gave his support to United's new 20-year keeper David de Gea, who has had uncertain moments since his £18.9m summer move from Atletico Madrid.
He said: "I think he's obviously a good shot stopper. I hadn't seen much of him before he signed but he is a good shot stopper and his passing out from the back is alongside Edwin Van der Sar's. He very rarely kicks long to a forward, he always tries to pick someone out.
"He's still young and got a lot to learn but he's working hard and doing well in training. He's a strong character. After the Manchester City game and then West Bromwich Albion he didn't seem to be too affected by the fact that not everything went for him. He was on the training pitch the next day working hard and in the last couple of games he's done well for us. I think he will only get better the more he plays." | Wayne Rooney admits his decision to drop his demand to leave Manchester United and stay at Old Trafford has turned out to be the best move of his career. |
17,770,765 | The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) can stop customers being misled by the use of words like 'helpline'.
It is particularly worried about firms selling loans or debt advice that imply they are charities or government agencies.
The warning is part of the OFT's continuing campaign against misleading debt advisers.
However, most questionable names were changed following informal discussions between the business and the regulator, an OFT spokesman said.
On rare occasions, the OFT has formally refused an application to vary a licence by a firm wishing to use a misleading name.
The regulator said that it wanted to prevent names being used by commercial firms that could mislead people looking for free, impartial, charitable or public sector assistance.
It also wanted firms to avoid misleading customers about the services on offer, the cost of these services, the geographic scope of the business or the relationship with other businesses.
That means business names such as Cheap Loans For All would be challenged, as would claims of no interest, or lowest prices in a trading name.
In December 2010, the OFT refused an application from Baker Evans Limited to use the trading names The Bankruptcy Helpline and The Insolvency Helpline.
In October 2011, the OFT also stopped Money Advice Direct Limited using its former existing trading name, the UK Insolvency Helpline, and proposed domain names including the word "helpline".
The OFT warning adds to the threat it made last year to 129 debt management firms to change the way they carried out their business.
Adam Scorer, of watchdog Consumer Focus, said: "This is a sensible tightening of a loophole that seems to be deliberately exploited by unscrupulous traders.
"Companies trading to make a profit should not be able to mislead consumers by calling themselves a 'helpline' or any similar title. This is a common sense move which will help reassure consumers."
The Money Advice Trust, which runs the National Debtline service, said people searching for it on the internet were at risk of being misled by copycat adverts from commercial firms.
"Anyone who enters the name of our free, charity service, 'National Debtline' into Google today will see adverts from fee-charging companies that are clearly trying to give the false impression that their website is National Debtline's website," said Joanna Elson, the chief executive of the Money Advice Trust.
"It can take a fair amount of courage to own up to a debt problem and seek help, so when someone does take the right step, they deserve better than firms trying to make a profit by deliberately misleading them," she added. | A regulator has warned the firms it licences to avoid using "misleading or undesirable" trading names. |
36,327,059 | The 34-year-old moved to Wire in 2002 from Wakefield and has made 374 appearances over his 14-year stay.
The ex-England international, has won three Challenge Cups and reached two Grand Finals with the Wolves and will stay for the 2017 season.
"I am really excited. I am glad that we've got it sorted out pretty quickly," he told the club website.
"I have been a part of this club for such a long time and I would like it to go on a little bit longer yet.
"There's still one thing I haven't won at this club so hopefully we can get that done." | Warrington Wolves second-row Ben Westwood has signed a new one-year contract with the Super League leaders. |
34,473,459 | Dharmana's Family and General Practice in Walton, Liverpool, became one of the first GP practices in England to be placed in special measures in January.
When inspectors returned in July they found "continued concerns" including the lack of oxygen supplies there.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has now cancelled the surgery's registration.
Other concerns at the practice identified by the CQC included:
The practice, in Queen's Drive, will close in December 2015 when its current contract with NHS England expires.
In the meantime, the site will be given support to arrange the transfer of its 2,400 patients to alternative providers.
Sue McMillan, the CQC's deputy chief inspector of general practice, said: "It is extremely disappointing that the practice has not made the required improvements and is still not providing care of an acceptable standard. The people who rely on this practice deserve better.
"We had told Dr Dharmana in January that if improvements were not made after a period of six months, we would consider taking steps to cancel the practice's registration.
"Following our latest inspection Dr Dharmana has decided to close the practice voluntarily." | A healthcare practice has agreed to close after health inspectors rated it as inadequate for a second time. |
39,519,061 | Media playback is not supported on this device
Former England boss Taylor, who had two spells at both clubs during a 31-year managerial career, died in January at the age of 72.
Watford plan to face one of Taylor's former clubs annually, competing for the Graham Taylor Trophy.
The match will take place at 15:00 BST on Saturday 29 July, with profits split between two charities.
The National Memorial Arboretum and the Watford FC Community Sports and Education Trust - two organisations with which Taylor had a close connection - will benefit from the fixture. | Watford will host Aston Villa in a memorial game for Graham Taylor this summer. |
39,693,777 | Carney, 28, was sent off by referee Jack Smith in the 26th minute of the Super League club's Challenge Cup fifth-round win on Sunday.
The Rugby Football League have charged Carney with a Grade F offence, for verbal abuse based on race or colour.
Salford are also investigating events leading up to the sending-off.
The Grade F charge is the most severe category of offence and carries a penalty of at least eight games, or a fixed time period of suspension, if a player is found guilty.
Australian Carney, who is in his second season with Salford, does not have the option of entering an early guilty plea.
The Challenge Cup tie brought an end to Toronto's first run in the competition, with the Canadian third-tier side having made their debut in English rugby league in the third round of the competition in April.
It was the first competitive defeat that the Wolfpack, who have won all five of their League 1 matches in 2017, had suffered.
Meanwhile, Toronto forward Jack Bussey will face a hearing after being charged with a Grade B offence of striking with his elbow or forearm and team-mate Bob Beswick has been given a caution for striking with his knees in the same game.
Hull FC prop Liam Watts has been charged with a Grade B high tackle following his sending-off in his side's 26-24 Super League win over Castleford, which could result in a one or two-match ban if he is found guilty.
Huddersfield full-back Darnell McIntosh (punching) and Warrington forward Joe Philbin (tripping) face Grade A charges. | Salford winger Justin Carney could face a suspension of eight or more games after he was accused of racially abusing a Toronto Wolfpack player. |
36,361,725 | The question: Alan asks BBC Radio 4' s PM programme: "How many UK citizens have been arrested and extradited to other EU states compared with citizens of other EU states extradited to the UK?"
Reality Check verdict: In the financial years 2009-16, 7,436 people were extradited from the UK to another EU country. Of these, 292 were UK nationals. Meanwhile, 897 people were extradited to the UK. Of these, 352 were EU nationals.
If the suspect is identified, they can then be arrested by a local police force.
In the financial years 2009-16, 10,532 people wanted by another EU state were arrested in the UK.
Of these, 479 were UK nationals, although more may have been permanent UK residents.
After the appeals process, 7,436 people were actually extradited from the UK to another EU country to stand trial or serve their prison sentence.
Of these, 292 were UK nationals.
In the same time period, 10% of that figure, or 1,054 people, wanted by the UK were arrested on its behalf by another EU state.
Of these, 444 were EU nationals.
The rest were either British citizens or from another part of the world.
Of these, 897 people were extradited to the UK.
And of these, 352 were EU nationals - but more may have been permanent EU residents.
Read more: The facts behind claims in the EU debate | If someone is wanted by an EU country in relation to a crime, and that country suspects the individual might be living in another member state, they can make a request for arrest under the European Arrest Warrant. |
20,915,604 | Islamic charity the As-Salaam Trust wanted to take over the hut at Thurnby Lodge, Leicester, but have faced sustained opposition.
Campaigners wanted the disused property to be developed for use by the wider community.
However, the city council has agreed to lease the nearby Raven Centre to the Islamic group.
The decision comes after a consultation with local residents.
City mayor Peter Soulsby said: "The results of the consultation show the vast majority of people who responded are in favour of the community taking on responsibility for the former scout hut, and As-Salaam taking on the Raven Centre.
"This option meets everyone needs, and I am therefore offering both groups the opportunity to make this happen."
More than 7,000 leaflets containing a questionnaire were delivered to homes in Netherhall and Thurncourt to tell residents about the proposals and to ask for their views. | Plans to turn a former scout hut into an Islamic centre have been turned down. |
39,029,209 | Patrick Freeman, 62, fractured his right shoulder when the tram crashed moments before it reached Sandilands Junction on 9 November 2016.
Mr Freeman has to date received £2,000 from Transport for London (TfL).
He said he has been advised by a surgeon that he will only recover 50% of the use of his arm.
Earlier on Monday, the Rail Accident Investigation Bureau (RAIB) said the seven people who died in the tram crash fell out of windows as they shattered.
Mr Freeman was among 16 others seriously hurt in the crash.
Mr Freeman, not a regular tram user, was staying in the New Addington area for a few days while refurbishing a house nearby.
He told BBC London he received the payment of £2,000 from TfL on 12 December, but is now seeking full compensation for loss of wages.
He said: "The loss at the minute is about £6,000-£7,000 in wages. I have a little bit of savings... I've had to use that to pay my rent to live on."
He added: "Its not our fault it happened. Whoever caused it, whatever happened there, it is definitely not the fault of the people on the tram."
A spokesman for TfL said it had paid more than £500,000 in financial support following the crash.
In a statement, TfL said: "We believe all requests for payments made to date from those injured in the incident have been paid and none are outstanding.
"We urge anyone needing further support to contact us straight away for help."
Investigators said initial indications showed passengers were "ejected or partially ejected" from the tram.
They added the brake was applied two and a half seconds before the crash, suggesting the driver "lost awareness".
A total of 70 passengers were on board in November, rather than 60 as originally believed, it added. | A self-employed labourer unable to work since the Croydon tram crash is seeking full compensation after struggling to pay his rent. |
40,006,603 | Ruth Appleby was told her daughter died after she gave birth in 1992 but later learned thousands of Spanish babies were taken and given up for adoption.
The EU delegation say they will speak with various officials about what could be done to reunite those affected.
MEP Jude Kirton-Darling said there needed to be a "full investigation".
Mrs Appleby, from Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire, gave birth at a hospital in La Coruna in northern Spain where she was living at the time but the following day was told her child had died.
When she returned to the UK in 2010 she had her daughter's remains exhumed for cremation but said the skeleton she saw in the coffin appeared to be that of a much older infant.
The following year she learned of the scandal of stolen babies in Spain and went on to report the matter to police in 2012
Her case was then referred to the Spanish authorities, but she was unhappy with their handling of it and petitioned the European Parliament.
Spain's 'Niños robados' (stolen children)
Mrs Kirton-Darling, a member of the European Parliament's Petitions Committee, said: "Ruth's case is absolutely crucial. It is the lynchpin of why we are here in Madrid.
"What we are talking about is a serious crime and it needs to be investigated as a serious crime.
"What happened to her child we cannot know until the evidence comes out.
"What we need is a full investigation to try and establish what the actual facts were."
Speaking to the BBC, Mrs Appleby said had she known her child may not have died she would have "moved heaven and earth" to find her.
"Even though she won't know the name she was given; Rebecca, you have always been very loved and you have a family who are just dreaming of the day they can welcome you in to our hearts and complete our family." | A woman who thinks her baby was stolen at birth in Spain has travelled to Madrid to join MEPs investigating a raft of similar claims. |
35,403,697 | Philip Ledward, 62, of Whitchurch, Shropshire, died in November 2011 while working for Arkenfield Stable Hire Ltd.
Mold Crown Court heard it was "an accident waiting to happen".
The company, of Bronington, Wrexham county, and general manager Phillip Sutton both deny breaching health and safety rules.
The company has been charged with failing to ensure the health, safety and welfare at work of employees by failing to ensure a safe system of work with vehicles.
Mr Sutton faces a similar charge which alleges he consented or connived with the company, or that the offence was attributable to his neglect.
The court was told Mr Ledward, a heavy goods vehicle mechanic, was one of three workmen guiding the articulated truck at the company's yard at Boundary Garage on the A495.
Two colleagues were in the road trying to stop traffic and Mr Ledward was stood talking to the lorry driver when he was hit by an oncoming car. He died at the scene.
Christopher Stables, prosecuting for the Health and Safety Executive, said no risk assessment had been carried out and the practice had been used for some time.
He said it was "fraught with dangers, particularly in the darkness".
He argued Mr Sutton was in day to day charge and must have known what was going on.
The death happened because the company operated an unsafe system of work and the incident was "utterly foreseeable and avoidable", he claimed.
The trial continues. | A workman who died when he was hit by a car was helping a lorry to reverse into a yard in the dark, a court has heard. |
35,353,705 | He was nominated because of his work in mountain rescue and training climbers, and for setting up the Scottish Mountaineering Heritage Collection.
Mr Tighe will be presented with the accolade at the Fort William Mountain Festival next month.
The award was set up to recognise those who have dedicated their lives to working in Scotland's mountains. | Climbing guide and pioneer Mick Tighe has won this year's Scottish Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture. |
36,787,198 | Sagan won a sprint after he, Tinkoff team-mate Maciej Bodnar and Team Sky's Froome and Geraint Thomas launched a surprise attack late in the 162.5km stage from Carcassonne to Montpellier.
Froome, who finished six seconds clear of the peloton, collected a six-second bonus for his second-place finish.
He now leads fellow Briton Adam Yates by 28 seconds and Nairo Quintana by 35.
Mark Cavendish, who had been among the favourites to pick up a fourth stage win of this year's race and 30th overall, finished well adrift after suffering a mechanical problem late on.
Thursday's planned finish on top of Mont Ventoux has been cancelled because of high winds in Provence. The 12th stage will now finish several kilometres down the mountain at Chalet Reynard.
With cross winds threatening to split the race throughout the day, riders were watchful and an early break by Arthur Vichot and Leigh Howard was brought back with 60km remaining.
The peloton then rode more conservatively until Sagan broke clear inside the final 15km with Pole Bodnar.
Froome, spotting an opportunity to gain time on his rivals for the general classification, followed with compatriot Thomas and the unlikely quartet quickly opened a lead of more than 20 seconds which the disorganised peloton only managed to reduce to six by the finish.
"It was crazy," said Sagan. "Froome and Geraint came with us and I said, 'we are too strong, they are never going to catch us'. So we pulled hard and it happened.
"There was a crazy wind and I was not planning to go in the break with the yellow jersey and Geraint and Bodnar. You cannot plan that - it just happens."
Sagan picked up 67 points in the green jersey classification - 50 for winning the stage and 17 in an intermediate sprint - and the Slovak now leads Cavendish by 90 points and looks certain to win a fifth successive title.
Two-time Tour winner Froome moved into the race leader's yellow jersey with a surprise downhill attack on stage eight into Bagneres-de-Luchon and he followed that with another aggressive move on Wednesday.
It is unusual to see the race leader attack on a flat stage but with the sprinters' teams assembling themselves for the run-in to Montpellier, he made a bold decision.
"Obviously I took a few seconds on the downhill and then again on the finish here," the 31-year-old said.
"Any opportunity I can see I'm going to take it.
"This is bike racing at its best. I feel like I'm enjoying it, I'm not feeling I'm being forced into this because of pressure."
Stage 11 result:
1. Peter Sagan (Svk/Tinkoff) 3hrs 26mins 23secs
2. Chris Froome (GB/Team Sky) Same time
3. Maciej Bodnar (Pol/Tinkoff)
4. Alexander Kristoff (Nor/Katusha) +6secs
5. Christophe Laporte (Fra/Cofidis) Same time
6. Jasper Stuyven (Bel/Trek)
7. Edvald Boasson Hagen (Nor/Dimension Data)
8. Andre Greipel (Ger/Lotto)
9. Sondre Enger (Nor/IAM Cycling)
10. Oliver Naesen (Bel/IAM Cycling)
General classification after stage 11:
1. Chris Froome (GB/Team Sky) 52hrs 34mins 37secs
2. Adam Yates (GB/Orica) +28secs
3. Daniel Martin (Ire/Etixx - Quick-Step) +31secs
4. Nairo Quintana (Col/Movistar) +35secs
5. Bauke Mollema (Ned/Trek) +56secs
6. Romain Bardet (Fra/AG2R) Same time
7. Sergio Henao (Col/Team Sky)
8. Alejandro Valverde (Spa/Movistar) +1min 13secs
9. Tejay van Garderen (US/BMC Racing) Same time
10. Roman Kreuziger (Cze/Tinkoff) +1min 28secs | Defending champion Chris Froome extended his overall lead in the Tour de France as Peter Sagan won stage 11. |
38,096,961 | Chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, Crispin Blunt, said ministers' response was "troubling", as he believed similar mistakes could be made in future.
In September, the committee said the UK had lacked a coherent strategy and intelligence had not been "accurate".
But the government disagreed, saying the coalition's actions saved lives.
An international coalition led by Britain and France launched a campaign of air and missile strikes against Muammar Gaddafi's forces in March 2011 after the regime threatened to attack the rebel-held city of Benghazi.
But after Gaddafi was toppled, Libya descended into violence, with rival governments and the formation of hundreds of militias.
And so-called Islamic State, also known as Isil and Daesh, gained a foothold.
In its report in September, the foreign affairs committee criticised David Cameron, prime minister at the time, saying he had been ultimately responsible for failing to develop a coherent Libya strategy.
It said UK strategy was based on erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding of the evidence and ministers should have foreseen that militant extremist groups would attempt to benefit from the rebellion.
'Inadequate plans for stabilisation'
But Conservative MP Mr Blunt said the MPs on his committee "do not accept that it understood the implications" of intervening in Libya - including the rise of Islamist extremism.
He said its response had failed to "work through the logic" of the evidence heard by the committee and was "yet to appreciate the lessons from our experience in Libya including our lack of country knowledge amongst those drafting and deciding policy".
"This is troubling, because Libya should inform the development of future UK foreign policy," he said, adding there should have been a "robust process of self-examination in government to improve future performance".
"I believe we are about to repeat the failure to have adequate plans and resources for stabilisation in Mosul. Libya should have taught us these lessons."
He also urged the PM to "reconsider" the committee's calls for members of the National Security Council (NSC) who are not politicians - for example the chief of the defence staff - to be able to ask for written instructions from the PM when asked to do something "contrary to their professional judgement", rather than leaving them "to emerge in conversations with historians".
The government rejected that idea.
In its response, the government said it did not agree with the foreign affairs committee report conclusion that no proper analysis of the rebellion or threat posed by the Gaddafi regime was carried out.
Gaddafi 'unpredictable'
"Real-time and evolving military, intelligence and diplomatic assessments gave ministers an understanding of the detailed context in which to take strategic decisions, as well as identifying areas where further information was needed..." it said.
"Muammar Gaddafi was unpredictable and had the means and motivation to carry out his threats. His actions could not be ignored, and required decisive and collective international action. The actions of the UK and the Coalition undoubtedly saved the lives of innocent Libyan civilians."
Former PM David Cameron told MPs in January that he had to take action in Libya because Gaddafi "was bearing down on people in Benghazi and threatening to shoot his own people like rats".
But the foreign affairs committee's original report found that the government "failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated", adding that it "selectively took elements of Gaddafi's rhetoric at face value".
The government also failed to identify the "militant Islamist extremist element in the rebellion", the MPs said and allowed a planned intervention to protect civilians to drift into an opportunist policy of regime change.
"That policy was not underpinned by a strategy to support and shape post-Gaddafi Libya.
"The result 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 in North Africa."
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 to 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. | The UK government appears not to have learned the lessons from its 2011 Libya intervention, say MPs. |
40,241,560 | The 70-year-old, who led England for four years before resigning in 2012, joins former Premier League managers Luis Felipe Scolari, Andre Villas-Boas, Gus Poyet and Felix Magath in China.
Former Chelsea manager Scolari coaches current champions Guangzhou Evergrande.
Capello's fellow Italian Marcello Lippi is in charge of China's national team.
A Jiangsu statement confirmed: "We have signed a working contract with Mr Fabio Capello. He will be the head coach. Welcome Fabio!"
Capello made his name at AC Milan in the 1990s, winning four Serie A titles and the Champions League. He went on to win two La Liga titles in separate spells with Real Madrid and another Italian league crown with Roma.
He also won Serie A twice with Juventus but both were revoked and they were demoted to the second division for their involvement in Italy's match-fixing scandal.
England reached the last 16 of the 2010 World Cup under Capello, losing to Germany, and he resigned two years later after a disagreement over the stripping of the captaincy from John Terry.
He went on to spend three years as Russia coach before being sacked. | Former England manager Fabio Capello is the latest high-profile coach to move to the Chinese Super League, signing a contract with Jiangsu Suning. |
28,158,107 | The naming ceremony for the 65,000-tonne HMS Queen Elizabeth is taking place at Rosyth in Fife, where it has been assembled and fitted out.
Mr Salmond's father Robert, 92, was in the Royal Navy during the war.
As a petty officer he served on two aircraft carriers, and was responsible for repairing radios on the planes.
He was on the Fleet Carrier, HMS Indomitable, when she was torpedoed supporting the invasion of Sicily in 1943.
The Duke of Edinburgh was in command of the destroyer HMS Wallace in the same action.
When the Indomitable sailed for Norfolk, Virginia, for repairs, Mr Salmond senior and his team were transferred to the newly commissioned escort carrier HMS Hunter and he saw further action in the Salerno landings, before being diagnosed with TB and confined to hospital for the remainder of the war.
On his 90th birthday in 2011 Mr Salmond senior climbed the gantry to the controls of the big crane at Rosyth as work began on the new carrier.
The first minister said his father would enjoy seeing the new carrier and would be interested in how it compared to HMS Indomitable.
He said: "Like many servicemen, my father never spoke too much about the war when I was growing up.
"However we all are proud of him as are all families of those who served.
"Typically, he says the worst thing that happened to him was not getting torpedoed on the Indomitable but witnessing the loss of pilots on HMS Hunter when the Seafires came in too fast for the converted merchant ship.
"As far as I can make out the damage to the Indomitable almost certainly saved his life since the remaining crew were given mandatory screening on entry into the United States.
"When they detected TB on board, the Navy back-screened the previous ship's complement including father. He was pulled off a football field playing in a navy match in Belfast when his test came through as positive.
"So if it hadn't been for a Junkers bomber putting a hole in his ship, father would have been dead and I wouldn't have been born." | First Minister Alex Salmond will be joined by his WW2 veteran father to see the Queen formally name the Royal Navy's biggest ever ship. |
38,248,868 | Mark Selby won the UK Championship on Sunday and earned himself the winnings.
But Mark Williams, who got to the quarter finals, tweeted he had a "nice little bonus" after being sent a message saying he would get the money.
World Snooker said the alert was an error and no actual money was sent and Williams was "having some fun."
The Jester from Leicester Selby took the title in a thrilling final in York against Ronnie O'Sullivan.
But Williams, from Cwm, Blaenau Gwent, was green with envy when he received an email which said: "Dear Mark, UKChampionship 2016, we advise that the prize money for the above event will be in your account on the Friday 9th December".
He put an image of the message on Twitter saying: "This was a nice little bonus for me off @WorldSnooker1", adding the hash-tag "ithoughtibeatronnieaswell".
A spokesman for World Snooker said the notification was an administrative error and the funds went to the intended recipient.
He said: "I'm sure Mark Williams realised straight away what had happened.
"But being a colourful character he has run with it and is clearly having some fun." | Snooker officials were left pink with embarrassment when they sent notification of £165,750 prize money to the wrong player. |
37,531,184 | Prince William said they felt "very lucky" to have introduced Prince George and Princess Charlotte to the Commonwealth country.
The royal children stole the limelight during a trip to an outdoor fun day as part of the eight-day engagement.
The visit was their first official overseas trip as a family of four.
In pictures: Royals on Canada tour
Prince William said he and Kate were "incredibly grateful" to the people of Canada for the warmth and hospitality they had experienced as a family.
He added: "We have loved our time in British Columbia and Yukon and will never forget the beautiful places we have seen and the many people who have been kind enough to come to welcome us in person.
"We feel very lucky to have been able to introduce George and Charlotte to Canada. This country will play a big part in the lives of our children and we have created such happy memories for our family during this visit.
"Canada is a country of optimism, generosity and unrivalled natural beauty. I hope we have helped all Canadians celebrate what makes this country great. We will see you again soon."
For eight days, an important aspect of Canada's future has been on display. It's a future the majority of Canadians appear happy to embrace, for now.
The Cambridges have only visited parts of the country where people have applauded them coming, not questioned their existence.
They know the monarchy needs to be seen and appreciated to survive.
The public presence, at strategic points during the tour, of Prince George and Princess Charlotte will have bolstered, at the very least temporarily, the survival of this ancient institution.
Of course, what has been left unsaid this week is that Prince William and Prince George are not next in line. Prince Charles is waiting in the wings and his appeal in Canada is not as great as that of his son or his grandson.
Monarchists argue that's down to the allure of youth. Those seeking an elected, Canadian-born head of state see a chink in the armoury of the House of Windsor.
The couple visited parts of the Yukon and British Columbia which included a trip to the archipelago of Haida Gwaii and the gold rush town of Whitehorse.
Prince George and Princess Charlotte made a rare joint appearance at an official event with a play day with children of the Canadian military on Thursday.
Charlotte, 16 months, was heard speaking in public for the first time - saying "pop" at the balloons that filled Government House in Victoria.
The residence was transformed into a children's paradise, which included a petting zoo and miniature ponies.
As part of the eight-day trip, the duke and duchess visited a charity in Vancouver which helps vulnerable mothers overcoming addiction and met refugees at an immigration centre.
The couple travelled in style, including taking a trip on a sea plane, and they also rowed a 25ft canoe.
They began their final day of the tour by visiting the Cridge Centre for the Family - one of Victoria's most well known charitable institutions.
The centre provides a range of services, including childcare, youth outreach and support for women who have experienced domestic violence.
Their royal trip has been marked with a 100,000 Canadian dollar (£60,000) donation to benefit indigenous communities and refugees from the Canadian government.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the money would be divided equally between the Prince's Charities Canada (PCC) and the Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia (ISSofBC).
Mr Trudeau said: "In keeping with tradition, I am honoured to mark the visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with a gift that will help both indigenous youth as well as newcomers to Canada realise their dreams.
"Canadians have a real affection for the Royal Family which was once again very much on display during this tour." | The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have praised Canada for leaving their family with "happy memories" as their tour of Canada came to an end. |
36,611,490 | Roy Hodgson's side face Iceland in Nice on Monday (20:00 BST) after finishing runners-up in Group B behind Wales.
That puts them in the same half of the draw as Germany, Spain, Italy and hosts France, but Rooney feels the team can challenge for the title.
"We have five or six match-winners in our team and I cannot say we have always had that," he said.
"We are here and we want to win it. We are not going to say that getting to the quarter-finals will be a sign of progress. I believe we are better than that."
Euro 2016 is 30-year-old Rooney's sixth major tournament.
In those six tournaments, England have won just one knockout game - against Ecuador at the 2006 World Cup.
"Other tournaments have not gone great for me," he said. "I have always held a lot of pressure, feeling I have to be the one who has to win games.
"But we now have a lot of players who can do that and I am happy to sit in the background. If I have to be the person to step up and win games, I will do that."
Manchester United captain Rooney - England's all-time leading scorer with 52 goals - has found the net five times in three European Championships.
Media playback is not supported on this device
Rooney was one of six players rested for the group game against Slovakia.
The 0-0 draw meant England finished second in the group and in the bottom half of the knockout draw, which also features holders Spain, 2012 finalists Italy, world champions Germany and hosts France.
However, England face the lowest-ranked side Iceland in the last 16.
"If this was four years ago and you were saying you have to play France, Spain, Germany, you would have been worried," said Rooney.
"I think the gap has changed. The gap to get to those teams is not as big."
Media playback is not supported on this device | England are capable of "magical things" after reaching the last 16 of Euro 2016, says captain Wayne Rooney. |
31,861,511 | Rogue One is the title of the first film in a series of big-screen adventures exploring characters from the core Star Wars saga.
No details have been released on the character to be played by The Theory of Everything star Jones.
Rian Johnson has been asked to write and direct Star Wars: Episode VIII.
The film - which will follow on from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, out later this year - will be released on 26 May 2017.
That date and the Rogue One title was revealed on Thursday in San Francisco by Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger at a shareholders meeting.
Edwards' film begins shooting this summer in London and is due for release on 16 December 2016. | Star Wars producers have announced the name of the new stand-alone film, to be directed by Brit Gareth Edwards and starring Felicity Jones. |
35,291,666 | Ceredigion Museum, in Aberystwyth, will also get new equipment for the Coliseum auditorium from the £916,200 grant.
Council leader Ellen ap Gwynn said the work would help attract more people to the "hidden gem".
The work is part of a wider £1.3m project. | A mid Wales museum is to get a new shop, tourist information centre and cafe funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. |
38,518,641 | The 22-year-old, who had a loan spell at Mansfield last season, is a left-back who can also play in midfield.
Dublin-born Kavanagh has been at Fulham since 2011 and made his debut in a 1-0 defeat by Wolves in August 2014.
Meanwhile, Pools goalkeeper Trevor Carson is set to miss the rest of this campaign as he requires surgery on a shoulder injury in two weeks' time.
Former Bury and Cheltenham stopper Carson, 28, has made 23 appearances in all competitions for the League Two club this term. | Hartlepool have signed defender Sean Kavanagh from Fulham on a loan deal until the end of the season. |
39,595,769 | His club issued a statement on Tuesday denying a report that a board meeting was being held to discuss his future.
"For me, it's not affected me," said Foran ahead of Saturday's visit to Motherwell. "I'm quite strong-minded.
"When you take a job on, you've got to expect criticism, rumours, speculation and lies."
Caley Thistle lie four points adrift of Saturday's hosts after their 3-0 home defeat by St Johnstone, but Foran remains positive about his position - and his side's chances of staying in the Premiership.
"It's not true - there was no board meeting about my future," he said.
"The club have put a statement out, so everything will be done face to face with the chairman. It doesn't get me up or down."
Foran was heckled after the weekend reverse, but the former club captain had no criticism of the fans.
"It's been a long season and fans have been patient," he said. "They were right to boo me off and have a go at me.
"They've been great for me and the team all season, but I deserved criticism on Saturday. I understand it.
"If they can be that bit more patient for the last six games, we'd appreciate it.
"They've surprised me how positive they've been. Don't panic or get frustrated, the wins are coming.
"Us, the players and supporters will enjoy their summer off as we'll still be in the Scottish Premiership."
Foran admits that relegation has been spoken about in the Caley Thistle dressing-room.
"Some have been part of teams before that went down - I was part of it here," he said. "I walked out in the corridor to see staff in tears at losing their jobs.
"It's huge to the city of Inverness to stay in the Scottish Premiership and we will.
"We're going to be fearless in these last six games, get points on the board and end up in a good position."
On Tuesday, Caley Thistle insisted that the club was holding "a routine board meeting".
"The directors, management team, players, staff and supporters remain focused on taking as many points as possible from our remaining six games," said their statement.
"A win at Motherwell this weekend would dramatically improve our prospects and the manager, coaching staff and lads are working hard to achieve this.
"The atmosphere at the club remains positive, with great determination to remain in the top-flight." | Richie Foran says he is discounting rumours about his own job and is fully focused on leading Inverness Caledonian Thistle to safety from relegation. |
32,220,764 | Many in Kurdistan have not been paid for months.
Commander Faridon Jwanroyi holds up his AK-47 rifle and fires off a few rounds, purely for my benefit.
"I wish there was Islamic State here, I could fire at them!" he jokes.
I would have asked for a more dramatic display, but the Peshmerga - the Kurdish fighting force here - are a bit short on weaponry.
In fact they're a bit short on ammunition, too. And since December, they've even run out of money to pay their soldiers.
"Some haven't been paid in three months," he confides, when we met in late March.
"It's hard. They have to pay for their rent, for the children's clothes. But still, we fight on. We have belief."
But with talk now of a combined Iraqi-Kurdish operation to liberate Iraq's second city, Mosul, it is an open question whether belief alone can bring victory.
Indeed, a financial crisis has been brewing for several months.
The halving of the global oil price - undercutting Kurdistan's main source of revenue - and the effect of the war have both had a deleterious effect, especially after fighting in August saw the black flags of Islamic State (IS) come just 19 miles (30km) from Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq.
"When IS is at the door, logically it's hard to convince foreign investors that Erbil's safe and nothing's wrong," says Govan Haji Akravi, chief executive of Fastnet, an internet systems provider for foreign companies in the city.
"Almost from one day to another, many of them packed up and left."
There's also been a major refugee crisis.
Some one-and-a-half million displaced people have arrived in Kurdistan, fleeing the fighting in Syria and northern Iraq. That's a 30% increase in the population of the region, leading to huge extra stresses, I'm told, on local services like water and education.
The refugees are mostly housed in improvised camps.
One of the more bizarre is the Ankawa Mall - a half-built shopping centre on the outskirts of Erbil. Like many building projects, it was abandoned by its developer as the crisis hit last year.
Now the raw concrete shell is occupied by some 4,000 Iraqi Christians from the Mosul region, sleeping in alcoves created for designer boutiques. A makeshift wickerwork crucifix hangs over the entrance.
One of the refugees, Issa, charges about 30 cents for a haircut and shave in his makeshift barber's shop in the main atrium at the foot of two massive escalators that are now derailed and disintegrating.
"I'm cheaper than the Kurdish barbers here," he tells me. "No one wants to look hairy like the guys from Islamic State, so they come to me!" he laughs.
But the smile quickly fades.
Life in the shopping centre is miserable, he says: "It's like a camp for chickens." He dreams of escaping to Europe.
Perhaps the biggest economic challenge for Kurdistan stems from its troubled relations with central government.
For the last year, Baghdad has only fitfully been paying the regional government in Erbil its share of the national budget.
Under the constitution, Baghdad requires the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) to share its own oil production with the rest of the country. The Kurds should then be reimbursed with 17% of the total nationwide budget, which is currently set at $105bn (£71bn).
Baghdad has accused Erbil of selling oil illegally, without its authority, and of failing to meet production quotas - allegations the Kurds deny.
"Baghdad knows very well we are selling oil - we have to pay people's salaries," says Dr Ali Sindi, the KRG's minister of planning.
"Meanwhile five million Iraqi citizens have been cut off from their rightful share of the nation's resources. This is a threat to the stability and the sustainability of the region," he says.
The anger in Kurdistan is all the greater since Baghdad is continuing to pay salaries to government workers living under Islamic State.
Even some refugees - civil servants displaced from Mosul - are, it is said, receiving their salaries from within the camps, whilst some of those caring for them haven't been paid since December.
In the last three weeks, Baghdad has announced a breakthrough, saying it is renewing budget payments, although so far these amount to less than half what is owed for just March alone.
Salaries for most workers, including soldiers, remain many months in arrears.
The Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider Al-Abadi, has been quoted as blaming delays on a wider economic crisis in Baghdad.
"If we don't reach a lasting solution, we will have to handle it through our own export of oil," says Dr Sindi. Kurdistan is this month said to be completing a new pipeline to its northern neighbour, Turkey.
But despite the threats, few in Erbil believe Kurdistan has the political power to cut its own deals with the wider world.
In the meantime, some state employees are getting desperate. Civil servant Najad Amin and his wife Iqbal say they expect the last of their savings to run out in the next month.
They've started growing vegetables in their back garden, to help feed the family.
Do they blame the politicians in Baghdad or in Erbil, I ask?
"They're all to blame," they say. "But we Kurds are used to depending on ourselves. We will find a way. We don't give up, absolutely." | In Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurds' battle with Islamic State has been complicated by the halving of global oil prices over the past year and a dispute with the central government in Baghdad that has seen the region's revenues dry up. |
38,148,925 | The straw and wood structure was put up on Sunday, the first day of Advent, but was burnt down soon after despite extra security measures.
Last year the famous goat survived until 27 December before arsonists set it alight.
It is the 35th time in 50 years that the goat has been destroyed.
This year the town reportedly spent 2.3m kronor (£200,000; $250,000) on constructing the goat and subsequent festivities.
Closed-circuit TV had been set up to monitor the structure.
Local council official Helene Akerlind told newspaper Gefle Dagblad (in Swedish).: "We'll have more guards. We're going to try to have a 'goat guarantee' the first weekend."
But despite Gavle's best efforts, The Local reports, an arsonist managed to get past a security guard who had briefly left to use the toilet.
The police launched a preliminary investigation but there were no immediate arrests.
The "Gavlebocken" went on Twitter hours after the fire to say it hoped for better luck next year. | A giant Christmas goat effigy, erected each year in the Swedish town of Gavle and a favourite target of arsonists, failed to last 24 hours this year. |
36,048,015 | However, the bank said the long term impact was "unclear" because there was no certainty over how the UK's position outside the EU would evolve.
"The board is mindful that the future of the UK's relationship with the EU is a matter for the UK electorate, and that for many the debate is about more than just economics," it added.
The EU vote is on 23 June.
It's the first bank to speak out officially on the impact of the EU referendum vote, although in October its chairman Lord Brackwell said in the Lords there weren't "compelling arguments" for staying in the EU without "significant" reforms. He made it clear, however, that he was making the comments in a personal capacity.
Other bank bosses, including RBS chief executive Ross McEwan, Barclays boss Jes Staley and HSBC's chief executive and chair Stuart Gulliver and Douglas Flint have spoken out in favour of Britain staying in the EU, although all have emphasised that they were speaking in a personal capacity.
Lloyds said it had issued the statement following a board discussion earlier on Thursday, but said its view was based on "a range of third-party economic analysis".
It said it currently had no plans to discuss it any further at their AGM.
Lucy Thomas, deputy director of Britain Stronger In Europe, the lead campaign for the In side, said the warning from Lloyds underscored the "huge risks to workers, savers and homeowners" if Britain voted to leave the EU.
"Leave campaigners who think this market is 'not important' should reflect on the at least three million jobs dependent on our trade with Europe", she said.
John Longworth, chairman of the official Out campaign Vote Leave, said: "What right do multinationals have to lecture us?
"The EU may work for the handful of large multinational banks that can afford the reams of red tape, but it will be the dynamic SMEs that will benefit if we Vote Leave on 23 June."
Lloyds' statement comes after the Bank of England earlier warned the EU referendum could hurt growth in the first half of this year as it held interest rates at 0.5%.
Vote Leave last month published a list of 250 business leaders who it said supported Britain leaving the EU.
The list included former HSBC chief executive Michael Geoghegan and the hotelier Sir Rocco Forte.
But Britain Stronger in Europe said at the time that Vote Leave could not find a business to officially back it, as those listed supported it in a "personal capacity". | Lloyds Banking Group has warned a UK vote to leave the EU would cause short term "economic uncertainty". |
36,134,837 | The Labour amendment to the Immigration Bill was rejected by 294 to 276.
Ministers argued that offering sanctuary to lone children who have already reached Europe could mean more fall into the hands of traffickers.
This was dismissed by Lib Dem leader Tim Farron as "bogus" while some Tory MPs also backed the amendment.
Following the vote, Labour peers said they would propose an alternative amendment in the Lords on Tuesday. If they are successful, the matter could return to the Commons.
The government announced last week it would take in as many as 3,000 refugees, mostly vulnerable children, from the war-torn Syria region by 2020.
But campaigners, including charity Save the Children, are calling for 3,000 unaccompanied children who have already made it into Europe to be allowed into the UK.
The amendment to the Immigration Bill, tabled by Labour's Lord Dubs, was backed by Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP.
Lending his support, Conservative backbencher Stephen Phillips said "exceptional times call for exceptional measures", urging colleagues to back the amendment.
Responding to Immigration Minister James Brokenshire's argument, he said: "These children are already in Europe. They are alone, far from their families, they are cold, frightened, hungry, frequently without help or access to those who might help or protect them."
Labour's refugee taskforce chairwoman, Yvette Cooper, suggested the government was leaving the problem to other countries like Greece which could not take the strain, while shadow immigration minister Keir Starmer said the argument that admitting the children would create a "pull factor" for more refugees was "flimsy".
Children, who were sleeping rough with no possessions and nowhere to go, were slipping into sexual exploitation and trafficking, and then disappearing, Mr Starmer told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"We cannot turn our backs on these vulnerable children in Europe. History will judge us on this one," he said.
But Conservative Sir Edward Leigh said the government's position was "fair" because it was better to help children in danger in Syria rather than those who have made it to Europe.
Mr Brokenshire told MPs the government "wholeheartedly shares" the desire of the Lords to protect unaccompanied children.
But he said the challenge was in balancing "head and heart" and expressed concern that the Lords amendment could put more children at risk with families choosing to send them abroad alone, into the hands of traffickers.
The minister said: "Our starting principle is that we must put the best interests of children first and avoid any policy that places children at additional risk or encourages them to place their lives in the hands of people traffickers and criminal gangs.
"In any response we need to be careful not to inadvertently create a situation in which families see an advantage in sending children ahead, alone and in the hands of traffickers, putting their lives at risk by attempting treacherous sea crossings to Europe."
Europe should, "in essence", be a "safe space", he said. | MPs have voted against an attempt to force the government to allow 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees into the UK from Europe. |
33,766,688 | Media playback is unsupported on your device
3 August 2015 Last updated at 20:48 BST
Throughout the week thousands of performers and competitors will take to the stage.
You can see everything from dance to brass bands and choirs.
But what is it really like to be a competitor here?
BBC Wales reporter Rebecca John sings in Cor Y Gleision, the Cardiff Blues Choir.
Here is her take on what happens behind the scenes. | The National Eisteddfod is under way in Meifod, in mid Wales. |
36,852,762 | The fund was a government project to develop Malaysia's economy, but the Department of Justice (DoJ) has alleged that vast amounts of the fund's money was actually spent by a few individuals on luxury assets around the world. Officials at 1MDB have denied any wrongdoing.
Here are some of the ways the US says the money was spent.
The DoJ alleged that $380m was spent on a stake in the Park Lane, a luxury hotel overlooking Central Park in New York.
Another property, Park Laurel Condo, also in New York, cost $33.5m at purchase, the US claims.
Walker Tower Penthouse and Time Warner Penthouse were purchased for $50.9m and $30.5m respectively.
The Viceroy L'Ermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills in Los Angeles was also on the list, purchased for $44.8m, the US alleges.
A mansion in Beverly Hills with a pool curved around and it and tiered gardens was valued at $31m at purchase.
And the DoJ says $41.8m was spent on a secluded townhouse in the London's upmarket Belgravia area.
The US says 1MDB spent $100m on Red Granite Pictures, the studio backing the The Wolf of Wall Street - a film about corruption and greed. The production company was co-founded by Riza Aziz, stepson of the Mr Najib.
A Bombardier Global 5000 private jet was purchased for a reported $35.4m.
Vincent Van Gogh's La Maison de Vincent à Arles, a pen and ink drawing by the Dutch post-impressionist, was picked up for $5.5m, the DoJ said.
Oscar-Claude Monet's Nymphéas Avec Reflets de Hautes Herbes, an oil painting was worth $57.5m at purchase.
Monet's Saint-Georges Majeur au Crépuscule was bought for $35m.
Source: US Department of Justice | US authorities have said they plan to seize more than $1bn (£761m) in assets allegedly bought with funds diverted from Malaysia's government investment fund, 1MDB. |
30,895,025 | Among investors and the media, I've rarely encountered quite so much fevered expectation about a policy that is very unlikely to do more than provide additional painkillers to an economy that needs rather more radical structural treatment (see my post of 14 January).
So it might be worth thinking about what QE is supposed to do that could be useful.
Well, as Ben Bernanke, the former chairman of the US central bank the Federal Reserve said (and I paraphrase), there isn't a great deal of compelling economic theory around QE, but it seems to work (a bit) in practice.
So what does it do?
Well when a central bank buys government bonds, it should push up the price of those bonds, which in turn would implicitly reduce the interest rate that the relevant government pays to borrow (the interest rate or yield on the bond falls as the bond price rises).
Now since the debt of other borrowers in an economy, such as households and businesses, is priced with reference to the price paid by the government, there is hoped to be - and seems to be - a cut in the borrowing costs for the private sector too.
And what's more, if the cash paid for these government bonds to investors and banks is then lent or invested in private sector debt, there should also be a bit more credit available to the private sector.
Anyway that is what is supposed to happen. And in practice it did seem to happen in the UK and US, certainly in the early days of QE in 2009 - when there was a good deal of stress in financial markets, and investors were impressed to see central banks with their bottomless purses wading in.
So will QE work in the eurozone - and how would we know if it had?
Well there is the short term and the long term.
It will take some time, weeks or even months to assess whether there has been any impact on the flow of credit or interest rates paid by the private sector.
But if there were big market movements on the day - in the price of bonds, shares and the euro - that would tell us something, especially since the market has been briefed to expect QE in some form or other.
So if bond and share prices rise very significantly, that would probably mean that the announced form of QE is bigger and more ambitious than expected - and vice versa if they fall.
As for the euro, if it were to fall that would mean one of two contradictory things - it could mean that investors expect QE to work by cutting the cost of money in the eurozone, or it could mean QE is a damp squib such that foreigners don't want to own euro assets.
Now this is where it all gets a bit surreal and complicated. So buckle up.
For the eurozone the symbolism of QE is almost more important than the actual exercise of it.
What do I mean?
Well the Germans have been arguing for years that QE is illegal in the eurozone, because it is too close for comfort to prohibited direct financing by the central bank of governments, rather than being a tool of monetary policy to manage interest rates.
The Germans can however be outvoted on the ECB governing council.
Even so, when QE is announced on Thursday, if it turned out that the two German members of council, Sabine Lautenschläger and Jens Weidmann, had voted for it, the markets would be euphoric - because that would imply that the ECB would perhaps be able to operate in future with fewer German-imposed restraints.
German assent to quantitative easing would almost certainly see bond and share prices rising sharply.
But other things could go wrong for Mario Draghi, the ECB's president.
If the maximum size of ECB bond purchases were to be significantly less than the 500bn euros expected, that would not please investors.
Most important of all perhaps, if the purchase of government bonds is not by the ECB itself but by the national central banks that collectively stand behind the ECB, that would be a great disappointment to markets - even though there have been plenty of leaks to the effect that such "nationalisation" of bond purchases is likely to be what happens.
Why would purchases of Italian bonds by - for example - the Banca d'Italia be deemed as inferior to purchases of Italian bonds by the ECB?
Well it would be seen to be an unravelling of the eurozone principle that monetary policy is a shared federal responsibility, not a national one.
The point is that - according to economic theory - monetary union can only really work in the long term if its risks and rewards are shared federal risks and rewards, not national ones.
So if it emerges that Draghi was only able to secure agreement for QE by devolving its operation to the national central banks, in an attempt to reassure German taxpayers that they are not in any way taking financial risks to support governments other than their own, then many would see that as highly retrograde - a de facto unravelling of monetary union.
As it happens, it would also be a fairly pointless and futile gesture to German taxpayers, in the sense that if the worst happened - which is that it looked as though a country like Italy would default on its debts - Germany could never be insulated from the huge losses, even if the Italian bonds were owned by the Italian central bank rather than the European Central Bank.
In the case where an Italy or a Spain or (more topically) a Greece were about to renege on what it owed, Germany would either have to stand by when the country left the euro (which would produce eye-watering costs for other eurozone members) or bail that country out.
Or to put it another way, Germany is in an "all for one, one for all" monetary union, even if at times it would like to pretend not to be. | On Thursday we get the what and how much of eurozone quantitative easing. |
40,301,886 | Cheika, the Australia coach since 2014, was a bruising number eight in his day, but he was always quick on his feet, verbally and physically. He danced around the question by saying that he'd just seen Scotland's pack and the formidable names contained within. He said he hadn't yet seen who was in the backline. That was an improbable scenario for a man who's renowned for his attention to detail, but it got him out of a hole none the less.
Had he said that he'd seen the full Scottish team then the next set of questions would have been about Greig Tonks, Lee Jones and Rory Hughes - three men he can't have expected to be named in the team. Cheika's offerings on those guys would have been interesting.
Tonks hasn't played a Test in nearly two years. He's spent the last season with London Irish playing Ealing Trailfinders, Cornish Pirates and Rotherham Titans in the second tier of English club rugby. He lost his place in the Exiles side for the Premiership play-off final with Yorkshire Carnegie. Tonks is a handy footballer, but it's a seismic step up for him on Saturday.
Although he's been excellent for Glasgow this season, Jones hasn't played for Scotland in more than five years and Hughes has hardly delivered a whole lot for the Wallaby video analysts to chew over either. He's had one start for his country and three caps in total.
Scotland have fallen short - agonisingly so - in their most recent Tests with the Wallabies. Back then, Vern Cotter was picking, largely, from a full deck. Gregor Townsend is attempting to do what Cotter couldn't while missing an amount of stellar names. It would be a mean feat if he was to pull it off.
You could construct a formidable backline from the players the new Scotland coach will be without: Sean Maitland; Tommy Seymour, Huw Jones, Mark Bennett, Tim Visser; Stuart Hogg, Greig Laidlaw. Six of those players will be nowhere near the Allianz Stadium on Saturday. The seventh, Visser, will be sitting in the stand, injured.
Regardless, Scotland still firmly believe they have the artillery to beat the Wallabies. "This is the big league, playing in their backyard against one of the top teams in the world," said captain John Barclay on Friday. "We understand how big a test it is.
"Australia will move the ball and they're very skilful players. Defensively, we'll have to be a lot more astute and switched-on, and physical, to deal with them (than against Italy last Saturday). They run from everywhere. That's the way they play rugby here. It presents a nice challenge to us to try to clean them up."
Barclay says he hasn't noticed any nerves or anxiety among the inexperienced back three. Neither has he any fears for them. Townsend says the same. "I believe our team is stronger this week," was his comment when discussing the players who will take on the Wallabies.
Cheika is in a period of experimentation and squad-building. He's omitted some proven campaigners in order to take a look at what's coming through. Rob Simmons, Kane Douglas, Dean Mumm, Scott Fardy and Will Skelton are all impressive operators up front, with 216 caps combined, but Cheika hasn't picked any of them even though he's without the great David Pocock in his back row. Pocock is in the midst of a 12-month sabbatical from the game.
Australia won handily against the Fijians last weekend. They ran with their customary devastation at times, but there were weaknesses. They missed a high number of tackles and turned over a lot of ball. That's where the Scottish hope comes from.
If Townsend's back three looks light, the rest of it looks strong, particularly the pack and the bench. If it goes down to the wire yet again, Townsend has some experience and power to call on in WP Nel, Josh Strauss, Tim Swinson and Ross Ford, who is set to win his 109th cap and equal Chris Paterson's all-time Scotland record.
From Cheika to Bernard Foley, the so-called 'Iceman' who kicked Scotland to defeat in the last two meetings, to Townsend to Barclay, all believe that this will go the distance again. They've all spoken of how they expect another thriller.
The last five games between the sides have ended in three one-point victories, a three-point victory and a six-point victory. Three of the games were decided by a kick in the 79th minute or later. It's been an astonishing sequence of Tests, a rugby rollercoaster like few others.
"I was at the game in the autumn," said the Scotland coach, "and it was brilliant, a really good atmosphere. Being in the crowd, it really hit home to me how much the rugby team means to our supporters. For the World Cup match I was in the living room with my family and friends and we were jumping off the seat at the end when Mark Bennett ran in for that try. I'd better not say what we were doing when the final whistle went.
"Both of those games have been important in Scottish rugby history, especially the World Cup game because it galvanised people who are maybe not full-time watchers of rugby. And for the players, it showed how close we are to the best in the world. There was a frustration but now a determination to get over the line.
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"What the players learned over those two games is that you can never count Australia out. If they're losing they have the skill to create something out of nothing, so we've got to make sure we have an 80 or 85-minute performance in us."
There is a sub-plot to all of this. News from New Zealand is that Warren Gatland intends to call for reinforcements to his squad this weekend. The Lions coach, it's reported, wants to protect his likely Test players in Tuesday's match against the Chiefs and needs more bodies for the match against Dave Rennie's team. That could mean a call-up for Finn Russell (against his future Glasgow coach, Rennie) if he shows up well against the Wallabies. The chances are that at least one Scot is going to get the SOS.
Townsend knows the score on that one, but that's not where his focus has been. He's spoken this week about the two seasons he spent playing club rugby in Australia in 1993 and 1995. He turned out for Warringah from the Northern Beaches of Sydney and came up against Cheika, who was one of the leaders of a ferociously good Randwick side.
Townsend remembers Cheika as a "really tough player and an aggressive character in a team that played the most ambitious, high-tempo, passing rugby I had ever seen". Cheika remembers Townsend as a "pretty nimble player who I was always trying to chase and get hold of, but couldn't catch."
Townsend says that buried somewhere in his subconscious there are probably a few things he learned as a player in Australia that helped make him the coach he is now. It's been a hell of a journey since then. A win on Saturday would surely rival anything he's achieved along the way.
Team line-ups:
Australia: Israel Folau; Dane Haylett-Petty, Tevita Kuridrani, Karmichael Hunt, Eto Nabuli; Bernard Foley, Will Genia; Tom Robertson, Tatafu Polota-Nau, Allan Alaalatoa; Sam Carter, Adam Coleman; Ned Hanigan, Michael Hooper (capt), Scott Higginbotham.
Replacements: TBC
Scotland: Greig Tonks; Lee Jones, Alex Dunbar, Duncan Taylor, Rory Hughes; Finn Russell, Ali Price; Gordon Reid, Fraser Brown, Zander Fagerson; Ben Toolis, Jonny Gray; John Barclay (capt), Hamish Watson, Ryan Wilson.
Replacements: Ross Ford, Allan Dell, WP Nel, Tim Swinson, Josh Strauss, Henry Pyrgos, Ruaridh Jackson, Matt Scott. | There was a moment during Michael Cheika's press conference on Thursday in the Sydney suburbs when he was asked about the unfamiliar look to the Scottish backline, principally the Scottish back three, for the Test against his Wallabies on Saturday. |
39,490,984 | Appiah, who will also take charge of the national team for locally-based players, has been offered a two-year contract to start work 1 May.
He replaces Avram Grant who stepped down as coach after the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations.
It is a second stint in charge for Appiah, who led the Black Stars from 2012 until 2014.
Since leaving the Black Stars following a poor World Cup campaign, he has been coaching Sudanese side Al Khartoum.
The Black Stars failed to get out of the group at the World Cup in Brazil and were also beset by off-field problems with players being expelled from the team and a row over pay.
Ghana's first qualifier for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations is in June when they host Ethiopia, the other teams in Group F are Sierra Leone and Kenya with only the pool winners guaranteed a place in Cameroon.
Appiah will also be trying to reach his second consecutive World Cup finals in Russia in 2018.
Ghana currently have just a single point from their two games so far in World Cup qualifiers leaving them five points behind Group E leaders Egypt.
Uganda and Congo-Brazzaville are the other two teams in the group. | The Ghana Football Association (GFA) has re-appointed Kwesi Appiah as the coach of the Black Stars. |
39,625,897 | The duke said he wanted his children to be able to express their feelings.
Prince William's comments come after Prince Harry revealed he had sought counselling after spending nearly 20 years "not thinking" about the death of their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.
Prince Harry has been praised for speaking out by the prime minister and mental health charities.
Theresa May said his decision would help "smash the stigma".
Prince William's comments came in an interview - alongside Prince Harry - with a magazine produced by the charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (Calm), which is dedicated to preventing male suicide.
The future king and his brother are using the intense interest they generate to focus attention on a cause they are increasingly passionate about, BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt says.
Prince William talked about his "tipping point", which was his exposure to suicide - the biggest killer of men aged under 45 in the UK - through his work as an air ambulance pilot.
He told Calm that while there might be a time and a place for the "stiff upper lip", it should not be at the expense of people's health.
The duke highlighted the importance of role models opening up about their mental health, including grime artist Stormzy.
"The recent interview by Stormzy about his depression was incredibly powerful and will help young men feel that it's a sign of strength to talk about and look after your mind as well as your body," he said.
He added that he and the Duchess of Cambridge wanted their children - George and Charlotte - to grow up able to talk about their emotions and feelings.
Prince Harry has acknowledged his own failure to do that.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph on Monday, he said it had not been until his late 20s that he had processed the grief of losing his mother when he was 12 1997.
Before reaching that point, he had endured two years of "total chaos" and come close to a "complete breakdown", he said.
Mrs May said: "Mental health problems affect people of all ages and all backgrounds.
"The bravery of those in public positions who speak out about their experiences helps smash the stigma around mental health and will help thousands of people to realise they are not alone."
Mental health charity Mind described the interview as a "true turning point".
Fiona Pienaar, director of clinical services at children's mental health charity Place2Be said: "Prince Harry's willingness to talk so intimately about the impact of the loss of his mother 20 years ago, as well as how he has processed his grief, is a gift from the young royal."
The two princes, along with the Duchess of Cambridge, are promoting the Heads Together mental health campaign, the London Marathon's charity of the year.
A two-part series, Mind Over Marathon, starts on BBC One at 21:00 BST on Thursday 20 April, as part of a Minds Matter series of programming about mental health issues. | The British "stiff upper lip" should not be allowed to endanger people's health, the Duke of Cambridge has said. |
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