id
int64 10.1M
41.1M
| dialogue
stringlengths 15
174k
⌀ | summary
stringlengths 1
399
|
|---|---|---|
31,592,092 | Rene Tkacik, 44, was working on a Crossrail site in Holborn, central London, on 7 March 2014 when the accident happened.
He lay unconscious for 15 minutes before medical staff arrived, St Pancras Coroner's Court heard.
Mr Tkacik, of Hackney Road, east London, was a "hugely experienced" worker, the court heard.
He had been working in the UK to earn money to send home to his family in Slovakia so he could pay for his daughter Esther to go to university, a statement from his wife Renata said.
The jury was shown a digital reconstruction of the 80ft (24m) deep tunnel in Fisher Street, Holborn, where Mr Tkacic was killed.
The tunnel was so deep it took an emergency team six minutes to reach him from ground level, the court heard.
Investigating officer Cavin McGrath said: "It was just under a tonne of concrete that came down, which is the equivalent of a bag of building sand."
The statement read to the jury from Mr Tkacik's wife said he was a highly experienced construction worker, who did not drink and put his family first.
"His family was his first priority," it said.
When Mr McGrath was asked if there were any rope or chains in front of the exclusion zone at the time of the accident, he replied: "There was not."
No-one is facing prosecution for the death, the officer confirmed.
A report from the medical attendant who was at the scene, stated Mr Tkacik had died from "blunt force trauma to the head and chest". | A construction worker was crushed to death as nearly a tonne of wet concrete poured on him, an inquest has heard. |
38,584,526 | Lukasz Robert Pawlowski, 33, had pleaded guilty to sexual assault by grabbing and kissing a shop assistant.
Pawlowski, of Bush Street, Pembroke Dock, was appearing for sentence at the Pembrokeshire court when the incident happened.
He has been taken to a Swansea hospital by air ambulance.
Following the incident, an emergency call was made from the court at 10:20 GMT.
It is unclear where and how Pawlowski gained access to the weapon. The court complex has airport-style security scanners and guards in place at both entrances.
It is understood he lost consciousness and blood after the incident. A Wales Ambulance Service spokesman described Pawlowski's injuries as "serious".
A Western Telegraph reporter was in court and witnessed the incident.
The online edition of the newspaper reported Pawlowski asked to leave the dock to go to the toilet, but when he returned he slit his throat.
They said: "He came into the dock, then asked to go to the toilet.
"He went out, came back, muttered something then started slashing at his throat.
"The court room was then cleared out, and first aid was given by paramedics in the dock."
Dyfed-Powys Police said: "Officers attended and found an injured man at the scene, who was receiving treatment by paramedics.
"He has been conveyed to Morriston Hospital by air ambulance. The extent of his injuries are unknown at this time. The court has been closed in order for inquiries to take place.
"Police are not looking to speak to anyone else in connection with this incident at this time."
An HM Courts and Tribunal spokesman said: "A man has been taken to hospital following an incident at Haverfordwest Magistrates' Court on Wednesday 11 January. There were no injuries to staff or other court users.
"There is an ongoing police investigation so it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage."
Preseli Pembrokeshire MP Stephen Crabb tweeted his concern at the events, saying: "Disturbing news. No one should be in a position to harm themselves or others in a court room." | A man has cut his throat in the dock at Haverfordwest Magistrates' Court as he waited to be sentenced for a sex attack. |
37,165,106 | And now the residents of Wanlockhead in Dumfries and Galloway have some pretty lofty ambitions for its future.
The local community trust recently held talks about a buyout involving purchasing land which is part of the Duke of Buccleuch's Queensberry Estate.
They hope to improve economic development and enhance tourism and leisure in the area.
But what potential do they see in the south of Scotland village?
A village in the Lowther Hills, at the head of Wanlock Water, it sits about 11 miles (17km) north of Thornhill.
The area around the village and its neighbour, Leadhills, was long a centre for lead-mining.
The mines round Wanlockhead opened in 1680 and finally closed in 1959; Wanlockhead is now home to the Museum of Scottish Lead Mining.
Gold has been found in the streams round about, and small quantities are still found by eager panners.
Last year a nugget estimated to be worth £10,000 was discovered.
Gold from the area was used in the crown of James V, in a ring for Queen Mary and in a brooch for Queen Elizabeth.
Born in nearby Leadhills in Lanarkshire, William Symington became a mechanic at the Wanlockhead mines.
In 1787 he patented an engine for road locomotion and, in 1788, he constructed a similar engine on a boat fitted with twin hulls and paddle-wheels, which was launched on Dalswinton Loch.
In 1802 he completed at Grangemouth the Charlotte Dundas, one of the first practical steamboats ever built.
A narrow gauge railway runs between Leadhills in south Lanarkshire and the village.
It became famous earlier this year when it offered an unusual "commuter" service while the road link was closed for resurfacing.
It offered a "replacement train" service to allow people from Wanlockhead to get to the doctor's surgery as well as ferrying some staff at the Museum of Lead Mining.
A gruelling cycling challenge has its starting point in the village.
The Snowball Sportive allows riders to tackle some of the highest roads in the country.
But with six major climbs along its route, it is not for the faint hearted.
Winter sports fans can join the south of Scotland's only ski centre.
The Lowther Hills Ski Club is situated near the village.
Volunteers who run the club believe that, with improved facilities, they could draw hundreds of people to the region.
First talks between the Wanlockhead Community Trust (WCT) and Buccleuch were described as "very productive".
Lincoln Richford, who chairs the WCT, said: "We look forward to working further with Buccleuch Estates. I believe that we can find a mutually satisfying solution for both parties that will ensure a bright future for our village."
John Glen, of Buccleuch, said: "We were pleased to have had this initial meeting with the trust as the estate is committed to playing its part in local economic development. We have held discussions with various interest groups over the years and there is a range of options that we should all consider that could help improve the sustainability of the area. As there are many complex issues to discuss, it is too early to form any conclusions or reach decisions. However, we look forward to continuing a constructive dialogue with the trust's representatives and villagers."
Further meetings are planned and the WCT is expected to register a formal interest in the land with the Scottish government later this year. | Sitting at a height of 467m (1,532ft), it claims to be the highest village in Scotland. |
38,406,150 | Just five farms are doing it, and they are tightly regulated by the Food Standards Agency.
They are selling anything between 50 to 800 litres a week and are restricted to off-farm sales or offering it via farmers' markets.
The milk they produce must carry a specific health warning.
Pasteurisation of milk is a heat treatment which destroys bacteria but some people want an unpasteurised product.
David Laughlin has an organic farm near Kilrea.
He bottles up to 50 litres of milk a day from his dairy herd which he sells directly to the public.
People travel to his farm to buy the milk. Two litres costs £1.50 direct from the farm. It's more expensive at markets to reflect transport costs.
David must comply with a stringent hygiene and testing regime.
He says people who come to buy the milk have researched the subject and are aware of the "potential pitfalls".
Kirsten Dunbar of the Food Standards Agency of Northern Ireland says the risks from "raw milk" include E.coli and salmonella.
"We expect these farmers to have good food safety management systems in place which recognise the risks and details the actions they'll take to mitigate those, so they'll do a lot of testing."
Other risks include TB and Listeria. The latter is an environmental bacteria, so good hygiene helps prevent it entering the milk.
David's herd is TB free and always has been. If he had a case he would have to stop selling unpasteurised milk.
The health warning "raw milk" must carry says: "This milk has not been heat treated and may therefore contain organisms harmful to health".
The Food Standards Agency is going out to consultation on a new warning in the spring.
It recommends that the product should not be consumed by "vulnerable groups" like the elderly, pregnant women and people with an existing chronic condition or those who are unwell. | A small number of dairy farmers in Northern Ireland have begun selling unpasteurised milk to the public. |
36,340,202 | The Fishing for Leave group said the Common Fisheries Policy has been a "disaster" for the industry.
However, others in the sector have warned that rushing to exit could "knock the industry back 10 years" and throw it into "crisis".
A referendum is being held on 23 June to decide whether Britain should leave or remain in the European Union.
Former skipper John Buchan and owner of the Atlantic Challenge is part of the Fishing for Leave campaign.
He said other countries' industries had flourished while Scottish fishermen have lost out.
"I started at the sea in 1972," he said.
"The first vote I ever took was the referendum and I was told it was going to be a common market.
"I voted to enter but I know it was the biggest mistake I ever made, and I have waited 40 years for this chance.
"In the 70s we got grants and the fleet expanded. It got far too big. We got a smaller share of the cake. Every decision is made in Brussels."
He added: "We are asking to leave. With decisions, we will have the final say."
However, there are those in the industry who believe the UK would be better to remain part of the EU.
Aberdeen fish processor Andrew Charles said he fears for a future outside the union.
"The problem that we have is if we come out what do we put in its place?" he said.
"We have a management plan and from my experience that is slowly starting to work. Every stock is sustainable.
"If we were to come out of Europe we could find ourselves with management being controlled by a Westminster government. How would they cope with that?"
He added: "I let evidence speak for itself - we have a growing fishing industry.
"Our fishing industry would be knocked back 10 years, throwing it into crisis. It's not perfect, fishing management is very complex." | Fishermen in the north east of Scotland have launched their campaign for the UK to leave the European Union. |
37,716,396 | The University of Benghazi's campus-turned-battleground became a base for so-called Islamic State militants and other jihadists in the city until a militia backed by Libya's eastern administration pushed them out in April.
Classes were suspended altogether in 2014, and resumed again last year, but at other locations in the city - which has made it difficult for students to complete their studies.
Students from the university's mass communication school posed in their caps and gowns on 15 October, with some battered buildings visible in the background.
Some students chose to pose next to missiles and other munitions left over from the fighting.
Since the 2011 uprising that ousted long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi, violence has affected the university. It was eventually shut down in mid-2014 as the fighting intensified.
Since April demining forces have been able to clear only 5% of booby traps planted by militants on the campus, so the buildings remain too dangerous for use, the privately owned news website Libya Herald reports.
The Facebook page of the University of Benghazi's engineering school posted photos from the graduation ceremony on 11 October, saying: "[The students] insisted that their happiness [be celebrated] within the university, despite the destruction it has sustained."
One of the graduates, Nada, tweeted: "#Benghazi University is where both of my parents graduated, I'm proud to have graduated on the same campus."
Some tweets have used the graduation ceremonies to draw attention to the "steadfastness" of the city of Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city, using hashtags such as "Benghazi [is] life" and "Benghazi returns".
BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook. | A Libyan university campus that was closed for more than two years because of intense fighting has just opened its doors for a series of graduation ceremonies. |
33,039,247 | A Merlin helicopter, flying from the ship, spotted a group of boats carrying about 500 people on Sunday morning.
The UK government sent the warship to aid search efforts in the Mediterranean amid a rise in the number of people dying while trying to reach Europe.
Last week, Bulwark rescued 747 people from boats off Libya's coast.
A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said: "One of HMS Bulwark's two Merlin helicopters this morning identified four migrant vessels in distress.
"HMS Bulwark has now commenced rescue operations."
The ship was already heading towards Libya after reports 14 vessels carrying migrants had left the country's coast.
BBC defence correspondent Jonathan Beale, who is on board the Royal Navy vessel, said it was sailing south with about 12 other European vessels.
HMS Bulwark is thought to have been involved in the rescue of about 1,800 migrants in the past month.
The ships are patrolling an area of about 70,000 square miles of the central Mediterranean - looking for those migrants fleeing Africa and trying to get to Europe.
The numbers of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean in the hope of reaching Europe has increased by more than 10% in the first five months of 2015.
Italy's government predicts a total of 200,000 will arrive on its shores this year, up from 170,000 in 2014.
Estimates suggest more than 1,600 people have drowned so far this year trying to cross the Mediterranean.
Many are fleeing war in Libya, where Islamic State fighters are terrorising the population, fuelling instability.
Italian navy ship Driade rescued 560 of the migrants on Saturday, including women and children, while the Irish vessel Le Eithne picked up 310 people. | Royal Navy warship HMS Bulwark is heading towards four boats carrying migrants off the coast of Libya, the Ministry of Defence says. |
40,698,983 | Cor Merched Sir Gar, from Carmarthenshire, was second to Slovenia in Riga on Saturday while hosts Latvia were third out of nine countries.
The choir sang Czech song "O, Mountain, O", Welsh lullaby, "Mil harddach" and an English song, "Wade in the Water".
It was the first time in more than 20 years that Wales entered a Eurovision event, as opposed to a UK entry.
Cor Merched Sir Gar, a choir established five years ago and led by Islwyn Evans, won the Choir of Wales 2017 title in Aberystwyth in April.
They were the youngest of the entrants in Riga and came second to Manet choir Carmen. | A Welsh choir has finished runner-up in the inaugural Eurovision Choir of the Year competition. |
36,510,552 | The animals were rehabilitated at a primate centre by East Sussex charity, International Animal Rescue (IAR).
Charity workers monitored their behaviour, health and eating as they returned to their natural, wild state.
The slow lorises were rescued from traders in Western Java last September.
The creatures are being kept for a month in an enclosed area, and they have radio collars around their necks for monitoring after their release.
Co-ordinator Bobby Muhidin said: "Our team will monitor the lorises for about a year."
IAR ran a celebrity-backed Tickling is Torture campaign last year to expose the cruelty involved in keeping the shy, nocturnal primates as pets.
It followed an online craze where YouTube clips showed pet slow lorises with their big eyes, soft fur and slow movements being tickled and handfed.
But IAR said when a slow loris was tickled it raised its arms as a defensive gesture to activate a venomous gland - not because it was enjoying it - and given the chance would give a serious bite.
It said most rescued slow lorises had dehydration, malnutrition - and stress exacerbated by having their teeth cut.
The charity's latest slow loris release comes one year after its campaign launch, but Alan Knight, chief executive of the Uckfield charity, said the illegal trade remained a "huge threat". | Eight slow lorises that were seized from illegal traders in Indonesia have been nursed back to health and taken to a protected Sumatran rainforest ahead of their release into the wild. |
32,394,338 | On 23 April 1945, just weeks before the end of World War Two, 31 American military personnel died after their Flying Fortress bomber crashed on a rocky Manx hillside.
Although it was a fully-equipped warplane, the bomber was on a peaceful mission, taking ground crew to Northern Ireland for a few days of leave.
A Manx Aviation Preservation Society (MAPS) spokesman said the servicemen were packed into every available space in the cramped body of the aircraft, the radio cabin, and even in the gun turrets.
All would have been eagerly anticipating the short break from the busy base at Ridgewell in Essex where they repaired bombers.
Manx Aviation Museum Director Ivor Ramsden said the plane crashed at "full speed".
"It bounced back into the air, debris and men spilling from its torn fuselage, and crashed back on to the rocky slopes where high-octane petrol surged from the huge wing tanks and exploded in a fireball.
The plane's pilot Lt Charles Ackerman was hugely experienced and had completed more than 50 missions - many as lead pilot in his squadron.
It is not clear why he deviated from his planned route to be flying over the Isle of Man.
Just nine months earlier Ackerman's former co-pilot Lt Ronald Dorrington was killed whilst crashing into the same hill.
Five Americans died when their B-24 Liberator bomber crashed - again in low cloud. It had been flying from Northern Ireland to Lancashire.
Mr Ramsden said: "I can't think of any reason why Ackerman would have been flying over the Isle of Man, rather than to the north of it, other than to try to see where his former buddy came to grief.
"The flight plans of both aircraft were routed north of the island".
Each year, members of the MAPS fly the Stars and Stripes at the top of the hill where the scars of the crash are still visible.
Mr Ramsden said it is always a "very moving occasion".
He said: "It is such a beautiful, peaceful spot and it's impossible to imagine that it was a place of devastation and horror 70 years ago.
"Nature has hidden most of the scars but here and there you can find twisted pieces of metal which provide vivid reminders of that terrible accident."
The crash came nine days after 11 US personnel lost their lives in a crash in the south of the island.
The story of the the air tragedies will be told through displays at Castleton's Manx Aviation and Military Museum, which is open at weekends. | It started as a peaceful mission and ended as the worst aviation disaster in the history of the Isle of Man. |
40,834,876 | The Millers blew Phil Brown's men away in the opening 45 minutes in South Yorkshire, with Joe Newell adding a fine goal to Moore's treble and Ryan Williams notching after the break.
Moore got the ball rolling in the 15th minute when he slotted home from Williams' pass and then 60 seconds later he added his second, tapping home Jamie Proctor's pinpoint cross.
Newell made it 3-0 after only 23 minutes with the best goal of the lot as he fired beautifully into the far corner and then Moore became the first man to score a competitive hat-trick at the New York Stadium when he converted from 12 yards in first-half injury time.
Williams made it five just before the hour when another brilliant team move left him with the simplest of tap-ins.
The Millers threatened to equal their record home win but David Ball was denied by a good save from Mark Oxley while Southend were denied a late consolation when Marc-Antoine Fortune hit the post with the goal gaping.
Report supplied by the Press Association.
Match ends, Rotherham United 5, Southend United 0.
Second Half ends, Rotherham United 5, Southend United 0.
Corner, Rotherham United. Conceded by Theo Robinson.
Corner, Rotherham United. Conceded by Rob Kiernan.
Hand ball by Joe Newell (Rotherham United).
Foul by Semi Ajayi (Rotherham United).
Michael Kightly (Southend United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Marc-Antoine Fortuné (Southend United) hits the left post with a right footed shot from the centre of the box.
Joe Newell (Rotherham United) is shown the yellow card for hand ball.
Semi Ajayi (Rotherham United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Marc-Antoine Fortuné (Southend United).
Foul by Semi Ajayi (Rotherham United).
(Southend United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Joe Newell (Rotherham United) wins a free kick on the left wing.
Foul by Michael Kightly (Southend United).
Attempt missed. Michael Kightly (Southend United) right footed shot from outside the box is just a bit too high.
Attempt missed. Jamie Proctor (Rotherham United) header from the centre of the box is too high.
Corner, Southend United. Conceded by Joe Mattock.
Attempt saved. David Ball (Rotherham United) left footed shot from the left side of the box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Corner, Southend United. Conceded by Semi Ajayi.
Corner, Southend United. Conceded by Joshua Emmanuel.
Substitution, Rotherham United. Anthony Forde replaces Ryan Williams.
Will Vaulks (Rotherham United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Michael Kightly (Southend United).
Darren Potter (Rotherham United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Jason Demetriou (Southend United).
Joshua Emmanuel (Rotherham United) wins a free kick on the left wing.
Foul by Michael Timlin (Southend United).
Substitution, Rotherham United. David Ball replaces Kieffer Moore.
Kieffer Moore (Rotherham United) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Foul by Kieffer Moore (Rotherham United).
Ryan Leonard (Southend United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Attempt saved. Marc-Antoine Fortuné (Southend United) right footed shot from the centre of the box is saved in the top centre of the goal.
Jamie Proctor (Rotherham United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Stephen Hendrie (Southend United).
Foul by Darren Potter (Rotherham United).
Michael Timlin (Southend United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Substitution, Southend United. Stephen McLaughlin replaces Anton Ferdinand.
Joe Mattock (Rotherham United) wins a free kick on the right wing.
Foul by Marc-Antoine Fortuné (Southend United). | A brilliant first-half hat-trick from Kieffer Moore led Rotherham United to a scintillating thrashing of Southend in League One. |
40,505,248 | Smith scored 11 goals and provided 30 assists in 120 games over two seasons for the Southern Premier League side.
The 21-year-old former Luton Town youngster has previously had trials at Premier League side Crystal Palace and as well as Football League clubs.
"I think that I can bring a lot of pace and excitement to the club," he told the National League club's website. | Boreham Wood have signed right-back Kane Smith on a two-year deal on a free transfer from Hitchin Town. |
18,366,783 | Approaching Red Road by car, the buildings loom into view - intimidating as much as they are awe-inspiring.
These towers were built as the solution to a post-war housing crisis, the ultimate in modern communal living.
And for a time they lived up to the promise.
But quickly Red Road came to embody everything that was wrong with high-rise living - symbols of alienation and poverty, the very problems from which they were designed to provide an escape.
Initially, the plans for the eight buildings were fairly modest, but by the time they were completed in 1969 they had become something of an architectural experiment.
They were the highest residential blocks in Europe and provided homes to almost 5,000 people. They have inspired a film, a novel, and fascinated photographers and artists.
So what was it like as an inhabitant of the estate?
As one of Red Road's earliest residents Jean McGeough, initially at least, saw the towers at their best. Her new home meant a vast improvement in living conditions. She tells the now famous local story of being handed a ticket with her floor and house number on it.
"We got up to here with my friend and I'm like, we're gonna be late, we're gonna be late," says Jean.
"And my friend went 'look at the crowds, are they all getting houses up here?' - but it was people taking pictures as well as new residents. I had a wee card and they told us to pick for a house and I had my neighbour with me and said 'you pick it for me,' and she said 'no you pick it' - so I did. I got 9-3 and I was very, very happy."
For Ms McGeough the flats meant community. She shared cleaning the hallways on a rota system with her neighbours and children would run through her flat to get to the only stairs in the building when the lifts failed.
She went to The Brigg, the famous thousand-seater Bingo hall that was built under the flats and she worked in the bar at Red Road. She concedes it did not last, but for a time, they were everything.
"They were lovely the houses and it's breaking my heart to see them coming down."
By the time Azam Khan and Peter McDonald lived in Red Road in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Red Road had a very different kind of community.
It was no longer a desirable place to live. They describe it as a "dumping ground" and Mr Khan's new neighbours robbed for a living.
"A black cab dropped us off at the back of the building," he says. "And when you get out and see this big huge monster building in front of you and you're like 'is this it?'"
The new home that greeted Mr Khan was coated wall-to-wall in pigeon excrement and he was quickly introduced to the story of the previous occupants.
"The two residents beforehand had both jumped out the kitchen window, so when you looked out the window you could see where they'd landed because that's where it had been patched up."
"It was very rough, drugs took over the place. There was a lot of unemployment. They were closing down the shipyards, there were no jobs about and crime seemed to be the best way to pay for things. It was hard times."
"If you were a single guy and you put your name down for a flat you probably got shoved here," says Mr McDonald.
"That was just the way it was, a dumping ground. Look at them - they just look rotten don't they? Big gravestones."
Both men say they learned a lot at the flats and that they toughened them up at least.
The horror stories of Azam Khan and Peter McDonald could have been the end of the story for Red Road and in fact for many they were.
But there was to be another wave of residents to come. As well as council tenants, the flats were in turn used to house students and finally became a home for asylum seekers. Red Road briefly shot to fame again when a family of Russians jumped to their deaths in 2010.
But amid the despair was a final wave of hope.
For Mohsin Ali and his family the flats provided security and in fact echoed their original purpose - a place that inspires awe and creates communities. Mr Ali was a police officer back home in Faisalabad, Pakistan and he has been in Scotland seeking asylum since 2007.
"We were afraid when we arrived here - going higher and higher, it's just like being in a plane," says Mr Ali. "But after that we saw many families like ours and we thought we were lucky to be here. I like the Red Road flats and so do my children. The only thing was that when the wind blows, the flats would move."
Mohsin Ali talks of not having to leave the building to see his new friends. For many that would mean feeling trapped, but for him it was safety.
"The children feel very secure here, especially when we arrived because we were threatened in Pakistan.
"My children are now integrated and are used to it here and have friends. They cannot go back. My younger daughter was born here, she was born in the Red Road flats - she is Glaswegian - we've got a Red Road baby."
Watch Catrin Nye's full report on BBC Newsnight on Monday 11 June at 22:35 BST on BBC Two. | As the first of the Red Road tower blocks in Glasgow are demolished, former residents have been remembering what life was like in the epic structures. |
38,624,415 | Emergency services were called to an address in Heather Avenue, Alexandria, at about 14:25 on Saturday.
The Scottish ambulance service said four ambulances, a paramedic unit and a special operations response team attended.
Police Scotland said the circumstances were being investigated.
It is understood that no violence was involved in the incident.
Five people were taken to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow and the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley. Their condition was not immediately known.
A Police Scotland spokeswoman said: "Enquiries are at an early stage to establish the circumstances surrounding the incident." | Five people have been taken to hospital after becoming unwell at a sheltered housing unit in West Dunbartonshire. |
40,823,520 | West Bay's east and west beaches in Dorset were affected by flooding last year and in 2014.
West Dorset District Council has approved £3m over five years towards the £7m protection scheme, which also affects Park Dean caravan park.
The Environment Agency previously said East Beach was at risk of being "significantly lost" due to flooding.
Waves have previously overtopped the sea wall and flooded the road and properties behind West Beach.
District councillor John Russell said the works were "essential" as residents have previously had to "build-up protection" for their homes themselves.
A public consultation on the Environment Agency and West Dorset District Council plans was held last year and earlier this year.
Proposals at West Beach - where the beach is narrowing towards the eastern end - include strengthening the flood wall to "avoid failure and flooding of properties behind the wall, without increasing the height", a 23m (75ft) extension to the existing groyne and the construction of a new 45m (148ft) groyne.
At Park Dean the embankment will be "reprofiled" under the plans and a vertical wall will also be built along the caravan park boundary.
A rock structure could also be constructed and buried under the sand at East Beach, as well as a new sea wall, set back from the seafront.
If approved construction is expected to take place between next autumn and spring 2020. | Plans to protect two storm-hit beaches on the Jurassic Coast from future flooding have been awarded £3m. |
22,712,756 | Lawyers for the young woman - who suffers from lupus and kidney failure - had argued that continuing the pregnancy would place her life at risk.
The foetus itself is missing part or all of its brain.
All abortions are prohibited in El Salvador under any circumstances.
The constitution in the majority Roman Catholic country protects the right to life "from the moment of conception".
The 22-year-old woman - referred to as "Beatriz", not her real name - is said to be in fragile health, suffering from the chronic immune disorder lupus as well as kidney failure.
Tests suggest her 26-week-old foetus is developing without a complete brain, a condition called anencephaly. Almost all babies born with this condition die before or shortly after birth.
Sources: World Health Organisation, Guttmacher Institute
A medical committee at her maternity hospital, the Ministry of Health and rights groups had all supported Beatriz's request to terminate her pregnancy, but judges at the Supreme Court voted four-to-one to reject the woman's appeal.
In their ruling, the judges said: "This court determines that the rights of the mother cannot take precedence over those of the unborn child or vice versa, and that there is an absolute bar to authorising an abortion as contrary to the constitutional protection accorded to human persons 'from the moment of conception'."
The judges said that Beatriz's health was "stable", although they recognised this could change, ordering doctors to continue to monitor her health and provide all necessary treatment.
Judge Rodolfo Gonzalez, one of the four judges to rule against allowing Beatriz to have an abortion, said the constitutional court could not be turned into a "tribunal to allow the interruption of pregnancies".
Judge Gonzalez said he had not been convinced Beatriz was at risk of dying if the pregnancy was allowed to continue.
He said the case, and the great number of groups and people who had wanted to offer their opinion on it, had shown there was a need to discuss abortion more widely in El Salvador.
Florentin Melendez was the only one of the five judges to rule in favour of Beatriz, but said this did not mean he backed abortions.
He said he believed the court should have ruled in her favour to "guarantee that the medical personnel would not omit [any treatments] and would act diligently at all times, without having to recur to legal authorisation to protect the life of the mother and the human being she is carrying in her womb".
There was no immediate response from Beatriz's lawyers to the ruling.
Campaigners for the legalisation of abortion in cases where the mother's or foetus's life are at risk have condemned the ruling.
Morena Herrera, director of a campaign group which has supported Beatriz's case, said it was "irresponsible".
She argued that the judges had failed to consider the delicate state of health of the foetus, which she said would have no chance of surviving after birth.
"The only life we can save here is that of Beatriz," she said.
Ms Herrera said the group would look into ways of moving Beatriz out of El Salvador so she could receive the treatment they said she needed.
Doctors who support a termination have argued that the risk to Beatriz's health will grow as her pregnancy advances, and that if she suffers a health crisis it will be more difficult to treat the further into her pregnancy she is.
Doctors who perform an abortion in El Salvador and the mothers who undergo it face arrest and criminal charges. | The Supreme Court of El Salvador has refused to allow a seriously ill pregnant woman to have an abortion, even though her foetus has almost no chance of survival. |
35,852,509 | Media playback is not supported on this device
The Dons slipped four points behind Premiership leaders Celtic after Motherwell came from behind with goals from Scott McDonald and Louis Moult.
Defensive lapses led to both goals for the hosts at Fir Park before Aberdeen lost Barry Robson to a red card.
"We beat ourselves today," McInnes told BBC Scotland.
"We know the importance of getting that second goal and I thought we looked likely to get it.
"Motherwell put you under pressure and you never think you are home and dry at 1-0."
A Kenny McLean penalty separated the sides at the interval, with the visitors well on top in the first 45 minutes.
Media playback is not supported on this device
But Motherwell improved after the break to make it five wins in six matches, although they were given a helping hand by some poor defensive work from the Dons.
"There was too much deliberating and hesitancy when we lose the first goal. We should deal with the ball bouncing about," said McInnes.
"The second goal deserved to be punished. We were in control of the situation and we've made it easy for Moult to lift it over.
"Then we get Robson sent off and all of a sudden we go from doing well and managing the game to more of a challenge."
Robson was ordered off moments after coming on as a substitute for aiming an elbow at McDonald, McInnes saying of the experienced midfielder: "He should know better."
It was just a second defeat in 18 games for the Dons, who have played a game more than Celtic.
On Aberdeen's title challenge, McInnes added: "There wasn't a lot of room for error before today.
"We've got 21 points to play for and I still think there will be twists and turns for us.
"We feel we can contest every one of those games and we'll see where we finish."
The opening goal upset Motherwell boss Mark McGhee because he thought the officials missed a foul for his team in the build-up.
"We were a bit aggrieved about the nature of the penalty because we felt we should have had a free-kick," he explained.
"But Aberdeen were at least one goal better than us in the first half and I thought we lacked a bit of belief.
"Second half, we pressed them more and it was a terrific performance. We showed great spirit and scored two good goals.
"Our shape was better and we managed to get Scott McDonald and Louis Moult up against their centre-halves."
Motherwell's excellent run has taken them up to fifth place but McGhee remains wary of the teams below in a congested mid-table.
"We can start to think about the top six if we win another game but we have a difficult trip to Inverness then it's Celtic here," he added. | Aberdeen were punished for "a few moments of madness", according to manager Derek McInness, following a 2-1 defeat by Motherwell. |
40,530,711 | Prosecutors argued Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez Cruz had avoided antenatal care, tantamount to killing the child.
Her lawyers said she did not know she was pregnant and no crime had occurred. They said the pregnancy was as a result of repeated rapes she did not report.
The Central American country completely bans abortion in all circumstances.
Dozens of women have been imprisoned for the deaths of their foetuses in cases where they said they had suffered miscarriages or stillbirths.
In April last year, Ms Hernandez gave birth in the latrine of her home in a small rural community. She lost consciousness after losing large amounts of blood.
When her mother took her to hospital, leaving the baby's remains behind, Ms Hernandez was detained on suspicion of procuring an abortion.
Eleven days later she had an initial court hearing and she has been in custody since.
Her charge was changed to aggravated homicide when no evidence was found of her having had an abortion.
Although she was in the third trimester, Ms Hernandez said she had confused the symptoms of pregnancy with stomach ache because she had experienced intermittent bleeding, which she thought was her menstrual period.
She told the court: "I did not want to kill my son."
The judge did not believe she did not know she was pregnant.
Much of the case centred on whether the baby was dead at birth or died in the moments afterwards, but medical experts were unable to determine the answer definitively.
The human rights organisation Amnesty International condemned the sentence and Ms Hernandez's lawyer, Bertha de Leon, said she would appeal.
Efe Alberto Romero, from the Citizens' Group for the Decriminalisation of Abortion, said witnesses could not determine whether Ms Hernandez had intended for the baby to die, and that she had become pregnant due to repeated rapes in a forced sexual relationship.
Her lawyers said she had been too frightened to report the rapes. Some reports say the man who raped her was a gang member.
Pro-choice campaigners in El Salvador and around the world have argued that the country's absolute abortion ban criminalises people who have not sought abortions but have had natural miscarriages, as well as forcing women to carry pregnancies to term despite risk to their own lives.
Countries with an absolute ban on abortion: | A teenager in El Salvador has been sentenced to 30 years in jail for aggravated homicide after delivering a stillborn baby in a toilet. |
27,291,822 | The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) will get £160.5m euros over seven years to combat marine pollution, the European Parliament said.
The MCA which used EMSA images in the prosecution, welcomed the move.
EMSA uses three satellites to detect "ship source pollution".
Last October Truro Crown Court heard how an EMSA satellite detected a ship trailing a slick in the waters between Land's End and the Scilly Isles.
The ship was identified as the Singapore-registered tanker Maersk Kiera, and the MCA was alerted.
The discharge of palm oil, which was being cleared from the ship's tanks, was illegal because it was within 12 miles of land.
Maersk Tankers Singapore was fined £15,000, and ordered to pay £7,400 costs and a £120 victim surcharge.
Palm oil has been found washed up around the UK's west and south coasts, with sightings as far afield as Cumbria to Worthing.
It has also been blamed by vets for the death of a dog and the illness of many others which were found to have eaten the white waxy substance after it washed up on beaches in Cornwall.
The MCA said it received an average of 55 images per month in 2013 from EMSA and all alerts were investigated, but there had been no further prosecutions.
It said: "Any funding that will boost capability to combat pollution is always welcomed."
EMSA said that since 2007 about 200 illegal discharges had been confirmed a year in EU seas thanks to satellite images. | The EU is investing more money in anti-pollution measures which led to the first prosecution by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency using satellite images. |
38,316,908 | The technique prevents babies being born with deadly genetic diseases.
Three-person IVF has been backed by MPs and peers, got ethical approval and has been shown to be scientifically ready.
A meeting of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority on Thursday will decide whether to give the final go-ahead.
If it does, the first such baby could, at the earliest, be born towards the end of 2017.
The baby would have all the genetic information from its mother and father, plus a tiny amount from a donor woman.
The fertility technique has been developed to prevent deadly mitochondrial disease.
Mitochondria are the tiny structures in every cell that convert food into useable energy.
Defective mitochondria affect one in 200 babies. In severe cases it can leave the child with insufficient energy to keep their heart beating, sustain the brain or move muscles.
Mitochondria are passed on only from the mother, so a second donor egg is needed to create healthy children.
But as mitochondria have their own genetic code, it means resulting children have DNA from three people.
They would have 0.1% of their DNA from the second woman - a permanent change that would be passed down through the generations.
Nucleus: where the majority of our DNA is held - this determines how we look and our personality
Mitochondria: often described as the cell's factories, these convert food to usable energy to make the cell function
Cytoplasm: the jelly-like substance that contains the nucleus and mitochondria
Both the Commons and the Lords approved regulations to allow the creation of such babies in 2015.
And reports by the Nuffield Council of Bioethics and the HFEA concluded the process would be ethical.
But the final safety checks held things up and new concerns emerged that the procedure would fail in one in eight pregnancies.
The HFEA's science advisors concluded last month that it was time to start.
Prof Robin Lovell Badge, one of the advisors, told the BBC at the time: "We're not going to learn much more now unless you try it out for real basically - it's at that stage.
"There's no reason why it shouldn't go ahead now, but do it cautiously on selected patients where the risk of having a badly affected child is very high."
The woman who lost all seven children
Every time Sharon Bernardi became pregnant, she hoped for a healthy child.
But all seven of her children died from a rare genetic disease that affects the central nervous system - three of them just hours after birth.
When her fourth child, Edward, was born, doctors discovered the disease was caused by a defect in Sharon's mitochondria.
Edward was given drugs and blood transfusions to prevent the lactic acidosis (a kind of blood poisoning) that had killed his siblings.
Five weeks later Sharon and her husband, Neil, were allowed to take Edward to their home in Sunderland for Christmas - but his health slowly began to deteriorate.
Edward survived into adulthood, dying in 2011 at the age of 21.
Now Sharon is supporting medical research that would allow defective mitochondria to be replaced by DNA from another woman.
The UK was the first country in the world to legalise the creation of three-person babies - much of the science has been developed by researchers at the University of Newcastle. .
However, the child will not be the first to be born through the three-person technique.
A Jordanian couple and doctors in New York performed the procedure in Mexico and the resulting baby is understood to be healthy.
Robert Meadowcroft, the head of Muscular Dystrophy UK, said Friday's decision would be "life-changing for many".
"This is the final move towards clinical trials using an approach to give thousands of women living with devastating and unpredictable mitochondrial conditions the choice to bear their own unaffected children," he said.
But Dr David King, from the campaign group Human Genetics Alert, warned: "This decision opens the door to the world of GM designer babies.
"Already, bioethicists have started to argue that allowing mitochondrial replacement means that there is no logical basis for resisting GM babies, which is exactly how slippery slopes work."
Follow James on Twitter. | The UK's fertility regulator is about to make a historic decision on whether to allow the creation of babies from three people. |
29,321,248 | The blast struck the Nanyang Export Fireworks Factory in the city of Liling in Hunan province.
Another two people were missing following Monday's blast.
Officials did not say what caused the explosion, but said the factory was properly licensed.
The blast left surrounding areas scattered with debris and glass shards from broken windows of nearby houses, Xinhua news agency said.
China's fireworks industry suffers from lax controls and there have been a number of deadly incidents in recent years.
Last year, an explosion at fireworks factory in Guangxi killed 11 people and injured 17 others.
An accident in February 2013 also saw a truck carrying fireworks explode on an elevated highway in Henan province, killing at least five people and causing part of the road to collapse. | An explosion at a fireworks factory in China has killed at least 12 people and injured 33 others, local government officials say. |
26,864,817 | Che Cruz was arrested on Sunday and accused of breaking into the star's guesthouse in Calabasas, California, while she was at home.
The 20-year-old admitted trespassing at a court appearance on Wednesday and was immediately sentenced.
He was also given three years probation and ordered to stay away from Gomez.
Los Angeles police said Cruz was arrested after Gomez heard a noise at her home on Sunday night and called security.
Cruz then knocked on the door of her $3 million (£1.8m) property. A friend answered but slammed it shut when he asked for Gomez.
Security guards later found him in the guesthouse and held him until police arrived.
Gomez rose to fame in the TV series Wizards of Waverly Place but is now better known for her pop career.
She scored a Top 10 hit in the UK last year with Come and Get It and was named favourite female singer at Saturday's Kids' Choice Awards.
The 21-year-old is also known for her on-off relationship with fellow pop singer Justin Bieber. | A man charged with trespassing at singer Selena Gomez's home has been sentenced to 45 days in jail, prosecutors say. |
35,788,345 | Mr Eastwood was speaking at his party's annual conference in Londonderry.
He became leader four months ago.
With the Assembly election only two months away, Colum Eastwood has insisted his party will not lose out as Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness vie for the top job at Stormont.
"No one person has more power than the other so this nonsense that people want to put out there that it's a battle between Martin and Arlene about who is going to be the first minister, it undermines the fact that we want to move politics forward," he said.
"We want politics to be about policy, about ideas and about delivery, not about whose name plate is above which office."
Under Stormont rules, the largest party of the largest designation - unionist or nationalist - provides the first minister.
But the positions of first and deputy first minister are effectively equal.
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Arlene Foster said a small swing in votes would hand the role to Sinn Féin.
She suggested unionist voters should support the DUP to prevent Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin from becoming first minister.
But the SDLP leader said focusing on that contest cheapens politics.
The SDLP deputy leader Ferghal McKinney used his speech to attack what he called the failure of successive DUP ministers to tackle the problems in the health service, adding that stagnation at Stormont is no longer an option. | The SDLP leader Colum Eastwood has said he is not concerned about his party being squeezed between the DUP and Sinn Féin as they battle to provide the next first minister. |
39,421,413 | The fly-half says helping the Swansea region triumph after being handed a "worst-case scenario" is his aim.
The match has had to be moved from their Liberty Stadium home because of a clash of fixtures with Swansea City.
"I'll be worried about making sure we come out on the winning side," he said.
Lions coach Warren Gatland has said this weekend's round of European knockout matches is a chance for players to impress before the squad is announced on 19 April.
Asked about his chances, Wales stand-off Biggar replied: "Knowing Gats he's got a good idea of the squad already and it's nice to be able to stake a claim if selected at the weekend.
"But for me ... the last thing you're worrying about in the middle of a game or if you've got a kick to touch is 'I've got to make an extra 10 metres here to impress the selectors'.
"It's about making an extra 10 metres for your team to be in a better position.
"For me I just take it each day as it comes.
"If it happens it would be a lovely, lovely way to finish off the season.
"I'm not holding out too much hope in terms of not thinking about it really. I'd love to be in the reckoning, being talked about, but as far as my attitude is you can't do an awful lot more about that."
Ospreys are in the Challenge Cup for the first time after missing out on qualification for the top-tier Champions' Cup.
Despite a perfect group campaign where they picked up a maximum 30 points, Ospreys find themselves playing on a neutral venue against one of the most powerful sides left in the tournament.
Stade Francais also go into the game off the back of an aborted amalgamation with Racing 92 which led to a player strike and appears to have had a galvanising effect on their form.
They beat former European champions Toulon 17-11 in the French Top 14 last time out.
"There was potentially livelihoods on the line and they are a proud rugby club and they are going to be hugely motivated in terms of recent events," said Biggar.
"It's probably worked out as worst-case scenario for us in terms of 30 points from 30 points in the group, [but] we've had to move the game from our home ground and we're up against one of the strongest teams left in the competition so we've certainly got to do it the hard way.
"Their home form has been exceptional this year, their away form - I don't think they've won on the road yet and we're hoping to keep it that way and if we perform well we give ourselves a chance." | Impressing British and Irish Lions selectors will not be Dan Biggar's motivation when Ospreys play Stade Francais in the European Challenge Cup quarter-final at Principality Stadium. |
38,684,941 | His successor as Sinn Féin's leader in Northern Ireland will be announced next week.
So who will replace him? Three names are tipped as the most likely contenders - Finance Minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, Health Minister Michelle O'Neill and MLA and former MP Conor Murphy.
Conor Murphy is a key member of the Sinn Féin negotiating team who has represented the party at the Hillsborough, Leeds Castle and St Andrew's negotiations as well as playing a key role in the Fresh Start agreement negotiated at Stormont House.
After his election to the assembly in 1998, he was the party's chief whip.
In 2005, he became the first Sinn Féin member to be elected as MP for Newry and Armagh.
Following Mr Murphy's re-election to the assembly in 2007, he was appointed minister for regional development, a position that he held until 2011.
He was criticised for the NI Water crisis as minister during the winter of 2010/11.
In 2012, ahead of a ban on double-jobbing, he left the assembly to concentrate on his role as an MP.
He returned to the Assembly in 2015 when Mickey Brady was elected MP for the constituency. Since re-entering the assembly he has been a member of both the Enterprise, Trade and Investment Committee and the Public Accounts Committee.
Health Minister Michelle O'Neill has held various senior positions within Sinn Féin.
She has worked in the Assembly since 1998, initially as political adviser to MP and former MLA Francie Molloy, before being elected to Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council in 2005.
Mrs O'Neill was elected to the assembly for the Mid Ulster constituency in 2007, sitting on the education committee and serving as Sinn Féin's health spokesperson.
In 2011, she was appointed as minister for agriculture and rural development.
The following year, she announced that the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) would move to a former British army barracks in Ballykelly, County Londonderry.
Following the announcement, it came to light that Strabane had been chosen as a more suitable location by an internal DARD assessment, a decision that Mrs O'Neill then overruled.
In February 2013, it was also revealed that the decision had been questioned by the Finance Minister Sammy Wilson.
As health minister since 2016, tackling mounting hospital waiting lists have been a huge task for Mrs O'Neill.
In October, she launched a 10-year plan to transform health service, saying it would improve a system that was at "breaking point".
Opposition politicians questioned the lack of details in the plan, which was not costed.
But it set out a range of priorities, including a new model of care involving a team of professionals based around GP surgeries.
Máirtín Ó Muilleoir has previously been a writer, journalist and publisher of the Belfast Media Group newspapers and the Irish Echo in New York.
The former west Belfast councillor served as Lord Mayor of Belfast from June 2013-June 2014 and was broadly praised for reaching out to unionists, despite attacks by loyalist protestors.
Mr Ó Muilleoir subsequently stood unsuccessfully as Sinn Féin's candidate for South Belfast in the 2015 Westminster election, but was returned in the Stormont Assembly election of May 2016.
As finance minister, he was the first Sinn Féin minister to hold a major economic brief in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
His role has included leading the implementation of the devolution of corporation tax, due to happen in 2018.
However, he became embroiled in controversy in 2016 when news emerged about a back channel of communication between a Stormont committee chairman and a witness who was giving evidence on the Nama property loan sale.
Mr Ó Muilleoir denied knowledge of alleged coaching of loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson by finance committee chair Daithí McKay before his appearance. | Former deputy first minister Martin McGuinness has confirmed he will not stand in the Northern Ireland Assembly election. |
35,344,073 | James Davis, Laurence Halsted, Richard Kruse and Marcus Mepstead gained a 35-34 sudden-death win over South Korea in the third-place match.
Britain are set to finish outside the top four automatic qualification spots.
That means they need to be the next-best European team in the rankings to qualify for Rio.
Britain, who are seventh, boosted their chances in that respect by winning 40 ranking points - 15 more than nearest European rivals Germany - after beating them 39-35 in the round of 16.
The last event of the men's foil Olympic qualification series takes place in the German city of Bonn on 7 February.
It could get complicated for Britain, though, as they must not only stay ahead of Germany, but also rely on France, Russia and Italy remaining in the top four automatic qualification places - as if any of them drop out, they would then become the next-best European team instead. | Great Britain's men's foil fencing team increased their chances of qualifying for this year's Rio Olympics by finishing third at the Paris World Cup. |
35,926,021 | A Vauxhall Astra with three men inside was driven into HSBC bank in Lower Northam Road, Hedge End, at about 10:30 BST.
The men were seen entering the building before leaving in a white Audi which headed east.
Hampshire Constabulary said a "small amount of cash of various denominations" was believed to have been taken.
The men were described as white and wearing balaclavas and their white Audi had a 2015 number plate.
Police said one member of staff, a 31-year-old woman, sustained bruising after one of the men grabbed her wrist.
A spokesperson said: "Her injury is believed to be minor at this time and she was left understandably shaken."
The Astra was believed to have been stolen and has been seized by police. | Robbers have escaped with cash after driving a car into a bank in Hampshire. |
35,614,683 | Italian national Samira Lupidi, 24, was arrested following the deaths of Jasmine Weaver, one, and Evelyn Lupidi, three, on 17 November.
Post-mortem examinations found they both died from multiple stab wounds.
Ms Lupidi denied two charges of murder at Bradford Crown Court earlier and was remanded in custody. A provisional trial date has been set for 9 May.
Updates on this story and more from around West Yorkshire | A woman has denied killing her two daughters at an address in Bradford. |
40,098,566 | On Monday, Mr Horgan announced that he had the support of the BC Green Party to oust Ms Clark's Liberal Party.
The Liberals won 43 seats in a recent election, the NDP won 41 and the Greens won three.
Ms Clark said she is unlikely to survive a confidence vote, but will not resign pre-emptively.
"If there is going to be a transfer of power in this province, and it certainly seems like there will be, it shouldn't happen behind closed doors," she said on Tuesday during a brief press conference.
Under Canadian law, she does not have to resign, since her party won the most seats in the legislature. She said she expects the legislature will test the confidence of the government in "short order", possibly as soon as early June.
If her party fails this vote of confidence, than it is up to to the province's lieutenant governor, who is appointed by the Queen, to either call another election or call on the NDP to lead.
Ms Clark said she would not request another election so soon after May's election, but that it is in the hands of BC Lieutenant Governor Judith Guichon.
Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver said his party will support the NDP for four years in a "stable minority government". Mr Weaver was careful to stress it would not be a coalition government and the Green Party would not have any seats in cabinet.
After 16 years in power, the BC Liberal Party has struggled recently amid high-profile donation scandals and a strong environmental movement in the province that vehemently opposes the oil and gas industry.
Mr Weaver said the Liberals' support of the Kinder Morgan pipeline was one of the main reasons why he decided to back Mr Horgan instead of Ms Clark. He and Mr Horgan say they will use "every tool available" to stop the pipeline's expansion.
The provincial Liberals are not related to the federal Liberal Party, which is led by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. | British Columbia Premier Christy Clark says she won't resign, even after an attempted takeover of power from NDP Leader John Horgan. |
38,893,142 | About two-thirds of England's councils responded to a BBC information request on bird control.
Their responses reveal the amount spent rose from £452,000 in 2013-2014 to £830,000 in 2015-2016.
The British Pest Control Association said the increase in spending might reflect a growing awareness of public health risks posed by some birds.
The figures come about two years after then Prime Minister David Cameron called for a "big conversation" about gulls in the wake of attacks on a dog and a tortoise in Cornwall.
Of the 103 authorities that specified the types of control methods used, 12 said they employed marksmen to shoot pigeons, 12 used hawks and 46 used spikes to discourage pigeons landing.
Scottish councils spent £950,000 ober the past three years compared with £43,000 in Wales and £9,519 in Northern Ireland.
The biggest spender on bird control is the London Borough of Southwark, which has shelled out £393,000 since 2013.
Stoke-on-Trent City Council had the biggest spend outside of London, with £75,000 since 2013, followed by West Sussex County Council which spent £65,000 and Portsmouth, which spent £63,000.
Money spent by councils on bird control ranges from approaches such as pigeon-proofing buildings to clearing up pigeon guano and removing dead pigeons.
But some types of bird control - such as pigeon-proofing - simply move "problems on" to another building or area, said Dee Ward-Thompson, technical manager at the British Pest Control Association.
"If you totally exclude them rather than control the population, they sometimes just move to an adjacent building.
"What we are seeing more often now is landowners coming together to deal with issues collectively.
"In London, they are trying to exclude gulls from all of the buildings because otherwise they will just be moving the issue on."
Pigeon control was usually carried out on public health grounds, she said, while gulls were targeted by some authorities because they can be aggressive.
Ms Ward-Thompson, who said bird control activities must be carried out by professionals because of the various laws involved in protecting animals, said she was unaware of a growing issue with birds that could explain the doubling in spending over three years.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said it "would always advocate non-lethal measures in the first instance".
The RSPCA said: "The most humane way of deterring birds is to remove what attracts them to urban areas - mainly food or shelter.
"Means of doing this can include reducing food availability, or preventing them from accessing roofs or other areas where they could cause disturbance.
"If deterrence methods and all alternatives fail, and there is a proven case for control methods, we urge people to use only humane methods and trained, experienced professionals." | The amount spent on ridding streets of pigeons and gulls has almost doubled in the past three years, it has emerged. |
38,741,491 | The crash happened on the A4042 between Hardwick and Llanellen at about 21:00 GMT on Tuesday.
Gwent Police said the driver suffered significant arm injuries and was taken to Nevill Hall hospital.
Police said clearance work would close the road for a "significant" amount of time, as the spillage had involved a substantial amount of oil.
A 40-mile (64km) diversion has been put in place at the Hardwick roundabout on the A4042 south bound, and on the A4042 junction with B4269 at Llanellen, adding at least 45 minutes to journey times. | A road in Monmouthshire has been closed after a lorry overturned, spilling palm oil which has "set like wax". |
35,820,675 | Media playback is not supported on this device
The West Indies batsman struck 11 sixes on his way to scoring 100 from just 47 balls as England slumped to a six-wicket loss in Mumbai.
"The world is watching, so the universe boss got to deliver and he did today," the 36-year-old left-hander said.
"The Gayle force got the better of England today."
Gayle said his thrilling innings was inspired by the words of West Indies team-mate Sulieman Benn.
"Sulieman said to me I had to go out and entertain him, that gave me the spark," the Jamaican said.
"I just try and keep people entertained around the world. That's my objective."
Gayle's century was the joint-third fastest in T20 internationals, saw him become the first man to score two tons in the World T20, and took West Indies to their target of 183 with 11 balls to spare.
"It was a fantastic innings and I'm really happy to have finished the game, I didn't leave it for anyone," he added.
"It was always good to bat second. A target of 183 we always had a chance of chasing down. We didn't panic. Now we're on to the next one against Sri Lanka."
For England, Joe Root made 48 in a total of 182-6, the highest score they have failed to defend in a Twenty20. Captain Eoin Morgan described the total as "competitive".
"We would have liked 200, 220 probably would have been a wining total, but we never really took the game away from them," he added.
"They bowled well and probably in the chase there was not a lot on offer for us apart from the first few overs when it swung. Once Gayle gets himself in, though, he's hard to stop." | Centurion Chris Gayle described himself as the "universe boss" after his stunning innings defeated England in their first game at the World Twenty20. |
38,161,981 | The Hammers said on 30 November the 26-year-old would be missing for six weeks because of a thigh injury, meaning he would not return until mid-January.
But boss Slaven Bilic said on Thursday that Sakho faced up to eight more weeks out, taking him to mid-February.
The 2017 Africa Cup of Nations starts on 14 January.
Two years ago, Sakho withdrew from Senegal's squad with a back injury but scored 18 days later in West Ham's FA Cup 1-0 win at Bristol City.
As a result, the club were fined £71,000 by world governing body Fifa.
Last month, in only his second appearance of an injury-plagued season, he scored in a 1-1 draw at Manchester United.
The forward, who joined West Ham in 2014 from French club Metz, had only returned from a back injury in the defeat at Tottenham on 19 November.
West Brom were keen to sign Sakho for £15m in August but the deal was called off because of a back problem.
West Ham are 13th in the Premier League table, five points above the relegation zone.
The Hammers visit struggling Swansea on Boxing Day (15:00 GMT) before travelling to Leicester City on 31 December (15:00 GMT). | West Ham and Senegal striker Diafra Sakho will miss the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations after being ruled out for up to eight more weeks with a back injury. |
34,788,969 | The company's founder, Sir James Dyson, argued vacuum cleaners were only tested when they were empty of dust.
He claimed that meant the tests misled "consumers on the real environmental impact of the machine they are buying".
In separate legal actions, the UK firm has claimed some rival vacuum cleaners are achieving misleadingly good ratings in tests.
The EU's General Court dismissed Dyson's action "in its entirety" because the company - best known for its bagless vacuum cleaner - had failed to show there were more reliable and accurate tests.
It said: "Dyson states that the regulation misleads consumers because the cleaning performance is tested only when the vacuum cleaner's receptacle is empty and not during use.
"The court acknowledges that the suction performance and energy efficiency of a vacuum cleaner with a dust-loaded receptacle will be reduced due to dust accumulation.
"It observes, however, that the [European] Commission could not use tests conducted on the basis of a dust-loaded receptacle, as they are not reliable, accurate and reproducible, as required by the regulation."
The court also dismissed Dyson's claim that current EU energy labelling laws "discriminates" in favour of bagged vacuum cleaners.
A Dyson spokeswoman said it was "deplorable" that the ECJ "endorses tests that don't attempt to represent in-home use, and we believe this is causing consumers to be misled."
The company added: "By this judgment, the ECJ has given its support to unrepresentative tests devised by the Commission with a small group of European manufacturers which in our view disregards the interests of consumers in Europe.
"The judgment is all the more surprising in view of the revelations about car testing in the VW scandal where the tests do not reflect real life usage.
"We don't believe the ECJ is acting in the interests of consumers and will continue to fight for testing and labelling, which is."
The ruling is a setback for Dyson, which last month began legal action against rivals Bosch and Siemens, alleging that they were misleading consumers in behaviour "akin to the Volkswagen scandal".
It claimed that independent testing had shown that machines made by Bosch and Siemens could draw more than 1600W of power when used in the home while containing dust, despite having a rating of 750W gained in dust-free testing.
That would mean that a rating as high as AAAA in test conditions could drop to an E or F in the home.
Last month, BSH Home Appliances, the parent company of Bosch and Siemens, said it planned to sue Dyson over the "unfounded and untrue" statements.
BSH chief executive Karsten Ottenberg said: "We have long since been aware that James Dyson has a history of taking a very aggressive approach against his competitors and has a desire to be in the public eye."
The company said all its vacuum cleaners were tested in accordance with the EU Energy Label and Ecodesign Directive for vacuum cleaners and met the standards in full. | Vacuum cleaner manufacturer Dyson has lost its bid to change European energy labelling laws. |
40,001,904 | The attack in the foyer of the Manchester Arena at the end of a concert by singer Ariana Grande killed 22 people and injured a further 59.
Nicola Sturgeon said six people had "presented at hospitals in Scotland", with four since discharged.
Police are also in contact with the family of two girls from Barra.
One of the teenagers who was unaccounted for after the attack has been found alive in hospital. in Manchester.
Fifteen-year-old Laura MacIntyre is said to be seriously injured. Her friend, 14-year-old Eilidh MacLeod remains missing.
None of the six Scots known to have been treated in hospital are thought to have life-threatening injuries.
Police have named the suspected suicide bomber as 22-year-old Salman Abedi, who died in the blast after detonating an improvised explosive device he had been carrying at about 22:35 on Monday night.
A number of children are among the 22 people confirmed to have died. A 23-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the incident.
So-called Islamic State has said it was behind the attack, via IS channels on the messaging app Telegram.
Speaking after chairing a meeting of the UK government's Cobra emergency committee, Prime Minister Theresa May said the suicide bomber deliberately chose the place where he could cause "maximum carnage".
Mrs May condemned the "cowardice" of the attacker and hailed those who rushed to help, who had shown "the spirit of Britain - a spirit that through years of conflict and terrorism has never been broken and will never be broken".
She vowed: "The terrorists will never win and our values, our country and our way of life will always prevail."
Security has been stepped up at key locations across Scotland as a precaution, with a "significant" increase in the number of armed officers on patrol at transport hubs and other crowded places.
Police Scotland will review security at all public events in the next fortnight as a result of the Manchester attack, including the Scottish Cup Final on Saturday.
Officers are also at motorway service stations as part of efforts to identify potential witnesses returning to Scotland from Manchester.
Following a meeting of the Scottish government's resilience committee on Tuesday night, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon repeated that there was no intelligence of an increased risk to Scotland - but said people should remain vigilant.
She said her government and Police Scotland had liaised closely with the UK government and police forces in England and Wales.
Ms Sturgeon said: "Police Scotland are providing support to the families of Laura MacIntyre and Eilidh MacLeod from Barra.
"Both families have asked for privacy at this difficult time. Our thoughts go out to them and to the families of everyone who has been caught up in this tragedy.
"Scotland stands together, in solidarity, with the people of Manchester - we will not be divided by those who seek to destroy our way of life."
She earlier condemned the "dreadful atrocity" and said there could be nothing more cowardly than an attack focused on children and young people.
Anyone who has concerns about loved ones should contact the Greater Manchester Police emergency number on 0161 856 9400.
The UK threat level has been has been judged to be severe for nearly three years - which means an attack is considered highly likely.
But in recent months the tempo of counter terrorist activity has been increasing with - on average - an arrest every day.
After the attack in Westminster by Khalid Masood in March, police and security officials have been warning that further attacks were almost inevitable.
But they also believed that those were more likely to be low-tech involving knives or vehicles. The fact that the Manchester attack involved explosives will worry them.
It may not have been at the level of complexity seen in Paris in 2015, when multiple attackers sent from Syria used guns and suicide belts, but it will still have required planning to make an improvised explosive device.
Read more from BBC home affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani
The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, which is meeting in Edinburgh, held a minute's silence and said prayers for the dead and injured in the blast.
Flags were being flown at half mast at the Scottish Parliament and at council headquarters across Scotland.
A vigil was due to be held in George Square in Glasgow for victims of the Manchester attack.
Reacting to the news, Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said: "Terrorism has once again struck our country and, once again, we are faced with a sense of disbelief that someone could be capable of carrying out such an appalling act."
Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale described what happened in Manchester as "a barbaric and sickening attack, targeted at young and vulnerable people enjoying a night at a concert".
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said: "My deepest sympathies are with the victims, and with families who have lost loved ones, as well as those desperately waiting for news." | Six Scots were treated in hospital after the Manchester suicide bomb attack, the country's first minister has confirmed. |
39,107,092 | Fulton wants to give Peter Caruth and John Jeremyn as much time as possible to prove their fitness and a final squad of 18 will be named this weekend.
Ireland will take on Austria, Italy and Ukraine in Pool A.
"It will not be an easy tournament and we will not underestimate the task at hand," said Irish player Eugene Magee.
Ireland need a top-three finish in the eight-team tournament to book a spot in World League 3.
Pool B see France, Poland, Scotland and Wales in action at the east Belfast venue.
Media playback is not supported on this device
Banbridge midfielder Magee will be one of the most experienced members of the squad with 240 caps, but is confident in the combination of youth and experience of the team.
"We have great depth in our squad and the young players coming up through have proven that they are more than capable of playing at senior international level," he added.
"Austria will be the toughest challenge in our group and all teams in Pool B will prove to be a challenge.
"We have had some good preparation games in the lead up to this tournament including games against France, who are top ranked in Pool B.
"It should be a very exciting tournament in Belfast and I'm really looking forward to getting our World Cup qualifying campaign underway in front of a home crowd."
The Hockey World League Round 2 will be played over three men's and three women's events.
Ireland extended squad: David Harte (GK), Jamie Carr (GK), Jonathan Bell, John McKee, Ronan Gormley, Chris Cargo, Matthew Nelson, John Jermyn, Eugene Magee, Peter Caruth, Neal Glassey, Shane O'Donoghue, Sean Murray, Matthew Bell, Callum Robson, Julian Dale, Jamie Wright, Paul Gleghorne, Conor Harte, Jeremy Duncan, Lee Cole, Luke Madeley, Drew Carlisle, Mark Ingram. | Ireland coach Craig Fulton has announced an extended 24-player panel for next month's World League 2 tournament at Stormont in Belfast. |
39,556,052 | The four-storey post office on Westgate Street was considered one of the finest in the UK when built in the 1890s.
But the Grade II-listed building has been empty since tenant BT moved out, even though its lease runs until 2023.
Owner Bamfords Trust failed to sell it for £11.5m in 2013 and will continue collecting rent before re-evaluating when the contract ends.
It is in a prime location, between the Principality Stadium and under-development Central Square, with plans for nearby Cardiff Arms Park and the Brains Brewery site.
"Our client will have income from BT for about five-and-a-half years and, with the area around it being regenerated, they decided to hold on to it," said Matt Phillips of estate agent Knight Frank.
"That will give time for Central Square to develop and they will revisit [the situation]."
BT renovated the 58,000 sq ft (5,000 sq m) premises to grade-A office standard in 1996 before all the staff moved to nearby Stadium House. It is now looking to sub-lease the office.
Mr Phillips believes regeneration work could see the sale value increase and, subject to planning, it could be used as offices, homes or a hotel.
The building illustrates the "staggering" growth of the city in the late 1800s, according to Cardiff University Welsh history professor Bill Jones.
In 1860, its population was 50,000 but this rose to 230,000 by 1920.
Similarly, in 1880, Cardiff's postal service employed 86 people and delivered 2,800 parcels but by 1919, 1,626 people dealt with 60,000 parcels, with two million letters processed every week.
In line with this, ambitious plans for a new headquarters were unveiled in 1893 when the site of a circus was purchased from Lord Bute.
Writing in 1897's Illustrated History of Cardiff, Arthur Mee described it as "one of the finest establishments of the kind in the provinces, and which abundantly shows the confidence that the central authorities show in the future of Cardiff".
Prof Jones said its creation demonstrates Cardiff's rapid growth into a commercial centre because of increased trade through coal and the docks.
"The building oozes confidence, an illustration of how much money was going through Cardiff, creating this idea of it being the metropolis of Wales," he said.
"That London was persuaded to build it, gives an idea of how important Cardiff was becoming, the confidence they had in the future of it."
Prof Jones said the city was "developing rapidly", further illustrated by plans to turn Westgate Street and the Arms Park into a commercial centre.
But times changed with the demise of the coal industry and, by 1983, the post office left the building for a new site at The Hayes.
In the late 1980s, there were plans to turn it into a five-star hotel with a casino in the basement.
But it has been empty since BT moved out with a note in the doorway requesting homeless people stop sleeping there.
While Prof Jones believes it is essential its character is preserved in any future development, he thinks a hotel could be its best use.
"The nature of the tourism market is changing, old buildings are more appealing [than new-build hotels]," he said.
"People like linking in with the history, gaining a sense of place, where they are. And this is an illustration of how Cardiff developed."
Pointing to the redevelopment of the Coal Exchange into a hotel, he said "someone needs to be bold and take a risk" on it. | A historical building could be empty for six years while Cardiff city centre is redeveloped around it. |
37,603,543 | Two goals from Sarah Crilly and a first City goal for young midfielder Sam Kerr ensured the champions remained five points clear of Hibernian Ladies.
Hibs maintained their challenge with a 3-0 win over Celtic.
Elsewhere, Rangers Ladies won 6-0 at Aberdeen, while Stirling University prevailed 3-0 at Spartans.
Goals from Lizzie Arnot, Abigail Harrison and Rachel McLauchlan against Celtic ensured Hibernian kept their slim title hopes alive.
But with only two games left, they must beat Glasgow City at the Excelsior Stadium in a fortnight if they are to have any chance of stopping Scott Booth's side from retaining their title.
The head coach fielded a much changed team to the one which started Thursday's 1-0 Champions League defeat at Swedish side Eskilstuna United, with one eye on this week's return leg.
A number of young City youngsters got their opportunity and they didn't disappoint as City went 2-0 up inside 13 minutes as Crilly converted a Clare Shine cross and Sam Kerr finished brilliantly after a flowing move.
Booth made further changes but City's dominance continued as Crilly scored her second goal 12 minutes in to the second half after being set up by Carla Boyce.
"We are happy with the three points today," Booth said. "The girls were really professional throughout. Our younger players who took part - Hannah Coakley, Sam Kerr, Carla Boyce, Kodie Hay and Brogan Hay - all deserve a special mention for coming in and delivering." | Glasgow City won 3-0 at bottom side Forfar Farmington to edge a step closer to a historic 10th straight Scottish Women's Premier League title. |
38,676,937 | The man, who was driving a Hyundai Tucson, was taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary with minor injuries following the incident on Almondvale Boulevard in Livingston at 10:25.
The crash, also involving a Vauxhall Zafira, happened at the roundabout's entrance to Asda.
The road has now been reopened but one of the cars is still to be removed. | A driver has been taken to hospital after a car overturned following a two-vehicle crash in West Lothian. |
31,150,287 | An online register would include a list of organisations which spend large amounts of cash employing people to influence MSPs.
In 2013, the Scottish government announced plans to legislate on lobbying, but no bill has yet emerged.
Ministers said they remained committed to taking the issue forward.
The cross-party standards committee recommended the register should cover "significant" lobbying activity, which would also take in organisations which have sustained contact with politicians.
They would need to provide information on meetings with MSPs, events and hospitality involving MSPs and details of what the lobbying aimed to achieve.
Healthy democracy
Committee convener Stewart Stevenson, an SNP MSP, said: "Lobbying is a legitimate, valuable and necessary part of a healthy democracy.
"But a parliament founded on openness must seek to make clear who is lobbying, on what issues, and why."
Plans for a register of lobbyists - originally suggested by Labour MSP Neil Findlay - were put forward in the wake of events at Westminster, after three peers were accused of agreeing to carry out parliamentary work for payment.
The Scottish Parliament has remained free of any serious lobbying scandal, apart from an incident in 1999 when the Observer newspaper reported that public relations firm Beattie Media touted for business by offering privileged access to Scottish ministers.
A Scottish government spokesman welcomed the committee's report, adding: "We have repeatedly said that the standards committee's inquiry into lobbying is central to determining the best way forward and we will now take the time to carefully consider its findings.
"The Scottish government remains committed to take forward the development of a Lobbying Transparency Bill." | The names of major political lobbyists in Scotland should be made public to improve transparency, the parliament's standards committee has said. |
34,977,607 | At the same time, the first minister's tone was intriguing as she confirmed, in a news conference at Bute House, that the SNP will vote against a proposed incursion by the RAF into Syria when the Commons debates the issue tomorrow.
I questioned Nicola Sturgeon as to whether there was ever any serious doubt that the SNP would be in the No lobby of the Commons when the vote was taken.
In response, she went out of her way to emphasise that this was a carefully weighed decision, preceded by detailed thought and discussion.
Her tone eschewed political rhetoric. Indeed, she praised the prime minister's efforts to attempt to convince sceptics, indicating that he had made progress in that direction. She summed up the position as "an honest difference of opinion."
So what is driving this approach? Firstly, this "nuanced" view - Nicola Sturgeon used that very adjective - is driven by conviction. Within the SNP leadership, Ms Sturgeon has taken particular pains to stress that it was important to think carefully, particularly in the aftermath of the Paris attacks.
She deliberately left the impression that this was not primarily a decision from pre-existing first principles but rather a careful, pragmatic calculation based on an assessment of all the elements, in Syria and globally.
So Ms Sturgeon accorded weight to the Prime Minister's persuasion but argued that it fell short on two points; the lack of a credible ground force to support air strikes and the lack of planning for post-conflict reconstruction in Syria.
Without those, she argued, air strikes might well make matters worse.
There are of course wider political calculations. There are some who have been adamant against air strikes from the outset. Ms Sturgeon is not in that camp, matching perhaps the troubled thoughts of many in Scotland and the wider UK as they reflect upon Paris.
Thirdly, the standpoint adopted by the SNP has the effect - intentional or otherwise - of contrasting with the uncertainty and disquiet in Labour ranks, reflected in the lack of a common position among Her Majesty's principal Opposition at Westminster. | The substantive issue could scarcely be more serious; potential UK involvement in air strikes against Syria in an effort to countermand a global terrorist threat. |
39,028,810 | Mr Hill, who successfully prosecuted the failed 21/7 bombers, takes over the role on 1 March from David Anderson QC who has held the post since 2011.
The QC said he was "very pleased" to have the opportunity in a time of "heightened concern" about terrorism.
Ms Rudd said he would bring a "wealth of experience and legal expertise".
"With the threat from terrorism continuing to evolve and diversify, it is vital we have robust oversight to ensure our counter-terrorism laws are fair, necessary and proportionate," she said.
Mr Hill said: "As a practising barrister with experience in both counter-terrorism and the rights of citizens facing allegations of serious crime, I look forward to working with participants at all levels and from all sides."
Mr Hill, who has been a QC for nine years and appeared at the inquest into the 7/7 bombings, has experience in both defending and prosecuting complex cases involving terrorism, homicide, violent crime, high value fraud and corporate crime.
As part of his role, Mr Hill will have to produce an annual report on his findings, which the government will lay before Parliament and publish, the Home Office said.
His predecessor, David Anderson, tweeted: "Congratulations to the very well-regarded @MaxHillQC, who will be @terrorwatchdog from 1 March."
The would-be 21/7 bombers targeted three London Underground trains and a bus on 21 July 2005 in an attempted repeat of the 7/7 attacks two weeks earlier - but their devices failed to explode and they were later jailed. | Max Hill QC has been appointed as the government's new independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Home Secretary Amber Rudd has announced. |
39,758,233 | Mali were originally banned from global football in March after the country's Sports Minister Housseïni Amion Guindo had dissolved the executive committee of FEMAFOOT.
Fifa, who do not look kindly on government interference, had said the ban would only be lifted when the FEMAFOOT board was reinstated.
On Saturday, Caf announced that a letter dated 28 April 2017 and signed by Fifa Secretary General Fatma Samoura had confirmed the reinstatement of FEMAFOOT's executive committee, thereby allowing Mali back into the international fold.
Caf say Mali are now clear to participate in the Under 17 Africa Cup of Nations in Gabon from 14 to 28 May 2017.
Ethiopia would have replaced holders Mali at the tournament if the suspension had not been lifted.
Mali will be based in Libreville for the U-17s Nations Cup and are set to play in Group B alongside Angola, Niger and Tanzania.
The hosts Gabon will take on Cameroon, Ghana and Guinea in Port Gentil in Group A. | The Confederation of African Football (Caf) confirmed that the suspension of Mali's Football Association (FEMAFOOT) has been lifted by the sport's world body Fifa. |
40,622,002 | Selby, 30, earned a unanimous points decision at Wembley Arena - his third successful defence.
The 30-year-old told ITV: "I got the win, and I dedicate it to my mother."
Barros inflicted a cut above Selby's right eye early on but otherwise did little to trouble him, and the Argentine was floored in the 12th.
Speaking about the death of his mother, Selby said: "I told my team not to mention anything, turned my phone off, there were emotions going through me before the fight.
"If I told anyone I would have been strapped up in a straitjacket. I got the win, and I dedicate it to my mother."
Selby said at no stage did he consider pulling out of the bout, saying: "No. I'm a fighter and whatever happens I'll still fight."
The Welshman said he was not troubled by the cut he sustained.
"Nothing in the ring fazes me. It's a fight. You're supposed to get cut, and I've got the best cuts man in the business, Chris Sanigar."
Former WBA champion Carl Frampton, who was ringside, remains a possible opponent for Selby's fourth title defence.
"He probably fancies it now, it's a fight I'd love, and all the British fans will love," said Selby.
Frampton tweeted: "Huge respect to @leeselby126 fighting under those circumstances." | Welsh featherweight Lee Selby dedicated his successful world title defence against Jonathan Victor Barros to his mother, who died four days beforehand. |
36,299,835 | Filippo Grandi told the BBC that more nations had to help the "few countries" shouldering the burden, by increasing both funding and resettlement.
He said that, last year, fewer than 1% of 20 million refugees had been resettled in another nation.
More are fleeing conflict and hardship than at any other time in history.
Mr Grandi was speaking to the BBC during a day of special live coverage examining how an age of unprecedented mobility is shaping our world.
The UN refugee agency's special envoy, Angelina Jolie-Pitt, will shortly deliver a keynote speech, in which she will warn about the "fear of uncontrolled migration" and how it has "given space, and a false air of legitimacy, to those who promote a politics of fear and separation".
BBC News World On The Move is a day of coverage dedicated to migration, and the effect it is having on our world.
A range of speakers, including the UNHCR's special envoy Angelina Jolie-Pitt, and former British secret intelligence chief Sir Richard Dearlove, will set out the most important new ideas shaping our thinking on economic development, security and humanitarian assistance.
You can follow the discussion and reaction to it, with live online coverage on the BBC News website.
Latest from day of special BBC coverage
What's the story with migration?
Latin America's affluent capital
Technology lures ex-pats back to Vietnam
'We need to defend mobility online'
Women risking it all to flee Syria
Uganda: "One of the best places to be a refugee"
Mr Grandi, who took up the UN post in January this year, said the fact that Syrians were arriving in East Asia and in Caribbean as refugees showed "how global the phenomenon has become and therefore we have to have global responses".
He said the burden of caring for refugees had so far fallen "on a few countries that host hundreds of thousands of refugees, usually those near wars, near conflicts and a few donors that alone, seven or eight of them, give 80%-90%, of the funding".
"This has to spread more, has to be shared more, otherwise the imbalances will cause knee-jerk reactions, closures, rejections and in the end we will fail in our responsibility to help refugees."
He said that resettlement was "a direction in which we need to move more boldly", given that fewer than 200,000 of 20 million refugees, excluding internally displaced, had been taken in by another country.
"There is an awareness that global displacement, having reached 60 million people, plus all that move for other reasons, economic migrants and so forth, that requires a different kind of investment and therefore it involves everybody," Mr Grandi said.
He admitted a solution would require "a very long and difficult discussion" but added: "There can't simply be a reaction whereby states shut down borders and push people away simply because it won't work."
Save the Children is calling for greater international commitment to ensure child refugees remain in school.
The charity's new report, A New Deal for Refugees, says only one in four refugee children is now enrolled in secondary school.
It is calling on governments and aid agencies to adopt a new policy framework that will ensure no refugee child remains out of school for more than a month.
It is an ambitious target but there is growing concern that this migration crisis is producing a lost generation of children which means conditions for even greater insecurity and poverty.
On Monday, Angelina Jolie-Pitt will call for stronger multilateral action to respond to this migration, which she describes as the challenge of our century.
She will say there is now a "risk of a race to the bottom, with countries competing to be the toughest... despite their international responsibilities".
Are more people on the move?
Migrant crises through history
The number of people seeking asylum in the European Union in 2015 reached 1,255,600 - more than double that of the previous year.
Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans topped the list of applicants, with more than a third going to Germany, Eurostat says.
There has been a sharp decrease in the flow this year, after the main crossing point at the Greece-Macedonia border was closed and a number of European countries blocked the route north with fences.
The signing of an EU-Turkey deal has also cut the number of migrants. Under the agreement, migrants who have arrived illegally in Greece since 20 March are to be sent back to Turkey if they do not apply for asylum or if their claim is rejected.
For each Syrian migrant returned to Turkey, the EU is to take in another Syrian who has made a legitimate request
A note on terminology: The BBC uses the term migrant to refer to all people on the move who have yet to complete the legal process of claiming asylum. This group includes people fleeing war-torn countries such as Syria, who are likely to be granted refugee status, as well as people who are seeking jobs and better lives, who governments are likely to rule are economic migrants. | The UN high commissioner for refugees says the migrants crisis is now a global phenomenon and that simply turning them away "won't work". |
37,733,372 | It was shut on 12 September for a £10m upgrade to make the infrastructure ready for electric trains.
This was part of the wider £2.8bn scheme to electrify the main line from London to south Wales.
Three teams of 200 engineers have worked around the clock, 24 hours a day, to complete the work.
This included installing a power rail in the tunnel roof.
During the tunnel closure, rail replacement buses operated between south Wales and Bristol via Gloucester, and flights took passengers from Cardiff to London City airport.
GWR managing director Mark Hopwood said: "I appreciate how disruptive this work may have been for some and I would like to thank them for your patience during the last six weeks.
"The vital work will modernise the railway between south Wales and London which, once complete, will enable us to deliver more frequent services, more seats, and to reduce journey times."
Alun Cairns, Secretary of State for Wales, said: "I recognise the closure of the tunnel has been a challenge for many of us here, but it's clear the benefits will vastly outweigh this short period." | The Severn Tunnel has reopened after closing for six weeks for rail electrification works. |
33,673,806 | Police were called to the Oaklands pub, Peterlee, at about 00:30 BST on Sunday.
A 33-year-old man suffered a number of wounds and was taken to Middlesbrough's James Cook Hospital where his condition was described as serious but stable.
Steven Robinson, 40, of Elliott Road, Peterlee, was remanded in custody to appear at Durham Crown Court on 10 August. | A man has been charged with attempted murder following a stabbing at a pub in County Durham. |
33,438,174 | Ministers had argued fish farm staff, and their families, may receive threats if the information was released.
Now the Scottish Information Commissioner has said the government failed to comply with environmental information regulations.
Environmentalists described it as a "landmark victory".
Salmon producers are issued with licences which allow seals to be shot to protect fish stocks.
Campaigners have long argued detailed information about the number of seals being shot should be published, to enable consumers to make informed choices about whether or not to buy farmed salmon.
The Scottish Government had said that could put public safety at risk.
But the Information Commissioner did not accept that disclosing the information would represent a substantial threat to public safety.
Don Staniford of the Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture said: "This is a landmark victory.
"Today's decisions are a shot in the arm for freedom of information and a shot across the bows of the bloody Scottish salmon farming industry.
"Now the public will be able to boycott salmon from lethal salmon farms.
"It is shameful that the Scottish salmon farming industry continues to kill seals and shocking that supermarkets still source seal-unfriendly farmed salmon."
The chief executive of the Scottish Salmon Producers' Organisation, Scott Landsburgh, said the number of seals shot by salmon farmers had declined dramatically in recent years.
He added: "We have championed deterrence techniques that are designed to keep seals away from our fish, and shooting is always a last resort."
A Scottish government spokeswoman said: "The Scottish Government has received Decisions 102/2015 and 103/2015 from the Scottish Information Commissioner, which relate to FOI requests by Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture for information about numbers of seals shot and related correspondence and seal killing return forms for salmon farms for 2013 and 2014.
"We are currently considering their terms."
Animal rights campaigners have argued consumers ought to know what food producers are doing.
John Robins, from Save our Seals, told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme: "It's an environmental issue, its an animal welfare - an animal rights issue. It's also a consumer issue, the consumer has the right to know."
Mr Robins added: "All we want to do is compare the information we have with the information that the government gets.
"Then we can tell the public where the seals are being shot, which companies are doing the shooting and the public can decide whether or not they want to pay for bullets to shoot seals." | Campaigners have welcomed a ruling forcing the Scottish government to reveal how many seals are shot each year at individual salmon farms. |
35,101,662 | The dating site for married people was hacked in the summer.
Security expert Graham Cluley blogged he had received "a steady stream of emails" from the site's users worried about the hack.
Mr Cluley advised anyone receiving such a letter to "ignore it".
Ashley Madison - which has the tagline 'Life is short, have an affair' - was hacked in July, and data belonging to its 33 million members was leaked on to the so-called dark web, meaning it was accessible via encrypted browsers.
A month later, police in Canada reported that two individuals associated with the leak of data had taken their own lives.
It has left many members concerned about how their data could be misused.
One such user wrote the following note to Mr Cluley: "I just received a physical postal letter to my house asking for $4,167 [£2,748] or exposed my AM account to people close to me."
In response, Mr Cluley blogged: "I understand how it would be distressing for Ashley Madison members to receive a letter like that through the post, but I'm strongly of the opinion that - in the majority of cases - blackmailers are trying their luck, hoping that a small percentage of those targeted will pay up."
He advised users to ignore the demands but also to share the letter with the authorities.
"If you pay up, there is no guarantee that the blackmailer won't ask for more," he told the BBC.
It has previously been revealed that blackmailers were sending emails to users of the dating site, asking for money.
Mr Cluley told the BBC that he received up to "half a dozen" notes a week from Ashley Madison users who had received such threatening emails but added that the news some were now also getting letters "stepped it up a gear".
He thinks it is unlikely that it is the original hackers who are sending such letters.
"Typically they like to cover their tracks," he said.
"This is more likely to be opportunists who have got their hands on the data."
He believes that hack-mailing will become a common threat in 2016.
"Increasingly we will see hackers stealing companies' databases and then demanding cash to stop them exposing the data on the dark web," Mr Cluley said. | Blackmailers are reportedly sending letters to users of the Ashley Madison dating site, threatening to reveal their membership to friends and family unless they pay money. |
37,022,233 | Conservative Andrew Boff told the BBC it would not be cost-effective to keep paying for patches to make sure the operating system was secure.
Last year, a Freedom of Information request by the tech site Motherboard found 35,000 Met PCs ran XP.
Mr Boff said this had fallen to 27,000, which remained "worrying".
"I have fond memories of XP, I've only just got rid of it myself a few months ago," said Mr Boff.
Microsoft ceased providing free security and technical support to XP users in April 2014.
Currently, the Met is carrying out a plan to upgrade thousands of its computers to Windows 8.1.
Mr Boff said the force should instead upgrade to the latest Windows operating system, Windows 10.
"I'll be asking a question and, depending on the written reply I get, I'll then be questioning the mayor on whether or not they should start a review," he said.
"We spend an awful lot of money on information technology - we've got to get the best bang for our buck."
The Met Police confirmed that, by the end of September, a further 6,000 desktops will be upgraded to Windows 8.1, reducing the overall number of PCs still running XP to 21,000.
It added that those computers still running the older operating system will be covered by an extended support arrangement with Microsoft until April 2017 - at a cost of £1.65m.
The Met said a large amount of "legacy software" meant that the upgrade plan was not as easy as it might be at many other organisations.
"Further plans are being developed to address the remaining XP desktops," it added, "including reducing the overall number used by the organisation, replacing with laptops, tablets and disposing of equipment that cannot support Windows 8.1 and beyond." | A London Assembly member has questioned why the Metropolitan Police are still using Windows XP on tens of thousands of computers. |
34,453,114 | England have the youngest squad in the competition with an average age of 26.2. Each player averages 25 caps, the second fewest in Pool A.
"It's hard to make selections when you have an inexperienced team and bringing more inexperience in," said Lancaster.
England face Uruguay at Etihad Stadium on Saturday in their dead-rubber final group game.
Although they beat Fiji in their opening match, defeats by Wales and Australia meant England became the first host nation in history not to progress beyond the group stages.
Lancaster, who has overseen three successive second-place finishes in the Six Nations prior to the World Cup, admitted he was under pressure.
He said: "I understand that, not having nailed a Six Nations or a Grand Slam and certainly not having nailed this World Cup, there is no room for error.
"Obviously that will all be taken into consideration over the next few weeks."
He also stated that there is a "lifespan" to international coaching, explaining that as the players "tend to stay the same" so there is an "inevitability that the coach will have to change".
He added: "Because you only have a few games each year, it takes longer to build.
Media playback is not supported on this device
"That's not me stating a case for me one way or another. I'll wait and see how I feel and how the RFU feel in the next couple of weeks."
Lancaster, who described the head coach's job as "brilliant but tough", said injuries and "discipline issues" also affected England's preparations for the tournament.
Centre Manu Tuilagi was suspended by England for assaulting police officers, while hooker Dylan Hartley was withdrawn from the squad after being banned for headbutting an opponent in a Premiership game for Northampton.
Lancaster also blamed the absence of several players on the tour of New Zealand in 2014, when "half the squad was in the Premiership final".
He added: "Some of our talented players - 18, 19, 20 years old at the time - learning their spurs and still not even in Premiership. It's hard to bring these players in in one go."
Lancaster said England will regret the 28-25 defeat by Wales in their second group game more than Saturday's 33-13 thumping by Australia, which ended their hopes of reaching the quarter-finals.
"Regret goes back to the Wales game," he said. "We didn't lose the game against Wales because of a lack of creativity.
"We lost because we gave away dumb penalties and Dan Biggar kicked them.
"I had one-to-ones with the boys yesterday. They said Australia were one of the best teams we played against in last four years. We were beaten by the best side."
Bath coach Mike Ford, part of the coaching staff when England lost in the 2011 World Cup quarter-finals, said it is "too late" for the Rugby Football Union to carry out a "root and branch" review.
"Everyone knows what has gone on," said Ford, who has been mentioned as a possible successor to Lancaster.
He is unsure if Lancaster wants to remain in charge, telling BBC Sport: "The interview I saw after the game, he was a broken man.
Media playback is not supported on this device
"The criticism and scrutiny you get as an England coach is very intense.
"You've got to want it 100% and love coaching 100% and be hard-skinned. It does certain things to you, and I don't know if he wants it."
Ford, 49, said he would turn down the England head coach's role if it was offered because he wants to "leave a legacy" at Bath.
He said: "I've got the best job in the world. I can't walk away because I've made commitments to players to stay with me for the next four years.
"I've not won anything yet. In four years' time, in 2019, who knows." | England's inexperience was a factor in their early exit from the World Cup, says coach Stuart Lancaster. |
35,916,777 | Having opposed devolution in 1997 and having lost every one of their Welsh MPs in that year's general election, expectations were low for the Conservatives in the first devolved elections two years later. The party won nine of the 60 seats - a modest total, but a platform from which to rebuild.
The group was led by former MP and Welsh Office Minister Rod Richards, whose pugnacious style enlivened the assembly's early proceedings. But Mr Richards stepped down as leader after being accused of assaulting a young woman. Subsequently cleared, he stood down as an AM in 2002.
His successor, law professor Nick Bourne - these days a peer and UK government minister - set about healing the rifts caused by the devolution referendum.
He saw little point in retaining the party's anti-devolution stance, gradually moving the party (despite some internal resistance) to the position it now holds - in favour of a Welsh parliament with the fiscal powers to reduce taxes and boost enterprise.
So committed was Mr Bourne to his project that he came within a whisker of leading the Conservatives into government in Cardiff Bay in 2007.
Having increased the party's share of the seats to 11 in the 2003 election, the Tories went one better four years later, winning 12.
A three-way coalition with Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats was on the cards - years of behind-the-scenes work meant a joint programme for government was put together relatively easily. But reluctance in the other two parties meant the grand plans eventually came to nothing.
There was a silver lining - Plaid Cymru's decision to form a coalition with Labour instead meant the Conservatives cemented their position as the main opposition party in Cardiff Bay and, with the party's fortunes reviving across the UK, the 2011 assembly election saw the Conservatives win 14 seats, overtaking Plaid as the second largest party.
The gains came at a cost, as Mr Bourne lost his seat on the regional list for Mid and West Wales.
The subsequent leadership contest saw Andrew RT Davies defeat Nick Ramsay; Mr Davies continued Mr Bourne's direction of pushing for greater devolution as a means of implementing a Conservative vision for the economy and public services, albeit in a larger-than-life style than that favoured by his predecessor.
Having enjoyed some success in highlighting perceived failures in Welsh Labour's record on the NHS, and making dramatic gains in last year's general election, the Welsh Conservatives are hoping for further gains in May.
But with relations with Plaid Cymru having cooled considerably since 2007, it seems that getting into government will remain a tall order. | The electoral statistics suggest the Conservatives have enjoyed a significant if gradual improvement in fortunes since 1999 - but the numbers only tell part of what has been a sometimes bumpy and often colourful journey back to the front line of Welsh politics. |
38,073,227 | They warned that Hurricane Otto may have winds of 90 mph (145km/h) when it makes landfall early on Thursday.
At least four people have already died in Panama in severe weather caused by the approach of the storm.
The hurricane is moving west at 2 mph (4km/h) after being almost stationary throughout Tuesday, experts say.
The US National Hurricane Center says Otto is now blowing at about 75 mph (120km/h) as it approaches northern Costa Rica and southern Nicaragua.
The storm is now centred east of Limon, Costa Rica. When it makes landfall early on Thursday its heavy rain is expected to create numerous mudslides. It is then expected to cross over into the Pacific,
"A storm of Otto's expected strength has never made landfall so far south in the Caribbean, and there is no record of any hurricane striking Costa Rica," the Washington Post quoted weather expert Bob Henson as saying.
The paper says that very few hurricanes have formed so late in the season - which ends on 30 November - and that across the Atlantic since 1851 only 35 storms have reached tropical storm intensity on or after 15 November.
Earlier in Panama two people died in a mudslide; a girl drowned in a river and a boy died when a tree fell on a car taking him to school. His mother, who was driving, survived.
About 50 homes were destroyed by mudslides, officials said, and flights were delayed.
The governments of Nicaragua and Costa Rica have issued a hurricane watch from Costa Rica's southern border to the city of Bluefields in Nicaragua.
There is also a likelihood of dangerous surf and rip current conditions over the next few days along the coasts of Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, officials say. | A storm in the Caribbean has been upgraded to a hurricane and is threatening Costa Rica and southern Nicaragua, forecasters say. |
35,526,267 | On Friday the prosecutor mentioned the names of several witnesses, thinking the microphones were off.
The blunder took place during the trial of former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo for crimes against humanity, charges he denies.
The judge said he did not know whether it was "recklessness, superficiality or stupidity" that caused the mistake.
Presiding Judge Cuno Tarfusser added that he did not want to "speculate about something else".
The ICC has ordered a formal inquiry.
What is the International Criminal Court?
The BBC's Anna Holligan in The Hague reports that the incident was relayed to the public gallery and the recordings have since spread on social media, and even appeared on YouTube.
Our correspondent adds that protecting witnesses is one of the key promises of the ICC, and the court goes to great lengths to shield the identities of sensitive witnesses from the public by pixellating their faces and disguising their voices.
In some cases, witnesses are even moved to a new country and given a new identity.
This is the highest profile trial yet for the ICC, which has only convicted two people, both Congolese warlords, since its establishment in 2002.
Mr Gbagbo, 70, and ex-militia leader Charles Ble Goude, 44, deny murder, rape, attempted murder and persecution in the violence after Ivory Coast's election in 2010.
Mr Gbagbo sparked a crisis in Ivory Coast after he refused to step down following his loss to Alassane Ouattara in the presidential vote.
There were bloody clashes between rival forces over five months in 2010 and 2011.
Some 3,000 people were killed.
At the start of the trial the prosecution said it planned to bring forward 138 witnesses.
The trial is expected to last three to four years.
Who is Laurent Gbagbo?
Seven things to know about Ivory Coast | The International Criminal Court (ICC) has apologised after the public gallery heard the names of protected witnesses. |
32,254,314 | The DUP is one of two Northern Ireland parties running more than five candidates but have no women contesting seats.
The DUP has 16 candidates and the other party - UKIP - has 10.
Just under 25% of Northern Ireland candidates in this year's election are women. One constituency - West Belfast - has nine all male candidates.
Only one has more female candidates that men - Fermanagh and South Tyrone. It has three women contesting the constituency and two men.
"We [the DUP] have a particular situation because we have eight incumbent MPs and they are all male and we are not going to turn around and say to them 'we think you should go because you're not female'," Ms Foster said.
"And of course, unionism in general is quite conservative with a small 'c' in terms of women coming forward and getting involved in political life.
"What we need to to do is encourage more women to become involved in political life right across Northern Ireland."
Judith Cochrane, of Alliance, said her party already had "a culture of inclusivity that automatically leads to diversity".
"We haven't needed to put quotas in place or anything like that, we've had good strong female role models like my colleague Naomi Long," she said.
"When I served on Castlereagh council we had four councillors at the time, three of whom were female and that was without needing any quota system.
"We have some very bright and able women out there who often hold back and they just need that bit of encouragement."
Other parties with no women candidates are Cannabis is Safer than Alcohol, which is contesting four seats and People Before Profit which has one candidates. | DUP assembly member Arlene Foster has defended her party over its lack of female general election candidates. |
20,825,158 | The Police Federation will appoint an independent figure in the new year to carry out the inquiry.
It follows controversy over officers in the West Midlands allegedly campaigning against Tory MP Andrew Mitchell.
He quit as chief whip after it was alleged he called Downing Street police "plebs", which he denies.
Mr Mitchell has admitted swearing at officers during the incident in September, but denies using the word "plebs" during angry exchanges.
He resigned from the government in October, following several weeks of criticism in the media.
Police Federation chairman Paul McKeever has acknowledged concerns that it "stoked up" the incident.
Earlier this week he said he would apologise to the MP if it was shown he had been wrongly accused of calling officers the name over their refusal to let him ride his bike through the gates.
By Iain WatsonPolitical correspondent, BBC News
The incoming chairman of the Police Federation, Steve Williams, clearly wants to limit the force of any backlash from the Andrew Mitchell affair.
He was privately critical of actions taken by the West Midlands Police Federation before Mr Mitchell resigned as the Conservative chief whip.
He felt they had campaigned in an overtly personal and political way - some sporting t-shirts emblazoned with the word 'pleb.'
He thinks this damaged the federation's credibility with government.
The problem is that while he disagreed with their actions, the West Midlands federation was well within its rights to do this, as all 43 Federations in each of England and Wales's police forces in effect have autonomy.
Mr Williams has to argue against cuts of more than 20% to police budgets -and he has a fight on his hands to try to preserve some of the pay and conditions of his members. So he made his announcement today to try to get on the front foot and to signal a new start in relations between government and rank and file officers.
Mr McKeever has handed control to his successor-elect Steve Williams just over a month before he is officially due to leave the role, due to "pre-existing leave arrangements", the Federation said.
Announcing the review, Mr Williams said: "Recent events have shown that there are issues around the way the Police Federation nationally is able to lead and co-ordinate at a national, regional and local level," he said in a statement.
"As we enter a new era, my first act as chairman is to establish this independent panel to ensure that we as the Federation continue to represent the interests of our members in the most effective and efficient way."
Local branches organised protests by members wearing "PC Pleb" T-shirts and some demanded Mr Mitchell's sacking.
BBC political correspondent Robin Brant said it appeared the federation was conceding that involvement of some of its officers in what looked like an "anti-Mitchell" campaign had damaged its reputation and trust.
It came as one of the country's most senior police representatives denied the ongoing investigation into the row has exposed "distrust" between the police and politicians.
Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, rejected criticisms that the relationship was worsening.
Earlier this week, Met commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe publicly backed the two original officers who were present during the altercation in Downing Street.
Sources close to Mr Mitchell have said there has also been what is described as an "unsatisfactory" exchange of letters between the MP and the commissioner, which has reportedly further eroded the MP's confidence.
Sir Hugh said: "There's always been, and there should be, a healthy tension between politicians and the police service.
"Chief constables are operationally independent; they have to interpret government policy and deliver it fairly and impartially and then be held to account and I don't think this is prima facie evidence of a growing distrust."
Some 30 officers are working on the Metropolitan Police investigation into what happened and two men have been arrested so far.
A Diplomatic Protection Squad officer aged 52 was arrested last Saturday on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
Earlier this week Channel 4 News alleged that an officer had sent an email purporting to be from a member of the public who had witnessed the row.
A 23-year-old man, who was not a member of police staff, was also arrested last week on "on suspicion of intentionally encouraging or assisting an offence of misconduct in a public office". He was released on bail. | The body representing rank-and-file police officers has launched a review into issues raised by its handling of the "plebgate" row. |
41,019,180 | Six teams changed their entire starting XI from their preceding league match, including Premier League side Brighton.
Leicester's win at Sheffield United attracted 11,280 fans in a stadium with a capacity of 32,702.
"It's a top game with a Premier League team but supporters haven't come," said ex-Everton midfielder Leon Osman.
He told BBC Radio 5 live: "Maybe the changes devalue the competition in that way."
The average attendance for second round games so far has been 9,038, higher than last season's 8,713. There are six more fixtures to be played on Wednesday night, all involving Premier League sides.
There has also been criticism that the third-round draw for the competition is being held in Beijing, China on Thursday - at 04:15 BST.
Previous draws for this season's competition have been beset by problems - including teams being drawn twice and confusion around home and away ties.
Osman praised manager Tony Pulis for only making four changes to his West Brom side, who have won both their games in the Premier League this season. The Baggies beat League Two team Accrington 3-1.
Premier League side Watford were the highest-profile casualties, losing 3-2 at Bristol City after making six changes to their starting side.
Aston Villa made 11 changes but beat an also entirely changed Wigan side 4-1, while Doncaster of League One beat a Hull side also completely changed from the weekend's line-up.
Osman said: "These cup competitions offer a great opportunity and it's good to see Tony Pulis taking it really seriously. Leicester made lots of changes but still put out a really strong outfit. The problem comes when you make changes and lose the game."
Baggies boss Pulis said: "We've taken the competition seriously. It gives us a chance to get to Wembley. I've been fortunate to take Stoke there and it would be lovely to do that with West Brom."
Having raised the risk of the competition feeling devalued, Osman conceded that it did allow players on the fringes of the first team to get some playing time.
"It's an obvious opportunity for managers to give their squad a game," he said. "These players are determined and desperate to show what they can do and possibly take it more seriously than those in the first team would do".
Thomas Hollern: They are all squad players, the only thing disrespectful is calling them weak. They are in the squad and have the right to play.
Gavin Witt: Give Champions League places to FA Cup & EFL Cup winners rather than clubs happy to play for 4th - then see how seriously teams take the cups.
Simon Turner: Reality of the modern game - an opportunity to rest the regular first-teamers and give useful competitive playing time to others.
Richard Milbourne: It's disrespectful to the players in a team's squad, suggesting they're not good enough to play.
Baggies fan in the US: Why risk injury to your best players? It also gives the youngsters a good run out.
Darrell Kerrison: Disrespectful to make team changes? How about holding the draw at 4am in China? That's disrespectful to the competition.
Mike Walker: The problem with the League Cup is not the players changing but the continual name change!
Mark Farley: Why ask a club to name a squad at the start of season if they can't utilise it? It's good management.
Andrew Neil: Most of the 'superstars' probably started their club career as a starter in an EFL Cup game or similar. It helps develop talent.
Of the seven Premier League sides in action Watford were the only ones to fall, going down 3-2 at home to Championship side Bristol City - despite making only six changes compared to the visitors' nine.
Newly promoted Brighton edged past League Two's Barnet 1-0, while Bournemouth came from behind to win 2-1 at Birmingham and Crystal Palace won by the same scoreline against an Ipswich side with an average age of under 20.
There were no such problems for 2015-16 Premier League champions Leicester, who triumphed 4-1 at Sheffield United, a result matched by Swansea against MK Dons, while a strong West Brom line-up were too strong for fourth-tier Accrington, winning 3-1 at the Crown Ground.
One of the shocks of the evening came at Craven Cottage where Championship side Fulham were beaten 1-0 by League One's Bristol Rovers, with Ellis Harrison scoring the winner.
Kemar Roofe hit a hat-trick for Leeds in their 5-1 win over Newport County and Aston Villa found the net four times for the second successive game, beating Wigan 4-1.
Burton overcame Cardiff 2-1 to inflict the first defeat of the season on the Championship leaders, while both Bolton boss Phil Parkinson and Sheffield Wednesday manager Carlos Carvalhal were sent off during Wanderers' 3-2 win. | There were 274 changes made by teams across 19 matches in Tuesday's second round EFL Cup ties - a trend described as "devaluing" the competition. |
40,128,512 | A second boy suffered burns and a suspected broken arm after being injured at a railway depot in the West Midlands.
The two 13-year-olds were among four children said to be playing near tracks next to parkland in Wednesbury, West Midlands Ambulance Service said.
British Transport Police said they were injured in an out-of-bounds area.
See more stories from across Birmingham and the Black Country here
The incident happened at 11:45 BST on Thursday. Both injured boys were taken to Birmingham Children's Hospital, one by air ambulance.
British Transport Police said it is understood one boy was on the site when electricity arced from an overhead line and struck one side of his body.
They said the second injured boy was with him at the time.
Insp Jacqui Wilson said: "We are doing all we can to understand exactly what led to them becoming injured at the depot but what we do know is that they were inside the boundary of the site - an area out of bounds to the public - when it happened."
London Midland said it happened near the railway between Bescot Stadium in Walsall and Tame Bridge Parkway. | A teenage boy electrocuted near a railway line has suffered "life-changing" injuries, police said. |
26,981,451 | This is the full statement to the inquests read by his daughter, Amy McGlone, on behalf of his widow Irene McGlone:
Irene McGlone will say as follows on behalf of the McGlone family:
Alan McGlone was born in 1960 into a loving family. Alan was the fourth of five brothers. At the age of eight Alan lost his Dad to cancer.
Alan attended the local junior school where he played football. While Alan was at the school he had a dog called 'Lucky' who would walk him to and from school each day. The dog would know what time to go back to the school to meet him at the end of the day.
Not so lucky
Lucky only had one ear, one eye and three and a half legs, so I doubt that he was very lucky at all.
By the age of 11, Alan was playing table tennis and was coached and sponsored by Fred Perry. Alan played for the North West.
He had lots of interests, but his main ones were mechanics, animals and sport.
Profiles of all those who died
I met Alan when I was 12 years old as we went to the same comprehensive school. I always thought I was Alan's first love until he told me Liverpool Football Club was.
Before we got married, my Mum called Alan 'Pounds-worth' as he had a 50cc moped and all you could fit in the tank was a pound.
We were married in September 1982, the day before I was 21 and two days before Alan was 22. We moved into our first home together the same year. It was a one-bedroom flat, but it was our home and we loved it.
In February, 1984, our first baby was born, a baby girl. I will never forget the look of amazement on Alan's face.
'Loved being a Dad'
He loved being a Dad and it wasn't long before Amy was dressing in jeans and a jumper to go and help her daddy fix cars.
In 1986, I was pregnant again so we moved out of our flat into a two-bedroom house. Claire was born in December, 1986. Again, the look on Alan's face was unforgettable.
Alan called Claire 'Tyson' straight away because she weighed just on 9 lbs, born with a big neck and cheeks. Every night Alan would bath the two girls, put them to bed and read them a story.
This was their time together. Our family was now complete and we had been blessed with two beautiful daughters.
At the side of our house were loads of trees with lots of birds' nests in them. One morning, when Alan got up early for work, he saw a falcon sitting on the back fence so he opened a tin of ham and threw it to the falcon.
'Fed our tea to a falcon'
At work that day, Alan made a glove with suede and leather. When Alan came home, he fed the falcon steak, which was supposed to have been for our tea.
That same afternoon, I found a nest of young birds just outside the back door, so when Alan came home, he put the birds in the outside electricity cupboard.
He would get up every few hours to feed the birds warm milk and bread until they could fly.
Alan worked full time for a firm called JJ Smiths, repairing woodworking machinery. He was there about 18 months and he loved working there.
Every year we would holiday with both our families. For one week in June, we would go to Butlins and every August we went to Tenby with my sister, brother-in-law and niece.
It was on our last holiday one night when Alan was sitting just looking at his two girls, so I asked Alan what was wrong? When he turned to me crying, I asked why he was crying, and he said, 'I would have loved my Dad to have seen my two girls grow up'.
The sad thing is, he never got to see his own girls grow up and never got to see his beautiful grandchildren.
'Wake from this nightmare'
On 15 April, 1989, it was a lovely sunny Saturday and the girls had been playing skipping with their Dad in the path before he left for the match. We were all looking forward to a party later that night at my sister's house as it was her wedding anniversary.
Due to the events of the day, we didn't leave the house. That night I had to put the girls to bed, kiss them good night and as I was walking out of their room, Amy sat up and said, 'Mummy, will you tell Daddy to come in and wake us up when he gets home?'
I am still waiting to wake my girls up out of this nightmare and send their Daddy in to them.
Alan, we love and miss you so much. | A father-of-two and factory worker from Kirkby, Alan McGlone travelled by car with friends David Roberts and Stephen Clark, who both survived, and Joseph Clark, who also died in the tragedy. |
39,526,643 | Khalid Baqa, 52, from Barking, was on a flight from Lahore, to Heathrow in February when it was diverted due to an unrelated "disruptive passenger".
Baqa had failed to tell his car insurer about penalty points when he renewed his policy, magistrates heard.
He was given a conditional discharge.
Baqa, an unemployed former revenue officer at Hackney Borough Council, was jailed for two years in 2013 for possession and dissemination of terrorist material.
At the time of the diversion on 7 February, Essex Police said the incident was "not believed to be a hijack situation or terror matter", and there had been reports of a disruptive passenger on board.
However, Pakistan International Airlines said in a statement that UK authorities had received "some vague security threat through an anonymous phone call" regarding the flight.
He was due to have been arrested anyway when the flight arrived at Heathrow before it was diverted, police said at the time.
No information about the background to Baqa's arrest or whether he was linked to the flight diversion was given at Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court on Thursday.
The court heard he had been arrested and charged for failing to tell car insurers Liverpool Victoria about three penalty points he received in 2015 for going through a red light when he renewed his policy.
Prosecutor Fabio Vitiello told the court: "The premium would have been £175 higher, therefore the prosecution case is that by not disclosing the conviction he made a benefit for himself by not paying the higher price."
Baqa, of Priory Road, was ordered to pay £115 in costs and victim surcharge after being convicted of fraud by failure to disclose information. | A man arrested when the flight he was on was diverted to Stansted Airport and escorted by fighter jets has been convicted of insurance fraud amounting to just £175. |
40,436,177 | Canada Post said it would not resume deliveries at several addresses in East Vancouver "until such time as the hazard no longer exists".
Canuck is said to have drawn blood after biting a letter carrier.
The bird is known for riding the city's SkyTrain and stealing shiny objects, including a knife from a crime scene.
Canada Post spokeswoman Darcia Kmet told the BBC: "Unfortunately, our employees have been attacked and injured by a crow in that Vancouver neighbourhood while attempting to deliver the mail.
"Regular mail delivery was suspended to three homes due to it being unsafe for our employees.
"We are monitoring the situation when delivering the mail to other residents on the street. If our employees believe it is safe to deliver to those three addresses, they do so."
Shawn Bergman, who maintains the Facebook group, Canuck and I, which chronicles the crow's exploits, said the bird had repeatedly attacked a Canada Post worker, causing broken skin and bleeding.
Shortly afterwards letters stopped arriving at his home and two adjacent properties.
He wrote on the Facebook group that it has been about two months since he or his neighbours received any mail.
"With the neighbours getting upset, there have been both subtle and not so subtle threats against Canuck's safety," he writes.
Mr Bergman received a response from Canada Post that said: "We are safeguarding our employees by not delivering to areas where the crow has been known to attack until such time as the hazard no longer exists."
Canuck's anti-social behaviour has even stooped to crime-scene tampering.
In May 2016 he swooped to steal a blade that had allegedly just been used to threaten police officers.
One of the constables gave chase and the bird dropped the vital piece of evidence before making his getaway.
Crow attacks are not uncommon in Vancouver, with one online database mapping the birds' assaults. | Postal deliveries have been suspended in part of a Canadian city after a well-known crow called Canuck attacked a mailman. |
35,049,374 | Slade is out for at least four months after breaking his leg at Wasps.
"Ian Whitten and Sam Hill have been fighting it out for one centre spot really, now they're going to get to fight it out for two," Baxter said.
"We've got another international centre in Michele Campagnaro waiting in the wings, Jack Nowell's an international player who can play at centre."
Hill is a former England Under-20 international who came through Exeter's academy ranks with Slade, while Whitten, who has won two Ireland caps, is in his fourth season at Sandy Park.
"Sam Hill in the media is portrayed as a bit of a straight up the middle type of centre, but actually when you watch the quality of his passing he's got good skills in that department," Baxter said.
"Ian Whitten is a better all-round player than he gets credit for, I think often what you find is that when Henry's in the team those other two lads are filling a certain role and so as a combination they get different things.
"I'm not unduly concerned with the changes we have to make, they bring different strengths and characteristics.
"Are they as good kickers with the distance Henry can put on the ball? No, but then there are only one or two players in the Premiership who can kick a ball like Henry Slade." | Exeter will be able to cope without injured England centre Henry Slade, says Chiefs head coach Rob Baxter. |
40,000,750 | The Japanese team behind the gravity-breaking experiment on the International Space Station (ISS) say it shows that transporting the seeds of life away from Earth is feasible.
Sperm banks could even be made on the Moon as a back-up for Earth disasters, they told a leading science journal.
It is unclear if this will ever help humans populate space, however.
Sustaining life in space is challenging to say the least.
On the ISS, radiation is more than 100 times higher than on Earth. The average daily dose of 0.5mSv from the cosmic rays is enough to damage the DNA code inside living cells, including sperm.
Microgravity also does strange things to sperm.
In 1988, German researchers sent a sample of bull semen into orbit on a rocket and discovered that sperm were able to swim much faster in low gravity, although it was not clear whether this gave a fertility advantage.
Another space test showed fish eggs could be fertilised and develop normally during a 15-day orbital flight, suggesting a brief trip into space might not be too harmful for reproduction - at least for vertebrates.
The freeze-dried mouse sperm samples were stored on the space station for nine months before being sent back down to Earth and thawed at room temperature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports.
Although sperm DNA was slightly damaged by the trip, it still did the job of fertilising mouse eggs and creating apparently healthy "space pups".
Fertilisation and birth rates were similar to healthy "ground control" mice.
The space pups had only minor differences in their genetic code and grew to adulthood. A select few were allowed to mate and became mums and dads themselves.
The researchers, Sayaka Wakayama and colleagues from the University of Yamanashi, suspect some of the sperm DNA damage is repaired by the egg once it has been fertilised.
"If sperm samples are to be preserved for longer periods in space, then it is likely that DNA damage will increase and exceed the limit of the [egg] oocyte's capacity for repair.
"If the DNA damage occurring during long-term preservation is found to have a significant effect on offspring, we will need to develop methods to protect sperm samples against space radiation, such as an ice shield," they said.
Once they've cracked that, they can set their sights on the Moon sperm banks.
"Underground storage on the Moon, such as in lava tubes, could be among the best places for prolonged or permanent sperm preservation because of their very low temperatures, protection from space radiation by thick bedrock layers, and complete isolation from any disasters on Earth," the scientists say.
But that still leaves the massive question of whether mammals, including us humans, can permanently live and procreate in space.
Mouse and human studies so far suggest perhaps not.
Prof Joseph Tash, a Nasa-supported physiologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center, said although the latest findings were interesting, the ISS was a somewhat sheltered environment to use as the test zone for space.
"The ISS orbit is within the protection of the Van Allen radiation belt - the magnetic field that diverts most high energy radiation particles from hitting the earth or the ISS.
He said the actual risk of radiation damage at the Moon and beyond would be much higher.
"Ovaries and testes are the most sensitive organs to both acute and chronic radiation exposure."
He said the feasibility of mammalian reproduction in space beyond the Van Allen belt would depend on the creation of "radiation-hardened" facilities that could protect sperm, eggs and embryos from harm.
"Given the nine month gestation for humans, the pregnant mother would also need to be protected by such a facility. So it presents very real habitat, medical, social, and psychological questions that need to be addressed as well."
Follow Michelle on Twitter | Healthy baby mice have been born using freeze-dried sperm stored in the near-weightless environment of space. |
40,568,087 | Burke joined Leicestershire on a season-long loan deal in January, but his only appearance came against Loughborough University in March.
In 13 first-class games for Somerset and Surrey, the 26-year-old has scored 274 runs and taken 23 wickets at an average of 30.60.
"I have thoroughly enjoyed my career at Surrey," he told the club website. | Surrey all-rounder James Burke has left the county in order "to further his career elsewhere." |
31,040,933 | The Met Office says cold weather will continue throughout Thursday and it will remain very cold until the beginning of next week.
The wintry weather gave snowboarders a chance to take to the heights of Divis Mountain in Belfast.
Many parts of Belfast were affected by the snow, particularly those on higher ground. Stevie Anderson's picture shows Woodvale Park at first light on Thursday morning.
The winter sun rises over the Glenshane Pass, as BBC cameraman Peter Jones captured this morning.
In Ballynure, Country Antrim, the snow made driving conditions difficult when several inches fell overnight.
Many parts of east Antrim experienced heavy snow and disruption, but it also gave Bob Farmbrough the opportunity to photograph the snow lying on the trees overlooking Carrickfergus.
Fields in Boardmills, County Down, were also covered with snow, as Dennis Sheridan's picture shows.
The snow also covered the peaks of the Mourne mountains, as this picture by Lauren Harte shows, taken from Newcastle.
BBC News reporter Julian Fowler took this image while filming, showing parts of the Clogher Valley in County Tyrone covered with snow.
The Met Office issued an amber weather warning for snow, which started falling on Wednesday evening. This picture by Philip Palmer was taken just under Dromore viaduct in County Down. | Snow has brought fresh disruption to many parts of Northern Ireland, with a number of Translink bus services affected and many schools closed. |
37,645,119 | And every day someone tells her to "slow down".
It is certainly true that every day since the EU referendum the question is asked when, or if, the SNP's call for Indyref2 - as it's known - might happen.
Follow reaction to news of a second independence referendum bill
With many commentators (myself included) concluding that the cautious, canny Sturgeon will not rush into a vote she knows she might lose.
Today Ms Sturgeon made very clear that she is prepared to trigger a second referendum if she feels that is the only way to protect Scotland from what she calls a "hard Brexit imposed by the hard right of the Tory party".
She was angered by what she heard from the Prime Minister at the Tory conference last week.
Not only did she disagree with what appeared to be the PM's vision for Brexit she was infuriated by language that seemed to suggest the PM would not take seriously the concerns of the Scottish Government.
When Theresa May came to Edinburgh shortly after becoming PM she promised the Scottish government would be "fully engaged" in Brexit discussions.
But none of those discussions have yet taken place and Ms Sturgeon fears she will not be listened to when they do.
So, her speech to the SNP conference in Glasgow today was really a clear message to Mrs May in Downing Street. A warning that if Scottish concerns are not seriously considered thenIindyref2 could be on the cards.
"If you think for one second I'm not serious about doing what it takes to protect Scotland's interests, then think again" is a pretty unequivocal message.
Ms Sturgeon neither promised nor threatened that she would definitely do it.
She still faces the significant problems.
Opinion polls suggest support for Scottish independence has barely increased since the EU referendum.
And the economic circumstances, since the fall in the price of oil, are less favourable than they were in 2014.
The SNP leader acknowledged today that if they do go for another vote the case for independence will have to be made and won. It, she also made clear, it is still an option
Today she told her party - and the UK government - in no uncertain terms that she has not ruled out the idea of another referendum and she is getting ready to go for it if she feels the time is right. | Nicola Sturgeon told the SNP conference that not a day passes without someone telling her to "hurry up" with a second referendum on Scottish independence. |
25,876,309 | Many villagers are already cut off by floods and Somerset County Council said its priority was to keep people safe.
Sedgemoor District Council has made the same announcement so it can also mobilise extra support.
The area's MP said there was a risk of catastrophic flooding unless action was taken and he asked for government help.
A major incident is declared where there is a situation which could not be dealt with easily by the local council and could threaten lives, disrupt the community or damage property.
It means the local authority can organise emergency evacuations, set up rest centres and mobilise voluntary organisations.
He said there were fears that rain at the weekend could cause problems for Langport and Westonzoyland.
The Met Office has issued an amber warning for rain on Sunday saying people living on the Somerset Levels should "be prepared for further flooding".
Somerset County Council said its decision to declare a major incident followed the forecasts of further heavy rain, coupled with high spring tides next week.
Ian Liddell-Grainger, the Conservative MP for Bridgwater, said the county faced a "very difficult weekend".
He has written to Prime Minster David Cameron and Communities Secretary Eric Pickles asking for help.
"There is a very real risk of catastrophic flooding on a scale not seen for more than a century unless we act swiftly and decisively," he said.
"I have told the prime minister we need extra pumping capacity brought here as soon as possible and we may also need help from the military if the situation progresses in the way it appears to be going."
Deputy chief executive of Somerset County Council Pat Flaherty said: "Our priority has to be to keep people safe.
"We are doing everything we can to do this and we believe that declaring a major incident shows just how urgent the situation is for many of our residents and communities."
The council said it will continue its current help and support for people affected by flooding, including providing a boat service for the cut-off community of Muchelney and Thorney.
It will also be providing a pontoon bridge at Langport and supporting farmers providing a vital tractor service to communities.
Kerry Rickards, of Sedgemoor District Council, said: "Several Sedgemoor communities have been severely affected by the floodwaters for some weeks now.
"With significant rainfall expected over the coming days we feel this situation needs to be escalated as a major incident."
Sedgemoor District Council said it had dealt with two major incidents before, one in 2011 when a river wall partially collapsed in Bridgwater, leading to the evacuation of nearby homes and 19 people spending the night in emergency accommodation.
It said the second incident was in 2012 when homes were evacuated in Burnham-on-Sea after police found highly-explosive chemicals in a man's shed.
For this incident, it has provided portable toilets where septic tanks have overflowed and delivered extra sandbags on top of the 3,000 already given out.
The village of Muchelney in south Somerset has been cut off for almost a month.
A pontoon has been built there to help villagers board a boat which has been used for transport along flooded roads. | A "major incident" has been declared for all areas affected by flooding in Somerset following warnings of further heavy rain. |
17,427,125 | The council is due to vote later this week on a US motion calling for a probe into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka as its civil war ended in 2009.
Both government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels have been accused of abuses.
Mr Singh has come under pressure from India's Tamil community to support the resolution.
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party, representing Tamils in southern India, had threatened to pull out of the coalition led by Mr Singh's Congress party if India did not vote in favour.
Speaking in parliament, Mr Singh said: "We are inclined to vote in favour of the resolution if the resolution will cover our objectives, namely the achievement of a future for the Tamil community in Sri Lanka that is based on equality, dignity, justice and self respect."
He said India would study the final text of the draft resolution once it had been received.
The Sri Lankan government commissioned its own investigation into the war last year and the UN draft resolution calls on the government to implement its recommendations.
The Sri Lankan Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) cleared the military of allegations that it deliberately attacked civilians. It said that there were some violations by troops, but only at an individual level.
But another report commissioned by the UN secretary general reached a different conclusion, saying that allegations of serious rights violations were "credible" on both sides.
Human rights groups estimate that up to 40,000 civilians were killed in the final months of the war. The government recently released its own estimate, concluding that about 9,000 people perished during that period. | Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said India is "inclined" to vote in favour of a resolution against Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council. |
35,904,923 | Last year's runner-up, who went off as 15-8 joint favourite, dominated from a long way out and, once they turned for home, jockey Victor Espinoza's mount moved clear.
The 2014 US Horse of the Year went on to triumph by four lengths, despite Espinoza's saddle slipping back.
It is a first win in the race for Espinoza and trainer Art Sherman.
Mubtaahij (16-1) took second for jockey Christophe Soumillon and trainer Mike de Kock, with Hoppertunity (25-1) third for trainer Bob Baffert.
It was a third win in three starts for California Chrome since injury ruled him out of a planned visit to Royal Ascot last summer.
Sherman said: "He's got such a fan club in Dubai, it's great, he got a standing ovation and it made me feel really good.
"I love this place, it's my third time back. He's a great horse, what can you say? It's the dream of a lifetime for me, it doesn't get better.
"I don't think he'll go to England, we'll give him 30 days at the farm to let him unwind and the ultimate goal is the Breeders' Cup [Classic]." | California Chrome made it look easy to win the world's richest horse race, the £6.8m Dubai World Cup. |
40,188,974 | The former England international started his career at Bradford Bulls and had a 10-year stint at Warrington before joining Widnes in 2015.
The 32-year-old has played a number of different positions and has featured in 272 games so far.
"I've struggled with injuries, so my boots are going up at the end of the year," he told the club website.
"All I've ever wanted to do is play rugby, so I'm going to enjoy my last year." | Widnes Vikings centre Chris Bridge has announced that he will retire at the end of the Super League season. |
24,520,888 | The "preventative raid" targeted workers at a vegetable warehouse, which was attacked by demonstrators on Sunday, Russian news agencies reported.
Angry protesters overran the market searching for migrant workers.
The rioting began during a protest over the killing of an ethnic Russian man on Thursday, allegedly by a Muslim migrant from the North Caucasus.
Ethnic Russian Yegor Shcherbakov, 25, was killed in front of his girlfriend in the capital's Biryulyovo district.
By Steve RosenbergBBC News, Moscow
These figures are astonishing: more than 1,200 migrant workers detained at a wholesale vegetable market.
It shows how worried the Russian authorities are by Sunday's explosion of anger on the streets of Moscow; the police clearly want to convince Muscovites they take the grievances of local residents seriously and will crack down hard on illegal migrant workers.
Hence Monday's powerful images on Russian TV of detainees lined up against a fence with their hands tied behind their backs.
But dramatic police raids will do little to ease the tension that is growing in parts of the Russian capital between ethnic Russians, and people from the Caucasus region and some former Soviet republics.
Police have released a security camera photo of the suspect, but have not identified him.
Media said the image suggested the man was of "non-Slavic appearance", leading nationalists to conclude the killer was a Muslim migrant from the Russian North Caucasus.
Some 380 people were detained during the rioting that began on Sunday, but most have been released without charge.
It is unclear what charges, if any, those detained in Monday's raid against migrants in the vegetable warehouse would face, RIA Novosti reported. Police were quoted as saying that they were investigating "involvement in criminal activity", without elaborating.
Immigration and internal migration were among the main issues in Moscow's recent mayoral election, which was won by Sergei Sobyanin.
The BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Moscow says the violence reflects Russian nationalism, and the growing tension between ethnic Russians and migrants from the Caucasus region and from former Soviet republics. | Police in Russia have arrested more than 1,200 people in a raid targeting migrants after major riots in Moscow. |
40,159,433 | Keane Wallis-Bennett died in April 2014 when a modesty wall in the PE changing room at Liberton High School fell on top of her.
A police investigation found no-one would face criminal charges.
However, it was decided an inquiry would be held to establish the full circumstances surrounding the incident.
In her opening remarks, Sheriff Principal Mhairi Stephen said the two-week inquiry would focus on why the wall collapsed, why it collapsed when it did and the property maintenance regime at the school.
She said the hearing came at a time of particular poignancy as many of Keane's classmates had recently been taking exams and were preparing to make their way in life.
Sheriff Principal Stephen added: "The whole community was totally shocked by Keane's death. A young woman who attended school on 1 April, 2014, and did not return to her family.
"School should be a safe place for people."
The inquiry heard that pupils had leaned on the wall while changing their shoes when it it collapsed on top of Keane.
In evidence read out to the court, one described fellow pupils' efforts to lift the wall but said it was too heavy.
Another witness, a Det Ch Insp Keith Hardie, was asked if on 1 April - the day of the incident - he could answer why the wall fell.
He replied: "No."
In a statement, one girl told how PE teacher Nicole Christie must have heard the bang as the wall fell and told them to leave.
The teacher then went over to Keane and told her: "It's alright. The ambulance is coming."
Other girls told of pupils pushing or shoving against the wall and one girl said the wall moved forwards or backwards before returning to its original position.
Another told of a "scraping or grinding noise" and how she looked down and saw "a bit of a gap" about a centimetre wide at the bottom.
Another pupil said a girl would put her back against the shower wall and her feet on the modesty wall and try to walk up it, while another tried to climb up the wall two or three times. But she stopped when she saw the wall move as she had "got a fright"and never did it again. | A fatal accident inquiry into the death of a 12-year-old girl who died when a school wall collapsed has begun in Edinburgh. |
22,855,911 | The museum said 70% of tickets have been sold for the live screening in the UK and Ireland on 18 June.
The event will be replayed in cinemas in 51 countries later in the year.
It features objects recovered from the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, both wiped out by Mount Vesuvius in 79AD.
The exhibition, Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, closes on 29 September.
It received five-star reviews from critics in March - with the Daily Telegraph noting "the quality of much of what has come to London beggars belief".
The BBC's arts editor Will Gompertz said the exhibition offered "a snapshot of daily life 2,000 years ago".
The exhibition has proved a hit with patrons, with more than 260,500 tickets sold and the museum's opening hours extended to cope with demand.
Pompeii Live will be introduced by the British Museum's director, Neil MacGregor, and will be presented by Peter Snow and Bettany Hughes.
Countries that have signed up to the later showings include China, Colombia, India, Israel, Malta and Norway.
"This kind of innovative broadcasting - unthinkable even five years ago - has opened up new ways of sharing knowledge and accessing objects for adult and young audiences alike," said MacGregor. | The British Museum has said 1,000 cinemas across the world will screen a recording of Pompeii Live, a tour of its exhibition of Roman life before a devastating volcanic eruption. |
36,407,506 | Bedene fought bravely and twice broke his opponent's serve, but lost 6-2 6-3 6-3 on Court Philippe Chatrier.
"I think I found my game now, so it's good to see, especially before Wimbledon. I just have to build it up," said 26-year-old Bedene.
The tournament at Wimbledon is the next Grand Slam and begins on 27 June.
Bedene began brightly but his best groundstrokes were all returned well by Serbian Djokovic, who had to battle for more than two hours for victory.
The Slovenia-born world number 66, who became a British citizen in March 2015, added: "I guess the confidence is back. I'm working hard, but it's about just working hard and improving the things which were not the best.
"Obviously when you play someone like Novak, you can see where the weaknesses are, so I'm going to work on that."
Andy Murray is the only Briton left in the competition and faces American John Isner in the fourth round on Sunday at about 14:00 BST.
Meanwhile, 29-year-old Djokovic has appealed to event organisers to build floodlights on Roland Garros' showpiece court.
He had to complete his third-round match at 21:30 local time (19:30 BST) as the light faded.
"It was getting dark," said Djokovic, who is looking to win the French Open for the first time. "For a Grand Slam, you need to have lights.
"I'm really hoping we can have that very soon for these particular situations, especially considering the fact that the forecast for the weather is not that great in the following days." | British number two Aljaz Bedene says he has "found his game" despite losing to world number one Novak Djokovic in the third round of the French Open. |
36,471,911 | The 25-year-old spent 2015-16 on loan in the Championship at Charlton, scoring five goals in 37 games but not preventing them from being relegated.
Capped six times by Denmark, 6ft 7ins Makienok scored 35 times in 74 games for Brondby before joining Palermo.
"His height, plus his international experience, brings us a different dimension," said boss Simon Grayson.
Makienok is North End's second signing of the summer, following goalkeeper Chris Maxwell's move from Lancashire neighbours Fleetwood.
Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page. | Preston North End have signed striker Simon Makienok on a one-year loan deal from Italian Serie A side Palermo. |
34,677,072 | The train hit the empty vehicle near Uphall station just after 17:00 on Wednesday 14 October. One passenger was slightly injured.
The 26-year-old man is due to appear at Livingston Sheriff Court later.
A report will be sent to the procurator fiscal. | A second man has been arrested after a pick-up truck was hit by a train in West Lothian. |
39,382,626 | The 24-year-old will join up with Gareth Southgate's squad for Sunday's 2018 World Cup qualifier against Lithuania at Wembley.
The centre-back has been drafted in following an injury to Chris Smalling.
The Manchester United player has returned to Old Trafford while Chelsea's Gary Cahill, who is suspended for the game, has also left the camp.
Gibson will join the squad on Friday afternoon and take part in a training session on Saturday.
England were beaten 1-0 by Germany in a friendly in Dortmund on Wednesday in Southgate's first game as permanent England manager.
They go into Sunday's game unbeaten in qualifying and are top of Group F on 10 points. | Middlesbrough defender Ben Gibson has been called up to the England squad for the first time. |
39,555,805 | The grey seals were taken to a beach near St Brides' Bay in Pembrokeshire following rehabilitation by the RSPCA.
The quartet have been tagged to enable members of the public to report any future sightings and monitor their movements.
A spokeswoman reminded people not to approach lone pups for 24 hours.
Animal collection officer Ellie West said: "This is the best part of being a member of the RSPCA inspectorate - seeing animals back into their natural habitat.
"I am grateful to Welsh Marine Life Rescue for their help in releasing these seals back into the sea.
"We do get a number of calls about abandoned seal pups and it's great that we are able to rescue them, give them the care they need and get them back out into the sea.
"I would like to remind members of public to follow our advice about leaving wild animals alone, for 24 hours, before contacting us, as human presence may hinder rather than help." | Four seals rescued from the coast around Wales have been released back into the water after being cared for at an animal shelter. |
35,213,838 | Scottish Rugby says the decision was taken to limit the capacity due to a shortage of available safety staff.
The match was switched from Scotstoun due to a waterlogged pitch.
Scottish Rugby said: "The option to sell significantly more tickets for this match has not been possible due to safety and security reasons."
Murrayfield has a capacity of 67,800, but Scottish Rugby insists it was not possible to make more tickets available.
"The safety and well-being of all supporters is paramount and, given the late venue change and the time of year, it was simply not possible to get the appropriate external support staff in place to ensure the well-being of a larger crowd," a statement on the Scottish Rugby website added.
Edinburgh hold a 23-11 lead from the first-leg, which was also held at Murrayfield, with both games doubling as Pro12 fixtures. | A maximum of 8,000 people will be allowed through the gates at Murrayfield for the second leg of the 1872 Cup between Glasgow and Edinburgh. |
35,353,396 | This has sparked fears of censorship among digital rights activists, who say that what started as a move to curb "blasphemy" may now extend to curbing political dissent.
It is too early to see what's missing and what's not on YouTube.com.pk.
The Innocence of Muslims, an amateur film about the Prophet Muhammad which was widely seen as derogatory to Islam and which sparked Pakistan's YouTube ban in September 2012, is not available for viewing.
But much of the other material, such as songs by a Pakistani band called Beygairat (disgraceful) Brigade which are highly critical of Pakistan's powerful military, are still available.
So was Pakistan's three-year YouTube hiatus really just about preventing riots over a film deemed blasphemous?
Farieha Aziz, journalist and co-founder of a digital rights and advocacy group called Bol Bhi (Do speak up), says the YouTube ban went into effect days before protests over the film actually broke out.
"This would mean that the Pakistani authorities were aiming for something more than just that," she says.
Activists point to the ambiguity surrounding the entire administrative and legal processes that have been unfolding since the September 2012 ban.
"Though officially the ban was ordered by Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA), instead of offering comments, they would direct news reporters to the Ministry of Information Technology, which would send them to the Interior Ministry, which would in turn refer them back to PTA," explains one Islamabad journalist who was covering the ban.
"It seems the real power rested with what was called an inter-ministerial committee for the evaluation of websites which has no constitutional status but which included members from concerned civilian departments as well as military intelligence. They never offered public comment."
Ms Aziz points out that resolutions were adopted by both houses of the national parliament, which recommended the lifting of the ban, but they fell on deaf ears.
The PTA also ignored procedural mechanisms explained during court hearings by both local experts and Google Inc (which owns YouTube) which could help discourage viewing of offensive material.
"Instead, [the IT ministry] adamantly pursued the localisation of YouTube. Anything short of controlling this medium was just not a palatable solution for it," she says.
Now that YouTube is back online, there are fears over the lack of transparency on the part of both the government and Google.
"Google has not offered any details of the agreement with Islamabad, but in private discussions they have indicated that as and when Pakistan requests for the blocking of certain content, Google will remove it after vetting the request in accordance with international standards," says Farhan Hussain of another digital rights group, Bytes for All Pakistan.
YouTube has denied claims that the authorities can filter content, saying all takedown requests were subject to its own reviews.
In a statement it said: "We have clear community guidelines, and when videos violate those rules, we remove them. In addition, where we have launched YouTube locally and we are notified that a video is illegal in that country, we may restrict access to it after a thorough review."
Ms Hussain said: "The problem is, we don't know what their vetting process is, and what those international standards are. Google's annual transparency reports only provide statistics - such as how many requests for a ban were made by a country, and how many of them were accepted. But we would like to know the details of those requests."
Digital rights activists are unanimous that localisation of a website has full potential to become a tool for censorship in the hands of a country.
In Pakistan, where so-called national security interests have dominated the basic rights of citizens, the tendency to control religious, gender and political diversity may continue to fuel a restrictive approach to information.
Already, the country has invested heavily in firewalls to block dozens of websites, particularly those run by ethnic Baloch separatists.
Most agree, however, that entertainment and educational content may largely remain unaffected on the .pk version of YouTube. | YouTube is back in Pakistan, with a localised domain and a provision that Islamabad can ask for access to material it deems "objectionable" to be blocked. |
39,149,404 | This content will not work on your device, please check Javascript and cookies are enabled or update your browser | Following a week of heated build-up to the fight between Tony Bellew and David Haye, BBC Sport looks at some of boxing's most memorable putdowns. |
40,393,944 | Father Martin Xavier Vazhachira was last seen at St John The Baptist Roman Catholic Church in Corstorphine, at about 13:00 on Tuesday.
Police and the Catholic church said his body was found on the beach at Dunbar on Friday afternoon.
Father Xavier, 33, was originally from India. The cause of death has yet to be established.
The Bishop of Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, Leo Cushley, said: "The news of Father Martin Xavier's death comes as a great shock and a great sadness to all those who knew him and loved him.
"Our thoughts and, more importantly, our prayers are with him and with all his loved ones in both Scotland and India. May he rest in peace."
Father Vazhachira was a native of Kerala in southern India and was ordained a priest in 2013.
He arrived in Scotland in 2016 in order to undertake post-graduate studies at Edinburgh University.
He also served in local Catholic parishes, initially in Falkirk before being appointed to Corstorphine in October 2016.
He was last seen on Tuesday afternoon in his parish house.
The alarm was raised by parishioners after he failed to turn up for Holy Mass on Wednesday morning.
His family in India have been informed of his death and a post-mortem examination will be carried out to establish the cause. | A priest who went missing from a church in Edinburgh last week has been found dead on a beach in East Lothian. |
37,130,216 | Deaths have fallen by a quarter, from just over 12,000 in 2005 to just over 8,800 in 2014, according to the Heart Disease Annual Report.
Health Secretary Vaughan Gething said authorities would "build on the positive progress we've seen so far", on risk factors and diagnosis times.
The Welsh Conservatives said care still "lags behind the rest of the UK".
About one in 12 adults in Wales said in 2015 they were being treated for a heart condition.
The report said the fight against heart disease was a "national priority", describing it as "a major killer in Wales, particularly affecting our poorer communities".
It hailed success in tackling risk factors, such as the percentage of adults smoking falling from 23% in 2010 to 19% in 2015.
Former HGV driver Gerald Williams thought he was healthy, but tests by his doctor put him at a 32% risk of a stroke or heart attack.
"I could see something was not right by the look on her face when she took my blood pressure," said Mr Williams, 66, a former Ystrad Rhondda winger from Pentre.
"I had no idea my blood pressure was like a ticking time bomb."
Since his health check, he has kept an eye on his diet with the help of his wife and daughter, who is a nurse.
The introduction of community cardiology services was praised for diagnosing patients closer to home and much sooner than before.
Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board cut the waiting time for diagnosis from six to three months.
Mr Gething welcomed a "positive report", saying: "The steady decline we've seen in the rate of people dying from all cardiovascular disease, alongside the fact that fewer people are suffering from heart disease, is something we're proud of.
"There's always further work to be done and the report outlines where improvement is needed.
"We'll take that on board and will build on the positive progress we've seen so far."
Welsh Conservative health spokeswoman Angela Burns said: "The fall in deaths linked to heart disease is encouraging, but the Welsh Government should not crack open the champagne just yet.
"Patients in Wales continue to receive care that lags behind the rest of the UK, with diagnosis currently taking 10 days longer in Wales than in England." | Fewer people are dying or suffering from heart disease in Wales, with falls in smoking and binge drinking helping. |
40,861,475 | If you didn't catch it, Cath Hardacre, played by Jodie Whittaker, is sacked as a nurse so steals her best friend's identity to become a senior doctor.
The psychological thriller shows her attempt to fake it as an experienced emergency doctor, relying only on her nursing knowledge and medical textbooks.
The show's writer Dan Sefton - a real-life A&E doctor - says it's not that hard to do if you have some qualifications.
"I think there are loads of people who aren't real doctors," Sefton told the BBC.
There was once a bogus doctor working at his own hospital, he said, who was "actually pretty competent".
"Often these doctors are very professional and get along very well with their colleagues. The only flaw is that they aren't real doctors," he added.
Since 2006, 12 people have been charged under the Medical Act 1983 with pretending to be registered as a doctor, Crown Prosecution Service figures show.
It's not known how many of them went on to be prosecuted.
It is possible that other bogus doctors have been apprehended too, but were charged under the broader offence in the Fraud Act 2006 of impersonation and giving false or misleading information.
This makes it harder to extract figures for doctors.
Rachel Power, chief executive of the Patients Association, has some reassuring words for anxious TV viewers.
"It's incredibly rare for people to masquerade as doctors in the NHS.
"The numbers involved are negligible, so patients should not feel concerned that there's any substantial prospect of being seen by someone falsely claiming to be a doctor."
However, it has happened occasionally, as these examples show.
Stethoscopes and scrubs
Last year, mother-of-four Sarah Caine twice posed as a doctor and stole medical equipment from Lister Hospital in Stevenage, the Telegraph reported.
She even posted photos on Facebook, one of herself dressed in surgical scrubs and another with a stethoscope draped around her neck.
On Twitter in 2014, she pondered which direction her medical ambitions might take her.
NHS staff caught her out the second time round, and the police were called.
Magistrates banned her from every hospital in the UK - except in "genuine medical emergencies" - until sentencing.
She was given a £440 fine after she admitted impersonating a doctor and stealing medical equipment.
His CV was 'a work of fiction'
Abdul Pirzada, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, invented a glittering medical career history that allowed him to work as a practice nurse in Birmingham for seven years, as a locum GP and a physician's assistant.
Within months of arriving in the UK in 2001, he joined the doctors' union BMA as a refugee member, claiming to be a qualified doctor.
This meant he could access online courses, which gave him a superficial air of legitimacy, the CPS said.
His CV, which prosecutors described as "almost entirely a work of fiction", claimed he had worked as a doctor in Bosnia and Glasgow, and was registered as a doctor in Pakistan.
Pirzada gained work at three medical practices in Birmingham between 2004 and 2011, where he performed blood tests on patients and even prescribed medication.
His deception came to light when a pharmacist spotted that his name on a prescription did not appear on the NHS-approved list, the CPS said.
In 2012, he was jailed for 15 months after admitting two counts of fraud and one of obtaining a financial advantage by deception.
Forged documents
Two years ago Levon Mkhitarian pleaded guilty to fraud after impersonating a doctor.
Mkhitarian, originally from Georgia, had failed to complete his medical training but continued to apply for doctors' jobs.
In 2014, he was struck off the GMC register after being caught sending an email pretending to be the GMC.
With no job to go to, Mkhitarian forged documents so he could apply for locum positions through agencies.
He assumed the identity of another doctor, who was practising at the time, and made up a CV, bank statements, a medical degree and training certificates.
Under his false identity, Mkhitarian treated 3,000 patients on cancer, transplant, general surgery, cardiology and elderly wards, and was on call in A&E.
That was until HR staff at the William Harvey Hospital, in Ashford, tried to create a personal smart card for him.
A database showed one had already been issued in his assumed name, but with a different photograph.
One investigating police officer told Canterbury Crown Court the risk of harm to patients was "not high but nevertheless his actions were selfish and reckless".
Mkhitarian was jailed for six years.
The General Medical Council says the onus is on employers to thoroughly check a doctor's identity and qualifications before recruiting them.
There are currently 270,000 doctors named on its UK medical register, which carries details of where the doctor studied, when they registered and whether they hold a licence.
The GMC carries out its own checks before allowing a doctor to register, including on their identity and qualifications, as well as checks with the doctor's medical school and previous employers.
Staff at the GMC also help employers by taking photos of doctors during a face-to-face identity check when they apply to register. These can then be sent on to hospitals to confirm the new recruit's identity.
NHS Employers says there are six checks which must be made before giving a doctor a job:
Trust Me is available on BBC iPlayer and continues on BBC One on 15 August. | TV viewers of new BBC drama Trust Me, in which a nurse fakes it as a doctor, have been left wondering whether it could happen in real life. |
36,136,286 | Sirens were sounded at the same moment as the first explosion at the reactor, in the early hours of 26 April 1986.
The meltdown at the plant remains the worst nuclear disaster in history.
An uncontrolled reaction blew the roof off, spewing out a cloud of radioactive material which drifted across Ukraine's borders, into Russia, Belarus and across a swathe of northern Europe.
The relatives of those who died attended candle-lit vigils at several churches, including at Slavutych, a town built to re-house workers who lived near the nuclear plant. A series of events are being held throughout the day.
Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko attended a ceremony in Kiev, and laid a wreath at a memorial to the victims of the disaster before observing a minute's silence.
He is heading north to the site of the plant itself, not far from the border with Belarus, for a ceremony there.
Vasyl Markin, who had been working in Chernobyl at the time of the disaster, attended the service in Slavutych.
"This tragedy will stay with us till the end of our lives. I won't be able to forget it anyway," he said.
Some former residents returned to the area, now derelict and overgrown, ahead of the anniversary.
Zoya Perevozchenko, 66, lived in Pripyat, the town inhabited by Chernobyl workers which was abandoned in the wake of the accident.
She told Reuters news agency: "I barely found my apartment, I mean it's a forest now - trees growing through the pavement, on the roofs. All the rooms are empty, the glass is gone from the windows and everything's destroyed.
Levels of radioactivity remain high in the surrounding area. A charity, Bridges to Belarus, is warning that a number of babies in a region close to Ukraine's border are still being born with serious deformities, while an unusually high rate of people have rare forms of cancer.
Donors around the world pledged €87.5m (£68m; $99m) on Monday towards a new underground nuclear waste facility in the region. Ukraine will need to commit a further €10m in order to complete the new storage site.
Work began in 2010 on a 25,000-tonne, €2.1bn sarcophagus to seal the uranium left in the damaged reactor, thought to be about 200 tonnes.
Experts fear that if parts of the aging reactor collapse, further radioactive material could be spewed into the atmosphere.
The number of people killed by the disaster remains disputed. A report in 2005 by the UN-backed Chernobyl Forum concluded that fewer than 50 people died as a result of exposure to radiation, most of them workers killed immediately after the disaster, but some survived until as late as 2004.
The forum estimated up to 9,000 people could eventually die from radiation exposure, although Greenpeace claims the figure could be as high as 93,000. | Ukraine is holding commemorations to mark the 30th anniversary of the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl. |
38,442,443 | It is the first trial of alleged plotters to take place in Istanbul since the abortive coup.
Turkey has arrested some 40,000 people and sacked even more after parts of the army and police tried to oust President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The coup was blamed on US-based Islamic cleric Fetullah Gulen.
He has denied the allegations but the Turkish president has warned that the Gulenist movement is still active within Turkey.
The murder of Russian ambassador Andrei Karlov by an off-duty policeman has also been linked to Gulenists, although the gunman shouted slogans about the Syrian city of Aleppo before he was shot dead.
No cause for optimism in divided Turkey
The human impact of Turkey's purges
Turkey torture claims in wake of failed coup
The four-day trial began on Tuesday amid high security at the large Silivri jail complex on the outskirts of Istanbul.
Twenty-one of the 29 police officers face life terms if found guilty of taking part in the failed coup. They are all accused of following Fetullah Gulen as well as failing to follow orders and carry out their duty to protect the president.
Eight of the accused face lesser sentences.
Although smaller-scale trials have taken place elsewhere in Turkey, this was the first major case in Turkey's biggest city.
The purge of suspected Gulenists has spread throughout Turkey's state apparatus. Critics accuse the government of using the failed coup to hit back at opponents.
A judge on Monday remanded in custody a cook who works at an opposition newspaper on a charge of insulting the president. The cook, Senol Buran, is alleged to have told police he would not serve President Erdogan a cup of tea.
The Silivri court where Tuesday's trial took place was first built to try top-ranking officers who were convicted three years ago of an earlier plot.
Turkish commentators say that the case, known as Ergenekon, was orchestrated by Gulenists against the military. | Twenty-nine police officers have gone on trial in a Turkish prison accused of trying to overthrow the government in the failed July coup. |
21,142,623 | While much attention has been devoted to the dramatic Supreme Court move to order the arrest of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf on charges of corruption and recent large-scale protests led by populist cleric Tahirul Qadri to demand the resignation of the government ahead of elections due in May, the country's financial difficulties have been overlooked.
Likewise recent deadly militant bombings have also distracted attention, as have skirmishes with India on the Line of Control (LoC) that divides the disputed Kashmir region.
These headline-grabbing events have not only served to obscure the profound economic challenges facing Pakistani society but in many cases have also nurtured and aggravated them.
The truth is that the Pakistani people are deeply troubled by the plight of their economy and their own economic prospects.
With the government likely to ask the International Monetary Fund this year for a new aid package, the nation's economic plight may soon become topic number one in the global discussion about Pakistan's future.
"Deep seated structural problems and weak macroeconomic policies have continued to sap the [Pakistani] economy's vigour," the IMF's executive board concluded in late November.
Economic growth over the past four years, after adjustment for inflation, averaged 2.9% annually, and is projected to be only 3.2% in 2012-13.
That, says the IMF, is not sufficient to achieve significant improvement in living standards and to absorb the rising labour force.
All this at a time when prices are rising about 11% per year.
Moreover, the government deficit was 8.5% in the last fiscal year and press reports suggest it may miss its budget deficit target this year by a significant amount.
The IMF expects foreign reserves this fiscal year to be half what they were just two years ago, a sign of waning investor confidence and a deteriorating international economic situation.
Hardly surprising then that the Pakistani people are extremely downbeat.
Roughly nine out of 10 say the economy is bad, including a majority (64%) who think that it is very bad, according to the 2012 Pew Global Attitudes survey.
Just 9% rate the economy positively.
There has in fact been a sharp decline in economic ratings in Pakistan since the beginning of the global economic recession.
In 2007, 59% said the economy was doing well; by 2008, this percentage had dropped to 41% and has continued to fall since then.
A plurality (43%) believes the economy will only worsen. For many of them, this pain will be felt personally.
Their assessment of their own personal economic situation is down 19 percentage points since 2008, one of the largest fall-offs among the 15 countries for which the Pew Research Centre has comparable data.
Only 38% say they are better off than their parents.
More than half (57%) say they are worse off than five years ago. And 65% say it will be very difficult for their children to advance economically.
Unemployment is one of the public's major concerns.
Nine out of 10 people say that the lack of jobs is a very big problem, a more important issue to them than concern about corrupt political leaders or unrest in Kashmir.
However because the survey was conducted in the spring of 2012, it could be that concern about Kashmir has risen more recently because of flare-ups in January along the LoC.
While it is true that issues of life and death and war and peace will always trump economic news, the dire nature of Pakistan's economic problems could ultimately feed political and social unrest as the regional and global discussion about Pakistan's future moves to centre stage.
Polling suggests that the people of Pakistan may say this refocusing is long overdue.
Bruce Stokes is the director of global economic attitudes at the Pew Research Centre. | Pakistan is a country beset with political difficulties, but they could be of secondary importance to its economic woes. |
33,394,196 | The 7m sculpture, called Charity, is based on a Scope collection box from the 1960s of a disabled young girl holding a teddy bear.
It was installed opposite the capital's Gherkin building as part of the 2015 Sculpture in the City exhibition.
Other sculptures are being unveiled near London landmarks.
The open air exhibition, which is in its fifth year, shows off a selection of contemporary art pieces in and around the Square Mile.
The charity Scope, which aims to improve the lives of disabled people in the UK, withdrew the collection boxes in the 1980s in favour of promoting positive images of disabled people.
But Hirst's sculpture shows a scuffed version where the girl's collection box has been broken into with a crow bar which lies at her feet.
It is intended to depict the historical tradition of representing charity and disability as a pitiful image.
Alan Gosschalk, fundraising director at Scope, says: "Charity is an iconic piece of art. It is also a symbol of changing attitudes to disability over the past 50 years, since collection boxes like the one depicted in this sculpture were seen on high streets across the country.
"This artwork highlights an outdated vision of charity and disability. However, while attitudes to disabled people have improved in this time, many people still feel awkward about disability.
"We hope that this sculpture will encourage conversations about disability amongst people in our capital."
Hirst made a name for himself in the 1990s with controversial works such as "Mother and Child Divided" - consisting of a cow and a calf dissected into preserved segments - and putting a shark in a tank of formaldehyde. | A Damien Hirst sculpture which highlights an "outdated vision of disability" has been installed in London as part of a new exhibition. |
36,266,632 | California-based Cyphort Labs said that it had detected ads placed on the site being used to spread harmful code on two separate visits during one week.
The celebrity scandal site has not yet commented but was known to have suffered a similar problem last year.
Experts suggested users install ad-blocking plug-ins to defend themselves.
The phenomenon is known as "malvertising", and users do not have to click on the ads to find their device infected.
PerezHilton.com is far from being the only publisher to have hosted the threat.
Cyphort identified 1,654 unique domains that had fallen victim to the parasitical attack in 2015, and said it believed it was on course to see more than 2,000 instances this year.
The New York Times, AOL and BBC.com are among other popular sites thought to have been hijacked in this way. since January.
"Malvertising is effective because users tend to trust mainstream, high-trafficked "clean" websites," security researcher Nick Bilogorskiy blogged.
"The attackers abuse this trust to infect them via third-party ad content."
PerezHilton.com says it is visited by 12 million people every month.
In the first instance on 30 April, the firm said PerezHilton.com's ads caused users to download the Angler exploit kit, which is used to distribute a range of infections including ransomware.
Then on 2 May, it said a different type of exploit kit was spread via the site.
If the users had anti-virus software installed they may have been protected against some of the threats. But in many cases they would not have known they had been exposed.
Like many sites, PerezHilton.com does not check each advert that appears on its pages but instead relies on third parties to place them, sharing the revenue they generate.
"The only organisations which understand the full scale of the threat are the advertising networks themselves, and they don't want to draw attention to their own failure to vet their clients," commented Dr Steven Murdoch, a security expert at University College London.
Cyphort noted that users could protect themselves by installing ad-blocking extensions for their web browser.
Dr Murdoch concurred but questioned whether this was a long-term solution.
"Ad-blockers offer a temporary mitigation against these problems but if everyone starts using them the current business model of the web will no longer be sustainable," he said.
"Other options for keeping the web running include asking users to pay for services - subscriptions - but few websites have been able to make this work." | The gossip news site PerezHilton.com has exposed recent visitors to malware, according to a cybersecurity alert. |
35,319,827 | If elected, the former lord mayor of the city would replace Alban Maginness, the current SDLP MLA for North Belfast.
Mr Maginness announced this month that he would be retiring from politics.
Ms Mallon was selected by party members at a convention in the Lansdowne Hotel in Belfast on Thursday evening.
She said it was "a great honour" to be selected to defend the seat for her party and "a privilege" to take over from Mr Maginness.
"Alban has been a tireless servant for the people of north Belfast," she said.
"His dedication to justice, human rights and the defence of civil liberties will mean his voice is sorely missed from politics here."
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said: "Her dedication to, and compassion for, people in the city is clear to everyone who meets her and contributed to a powerful and uniquely successful year as lord mayor." | Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) councillor Nichola Mallon has been selected to contest the Northern Ireland Assembly election in North Belfast. |
35,103,402 | The 26-year-old from Northern Ireland enjoyed three tour victories in 2015 to win the Race to Dubai title ahead of Englishman Danny Willett.
McIlroy triumphed despite an ankle injury which ruled him out of action for five weeks.
"I feel very proud to have won for a third time - it's always special to be recognised in this way," said McIlroy.
The world number three secured his first tour victory of 2015 at the Dubai Desert Classic, followed by success in the WGC-Cadillac Match Play in San Francisco in May.
Victory in the season-ending World Tour Championship last month ensured McIlroy also won the Race to Dubai title for a third time in four years.
"After a good first half to the season, the injury was obviously a setback for me, so to finish the year strongly with my second victory in Dubai, plus picking up the Race to Dubai title again, was very satisfying," added the four-times major winner.
"This was an objective I successfully fulfilled this season. To now also win the Golfer of the Year award is a great way to sign off the year.
"I am already looking forward to starting the new season and trying to achieve even more in 2016." | Rory McIlroy has picked up the European Tour Golfer of the Year award for the third time in four years. |
32,694,488 | The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) says the deal will be referred for an in-depth investigation unless "acceptable undertakings are offered".
The CMA's initial investigation found that about 1,000 Sprit pubs overlap with a Greene King pub in a local area.
Both companies say they are putting proposals to the CMA that will address those issues.
Sheldon Mills, CMA senior director of mergers, said: "Greene King and Spirit now have the opportunity to resolve these concerns by offering appropriate undertakings."
The CMA is the UK's main consumer and competition authority.
Spirit, based in Staffordshire, was split off from Punch Taverns in 2011. It runs the Chef & Brewer and Flaming Grill chains.
Suffolk-based Greene King runs 1,900 pubs, restaurants and hotels across the UK, including the Loch Fyne Seafood and Grill and Hungry Horse chains.
The planned deal is part of Greene King's shift into restaurants and pubs that serve food.
Greene King chief executive Rooney Anand called the CMA's decision "sensible". He said: "We are confident we will be able to offer suitable undertakings, which will keep the number of pubs we need to sell to a minimum and allow the acquisition to complete before the end of June." | Greene King's £775m offer for Spirit Pub Company could hurt competition, the competition regulator has said. |
35,595,108 | Officers said it appeared that the men worked together to distract staff, allowing one of them to steal from behind the counter.
The three men ran from the premises following the theft and were last seen running along Aberfoyle's Main Street.
The theft took place on Tuesday afternoon at about 13:00 and the suspects were captured on CCTV.
The three men were all white, with the first described as aged between 40 and 50, 5ft 7in tall, of heavy build, clean shaven and wearing a black baseball cap.
The second male was described as between 20 and 30, 6ft, slim, with collar-length brown hair, wearing jeans and a jacket and of "scruffy" appearance.
The third male was about 40 and heavily built.
A Police Scotland spokesman said: "The inquiry so far has the three suspects on CCTV outside the post office before they enter, and a short time later running along Main Street on the footpath.
"It is not known if the three got into a car to leave the village." | Police are hunting three men after a four-figure sum was stolen from Aberfoyle Post Office. |
30,845,154 | Australia would continue to work on behalf of "Bali Nine" smugglers Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, she said.
The duo, sentenced to death in 2006 as ring leaders of the group, are expected to be executed by firing squad.
Ms Bishop's comments came after Indonesia executed six people for drug offences on Sunday.
Five of those executed were foreign nationals, from Brazil, the Netherlands, Malawi, Nigeria and Vietnam.
Brazil and the Netherlands have recalled their ambassadors from Indonesia in protest.
But Indonesian President Joko Widodo has said he will not give clemency to any of the drug smugglers on death row.
Speaking on Sky News, Ms Bishop said Australia would continue to point out to Indonesia that the two Australian men had gone to great lengths to rehabilitate themselves.
"I don't believe that executing people is the answer to solving the drug problem and certainly the trafficking of drugs in and out of Indonesia," she said.
"However, this is Indonesian law and it is a sober reminder that drug-related offences carry very, very heavy penalties in other countries, particularly in Indonesia."
Ms Bishop said she had written again to Indonesia's Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi in December about clemency for the two men but she received a response "just recently rejecting our representation on the basis that Indonesia claims it is facing a crisis in terms of drug trafficking and it believes that the death penalty should apply".
It is a long-standing position of Australian governments to oppose the death penalty and the execution of Australian nationals by foreign governments.
Ms Bishop would not say if Australia would withdraw its ambassador to Indonesia if the executions went ahead.
"I won't go into, speculate as to what would happen should the Indonesian government carry through its threat to execute Australians."
She said she had met the families of the two men on the weekend and "they are hoping and praying that there will be clemency".
The eight men and one woman of the Bali Nine were aged between 18 and 28 at the time of their arrests.
Following various appeals, the other seven are now serving either life or 20 years in prison.
A letter rejecting clemency for Sukumaran was delivered to Kerobokan prison in Bali by a government official last Wednesday, according to Australian media reports.
It was printed on the letterhead of "Presiden Republik Indonesia" and had Mr Widodo's name printed underneath, reported Fairfax Media.
Chan has not been notified officially that his clemency bid has been turned down and Indonesian Attorney-General HM Prasetyo has said that until it is issued, Sukumaran's execution is on hold.
Indonesia ended a four-year unofficial moratorium on executions in 2013. No executions took place in 2014. | Executing two Australian drug smugglers on death row in Indonesia will not solve its drug problem, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has said. |
40,568,222 | They won only four games last season and failed to progress beyond the group stage for the first time since 2008.
Hampshire opened this year's T20 Blast campaign with a 22-run win over Glamorgan and face Sussex Sharks in their second game on Wednesday.
Hove has been a happy hunting ground for Hampshire, who have not lost there since 2010, winning five times.
"The boys feel confident, they've had a lot of success over the years. Last year lots of different things happened at the club," said White.
"We had lots of injuries and other issues, this year we don't have those issues and we have fit players, fingers crossed they remain fit."
"Then you're starting to select teams on merit and trying to get the best eleven, we didn't have that luxury last year and I think the results followed suit."
Ball-by-ball commentary available on BBC 5 live sports extra, BBC Radio Solent and BBC Sussex via the BBC Sport website from 18:30 BST. | Hampshire director of cricket Giles White is confident his side can improve on a disappointing 2016 T20 campaign. |
30,115,276 | 16 August 2015 Last updated at 11:18 BST
Both are areas where volcanoes are active but they are very different types. Volcano Holuhraun in Iceland has been erupting for three months and has created a boiling lake of lava.
Dougal Jerram is a Volcanologist, and CBBC Fierce Earth presenter, and has recently been to the volcano in Iceland.
He came into the studio to chat to Martin and show him some of the rocks he collected there. | There have been two major volcanic eruptions in Hawaii and Iceland in the last couple of weeks. |
37,486,371 | Previous shape-shifting materials have needed some external trigger to tell them to transform, like light or heat.
Now, a US-based team has encoded a sequence of shape transformations into the very substance of a polymer, with each change occurring at a pre-determined time.
Details appear in Nature Communications journal.
The principles could be applied in implants that deliver medicine from within the human body and the technology could also see use in heavy industry.
Professor Sergei Sheiko from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues introduced two types of chemical bond to their polymer: permanent bonds and dynamic (or reversible) bonds.
The permanent bonds store the material's final shape, while the dynamic bonds control how quickly it can reach this shape.
Prof Sheiko said there were several parameters in the material which, when adjusted, allowed the scientists to control the changes.
"One is the strength of the individual bond - or the energy of dissociation of the individual bond. The other is the concentration of these bonds," he explained.
"There is a third parameter: several individual hydrogen bonds (dynamic bonds) can form a cluster. This cluster of hydrogen bonds can then form stronger cross-links."
As a proof of concept, the team designed a synthetic flower which "bloomed" in a pre-programmed fashion.
"We wanted to make the concept more explicit. So there are plenty of examples in nature, like flowers, which change their shape with time," Prof Sheiko told BBC News.
"One of the advantages of our technology is that you can assemble a complex shape of individual pieces like these petals. Usually shape memory materials are just made up of one chunk that changes shape."
He said each of the pieces could be programmed individually, with different timings.
Asked how precisely the timing of the changes could be controlled, Prof Sheiko explained: "We cannot control accurately between 20 and 21 seconds. But we can control between 20 and 60 seconds, two minutes and five minutes.
"We can control [the shape changes] pretty accurately on a scale of minutes and hours."
Potential applications include drug delivery systems, which allow medicines to be released within the body according to a specific timescale.
"People want a material that changes shape without a stimulus. The reason is very practical: there is often no way to apply one.
"In the body, for example, it is pitch black inside and the temperature is super-stable. Our bodies work very hard to maintain a constant temperature. It's a similar situation in space, or down an oil borehole."
Prof Sheiko said his team had been asked about the possibility of producing a smart cement for the oil and gas industry. This could be poured down a borehole but would remain liquid for a while before setting at a specified time.
He explained: "It's a very interesting challenge indeed, to design materials that would change their properties - which could be colour, shape, density, or mechanical properties - simply as a function of time."
Follow Paul on Twitter. | Scientists have pre-programmed materials to change their shape over time. |
37,987,246 | The union said 85% of station workers had voted to walk out in a dispute over staffing and safety.
Drivers on the Piccadilly line also backed action over a "wholesale breakdown" in industrial relations.
London Underground (LU) said the RMT should "work with us constructively... rather than threaten strikes".
About 3,400 workers are involved in the two disputes which could affect services in the run-up to Christmas.
General secretary Mick Cash said a "toxic impact of the job cuts programme" had made working on the Tube "horrific".
"Our dispute is about taking action to haul back the cuts machine and put safety back at the top of the agenda," he said.
The RMT executive is to consider the ballot results before deciding the next move.
Transport for London (TfL) said both ballots had low turnouts, with 33% voting in the ballot over staffing and safety and 49% voting in the Piccadilly line dispute.
Steve Griffiths, LU's chief operating officer, said "an independent review was being conducted" into the closure of ticket offices and talks had been planned "to discuss the RMT's concerns on the Piccadilly line".
The Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) union has also announced it will ballot hundreds of members for strikes over the closure of ticket offices. | Thousands of London Underground staff have voted to go on strike over two separate disputes, the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) union said. |
32,882,186 | When he was a young boy, the man who would become a University of Glasgow professor and a leading expert in diabetes and cardio-vascular disease research says his "highly competitive nature" led to tantrums if he did not win at whatever he was doing.
Prof Sattar told Stark Talk he was still competitive but he hoped that he was managing to channel it better.
He says: "In research the competitiveness is still there and you have to be competitive because there are big teams from Oxford and Cambridge and Boston who will just roll over you."
The world of medical research is a tough fight for funding and influence but Prof Sattar says he aims for more than that.
"What I am keen to do is write papers that correct people's clinical knowledge in a way that improves practice," he says.
Medical experts are not always keen on being corrected, especially in public, but he says he does not mind upsetting people.
"I care more about them doing the right thing for their patients," he says.
"If it happens to upset certain people, well I think that's their problem."
There are numerous examples of Prof Sattar standing up in front of the medical experts and using his research to correct them.
He cites the example of the clinical use "metabolic syndrome" to simultaneously predict the risk of heart disease and diabetes.
"Eventually a light struck in my head and I thought 'this is completely wrong'," he says.
"I thought 'they are putting together a criteria that is trying to predict two diseases in one. That doesn't work'."
Prof Sattar addressed a room full of experts from major charities and eminent professors and said: "I'm sorry gentlemen and ladies but this is complete nonsense."
"At the very end of it, the chairman, who is very eminent and I won't say his name, said 'Naveed, shut up and sit down'."
Of course, he did not leave it there. He phoned medical journal The Lancet and said "if you want to kill this thing I have the data".
They looked into his claims, got more data and published it.
Prof Sattar says: "It has been heavily cited and it has helped among other things to wipe this thing out of the clinical scenario. I felt good about that."
Prof Sattar was born in Wales to Pakistani parents but grew up in Blantyre, South Lanarkshire.
He studied medicine in Glasgow, and despite his work being highly valued and sought after across the world, he has chosen to stay in the city he loves.
However, his relationship with medicine almost ended before it began.
After he finished studying medicine and did his initial one year of training he left the profession and became an accountant.
"But after 12 weeks of doing accountancy I realised that medicine wasn't so bad after all," he says.
The problem, Prof Sattar says, was with the clinical side of medicine.
No-one in his family had a medical background and he found himself lacking confidence when carrying out procedures.
He says: "I was fine for the first two years of study which were the scientific aspects but as soon as we got to the clinical I was a lost soul, I didn't think I could do it."
He grew in confidence when he worked in cardiology at Edinburgh Royal but it was a job with Professor James Shepherd, a world-leading pioneer in the investigation of the causes, prevention and treatment of coronary heart disease, that gave him his true calling.
"In the first few months of doing that I discovered something new called research," he says.
"Everything up until then had been learning facts and patterns of disease but here was a new phenomenon called research in which we did not know the answer to specific questions.
"We had to define experiments to improve our knowledge in a specific area and as a result maybe improve patient management, and that I found incredibly refreshing."
Prof Sattar's time in Edinburgh might not have given him the career path he wished for but he did meet his wife Lindsay while he was there.
His parents had wanted him to have an arranged marriage so he kept his wedding to a woman from outside their culture, and even the birth of his first child, secret from them.
"I feel really bad about this. My poor mother and my sisters first knew that I was married when I presented at their door with my nine-month-old son," he says.
"Once this had come out, my parents quickly adjusted their mindsets."
Prof Sattar says he has always been "more Westernised" than most of his siblings but there is one aspect of his heritage his work has forced him to confront.
He is hoping to write a "definitive review" of the mechanisms of why South Asians in the UK are more likely to get diabetes than European whites.
He says: "I realised I had to improve my diet because we did a research study and of all the respondents in that study I had the highest level of blood insulin which meant my pancreas was working really hard to keep my sugar down. That is because I had too much fat in the wrong places.
"I then realised my mother had diabetes, my two uncles had developed diabetes in their 30s and I thought 'I'm on the fast-track to diabetes'."
He cut out chips and sugary drinks and "redeveloped a taste for more fruit and veg".
However, he says he was in a "very privileged position" that as a doctor who lived in a nice environment he could afford to make the changes.
He says: "If you put me back in Blantyre, in some of the communities I grew up in, there is an abundance of fast food, they haven't been given the potential to develop taste buds and palate for the good foods because they have never been exposed to them.
"Their palates are programmed for sugary drinks, fatty foods and that's what their body cries out for.
"What we have to break is changing the food environment. More healthy foods at cheaper prices and making unhealthy foods much more expensive.
"That's a tough ask and I don't think the government are ready to make those changes." | Prof Naveed Sattar's research into metabolic medicine has had an impact and influence around the world but his desire to correct errors in clinical practice is not always well received. |
32,138,152 | I was most definitely not in France, although I could see it off in the distance, across the English Channel, and was clearly close enough to pick up its mobile signals.
Instead I, along with dozens of reporters and camera operators, was milling around a parking lot at the base of the white cliffs of Dover, waiting for UK Independence Party head Nigel Farage to arrive.
That this was the location Mr Farage chose to give a speech on his party's immigration policy was by no means an accident. The famed cliffs, towering over the coastline of the region, were labelled England's "glittering breastplate" by British poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy - a majestic barrier protecting the islands at their closest point to the European mainland.
Now, Mr Farage says, that barrier has been breached - and his country is being overrun by a flood of unassimilated new arrivals.
As any veteran of American-style politics knows, good visuals and a compelling narrative are as important to a campaign event as what a candidate actually, you know, says.
Ever since the days of Ronald Reagan, political advance teams and consultants in the US have obsessed over how their events are stage-managed - the backdrop, the imagery, the process, every minute detail.
For Mr Farage, the setting could not have been better. The execution, however, was decidedly low-tech - quaint even, by American standards. Mr Farage strode out of his car at 11:00 and stood in front of a line of placard-carrying supporters, as a cover was pulled to reveal a lorry-sized campaign poster on the immigration issue.
The image was of those guardian cliffs, surmounted by giant escalators.
"Immigration is three times higher than what the Tories promised," the sign read. "UKIP: The only party you can trust to reduce immigration."
After the unveiling, Mr Farage gave a short speech.
"Immigration goes right to the heart of the public's disillusion with politics and politicians," he said. "It is all about trust."
He pledged that his party would bring about a "return to normality", setting a cap on immigration to the UK at 30,000 per year. (For the first nine months of 2014, that number topped 260,000.)
He accused Prime Minister David Cameron of falsely claiming the Conservative Party has an immigration policy. "To pretend they do is a wilful deceit," he said.
After Mr Farage's speech, I spoke with one of the placard-carrying entourage, Steve Heather, who is a resident of the nearby town of Deal. He said he had voted for both Labour and the Conservatives in the past, but has grown disillusioned with establishment positions on issues like immigration and membership in the European Union.
"It's the same old tired politics from the same old tired politicians," he said. "We need a message of change in this country, and I believe UKIP will do that."
Mr Farage must hope that there are more voters out there like Mr Heather - not only for the good of his party, but for his future as an elected politician.
Mr Farage himself is a candidate for office from the south-eastern coastal constituency of South Thanet. He pledges to resign from UKIP leadership if he loses. This marks the sixth time Mr Farage has run in a general election. In 2010 he garnered 17% of the vote in a race in Buckingham against the sitting speaker of the House of Commons. Five years earlier he tried in South Thanet and received just 5%.
His opponents this year are Conservative Craig Mackinlay, Liberal Democrat Russ Timpson and Labour's Will Scobie, who in a recent issue of the New Statesman says that UKIP is trying to gain a foothold in the more remote regions of the UK.
"If you look at the other UKIP target seats they are, more often than not, places cut off transport-wise, and serviced by rickety, unreliable and overpriced rail services," he writes. "Divisions - between Britain and Europe and between London and the rest of the country - are what UKIP thrive on."
This could be a defining election for Mr Farage's UKIP. Just last year, it received the most votes in the European Parliamentary elections - the first time in more than 100 years that a party other than the big two won the most seats in a British nation-wide election.
But can that support translate into gains where it counts, in the British Parliament?
UKIP is currently polling in the mid-teens, which puts it in a position to be a spoiler in many races but a favourite in few. The party needs to finish first in many of the constituencies it's targeting to have real power in Westminster.
This raises another interesting takeaway from Tuesday's seaside event. In the US, one of the roles of a presidential nominee is to boost the chances of down-ticket candidates running under the party's banner. The success of candidates is measured not just by their victory, but also by their congressional "coat-tails".
Tuesday's UKIP event was held in South Thanet's neighbouring Dover constituency, and its nominee, David Little, was in attendance.
Not once during his speech did Mr Farage mention his party's local candidate by name. When Mr Farage and Mr Little posed with the cliffs in the background, one photographer shouted "Just Nigel", and Mr Little dutifully stood aside.
After another round of photos and interviews, Mr Farage headed into a nearby restaurant, the Coastguard, where he ordered a coffee - not beer, despite his reputation as a dedicated drinker. The venue proved too small for the pack of media, leaving reporters crowed outside and television cameras pressed against the windows - the stuff that would cause an experienced American political advance team to break into a cold sweat.
After his refreshment, Mr Farage left the way he arrived - in the back of a black SUV, which began the curvy journey up from the shoreline.
Several moments later, Mr Little popped out of the restaurant and looked around.
"Is Nigel gone?" he asked. | "Welcome to France", read the message on my mobile phone. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.