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37,134,946 | The fair city was classified as a town in 1975 during a local government shake-up and did not regain its city status until 2012.
Perth won a competition to become Scotland's 7th city to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, and now hopes to repeat its success.
Here are eight reasons why Perth is already a Scottish cultural hub.
Born in Perth, the Trainspotting star gained recognition for his portrayal of heroin addict Renton in the on-screen adaptation of Irvine Welsh's novel.
McGregor went on to star in a variety of blockbusters including Moulin Rouge and the Star Wars prequels, where he played a young Obi-Wan Kenobi.
His love of motorbikes led him to create travel documentary The Long Way round with Charley Boorman, which followed them across thirteen countries as they travelled from London to New York.
Perth-born Fred MacAulay started his comedy career late at the tender age of 31, after first training to be an accountant.
He is now a frequent and popular performer at Edinburgh's Fringe Festival and a variety of international comedy festivals.
The comedian hosted his own radio show MacAulay and co for almost 18 years on BBC Radio Scotland, and has made appearances on comedy panel shows including QI and Have I Got News For You.
The Scottish baritone made his Royal Opera debut in 1987 and has since enjoyed critical acclaim.
The Perth singer is a former member of the Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera and a host of international opera companies.
Maxwell has portrayed leading roles in productions of Madam Butterfly, Otello, Carmen and La Boheme, to name a few.
The former PE teacher from Perth won silver medals in the 400m hurdles at two Commonwealth Games, most notably at Glasgow 2014.
She was both hurdles European Champion and Scottish Athlete of the year in 2014.
Recently, Doyle suffered a devastating defeat by finishing in last place during the 400m hurdles at the Rio Olympics final.
The curling star was skip of the Scottish team that won the 2011 European Championships in Moscow and the 2013 World Championships in Riga.
As part of Team GB, Muirhead went on to win bronze at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and held the title of 2013 World Champion.
Perth's Mark Beaumont first rose to fame when he completed an 18,000 mile round-the-world bike trek, where he beat the world record by a staggering 82 days.
Beaumont is also a television presenter, broadcaster, author and endurance adventurer who has made documentaries in more than 100 countries.
The Glenturret Distillery, just outside of Perth in Crieff, is where Scotland's favourite Famous Grouse Whisky is made.
Glenturret is Scotland's oldest working distillery, and it offers hourly tours and tasting experiences for visitors.
Scotland's largest export is still a popular draw for tourists and locals, and the Famous Grouse experience won Whisky Visitor Attraction of the Year 2015.
The iconic installation that covered the Tower of London with poppies in 2014 is now housed at the Black Watch Castle and Museum in Perth.
Thousands of hand made ceramic poppies were created by artist Paul Cummins and designer Tom Piper to mark the centenary of World War One.
The Weeping Window is touring the country, but will remain in Perth until 25 September. | Perth has launched its bid to become the UK's 2021 City of Culture. |
37,409,246 | Jill Lunn, 56, had gone to close the remote control gate by hand, leaving her granddaughter in her car nearby.
It fell as safety-stop devices had not been installed, Norwich Crown Court heard.
Robert Churchyard, 51, has denied gross negligence manslaughter and breaching a general duty of care in his work.
The gate, which was at the entrance to her driveway in Blofield Heath, near Norwich, weighed around a third of a tonne.
It was designed to be operated automatically and manually.
Mrs Lunn, who died on 17 April 2013, had left her grandchild in the car nearby when she went to close the gate.
Andrew Jackson, prosecuting, said: "It gained momentum as she pushed and pulled it and predictably it fell.
"That tragedy could have been easily prevented by simple stop devices on the gates or on the track on which it ran."
Mrs Lunn lived in an annex at the property owned by her daughter Jane Shannon and son-in-law Christopher Shannon.
She suffered a heart attack while pinned under the gate, the court was told.
The gate was fitted in March 2013 by Mr Churchyard, of Turner Road, Norwich, who worked for Automated Garage Doors and Gates Ltd, based at the Sweetbriar Industrial Estate in Burnet Road, Norwich.
Mr Jackson described the set-up used as "highly dangerous" as there was nothing to hold the gate in place.
Automated Garage Doors and Gates Ltd admitted three counts of failing to comply with a requirement under the Supply of Machinery (Safety) regulations at an earlier hearing.
The trial, set to last two weeks, continues. | A woman died after she was pinned underneath a iron gate which fell when the automatic mechanism failed, a court heard. |
34,699,062 | Raheem Sterling struck from a tight angle after eight minutes - and Fernandinho's header doubled City's lead just 170 seconds later.
Sevilla hit back through Benoit Tremoulinas' free header, but Wilfried Bony swept in for a 3-1 half-time lead.
City cruised through the second half to progress with two games to spare.
Victory for the Premier League leaders, coupled with Juventus's 1-1 draw at Borussia Monchengladbach in the group's other game, means they have reached the last 16 quicker than in any of their previous four campaigns.
Sevilla could still finish level on points with City, but the Blues would progress because their two wins over the Spanish side gives them a superior head-to-head record.
City have struggled in the Champions League over the past four seasons, twice failing to escape the group stage under Roberto Mancini and losing in the last 16 in each of Manuel Pellegrini's two campaigns.
But their victory in Spain maintained the Chilean's flawless record of reaching the knockout phase while managing City.
Pellegrini's side were rampant in a remarkable first half, cutting apart their hosts almost at will.
Sterling finished coolly after he was picked out by Fernandinho's accurate through ball, before the Brazilian headed into an empty net after pouncing on a rebound.
And, after Sevilla gave themselves a lifeline when an unmarked Tremoulinas was picked out at the far post by Coke, Bony swept in Jesus Navas's low cross from the right to restore the two-goal advantage.
Europa League winners Sevilla barely threatened after the break, with Yaya Toure, Bony and Sterling all going close to adding more away goals.
City have been beaten by Barcelona in the last 16 in the past two seasons, but they are now in a strong position to finish as Group D winners, which they will hope will give them a more favourable tie.
City have developed a reputation in recent weeks for pinching dramatic winners, but this victory was based on a lightning start rather than a scrambling finish.
The Blues needed late goals to beat Monchengladbach and Sevilla in their previous two Champions League matches, and to see off Premier League rivals Norwich at the weekend.
Pellegrini sprang a surprise by dropping £55m summer signing Kevin de Bruyne, arguably City's star performer in recent weeks, to the bench.
That may have hinted at a more pragmatic approach, but the Chilean's tactics were far from cautious.
Sevilla had not lost in their previous 10 European home games but had no answer to the pace of Sterling and Navas down the flanks, nor to the power and drive of Fernandinho and Toure.
City had six shots on target in the opening 20 minutes as Sevilla failed to muster one.
The visitors ended the first half with 16 efforts. Only Atletico Madrid have managed more in one half in this season's competition, with 17 against Kazakhstan minnows Astana.
Virtually every club side in European football would struggle to replace Sergio Aguero and City, despite their vast riches, are no different.
In the Argentine talisman's absence through injury, some City fans have not been convinced that £28m signing Bony is an adequate replacement.
The Ivorian had scored five in 24 appearances before the match in Spain, but he responded with an encouraging display.
As well as netting his first Champions League goal, Bony impressed with his link-up play at the focal point of City's counter-attacking set-up.
And he was given a rousing ovation by the travelling supporters when he was replaced in the final five minutes.
Man City boss Manuel Pellegrini: "It is important to be qualified two games before the end.
"Now we will still try to qualify in the first position of this group and if we continue playing in this way we will have more chances."
Sevilla coach Unai Emery: "We have played against a fantastic team.
"They were very fast and good at converting their opportunities. Once they scored the first two goals that nullified us. We had our moments but not enough.
"We knew City and Juventus were going to be the favourites in this group, but we know there is still a chance we can get through. The group is still open."
A return to Premier League action. Leaders City, ahead of second-placed Arsenal on goal difference, visit bottom side Aston Villa on Sunday. | Manchester City secured a place in the Champions League last 16 by tearing apart Group D rivals Sevilla with a blistering attacking display. |
34,034,681 | It says that Hong Xudong was released following an intelligence operation and is now in the hands of the government.
He had reportedly cycled across Pakistan after traversing Tibet, Nepal and north India.
He was kidnapped in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, close to a dangerous region in neighbouring Balochistan province.
The area is notorious for its multiple insurgencies.
"The Chinese tourist was recovered on Saturday night after a successful operation and is to be handed over to the Chinese embassy in Islamabad anytime soon," Dawn newspaper reported Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan as telling a press conference in Islamabad.
It remains unclear who abducted him - a Taliban splinter group said it was holding him, but another faction released a video three months ago apparently showing the kidnapped man asking the Chinese government to fulfil the kidnappers' ransom demands.
China is one of Pakistan's major allies, investing heavily in infrastructure projects including nuclear power plants, roads and dams. | A Chinese man kidnapped while cycling through Pakistan in May last year has been freed by the security forces, the Pakistani government has said. |
36,953,126 | The 21-year-old, whose two appearances for Palace's first team came in the League Cup, has moved to the League One side on a two-year contract.
Binnom-Williams had four loan spells away from Palace, spending the first half of last season at Burton and the second part at Leyton Orient.
He comes in after Posh missed out on Leicester left-back Callum Elder.
Elder made 21 appearances for Posh on loan last season, but he has joined Championship side Brentford on a season-long loan deal.
Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page. | Peterborough United have signed Crystal Palace left-back Jerome Binnom-Williams for an undisclosed fee. |
24,022,776 | Dozens of those taking part in the 88-mile (142km) Wiggle Etape Cymru ride through Wrexham and Denbighshire on Sunday suffered punctures.
Organisers of the event said the action was a danger to riders on the day and a menace for drivers for weeks to come.
Wrexham council said the event was "hugely successful" despite this.
The event, in its third year, began and ended at Bangor-on-Dee racecourse, Wrexham, after taking in the Horseshoe Pass in a challenging route involving thousands of metres of climbing.
The ride closes some roads for up to eight hours which organisers suspect may be the reason behind the incident.
Nick Rusling, of event organisers Human Race, said he understood the temporary closures were "an inconvenience to some" but hoped people would find the "positives outweigh the negatives".
He said: "It's understandable that this event is not for everyone and it can be disruptive but this event does much for the local economy.
"It's a unique experience for the riders. People come from miles to do it and spend money in the region. It would be foolish to try and sabotage it."
He said the organisers worked with agencies and local people to ensure those who had to make trips along the route on the day such as carers, the elderly and farmers had a motorcycle marshal to accompany them.
He added: "We do understand that it can be prohibitive but it's one day a year with plenty of notice.
"The police were on hand to remove the bulk of the tacks but a lot will stay on the road and affect local people for weeks to come. It's not just the cyclists."
Mr Rusling said a motorbike safety marshal was put out of action after getting a puncture.
Wrexham council said it was looking forward to the event's return next year.
It said: "It is obviously disappointing that a small minority attempted to spoil what was a fantastic event.
"We hope that North Wales Police find those who were responsible.
"But this should not detract from what was a hugely successful event that attracted 2,000 cyclists from all over the country."
Clwyd South MP Susan Elan Jones called for those responsible for throwing the nails and tacks to be prosecuted.
She said: "Most people in our area will want to see the thugs behind these appalling acts dealt with properly. We need to have zero tolerance for this sort of yobbish behaviour." | Saboteurs targeted a bicycle event featuring 2,000 riders by throwing tacks and nails on the route in three separate places. |
33,856,227 | The boy was struck by the vehicle driven by a 58-year-old man from Carlisle earlier on the A7, between the A6071 junction and Longtown Bridge.
The victim's family have been informed and are being supported by specially trained officers.
The road is closed while police investigate. Officers are appealing for witnesses to the crash to come forward. | A 10-year-old boy has died after being hit by a tractor in Cumbria, police have said. |
12,405,969 | However, since then many protesters have been detained without charge and become victims of police brutality, according to human rights groups.
Activists estimate that more than 300 people have been killed in the popular uprising and several thousand have been injured.
Funerals and memorial services have been taking place on a daily basis.
"I would love my friend, Ahmed Bassiouni, to be remembered as a brave, honest, crazy, beloved guy," says Shady Noshokaty.
"He was a brilliant musician, a contemporary artist, a teacher and a father to two kids."
The two men, both young university art professors, joined the protest after Friday prayers on 28 January but became separated.
Four days later, the body of Mr Bassiouni was found in a hospital with bullet wounds to his neck.
"I'll be honest, in the beginning I wasn't sure the demonstration would do anything, but now it's really become my cause," says Mr Noshokaty.
Friends of the dead man have hung up a huge picture of him outside one of the boarded-up fast-food outlets at the edge of Tahrir Square.
Signs showing others killed in the demonstrations have appeared on nearby railings, and websites have been set up to commemorate them. Most were killed at the height of violent clashes with police a week and a half ago.
After touring Cairo's hospitals, Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch concluded: "A great number of deaths were caused by live gunshot on Friday 28 January, others were from rubber bullets and tear gas fired at too close a range.
"There were also some cases of people shot at extremely close range at one police station on the Friday night. Another category was deaths from sniper-shots, mostly outside the interior ministry on Saturday 29 January."
At least one journalist, Ahmed Mahmoud, who worked for a state-owned publication, has been killed during the demonstrations.
He was shot in the eye by a police officer on 29 January while taking photographs of the protests on his mobile phone from the balcony of his office.
"Now the situation has become very bad for journalists in Egypt," observes the dead man's colleague, Mohamed Basiouni, who wrote his obituary in the al-Ahram newspaper.
"Everyone finds himself a target."
Many Egyptian and foreign media workers have reported being assaulted by thugs with the help of police during demonstrations.
The military and state security continue to arrest journalists, activists and protesters. Many are held for less than 24 hours, but some have stayed in custody for up to two days.
"While most people are released after a short time, we do have some reports of people being beaten," says Gamal Eid of the Arab Network for Human Rights.
He says he is investigating the disappearance of several doctors, working at field clinics in Tahrir Square and the blogger, Kareem Amer, who was released in November after being imprisoned for three years.
The government has promised demonstrators it will lift the emergency law, in place since 1981, which gives wide powers to security services.
Critics have long complained that the law has created a culture of impunity and leads to systematic abuses of human rights in the name of national security.
The law is supposed to be restricted to terrorism and drugs cases. However, the experience of protest organiser Wael Ghonim, who described being dragged to a car by four men on 28 January, threatened and kept blindfolded during 12 days of detention, suggests it is still used against political dissidents.
Few young protesters in central Cairo believe they are safe from the security services despite a reported order from the president that "they should not be detained, harassed or denied their freedom of expression".
At the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre, which specialises in human rights cases - from police torture to advice for political activists - a clear-up is still going on after the offices were raided on 3 February.
Security forces temporarily detained more than 30 people after the raid, including lawyers, human rights campaigners and members of the April 6 Youth Movement. The hard drives of computers and laptops were seized.
Malik Adli, a lawyer from the centre who was picked up before his colleagues, says it is "dangerous work".
"They accuse us of being spies or being disloyal to our country."
But he says there is still determination to carry on.
"No-one can stop us. The police and army have committed many crimes against Egyptian citizens in the past few days. Now we have a lot of work." | An end to restrictive emergency laws and routine abuse by state security services were among the main demands of Egypt's first "day of rage" on 25 January. |
38,764,923 | HM Revenue and Customs must avoid the impression it has "one rule for the rich and another for everyone else," the Public Accounts Committee said.
In a scathing report, PAC chairwoman Meg Hillier said HMRC's claims about its success "just don't stack up".
But an HMRC spokesman said the rich got extra scrutiny, not special treatment.
Since HMRC set up a specialist unit dealing with so-called high net worth individuals in 2009, the amount of income tax they paid had fallen by £1bn, the report said. This was despite income tax receipts from the public as a whole rising by £23bn over the same period.
Since 2009, each of the estimated 6,500 individuals worth £20m or more has been assigned a "customer relationship manager" by HMRC to administer their tax affairs.
But while HMRC said this had resulted in the collection of an additional £2bn in tax. it was unable to explain why the income tax they paid fell by 20% - from £4.5bn in 2009-10 to £3.5bn in 2014-15 - when the overall income tax take rose by 9% £23bn.
The PAC, which took evidence from HMRC chief Jon Thompson and other experts, said it was "alarming" that at any one time about a third of high net worth individuals were likely to be under inquiry for unpaid tax.
But the HMRC had a "dismal record" when it came to prosecuting the very wealthy for tax fraud in the criminal courts, the committee said.
In the five years to 31 March 2016, it completed just 72 fraud investigations into such individuals, with all but two having been dealt with using its civil powers. Only one case resulted in a successful criminal prosecution.
Of the 850 penalties issued to the very wealthy since 2012, the average charge was £10,500, a figure the MPs said was unlikely to be a deterrent to multi-millionaires.
The report highlighted particular concern about tax evasion in the football industry and the "misuse" of image rights to reduce tax liabilities.
The committee revealed that 43 players, 12 clubs and eight agents were currently the subject of "open inquiries" by HMRC. However, it said that in some cases clubs were failing to co-operate fully with the tax inspectors.
"We were appalled to hear that not all football clubs are providing HMRC with data under a voluntary agreement struck with the English Premier League," said the report.
Current tax rules allow for income from image rights to be treated as a separate revenue stream for tax purposes.
It means that taxpayers who believed their image had a market value could set up a company to receive payments for those rights.
But the committee feared these rules are being abused. "Government should take urgent action to address image rights taxation," the report said.
PAC chairwoman Meg Hillier said: "If the public are to have faith in the tax system then it must be seen to have fairness at its heart. It also needs to work properly. In our view, HMRC is failing on both counts.
"HMRC's claims about the success of its strategy to deal with the very wealthy just don't stack up," she said.
To re-build trust, HMRC must be far more transparent about its operations and dealings with the super-rich, said the PAC. And it should consider what further powers it needs. The MPs said HMRC must report back to the PAC by July this year.
An HMRC spokesman strongly defended the department.
He said there was "absolutely no special treatment" for the wealthy. "In fact we give them additional scrutiny, with one-to-one marking by HMRC's specialist tax collectors, to ensure that they pay everything they owe, just like the rest of us do," he said.
He added that the department carefully scrutinised arrangements between football clubs and their employees to ensure the right tax was paid.
"In recent years we have identified more than £158m additional tax yield from clubs, players and agents," he said. | The taxman's failure to get tough with the super-rich risks undermining confidence in the whole system, MPs warned in a report on Friday. |
21,485,731 | The blast, which also wounded 180 others, ripped through a crowded market place in an ethnic Hazara area at around 18:00 (13:00) on Saturday.
A Sunni extremist militant group has said it was behind the bombing.
It is the second major attack on Quetta's 600,000-strong Hazara community in five weeks.
A twin suicide bomb attack at a crowded snooker club on 10 January killed at least 92 people and wounded 121.
By Imran AliBBC Afghan Stream
After the last bomb attack in Quetta, and the ensuing protests by the Hazara community, the Pakistan government sacked Baluchistan's chief minister, Nawab Aslam Raisani, but has yet to arrest the culprits behind the attack.
This came as no surprise to the Hazara community, who have yet to see the Pakistan government take action against the Sunni extremist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
Many Hazaras feel the government is not doing enough and allows groups to act freely against Shia.
With frequent targeted killings and bomb explosions in Quetta, the Hazaras are living in a state of fear.
Many are apprehensive to leave their homes and those who work in areas that are deemed dangerous are told by their employers to stay at home.
The banned Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for the January attacks; and has reportedly claimed responsibility for this latest bombing.
The bomb went off in a market area housing grocery stores, vegetable shops, language schools and a computer centre.
It happened as people, mainly women, were shopping for groceries and children were coming out of their classes.
The district is dominated by ethnic Hazaras, who mostly belong to Pakistan's Shia minority.
Quetta police chief Mir Zubai Mehmood told the media that some 70kg to 80kg explosives had been planted inside a water tank that had been installed on a tractor trailer.
The blast brought down nearby buildings, and police said they feared some people remain trapped under the rubble.
Victims were rushed to hospitals in the area, and some were flown to hospitals in the southern city of Karachi, police said.
"I saw many bodies of women and children," an eyewitness at a hospital told Reuters. "At least a dozen people were burned to death by the blast."
Angry crowds are reported to have gathered in the area immediately following the blast, pelting police and initially refusing to let them and rescue workers reach the scene of the blast.
The police raised the number of casualties several times through the day.
Quetta is the capital of Balochistan province, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, and has been plagued by a separatist rebellion as well as sectarian violence.
The city's minority Shia community have been angered by what they say is a lack of protection for them against sectarian attacks by Pakistani Sunni militants.
Hundreds of Shia Hazaras in Quetta have been killed in such attacks over the last several years.
Following the attacks on 10 January, families of the victims refused to bury their dead until they received assurances of security from the authorities.
Following talks with Shia representatives from Quetta, Pakistan's Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf sacked Balochistan's chief minister and promised them better security.
In the past Shia leaders and human rights campaigners have accused Pakistan's government of incompetence or collusion, the BBC's Orla Guerin reports from Islamabad. | At least 79 people are now said to have been killed in a bomb attack in a predominantly Shia Muslim part of the south-western Pakistani city of Quetta. |
36,588,904 | Media playback is not supported on this device
Kurt Gidley's late goal gave the hosts victory following a tight second half.
Widnes led 12-10 at the break through converted tries from Joe Mellor and Matt Whitley, with Jack Hughes and Kevin Penny scoring for the hosts.
Brad Dwyer crossed to put Warrington back ahead but Charly Runciman levelled the scores at 18-18 before Gidley's late penalty settled the tie.
Eight-time winners Warrington join Wakefield in the last four, with Hull FC, Catalans Dragons, Wigan and Castleford looking to join them on Saturday.
Greasy conditions made for an error-strewn game at the Halliwell Jones Stadium, with the game becoming stretched as the second half wore on.
Dwyer's close-range score gave the Wolves the initiative after the break but Runciman finished a well-constructed move to drag Widnes level with 15 minutes left.
However, the Vikings were punished when Hep Cahill was offside from a knock-on by Rhys Hanbury and the visitors had no reply to Gidley's kick from the tee.
Warrington, who had centre Ryan Atkins taken to hospital for assessment following a first-half concussion, will find out their semi-final opponents when the draw is made on Saturday following Wigan's tie with Castleford (17:30 BST, live on BBC Two).
Warrington: Ratchford; Russell, Evans, Atkins, Penny; Gidley, Sandow; Hill, Clark, Westerman, Currie, Hughes, Westwood.
Replacements: Dwyer, King, Bailey, Cox.
Widnes: Hanbury; Thompson, Runciman, Bridge, Ah Van; Mellor, Brown; Cahill, White, Buchanan, Houston, Dean, Leuluai.
Replacements: Whitley, Manuokafoa, Dudson, Heremaia.
Referee: James Child | Warrington Wolves narrowly beat local rivals Widnes Vikings to reach the Challenge Cup semi-finals. |
33,235,271 | A trained pilot, he is reported to have been alone aboard a small private plane which crashed north of Santa Barbara on Monday morning.
The musician worked on three James Cameron films, as well as A Beautiful Mind, Braveheart, Troy and Apollo 13.
He won one Oscar for the Titanic film score and another for its theme song.
The musician shared his second Oscar with lyricist Will Jennings for best original song, the hugely successful My Heart Will Go On, sung by Celine Dion
Dion released a statement saying she was "deeply saddened" by the composer's "tragic death".
"He will always remain a great composer in our hearts. James played an important part in my career. We will miss him. We offer his family and friends our deepest sympathy."
Horner was nominated for a further eight Oscars, for scores and songs for the films Avatar, House of Sand and Fog, A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, Braveheart, Field of Dreams, An American Tail and Aliens.
He was also the composer for the two highest-grossing films of all time, Avatar (£1.7bn) and Titanic (£1.3bn) and is listed on the Internet Movie Database as having 95 soundtrack credits and 158 composer credits.
"My job is to make sure at every turn of the film it's something the audience can feel with their heart," Horner said in a 2009 interview with the Los Angeles Times.
"When we lose a character, when somebody wins, when somebody loses, when someone disappears - at all times I'm keeping track, constantly, of what the heart is supposed to be feeling. That is my primary role."
The plane crash in the Los Padres National Forest, north of Los Angeles, left an impact crater and sparked a brush fire that had to be put out by firefighters, local fire authorities said.
Horner's personal assistant, Sylvia Patrycja confirmed his death, writing on Facebook on Monday: "We have lost an amazing person with a huge heart, and unbelievable talent. He died doing what he loved. Thank you for all your support and love and see you down the road."
30 million
Titanic soundtrack sales
158 composer credits for TV, films and documentaries
2 Oscars won for Titanic, 8 other nominations
1 uncredited acting appearance in Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan (also his first major movie score)
1995 composed 6 scores including Oscar-nominated Apollo 13 and Braveheart
Horner, who was born in 1953, started piano lessons aged five and went on to study at London's Royal College of Music before moving to California in the 70s. He went on to study music theory and composition, achieving a bachelor's degree, master's degree and PhD, scoring student films as a sideline.
His first break came with the score for 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and he went on to work with some of the biggest directors in film, including George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Ron Howard and Oliver Stone.
Actor and director Howard tweeted: "Brilliant Composer James Horner, friend & collaborator on 7 movies has tragically died in a plane crash. My heart aches for his loved ones."
Russell Crowe, who starred in Howard's Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind, added: "My sincere condolences to the family, loved ones and friends of James Horner."
Actress Kirstie Alley added her voice, saying: "I'm so sad to hear about James Horner... He scored the first movie I did - Star Trek 2. Great composer... great person... huge loss."
Eight-time Oscar winning composer Alan Menken, whose works include The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, paid tribute by saying he counted Horner as "among the very best film composers of our generation".
"His work is stirring, emotionally powerful and broadly evocative. Although we only met on a few occasions, I will always cherish the memory of him and his wonderful work," he said.
Actor Rob Lowe echoed the sentiments of many by tweeting: "There is nothing that shaped my movie-going experience more than the musical genius of James Horner. He will live on through the ages."
American composer Steve Jablonsky, writer of the music for the Transformers movie series, tweeted about the influence the composer had on him, saying: "James Horner, thank you for inspiring a young me to pursue a career in film music. Thank you for your music. Rest in peace."
The Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb added: "Last time I spoke to JH he was scoring for a kid at AFI. 2 Oscars and he agreed to score a student film! What generosity."
Cameron, who directed Titanic and Avatar, paid tribute to Horner in 2011 when the composer won an award at the eDIT Filmmakers Festival in Frankfurt.
The director said: "In Titanic, I challenged you to do an emotionally powerful score without violinists, and with the use of haunting vocals and bittersweet Celtic pipes, you reinvented the romantic score.
"Avatar was a very different challenge - to capture the heart and spirit of an alien culture without alienating the audience.
"By combining the sweep of a classic orchestral score with indigenous instrumentation and vocals, you came up with a unique sound that created both the epic sweep of the film and also childlike sense of wonder of experiencing that fantastic world for the first time."
Horner leaves a wife and two daughters. | James Horner, the Hollywood composer who wrote the Oscar-winning score for Titanic, has died in a California plane crash aged 61. |
20,179,832 | Digital Goldfish, which creates content for mobile phones, has been purchased for an undisclosed sum.
The company has confirmed that its 15 staff will remain in Dundee.
Ninja Kiwi, founded in Auckland in 2006, has produced about 60 games, including the popular Bloons series. The two firms had been working closely together for several years.
The relationship had seen Digital Goldfish developing the mobile versions of Ninja Kiwi games Bloons and Bloons TD.
The firm will now focus on expanding the New Zealand developer's reach on mobile platforms.
Chris Harris, co-founder of Ninja Kiwi, said: "The Digital Goldfish guys have been great partners for us and have great depth of skill in mobile games development.
"As we continue to build our mobile games reach, joining forces with the Digital Goldfish team is just awesome.
"Blending their mobile expertise with our IP and player base has worked really well for us to date, so this acquisition is strategically very strong for us."
The Dundee team will continue under the management Digital Goldfish co-founders David Hamilton and Barry Petrie.
Mr Petrie said: "What started as a simple license deal developed into the perfect partnership.
"We have collaborated on several successful titles together and racked up millions of downloads in the process. This deal made absolute sense for both parties and was a natural progressive step in the relationship between the two companies.
"We are delighted to become part of the Ninja Kiwi family and are excited for the future as we look to bring existing and new Ninja Kiwi IP to a variety of platforms." | A Dundee-based computer games developer has been bought by New Zealand's Ninja Kiwi. |
32,158,729 | First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will be questioned by MSPs for the last time before the Easter recess at Holyrood.
Meanwhile, Labour will campaign on tax plans, the SNP will condemn cuts on disabled people, and the Liberal Democrats will focus on businesses.
Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson said her party were the only to outline details of £30bn of cuts.
Following First Minister's Questions, Ms Sturgeon will prepare to face six other party leaders, including Prime Minister David Cameron, Labour's Ed Miliband and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, in a two-hour live general election debate to be screened on ITV from 20:00 on Thursday.
The debate, which will be given extensive live coverage by other media outlets including the BBC, will also feature Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, Nigel Farage of UKIP and Plaid Cymru's Leanne Wood.
Speaking ahead of the debate, Ms Sturgeon said it marked an opportunity to break out of the traditional two-party politics of Westminster and ensure "real progressive voices" could be heard.
On Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland, as part of a series of interviews of the Scottish party leaders this week, Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson said her party was the only one which had outlined how cuts would be made following the election.
Referring to Chancellor George Osborne's plans for £30bn of cuts if the Conservatives are elected, Ms Davidson said £12bn would be saved in welfare, £13bn saved in departmental cuts and £5bn saved from tackling tax evasion.
On the issue of zero hour contracts, Ms Davidson said most people who were on them in Scotland didn't want more work.
She added: "This is what we growing up would have called casual labour. Sixty six percent of them [people on zero hour contracts] said they didn't want more work; 17% of them are students.
"Three weeks ago, I was doing a debate with Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy who said he wanted to protect some zero hour contracts, such as pensioners who supplement their pension by doing some shifts at B&Q. I think that is an excellent example of where causal contracts can work for people."
Ms Davidson defended the government for managing to half the deficit it inherited, and said the Conservatives should form a minority government - if the party failed to win a majority at the election - rather than form a coalition with another party.
On the SNP, she added: "If the defining characteristic of a party is to break up the United Kingdom, then you don't put that party into the government of the United Kingdom."
What are the top issues for each political party at the 2015 general election?
Policy guide: Where the parties stand
On the campaign trail today, Health Secretary Shona Robison will condemn cuts to benefits for disabled people, saying this is opposite from the "progressive politics" offered by the SNP.
Scottish Labour Leader Jim Murphy will be in Clydebank to argue a Labour government and its tax plans can release one billion pounds over five years which could go to the NHS in Scotland.
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie will be in Edinburgh to highlight the work the party has done in government to help small businesses.
The last FMQs before the Easter recess can be watched live from 12pm at BBC Scotland's Democracy Live. | The UK General Election is expected to dominate proceedings at First Minister's Questions. |
40,690,964 | Campbell, 29, has yet to fight for a world title, but is the mandatory challenger having beaten Darleys Perez of Colombia in April.
Venezuelan Linares, 31, beat Briton Anthony Crolla last year to claim the title and also won a rematch in March.
The WBA said Linares "must face his mandatory opponent in a period of nine months" from winning the belt.
They added that that time "expired on 23 June 2017".
The governing body said both teams had been notified and set a deadline of 30 days from 21 July to reach an agreement.
Campbell, who won gold at the 2012 Olympics in London, has had 18 professional fights, winning 17 and losing once.
It will be his first world title shot.
Get all the latest boxing news sent straight to your device with notifications in the BBC Sport app. Find out more here. | WBA lightweight champion Jorge Linares has been given 30 days to arrange a fight against Britain's Luke Campbell. |
33,880,848 | She said her left-wing rival Jeremy Corbyn lacked economic credibility and he would keep Labour out of power.
Mr Corbyn insisted his policies were "serious" and urged his rivals not to indulge in "personal abuse".
Meanwhile, the Guardian has endorsed Ms Cooper for the leadership, saying she is "best-placed" to unite the party.
Ms Cooper has previously held back from directly criticising Mr Corbyn, who began the race as a rank outsider but has shot to the top of the opinion polls on the back of a social media campaign and backing from the two biggest unions.
But in a speech in Manchester, she accused the Islington North MP of "bad economics," arguing his policies - including on renationalisation, quitting Nato and quantitative easing - were not radical, would not stand up to scrutiny, and would not get Labour elected.
Her comments echo warnings from former Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior figures as a row continues over the party's future direction.
She said she did not want to dismiss the values and intentions of Mr Corbyn or his supporters, but she said she would not "pander" to them or pretend she agreed with his answers for Britain.
"I feel really strongly... that his are the wrong answers for the future," she added.
"They aren't radical and they aren't credible. And they won't change the world. They will keep us out of power."
Criticise Corbyn and you make him stronger. That's been the fear of so many who believe he'd spell disaster for Labour.
When Tony Blair - arch-enemy of the party's left - says a Corbyn victory could mean annihilation, they wince.
If you love Corbyn and hate Blair, they argue, that won't change your mind. It's why, perhaps, Yvette Cooper has waited until the eve of polling to explicitly criticise his policies. It's why others stay silent still.
Labour's centrists fear too that the flood of new voters - hundreds of thousands of them, enough to form a party of their own - have signed up to back Corbyn.
They don't know it, though. Not yet.
The same Westminster consensus that makes Corbyn a sure-fire winner today, regarded him as a fringe outsider not so long ago; it's been a bad year for the Westminster consensus.
So time's not up yet for those who'd make the case against Corbyn, but it's running out.
And his opponents remain uncertain who or what could stand in his way.
Ms Cooper told BBC Newsnight there was a serious risk that the party would split if Mr Corbyn won.
She said: "I don't want to see that happen, I can't bear to see that happen because I think there is too much at stake and when you've got families who depend on Labour to stop their tax credits being cut, to say goodbye to power and to the possibility of winning the next election is wrong."
Asked if she would sit in a Jeremy Corbyn shadow cabinet, Ms Cooper said she would not be able to argue for policies such as the return of the Labour Party's Clause IV.
She said she feared Labour could be out of power for a generation, but would not walk away from the party.
In an editorial, the Guardian said Mr Corbyn had "breathed extraordinary life" into the leadership campaign, while his three rivals came across as "a triple-headed embodiment of the well-dressed, smooth-talking Westminster class".
But it said he would not win the votes necessary to clinch a general election - and instead Ms Cooper would be best-placed to take on David Cameron, and perform the "formidably difficult task" of uniting the party.
Andy Burnham, another candidate vying for the leadership, said the attacks on Mr Corbyn "misread the mood of the party".
He said there was "a yearning out there for a different style of politics".
Responding to Ms Cooper's criticisms and Mr Blair's claim that he would "annihilate" the party, Mr Corbyn said he wanted to focus on policies not personal abuse.
"We don't do personal attacks," he said.
A look at what each of the candidates would do if they won power:
He said many people had been "turned off" by the "politics of abuse" and wanted the political system to represent them.
The Islington North MP added he had put forward a "serious set of economic proposals" which he said had been well thought out.
Ms Kendall, who is polling fourth in the contest, said she understood why Labour figures were issuing warnings over the prospects for Labour under Mr Corbyn's leadership.
But she added: "I think it is up to all of the candidates in the leadership and deputy leadership race to make the case for a positive, optimistic alternative for the Labour Party that is right for the country."
The leadership hopeful, who is embarking on a three-day tour of Britain to revive her bid, conceded she had a "hell of a long way to go" but she would fight "to the very end".
Meanwhile, Labour Party officials have rejected calls to pause the contest over fears the process is being sabotaged by members of other parties.
The Labour Party will begin sending out ballot papers on Friday, with the result of the four-way contest to be declared on 12 September. | Yvette Cooper has turned her fire on the frontrunner in the Labour leadership race as the party prepares to start sending out ballot papers. |
35,547,206 | The violence broke out in the district on Monday night as officials tried to clear an unlicensed New Year market.
Scores of people, mostly police, were injured and 64 people were arrested as supporters of the food vendors tried to stop the operation.
The 37 were released on bail and the case adjourned until April.
A 15-year-old is appearing in a juvenile court.
What are Hong Kong's localists angry about?
As they appeared in the packed courtroom in Kowloon, some of the defendants accused the police of using excessive force during the clashes.
One newspaper reporter has alleged he was attacked by police officers.
The charge of rioting, which carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence, has not been used in Hong Kong in more than 15 years.
The BBC's Juliana Liu in Hong Kong says its use reflects the seriousness with which authorities are responding to the clashes.
The South China Morning Post said the last use of the rioting charge was after violent clashes between inmates at a drug treatment centre in 2000.
Mong Kok clashes
What happened in Mong Kok?
Hong Kong police attempted to shut down unlicensed food stalls along the junction of Shan Tung Road and Portland Street in Kowloon. Clashes erupted after dozens of local activists gathered to defend the vendors.
Why now?
The unlicensed food stalls were set up for the Lunar New Year holiday. Officials usually turn a blind eye to the hawkers' lack of official permits, but this year decided to crack down.
Were the clashes just about street food?
The underlying tensions go deeper. Many "localist" groups, who want greater autonomy for Hong Kong, turned up to support the vendors, arguing that Hong Kong's identity is under threat. Trust between the public and the police has also declined in recent years. On social media the protest was dubbed #fishballrevolution, after one of the snacks on sale.
Read more: More than fishballs | Thirty-seven people have appeared in court in Hong Kong, charged with rioting over violent street protests in Mong Kok. |
37,910,858 | It may ultimately impact on other institutions such as the National Library of Wales and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales.
But its creation is the result of a study, undertaken by PwC in March 2016 and published in the summer, to examine ways of maximising the potential commercial revenue of Cadw, the Welsh government body that looks after many of Wales' historic castles and monuments.
The report made a number of recommendations, from loose collaboration to a complete merger of national heritage bodies such as the museum and library.
A steering group, with representatives from the heritage sector as well as unions representing staff, is currently considering areas where greater collaboration could be achieved.
There is widespread agreement that collaboration can enhance the sector, but it is the prospect of formally merging some activity that has made the proposal so controversial.
Officially, the final form will be decided by the Welsh Government once the organisations and the unions have had their say.
That is likely to be early in 2017, after which a public consultation will be carried out.
The Welsh Labour government said it made a manifesto commitment to establish Historic Wales and the economy secretary said closer collaboration was vital if the bodies are to increase their commercial success.
Continued public funding for the institutions is not under threat, but the government says only a closer working relationship can generate more private income and present a united front in marketing Wales' heritage to the world.
For many of those who have objected, any new organisation that takes functions away from the national museum will be undermining its independence and stripping it of its ability to raise its own commercial income.
The Museums Association has warned that any commercial merger would have a wider negative impact on NMW's exhibition programming and on its ability to form partnerships with communities and museums across Wales.
The Welsh Government insists it is taking a pragmatic approach and is keen to listen to expert voices and the public before Historic Wales is established. | The final form Historic Wales will take is still under discussion, but its purpose is already defined: to merge some of the commercial functions of Cadw with those of National Museum Wales (NMW). |
33,074,723 | That was Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey's message to first-time home buyers.
Mr Hockey was speaking at a press conference in Canberra when he denied Sydney's property market was becoming unaffordable.
"If housing were unaffordable in Sydney, no one would be buying it," he said.
"So the starting point for a first home buyer is to get a good job. Then you can go to the bank and borrow money."
Mr Hockey's words were slammed by thousands of Australians on social media, with many users criticising him for being "arrogant" and "out of touch" with difficulties faced by young buyers.
"What's Joe Hockey's next observation? Poor people choose to be poor?" said Twitter user Peter Murphy, a teacher in Sydney.
Another user remarked: "Maybe [Mr Hockey] should live off the minimum wage and see how real people live."
Many commentators on Twitter soon began dispensing their advice for the Australian treasurer using the hashtag #adviceforjoe.
"Learn the fact that 'society' isn't the same thing as 'economy,'" said one user.
"Put the cigar out, step down and out of the ivory tower and engage with the rest of the nation," advised another.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who stood by Mr Hockey and defended his comments, was also not spared on social media.
The opposition Australian Labor Party also weighed in with the tweet: "Want a 'good' job that pays good money? Why not apply for one in Joe Hockey's office!"
Some users also shared their personal difficulties they faced with Sydney's rising housing prices.
While others kept their advice for Mr Hockey simple. | "Get a good job that pays good money." |
40,611,276 | The 19-year-old is yet to make his first-team debut for the Gunners, but played 13 games for Notts County during a loan spell last season.
"His arrival means we now have competition for every position along the back line," Rovers boss Darrell Clarke told the club website.
They start the new League One season with a trip to Charlton on 5 August.
Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page. | Bristol Rovers have signed Arsenal left-back Marc Bola in a season-long loan deal. |
34,152,466 | It will see road closures on Saturday as rugby fans flock to the Millennium Stadium, while a strike is also planned by some Cardiff Bus drivers.
On Sunday, Wales will face Israel at the Cardiff City Stadium.
Train operators said crowd management systems will be in place.
Cynthia Ogbonna, managing director of Cardiff Bus, said the number of its services running on Saturday was "not yet known".
"We are extremely apologetic for inconveniencing our customers and will do our best to ensure that we keep Cardiff moving during this time," she said.
On Sunday, there will be further bus route changes up until midday, as the city holds the Cardiff 10K race, with further road closures.
A spokesman for Arriva Train Wales added: "As with all major events in Cardiff we are expecting our services to be very busy this weekend."
Cardiff council said it would also be operating park and ride facilities to get rugby fans into the city centre on Saturday.
"A crowd of 50,000 is expected and the City of Cardiff Council is advising people to allow plenty of time to get into the city," said a spokesman.
Check if this is affecting your journey | Cardiff is preparing to host one of its busiest sporting weekends - with Wales footballers on the brink of Euro 2016 qualification, and the rugby side facing Italy for a World Cup warm-up. |
34,360,509 | Wales fans hoping to travel home after Saturday's game said they would be left stranded if they relied on the train.
The last service from Paddington is at 22:00 BST - just 30 minutes after the game is due to finish.
Great Western Railway said the closure of Severn Tunnel for engineering work prevented them putting on more trains.
Meanwhile passengers may face delays travelling to London, after Arriva Trains Wales confirmed delays between Cardiff and Newport due to a cable theft.
Wales and England face each other at Twickenham at 20:00 BST in what is expected to be the most explosive contest of the World Cup so far, as both sides aim to bolster their quarter-final chances.
GWR said less than 2% of match tickets had been sold to fans in Wales - with most staying overnight.
"Given the particularly late kick off and with a journey time from Twickenham to a GWR station of at least an hour - meaning the earliest train to some destinations in south Wales would not arrive until at least 02:00 - most fans from Wales are likely to choose to travel by alternative means, or stay overnight," an official for the train operator said.
"No amount of additional trains would change the fact that the Severn Tunnel is closed, and we are not able to run any more trains through it to get to Wales than we already are.
"The train timetable following the game has been published well in advance and the majority of customers will have planned their return from the match accordingly."
GWR said its plans were also based on match ticket data provided by Rugby World Cup, which said less than 2% of match tickets have been sold in Wales.
Train travel arrangements for the game is the latest in a series of complaints that have marred the start of the tournament, following overcrowding problems at Cardiff Central after the Ireland v Canada game.
It prompted Welsh Secretary Stephen Crabb to tell train operators to "fix it".
GWR also had to apologise after fans faced long delays following the Scotland v Japan game in Gloucester and Australia's match against Fiji in Cardiff.
The issues have also seen the Welsh economy minister Edwina Hart intervene to warn train operators that "they've got to get their act in order".
She told assembly members: "I don't very often agree with the secretary of state for Wales, but I do agree with him on this occasion and what he says: 'Can't they just get on with it and actually sort it out?'
However, with five more Rugby World Cup matches still to be played at the Millennium Stadium - including two quarter finals - Cardiff council dismissed any suggestion that delays experienced by rugby fans painted the city in a poor light.
"The positive benefits for the city massively outweigh the negatives - it's a good thing for the city," insisted a spokesman.
Moving tens of thousands of people in and out of the city centre always "poses some challenges" he added, which was why the council had established areas such as fan zones, to ease pressure on the road and rail network, by persuading people to stagger their journeys home.
The council said it was continuing to liaise with rail and bus operators for the upcoming games, with the possibility of increasing capacity for one of two sold-out park-and-ride facilities in the city. | Train operators have said there will be no extra trains back to south Wales after the Rugby World Cup clash between Wales and England at Twickenham. |
34,054,361 | The vaccine is being delivered by dart rifle, and it is believed to be the first programme of its kind in Wales.
It is being administered because too many foals are being born on common land, including on Gelligaer Common in Caerphilly county.
A vet will give the vaccine using a blow-dart and dart rifle.
The programme is being carried out by The Society for the Welfare of Horses and Ponies.
So far 300 hundred horses and ponies have been vaccinated across 12,000 acres of land, from the Brecon Beacons and the Black Mountains, down to the south Wales valleys.
The programme could take five years to complete.
The ponies on Gelligaer Common include traditional Welsh mountain ponies, but also cobs and Shetland ponies.
The vaccination is also aimed at preventing horses and ponies dying in the cold winter months. Fourteen dead ponies were found in one day in April 2013, following heavy snow and freezing temperatures.
The vaccination also works on stallions, curbing their aggressive behaviour and desire to breed.
The society believe the programme could be extended to other parts of Wales, and say the vaccination could prevent the number of ponies on Gelligaer Common increasing to 1,200 in the next three years. | Hundreds of semi-feral ponies are being given a contraceptive vaccine to reduce the number of foals being born on common land across south Wales. |
37,621,671 | The Finn's Law campaign is named after the Hertfordshire police dog who, along with his handler, was stabbed in Stevenage while chasing a suspect.
It wants people who attack police animals to face charges similar to those for attacking a person.
A teenager has been charged with criminal damage over the dog attack.
More on this and other news from Hertfordshire
German shepherd Finn was stabbed in the head and chest and his handler, PC Dave Wardell, received a hand injury in Denton Road after they pursued a suspect at about 01:15 BST.
A 16-year-old boy from Lewisham, south-east London, is accused of the assault of the officer and criminal damage relating to the dog.
The petition, set up by David Burstow on the UK government's petition site, proposes that police animals "be given protection that reflects their status if assaulted in the line of duty".
The campaign's Twitter feed said it had been set up by a private individual - and not serving police officers - to "ensure police animals are recognised for the excellent work they do in upholding the law".
Assistant Chief Constable Dan Vajzovic - from the Joint Protected Services for Beds, Cambs and Herts - said officers had been "overwhelmed" by the support for Finn and his handler.
He said "anything to help promote the safety of members of the police family should be looked at positively" but that decisions on legislative change were a government matter.
"Were there to be a proposal for legislative change I would support legislation that offered an effective mechanism for reducing the likelihood of officers and their police dogs being subject to assault and injury," he said.
The seriously injured dog underwent four hours of emergency surgery and is now recovering at home.
The officer was treated in hospital and discharged. | A petition calling for police animals to be given the same status as officers if they are injured at work has reached nearly 30,000 signatures. |
33,230,412 | 23 June 2015 Last updated at 11:56 BST
Planning officers have recommended approval for the application for test fracking at Little Plumpton, but Roseacre Wood has been recommended for refusal.
Fracking - or hydraulic fracturing - is a technique in which water and chemicals are pumped into shale rock at high pressure to extract gas.
However, anti-fracking campaigners claim the process is harmful to the environment.
BBC North West Tonight explains the process and explores the pros and cons. | Lancashire County Council is discussing applications to extract shale gas at two sites on the Fylde coast. |
31,761,632 | The authorities said the interview contained offensive remarks towards women, and could cause a public outcry.
However, many thousands of Indians have managed to access the film online.
The story once again illustrates the difficulty of banning films in the internet era.
The Delhi court's ruling prevents "the media/internet from publishing/transmitting/telecasting/uploading the interview".
Most Indian papers and TV channels have respected the ban, even to the extent of not quoting from the rapist's interview.
But the BBC showed the film on a UK-based channel, BBC Four, and since then people around the world have been sharing and uploading the film.
YouTube issued a statement on Thursday confirming it had taken down one address that linked to the documentary.
Users trying to watch the film were told: "The content is not available on this country domain due to a court order."
But Indians were still able to see the film on YouTube because, as one account is blocked, another springs up.
YouTube only removes content if the material infringes the law, and it receives a request referring to a specific web address.
In addition to the court's ban, the production company that made the film also said it was attempting to get illegal uploads removed.
Some uploads of the video on YouTube were replaced with the message: "This video contains content from the BBC, who has blocked it on copyright grounds."
The video has not only been uploaded to YouTube, but also to many other websites, making it even harder for the authorities to enforce a ban.
One website openly addresses the issue, telling users: "We implore you to see it and decide for yourself how you feel about it. The government cannot take this decision for you."
The page, which has a YouTube version of the video embedded, was shared more than 40,000 times on Twitter and Facebook.
Although YouTube has successfully taken down a number of the uploads, including the ones that these sites pointed to, many thousands of Indians have already circumvented the ban.
Many have used the standard technology tool that circumvents country-specific bans: using a proxy server to disguise the location of their computers.
Others have also downloaded the film and shared with friends and family on USB sticks or CDs.
If you want to know how hard it is to stop people copying and sharing content online, ask the music and film industry, writes the BBC's Mark Ward.
For over a decade industry associations for both sectors have sought ways to stop music and movies being pirated online. They have spent millions on investigations, launched countless lawsuits and deployed all kinds of sophisticated copy-spotting technology. For example, at the end of last year Google was getting more than nine million requests a week from rights holders to remove links to supposedly infringing content. Despite this, pirated content is still easy to find online.
The problem facing rights holders is the mismatch between the time it takes to copy a file and how long is needed to make a website, social network or online forum take down a pirated track or stolen movie. Copying can be as quick as a mouse click but take-down notices can take hours, days or months to enforce. Small wonder then that copying is rampant and sites such as The Pirate Bay have defied all attempts to knock them offline.
The proliferation of smartphones, social media and instant messaging systems are only making it easier to share links to content at the same time as they make it harder to spot when copyright is being flouted and media shared. | The Indian government banned a documentary earlier in the week that featured an interview with a man facing the death sentence over the gang-rape and killing of a student in Delhi in 2012. |
32,689,145 | Technology and in particular social media would play a key role in the 2015 campaign. Twitter and Facebook would become vastly more influential than newspapers in spreading election messages, and sentiment analysis - mining the big data of social media - would tell us exactly what was going on. How wrong that turned out to be.
Sure, there was vastly more social media activity, and the news cycle was accelerated as campaigners used Twitter to debunk their opponents' gambits within minutes. Ed Miliband had hardly unveiled his tablet of stone before the hashtag #edstone was a trending topic.
Five years ago, Twitter was something shiny and new for politicians, and even using Facebook was regarded as something quite frivolous by many - but both were obsessively used this time. And despite the much greater noise about Twitter, I suspect that Facebook was a much more important platform for reaching voters. Certainly, that was where the Conservatives spent a decent chunk of money.
If you wanted to get first news of every move in the campaign, or indulge in passionate debate with people who had a different view of politics, then tapping away at an app on your smartphone was the thing to do.
But for the most part, social media followed the campaign rather than led it. The running was made by those old dead-tree newspapers which proved, whether Twitter liked it or not, that they could still punch above their weight. And after a result that confounded both the pollsters and the Twitterati, many are concluding that social media platforms are just giant echo chambers where voters have their prejudices confirmed rather than challenged.
What though of the science of sentiment analysis? During the 2010 campaign, I was bombarded with press releases from companies claiming they could chew through the data from Twitter and Facebook and reach conclusions about who was faring best. When the results were in, it was seen that they'd failed, overestimating the Liberal Democrat vote by a wide margin.
This time, with more than 30 million Britons on Facebook and 15 million on Twitter, it seemed they had a better chance. Here was the opportunity for Big Data to show its mettle. Indeed one software consulting company boasted of its app which would "showcase uses of its Big Data technologies", using "contextual analytics" to provide insight on "the sentiment and frequency of Twitter conversations" about the election.
When I asked this morning for examples of where sentiment analysis had proved a useful predictor of voting patterns, the company behind that app returned with a blizzard of charts. Extracting any kind of conclusions from the data was almost impossible. What should we make, for instance, of the fact that Ed Miliband got more mentions than David Cameron on Twitter? Or that UKIP was the most talked about party?
But I also heard from Elections UK, a joint venture between Warwick University, City University and a Greek research institute that had success in using Twitter data to predict the recent election there. They bravely sent me their prediction, made at 1400 on election day, which combined Twitter data with opinion polls to reach a conclusion. And guess what? Just like the polls, it put Labour and the Conservatives neck-and-neck.
Twitter itself also got in touch to tell me that David Cameron had been the most-mentioned party leader this year, Conservative MPs had tweeted more than their Labour rivals over the last three months, and there was evidence that Twitter had encouraged more young people to vote.
So it seems that there is now a vast amount of data available to those wishing to look into the minds of British voters, but the techniques employed to examine that information and extract some meaning from it still need some work. Across the political spectrum many are convinced that technology can now play a huge role in an election campaign - but they are still puzzling over just how to use it effectively. | Five years ago, in the aftermath of the 2010 election, it became the received wisdom that next time things would be different. |
40,350,047 | In a scathing report, John Sopko said that officials bought "forest" pattern uniforms, despite the country's landscape being only 2.1% wooded.
The decision was "not based on an evaluation of its appropriateness for the Afghan environment", he wrote.
A former Afghan defence minister chose the pattern in 2007, he says.
In the 17-page report, Mr Sopko writes that Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak chose the privately-owned pattern over a cheaper pattern that the US military already owned.
US officials, who had been searching for patterns online with Mr Wardak, authorised the purchase because he "liked what he saw", they wrote at the time.
"My concern is what if the minister of defence liked purple, or liked pink?" Mr Sopko told USA Today in an interview.
"Are we going to buy pink uniforms for soldiers and not ask questions? That's insane. This is just simply stupid on its face.
"We wasted $28 million of taxpayers' money in the name of fashion, because the defence minister thought that that pattern was pretty."
For years, Mr Sopko's office has criticised the Pentagon for wastefulness during the United States' longest war.
In January, he told a think tank in Washington there was evidence that Taliban leaders had instructed commanders to purchase US fuel, ammunition and weapons from Afghan soldiers, because it is cheaper.
Senator Chuck Grassley called the uniform decision "embarrassing and an affront to US taxpayers".
"Those who wasted money on the wrong camouflage uniforms seem to have lost sight of their common sense," the Republican senator added.
The Pentagon is currently considering raising the level of US troops in Afghanistan, with a formal announcement expected this week. | US taxpayers unnecessarily spent $28m on uniforms for the Afghan National Army, according to the US inspector general tasked with overseeing the war. |
37,027,684 | The child was taken to Furness General Hospital from Old Park Wood in Grange-over-Sands on Monday afternoon.
He was transferred to Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool but died earlier.
Cumbria Police said an investigation was under way into the youngster's death, but it was not being treated as suspicious.
In a statement, the force said: "Police can confirm that the four-year-old boy involved in this incident has sadly died.
"Our thoughts are with the family at this difficult time."
It is believed the boy was staying with his family at the site, described on its website as "a luxury, private holiday park", set within the grounds of the Holker Estate. | A four-year-old boy injured in an "incident" at a holiday park swimming pool in Cumbria has died, police have said. |
36,298,766 | Manchester United v Bournemouth is still to be played after Sunday's game at Old Trafford was called off after a suspect package was found at the stadium.
Arsenal 4-0 Aston Villa
Chelsea 1-1 Leicester
Everton 3-0 Norwich
Newcastle 5-1 Tottenham
Southampton 4-1 Crystal Palace
Stoke 2-1 West Ham
Swansea 1-1 Manchester City
Watford 2-2 Sunderland
West Brom 1-1 Liverpool | All the match reports from Sunday's nine Premier League games, as Manchester City all but assured a fourth-place finish and Champions League qualification, Arsenal leapfrogged Tottenham to finish second and Southampton qualify for the Europa League. |
36,190,229 | It comes as former owner Sir Phillip Green agreed to appear before two Commons committees to answer questions about the collapse.
Sir Phillip sold BHS to Retail Acquisitions last year for £1, but has faced criticism about his role.
BHS went into administration last month, threatening thousands of jobs.
Mr Javid said in a statement: "I have asked the Insolvency Service to bring forward its investigation rather than wait three months for the administrators to report before launching their inquiry.
"This investigation will look at the conduct of the directors at the time of insolvency and any individuals who were previously directors. Any issues of misconduct will be taken very seriously."
Sir Phillip bought BHS in 2000 for £200m, but sold the department store last year.
BHS was 'crashed into a cliff'
'What we'll miss if BHS closes'
Broken promises at BHS?
The demise of BHS on the High Street
At the time, there were questions over the lack of retail experience of Dominic Chappell and his team at Retail Acquisitions, which became the majority shareholder of the department store.
A fortnight ago, the business fell into administration with debts of £1.3bn - including a pension deficit of £571m - putting 11,000 jobs at risk across 164 stores nationwide.
Sir Phillip is believed to have offered to provide about £80m to help plug the pension deficit. But he has already faced accusations that he crashed BHS "into a cliff", from the chairman of the Business Innovation and Skills Committee, Iain Wright.
Meanwhile, Frank Field, chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee, said Sir Philip had contacted Parliament and "indicated his willingness to come to Parliament to give oral evidence" to a joint session of the Work and Pensions select committee and the Business, Innovation and Skills committee.
No date had yet been set for his appearance. There were suggestions that the committees also wanted to quiz Sir Philip's wife, Lady Green. But Mr Field said he believed Sir Philip "will be able to answer all of our questions on the operations of BHS's pension fund".
Ahead of Sir Philip's appearance, the Work and Pensions Committee is due to hear from the Pensions Regulator and the Pension Protection Fund, BHS Pension Trustees, and Mr Chappell.
There is no suggestion that Sir Phillip did anything wrong.
However, on Friday, the former chairman of Marks and Spencer, Lord Myners, told the BBC Sir Phillip had big questions to answer over his stewardship of BHS.
Lord Myners said: "The big question is whether when Philip Green sold BHS to a group of individuals with no retail experience, led by a former mini racing car driver and twice bankrupt person... that the pension scheme had enough assets to meet its liabilities."
He added: "It is the responsibility of the owner to either make sure that the pension fund is adequately funded or that the new owner is going to take on that responsibility and is a fit and proper person with adequately funding and sensible plans to ensure that the deficit will be covered." | Business Secretary Sajid Javid has ordered the Insolvency Service to investigate the collapse of UK department store BHS. |
36,340,487 | In 2015, UK residents took 65.7m foreign holidays or business trips.
That was despite a number of high profile terrorist attacks in Europe.
They included the deaths of 130 people in Paris in November, and the killing of 38 holiday-makers on a beach in Tunisia in June.
The travel industry said the figures showed the "resilience" of UK travellers.
"The 9.4% growth recorded in overseas holidays during the year is the largest annual rise in nearly twenty years, and spending on holidays exceeded pre-crisis levels for the first time since the recession," said a spokesperson for the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA).
Spain was easily the most popular country for UK residents to visit, with 13m trips there during the year. That accounted for nearly a fifth of all foreign travel by Brits.
At the same time the number of trips by foreign visitors to the UK rose by 5.1%, to a record high of 36.1m.
But while foreigners spent £22.1bn on visits to the UK, Brits spent £39bn abroad.
That spending gap of £16.9bn is the highest since 2008, and accounted for a large slice of the UK's overall balance of payments deficit of £96.2bn in 2015.
The French were the biggest visitors to the UK, with 4m trips.
Behind them were the Germans and the Americans, with 3m visits each. However American visitors spend more, so are more important to the economy.
Outside London, the cities with the highest number of visitors were Edinburgh, Manchester and Birmingham, each of which had more than a million foreign visits. | The number of trips by UK residents abroad increased by 9.4% last year, the largest rise since 1998, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). |
28,567,274 | Lord Fowler raised the case in the House of Lords of Jeremy Pemberton, who had his licence to preach revoked after marrying his partner.
He called on the government to "see if there is anything that could be done to help reconcile the difficulties".
Gay marriage is legal in the UK but the Church of England has not accepted it.
Mr Pemberton was told he could not work as a priest in Nottinghamshire after he married his partner in April.
He was told by diocese officials that clergy must "model the Church's teaching".
He was also blocked from taking up a promotion within the NHS, where he works as a chaplain.
Lord Fowler said: "Given that there are other clergymen at similar risk, will the minister as a matter of good will look at the position here and see if there is anything that could be done to help reconcile the difficulties?"
The government's women and equalities spokesperson, Lady Northover, said it was a matter for the Church of England.
But she added: "Things can evolve. It is good to see, for example, that we should soon see women bishops."
The Bishop of Sheffield, the Right Reverend Steven Croft, said the Church would be holding "a two-year process of structured conversations to explore the changing attitudes to human sexuality and their implications for the life of the Church and its disciplines".
In June, The Right Revd Richard Inwood, acting Bishop for Southwell and Nottingham, said same-sex marriage was clearly at variance with the teaching of the Church of England.
He added: "In view of this I have spoken to Jeremy Pemberton and subsequently written to him to tell him his permission to officiate in the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham has been revoked." | The government should consider intervening to stop the Church of England sacking gay vicars who marry, a former Conservative chairman has said. |
39,714,090 | The 20-year-old suffered a hamstring problem in the first half of Sunday's semi-final win over Rangers.
The France U21 international is expected to be sidelined for up to six weeks during his recovery.
Dembele, replaced by Leigh Griffiths after 34 minutes at Hampden, has scored 32 goals in 49 appearances in his debut campaign since joining from Fulham.
Griffiths, who scored 40 last season but has been a regular on the substitutes' bench this season, has 14 goals in 36 appearances.
Celtic are seeking a domestic treble, having retained the Scottish Premiership title and beaten Aberdeen, who are second top in the league, in the League Cup final. | Celtic striker Moussa Dembele will miss the Scottish Cup final against Aberdeen on 27 May through injury. |
38,452,214 | I'm here with the Bias family - who are attending a programme called MEND.
It's designed to help get parents and children moving and give advice on diet and lifestyle.
It's a really fun programme to take part in - the room is full of children playing tig and other games.
It doesn't feel like sport, it's not competitive. It's just fun activity.
And it's important because Scotland needs to get more children and adults active.
Government figures show two thirds of adults are overweight. Just over a quarter of children are at risk of being overweight or obese.
I've been looking at why that is, and specifically what role sport plays.
Our elite sportsmen and women are winning more medals than ever before.
But government statistics on physical activity are largely static.
So what has happened to the inspiration that was meant to flow from our elite successes?
When I asked Prof Leigh Robinson from Stirling University about this she surprised me by saying there was no proven link between elite success and wider health.
She said: "Politicians and people who are trying to promote elite sport need to stop with that argument. Whether... the public are overly concerned about that argument, whether we like the fact that we win medals, that we are world champions, that we go away to events and are very successful, that may just be enough for us."
So it may well be that winning makes us all feel good, and that's enough, but she doesn't see any evidence it makes us healthier.
The more I spoke to people about this the clearer it became that if we are to become a more active society that needs to be part of our everyday lives.
Government initiatives that promote walking have seen big successes. Cycling is another area where activity can slot into our daily routine.
Back in Kilmarnock I spoke to Dawn Bias about everyday activity and something troubling became clear.
To get her kids up to a healthy level it seems she needs to make a real effort.
The simple kind of exercise many of us enjoyed as children - playing outside with friends - isn't something her girls do.
Instead, she ferries them to organised programmes.
"It's down to mum and dad - mum and dad's taxi as they call it usually - to get them to where they're to go. To follow someone else's structure. They don't get out and just play. It's a shame."
Much of this has to do with big changes in all our lives. Sedentary lifestyles, the attractions of modern technology and hustle and bustle of family life seemed to have squeezed out opportunities for activity.
We need to find ways to make time for it again, or face some sobering health consequences. | It's a freezing November evening and I'm in a sports centre in Kilmarnock. |
30,119,230 | The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said delays in spotting symptoms could be costing thousands of lives each year
About 1.2 million people are currently referred annually, but this figure could rise to 2 million.
GPs said they were already "doing a very good job" at referrals.
Research has suggested that up to 10,000 people die every year because their cancer is diagnosed late, NICE said.
A survey for the NHS last year suggested that a quarter of all people eventually diagnosed with cancer in England had to visit their doctor at least three times before being referred to hospital for tests, it said.
"It is not always easy for GPs to spot cancer," said NICE clinical practice director Prof Mark Baker.
"There are more than 200 different types of the disease so it is unrealistic to expect them to know every single sign and symptom of each one, especially when they only see a handful of new cases a year.
"The problem is that a lot of cancer symptoms can be very general and similar to those of other conditions.
"For example, many people who smoke have a cough associated with chronic lung disease. These are the same people most likely to develop lung cancer, but may well dismiss their symptoms as 'normal for them'," he added.
However, the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) said that GPs were "doing a very good job" of referring patients.
"An average GP might only see eight new cases of cancer for every 8,000 patient consultations, yet 75% of referrals made after one or two GP consultations lead to a positive diagnosis," said the RCGP's Dr Maureen Baker.
"When you consider that as well as being rare, many potential symptoms of cancer could be confused with other conditions that GPs see every day, GPs are doing a very good job of appropriately referring our patients that we suspect of having cancer."
She said that the draft NICE guidance was a "welcome step", but added: "What is really needed is giving GPs easier access to diagnostics such as CT and MRI scans and ultrasound that could make a real difference to our patients."
Investment was also needed for more GPs and support staff.
Sara Hiom, Cancer Research UK's director of early diagnosis, also welcomed the guidelines, but said: "To be truly effective, doctors need better access to diagnostic tests and speedy results."
The draft NICE guidance looks at symptoms, links them to possible cancer type and recommends referral procedures, in the form of a table.
It has been put together to supersede 2005 guidelines, which are organised by cancer type and are laid out as text.
"Early referral and diagnosis can help save lives," said NICE's Prof Baker.
Referrals are expected to increase for:
The increase in referrals is expected to cost the NHS between £17.8m and £36.3m, NICE added.
The draft guidance also includes recommendations about "safety netting" - how to review people with symptoms associated with cancer who do not meet the criteria for referral, to help ensure cancer is not missed. | GPs in England are being encouraged by the NHS advisory body to nearly double the number of patients referred for hospital cancer tests. |
38,217,638 | Media playback is not supported on this device
Scott Wilson grabbed their first goal as he finished off a neat ball across the six-yard box from James Constable.
Mikael Mandron then converted a penalty to double the lead for National League Eastleigh after Luke Coulson had been fouled by Josh MacDonald.
Halifax's hopes of a comeback were dashed when Scott Garner was sent off for elbowing Jai Reason late on.
Eastleigh travel to Championship side Brentford in the new year, one of manager Martin Allen's former clubs.
Match ends, FC Halifax Town 0, Eastleigh 2.
Second Half ends, FC Halifax Town 0, Eastleigh 2.
Attempt saved. Richard Peniket (FC Halifax Town) header from the centre of the box is saved in the top centre of the goal.
Attempt saved. James Constable (Eastleigh) right footed shot from the centre of the box is saved in the bottom right corner.
Corner, Eastleigh. Conceded by Steve Drench.
Attempt saved. Ryan Bird (Eastleigh) right footed shot from the centre of the box is saved in the top left corner.
Corner, Eastleigh. Conceded by Steve Drench.
Attempt saved. Joe Partington (Eastleigh) right footed shot from the centre of the box is saved in the bottom right corner.
Dave Lynch (FC Halifax Town) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Scott Garner (FC Halifax Town) is shown the red card for violent conduct.
Corner, Eastleigh. Conceded by Josh Wilde.
Hand ball by Adam Dugdale (Eastleigh).
Corner, FC Halifax Town. Conceded by Reda Johnson.
Substitution, Eastleigh. Ayo Obileye replaces Luke Coulson.
Foul by Jake Hibbs (FC Halifax Town).
Adam Dugdale (Eastleigh) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Richard Peniket (FC Halifax Town).
David Pipe (Eastleigh) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Jai Reason (Eastleigh) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Nathan Hotte (FC Halifax Town) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Jai Reason (Eastleigh).
Delay over. They are ready to continue.
Delay in match Richard Peniket (FC Halifax Town) because of an injury.
Substitution, FC Halifax Town. Jake Hibbs replaces Liam King.
Nathan Hotte (FC Halifax Town) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Ryan Bird (Eastleigh).
Substitution, Eastleigh. Adam Dugdale replaces Scott Wilson.
Corner, Eastleigh. Conceded by Cliff Moyo.
Attempt saved. Liam King (FC Halifax Town) right footed shot from outside the box is saved in the top centre of the goal.
Attempt blocked. Cliff Moyo (FC Halifax Town) right footed shot from the centre of the box is blocked.
Tom Denton (FC Halifax Town) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Michael Green (Eastleigh).
Substitution, FC Halifax Town. Alex Simmons replaces Matthew Kosylo.
Substitution, Eastleigh. Ryan Bird replaces Mikael Mandron.
Attempt saved. Luke Coulson (Eastleigh) right footed shot from the left side of the six yard box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Matthew Kosylo (FC Halifax Town) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Scott Wilson (Eastleigh) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Matthew Kosylo (FC Halifax Town).
Nathan Hotte (FC Halifax Town) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Corner, FC Halifax Town. Conceded by Reda Johnson. | Eastleigh beat sixth-tier Halifax in their FA Cup second round replay to set up a third round tie away at Brentford. |
39,025,768 | The 37-year-old Porsche 928 was owned by late Beatle Harrison when he lived in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, was sold to Raj Sedha, from Leeds, in 2003.
Mr Sedha was about to dismantle the car before his wife looked in the logbook to find it had been owned by Harrison.
The car is expected to fetch up to £20,000 in Stockport on 17 March.
Mr Sedha told the BBC: "Once I got it on the drive [in 2003], I began to figure which parts I wanted to take off.
"My partner ran out with the book and said, 'stop dismantling it, it belongs to George Harrison'. I said, 'who's George Harrison?'"
The car sat in Mr Sedha's garage for eight years before he decided to restore and sell it.
Mr Sedha added: "We want it to go to someone who's going to appreciate it."
Omega Auctions' Paul Fairweather said: "For anybody that's into cars and The Beatles, this is a must-have."
Harrison, who died in 2001, owned the car for three years while he was living at Friar Park in Henley-on-Thames.
The Porsche was one of more than 100 sports cars the Beatle owned. | A Porsche, once owned by George Harrison and bought for spares by a man unaware of its history, is to be auctioned. |
34,082,540 | Bell, 33, hinted he could quit Tests after winning the Ashes but has since had "a really good talk" with the coaches and captain Alastair Cook.
"Deep down I probably knew I wasn't ready to call time on my Test career," Bell wrote in the Metro.
He is England's record ODI run-scorer, with 5,416 runs in 161 matches.
However, the Warwickshire player was not selected in the two most recent England ODI or T20 squads.
Media playback is not supported on this device
Bell has played 115 Tests - only four Englishmen have played more - and scored 7,569 runs at an average of 43 with 22 centuries.
He managed only 215 runs at an average of 26.87 in the 3-2 series win against Australia, a record-equalling fifth Ashes triumph for an Englishman.
"I've a huge amount still to give in the Test arena and still have so many ambitions left to achieve, both from a personal and a team perspective," said Bell, who says he was not pressured into a decision by England coach Trevor Bayliss or Cook.
"I would love nothing more than to go to Australia in two years' time and right the wrongs of our last Ashes tour there.
"It is the toughest place to play. I'm not afraid of being dropped, I'm looking forward to challenging myself and putting myself into difficult situations against the best players in the world." | England batsman Ian Bell says he still has the "hunger and desire" to play Test cricket after retiring from one-day internationals. |
32,177,003 | He is a director of football whose heart is still out on the pitch, and he casts his mind back almost three decades to the opportunity he was given when he first set foot in the club as a new boy plucked from non-league.
He chuckles as he recalls telling the QPR manager in 1987, Jim Smith, that he couldn't join straight away as he had to work his month's notice as a van driver.
"I remember there were some guys who were just about to be released," Ferdinand, 48, recalls.
"They were saying, 'do you know, I might go and play non-league football. Two nights' work and still get paid £150 a week for playing'.
"I said: 'Are you guys mad? Are you seriously saying that? You have got to try your nuts off to stay in football! You don't believe what you have got'."
The former England striker is a man with a stock of stories to tell about the precarious business of opportunities in the game: how they come about, how they can so easily slip through a player's fingers, how they can be nurtured - and seized.
Reflecting on his own playing career and coaching experience, his is a voice worth listening to carefully at a time when Football Association chairman Greg Dyke is trumpeting ideas to find a host of English players like Harry Kane.
Ah, Harry Kane. Having watched Kane and his Tottenham team-mates Ryan Mason and Andros Townsend celebrating together for England in Turin during the week, Ferdinand argues that the line between that happy picture and talent drifting unharnessed in the modern game could not be thinner.
Kane, Mason and Townsend came through the development squad together at Spurs under the tutelage of Ferdinand, current QPR manager Chris Ramsey and Aston Villa boss Tim Sherwood.
"But I guarantee you now, had Tim, Chris and myself not taken over the first team, nobody would be talking about Kane, Mason and Townsend. Because we gave them the opportunity to play," stresses Ferdinand.
"They would not be playing at Tottenham otherwise. Andros went out on nine loans. Harry had four loans. Mason had five loans. They were no nearer the first team when they came back than when they went out on loan. It was only that we had been working with them and we knew we could put them in the first team and trust them.
"The average lifespan at any club for managers now is 11-12 months maximum. They haven't got time to think about player development."
For all the talk of quotas to clear the pathway for youngsters, as far as Ferdinand is concerned there is a much more immediate problem for players getting stuck in the system. It's that critical age between 16 and 21 that Arsene Wenger pinpointed this week.
"That's the heart of the problem," said the Arsenal manager. "Let's get better at that level, then if there is a problem integrating those players in the top teams, we have to do something about it. Today you have to be very brave to integrate the young players because the pressure is very high."
That sentiment strikes a chord with Ferdinand. He understands why managers are loath to take a risk on a young player. But the system, he reckons, makes it extra difficult to take those risks. Why? Because youngsters at the top clubs are starved of competitive football at the highest level.
The under-21 league, introduced by the Premier League as part of their Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) in place of old-style reserve-team football, is far too sterile for his liking. Ferdinand would scrap it in a heartbeat.
"It's not competitive enough," he says. "Look at our squad. For the previous manager here [Harry Redknapp] if there was a problem in the first team he wasn't looking at the under 21s. He would rather go and take someone on loan who he knows has played competitive football against seasoned pros.
"That's what 99% of managers in the Premier League would do. They don't see the under-21 squad as being competitive enough, which is why these boys are not coming through."
Ferdinand recalls his early days as a QPR player whisked out of non-league football.
"My first reserve game we had Clive Walker, Sammy Lee... all these experienced professional players. We played Southampton and they had Jimmy Case playing." His expression reveals that was an early lesson to the physical demands required. "I am not going to get better experience than that. I am certainly not going to get it in the under-21s.
"These people helped you, they guided you through your football. In the under-21s if you have another kid telling you to push in here or there, they are not quite sure what they are doing.
"The other thing that happened is if you didn't play on Saturday you knew you were playing on Tuesday in the reserves, it didn't matter how big a player you were. And they didn't have the hump because it wasn't seen as a punishment. It was about keeping yourself fit to play football.
"Nowadays the senior players in the under-21 development games see it is a punishment. They don't want to play. So they end up not running around as they should do.
"Because I worked in under-21 football I understand that these players need to be given an opportunity. Otherwise you just have a creche. It is a bit messed up. They have to look at the whole picture."
Given the complicated mix of stifled opportunity plus a generous salary - and all that at a sensitive age in between the teens and being a young adult - it doesn't seem to be the most productive environment.
Intriguingly, when Ferdinand looks at his own chance as a young player, he admits he found it difficult to get his head around what was happening - and that was without agents in his ear and megabucks in his pocket.
One day he was at Southall and Hayes, training twice a week after work and playing on the weekend. The next he was in the professional game.
"Instead of doing it for fun, suddenly it was my job. I struggled with that for a while," Ferdinand says. "I needed to change my lifestyle and I didn't. I was a young kid from a council estate and was still running around with the guys I had been running around with before I joined QPR. It all happened very quickly.
"It took a while to adjust to the life of being a professional footballer. The truth is I probably didn't adjust to it until I went to Turkey, to Besiktas on loan in 1988.
"It was amazing not only as a football lesson but as a life lesson. I was on my own, the first British player to go to Turkey, in this environment I totally didn't know about. But I needed to do it.
"I realised I did want to be a professional footballer and I needed to get away from distractions and concentrate 100% on football. That's what Turkey allowed me to do. It was the making of me as a footballer. I feel that was me serving my apprenticeship."
Ferdinand is a big believer in loans as long as the player himself is in the right mindset.
"People often go on loan and think, 'I'm here for a month. If it doesn't go that well it doesn't matter I'll go back to QPR or Arsenal or Tottenham or wherever. I don't really want to be here anyway…'"
But players need to believe that loan will actually lead somewhere, rather than feeling they are just farmed out.
The 22-year-old Ferdinand returned to QPR from Besiktas in 1989 - having scored 19 goals in 30 games - and never looked back. He was one of a generation that also included Ian Wright and Stuart Pearce that made the full journey from non-league to an England shirt.
The current crop of Premier League players who have their their roots in non-league - the likes of QPR's Charlie Austin, Burnley's Danny Ings, Dwight Gayle of Crystal Palace, Liverpool's Rickie Lambert and Jamie Vardy of Leicester - prove that the EPPP is not the only way to mould top level players.
"Coming in here to work every day is much better than getting up at 6am, working all day, having to jump on two trains and two buses to get to training," Ferdinand adds. "The boys that come out of non-league appreciate what they have."
That's another big part of the development issue - today's youngsters in the academy system are so well looked after their hunger can be eroded.
"That's a conversation that has been going on for many, many years," says Ferdinand. "How do we change the mindset of boys that have been brought up in the system because they believe this is life? It is their life. It is what they have got used to. So it's very difficult to tell them about another way when that is all they have seen.
"I know at all clubs education has become a major part of what they do. But it doesn't really give you the life experience. Maybe sending them out to work for a few months, to get up at six in the morning or maybe even earlier to go and do a day's work, might help them to appreciate what they have got."
Ferdinand laughs at such old-fashioned idealism in the middle of modern, £5bn industry. But it is an interesting idea.
Anything and everything needs to be taken into consideration in the hunt for the next batch of Harry Kanes. | Les Ferdinand is sitting in his office at QPR's Harlington training ground in his club tracksuit, straight from a stint with the players. |
31,848,215 | Edinburgh back row David Denton, who replaces Johnnie Beattie, is the only player among the quintet not to have featured in the tournament so far.
Winger Dougie Fife and centre Matt Scott come in for Sean Lamont and who have knee injuries.
Finn Russell replaces Peter Horne at fly-half and Jim Hamilton comes in at lock for Tim Swinson.
Scotland are looking for their first Six Nations win this year following a trio of narrow defeats by France, Wales and Italy.
Head coach Vern Cotter said: "Jim comes in and will bring his physicality and understanding of English rugby to our forward pack.
"It's good to have Dave Denton back as he provides us with strong ball-carrying and strong defence. He's also a very good line-out forward and will give us a bit more physical density against a big forward pack.
"It's been tough on Finn to sit out and it's great to have him back. He's slotted straight back in to the structure we're looking for.
"Finally, Dougie came on and played well against France and has had a couple of games with his club with a few work-ons.
"We're looking for him to bring his enthusiasm, energy and high work-rate, particularly in kick-chase and receipt."
In earning his 65th cap, Euan Murray will equal Allan Jacobsen's all-time appearance record for a Scotland prop.
He will partner Alasdair Dickinson and fit-again Ross Ford, who has recovered from the back spasm suffered against Italy to start in an experienced front-row.
Jonny Gray remains in the second-row with Hamilton, while Blair Cowan and Rob Harley start together for the sixth consecutive time in the back-row, alongside Denton.
Captain Greig Laidlaw will again partner stand-off Russell from scrum-half, with the latter returning from a two-week suspension, with Glasgow Warriors trio Mark Bennett, Tommy Seymour and Stuart Hogg completing the back-line.
Dunbar sustained his knee injury on Thursday morning and has already had it scanned, though the extent of the damage is not yet known.
Swinson drops to the bench to replace Ben Toolis, but with Johnnie Beattie and Adam Ashe also replacements that leaves Sam Hidalgo-Clyne and Greig Tonks as the only back replacements.
Cotter added: "This is a very important game.
"It will be played away from home at a very intense level and will allow us to assess further our ability to operate away from home in a hostile environment.
"Our focus, however, has been on ourselves and how we can perform better, by identifying the areas that we can control, like improving our skill-sets and reinforcing our cohesion, to withstand the difficult times and also apply some pressure."
Scotland complete their Six Nations campaign with a home match against Ireland on Saturday 21 March.
Scotland: Stuart Hogg (Glasgow Warriors); Dougie Fife (Edinburgh), Mark Bennett (Glasgow Warriors), Matt Scott (Edinburgh), Tommy Seymour, Finn Russell (both Glasgow Warriors), Greig Laidlaw (captn) (Gloucester); Alasdair Dickinson (Edinburgh), Ross Ford (Edinburgh), Euan Murray (Glasgow Warriors), Jim Hamilton (Saracens), Jonny Gray (Glasgow Warriors), Robert Harley (Glasgow Warriors), Blair Cowan (London Irish) David Denton (Edinburgh).
Replacements: Fraser Brown, Ryan Grant (both Glasgow Warriors), Geoff Cross (London Irish), Tim Swinson (Glasgow Warriors), Johnnie Beattie (Montpellier), Adam Ashe (Glasgow Warriors), Sam Hidalgo-Clyne and Greig Tonks (both Edinburgh) | Scotland have made five changes to the starting line-up for Saturday's Six Nations match against England. |
40,223,955 | A search was held on 6 May amid reports of a man seen clinging to rocks at St David's Head, but he was not found.
Dyfed-Powys Police said they believed the missing man is Bernard Hoepffner, a resident of Dieulefit.
Officers have issued a photograph of him and are appealing for details about his movements.
A coat, believed to belong to the man, was found containing money but there was no form of identification. | Police believe a missing man thought to have got into difficulties in the sea off Pembrokeshire is from southern France. |
38,194,869 | Police said the 33-year-old of Macclesfield, Cheshire was driving in Dagenham in east London at the time of the alleged offence.
Police said he was charged on Tuesday with driving while his alcohol level was above the legal limit .
He has been bailed and is due to appear at Barkingside Magistrates' Court on 13 December.
The midfielder played in Manchester City's 3-1 defeat at home to Chelsea on Saturday.
He was recalled to the Manchester City squad earlier this month after apologising for "misunderstandings" relating to comments made by his agent Dimitri Seluk.
In 2012, Toure spoke about being a devout Muslim and refused a champagne man of the match award due to his religious beliefs.
The club is yet to comment. | Manchester City footballer Yaya Toure has been charged with drink driving, police have confirmed. |
14,179,023 | Quick Step rider Niki Terpstra had a 12-second lead with 5km remaining but he was soon swallowed by the peloton before the HTC team put Cavendish in a position to attack in the final 200m.
He now has a 37-point lead over Jose Joaquin Rojas in the points standings, while Frenchman Thomas Voeckler retains the race leader's yellow jersey.
The other overall leading positions remained the same, with a gap of one minute and 49 seconds separating Voeckler and second-placed Frank Schleck of Leopard-Trek with Cadel Evans of BMC, 2:06 behind the leader.
But once again, Cavendish and his team HTC-Highroad grabbed the headlines.
Eddy Merckx (Bel) 34
Bernard Hinault (Fr) 28
Andre Leducq (Fr) 25
Lance Armstrong (US) 22
Andre Darrigade (Fr) 22
Nicolas Frantz (Lux) 20
Francois Faber (Lux) 19
Mark Cavendish (GB) 19
*individual stage wins
The 26-year-old's victory on the 193-km stage from Limoux to Montpellier was his 19th Tour success in four years.
The win took him to equal seventh on the all-time list of stage winners, alongside Francois Faber, with the only other entrant above him from the last 25 years the seven-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong, who won 22 stages between 1993 and 2005.
Cavendish is also on course to take the green jersey for the first time in his career. He took 10 points in the intermediate sprint which took place with 46.5km of the stage remaining. Rojas claimed nine points and Philippe Gilbert, 71 points behind in the race for green, took eight.
"In the first half we worked with Europcar then in the second half we worked on our own," said Cavendish.
"The fact we got through yesterday makes it even more gratifying to win here. It was a difficult and technical finish today. The guys kept together. They're an incredible group, I'm so so proud of them."
2011 - Four (after stage 15)
2010 - Five
2009 - Six
2008 - Four
Earlier, Katusha's Mikhail Ignatiev was part of a five-man breakaway group before he broke from that party with 22km remaining and with Quick Step's Niki Terpstra for support.
Ignatiev was caught with 5km to go leaving Terpstra as the lone man before he was reeled back by a combination of HTC and Garmin-Cervelo and the lead huntsmen of the the chasing pack.
Gilbert, FDJ's Anthony Roux and Vacansoleil's Marco Marcato made a break with 3km remaining but their efforts were in vain as the peloton caught the trio and prepared for the frantic finish.
With 200m to go, Cavendish was guided to the front by team-mate Mark Renshaw before taking the inside and sprinting home ahead of American Tyler Farrar and Italian Alessandro Petacchi.
STAGE 15 RESULT
1. Mark Cavendish (GB/HTC-Highroad) 4hrs 20mins 24secs"
2. Tyler Farrar (US/Garmin) same time
3. Alessandro Petacchi (Ita/Lampre)
4. Daniel Oss (Ita/Liquigas)
5. Jose Joaquin Rojas (Spa/Movistar)
6. Ben Swift (GB/Team Sky)
7. Gerald Ciolek (Ger/Quick-Step)
8. Tony Gallopin (Fra/Cofidis)
9. Francisco Ventoso (Spa/Movistar)
10. Sebastien Hinault (Fra/AG2R)
OVERALL STANDINGS
1. Thomas Voeckler (France/Europcar) 65 hrs 24 mins 34 secs
2. Fraenk Schleck (Luxembourg / Leopard) +1:49"
3. Cadel Evans (Australia / BMC Racing) +2:06"
4. Andy Schleck (Luxembourg / Leopard) +2:15"
5. Ivan Basso (Italy / Liquigas) +3:16"
6. Samuel Sanchez (Spain / Euskaltel) +3:44"
7. Alberto Contador (Spain / Saxo Bank) +4:00"
8. Damiano Cunego (Italy / Lampre) +4:01"
9. Tom Danielson (U.S. / Garmin) +5:46"
10. Kevin De Weert (Belgium / Quick-Step) +6:18" | Manxman Mark Cavendish secured his fourth win of this year's Tour de France, and 19th overall, with a well-timed sprint at the end of stage 15. |
36,687,694 | Media playback is not supported on this device
Rostami, 25, lifted 217kg with his last attempt in the clean and jerk to break his own world record and beat China's Tao Tian.
Tian equalled Rostami's clean and jerk lift, missing out on gold by just one kilogram.
Gabriel Sincraian of Romania won bronze, lifting a combined 390kg.
Find out how to get into weightlifting with our special guide.
Subscribe to the BBC Sport newsletter to get our pick of news, features and video sent to your inbox. | Iran's Kianoush Rostami won Olympic gold in the -85kg weightlifting, lifting a world record combined total of 396kg. |
39,352,390 | It took fire crews took an hour to cut the pair out of the blue van, which had become "embedded" underneath the lorry in the M6 crash in the West Midlands.
Paramedic Natalie Greaves said the 18-year-old driver was "so, so lucky" to escape with just a broken wrist.
His sister, who was in the front passenger seat, was uninjured.
See more stories from across Birmingham and the Black Country here
The crash happened at about 21:45 GMT on Tuesday on the southbound M6, just before junction 10a for the M54, near Essington, south Staffordshire.
The brother and sister travelling in the van are from Warwickshire.
West Midlands Ambulance Service spokesman Murray MacGregor said: "On arrival, ambulance staff found a blue van that was embedded under the rear of an articulated lorry.
"Due to the level of damage, it took firefighters an hour to cut away enough of the van to allow the two people inside the van to get out; throughout, the pair were receiving care from ambulance staff."
The lorry driver was shaken but otherwise unhurt. | A teenager travelling with his eight-year-old sister was "lucky" to escape without major injuries after their van and a lorry collided. |
39,833,692 | McAllister headed the hosts in front before doubling their lead from the spot six minutes into the second half after Nicky Riley was brought down.
Montrose were reduced to 10 men when Matty Smith was shown a straight red in the 69th minute.
And Jordon Brown completed a 4-1 aggregate win in stoppage time.
It means Montrose, who finished fourth in League Two, will be playing in the bottom tier again next season.
Peterhead, who finished second bottom in the division above, get another chance to retain their League One status.
Match ends, Peterhead 3, Montrose 0.
Second Half ends, Peterhead 3, Montrose 0.
Goal! Peterhead 3, Montrose 0. Jordon Brown (Peterhead) header from the right side of the six yard box to the bottom right corner. Assisted by Rory McAllister.
Corner, Peterhead. Conceded by Terry Masson.
Attempt blocked. Ryan Strachan (Peterhead) right footed shot from the centre of the box is blocked.
Corner, Peterhead. Conceded by Matthew Allan.
Liam Gordon (Peterhead) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Foul by Liam Gordon (Peterhead).
Ryan Ferguson (Montrose) wins a free kick on the right wing.
Corner, Peterhead. Conceded by Matthew Allan.
Corner, Peterhead. Conceded by Allan Fleming.
Attempt saved. Michael McMullin (Peterhead) left footed shot from the left side of the box is saved in the bottom right corner.
Foul by Jamie Redman (Peterhead).
Greg Pascazio (Montrose) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Grant Anderson (Peterhead).
Kieran McWalter (Montrose) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Substitution, Montrose. Kerr Hay replaces Chris Templeman.
Substitution, Peterhead. Grant Anderson replaces Simon Ferry.
Substitution, Peterhead. Leighton McIntosh replaces Nicky Riley.
Attempt blocked. Paul Watson (Montrose) right footed shot from outside the box is blocked.
Corner, Montrose. Conceded by Liam Gordon.
Substitution, Montrose. Kieran McWalter replaces Graham Webster.
Nicky Riley (Peterhead) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Matthew Smith (Montrose) is shown the red card for violent conduct.
Foul by Nicky Riley (Peterhead).
Matthew Smith (Montrose) wins a free kick on the left wing.
Attempt saved. Graham Webster (Montrose) right footed shot from the right side of the box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Attempt missed. Jamie Redman (Peterhead) header from the centre of the box is just a bit too high.
Attempt saved. Rory McAllister (Peterhead) header from the centre of the box is saved in the top left corner.
Craig Reid (Peterhead) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Graham Webster (Montrose).
Foul by Nicky Riley (Peterhead).
Matthew Allan (Montrose) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Corner, Montrose. Conceded by Ryan Strachan.
Attempt blocked. Ryan Ferguson (Montrose) right footed shot from the centre of the box is blocked.
Ross Campbell (Montrose) is shown the yellow card.
Foul by Rory McAllister (Peterhead).
Matthew Allan (Montrose) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Graham Webster (Montrose) is shown the yellow card.
Goal! Peterhead 2, Montrose 0. Rory McAllister (Peterhead) converts the penalty with a right footed shot to the bottom left corner. | Rory McAllister scored a double as Peterhead eased aside Montrose to reach the Scottish League One play-off final against Forfar Athletic. |
35,364,849 | Mr Lew said that unless both sides made sacrifices, "there is no path out of insolvency and back to growth."
Puerto Rico is in its tenth year of rescission and struggling to cope with $70bn (£49bn) in debt.
Several attempts at negotiations between the Puerto Rican government and creditors have failed.
"The people of Puerto Rico are sacrificing, but unless that sacrifice is shared by creditors in an orderly restructuring, there is no path out of insolvency and back to growth," he said during a visit to the US territory.
Mr Lew said the Treasury Department had dedicated a team to working with Puerto Rico on a "daily basis".
He has in the past ruled out the possibility of a federal bailout for the territory.
Puerto Rico defaulted on part of its debt at the beginning of January and is on track to miss larger payments in the coming months.
Puerto Rico does not have access to Chapter 9 of the US bankruptcy code, the provision that allowed cities such as Detroit to restructure their debts.
Puerto Rico, with support from President Obama, is pushing Congress to change that law and grant them permission to use the Chapter 9 provision.
In 2015 a US judge struck down a law passed by the Puerto Rican government that would have allowed it to restructure its debt. The judge ruled the new law was unconstitutional. | US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew urged Puerto Rico's creditors to make sacrifices that would allow the territory to restructure its debt. |
39,518,040 | Connor Ward, 24, is charged with possessing a cache of weapons, manuals, racist flags and videos with the intention of committing acts of terror.
At a preliminary hearing, defence lawyer Drew Mackenzie said his client denied the charges, which are alleged to have been committed in Banff, Aberdeenshire, between 2011 and 2014.
The trial is due to begin in November.
Mr Ward was not in court for Thursday's hearing at the High Court in Glasgow.
It is alleged that he had in his possession a quantity of neo-Nazi, anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish texts, images, videos, flags and audio files.
He is also accused of possessing knives, knuckledusters, batons, a stun gun, a mobile phone signal jammer, a bug detection device, a catapult and ball, a ninja star, rocket tubes and a battle club.
Prosecutors further claim that Mr Ward had steel ball bearings and instructions on how to use them to prepare an improvised explosive device, and had downloaded material on how to reactivate deactivated bullets.
It is also alleged he had manuals showing how to manufacture explosives and chemical and biological poisons, and that he had the address of every mosque in Aberdeen.
This offence under the 2006 Terrorism Act is alleged to have been committed between 26 February 2011 and 21 November 2014 at two addresses in Banff.
He has also been charged, under the 2000 Terrorism Act, of collecting or recording information likely to be useful to anyone committing or preparing to commit an act of terrorism.
It is alleged he did this by downloading files about making firearms, manufacturing explosives and producing and using chemical and biological poisons, onto a hard drive, a flash drive, a pen drive memory stick and a laptop computer. | A man accused of terrorism charges will go on trial at the High Court in Aberdeen later this year. |
40,245,194 | Rose became the first English winner of the US Open for 43 years in 2013.
The 36-year-old could have doubled his major tally at the Masters in April but lost out in a play-off to Ryder Cup team-mate Sergio Garcia.
"I've played very well at weekends in majors since 2010 and maybe just need to position myself better," he said.
"Then see where we go from there. Hopefully we can get our head around the course.
"Attitude starts earlier on venues that some guys grumble about. Even at Merion in 2013, people weren't delighted with it.
"It's a different type of golf course and the USGA obviously aren't scared to go to different venues, so you've got to accept it and play.
"That's what pulled through for me in 2013; I remember being incredibly patient all week and also not buying into the score.
"I set my strategy up by how I saw the course but I never pressed because and ultimately that's what paid off for me, that patience."
Since his US Open victory, Rose has recorded five top-10 finishes in major championships, three of them coming in a remarkable season in 2015.
The Englishman shot 14 under par in both the Masters and the US PGA, but won neither.
And in this year's Masters, Rose was two shots clear with five to play at Augusta before Spain's Garcia triumphed in the play-off to take his first major title.
"I can only say from the Olympics and the Masters, that was the calmest I've felt on a golf course in recent times," Rose added.
"When I need it the most I can get into that mindset - it's almost a survival mechanism for me. I know I can't afford to get frustrated and lose my head.
"The big situation forces me to stay a little bit more patient because I know how important it is. I have more incentive to be my best in those big events." | Olympic champion Justin Rose says he needs a strong start and a calm head to claim a second US Open title at Erin Hills. |
37,985,587 | The 38-year-old, who spent last year with New York City in Major League Soccer in the US, announced his decision on social media on Thursday.
Lampard made 649 appearances for Chelsea and won 106 England caps.
"Whilst I have received a number of exciting offers to continue playing, at 38 I feel now is the time to begin the next chapter in my life," said Lampard.
"I'm grateful to the Football Association for the opportunity to study for my coaching qualifications and I look forward to pursuing the off-field opportunities that this decision opens."
BBC Sport chief football writer Phil McNulty
Frank Lampard's legendary status and standing as one of the greatest players of the modern era is cemented by statistics.
When he left Chelsea in the summer of 2014, he was the club's record goalscorer with 211 goals from 649 appearances - a truly remarkable return for a consummate professional plying his trade in midfield.
Lampard was central to the most successful spell in Chelsea's history as he and they completed a clean sweep of trophies at home and abroad, a haul that reflected his stellar contribution.
He won 11 major trophies, including three Premier League titles and the Champions League in 2012. Lampard also won four FA Cups, two League Cups and the Europa League.
He was the model of consistency, respected and admired by team-mates and opponents alike.
Like his great contemporary Steven Gerrard he struggled to transfer club successes to his England career, but he was still a fine performer on the international stage.
Lampard's next step looks certain to be into coaching - and with the knowledge gained over a lifetime from his father Frank Sr as well as working with managers such as Jose Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti and Guus Hiddink, few would bet against him adding to his successes in this phase of his career.
Lampard joined Chelsea from boyhood club West Ham for a fee of £11m in 2001.
His club-record 211 goals helped the Blues win the Champions League, three Premier Leagues, four FA Cups, two League Cups, the Europa League and a Community Shield.
He played a pivotal role as Jose Mourinho's side delivered Chelsea's first top-flight championship in half a century, scoring 13 goals including both in the title-winning 2-0 victory at Bolton in April 2005.
He added 16 league goals the following season as Chelsea retained their title, finishing runner-up to Barcelona forward Ronaldinho in both the Ballon d'Or and Fifa World Player of the Year awards.
Lampard scored 10 or more Premier League goals in 10 successive seasons for Chelsea, reaching 22 as he collected a third Premier League winner's medal in 2009-10.
Champions League success finally followed in 2011-12 as Lampard captained the side to a penalty shootout win over Bayern Munich in the absence of the suspended John Terry.
"He was definitely a world-class player for a long period of time," said BBC football analyst and former Chelsea winger Pat Nevin. "I don't think we rate him as highly as we should do.
"He is kind of remembered just for scoring goals. That he was phenomenal at. There are very few people on the planet who can score that number of goals from midfield.
"He was a better all-round footballer than he was given credit for. When he was moved further back at the end of his career for Chelsea, he realised that his passing, short and long, was exceptional."
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Lampard played a key role in bringing success back to Stamford Bridge, but he was unable to help replicate that trophy-laden touch with the national side.
He made his England debut against Belgium in 1999, going on to win the same amount of caps as Sir Bobby Charlton, but missed out on a place in both the Euro 2000 and World Cup 2002 squads.
Lampard scored three times as England reached the Euro 2004 quarter-finals, and finding a way to fit him and Steven Gerrard into the same midfield was seen as the solution to the national side's problems.
The pair formed the core of what was tagged England's 'golden generation', but both missed a penalty in a World Cup quarter-final shootout defeat by Portugal in 2006 and England failed to qualify for the Euros two years later.
A last-16 exit followed against Germany in the 2010 World Cup and Lampard missed Euro 2012 through injury, before playing his final major tournament for England in Brazil in 2014, when England went out in the group stage.
"From an England point of view he was pretty spectacular," added Nevin. "There were times when he got a lot of stick. He still got all those caps and still scored a whole bunch of goals."
Lampard began his career at West Ham, making his debut in January 1996 having progressed through the club's youth system. But the presence at the club of his dad Frank Lampard Sr, and uncle Harry Redknapp as manager, meant the teenager was singled out for criticism.
Lampard even claimed in his autobiography that some Hammers fans cheered when he broke his leg during a game against Aston Villa.
Later he would face a frosty reception when he controversially arrived at Manchester City after agreeing to join New York City - the MLS franchise set up by the Premier League club and the New York Yankees baseball team - in 2014.
Lampard refused to celebrate when he scored against Chelsea, and while his performances in Manchester saw his deal at Etihad Stadium extended, it prompted an angry reaction in New York.
Lampard finally made his MLS debut in August 2015, but critics were underwhelmed by his performances and, after returning from an injury this season, he was jeered by his own fans and described as "the worst signing in MLS history".
But he rediscovered his scoring touch and the city celebrated Frank Lampard Day in September after he scored his 300th career goal. He went on to reach double figures in the MLS before announcing his time at New York had come to an end.
"It was an incredible career when you consider he was written off right at the start and told he might not go that far," said former Scotland international Nevin.
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Nevin, a key member of the Chelsea side that won promotion from English football's second tier in 1984, says Lampard is capable of doing anything he wants to in the game.
"He's a hugely intelligent guy," said Nevin. "He could actually go into an area where he could be running part of a club. If he wants to go down that route he is perfectly capable.
"Looking at his capabilities, anything within the game is possible for him, be it coaching, be it managing, be it working with the FA.
"I hope the game doesn't lose him, but I don't think it will. I think he loves the game too much."
Match of the Day presenter and former England international Gary Lineker recently went to New York to speak to Lampard about his future.
"Lampard says he is very keen on getting into coaching, which is not a path too many English players of his calibre have taken recently when their playing days ended," said Lineker.
"Part of that is down to them having other options. Punditry is one of them and I am sure he would be very good at it - there would be plenty of people trying to get him to work for them.
"But it would be nice to see someone like Lampard go into the coaching game, with his intelligence and passion and especially because he wants to test himself as a manager."
This content will not work on your device, please check Javascript and cookies are enabled or update your browser | Former Chelsea and England midfielder Frank Lampard has retired, bringing to an end a 21-year professional career. |
39,641,583 | Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark said that, owing to the imminent election, the date for this "decisive" move was being reviewed.
He claimed that firms "milked" loyal customers through rising default gas and electricity tariffs.
Energy UK said government intervention would be bad for customers.
Five of the big six suppliers have announced price rises this year.
Mr Clark said he did not have the power to affect prices directly, but the government could act to alter a "deficiency" in the market.
Major energy firms announced increases in standard tariffs in the last few months, blaming investment requirements, government demands and the falling value of the pound.
They include:
The energy regulator Ofgem said that some of the price rises were hard to justify and Mr Clark has now told the Business Select Committee that the market is "clearly not working" for those on default tariffs.
The government is due to respond to a two-year investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) which found that two-thirds of UK households were paying "over the odds" for their energy compared with those who have switched to a different tariff.
However, the CMA recommended that capping standard tariffs was not in the best interests of customers.
That conclusion has been challenged widely, and there has been widespread speculation that the government could intervene with some sort of cap on these variable deals.
Mr Clark told the committee that customers who could not shop around online, or who were not "fleet of foot", were being "milked" by the energy companies.
He said the government's response would be decisive, and later said it would be "muscular and strong".
The timing would now require "reflection" following the expectation of an early General Election in June.
Lawrence Slade, chief executive of Energy UK, which represents the major suppliers, said: "We must allow the remedies from the recent market investigation to be implemented but the industry is not complacent. Action is being taken now, with companies going further to engage with loyal customers and leading new initiatives like targeted switching campaigns.
"Intervening further in the energy market risks undermining so many of the positive changes we are seeing in the retail market. That would be bad for competition but more importantly, bad for customers too."
But Polly Mackenzie, director of the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, said: "Shopping around and switching energy providers can be daunting at the best of times, but when you're living with a mental health problem it can feel next to impossible. If you struggle to weigh up complex information, to make telephone calls or even to get out of bed, making sure that you're paying a fair rate for your energy bills is out of the question.
"We're pleased to see the minister recognising that the market isn't working for customers who struggle to shop around, and we hope to see the government taking action." | "Muscular" action will be taken by the government against energy firms' "damaging" price rises, a minister has said, but the timing remains unclear. |
38,501,033 | Joshua Parsons, 22, and James Fairbairn, 25, had denied their actions of February 2015 were racist in nature.
Their co-accused, fellow Chelsea fans Richard Barklie, a 52-year-old former policeman, and William Simpson, 27, were tried in absentia.
They were also ordered to pay the victim 10,000 euros in compensation.
Souleymane Sylla was targeted at Richelieu-Drouot station as football fans made their way to a Champions League match between Paris Saint Germain and Chelsea.
The hearing at the Palais de Justice saw a video recorded by a passenger of fans pushing him off the Metro train.
Supporters can be heard chanting "we are racist, we are racist and that's the way we like it".
The AFP agency reported that after giving evidence Parsons apologised to Mr Sylla, a Frenchman of Mauritanian origin, but denied there was any racist aspect to what had happened.
Turning to Mr Sylla in court, Parsons said: "I am very sorry to Mr Sylla, but I was not racist in any way."
Parsons, Fairbairn and Barklie have already been banned from football stadiums in Britain. | Four Chelsea fans accused of aggravated violence against a black man on the Paris Metro have been given suspended one-year sentences by a French court. |
40,705,687 | It said the phrase is unbiblical, un-Protestant, and a form of superstition connected to Catholicism.
RIP is an abbreviation of 'rest in peace' or in Latin, 'requiescat in pace'.
In a publication marking the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the order called on Protestants to stop using the phrase.
Wallace Thompson, secretary of Evangelical Protestants Northern Ireland, wrote a Facebook post on which the article was based.
He told the BBC's Talkback programme: "Observing social media, we have noticed that the letters RIP are used a lot by Protestants, and by some evangelical Protestants."
Mr Thompson explained that for him, 'RIP' is a prayer and he did not encourage prayers for the dead.
"From a Protestant point of view, we believe, when death comes, a person either goes to be with Christ for all eternity, or into hell.
"That's what we believe the gospel to be and in this 500th anniversary year of the Reformation, I think Luther, when the scales fell off his eyes, realised that it was all by faith alone, in Christ alone, the decision is made during life, on this earth, so that when death comes it has been made and no decision has been made after death," he said.
Speaking on the same programme, former Presbyterian moderator Dr Ken Newell said he did not use the phrase very often.
"I think when people use [RIP] in social media, there's a remembrance and a good wish in it, almost a blessing," he said.
He disagreed that people are praying for the dead when they used the phrase.
"If folk in the Orange Order want to take this line that's perfectly up to them, they are making a good point.
"I think ordinary people have not worked out the issues. This comes out of the human heart," he added.
In response to a request for a spokesperson of the issue, the Orange Order referred the BBC to comments made by the county grand master of County Fermanagh Grand Orange Lodge, Stuart Brooker, in the Impartial Reporter newspaper.
In it he said: "I think the message in the article is very clear and well put together, and I couldn't add anything further to it.
"This article clearly explains why we as Protestants, and members of the Orange Institution, shouldn't use the term 'RIP'.
"It also reminds us that if we need guidance in any matter, we should refer to what the bible teaches."
The Orange Order is the largest Protestant organisation in Northern Ireland.
It regards itself as defending civil and religious liberties of Protestants and seeks to uphold the rule and ascendancy of a Protestant monarch in the United Kingdom. | The Orange Order has asked its members to stop using the term 'RIP' to express grief or sympathy after a death. |
40,039,021 | The terminally ill Sunderland fan, who has neuroblastoma, is receiving end-of-life care at home. His family said they were "heartbroken".
The six-year-old has received thousands of messages of support from around the world and become friends with Black Cats striker Jermain Defoe.
In a Facebook statement, his family said a scan had revealed new tumours.
It said: "Bradley had a scan on Monday and it showed what we feared. Bradley's cancer is spreading at a very fast rate and he has now got lots of new tumours including in his lungs.
"The lump that was causing pain was originally thought to be an abscess has got bigger and they now believe it's a tumour.
"We are heartbroken this is happening so fast.
"Bradley is now receiving palliative care at home. He is going for radiotherapy at the end of this week and next week, but this is to control the pain in the hope we get him comfortable.
"Lots of people keep asking 'how long has he got to live?' I can't answer this as we don't know, all we know is it's not long."
The family, from Blackhall Colliery in County Durham, also said they were hoping to set up a Bradley Lowery Foundation and that all money raised for him would go towards the new charity.
His birthday party last week featured fire-eaters, a funfair, marquee, jugglers and stilt-walkers, with Defoe and Sunderland goalkeeper Vito Mannone there to celebrate with him.
Defoe also walked out with Bradley at Wembley for England's World Cup qualifier with Lithuania in March.
Last year an appeal to send him Christmas cards ended with the youngster receiving 315,000. | The family of football mascot Bradley Lowery have said his cancer has spread and he does not have long to live. |
32,844,164 | The study, commissioned by the Local Government Association, found 42% of all apprenticeships created in the last five years went to people aged over 25.
It said current policy enabled businesses to train established workers rather than unemployed young people.
The government said the number of young people not in work, education or training was at its lowest in a decade.
It has pledged to create a further three million apprenticeships before the end of Parliament in 2020.
The report, by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and the Local Government Association (LGA), found 67% of intermediate-skilled apprentices were already employed by their company when they were given their apprenticeships.
Detailed figures for the year 2013-14 showed under-19s applied for 57% of the advertised apprenticeships but were given 27% of them, whereas over-25s made up 7% of applications but filled 37% of the vacancies.
The study's authors said the government needed to undertake "significant reform" of the apprenticeship system, which they said was "failing to get to grips with stubbornly high levels of youth unemployment".
Luke Raikes, research fellow at IPPR North, said: "A high quality apprenticeship system could be used to combat youth unemployment and drive higher productivity, but the system we currently have is failing to deliver.
"There is a big gap between the function apprenticeships should have in our economy and how they're being used in practice: the majority of apprenticeships are being used to train older people, and those who are already employed at their company, instead of taking on young people out of work."
Just over a third of apprenticeships created in the last five years were at advanced or higher level, with the majority of places being at the intermediate level.
And 24% of 16-18 year olds, and 15% of all intermediate apprentices were not being paid the minimum wage, the report said.
Pay was particularly low in hairdressing and childcare, where 42% and 26% of apprentices were paid less than the minimum wage.
The report said local apprenticeship hubs should be created and given full control of the apprenticeship grant from central government.
This would enable employers to tailor the apprenticeship offer to better meet the needs of local employers and the local economy, it said.
Powers and budgets for apprenticeships should also be further devolved to local authorities.
Cllr Peter Box, economy spokesman for the LGA, said: "A good apprenticeship can give young people the experience, skills and understanding that can often lead straight into a full-time job.
"At present, too many new apprenticeships are low skilled and taken by older people already in work with their employer." | The apprenticeship system is "failing" and needs reform to address youth unemployment, a new report says. |
28,838,919 | They bought debts from the bank, and other Espirito Santo companies, and repackaged them as investments for branch customers.
Following complaints, BES was made to refund the customers, contributing to a record £2.8bn half-year loss.
BES was eventually split into a "good bank" and a "bad bank" on 3 August.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, Portuguese regulators are now interested in three Jersey companies, or "Special Purpose Vehicles", and one in the British Virgin Islands, which they say are connected to the Espirito Santo conglomerate.
The companies named are Top Renda, EuroAforro Investments and Poupanca Plus Investments.
Their alleged link to the Espirito Santos group is difficult to verify because Jersey companies can conceal their true beneficiaries by nominating local trust firms as shareholders.
The St Helier trust provider named in the companies' filings, Sanne Fiduciary Services, has not responded to requests for comment.
The filings of the three Jersey companies do show, however, that over the past ten years they bought hundreds of millions of euros worth of debt from Espirito Santo group companies.
To fund this, they sold many small batches of "preferred shares", which are a cross between shares and bonds. These are the products which had to be refunded.
Swiss bank Credit Suisse is named on the filings as the "arranger" of the deals.
Concerns over Banco Espirito Santo, and its exposure to other companies controlled by the reclusive Espirito Santo family, first arose in June.
Following the split, the "good bank" was part-nationalised, re-named Novo Banco, and bailed out with a £3.9bn loan from what remains of Portugal's financial crisis bailout fund.
The episode has affected banks in other countries and created uncertainty in Portugal's economy. | Three companies implicated in the downfall of the Portuguese bank, Banco Espirito Santo (BES), are registered in Jersey. |
24,183,083 | The march began on the High Street and ended on the city's Calton Hill with the Rally for Scottish Independence.
Police estimated that more than 8,000 people took part in the march.
Organisers said that between 20,000 and 30,000 people had been involved in the day's events.
A range of groups took part in the march, from political parties to organisations such as Farming for YES and Football Supporters for Independence.
Many of those assembled waved flags or held banners in support of their cause.
Speakers at the rally included Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond.
He said: "A Yes vote next September will not be a victory for the SNP, or the Yes campaign, or even the huge coalition of interests and enthusiasm gathered here today.
"It will be the people's victory. 'Yes' will be act of self-confidence and self-assertion which will mean that decisions about what happens in Scotland are always taken by the people who live and work here - not by a remote Westminster system.
"A Yes vote is for self-government, not remote government - good government with independence, not bad government from Westminster."
The rally was compered by comedian and actor Elaine C Smith. Other speakers included independent MSP Margo MacDonald, Scottish Green Party co-convener Patrick Harvie and Yes Scotland chief executive Blair Jenkins.
Mr Jenkins said: "The biggest prize from a Yes next year is not that we will never again have Tory governments we didn't vote for - important though that is for the well-being of our society.
"Instead it is having the ability to make Scotland's great wealth, talent and resources work better for the people who live here."
He added: 'When we take time to examine the facts people from all walks of Scottish life - pensioners, parents, students, business-people, women, seniors, people across society - see that a Yes vote makes sense for us as a nation and for us as individuals."
Mr Jenkins made an impassioned plea to campaigners to go out into communities with ever more vigour and optimism over the next 12 months and to ask people to think hard about the impact of both a No vote and a Yes vote.
Ms MacDonald urged the crowds to "imagine what would happen if Scotland votes No".
She said: "What would people think about the Scots? That we're all mouth and no kilts.
"We would not carry respect, we would not respect ourselves and that will be reflected in the activity of the country.
"Just imagine the No campaign trying to have a party. A No party. Who would go?"
Dennis Canavan, chair of the Yes Scotland Advisory Board, told the Calton Hill crowd: "This campaign is more like a marathon rather than a short sprint. And having run a few marathons in my time, I know that the runner who is ahead at the halfway stage is not necessarily the winner of the race.
"We have the people with the stamina, guts and determination to win this campaign - and win it we shall."
Voters in Scotland will be asked the yes/no question: "Should Scotland be an independent country?" when they go to the polls in the referendum, which will be held on 18 September 2014. | Thousands of pro-independence campaigners have marched through the streets of Edinburgh in support of their cause. |
22,348,718 | Net profits for January to March were 988m Swiss francs ($1.05bn; £678m), the bank said in a statement.
That was down about 5% compared with the same period a year ago, but above many analysts' expectations.
Last year, UBS was among several banks fined by regulators for attempting to manipulate the Libor rate.
It lost 1.9bn Swiss francs in the last quarter of 2012, and 2.2bn Swiss francs for the year as a whole. That included a 1.4bn-Swiss franc fine related to the Libor scandal.
Speaking to UK MPs earlier this year, UBS's investment bank chief Andrea Orcel said the bank had to work to recover its "honour" following the scandal.
The bank is also going through a significant restructuring of its business.
In a statement accompanying the results, chief executive Sergio Ermotti said that "while it is too early to declare victory, we have shown our business model works in practice". | Swiss bank UBS returned to profit in the first three months of the year, after racking up big losses at the end of 2012, related to the Libor scandal. |
35,711,926 | Having ended a nine-match losing run in the tournament, Vern Cotter's men have two other targets in their sights.
They have not beaten France in their past 10 meetings since 2006, and lost their last seven Six Nations matches at Murrayfield since February 2013.
"We are all desperate to get better and drive the nation on," Horne said.
"That has to start with France. We have to go out and back it up now. Just because we've won one game, it doesn't make us world beaters.
"Believe me, in that changing room we are the first to admit that.
"We are desperate to win another game, especially at home for our fans. It's been a while since we've won at Murrayfield in the Six Nations and everyone deserves that. So it would be great if we could go out and do a job on France."
Scotland's last home Six Nations win was a 12-8 backs-to-the-wall triumph [they won with 29% possession and 23% territory] over Ireland in February 2013.
But buoyed by a dominant scrummaging performance in Rome, Horne believes Scotland's pack can match the muscular threat of the French eight - particularly with front-row trio WP Nel, Ross Ford and Al Dickinson in prime form - at Murrayfield a week on Sunday.
"France are a massive, physical side," Horne, who replaced Mark Bennett for the last 16 minutes at the Stadio Olimpico - noted.
"Everyone expects all that Gallic flair, but they have some big men and the coaches in France love that.
"So we will really need to match them up front. We can't be scared to have a crack. If we can get our set-piece right like we did in Rome and win the breakdown, we will certainly have a chance because we have some fantastic outside backs who can score us tries.
"There is nothing better as a back than seeing your scrum moving forward and winning penalties. You can stick the ball in the corner, win the line-out and drive forward.
"In the past teams have done that to us but WP, Fordy and Dicko have put in fantastic performances over the last few weeks. You can't under-estimate how great that is for us."
Media playback is not supported on this device | Centre Peter Horne says Scotland are 'desperate' to back up their Six Nations victory over Italy by ending a 10-year drought against France. |
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Flanker Jamie Macartney, winger Jack Howard and centre Nicolai Koplewsky scored tries for Campbell in the first half at Kingspan Stadium.
Number eight Jack Barry-Glendinning added a fine try in the second half.
Scrum-half Malcolm Corry landed two conversions while Dalriada's points came from a Stewart Moore penalty.
"Coming here means a lot to both teams," said Campbell coach Brian Robinson.
"It was a physical and well-contested match and Dalriada should be proud of what they have achieved." | Campbell College beat Dalriada of Ballymoney in Tuesday's Schools' Cup semi-final and will meet Belfast rivals RBAI in the decider on 17 March. |
36,050,964 | In March Coleman said he and the FAW were "apart" during initial talks, but progress has since been made.
Coleman's deal ends after Euro 2016, the first major tournament Wales have qualified for since the 1958 World Cup.
"We very much hope to see Chris leading our team for the World Cup campaign," FAW chief executive Jonathan Ford said.
Wales' campaign to reach the 2018 World Cup finals in Russia begins in September when they host Moldova.
The governing body hopes to settle Coleman's future before the 45-year-old and his players head for France - via a 5 June friendly against Sweden - for their Euro 2016 campaign.
Wales start their Group B campaign against Slovakia on June 11 before facing England and Russia.
Coleman has indicated he wants to stay on for the World Cup campaign, though he also admits to have missed the day-to-day nature of club management.
He could also yet be a target for hometown club Swansea City if they decide not to retain head coach Francesco Guidolin for 2016-17.
Coleman has also been linked with the vacant manager's job at Aston Villa.
Former Wales managers Terry Yorath and Mark Hughes have urged the FAW to secure Coleman's future, a view backed up by full-back Chris Gunter. | The Football Association of Wales has improved its offer to Chris Coleman to remain as Wales manager. |
36,426,165 | The Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) produced its report for Britain Stronger in Europe.
The campaign group has claimed the jobs would be at risk if the UK left the EU.
But Leave campaigners have called the findings absurd, claiming the jobs cannot be at risk if they do not exist yet.
The report has been published as manufacturers Airbus and Siemens, which both have major plants in Wales, are warning of the dangers of an exit.
They said that economic disruption and uncertainty that would accompany a leave vote would inevitably impact on long-term investment decisions.
Last year, Cebr produced a report estimating that if the UK stays in the EU and achieves the market reforms it wants, it could receive an economic boost worth nearly 3% of GDP, and 790,000 new jobs by 2030.
It has now published a breakdown of what it could mean across different parts of the UK.
49,530 estimated total jobs created in Wales
6,130 estimated manufacturing jobs
7,780 estimated banking and business jobs
6,630 estimated distribution and retail jobs
It said 42,000 manufacturing jobs in Wales are either directly or indirectly linked to UK exports to the EU now. The report says this is projected to rise by 6,000 if there is a deepening of the single market.
In response, John Longworth, chair of the Vote Leave Business Council, said: "These daily threats are becoming absurd.
"The jobs they refer to don't even exist, so how can they be at risk?
"Instead of listening to speculation from advisory groups, let's look at what the job creators are actually telling us.
"Businesses up and down the country say that the costly red tape and regulations emanating from Brussels are constraining their ability to innovate and create jobs." | A think tank estimates that more than 6,000 manufacturing jobs would be created in Wales by 2030 if Britain stays in the European Union. |
21,348,188 | The incident took place in the tribal Kinnaur region, bordering Tibet.
Officials said the avalanche buried eight people in two homes in Kafnu village, some 200km (124 miles) from the state capital, Shimla. Three of them were later rescued.
There has been heavy snow in the remote Kinnaur region since Monday.
Popular scenic villages like Kalpa, the regional headquarters, are under more than 1.82m (6ft) of snow, officials say.
Last month, five people were killed in an avalanche in Kinnaur. At least 38 yaks, domesticated and owned by the locals, were also killed.
Much of Shimla has also been cut off - the area is without electricity as power cables and poles have been uprooted in many places. | Five people are feared killed after an avalanche hit a village in India's northern state of Himachal Pradesh, officials said. |
36,654,241 | Space agencies are now flying six satellite altimeters, returning large volumes of data on the height and shape of the sea surface - and in rapid time.
The information is fed into all manner of applications, from forecasting the weather to understanding the migratory habits of marine creatures.
The main image at the top of this page gives a snapshot of the six missions in action as they monitor the North Atlantic.
Each is seen to fly over the Gulf Stream - the current of warm water that rides up the East Coast of the US and then crosses to Europe.
The background map is a model - based on some of the sextet's data - of what the ocean was doing on the day the satellites tracked through the scene.
It should be evident immediately that the spacecraft all see the same features.
The constellation comprises the satellites known as Jason 1 and 2, which are a joint effort between the US and Europe; Sentinel-3a and Cryosat, which are solely European ventures; Saral/Altika - a French-Indian project; and HY-2A from China.
Their equipment may differ slightly, but their principle of operation is the same: they emit radar pulses towards the sea-surface and catch the "echo".
The nature of the returning energy gives information on the state of that surface, providing indications of wind speed and wave height. Meteorological agencies feed this into the numerical models that produce our weather forecasts.
But the time to the arrival of the echo is also a measure of the elevation of the surface - and is useful in a couple of ways, says Remko Scharroo, an altimetry expert with Eumetsat, the organisation charged with gathering the satellite information for Europe's forecasters.
"First of all, you can look at the slope of the sea surface and that tells you something about the currents. And secondly - the total height also depends on the total energy in the ocean.
"You can imagine that if you heat up the ocean, it slightly expands. And that's very important for example in hurricane forecasting because this type of information will tell you how much energy a hurricane can absorb from the ocean. If the sea surface is warm but the underlying water is not, the hurricane will not be intensified as much."
And it all goes wider than just the met offices, of course.
Shipping companies take the current information to work out the most efficient routes, saving time and diesel.
Drill rigs and cable-laying vessels will monitor strong currents and surface eddies to plan sensitive operations.
Marine biologists are interested in the surface conditions and currents because these hint at how water is being moved and mixed.
This influences the distribution of nutrients in the ocean and the production of plankton. All higher life - from the smallest fish to the biggest whales - depends on such processes.
Even geologists have reason to thank the work of the satellite altimeters.
This is because the mean topography of the sea surface reflects the shape of what lies below.
Because water follows gravity, it is pulled into highs above the mass of tall seamounts, and slumps into depressions over deep trenches.
Most of our knowledge of what the ocean floor looks like relies on these altimetric interpretations.
The two newest missions, Jason-3 and Sentinel-3a, are currently going through a period of commissioning before being accepted into full operation.
They were launched in January and February, respectively.
In the Gulf Stream map, Jason-3 is seen to track very close to its predecessor Jason-2 so that their instruments can be cross-calibrated.
Eumetsat has a key role in the management of the data coming from both the Jason and Sentinel missions.
[email protected] and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos | This is an unprecedented time for the study of the oceans. |
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Murray faces German teenager Alexander Zverev in the first round on Tuesday.
"I think Murray is going to find a way to get into the final again this year," Rusedski told BBC Scotland.
"I do believe he has a chance to win the Australian Open, but a certain man by the name of Novak Djokovic has been sublime."
With Murray seeded second for the tournament, he cannot face world number one Djokovic until the final.
But Rusedski warned the Scot will have some difficult hurdles to overcome before reaching that stage.
"It's a little bit more dangerous than we think, the draw," he said. "I think the first week Murray will be pretty comfortable. Fourth round is Bernard Tomic and then David Ferrer, who hasn't played as well as he has in the past.
"Then, after that, it gets very difficult because it's Stan Wawrinka - they call him 'Stan the Man' for a reason.
"He beat Novak Djokovic at the French Open. He has won the Australian Open as well, so from the semis onwards it gets difficult, but I still think Murray is going to find a way to get into the final again this year."
After being a losing finalist in 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2015, Murray is hoping to finally claim his first Australian Open crown, which would be the third Grand Slam title of his career.
Despite those four final defeats - the first of which was to Roger Federer before three losses to Djokovic - Rusedski rejects the suggestion Murray now has a mental block when it comes to making the final step and winning the tournament.
"I wouldn't describe it as a block," he said. "There's no disrespect losing to Djokovic and Federer in finals.
"If you look at Murray's past history, it's taken him five attempts to win his first major, which he won at the US Open. He's won Wimbledon, he's won the Davis Cup now.
"After winning the Davis Cup, usually as a player you gain in confidence, so I do believe he has a chance to win the Australian Open.
"But Djokovic has been quite sensational and his start to the year, that final in Qatar against Nadal, was frightening.
"But, in a one-match event, when you're playing in the final and anything can happen, Murray's got a chance."
Rusedski, the former British number one and US Open finalist, does not see Murray encountering any problems getting past his first-round opponent in Melbourne.
"Zverev is probably about two or three years away from his best tennis," said Rusedski, runner-up in the 1997 US Open.
"Murray for me at the moment is at the peak of his powers.
"He had a fantastic 2015, finishing the highest he's ever been ranked in his career at number two at the end of the season, and going on to win the Davis Cup - which I thought was one of the greatest feats in British sport - so I'm very positive for Murray's opening round." | Greg Rusedski expects Andy Murray to reach a fifth Australian Open final but believes Novak Djokovic will prove tough to overcome for the Scot. |
34,709,048 | Kevin Whately, who plays Inspector Robbie Lewis, and Laurence Fox, who plays DS James Hathaway, had "decided to retire" from the roles, ITV said.
Lewis will come to an end after a two-part story that begins on Tuesday and concludes next week.
Whately has been playing Lewis for 30 years - first in Inspector Morse, then in his own show from 2005 following the death of Morse actor John Thaw.
Thaw died in 2002. Lewis, the spin-off that saw Whately's character promoted to Inspector, began in 2005.
Whately said: "I feel incredibly fortunate to have shared a decade of fantastic worldwide success with Laurence and with the most brilliant crew, cast and production team anyone could wish for, and all that time with the loyal support of so many fans and of our backers ITV and WGBH ‎Boston."
Ratings for Lewis have declined from eight million viewers per episode two years ago to about 5.5 million for the start of this series, which began last month.
Last year, Whately told the Radio Times he did not want to carry on after the current series.
"Everything has a life span and I think it's gone on long enough," he said. "There were 33 Inspector Morse stories and we've now done 30 Lewis.
"I suppose it's a sentimental thing but I wouldn't want to do more Lewis than we did Morse because I do still think of it as an offshoot.
"There's the age thing as well - I'm older than John Thaw was when he died, bless him. It's a long time to play one character, but sometimes it only feels like yesterday that we started."
Announcing the decision to end the series, ITV's director of drama Steve November said: "It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to Robbie Lewis, one of ITV's most loved and enduring characters.
"We owe Kevin a huge debt of gratitude for nearly 30 fantastic years of Morse and Lewis, and, of course, many thanks too to Laurence Fox who has been by Kevin's side for the last 10 years.
"We respect their decision not to continue into a further series and wish them the very best for whatever comes next."
Another Morse spin-off, Endeavour, which looks at the early career of the detective, started in 2012. | ITV detective drama Lewis will end next week after a decade on air. |
39,661,979 | That does not include multiple Wales internationals across both rugby codes.
Webb's selection continues the fine sporting record of the Bridgend school.
"I used to look at the board and see how many British and Irish Lions were on it," Webb told BBC Scrum V Radio.
Webb joins Jack Matthews, JPR Williams, Gareth Williams, Mike Hall, Rob Howley, Dafydd James and Gavin Henson as Lions to have attended the school.
"I knew some of them because they were in my time but some of them I hadn't really heard of, but you always used to count them. It shows what an immense school and breeding ground for talent it is," Webb continued.
"There's still a good rugby base there and a lot of young talent coming up through the ranks, so it's great."
Brynteg is not the only school to celebrate former pupils being called up to Warren Gatland's Lions squad. Wales pair Dan Biggar and Liam Williams both attended Gowerton School in Swansea.
Adam Rosser, head of physical education at Brynteg, says instilling a positive philosophy into the pupils contributes to their success.
"The children have got a good background of what the game is all about and we just tweak it slightly, and encourage them to take part," he told BBC Scrum V Radio.
"We're fully aware that not everybody has got to play rugby union but everybody has got to go to school and when they get to us in September, they know through family of the contribution Brynteg has made."
As well as breeding future talent, Rosser says the school and its students are aware of the impact they, and the wider community, have made.
"We're extremely proud of what the school has done. We know that it's not just the school in isolation. We're supported by the local club game as well," Rosser continued.
"The local clubs in the Bridgend district work their socks off and we're extremely grateful for the contribution that they make."
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Whereas some players have uploaded their joyous reaction to their Lions call-up on social media, Webb says that his own discovery was an experience he went through alone.
"I shot home from training. We had the option to watch it in training but I knew I'd have the house to myself so I put it on pause, gave myself time to have a coffee and a chocolate bar and watched it then," Webb said.
"Then if there was disappointment then I could pout in the house on my own. I made it, so I fist-pumped in the house on my own and give it a big scream. I was over the moon.
"I had no one to hug or high five. Everyone was out and about. Lucky enough my mate called over and we celebrated, and two-and-a-half hours later my mum and dad decided to answer the phone." | To the uninitiated it might look like any other secondary school, but Brynteg Comprehensive School produced its eighth British and Irish Lion when Ospreys and Wales scrum-half Rhys Webb was called up on Wednesday. |
31,924,758 | Formed in 1970, it has sometimes been described as a "soft unionist" party because it believes Northern Ireland should stay in the United Kingdom until its people decide otherwise.
However, the party's principal aim is to urge Northern Ireland to rethink its politics by leaving behind sectarian ties and community divisions in favour of seeing everyone as members of a single society.
The Alliance's sister party in Britain is the Liberal Democrats.
David Ford became leader in 2001 following the resignation of Sean Neeson.
In the 2001 election campaign, the party decided to withdraw candidates from five constituencies under a strategy to see as many pro-Good Friday Agreement candidates elected as possible.
The party secured its first MP in 2010 when Naomi Long shocked the Northern Ireland political establishment by beating DUP leader, first minister and incumbent MP Peter Robinson in East Belfast.
The Alliance Party is keen to retain that seat, but Ms Long's standing in parts of the predominantly unionist constituency may have been damaged following the decision of Belfast City Council to only fly the union flag on designated days.
In 2012, Alliance members of the council backed a motion stating the flag should not be flown every day, in an attempt to create a more equal and neutral environment.
The Alliance Party took part in the political talks and supported the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, having campaigned for the deal in that year's referendum.
However, it has since been critical of the way the Northern Ireland Assembly has been set up, saying the rules can "entrench sectarian positions and party tribalism". | The Alliance Party is the main cross-community party of Northern Ireland, seeking to attract support from both Protestants and Catholics. |
36,550,853 | The body of Italian Giulio Regeni, which showed signs of torture, was found dumped near Cairo on 3 February.
His parents addressed a human rights committee in Brussels on Wednesday.
They called for sanctions against Egypt which they said was not co-operating fully to solve their son's murder.
The 28-year-old student had been researching trade unions, a politically sensitive subject in Egypt, when he went missing in Cairo on 25 January.
His body was found by a roadside nine days later.
No-one has been arrested over Mr Regeni's death, although in March Egyptian authorities claimed to have found a criminal gang responsible for his kidnapping and murder.
All the gang members were killed in a shoot-out, they said.
The claims have been branded "implausible" by academics who have criticised the Egyptian authorities.
His parents Paola and Claudio Regeni have joined calls for the Egyptian authorities to co-operate more fully with the Italian government.
In March the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on Egypt to provide the Italian authorities with information to "enable a swift, transparent and impartial joint investigation".
It also condemned the "torture and assassination under suspicious circumstances of EU citizen Giulio Regeni".
At a human rights sub-committee meeting on Wednesday the Regeni family called for Europe to impose sanctions on Egypt.
Labour MP for Cambridge Daniel Zeichner, a supporter of the "justice for Giulio" campaign, met the student's parents in Brussels and offered his condolences from the people of Cambridge, where Giulio had lived and studied for 10 years.
He described the couple as inspiring, and said: "Giulio's father Claudio outlined a range of measures he would like to see adopted, including embassies offering sanctuary to witnesses who are currently afraid to speak out."
Mr Zeichner said he would raise this issue with the UK Foreign Office.
"The sense I got was that Britain could be applying more pressure. There have been plenty of warm words but no action and I don't think Egypt will react to warm words.
"Giulio Regeni's parents do not believe the Egyptian authorities are doing all they can or that they are co-operating," he said.
"But I am left with Giulio's mother's question to both the Italian and British governments over whether Egypt can continue to be treated as a friend - 'Do friends kill each other's children?'"
In April the Foreign Office condemned "the brutal manner of [Giulio Regeni's] killing" and admitted it was "disappointed by the limited progress made in the case". | The parents of Cambridge University student Giulio Regeni who was murdered in Cairo, have questioned whether the European Union should continue to regard Egypt as "a friend". |
35,967,253 | The Sportscotland Avalanche Information Service (SAIS) said the last forecast was scheduled to be issued on 17 April.
However, weekend reporting may continue after that date if wintry conditions return.
SAIS assesses avalanche hazard in six areas - Lochaber, Glencoe, Creag Meagaidh, Southern Cairngorms , Northern Cairngorms and Torridon.
So far this season, the organisation's team of forecasters have recorded fewer avalanches than last winter - 170 compared to 237.
However, an avalanche has been suspected as causing the deaths of two climbers in February.
Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team believe Rachel Slater, 24, and Tim Newton, 27, from Bradford, were caught by an avalanche before starting a climb on the North Face of Ben Nevis.
This season, SAIS teams have encountered mixed weather conditions. Often the weather has changed from freezing temperatures and snow to milder conditions and a thaw in the space of 24 hours.
SAIS has been providing its service, which begin in December, for several years.
The six areas are among the most popular with hillwalkers and climbers, and include Scotland's highest mountains. | The latest season of Scottish avalanche information reporting is due to come to an end later this month. |
39,223,178 | Revision App claims to offer effective online revision through its website or phone app.
A BBC investigation has found the company has taken people's money then failed to respond to their complaints.
Its founder said the cases were a "poor representation of the experience customers actually encounter".
Revision App offers animated videos and quizzes to help with exam revision. It was set up in 2011 by Jermaine Hagan.
In 2013 he was named as Shell's young entrepreneur of the year and appeared on stage at the Conservative Party conference to explain how a government-backed start-up loan had helped get his business off the ground.
"I've been able to help one million young people learn on their mobile devices," he told the audience, which included the then chancellor, George Osborne, and education secretary, Michael Gove.
"In the next five years I want everyone to know about Revision App. We want to be huge," he said.
The business got positive coverage in national newspapers, the BBC News website and glowing reviews online. But by 2015, complaints had started to appear. People were posting reviews saying they had tried to cancel, but could not, and were still being charged a monthly fee.
Among them was Jane Finch, from Caerphilly, who had signed up to Revision App to help get her son through his GCSEs. She had been happy with the service until the time came to get rid of it.
"After his exams I thought oh well he's done with this so I emailed them to cancel it," she told BBC Radio 4's You and Yours. "I got an email back saying we'll contact you within three working days but I never had any response from them."
There is no address or telephone number on the Revision App website so customers can only email the company. When Jane Finch's emails continued to go unanswered, she contacted her bank and got them to block any further payments. By then, another £19.99 had been taken from her bank account for a month's access she did not need.
Other customers have paid for the service but have not been able to use it at all. In January 2017, Jo Hinds, from Cardiff, found Revision App while searching online for something to help with her daughter's AS-level exam revision. She paid £29.99 to access the website's content and received an email confirming her order.
"That email informed us that within the next five minutes we'd receive our member details and access instructions. We are still waiting for those," she said.
Without them, Mrs Hinds's daughter has been unable to access the content on Revision App's website. Mrs Hinds complained but her emails also went unanswered. She thought she had paid a one-off fee so was alarmed to discover she had been automatically signed up for rolling monthly payments - at least, that was what the email confirming the order told her.
"There was no mention of that at the stage of payment," she said. Her bank refunded her money and blocked any possible further payments.
The Revision App website includes the logos of four major exam boards, but they have all told the BBC that they have nothing to do with the service and their logos have been used without their permission.
Another discrepancy is a promised discount on access to GCSE videos. The website calls it a "1 day sale" yet it has appeared on consecutive days over 24 hours apart.
Alongside the complaints, positive reviews of Revision App have appeared on online forums. But when things have gone wrong, why have customers' complaints gone unanswered? It is still not clear.
When contacted by You & Yours, the founder of Revision App Global Ltd, Jermaine Hagan, put customers' complaints down to "temporary errors" with the software used to give out access codes and process cancellations.
He said both problems had been fixed "quite some time ago" but failed to explain why, in that case, complaints have been made during 2015, 2016 and now 2017. He said access to A-level content was not currently provided - so why was Jo Hinds's order processed at all? And why was A-level content still being advertised on his website?
Mr Hagan failed to provide any further clarification. In an email he stated the cases highlighted "are a poor representation of the experience customers actually encounter when learning with us".
Listen to BBC Radio 4's You & Yours report on Revision App. | Students using an exam revision app say they have been charged repeatedly, even when they no longer need it or have not been able to use it. |
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A goal in each half took the Portuguese to 105 Champions League strikes as Real became the first side since AC Milan in 1990 to win back-to-back cups.
"This is one of the best moments of my career but it seems I am able to say that every year," he said.
"People won't be able to criticise me because the numbers don't lie."
Juventus were on top for large periods of an entertaining and open first 45 minutes, as Ronaldo's opener was cancelled out by Mario Mandzukic's superb overhead kick.
But Real were dominant after the break as efforts from Casemiro, Ronaldo again, and Marco Asensio sealed a 12th European Cup win and a third in four seasons.
Ronaldo has now scored at least twice as many Champions League goals as any other player in the quarter-finals (20), semi-finals (13) and finals (4).
He has won the Champions League on four occasions and has now scored 11 more goals in the competition than Barcelona's Lionel Messi - his nearest challenger.
Success capped an incredible start to management for former Real playmaker Zidane, who last month guided the club to a first La Liga title since 2012 and became the first French coach to win the Champions League twice.
"I feel like dancing," he said. "I consider myself a man of this house [Real Madrid].
"This club is really in my heart and we are going to enjoy this. Today is a truly historic day for Real Madrid, for all Madrid fans."
Real Madrid midfielder Toni Kroos, who has now won the Champions League three times with Real and Bayern Munich, praised the impact of Ronaldo after Zidane's side retained the trophy.
"I didn't expect that it was possible to defend this title, it is so difficult to win it once," he said. "To win it three times in four years means a lot.
"Everybody knows that Cristiano is very important. As a team we played very well in the quarter-finals, the semi-finals and the final but you need a guy to score the goals and he did it again."
Veteran Juventus goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon was the focus of many neutral supporters before the game, with the 39-year-old looking to win the trophy at the third time of asking.
But, as with defeats to AC Milan in 2003 and Barcelona in 2015, it was to be another loss for the Italy number one.
"We thought we had enough to win the game," he said. "It is a huge disappointment.
"I cannot explain why we played like we did in the second half. Real Madrid deserved to win in the second half. They showed their class and the attitude needed to play in this kind of game."
Coach Massimiliano Allegri was disappointed with his side's reaction to going 2-1 down to Casemiro's deflected strike but pledged to return next season and "try again".
"I don't think Juventus has reached the end of a cycle at all," he said. "Buffon will still be Juventus's goalkeeper next season and Andrea Barzagli will still be with us.
"Clearly the club knows we can improve our team if we want to achieve a higher technical level.
"We all need some rest and after the holidays we will be ready to get back with new drive and impetus. Football gives you the chance to try again next year."
Former England captain Alan Shearer
Zidane has answered questions spectacularly tonight. The way he has handled the big players and the confidence he has shown in the role has been excellent. Not for once in that second half did they ever feel in danger of losing that game.
He has achieved something very special here this evening. To be the first to retain the trophy since 1990 - you can't underestimate that. It's too easy to say he's got amazing players because you have to handle them. He has and he's done it with such good style. | Cristiano Ronaldo said that his "numbers don't lie" after his double helped Zinedine Zidane's Real Madrid side beat Juventus 4-1 in Cardiff. |
34,893,456 | The Hammers took the lead when Mauro Zarate curled an exquisite 25-yard free-kick high into the net.
But the visitors equalised when a Lambert shot was deflected into his own goal by Hammers defender Winston Reid.
Salomon Rondon had a promising chance but his header from six yards was excellently saved by keeper Adrian.
West Ham were the dominant team in the first half and Zarate sliced a shot into the side-netting when well-placed before he put the home side in front with his sumptuous free-kick.
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With the Baggies rocking, Cheikhou Kouyate got in between the visitors' two centre-backs but glanced a header wide from Aaron Cresswell's cross.
West Brom keeper Boaz Myhill then had to pull off two smart saves from the lively Manuel Lanzini, keeping out a swerving long range strike and a first-time effort from the Argentine midfielder.
Diafra Sakho also had a clear sight of goal late on at the end of a counter-attack but his effort was blocked by the sliding leg of defender Jonas Olsson, before the Hammers striker limped off injured.
"I was very pleased with the way we played in the first half but I thought we should have been at least two up," said West Ham boss Slaven Bilic.
West Brom improved after the break, with striker Lambert coming on to join fellow forward Rondon in attack.
Lambert made an immediate impact as his shot led to the equaliser, and he caused plenty of problems for the home side.
The former Southampton and Liverpool player also played a lovely ball over the top of the home defence late on only for James McClean - at full stretch - to fail to get enough power on his shot.
"Rick has been a wonderful signing for us. He hasn't played that many games but his attitude and focus is spot on," said West Brom manager Tony Pulis.
"If James had a little bit more composure he could have passed it into the bottom corner."
West Ham manager Slaven Bilic: "Mauro Zarate is practicing these free-kicks and usually when the ball goes over the wall the way he wants it is tough to stop it.
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"It's a difficult league and home games are a lot about confidence. Like today, after we scored we were excellent until we conceded."
West Brom boss Tony Pulis: "It was a soft free-kick which led to their goal and we were a bit fortunate to come in only one down at half-time.
"We were better in the second half, there's no doubt about that."
West Ham travel to Old Trafford to play Manchester United in their next league game, while West Brom are next in action when they host Tottenham in the top flight. | Rickie Lambert's deflected shot earned West Brom a point against a West Ham side who have gone four Premier League games without a win. |
37,325,527 | The Bees started slowly, affording their opponents time to pick passes and they were punished when Drey Wright pulled the ball back to Tariq Fosu-Henry who gave the visitors a sixth-minute lead.
The home side struggled to keep possession in even the simplest situations and manager Martin Allen was forced to make a change after just half an hour, throwing on Jamal Campbell-Ryce.
And the substitute made a real difference, tormenting left-back Ben Dickenson and picking out Shaun Batt just before the break but the striker could only head over from three yards.
Barnet continued to look strong after half-time but still needed Josh Vickers' strong right hand to keep out Wright's shot.
But just a minute after Luke Gambin had seen a shot cleared off the line, Curtis Weston finished off a goal-line scramble to bag an 82nd-minute equaliser.
REACTION: Colchester United manager John McGreal talks to BBC Radio Essex
Report supplied by Press Association.
Match ends, Barnet 1, Colchester United 1.
Second Half ends, Barnet 1, Colchester United 1.
Foul by Mauro Vilhete (Barnet).
Lewis Kinsella (Colchester United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Attempt missed. John Akinde (Barnet) right footed shot from outside the box is just a bit too high.
Shaun Batt (Barnet) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Brennan Dickenson (Colchester United).
Jamal Campbell-Ryce (Barnet) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Craig Slater (Colchester United).
Kurtis Guthrie (Colchester United) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Curtis Weston (Barnet) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Kurtis Guthrie (Colchester United).
Attempt saved. Chris Porter (Colchester United) left footed shot from the centre of the box is saved in the bottom left corner.
Substitution, Colchester United. Kane Vincent-Young replaces Tarique Fosu-Henry.
Goal! Barnet 1, Colchester United 1. Curtis Weston (Barnet) right footed shot from the centre of the box to the centre of the goal. Assisted by John Akinde.
Corner, Barnet. Conceded by Luke Prosser.
Attempt blocked. Luke Gambin (Barnet) right footed shot from outside the box is blocked.
Corner, Barnet. Conceded by Tom Eastman.
Luke Gambin (Barnet) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Glen Kamara (Colchester United).
Foul by Curtis Weston (Barnet).
Craig Slater (Colchester United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Corner, Barnet. Conceded by Brennan Dickenson.
Attempt missed. Michael Nelson (Barnet) header from the right side of the box is just a bit too high.
Corner, Barnet. Conceded by Tom Eastman.
Substitution, Barnet. Ryan Watson replaces Sam Togwell.
Substitution, Colchester United. Lewis Kinsella replaces Drey Wright.
Tom Eastman (Colchester United) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Mauro Vilhete (Barnet) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Tom Eastman (Colchester United).
Attempt blocked. John Akinde (Barnet) right footed shot from the right side of the box is blocked.
Michael Nelson (Barnet) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Chris Porter (Colchester United).
Attempt missed. John Akinde (Barnet) header from the left side of the six yard box misses to the left.
Foul by Jean-Louis Akpa-Akpro (Barnet).
Tarique Fosu-Henry (Colchester United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Substitution, Barnet. Jean-Louis Akpa-Akpro replaces Shaun Batt.
Corner, Barnet. Conceded by Luke Prosser.
Attempt missed. Glen Kamara (Colchester United) right footed shot from outside the box misses to the right.
Brennan Dickenson (Colchester United) wins a free kick in the attacking half. | Curtis Weston's late goal saw Barnet draw with Colchester at The Hive. |
34,276,413 | Since the beginning of the year, it has reported a 11.4% drop in revenue compared with last year at its Resort Theme Parks.
These include Alton Towers, Chessington World of Adventure and Thorpe Park.
Alton Towers was temporarily closed after 16 people were injured in a collision on the Smiler rollercoaster.
Based on trading during the summer, as well as future bookings, it expects profits for 2015 to be at the lower end of between £40m and £50m in its theme parks division.
This compares with profits of £87m last year.
Immediately after the accident, Merlin also suspended advertising for its theme parks and temporarily closed rides at other sites.
Merlin said the disruption could continue to affect the profitability of its theme park group in 2016.
Nick Varney, the chief executive of Merlin Entertainments, said: "The trends we reported at the half-year have continued throughout the summer.
"The performance of our Legoland Parks Operating Group has remained strong, with very positive guest satisfaction.
However, this has been offset by the impact of reduced visitation across the Resort Theme Parks Operating Group, primarily at Alton Towers resort, and euro weakness impacting visitation at our London attractions."
The accident on the Smiler rollercoaster happened on 2 June when it collided with an empty carriage that had come to a halt on the track.
Leah Washington, 17, had a leg amputated following the accident, while her boyfriend Joe Pugh, 18, suffered severe knee injuries.
Vicky Balch, 20, also had a leg amputated, while Daniel Thorpe, 27, suffered a broken leg and a punctured lung.
Merlin Entertainments' share price dropped more than 1% in early trading. | Alton Towers owner Merlin Entertainments says the rollercoaster accident in June at the theme park has significantly reduced visitor numbers. |
38,834,833 | James Ibori was released in December after four years in a British prison, but prosecutors have since admitted they have documents suggesting police officers involved in the case took bribes.
The UK government spent years and millions getting Ibori out of Nigeria and into a British court in one of the most expensive and complex police investigations undertaken.
Ministers wanted to prove their determination to tackle corruption in Africa.
Ibori, a former London DIY store cashier, was jailed for fraud totalling nearly £50m in April 2012.
But now the tables have been turned with Ibori claiming the British authorities were themselves corrupt.
"I have been unfairly treated, that's all I can say," Mr Ibori told the BBC, confirming that he plans to appeal against his conviction for money laundering.
"Yes, I am, of course. I have made that decision personally and I have instructed my solicitors."
Ibori was believed to have laundered large sums in the UK, just part of hundreds of millions of dollars it was claimed he had embezzled from the Nigerian people.
On a state salary of just £4,000 a year he had bought a fleet of luxury cars and expensive properties. He was also looking to buy a private jet.
In 2005 the Department for International Development funded a special police unit inside Scotland Yard to go after corrupt African politicians.
Its prime target was Ibori. Its aim: to get him into a British court and convict him for corruption.
Having been extradited to London in 2010, Ibori was convicted and sentenced to 13 years for money laundering two years later.
But since he was jailed, documents have emerged suggesting that at least one officer involved in the Ibori investigation had taken thousands of pounds in bribes.
Last year, after repeatedly telling judges there was no evidence of police corruption, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) admitted they had found substantial material that supported the allegations.
Last summer, defence lawyers learned more about an undercover Scotland Yard investigation called Operation Limonium.
"There exists intelligence that supports the assertion that [a police officer] received payment in return for information in respect of the Ibori case," the CPS admitted.
The officer in question has always denied taking bribes and internal police investigations have previously exonerated him.
Details of how Scotland Yard tapped phones and conducted covert surveillance on a number of officers in the unit investigating Ibori emerged for the first time.
Other documents alleging officers had taken bribes were sent to the authorities anonymously in 2011 by a lawyer convicted as part of the Ibori case.
Former solicitor Bhadresh Gohil says he was trying to alert them to the police corruption.
"I brought this case to the attention of the Met police, the commissioner of the Met police Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, I brought it to the attention of Alison Saunders, the head of the CPS. I also drew it to the attention of the then Home Secretary Theresa May," Mr Gohil says.
"Unfortunately, no-one did anything about this."
What they did do was attempt to prosecute Mr Gohil for perverting the course of justice by faking the documents. With the CPS release of the new documents, that case collapsed.
The British authorities managed to get their man before a judge in 2012, but now James Ibori is willingly returning to the courts looking to put the reputation of the UK's criminal justice system on trial.
The irony will not be lost on government ministers. | A Nigerian politician is appealing against his British conviction for corruption, claiming the Metropolitan Police investigation was itself mired in corruption. |
33,257,415 | Ministers said a "significant number" of would-be migrants had been stopped during the French ferry worker strike.
Mr Cameron told MPs it was important to work with France to tackle the problem and warned against "either side trying to point the finger of blame".
Cross-Channel transport is returning to normal although there are delays.
Ferry, Eurotunnel and Eurostar services are running mostly to schedule, but those delayed on Tuesday face waits to rebook trains.
The M20 in Kent is closed between junctions 8 and 9 as parts of the motorway are used to create a queue for lorries heading to the continent. The operation will last for the rest of Wednesday, Kent Police said.
Mr Cameron said more needed to be done to tackle the issue of migrants trying to cross the channel to the UK, but the strike had played a "key role" in Tuesday's events.
He said the UK government wanted to see better documentation of migrants coming into Europe via the Mediterranean.
The PM said he had discussed putting more border staff and sniffer dog teams in Calais.
He added ministers needed to act to:
Home Secretary Theresa May, meanwhile, said the UK Border Force had put in place "tried and tested" contingency plans.
She said: "Despite the extra pressure caused by the French strikers, Border Force maintained border security by following plans to put additional staff in place to search freight vehicles passing through the affected ports."
Analysis: BBC political editor Nick Robinson
The story of Calais is an enormous headache for the prime minister and it couldn't have come at a worse time.
Just as the prime minister is about to formally table his proposal to re-negotiate Britain's relationship with the EU at a leader's summit he is confronted by images that highlight the issue that does the most to alienate voters from Europe - immigration.
Read Nick's blog here.
Shadow immigration minister David Hanson said it was important French authorities "take further action to ensure they support" the UK in humanitarian efforts and ensuring the "integrity" of its borders.
The government also said a taskforce to tackle organised immigration crime in the Mediterranean is being set up. Many of the migrants at Calais are believed to have crossed the Mediterranean in boats run by people traffickers.
Migration is also due to discussed at a two-day European Council summit in Brussels, which begins on Thursday.
Police in France said 350 migrants had been found in cars and trucks between 06:00 and 10:00 on Wednesday morning.
Eurotunnel said migrants had continued attempting to get on to trucks slowing down on the outskirts of Calais on Wednesday.
And seven people were arrested in Bedfordshire earlier on immigration offences. They were all detained near the Northbound M1 services at Toddington.
Abdul Aziz, 22, originally from Sudan, told the BBC he had travelled to the UK from Calais on Wednesday by clinging to the underside of a lorry.
On Tuesday, Eurostar tweeted that a fire caused by striking ferry workers had damaged the track, leading to all trains being cancelled.
It says services are now running on time, and passengers whose trains did not run are being asked to exchange their tickets - though they will not be able to travel until the weekend.
Eurotunnel, which manages the Channel Tunnel and runs car-carrying trains, says services are now "operating to schedule".
Ferry services have also resumed, though there are some delays.
HGV driver Andy Wilson, who was stuck on the UK side of the Channel on Tuesday, told the BBC his working day was "virtually destroyed".
He added: "When you're driving in toward Calais there's hundreds of migrants just waiting for you to stop."
One migrant at Calais, Moaz, said life in France was "difficult" and he believed he could get a home in England "very quickly".
A Sudanese man told the BBC he had heard Britain would not "leave you" to live in a camp like the one he lives in near Calais port.
"They will receive you with food… house, then after that you will get a chance to ask for asylum," he said.
About 3,000 migrants are estimated to be living rough around Calais, waiting for a chance to cross the Channel.
On Tuesday Philippe Mignonet, a deputy to the mayor of Calais, said French people were "fed up" and Britain must "take responsibility" for policing its borders.
"You're on an island and you can't see that it's your problem to deal with your security. I'm sorry to say so - it's your security," he told the BBC.
The Home Office says about 19,000 attempts to cross the Channel have been prevented so far this year, more than double the number during the same period last year.
The new Mediterranean taskforce to be announced later is a 90-strong law enforcement team including staff from the Border Force, the National Crime Agency, Immigration Enforcement and the Crown Prosecution Service.
A handful will be based with Europol in Sicily and the Hague, in the Netherlands, with most on deployment standby in the UK.
The UK had already announced extra security measures at ports in northern France and Belgium, where UK Border Force staff work alongside national authorities.
The measures include: | Scenes of hundreds of migrants in Calais trying to board lorries to the UK during a strike were "totally unacceptable", PM David Cameron says. |
34,227,774 | The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) study found the risk of heart disease fell by about 30% when subjects were asked to lower blood pressure beyond current recommendations.
The results were so conclusive that the NIH ended the study a year early.
Experts have disagreed on how to control blood pressure as people age.
"More intensive management of high blood pressure in people 50 years and older can save lives and reduce cardiovascular complications such as heart attacks," said Dr. Gary Gibbons, director of the NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which sponsored the study.
The current standard for systolic blood pressure - the greater of the two numbers that measure blood pressure - is 140mmHg. The diastolic standard is 80mmHg.
However, researchers in the study adjusted participants' medication so their systolic pressure became 120mmHg, achieving big reductions in heart attacks, heart failures and strokes.
Systolic blood pressure is measured when the heart muscle muscle is working. Diastolic blood pressure is measured when the heart muscle is resting and refilling with blood.
It is too early to know if the study will change the current guidelines. Researchers advised people to discuss any changes to their blood pressure with their doctors.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), high blood pressure can cause heart disease and stroke, which are two of the leading causes of death in the US.
About 70 million adults in the US - or one in three Americans - have high blood pressure, the CDC says. | New research has shown that aggressive treatment of high blood pressure can significantly reduce risks of heart disease and death in people over 50. |
36,335,526 | O'Brien will travel to the United Kingdom on Friday to see a specialist.
The 29-year-old played just six games for Leinster this season, completing 80 minutes on just two occasions.
He signed a three-year contract with the IRFU last December which will keep him at his native province until after the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
At present, there is no indication as to when O'Brien will be able to play again.
"It is too early to say if he can make it back by the start of the season. Initially, he got injured in Ireland's Six Nations game against France and it was a conservative approach in dealing with it," commented Leinster coach Leo Cullen.
"Other guys have been able to rehab similar injuries without surgery, others have surgery straight away.
"It was slower to heal than we would have liked but he broke down and we sought various opinions. It is frustrating but lots of players go through that in their career. He needs a plan in place to get back to the levels he wants. He is such a key figure for Ireland and Leinster."
Another Leinster forward, prop Cian Healy, is unlikely to feature for the rest of the season as he is troubled by a knee problem.
Full-back Rob Kearney misses the Pro12 semi-final against Ulster because of an ankle injury but Leinster say they are hopeful he will be available to play soon.
Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt is unlikely to have winger Tommy Bowe available for selection for the summer tour after it was revealed last week that he is still struggling with his knee complaint. | Flanker Sean O'Brien is set to undergo surgery on his hamstring injury and will miss Ireland's three-Test summer tour to South Africa in June. |
40,406,489 | The 21-year-old has agreed a two-year deal at Bloomfield Road, with the option for a further year.
Anderton joined Barrow from Preston in 2016 following two previous loan spells, and made 52 appearances last season as the club finished seventh.
He is Blackpool's fifth summer signing following their promotion via the League Two play-offs.
Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page. | League One club Blackpool have signed left-back Nick Anderton from Barrow for an undisclosed fee. |
32,686,204 | China's central bank lowered its benchmark rate by 25 basis points to 5.1%, saying the move was aimed at boosting development.
Chinese shares were higher, with the Shanghai Composite leading the way, closing up 3% at 4,333.58.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index closed up 0.51% at 27,718.20
Japan's Nikkei 225 index closed up 1.3% at 19,620.91.
However, shares in Sharp plunged 26% after local reports said the struggling electronics maker was planning a drastic restructuring of its finances. Sharp is expected to announce a deal with its creditors later this week that involves swapping $1.7bn of debt for shares.
Shares of Toshiba slumped 17% after it cancelled a dividend payment and withdrew its earnings outlook as it expanded an investigation into accounting irregularities which began last month.
In Australia, a day before the government is due to deliver its 2015-16 budget papers, the S&P/ASX 200 index closed down 0.2% at 5,625.2, erasing earlier gains.
Australian businesses reported a fall in sales and employment in April, while confidence remains subdued despite record-low interest rates, according to a survey by National Australia Bank.
"Until confidence lifts significantly it is difficult to see a sustained economic recovery developing - to date rate cuts have not appeared to do much and it will be interesting to see what if anything this week's Federal Budget will do," said NAB chief economist Alan Oster.
In South Korea, the benchmark Kospi index closed up 0.6% at 2,097.38. Shares were boosted by news of China's rate cut, as China is a major market for South Korean exporters. | Most Asian markets were trading higher after China lowered interest rates over the weekend, its third cut in six months, in an attempt to spur growth. |
35,902,576 | Media playback is not supported on this device
The vital goal came after St Johnstone goalkeeper Alan Mannus fumbled Ryan Dow's shot into the net in 22 minutes.
United finished the match with 10 men after Coll Donaldson denied Chris Kane an obvious goal-scoring opportunity.
Murray Davidson hit the bar for Saints, but United held on for what could turn out to be an important three points.
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The performance from United should also give their manager Mixu Paatelainen renewed hope that they can still pull off a great escape from relegation, as they narrow the gap on second-bottom Kilmarnock to five points. They also have a game in hand.
United sprung a surprise at the start of the game as they opted for a back four, rather than the three-man defence that has been their norm for several months.
The visitors also had the better of the early stages and should have scored after 40 seconds as Dow used his pace to get in behind the St Johnstone defence. His cross found John Rankin in the penalty area but his first touch let him down and the chance was gone.
In the 18th minute Mannus saved superbly to keep out Donaldson's header from Paton's free-kick. A minute later Mannus was in action again, this time saving Henri Anier's shot with his legs.
But Mannus would go from hero to zero as his slip gave Dundee United a deserved lead on the balance of play. The keeper looked to have saved a weak effort from Dow, but then somehow he managed to fumble it over his own goal line.
In the 35th minute Rankin then drove through the centre of the St Johnstone defence, the ball cannoned off his shins and just wide of the post.
United were by far the better side but just before half-time St Johnstone almost equalised. From a corner Davidson headed towards goal but his effort was blocked by his own player, Steven MacLean.
With an hour played, Donaldson hauled down Kane, denying the Saints striker an obvious goal-scoring opportunity. Referee Willie Collum immediately showed the red card.
St Johnstone pressed and Davidson's effort from 10 yards came back off the bar.
There was then an almighty stramash in the penalty area following a Dundee United corner which eventually led to a shot from Gavin Gunning from five yards out, but the defender blazed high and wide.
The match became increasingly tense and spiky but United held on for what could turn out to be a massive victory in the story of this season. | Dundee United recorded their first away win over St Johnstone in four years, which could prove vital as they seek to preserve their top-flight status. |
35,791,996 | The hosts took the lead when Mani Dieseruvwe, who joined the Stags on loan from Chesterfield this week, sent Matt Green through to coolly finish.
Pompey levelled before the break when Ben Davies' corner deflected off Ryan Tafazolli's legs and into his own net.
Neither side could find a winner, but Portsmouth came close when Scott Shearer saved Michael Doyle's strike.
Portsmouth stay sixth, with a three-point cushion on eighth-placed Wycombe, while Mansfield are 13th, seven points off the play-off places.
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Portsmouth manager Paul Cook told BBC Radio Solent: "I'm very disappointed with the game, very disappointed with how we played, very disappointed with us in general, but that's where that team's at.
"I think anyone who's watched us all season now could probably say it's a typical Portsmouth performance.
"My job is to make these players better, see us finish the season in whatever position we finish - which hopefully will be a position that there's still something to play for at the end of the season - and we build from there." | Portsmouth remained in the play-off places after earning a point against Mansfield at Field Mill. |
33,405,530 | It follows reports that a 25-year-old woman was attacked as she walked on a footpath in Wythenshawe Park at about 04:00 BST on Sunday.
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) has appealed for any witnesses or anyone in the area at the time of the attack to come forward.
The investigation is ongoing and extra patrols have been set up in the area, said police. | The rape of a woman in Wythenshawe Park is being investigated by police. |
40,314,770 | Edward Hughes, known locally at Iori, was hit by a black Vauxhall Insignia on the junction of Wian Street and London Road in Holyhead on 3 June.
He was taken to a hospital in Stoke but later died from his injuries.
He was described as a "popular local character who will be "sorely missed".
North Wales Police are continuing to appeal for witnesses to the incident. | The family of a 92-year-old man who died after being hit by a car on Anglesey have paid tribute to a "loving father and grandfather". |
37,624,494 | James Brokenshire was appearing in front of a Lords Select Committee.
He was asked if the government accepted that EU funding has provided a "positive transformational effect" on border regions.
He was also asked how the government would assess the impact of the loss of that funding after leaving the EU.
The secretary of state reiterated pledges previously made by the chancellor to stand by commitments to EU peace and cross border projects in the period 2014 - 2020, which he estimated at around 469m euros (£427m).
Looking to the future, Mr Brokenshire said the government was considering the position carefully, but had formed no guarantees so far.
He talked about "a number of different funding lines and programmes" after the UK's departure. However he stressed the Treasury's work in this area was "very much analysis and work in progress".
Asked to guarantee the existing rights of Irish citizens living in the UK, Mr Brokenshire said the government would stand by the Good Friday Agreement and pointed to the Ireland Act 1949 which says Irish citizens should not be treated as foreigners.
He said there was no reason to suppose the UK's exit from the EU would effect those obligations and that is "very much the approach we are taking". | The secretary of state has said the government is giving consideration to future funding for Northern Ireland's border regions after it leaves the EU. |
34,281,167 | There may well be a few investors breathing a sigh of relief that the Federal Reserve has kept US interest rates on hold.
But most realise that the days of cheap money are coming to an end.
Only now are we beginning to look at the stock market, blown up by cheap money over the last six years, and starting to question the resilience of this quivering balloon.
With rates close to zero the stock market has been the first choice for anyone hungry for a decent return since March 2009.
And in their enthusiasm those investors may well have inflated a bubble of alarming proportions.
One valuation, known as Cape, and which gained popularity after the collapse of the dot.com boom in 2000, is flashing red and sending shivers through the market.
Cape stands for "cyclically adjusted price to earnings" ratio. Don't be put off by the jargon. It's not as hard as it sounds.
The price to earnings ratio (or PE) is the relationship between the price of a share in the market, and the earnings of the company to which it relates.
Simply divide the earnings by the number of shares and you get to see how much each individual share is "earning".
Then see how many times greater the share price is - five times, ten times, twenty, whatever. The higher you go the more likely it is that the share is overvalued.
The question is: which earnings are you going to use? This year's? Last year's? Next year's estimate?
Prof Robert Shiller, the Nobel laureate economist who popularised Cape, decided to use average earnings, adjusted for inflation, over the last ten years. The measure is sometimes also called PE10.
So, what's a high Cape and what's a low one? The historic average Cape for the S&P 500, the broad US market index, is 16.6. Its rock bottom was just below 5 in the early 1920s.
Last year Prof Shiller said that over 25, Cape was at "a level that has been surpassed since 1881 in only three previous periods: the years clustered around 1929, 1999 and 2007. Major market drops followed those peaks".
Now, I know what you're thinking.
Where are we now?
25.33.
Uh-oh...
But before you grab the phone to your broker, it should be pointed out that no-one, Prof Shiller included, sees Cape as a predictor of a crash.
In fact had you used Cape to time your investment for most of this century you would have gone spectacularly wrong. For all that time Cape has been, with one brief exception in mid 2009, above its long term average of 16.6, i.e. telling you your returns were going to be below average.
Indeed according to Cape the market has been overvalued for all of the last six years.
Yet investors who plunged into the market in 2009 would have been rewarded, to date, with total returns (including dividends) of close to 200%.
Cape instead should be used to predict whether long term (preferably 10 year) future earnings for a company (or the market in general) are going to be below or above the historic average.
Even that use has its critics, who say that looking at past earnings over a decade can be distorted by changes in accounting practices or tax regimes. It doesn't take into account the state of a company's balance sheet which might, say, be loaded up with debt.
Working out an accurate view of earnings over a decade can be fiendishly difficult, complicated by new share issues, disposals, buy-backs and so on. And of course 10 years is too long to assess, say, Facebook or any number of new tech companies.
So this is, as many people have claimed, a fairly blunt instrument.
Mr Schiller, though, has other tools in his toolkit, and in particular his Stock Market Confidence indices, which show that both retail and institutional investors have been losing confidence in the stock market steadily over the last four or five years - even as they kept on buying.
It conjures up a curious picture of an investor putting the phone down after snapping up another $1m of Google stock muttering: "It's all going to hell - but I just can't help it."
Now combine these factors with one remaining element - earnings growth in the S&P500 - and things start to look fairly bleak.
Amidst all the hoopla around interest rates it's been easy to forget that US companies start reporting third quarter results next week. And it's not looking good.
The last quarter saw total earnings for companies in the S&P 500 index down 2.1% on the same period last year. The third quarter is likely to be worse, maybe 5.5% lower than last year.
Now a lot of that is to do with the energy sector getting knocked sideways by the low oil price, but other sectors are hardly shining. The bottom line is that earnings are at their weakest level in six years.
That in itself (let alone confidence levels and the Cape ratio) should make investors cautious. And interest rates haven't even gone up yet. | No increase in interest rates - crack open the champagne - another month (or two or three) of cheap money. |
36,357,986 | Currently, both adult and children's colouring books are exempt from the VAT.
However, in future, colouring and dot-to-dot books for adults could be classed as "uncompleted" books, which attract the full 20% rate of VAT.
More than three million adult colouring books were sold in the UK in 2015, worth an estimated £20.3m.
HMRC confirmed to the BBC that it planned to speak to publishers about the rules regarding VAT on adult colouring books, but stressed rules regarding children's colouring books would remain unchanged.
"There's been no change to the rules. Children's colouring books are entirely free of VAT and there are no plans to change that," an HMRC spokesperson said.
"We are meeting with publishing representatives shortly to discuss the VAT treatment of adult colouring books."
While literary and reference books are currently exempt from tax, the government website states that certain other types of books should be standard-rated.
Stamp albums are subject to VAT, as are books which are classed as stationery, such as diaries and address books.
James Daunt, managing director of Waterstones, told The Bookseller: "There needs to be clarity from HMRC around the issue on the definition of books which are VAT-exempt because there is lot of confusion at the moment.
"Retailers will be affected and will owe VAT on their margin of the sale, along with publishers, and if it is confirmed we owe HMRC that it will certainly be a sizeable chunk of money."
However, Daunt added that the company had plans in place to pay for it.
Adult colouring book have grown increasingly popular in the last year, with titles such as the Harry Potter Colouring Book and Johanna Basford's Enchanted Forest among the bestsellers. | Adult colouring books could be subject to VAT under new plans being considered by the government. |
34,665,347 | The Dulais Valley practice in Seven Sisters will lose two of four doctors.
As a result the Coelbren branch clinic is closed to GP appointments this week, and faces further future restrictions.
Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board said it was not possible to maintain the level of local service.
Lindsay Davies, head of primary care and planning, said: "Like many other local practices, the partnership will shortly introduce a call management and telephone consultation system.
"This will help them manage demand more appropriately, particularly if they are successful in recruiting alternative clinical staff." | Talks to try and maintain high-quality GP services in Neath Port Talbot have been taking place, amid concerns the health board there will struggle to replace departing doctors. |
39,593,102 | Fred Brown will be inaugurated at the union's annual conference in Manchester on Friday.
The NASUWT is one of the largest and most powerful teaching unions in the UK.
Mr Brown is expected to tell delegates too many young teachers are leaving the profession as they are so demoralised.
While they loved working with their pupils, many "hated all the nonsense which pollutes education", he will say.
"All the scientists and artists and journalists, all the plumbers and taxi drivers and machinists, all the doctors and care workers and nurses, all have benefited from what we do.
"What is good in our global society is possible because of teachers.
"We are, truly, the guardians of civilisation."
He is also set to call for working rights for teachers from other countries to maintained after the UK exits the EU.
Mr Brown has taught since 1980 in a range of schools and youth projects in Belfast and County Down.
He became a teacher after first working in a factory.
Members of the NASUWT in Northern Ireland have recently taken strike action over pay, jobs and workload.
In October 2016, all five main teaching unions in Northern Ireland rejected an offer that would have seen their pay frozen last year and a rise of 1% for 2016-17. | Teachers are the "guardians of civilisation", according to a Northern Irish teacher who is the new national president of the NASUWT teaching union. |
39,038,371 | Badminton Scotland has called for government intervention after UK Sport confirmed funding cuts to seven sports.
Appeals against the cuts for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic cycle were rejected by UK Sport.
"I don't want to have to worry about where my next pay cheque is coming from," Gilmour told BBC Scotland.
GB Badminton received £5.7m for the Rio Olympics and Paralympics and met its target of winning a medal.
Gilmour, who was part of the elite programme for 2016 Olympics, has told BBC Scotland she is having to explore different ways of meeting the cost of training and travelling to compete in Tokyo.
"It [the cost] is somewhere between £25,000 - £30,000 a year," she said. "All I want to do is concentrate on playing badminton. I'm going to have to split my focus and am trying to go down the private sponsorship route.
"It's a bit disheartening that they [UK Sport] don't have faith in the current players and the young players coming up. But this could provide players with a motivation to prove you wrong. Unfortunately, though, it's a catch-22 situation. We can't do it without the money but we want to do it even more now."
Badminton Scotland, which will continue to financially support Gilmour, fears it could hamper her career, among others.
"It is is a major set-back to the sport and the government should intervene to overturn it," said chief executive Anne Smillie.
"Kirsty's situation shows the impact from a Scottish perspective," she added.
"She is a Commonwealth Games and European Championships silver medallist who reached a world ranking of 15 to qualify for the Rio Olympics.
"Her goal was to continue her development and mount a serious challenge for a medal in Tokyo.
"To do this she had a personal award from UK Sport to allow her to train full time and a competition budget to allow her to compete all over the world to gain the necessary points.
"All of this has now been taken away yet Kirsty's costs associated with training every day and competing around 20 times a year all over the world must still be met." | Kirsty Gilmour says UK Sport's decision to withdraw its funding for badminton over the next Olympic cycle will cost her nearly £30,000 a year. |
35,587,696 | Isaac Mwangi denies wrongdoing but wants to leave his post for 21 days while world governing body the IAAF investigates the claims.
The World Anti-Doping Agency said it was "most disturbed" by the claims.
"The allegations have caused me a lot of mental anguish," Mwangi said in a letter to Athletics Kenya.
"I am anxious to have my name cleared."
Two suspended athletes claimed Mwangi had asked for money in exchange for more lenient punishments - allegations Mwangi said were "unsubstantiated".
BBC Sport revealed last week that Kenya had missed a deadline to prove to Wada it was tackling cheating in athletics, following a string of positive drugs tests and corruption allegations.
Media playback is not supported on this device
It will be placed on a 'watch-list' of nations at risk of breaching the agency's code, and could then be declared non-compliant and ultimately banned from international competition - as has happened with Russia's athletes.
The East African country, whose athletes are dominant in distance running, topped the medal table at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing with seven gold medals.
But since 2011, more than 40 of its athletes have failed drugs tests.
Three other senior officials at Athletics Kenya were suspended last year by the IAAF while an investigation took place into allegations of "subversion" of the anti-doping process in Kenya and "improper diversion" of funds received from Nike.
Vice-president David Okeyo, a council member for the IAAF, president Isaiah Kiplagat, and Joseph Kinyua, a former treasurer of the national association, all deny any wrongdoing. | The chief executive of Athletics Kenya wants to step down temporarily amid allegations he asked athletes for bribes to reduce doping bans. |
36,202,165 | But Twitter wasn't happy with this request and the picture went viral.
Photographer Alex Ellinghausen from Fairfax Media in Australia took the picture at a press conference and his colleague, reporter Stephanie Peatling, then tweeted it.
After Mr Dutton's team asked for the picture to be removed, Ms Peatling deleted her tweet but that did not stop others creating memes of the original photo.
In Australia, 'Peter Dutton' was among the top trending topics on Twitter as 9,000 tweets were posted about the politician.
In a blogpost, Ms Peatling explained why she deleted the tweet showing the original picture. She wrote,
"Mr Dutton's office felt it was 'unflattering' and demanded to know why I had tweeted it.
I tweeted it with the caption 'Eek' meaning that if I were a press secretary to Mr Dutton I wouldn't be thrilled to see the picture.
Mr Dutton's offsider took considerable umbrage with it and most strongly protested its presence on the socials.
After one of those conversations where both parties say the same thing over and over again I agreed I would take it off Twitter so long as I could say they asked me to do so."
But despite it being removed, social media has a way of just not letting go... | When this photo of Australia's immigration minister, Peter Dutton, appeared online, his team said it was too "unflattering" and asked for it to be taken down. |
38,448,361 | Dozens of factories supplying major Western brands were forced to close after a mass walkout and subsequent demonstrations in the Ashulia district.
Police said factories opened on Tuesday with many now back at work, but they also detained several labour leaders.
Last week, police arrested a journalist well known for his coverage of the garment industry for" inciting unrest".
Nazmul Huda stands accused of incorrect reporting and holding secret meetings with union leaders - a charge that has been denied by at least one of his employers.
He was the first journalist to report on problems with the structure of the Rana Plaza complex, just a day before it collapsed in 2013, killing more than 1,100 people.
The collapse of the building sparked global outrage and put the spotlight on working conditions, low wages and safety standards in a garment sector that manufactured clothes for some major global brands.
Garment manufacturing makes up the vast majority of Bangladesh's exports and any interruption is likely to have an impact on the economy.
It was the sacking of 121 workers that prompted the initial walkout more than a week ago. The workers' protest soon expanded to demand a monthly minimum wage of 16,000 taka (£165; $203). It is currently 5,300 taka (£55; $67).
But factories nevertheless resumed operations on Tuesday and that was when hundreds discovered they had lost their jobs, reports say. Union chiefs said police used a controversial law to shut down the protests.
Ashulia is a vast garment production hub used by clothing companies around the world, including Western giants like Zara, Gap and H&M. | At least 1,500 garment workers in Bangladesh have been sacked after a week of protests over pay, say police. |
13,393,451 | Now she says it is "very moving" to be playing her mum in a revival of the show.
Most people dread turning into their parents as they get older.
Kay Mellor, on the other hand, is turning into her mother five nights a week.
"I'm embracing it," she says with a wry laugh.
Thirty years ago, over the washing up, Mellor's mother Dinah told her daughter about an intense affair she had had with a man called Craze.
That revelation inspired A Passionate Woman, which was first staged at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds before running in the West End for a year.
"It's extraordinary because at times it's very moving for me - more so than playing another role," she says of performing in the lead role in the latest production.
"This brings my mother quite close to me. That's lovely in some respects, but in other respects I really miss her," says Mellor of Dinah, who died three years ago.
"But I'm sure she'd be delighted if she was watching me from somewhere playing her, and highly amused.
"Both my daughters said: 'Mum it's really freaky, when you're on the stage you turn into nana.'"
Although Mellor wrote the original play, acting has given her a different insight into her mother's story.
"You wear a different head," she says. "As a writer, you're looking at something analytically. You're looking at the show and the structure of it and all that.
"But being in it, you're involved on an emotional level right throughout it. You're engaging on every level with your thoughts and feelings. It's an emotional journey, and it can be at times quite profound, what happens to you.
"I get caught out sometimes. I can be completely reduced to tears in a minute and then think, get a grip girl, you've got to act this.
"At times it can be quite…" There is a long pause. "Unusual. It is unusual. I've played other roles. I've played big roles and you're always slightly outside yourself, watching yourself. But with this sometimes I can get lost within it."
In the play, the central character is called Betty and she tells her on-stage son Mark about her affair. That conversation represents the moment that Dinah divulged her secret to Kay.
"When I'm playing it I can feel how awkward it must have been to tell me, and why she didn't tell me for many, many, many years," says Mellor.
When Dinah died, Mellor decided to pay tribute and dusted off a screenplay version she had prepared.
The result was a two-part BBC One drama, starring Billie Piper and Sue Johnston as her mother at different stages of her life. That aired last year.
And it sparked interest from around 40 theatres who wanted to revive the stage version, says Mellor.
In the end, she teamed up with Gareth Tudor-Price, then artistic director of the Hull Truck Theatre.
The pair had worked together before - and besides, as an ex-boyfriend of Mellor's daughter Gaynor Faye, Tudor-Price had an unrivalled insight into the family he was putting on stage.
"I can't remember who suggested it, whether it was him or me, but it just evolved that I would be the right person to play my mother," says Mellor.
"I am the right age now to play my mother at the time that she told me about Craze, so I said yes."
The play starts with Betty finding an old ballgown in her loft, leading decades-old emotions to come pouring out.
Mellor first performed the role in Hull last year before moving to Ipswich last month. The play will open at the Oldham Coliseum on Wednesday.
Twenty years after the original production became a hit, why does Mellor think the story has held its power over audiences?
"I think it's got universal appeal," she says. "Because the themes are so big - marriage, love, death, mother and child relationships - they transcend age, time, culture."
A Passionate Woman runs at the Oldham Coliseum from 18 May to 4 June. | Writer and actress Kay Mellor made her name with her 1992 play A Passionate Woman, based on the story of her own mother's doomed affair with a Polish fairground worker. |
35,143,224 | The five-time world champion had not played a competitive match since losing to Stuart Bingham in the quarter-finals at the Crucible in April.
There were no sign of rustiness, with breaks of 61 and 52 in the first frame.
He returned from a 3-1 interval lead to seal the win with further breaks of 58 and 51 in the next two frames.
O'Sullivan now meets Jamie Cope or Stuart Carrington on Sunday, with the winner to go through to the final stages of the world ranking event in Berlin in February.
The 40-year-old, nicknamed 'the rocket', has confirmed he will play at the UK Masters at Alexandra Palace, London, in January.
Elsewhere at Wigan, Mark Allen enjoyed a 5-2 win over Duane Jones, while Shanghai Masters champion Kyren Wilson beat Jake Nicholson 5-0, including a highest break of 103.
Plus UK Championship finalist Liang Wenbo made a 121 in the deciding frame to beat Eden Sharav 5-4. | Ronnie O'Sullivan returned to the professional tour with a 5-1 victory over Hamza Akbar in the first round of the German Masters qualifers in Wigan. |
35,975,922 | The drama unfolded in The Alex pub in Southend, Essex, on Tuesday night, YourSouthend reported.
Kayleigh Johnson, 28, said she heard a "massive crash" before the ceiling came "tumbling down".
No-one was injured in the incident, and the pub's owners said specialist contractors were assessing the damage.
Mrs Johnson said: "It was so lucky. Where it happened was right near our old table, and the bar.
"If someone had been ordering a drink, they would have been right underneath where it happened."
Mrs Johnson said a light had come down too and only red lamps were left on.
Staff then helped people evacuate the "rammed" pub, which was recently refurbished at a cost of £300,000.
The cause of the collapse has not yet been established.
"We couldn't see anything because it was really quite dark and it was so dusty," Mrs Johnson said.
"The staff upstairs were very good. They got people out promptly."
General manager Andy Pipe said normal business would resume as soon as it was safe to do so. | A pub-goer had a lucky escape when a ceiling collapsed and a light fitting crashed down on to a table she had moved from just moments earlier. |
35,409,883 | Of the 38 cathedrals who responded fully, 26 said they were "worried" or "very worried" about the future.
Last year, the Church of England gave £8.3m to the historic buildings but the cash does not cover all of their needs.
Some cathedrals are now looking to new ways of fundraising including hiring the buildings out as venues.
Of the 42 Anglican cathedrals in England, 38 are Grade I listed and expensive to maintain - with some absorbing daily running costs of £4,000.
The challenge lies in maintaining a balance between needing to raise large sums of money and keeping the building as a spiritual space.
But cathedrals are often also the largest building available for public use in their area and are increasingly being used as places for concerts, lectures and even banquets.
Very few places have historic funds. People imagine we're sitting on large treasure chests from the past. That isn't the case.
Southwark Cathedral in London has been running a conference centre since 2000, which its dean, the Very Reverend Andrew Nunn, said was essential.
"You have to be really imaginative and think what's going to be the most appropriate business model for my cathedral in this place at this time," he said.
"We're next to the Shard, very glittery, very glamorous, people want to access us for conferences. That wouldn't necessarily be the case in other parts of the country.
"Very few places have historic funds. People imagine we're sitting on large treasure chests from the past. That isn't the case."
42
Anglican cathedrals
26
have bosses worried or very worried about funding within two years
8 cathedrals charge for entry
3 increased the fee in the last year
20% of income from donations
9% of income from commercial use
The Very Reverend Christopher Armstrong, dean of Blackburn Cathedral in Lancashire, said he was "very worried" about the future.
"We're a northern cathedral, we're not on the tourist track, so we don't get any money from tourists.
"Like most cathedrals, we are in the red most of the time and if we are going to be sustainable we're going to have to change that."
Three-quarters of those running cathedrals agree that turning their buildings into multiple use venues is "essential" and say they should be "open to non-faith based and commercial organisations".
Blackburn is just about to complete an £8m redevelopment in partnership with the local council, which they hope will put the cathedral in the black.
Canon Andrew Hindley, who is in charge of the project, said he planned to rent out a new refectory, conference room, library and spaces in the cathedral garden.
He sees no contradiction in using a sacred site for non-religious purposes.
"William Temple, the Bishop of Manchester who founded Blackburn Cathedral, wanted this place to do all sorts of things including recreation. In the 1930s he even wanted it to have a cinema, it was to be state of the art," Canon Hindley said.
"We've tried to follow and update that vision to make sure that people actually want to come and be a part of life in Blackburn. It's all about being part of the whole, not just one little bit of Sunday worship once a week." | Almost two-thirds of those running England's Anglican cathedrals are concerned about their finances, a BBC survey suggests. |
35,783,348 | In matrimonial advertisements in South Asian countries, women with "fair complexion" are in high demand, and millions of men and women around the world have resorted to bleaching their skin.
In recent years, new creams have been introduced to lighten armpit hair and even female genitals.
And their manufacturers advertise their wares by preying on basic human insecurities - consumers are encouraged to believe that lightening their skin tone a shade or two will enable them to win 'better' jobs and spouses and generally improve the quality of their lives.
Over the years, campaigners have tried to challenge this belief - they argue that beauty is more than skin deep and that dark is beautiful too.
In recent weeks, three students from the University of Texas, Austin, have launched a new campaign which has become a talking point on social media around the world.
It was inspired by a project that Pax Jones, a 21-year-old black student at the University of Texas in Austin, began in December.
She created a photo series featuring stunning images of her South Asian classmates, sisters Mirusha and Yanusha Yogarajah.
"Our goal was to combat colourism and the under-representation of people of colour in the media. We were trying to challenge the way colourism permeates our lives," Ms Jones told the BBC over the phone from Austin.
The series, called "Unfair & Lovely", became a hit and inspired the hashtag #unfairandlovely - named after the hugely popular Indian skin-lightening cream Fair and Lovely.
The campaign, which asked dark-skinned people to put their photos on social media, generated lively discussions on Twitter and Facebook and saw nearly 1,000 people posting their photos on Instagram.
Mirusha Yogarajah told the BBC she readily agreed to be a part of the campaign because colourism is rampant within the South Asian community.
"Most of us are advised not to go out in the sun because we'll get darker. It's as if darkness is undesirable.
"In college, I was abused by a South Asian person who had lighter skin. And someone once threw a bleach balloon at me."
Such incidents, Ms Yogarajah says, are deeply humiliating.
"At the time they happened, it was really hard for me to see myself as valuable. It is difficult to understand why people will dehumanise you for the way you look. I felt very vulnerable," she says.
Ms Jones, who says she has been ridiculed for her "hair texture" and "wide nose", agreed.
"We wanted to start a conversation and I think we have succeeded in that". | A new global campaign on social media against colourism - #unfairandlovely - is challenging the widely-held belief in many parts of the world that fair skin is the most attractive. |
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