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28,389,457 | Gobinda Chinweefat, 26, was arrested near the scene of a burglary in Didsbury, Manchester, on Friday night.
A short time later, he complained of chest pains and police called an ambulance to take him to hospital.
While driving along Kingsway, Mr Chinweefat opened the ambulance doors and jumped out. Greater Manchester Police said he could be seriously hurt.
Det Insp Kevin Marriott said the ambulance had been travelling at between 20 and 30mph (40 to 48km/h) when Mr Chinweefat jumped out.
He landed on his back but immediately got up and ran away through a tunnel linking Kingsway to Brailsford Road.
"We are making every effort to find him," said Det Insp Marriott
"Mr Chinweefat was also complaining of chest pains and we are concerned that he may need medical attention for this or any injuries sustained in his escape.
"He is not to be approached by members of the public but if anyone sees him or knows of his whereabouts, please contact GMP." | A man arrested on suspicion of burglary is on the run after he jumped out of a moving ambulance. |
36,119,829 | Speaking in London, he said: "Take a longer, more optimistic view of history."
Earlier, the US president visited the Globe theatre and watched actors perform scenes from Hamlet.
It came a day after he said Britain would be at "the back of the queue" for US trade deals if it left the EU.
His comments angered Leave campaigners. UKIP leader Nigel Farage accused him of doing Downing Street's "bidding" and "talking down Britain" and Tory Liam Fox said his views were "irrelevant".
Following his appearance at Lindley Hall in London, Mr Obama met Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Mr Corbyn said he had had an "excellent" discussion with the president on issues including the challenges facing post-industrial societies, the power of global corporations, technology, inequality, poverty, and "very briefly" the subject of Europe.
Taking questions from young people at the earlier town-hall event, Mr Obama said change takes time.
"If any of you begin to work on an issue that you care deeply about, don't be disappointed if a year out things haven't been completely solved," he said.
"Don't give up and succumb to cynicism if after five years poverty has not been eradicated and prejudice is still out there somewhere and we haven't resolved all of the steps we need to take to reverse climate change."
Progress is "not inevitable" but must be fought for over the long term, he said.
Mr Obama said it was "inspiring" meeting young people, which "gives [him] new ideas".
Asked about security and attitudes to Muslims, he said keeping people safe and preventing terrorist attacks in the US and UK was "one of our biggest challenges".
The US president said there was "a tiny subset of groups that have perverted Islam" and our "greatest allies" in tackling extremism in the US were those "Muslim Americans who are historically fully integrated in our society".
He said Islamophobia was not only wrong but "as a practical matter... self-defeating behaviour if we are serious about terrorism".
Being careful with language used in relation to Muslims and respecting people's faiths were "security matters, not just feel-good, liberal political correctness", he said.
Mr Obama also praised Prime Minister David Cameron for being "ahead of the curve" on LGBT rights issues.
He said the campaign for marriage equality in the US and elsewhere had "probably been the fastest set of changes in terms of a social movement that [he'd] seen".
Asked about his legacy as president, Mr Obama said he would not have a sense until 10 years from now.
But he added: "I'll look at a scorecard at the end... I think that I have been true to myself."
He mentioned changes he had made to the US healthcare system: "That's something I'm proud of," he said.
"And saving the world economy from a great depression, that was pretty good."
Asked about skills in dealing with political opponents and finding common ground, Mr Obama said: "If you spend time with people who just agree with you, you become even more extreme in your convictions.
"Seek out people who don't agree with you. That will teach you to compromise.
"Compromise does not mean surrendering what you believe."
Mr Obama's comments came on the second full day of his three-day visit to the UK, and weeks ahead of the 23 June in-out referendum.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Mr Cameron on Friday, Mr Obama said the US "wants Britain's influence to grow - including within Europe".
"The UK is at its best when it's helping to lead a strong European Union. It leverages UK power to be part of the EU.
"I don't think the EU moderates British influence in the world, it magnifies it." | US President Barack Obama has urged young people to "reject pessimism and cynicism" and "know that progress is possible and problems can be solved". |
36,717,286 | Prosecutors said the men were in constant contact with IS in Syria through Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the leader of the attacks in Paris last November.
He was killed in a shootout in Paris days after the attacks in which 130 people were murdered.
The Verviers cell was planning an attack in Belgium, prosecutors said.
Molenbeek's gangster jihadists
"The cell in Verviers aimed for the bloodiest possible attacks using bombs and automatic weapons," Judge Pierre Hendrickx said.
"For Abaaoud and the Verviers cell, the airport at Zaventem constituted a target," he added.
The airport was eventually targeted in March by militants who were also connected to Abaaoud. Two men detonated suicide vests, killing 17 people.
What we know about the Brussels attacks
Who were the victims?
Marouane El Bali, Souhaib El Abdi and Mohamed Arshad were charged with forming a terror organisation and given 16 years. Omar Damache was jailed for eight years on the same charge.
The men had returned from fighting with IS in Syria and a cache of explosives and weapons was found in the building where they lived, prosecutors said.
Paris and Brussels bombers' links uncovered
Two other men, Sofiane Amghar and Khalid Ben Larbi - who were killed in the Verviers raid - had also travelled to Syria.
A total of 16 suspects were charged in connection with the raid last January, but nine remain on the run.
The raid came a week after jihadists attacked the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, killing 12 people. | Four members of a so-called Islamic State cell dismantled in the Belgian town of Verviers last year have been jailed for between eight and 16 years. |
30,897,005 | The Fochabers-based family business is famed for its soups and preserves.
A spokeswoman for the company said: "The Baxter family confirm with great sadness that Mrs Ena Baxter passed away on Thursday (15 January).
"The family respectfully requests privacy at this difficult time."
Mrs Baxter and her late husband Gordon - who died in 2013, aged 95 - built up the firm from a cottage industry into an international food group over a period of 50 years.
She was born near Forgue, brought up in Huntly, and studied at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen. | Ena Baxter - one of the driving forces behind the Moray-based Baxters food empire and the face of many of its adverts - has died at the age of 90. |
34,957,677 | David Clarke, 26, who had learning difficulties, was beaten to death in his flat at Forthriver Road on 6 June 2001.
At the time, police said it was one of the most savage and brutal killings they had ever dealt with.
Det Ch Insp Alan Dickson said the inquiry had been re-opened after detectives received new information.
Mr Clarke's body was found in his flat later on the day of his death by friends who were concerned for him.
He had been an "inoffensive and vulnerable" man and died after an "increasingly frenzied" assault, DCI Dickson said.
"I have been a police officer for 28 years and a murder detective for 13 of those years," he said.
"Apart from the wounds sustained by gunshot victims, David's injuries are the worst I have seen.
"This was a frenzied and savage attack."
Police said Mr Clarke had been bullied in the weeks leading up to his murder.
DCI Dickson said there was no paramilitary involvement in the murder and people should not be concerned about bringing information forward.
"This was an incident in which a vulnerable young man, who was no threat to anyone, was savagely beaten because he was an easy target.
"The community took David to its heart - people helped to pay for his funeral, his grave is tended to this day by locals and his old flat is now a community centre known locally as Clarke House.
"The information needed to apprehend David's killer, or killers, lies within the local community at Forthriver and Glencairn.
"Even though there were a number of arrests in the original investigation, there is a sense that this is a forgotten murder.
"It has certainly not been forgotten by police or, probably, by those involved." | Police have re-opened an investigation into the murder of a man in north Belfast 14 years ago. |
33,015,460 | The Commission said the EU was aiming to phase out animal testing, but it was still too early to ban tests on live animals conducted for medical research.
The campaign group Stop Vivisection gathered 1.1 million signatures in a bid to change the law.
The Commission says a 2010 directive allowing animal tests will remain law.
It sets out detailed animal welfare rules for scientists conducting lab tests on animals.
Drug treatments and chemical toxicity are two of the most important research areas for such tests, and in most cases mice or rats are used. Cosmetics cannot be tested on animals under EU law.
There is often controversy about how closely animal tests can mimic human biology and scientists are refining alternatives, such as computer models.
Labs in the 28-nation EU used 11.5 million animals in experiments in 2011, according to the most recent official data available. France, Germany and the UK accounted for 55% of the total number.
In its response to the Stop Vivisection petition, submitted under an EU mechanism called "European Citizens' Initiative (ECI)", the Commission said that "for the time being, animal experimentation remains important for protecting human and animal health, and for maintaining an intact environment.
"While working towards the ultimate goal of full replacement of animals, Directive 2010/63/EU is an indispensable tool at the EU level to protect those animals still required. The Directive implements the Three Rs - to replace, reduce and refine animal use in Europe."
Under EU rules the Commission has to consider legislative changes if more than a million people in at least seven EU countries sign a petition on a particular issue.
The Commission said it "welcomes the mobilisation of citizens in support of animal welfare" and will organise an EU conference on animal testing "by 2016" to review the progress made towards reducing such tests.
Its response to the petition was welcomed by several research scientists, quoted by the Science Media Centre.
Nancy Lee at the Wellcome Trust said the Commission had recognised "the crucial role that the carefully regulated use of animals in research has in improving human and animal health and advancing modern medicine".
Prof Jan Schnupp, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, said strong animal welfare safeguards were in place in the EU and animal tests were carried out "only if these experiments have passed tight scrutiny by independent ethics boards".
More than half of those who signed the petition were in Italy, where it was launched.
Nick Palmer, head of policy at the UK anti-vivisection group Cruelty Free International, said the UK "is one of the largest users of animals in research in Europe and the UK is particularly secretive".
Speaking to the BBC, he said UK researchers do not have to publish full details of such experiments, whereas in much of Europe they do. He also complained that the number of such tests had risen in the UK.
"We are pleased in principle that the Commission is saying explicitly they think animal experiments should be phased out, but we're unhappy with the absence of any clear strategy to do so," he said. | An EU-wide campaign to stop laboratory experiments on animals has failed to persuade the European Commission to impose a ban. |
40,114,370 | Gal Gadot was formerly in the Israeli army. Military service is compulsory in the country.
The Lebanese interior ministry banned the film hours before its release, on a recommendation from the General Security directorate, reports say.
The nations are officially at war, but have observed a ceasefire since 2006.
A formal request to ban Wonder Woman was first made by the Ministry of Economy and Trade, which oversees a long-standing policy of boycotting Israeli exports, which it considers "enemy attempts to infiltrate our markets".
But the decision took cinemas by surprise. One of the first indications that the ban was approved came from Lebanon's Grand Cinemas chain, which tweeted on Wednesday: "#WonderWoman has been banned in #Lebanon."
Just 12 hours before, it had responded to a follower's concerns, saying: "It won't be banned dear."
The film was due to have had its Lebanese premiere in Beirut the same night.
Film distributor Tony Chacra of the company Joseph Chacra and Sons said that decision was "very frustrating". "The movie has nothing to do with Israel," he told the Reuters news agency.
As news of a possible ban spread, Lebanese users on social media site Reddit said publicity for the movie had been high.
"I am Lebanese and I'm seeing ads for WW everywhere in Beirut. Pretty much everyone of my friends want to see it. This is just a vocal minority [against it]," one user wrote.
Ms Galdot has previously appeared as Wonder Woman in 2016's Batman v Superman, which was shown in Lebanese cinemas.
The Ministry of Economy and Trade had requested that movie be banned on the same basis, but was not successful.
Lebanon and Israel have no diplomatic relations.
Lebanon's Hezbollah movement fought a brief war against Israeli forces in 2006. Since then, a United Nations-monitored ceasefire has largely been observed.
However, there have been occasional border clashes between the two countries, and Israel has targeted Hezbollah with strikes in Syria in recent years. | Lebanon has banned superhero blockbuster Wonder Woman from cinemas, because the title character is played by an Israeli actress. |
33,654,931 | Media playback is not supported on this device
The world champion was 0.351 seconds clear of Daniil Kvyat's Red Bull in second place and 0.719secs ahead of Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg.
The German was fourth, behind the second Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo.
Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen was fifth with team-mate Sebastian Vettel seventh after two spins, behind Toro Rosso's Carlos Sainz.
Hamilton was also quickest in the first session and was more than 0.7secs quicker than Rosberg on the medium tyre earlier in the session, as well as on the soft tyre on his qualifying simulation run.
The world champion looks already as if he will be tough to beat this weekend, on a race track where he has won four of the eight races in which he has competed.
"It was really good fun, but incredibly hot - hotter than a sauna," said Hamilton. "I lost over a kilo just then so it is going to be tough in the race.
"This morning I was thinking maybe this is my favourite track. It is so fun to drive - the combination of corners... It's bumpy, it feels old school."
Rosberg had a second attempt to try to close the gap to Hamilton but was already 0.6secs down when he aborted the lap after a mistake at Turn 12.
Red Bull's pace suggests that they could potentially emerge as the second quickest team behind Mercedes this weekend, as the twists and turns of the Hungaroring emphasise their strong chassis and play down the power deficit of the Renault engine.
The Red Bulls were also impressively fast on their race-simulation runs later in the session, Ricciardo in particular lapping consistently quicker than the Mercedes until he suffered an engine failure, bringing his session to a premature end.
"His race run was looking pretty competitive," team principal Christian Horner said, confirming that Ricciardo would not suffer a grid penalty because the team would fit an engine for the rest of the weekend that had already been used this season.
Ricciardo said: "Low fuel was pretty good, we can still clean it up a bit, but high fuel we're pretty much there. I won't get too excited yet, though."
BBC F1 analyst Allan McNish said: "The Red Bull pace looks genuine - I think they have stepped up into second place overall, for this race at least.
Media playback is not supported on this device
"They have a chance of the podium but it will be pretty tight on Saturday as we know Williams always run very conservatively on Fridays."
McLaren's Fernando Alonso was eighth with team-mate Jenson Button 12th, the Williams cars of Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa were ninth and 10th and Toro Rosso's Max Verstappen came 11th.
It was an encouraging performance from McLaren. Their Honda engine is significantly less competitive even than the Renault but, like Red Bull, the car is reasonably competitive.
Force India did not run at all as they investigated the cause of a violent crash suffered by Sergio Perez in the first session.
The Mexican was pitched into a spin by a rear suspension failure after he ran wide over a low kerb and the team were not prepared to risk team-mate Nico Hulkenberg until they could be sure what had happened.
Practice results
Coverage details | Lewis Hamilton was in impressive form as he set the pace in second practice at the Hungarian Grand Prix. |
29,611,863 | Andrew Hocking, from Copthorne, is alleged to have attacked the girl at his former home in Fareham, between 1982 and 1984.
Sussex Police said he was also charged last November with 11 offences of making indecent images of children between 1997 and 2011.
Mr Hocking appeared at Lewes Crown Court and was bailed until 22 December.
Sussex Police said their investigation was continuing and they wanted to speak to anyone who knew Mr Hocking in Fareham during the early 1980s. | A 57-year-old West Sussex man has been charged with raping and indecently assaulting a 12-year-old girl. |
35,822,073 | The 21-year-old made two appearances for the Tykes this season in the Football League Trophy.
He went on loan to Kidderminster last month and scored three goals in seven games after making his debut against the Wood.
"Harry really impressed me with his work ethic, strength and commitment," manager Luke Garrard said.
"We all know we need goals, we all know our defence is not a problem and with the strike force I now have fit and at my disposal, I'm hoping that they will get the goals that will fire us too survival."
Boreham Wood are one place and one point above the National League relegation zone, having been promoted last season. | Boreham Wood have signed striker Harry White on loan from Barnsley for the rest of the season. |
37,606,957 | The Scottish Veterans Fund helps projects provide services in areas such as employment, housing, and wellbeing.
Veterans Secretary Keith Brown said the Scottish government had pledged £360,000 - its largest contribution yet.
The fund will open for applications this autumn.
The boost includes a three-year £240,000 contribution from Edinburgh-based investment company Standard Life for employment schemes.
Mr Brown said: "For the past eight years, the Scottish government's Scottish Veterans Fund has been a source of help for projects that make a vital difference to people's lives.
"I am delighted to announce our largest contribution yet, with the fund to be supported by £360,000 of Scottish government money over three years.
"This will ensure it continues to help small, one-year projects - while, for the first time, applicants can bid for two or three-year funding for more strategic projects.
"I'm particularly grateful to Standard Life for their commitment, bringing the total available to £600,000 over three years.
"This investment will enable charities and other organisations to provide even more support to veterans leaving the armed forces and settling in Scotland each year."
Since 2008, The Scottish Veterans Fund has invested more than £830,000 and supported 125 projects that provide support to veterans. | Organisations in Scotland supporting veterans will be able to apply for a share of £600,000 funding, delivered over the next three years. |
32,251,699 | Amnesty International, Liberty and Privacy International filed a legal complaint with the court today.
The scale of the surveillance carried out by GCHQ has been revealed by US whistleblower Edward Snowden.
A similar legal challenge mounted in the UK last year saw judges rule that the spying did not breach human rights.
"The UK government's surveillance practices have been allowed to continue unabated and on an unprecedented scale, with major consequences for people's privacy and freedom of expression," said Nick Williams, legal counsel for Amnesty in a statement.
The three organisations claim that the surveillance carried out by GCHQ breaches the European Convention on Human Rights that enshrines certain freedoms in law.
The surveillance carried out by GCHQ has been subject to a series of legal challenges since National Security Agency documents provided by Edward Snowden started to appear in the media.
In December, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal that oversees the work of the intelligence services ruled that GCHQ's spying did not violate Britons' human rights and was a legitimate way to gather intelligence.
In February, a separate ruling by the IPT found that the spy agency's surveillance programme was unlawful because the processes governing how GCHQ gathered and shared information were not public enough.
Amnesty acknowledged these rulings in its statement but said the "secretive" nature of IPT hearings meant there was little transparency about the way GCHQ was being policed. This, it said, undermined the faith people had in official oversight of the agency.
Information that had come to light in the last 12 months showed, said Amnesty, that there were flaws in the oversight system. One revelation concerned arrangements GCHQ has with its US counterparts to get at data it would be difficult for the UK agency to get permission to acquire.
There were also loopholes in UK laws governing surveillance being exploited by GCHQ to expand its spying abilities, it said. | Rights groups have asked the European Court of Human Rights to rule on the legality of the UK's large-scale surveillance regime. |
35,161,831 | The Pro12 sides meet on Sunday at Murrayfield and then again at Scotstoun on 2 January.
As well as league points, the teams will be battling to win the 1872 Cup over two legs.
"Dealing with pressure is really, really important," said former Edinburgh and Scotland back Paterson.
"Your opportunities could be very, very few and far between. Your opportunity could be in the opening five minutes of the opening game and you've got to take it.
"You may not get another opportunity because everybody will be so tense over the two games. That's the key thing - keeping a calm head under pressure.
"You need some of your players, obviously, to get wound up and be more aggressive than others but you need the decision makers to be really clear under pressure and strike when you have opportunity to because there won't be a huge amount of opportunities."
Paterson, now an MBE, does some coaching with the Warriors and had two spells at Edinburgh as he became Scotland's most-capped and highest scoring player.
"It's your typical derby in many ways," he said of meetings of Scotland's two professional sides. "It's fiercely competitive on the field and off the field. There's a great tradition that the supporters compete as well.
"On the field, it's real - it's hard rugby, it's meaningful rugby, it's league points at stake but there's an 1872 trophy at stake as well.
"There's a real edge to it. What we have now is two teams that are really strong, really competitive. We've got reigning [Pro12] champions in Glasgow and you've got an Edinburgh team that are vastly improving - final of the European [Challenge Cup] last year.
"All that goes out the window when you come head-to-head. It comes down to you against your opposite number in a derby match and it's hard.
"They will be close. You've got two teams playing towards the top of their games, over two legs, it's an aggregate score in the 1872 Cup. The team that wins the first leg has a huge advantage." | Chris Paterson believes "a calm head under pressure" could be the key to success in Edinburgh and Glasgow Warriors' annual double-header. |
40,771,333 | The Proteas, chasing 492, lost three wickets for five runs in eight balls but recovered to close on 117-4.
It could have been better for England had opener Dean Elgar, unbeaten on 72, not been dropped by Keaton Jennings.
The hosts earlier moved from 74-1 to 313-8 declared, with Jonny Bairstow, Joe Root and debutant Tom Westley making half-centuries.
It can be argued that Root, declaring for the first time as Test captain, was conservative in waiting until the stroke of tea to end England's second innings, but his side are still on course to take a 2-1 lead in the four-match series.
South Africa would have to become only the fourth team to bat through the fifth day to save a Test after being four wickets down overnight.
England were helped by favourable bowling conditions when they dismissed South Africa for 175 in the first innings. Here, they had to be even better in the south London sunshine.
Elgar was reprieved at third slip by a diving Jennings off the bowling of James Anderson, but then watched from the other end as the Proteas crumbled.
A flat-footed Heino Kuhn was bowled by one that nipped back from Stuart Broad and Hashim Amla was caught at second slip when trying to leave Toby Roland-Jones, the second time in the match he has fallen to the debutant.
Ben Stokes then took over, first uprooting Quinton de Kock with a precision yorker and, next ball, Faf du Plessis offered no shot to be lbw, the same way he was dismissed in the first innings.
At 52-4, there was a thought that England could win inside four days, but Elgar found a willing ally in Temba Bavuma in an unbeaten stand of 65 that lasted for an hour and a half.
The crabby Elgar took a number of blows in between occasional drives and South Africa's unlikely hopes of saving the game rest mainly on him and the equally stoic Bavuma.
Resuming on 74-1 in ideal batting conditions, England had the pleasurable task of moving to a position from which Root felt safe to declare.
The hosts may have preferred under-pressure opener Jennings to make a telling contribution, only for the left-hander to fend Kagiso Rabada to gully after moving on from his overnight 34 to 48.
England's morning progress was untroubled, if not rapid, with Root (50) scoring through the off side and Westley (59) bringing up his maiden half-century with a classy clip through his favoured mid-wicket region.
Both fell trying to attack the left-arm spin of Keshav Maharaj and, when Dawid Malan was given lbw to Chris Morris on review, the rate was upped by Stokes and Bairstow.
Stokes, who made 31, heaved paceman Morris over cow corner for six, but the real entertainment came from Bairstow, who raced to 63 from 58 balls.
The highlights were a slog-sweep off Maharaj for six and a ramp over the slips off Rabada until he holed out to long-off to signal the declaration - not before Roland-Jones thumped two maximums of his own.
Ex-England captain Michael Vaughan: "Tom Westley was very good. I like players that don't seem to try to hit the ball hard, but time it very well to the boundary.
"On debut, in these conditions, he's faced a good bowling attack and gets a big tick from me. He's got a good temperament about him and he should be around for a while.
"At the minute, I don't think Keaton Jennings will be opening in this winter's Ashes but I do think England will stick with him for Old Trafford.
"At times he looked better but I still think he's struggling and I think he needs more energy in those legs, a little more oomph.
"At the minute he looks like a sitting duck. It's good he fought for his 48 but it was a great opportunity to get a hundred and he will know he will need more than 48 at Old Trafford."
England's Ben Stokes: "We always knew the target we wanted to be ahead when the day started. There wasn't really a massive plan until me and Jonny (Bairstow) started to play some more aggressive shots.
"There was a hint we might get 15 minutes before tea but Jimmy and Broady wanted to get into a rhythm rather than having to start again after a break."
Ex-South Africa captain Graeme Smith: "Well done to England, I thought they were very good, bar a declaration that maybe should have come 45 minutes earlier.
"If it wasn't for the late fight from Elgar and Bavuma it would have been very sorry for South Africa but those two have given them a glimmer of hope going into day five." | England are closing in on victory in the third Test after ripping through South Africa on day four at The Oval. |
35,654,483 | UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien told the Security Council that the plane dropped 21 tonnes of humanitarian items on a government-held part of Deir al-Zour.
Initial reports indicated that the aid had successfully reached the target area, Mr O'Brien said.
The UN says 200,000 civilians are living under siege in Deir al-Zour.
In a recent report, the UN said those trapped in the besieged areas were facing "sharply deteriorating conditions" with reports of "severe cases of malnutrition and deaths due to starvation".
Last week, more than 100 lorries carrying food and other basic goods reached 80,000 people in five other besieged areas of Syria. Two more convoys were sent to two towns besieged by government forces on Tuesday.
In another development on Wednesday, the main Syrian opposition umbrella group said it would respect a provisional ceasefire due to come into force on Saturday "for two weeks".
The statement from the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) came after the Syrian government also said it would observe the "cessation of hostilities" brokered by the US and Russia.
"Earlier this morning, a WFP (World Food Programme) plane dropped the first cargo of 21 tonnes of items into Deir al-Zour," Mr O'Brien told the Security Council.
He said teams from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent on the ground confirmed that "pallets have landed in the target area as planned".
BBC UN correspondent Nick Bryant says the air drop is a last resort by aid agencies after warring parties blocked access to the city.
Convoys of lorries are considered the most efficient form of delivery for much-needed supplies, he says.
The World Food Programme had previously ruled out humanitarian air drops in Syria due to the complexities of obtaining use of airspace, organising distribution on the ground, and finding suitable drop zones.
The UK government also said air drops were "high risk and should only be considered as a last resort when all other means have failed".
But Jan Egeland, who chairs a humanitarian taskforce, said last week that the strategy was the only way to feed people in Deir al-Zour.
The UN estimates that more than 480,000 Syrians are living in besieged areas, with four million more people in "hard-to-reach" areas.
Last week, convoys of aid lorries reached rebel-held Muadhamiya, Madaya and Zabadani, near Damascus, and pro-government northern villages of Foah and Kefraya.
The supplies are expected to last for about a month.
All sides in the civil war are believed to have used siege warfare, in which forces surround an area and cut off essential supplies, in breach of international law.
The temporary "cessation of hostilities" is scheduled to take effect across Syria on Saturday after midnight Damascus time (22:00 GMT Friday).
It excludes IS and the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.
The Syrian government has said it will observe the partial ceasefire, but insists it will continue to fight IS, al-Nusra and "other terrorist groups linked to them".
On Tuesday, the HNC warned that its acceptance of the truce was "conditional" on the implementation of a UN resolution that calls on all parties to lift sieges, allow aid deliveries, halt aerial and artillery attacks on civilians, and release detainees. | The UN says it has carried out its first air drop of aid in Syria to help civilians in an eastern city besieged by Islamic State (IS) militants. |
33,424,034 | The video was posted online and shows a man dressed in an orange jumpsuit, while five other men in black stand around him - one holding a fake knife.
The Sun said the employees were members of the bank's legal division in Birmingham on a team building exercise.
The bank said it did not tolerate "inappropriate behaviour".
"As soon as the Sun brought this video to our attention we took the decision to sack the individuals involved," the bank said.
"This is an abhorrent video and HSBC would like to apologise for any offence caused."
The bank did not specify how many people had been sacked.
The newspaper has posted an eight-second clip of the video on its website in which one man shouts "Allahu Akbar" - Arabic for "god is great" - while others laugh. | HSBC has sacked employees who made an "abhorrent" video in which they pretended to be Islamic State militants carrying out a beheading. |
33,857,875 | The Dons took the lead when Jake Reeves' drive found its way to Tom Elliott and the former U's striker fired home off the crossbar.
However, almost immediately after the restart Leon Legge headed home an equaliser from a Ryan Donaldson corner.
Two minutes later Barry Corr fired in a volley - this time from Harrison Dunk's corner - to seal the turnaround. | Cambridge came from behind to beat AFC Wimbledon and preserve their unbeaten start to the League Two season. |
36,385,661 | Sturridge, 26, who did not play in Sunday's 2-1 win over Turkey, was sidelined with an unspecified knock.
The Liverpool forward has had an injury-hit season for his club.
Friday's game is the last before boss Roy Hodgson trims three players from his provisional 26-man Euro 2016 squad.
"It is interesting because Sturridge is one of the players who Roy Hodgson said has a question mark over him," said BBC Sport senior football reporter Ian Dennis.
"Rashford will play on Friday night. This raises the prospect of him maybe starting and does it then increase the chances of him going to Euro 2016?
"I expect Hodgson to be pressed on the fitness of Sturridge at his news conference on Thursday."
Rashford, 18, scored eight goals in 18 appearances in his debut campaign for Manchester United.
Sturridge, who has five goals in 17 England caps, finished as Liverpool's top scorer this season with 13 goals, despite missing much of the campaign through injury.
The striker, along with Liverpool team-mates Adam Lallana, James Milner and Nathaniel Clyne, joined Hodgson's squad on Monday after playing and scoring in the 3-1 Europa League final loss to Sevilla.
Chelsea defender Gary Cahill, who had an injection in the days leading up to captaining England in the win over Turkey, also missed Wednesday's session.
Jamie Vardy, who scored the winner against Turkey, was the only other absentee after being given time off to get married.
Leicester team-mate Danny Drinkwater was there for the ceremony but returned in time for training in Manchester, where Jack Wilshere and Jordan Henderson were involved as they looked to prove their fitness.
Midfielder Eric Dier says he does not consider himself a definite starter for England despite having featured in all of their last five games.
"I wouldn't call myself a key member but it's been a crazy 12 months for me," said the 22-year-old, who helped Tottenham finish third in the Premier League.
"It's been a great 12 months and I'm really enjoying every minute of it. Hopefully I can repay the manager's faith and keep improving."
Who do you think should start at Euro 2016? Step into Roy Hodgson's shoes and pick your XI - and then share it with your friends using our brand new team selector. | Striker Marcus Rashford is set to start England's Euro 2016 warm-up match against Australia on Friday with Daniel Sturridge's fitness in question after he missed training on Wednesday. |
18,573,570 | The 24-year-old led by three early in the final round but eventually had to rely on the Australian bogeying the last to finish tied on 11 under.
The duo played the 18th hole four more times before Willett claimed victory.
"I've had some ups and downs in the last 18 months and I want to thank everybody for their support," he said.
Willett had previously finished in the top 10 on 19 occasions without managing a win
The Sheffield-born golfer was leading by one shot at the start of the day's play and birdied the third and fourth holes to take a three-shot lead.
But his early progress stalled on the ninth hole when he three-putted, allowing Fraser to draw level, and further dropped shots followed on the 11th and 15th.
The first extra hole saw both golfers par the 18th with Fraser holing from 12-feet, before both bogeyed it at the next attempt, with Willett missing from four feet. At the third time of asking, they parred it again.
Fraser, twice a winner on the European Tour, looked favourite to land the first prize of nearly £270,000 when he was 30 feet away in two and the Yorkshireman went over the green.
But Willett chipped close, while Fraser saw his putt lip out and then missed a four-footer coming back to give the Englishman victory.
The world number 204 now goes to Sunningdale to try to qualify for the Open Championship. | England's Danny Willett took his first victory on the European Tour by winning the International Open in Cologne after a play-off with Marcus Fraser. |
31,942,775 | Felicity Bassouls, 67, of the Scottish Highlands, is said to have harassed the ex-Northampton Saints player after he separated from her daughter, last year.
She appeared at Northampton Magistrates' Court on two counts of harassment without violence.
The case was adjourned for trial at Corby Magistrates' Court on 12 August.
The harassment is alleged to have taken place in Northampton and elsewhere between 1 September and 29 October last year, against Cohen and Ms Bassouls' own son, Austen Blaney.
Cohen, 36, had denied rumours that his marriage ended after his appearances on the BBC One celebrity show.
He starred in the 2013 series with dancing partner Kristina Rihanoff but denied they had a relationship.
In a statement issued at the time of their break-up, the couple said: "Ben and Abby Cohen have agreed to take time apart to deal with some marital issues but remain fully committed to the welfare of their children.
"There is no third party involved and Ben and Abby now ask that their privacy and that of their family be respected at this difficult time." | The mother-in-law of ex England rugby union player and Strictly Come Dancing star Ben Cohen bombarded him with e-mails and calls, a court has heard. |
39,319,486 | The 34-year-old Kazakh (37-0) sent Jacobs to the canvas in round four on his way to a 115-112 115-112 114-113 victory on the judges' scorecards.
Victory edges Golovkin closer to a super-fight with Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez.
"Of course, I'm ready [to fight Canelo]," Golovkin told HBO.
"I'm very hungry. I'm very mad and excited - I'm like an animal for this fight."
Golovkin's promoter Tom Loeffler claimed the Kazakh and Mexican Alvarez (48-1-1) have "agreed on a lot of points" after plans for a unification bout against Britain's WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders failed to materialise.
According to CompuBox, Golovkin outpunched 30-year-old Jacobs in New York - 231 to 175 - but the American, who is the first cancer survivor to win a world title, believed he had won the contest.
"After the knockdown, I told him he would have to kill me [to knock me out]," Jacobs said. "When I got up, I thought, 'This is all he has? I got back up and I thought I won the fight.'" | Gennady Golovkin made the 18th defence of his middleweight titles with a unanimous decision over Daniel Jacobs, but he failed to stop his opponent for the first time since 2008. |
37,015,055 | The rights group says the most deadly incident happened in Bahir Dar, where at least 30 people died on Sunday.
The authorities have said seven died in Bahir Dar and that security forces were reacting to violence from protesters.
There has been an unprecedented wave of protests in Ethiopia in recent months.
People in the Oromo and Amhara regions have been complaining about political and economic marginalisation.
Amnesty says that 67 people died when "security forces fired live bullets at peaceful protesters" in different towns and cities in the Oromo region over the weekend.
There were clashes between security forces and protesters on Sunday in Bahir Dar, the Amhara regional capital.
Opposition activists have given similar figures for the number of people killed.
The government has blamed "nearby and distant foreign enemies and social media activists" for defying warnings about holding unauthorised protests, the government-affiliated Fana Broadcasting Corporate (FBC) reports.
The authorities have said that the demonstrators were destroying government and private property and "inflicting deaths on innocent citizens" and arrests were made as people were trying to spread the violence, FBC adds.
The United States, a close ally of the government, said it was "deeply concerned" by the violence and said the people's rights to demonstrate should be respected.
The unrest was sparked last November by a plan to expand the capital into Oromia. This led to fears farmers from the Oromo ethnic group, the largest in Ethiopia, would be displaced.
The plan was later dropped but protests continued, highlighting issues such as marginalisation and human rights.
New York-based Human Rights Watch says that more than 400 people have been killed in clashes with the security forces since protests began. The government has disputed this figure.
The Amharas are Ethiopia's second biggest ethnic group and used to form the country's elite. | Nearly 100 people were killed in the weekend's protests in Ethiopia as demonstrators clashed with security forces in different parts of the country, Amnesty International says. |
14,459,954 | Fiona Donnison, 45, of Lightwater, Surrey, had denied the murders of Harry, aged three, and two-year-old Elise, in a trial at Lewes Crown Court.
Their bodies were found in holdalls in the boot of Donnison's car, near the former family home in East Sussex.
Donnison was jailed for life, with a minimum tariff of 32 years, following the killings in January 2010.
Judge Mr Justice Nicol described the murders as "deliberate and wicked acts".
He said: "The premature end of such young lives would have been a tragedy, but this was no accident.
"You killed them, you who were their mother. Why you did this defies logical explanation.
"It seems it can only have something to do with your feelings for Paul Donnison, the children's father and your former partner."
Speaking outside court, Mr Donnison, 48, said the pain his family had suffered was "almost unbearable."
He also criticised the criminal justice system, saying it was "biased" in favour of the person on trial and his former partner had been treated "with kid gloves".
Following the sentencing, it can also be revealed that prosecutors attempted to have Donnison tried for the murder of her first child with Mr Donnison.
After the deaths of Harry and Elise, investigators decided to look again at the circumstances behind the death of nine-month-old Mia, who died of a suspected cot death in April 2004.
Prosecutors said that "taken together" there was sufficient evidence for a jury to consider a murder charge in her case.
But at a pre-trial hearing, Mr Justice Cooke ruled to dismiss the charge of murdering Mia, saying there was no direct evidence in relation to her death.
Donnison had earlier chosen to stay in the cells as the jury returned its unanimous guilty verdict.
Jurors heard claims Donnison, a former City worker, used the children as the "ultimate pawns", in her vendetta against their father.
Prosecutors told the court she smothered the children with their bedding before putting their bodies in the car.
Donnison declined to give evidence during the trial.
But the defence argued she had suffered from depression at the time and said the charges should be reduced to manslaughter.
Jurors heard from mental health professionals who said Donnison swallowed a blade from a pencil sharpener earlier this year, could not remember events surrounding the deaths and could not bring herself to say the children's names.
But prosecutors dismissed this, pointing to the level of planning involved in the killings.
One clinical psychologist said she believed Donnison to have been "100% likely to be feigning" psychological problems or symptoms.
Donnison was also described in court as a narcissist with an overdeveloped sense of self-importance and entitlement.
Prosecutor Libby Clark said: "Harry and Elise were regarded as delightful, well-mannered and affectionate children by all who came into contact with them.
"Their lives were ended in a sudden and brutal act of revenge by the their mother.
"The jury has accepted the Crown's case that Fiona Donnison was not the victim she portrayed herself to be, but a calculating killer of her own children." | A mother found guilty of murdering her two young children has been sentenced to a minimum of 32 years in prison. |
40,942,741 | Last year 252 children aged 12 and under were given antidepressants while in 2009/10 it was 57.
During the same period the numbers for all children under 18 doubled from 2,748 in 2009/10 to 5,572 last year.
The Scottish government said the increase reflected a rise in the number of young people seeking help.
There are no official guidelines for the treatment of depression in children and adolescents in Scotland.
However, there are NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) guidelines for England and Wales that doctors can refer to and be guided by.
NICE says antidepressants should be given to teenagers and children in conjunction with psychological talking therapies.
Fluoxetine, which is usually sold under the trade name Prozac, is the only drug recommended for under 18s "as this is the only antidepressant for which clinical trial evidence shows the benefits outweigh the risks".
The statistics obtained by the BBC from NHS Scotland's Information Services Division show that last year 45% of the under-18s were prescribed fluoxetine.
They also show that 41% of them were prescribed sertraline and 13% citalopram, which are the recommended second-line treatments if fluoxetine is "not tolerated".
Ten adolescents, aged 13-17, were prescribed paroxetine despite NICE guidelines saying "paroxetine should not be used for the treatment of depression in children and young people".
Dr Elaine Lockhart, chairman of the child and adolescent faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland, said: "Antidepressants are prescribed for a range of conditions, including depression, anxiety, OCD and even for migraines and pain in some cases.
"This data does not indicate what the prescriptions are for, so it is impossible to ascertain precisely why prescriptions for antidepressants have increased.
"Without this information, it is wrong to assume that only depressed children have been prescribed medication."
Dr Lockhart added: "Antidepressants are an evidence-based treatment. When left untreated mental illnesses such as severe depression can cause extreme suffering, and stop children from enjoying their childhood."
She said antidepressants should only be used in under 18-year-olds on the recommendation of psychiatrists, who take the prescription of psychotropic medication "very seriously".
Dr Lockhart said they medications were used when anxiety or depressive symptoms had not responded adequately to psychological therapies alone.
They could also be used to reduce severe symptoms so the child or young person could then make use of psychological therapies, she said.
The Scottish government has said it believes doctors are using medication correctly.
Mental Health Minister Maureen Watt said: "Any prescribing is a clinical decision and there is good evidence that GPs assess and treat depression appropriately.
"We have worked hard to reduce the stigma faced by people with mental health problems. As this stigma declines we would expect more patients to seek help from their GPs for problems such as depression.
"People with mental illness should expect the same standard of care as people with physical illness and should receive medication if they need it."
The minister added: "The number of items prescribed has been increasing consistently over the last ten years.
"This reflects the substantial increase in demand for child and adolescent mental health services."
Julie says her depression was first picked up when she was nine or 10 after her parents became concerned about her mental health.
She did not receive antidepressants at that young age and the treatment "was mostly speaking to people and trying to get things off my chest".
For Julie, which is not her real name, talking therapies did not work.
"Things just got worse," she says.
"I didn't find any help in talking to people. They didn't accept there were some things I didn't want to talk about. They were very pushy trying to find out why I was upset."
When she was 14 Julie went to the doctor and was prescribed the antidepressant sertraline.
"At first I thought it helped," she says.
"I have never had very high self-esteem and I noticed very quickly that it helped with that.
"But after a couple of months I started noticing that I was maybe overconfident and a bit cocky, obnoxious, rude and inconsiderate towards other people. I was different to my usual self on it."
At first it was just mood swings but a few months on from that it turned into "destructive behaviour", which got her into trouble with the police.
"That wasn't me," she says
"The person I was when I was on that drug was someone unrecognisable to me and my family.
"I was a horrible person when I was on that medication. I had a lot of problems at the time but that just wasn't me. I've not been like that since or before it."
Julie says the dose of her medication was increased to deal with the symptoms but the side effects got worse and her behaviour became more erratic.
When she stopped taking the drugs, she says, she returned to herself within weeks.
"Very quickly the bad behaviour stopped, the intense emotions stopped and the anger went away.
"I'm 100% positive those problems started when I started taking Sertraline. Once I had taken myself off it those problems went away in a short space of time."
Julie is now 19 and looking back she says the way the drug was prescribed and monitored was wrong.
"The dose I was on was wrong and I wasn't made aware of the risks," she says.
"I think if someone is one it they should be checked on very frequently. It shouldn't just be left to them to deal with." | Four times as many children under 13 were prescribed antidepressants last year as just seven years ago, figures obtained by BBC Scotland show. |
29,502,471 | The delays are affecting blood delivery service Serv, whose managers have complained about a lack of information.
Alan Rogers, Serv Surrey controller, said bikers had been affected by the roadworks on the Coopers Hill Viaduct.
The Highways Agency said drivers should allow an extra 40 minutes for journeys, especially if heading for Gatwick.
In peak times about 4,500 vehicles an hour use the section of the M23 between junctions eight, which joins the M25, and nine, for the airport.
Night-time closures and a variable contraflow system, which started last month and will last until the end of November, have been causing tailbacks on both carriageways.
Mr Rogers said Serv's bikers collected blood at night from Tooting in south London for distribution to hospitals in Surrey.
They also meet riders on the A23 at Hooley to transfer blood for hospitals in Kent and Sussex.
"We don't know which parts of what roads are going to be closed on any particular night and that makes planning quite difficult," he said.
"The challenge is getting to the liaison with the Kent or Sussex guys for our pre-arranged rendezvous time."
Peter Phillips, Highways Agency manager for the M23, said: "If you are trying to get to Gatwick then please give yourself plenty of time or find yourself an alternative means of travel.
"There is a very good rail link but if you have got to come by car leave yourself plenty of time.
"Our website is the best source of information."
Separate roadworks to widen the A23 between Handcross and Warninglid in West Sussex are coming to an end.
The Highways Agency said a third lane would open to the public this week, with remaining resurfacing taking place at night. | Repairs to a corroded bridge have been causing traffic tailbacks of up to seven miles (11km) on the M23 in Surrey and Sussex. |
35,092,127 | Over the past two weeks, almost every nation on the planet has sent a team of negotiators to Paris to pore over page after page of nuanced jargon peppered with what seemed like a world record attempt for the most square brackets in a document.
But these brackets did matter. In the tense talks at a conference centre in north Paris, semantics was king.
Negotiators inhabited a world were "shall" would result in something becoming legally binding and "should" actually meant voluntary, as BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin explained here.
The fortnight kicked off with more than 150 world leaders, including Presidents Obama, Putin and Xi, descending on Paris to tell delegates that climate change was the most important issue facing us in the 21st Century.
Whether that was welcome support or unnecessary pressures it meant negotiators got down to business, often working through the night.
On Saturday evening - to claps, cheers and tears - a new landmark deal was born.
It was agreed by 195 nations. They will attempt to cut greenhouse gas emissions to a level that will limit the global average temperature to a rise "well below" 2C (3.6F) compared to pre-industrial levels - a level of warming deemed to be the point when dangerous climate change could threaten life on Earth.
You can read the final document here.
It depends on a multitude of factors - who you are, where you live, how you get from A to B, how you earn a living, how you spend your cash and how you like to spend your spare time.
If you live on a small low-lying island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the new agreement offers hope.
If nations manage to deliver then it could be the difference between having to flee your ancestral home and starting again thousands of miles away in an unfamiliar foreign land, or being able to plan and build for your family's future.
If you live in an industrialised, developed nation then it all depends on how committed governments and leading businesses are to achieving the goal. It could affect how much tax you pay, it could affect how much it will cost you to run a car - it may affect how much it costs you to feed and clothe you and your family.
But if nations do not commit to achieving the goal of limiting temperature rise to well below 2C, then the cost of adapting to the impact of a changing climate system will also affect the cost of living.
Numerous studies, including the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, say the cost of inaction will cost us all a great deal more than shifting to a decarbonised, climate-friendly way of life.
Some of it is legally binding within the United Nations framework. The regular review and submission of emission reduction targets will be binding.
So too will the $100bn fund from developed economies to help emerging and developing nations decarbonise their energy mix - which means moving away from burning fossil fuels to clean energy sources, such as renewables and nuclear.
What won't be legally binding will be the emission targets. These will be determined by nations themselves.
Within the agreement the targets are known as Intended National Determined Contributions (INDCs). To date, 187 countries have submitted their INDCs.
Observers have calculated that all of the targets, if delivered, will only curb warming by 2.7C. This is well above, not well below, the 2.0C goal of the Paris Agreement.
This begs the question why the targets themselves are not legally binding under international law.
This relates back to the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen. Observers say the attempt to impose binding targets on countries then was one of the reasons why the talks failed.
In Paris, a number of big emitting emerging economies - including China, India and South Africa - were unwilling to sign up to a condition that they felt could hamper their economic growth and development.
Nations have not been shy in coming forward to highlight their role in delivering a deal in Paris.
For example, just a few hours after the global climate deal was struck, US President Barack Obama told millions of TV viewers that it provided the "best chance we have to save the one planet we have". He also did not miss the opportunity to highlight the importance of "American leadership" in clinching the deal.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron said the deal represented "a huge step forward in securing the future of the planet".
The reaction from world leaders echoed the rousing rhetoric of their speeches on the opening day of the two weeks of negotiations.
The fact is that every nation played their part. Under the UN system, a single nation could have objected and refused to adopt the agreement and the deal would have been lost.
Among the more colourful rumours circulating in Paris was a suggestion that there was papal pressure to one president who was wavering.
And one shining star of the negotiations was French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, the president of the conference.
People lauded his handling of nations' positioning and posturing, with many saying that his political and diplomatic experience was one of the main reasons why there was a happy ending to the story.
Now the question is not who sealed the deal but who will deliver?
Even the most supportive observers accept that it is going to be a very tall order for the world to deliver a package of measures that will result in limiting global temperature rise to "well below" 2C (3.6F), let alone 1.5C, above pre-industrial levels.
Finance departments of governments around the globe are going to have to put decarbonisation at the heart of their fiscal policies. Past evidence suggests that this will be a big ask. To date, it has - at best - been on the margins and as soon as there have been wobbles in economic activity, green policies have either been put on the back burner, diluted, ignored or removed from statute books altogether.
There will have to be a paradigm shift in the philosophy of political parties. Lip service and nods, accompanied with a little tinkering will not be enough to deliver the aims of the Paris Agreement.
Campaigners say this is where you come in. Fiscal policy shapes economic activities. Governments, made up from elected politicians, shape fiscal policy. You elect politicians.
COP21: In summary
What is climate change?
Did the Pope save the climate?
Papers hail 'historic' Paris deal
COP 21 - the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties - saw more than 190 nations gather in Paris to agree new global pact on climate change, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the threat of dangerous warming as a result of human activities.
Explained: What is climate change?
In video: Why does the Paris conference matter?
Analysis: Latest from BBC environment correspondent Matt McGrath
In graphics: Climate change in six charts
More: BBC News special report (or follow the COP21 tag in the BBC News app) | As the euphoria of delegates at the UN climate talks in Paris fades, it is time to get down to the business of saving the planet and ask what does it mean for me? |
21,801,953 | Saturday's strike was part of a campaign against a zero pay rise.
But Bob Crow, general manager of the Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union said further talks would now take place following an improved offer.
The match is expected to draw 74,000 fans to Cardiff's Millennium Stadium with many coming by train.
The cleaners employed by contractor Churchill originally voted by a margin of 9-1 in favour of industrial action after the union accused the contractors of refusing to offer any increase in pay. | Cleaners for Arriva Trains Wales have called off a 24-hour walkout over pay on the day Wales play England in rugby's Six Nations. |
24,549,384 | Of these, 12 could be habitable - orbiting at a distance where it is neither "too hot" nor "too cold" for water to be liquid on the surface.
The planets are given away by tiny dips in light as they pass in front of their stars or through gravitational "tugs" on the star from an orbiting world.
These new worlds are listed in the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia.
The tally now stands at 1,010 new exoplanets, bolstered by 11 new finds from the UK's Wide Angle Search for Planets (Wasp).
Abel Mendez of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, said that although the number has rapidly increased in recent years, due to a lack of funding this figure is much lower than it could be.
"We have more techniques and proven technology to detect more exoplanets, but the limit has been telescopes, especially space telescopes.
"If we had more funding there would be more telescopes and that count would be much larger by now."
The Kepler space telescope, which spotted many of these worlds in recent years, broke down earlier this year. Scientists still have to trawl through more than 3,500 other candidates from this mission so the number could rapidly increase.
In January 2013, astronomers used Kepler's data to estimate that there could be at least 17 billion Earth-sized exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy. They said that one in six stars could host an Earth-sized planet in close orbit.
The number of confirmed planets frequently increases because as scientists analyse the data they are able publish their results online immediately. But as the finds are not yet peer reviewed, the total figure remains subject to change.
"Each night we get a list of astronomy papers where there might be an exoplanet announcement. When we get that we have to review it," explained Prof Mendez.
This exoplanet catalogue is organised by Jean Schneider, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory. For the past 18 years he has catalogued new exoplanets on the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia.
Others in the field, like Prof Mendez, are then able to review and comment on the findings, which makes it "more dynamic" he explained.
"That's why the other catalogues just lag behind. The review is reliable as it's exactly the same as what the journals do." Prof Mendez told BBC News.
Nasa will only accept those announced in an academic journal, so it updates its list far less frequently. Their tally currently stands at 919 confirmed worlds.
Jean Schneider said it was also important to note that there was "no consensus for the definition of a planet" and that past experience had shown that a few objects declared as planets were actually artefacts or low-mass stars.
"Some objects, like some Kepler planets, are declared 'confirmed planets' but have not been published in [referenced] articles. It does not mean that they will not be published later on, but it introduces another fuzziness in the tally," he added.
Even if there was a generally adopted definition, Mr Schneider said that for some objects "there is a large uncertainty on parameters, so that the planetary nature of the object is uncertain".
For Prof Mendez reaching 1,000 marks an important milestone in the quest to understand the history of the evolution of the cosmos.
"I don't just want to know where the exoplanets are, I want to understand the stars, because they are the hosts for the planets. I want to understand the whole galaxy and the distribution of the stars because everything is connected," he explained.
For him, the most exciting discoveries are Earth-like planets which could be habitable.
"We want to know how unique our planet is, that's a big question and we are now closer than ever," he added.
For Mr Schneider the most interesting is the candidate exoplanet around Alpha Centauri, as it is circling a star only four light-years away.
This planet likely has the same mass as Earth but is outside the "habitable zone" as it circles its star far closer than Mercury orbits our Sun. | The number of observed exoplanets - worlds circling distant stars - has passed 1,000. |
31,120,849 | Fawaz Al Hasawi's Mercedes-Benz Viano was vandalised while parked outside the iPro stadium during Derby County's match against Forest on 17 January.
The car had its rear windscreen wiper and personal registration plate torn off and its tyres deflated.
Derbyshire Police said writing a letter was a form of "restorative justice".
The two men were filmed vandalising the vehicle after the game which Nottingham Forest won 2-1.
Supt Gary Parkin said: "The two individuals will return on bail. Once they've returned they will be given the opportunity to write letters of apology.
"They've agreed to do this... Nottingham Forest and the chairman are comfortable with this at the moment and that will be restorative justice."
In a separate incident, on the same day, a fan ran on to the pitch to confront Nottingham Forest players.
On Tuesday, Joshua Gregory, 23, of Chaddesden, pleaded guilty to pitch encroachment and a public order offence. | Two 19-year-old men who were arrested over an attack on a car belonging to the chairman of Nottingham Forest have agreed to write letters of apology. |
18,238,326 | Russian security firm Kaspersky Labs told the BBC they believed the malware, known as Flame, had been operating since August 2010.
The company said it believed the attack was state-sponsored, but could not be sure of its exact origins.
They described Flame as "one of the most complex threats ever discovered".
Research into the attack was carried out in conjunction with the UN's International Telecommunication Union.
They had been investigating another malware threat, known as Wiper, which was reportedly deleting data on machines in western Asia.
In the past, targeted malware - such as Stuxnet - has targeted nuclear infrastructure in Iran.
Others like Duqu have sought to infiltrate networks in order to steal data.
This new threat appears not to cause physical damage, but to collect huge amounts of sensitive information, said Kaspersky's chief malware expert Vitaly Kamluk.
"Once a system is infected, Flame begins a complex set of operations, including sniffing the network traffic, taking screenshots, recording audio conversations, intercepting the keyboard, and so on," he said.
More than 600 specific targets were hit, Mr Kamluk said, ranging from individuals, businesses, academic institutions and government systems.
Iran's National Computer Emergency Response Team posted
a security alert
stating that it believed Flame was responsible for "recent incidents of mass data loss" in the country.
The malware code itself is 20MB in size - making it some 20 times larger than the Stuxnet virus. The researchers said it could take several years to analyse.
Mr Kamluk said the size and sophistication of Flame suggested it was not the work of independent cybercriminals, and more likely to be government-backed.
By Professor Alan WoodwardDepartment of Computing, University of Surrey
This is an extremely advanced attack. It is more like a toolkit for compiling different code based weapons than a single tool. It can steal everything from the keys you are pressing to what is on your screen to what is being said near the machine.
It also has some very unusual data stealing features including reaching out to any Bluetooth enabled device nearby to see what it can steal.
Just like Stuxnet, this malware can spread by USB stick, i.e. it doesn't need to be connected to a network, although it has that capability as well.
This wasn't written by some spotty teenager in his/her bedroom. It is large, complicated and dedicated to stealing data whilst remaining hidden for a long time.
Prof Alan Woodward on Twitter
He explained: "Currently there are three known classes of players who develop malware and spyware: hacktivists, cybercriminals and nation states.
"Flame is not designed to steal money from bank accounts. It is also different from rather simple hack tools and malware used by the hacktivists. So by excluding cybercriminals and hacktivists, we come to conclusion that it most likely belongs to the third group."
Among the countries affected by the attack are Iran, Israel, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
"The geography of the targets and also the complexity of the threat leaves no doubt about it being a nation-state that sponsored the research that went into it," Mr Kamluk said.
The malware is capable of recording audio via a microphone, before compressing it and sending it back to the attacker.
It is also able to take screenshots of on-screen activity, automatically detecting when "interesting" programs - such as email or instant messaging - were open.
Kaspersky's first recorded instance of Flame is in August 2010, although it said it is highly likely to have been operating earlier.
Prof Alan Woodward, from the Department of Computing at the University of Surrey said the attack is very significant.
"This is basically an industrial vacuum cleaner for sensitive information," he told the BBC.
He explained that unlike Stuxnet, which was designed with one specific task in mind, Flame was much more sophisticated.
"Whereas Stuxnet just had one purpose in life, Flame is a toolkit, so they can go after just about everything they can get their hands on."
Once the initial Flame malware has infected a machine, additional modules can be added to perform specific tasks - almost in the same manner as adding apps to a smartphone. | A complex targeted cyber-attack that collected private data from countries such as Israel and Iran has been uncovered, researchers have said. |
39,463,661 | Two goals in six minutes from Billy Waters and Harry Pell gave the Robins an unlikely lead before a Garry Thompson double levelled things.
Cheltenham's Jordan Cranston was sent off on 40 minutes and Wycombe thought they had won it when Joe Jacobson scored a late penalty.
But Waters fired in the rebound after missing a spot-kick of his own soon after to give struggling Cheltenham a crucial point.
Cheltenham were in front after just seven minutes when Waters tapped in Jamal Blackman's fumble for his 13th goal of the season.
Pell's side-footed finish from James Rowe's cross made it 2-0 shortly after, before Thompson pulled one back on 21 minutes with a neat flick.
Cranston's challenge on Matt Bloomfield saw him receive his second yellow card in quick succession and Thompson volleyed home from a tight angle to level before the break.
Jacobson's 81st-minute penalty, after Thompson was fouled, looked to have given Wycombe all three points.
But when Danny Wright was felled in the box by Michael Harriman at the other end, Waters saw his spot-kick saved but turned in the rebound to earn Cheltenham a draw.
Report supplied by the Press Association.
Match ends, Wycombe Wanderers 3, Cheltenham Town 3.
Second Half ends, Wycombe Wanderers 3, Cheltenham Town 3.
Billy Waters (Cheltenham Town) wins a free kick on the right wing.
Foul by Joe Jacobson (Wycombe Wanderers).
Foul by Adebayo Akinfenwa (Wycombe Wanderers).
Aaron Downes (Cheltenham Town) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Hand ball by Joe Jacobson (Wycombe Wanderers).
Attempt missed. Daniel Wright (Cheltenham Town) right footed shot from the centre of the box is close, but misses to the left.
Attempt missed. Paul Hayes (Wycombe Wanderers) left footed shot from the centre of the box is just a bit too high.
Attempt missed. Paul Hayes (Wycombe Wanderers) right footed shot from the centre of the box is close, but misses to the left.
Foul by Paul Hayes (Wycombe Wanderers).
Aaron Downes (Cheltenham Town) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Adebayo Akinfenwa (Wycombe Wanderers).
Aaron Downes (Cheltenham Town) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Dan Holman (Cheltenham Town) is shown the yellow card.
Substitution, Wycombe Wanderers. Paul Hayes replaces Will De Havilland.
Attempt saved. Garry Thompson (Wycombe Wanderers) right footed shot from the right side of the box is saved in the bottom left corner.
Attempt missed. Dan Holman (Cheltenham Town) right footed shot from outside the box is just a bit too high.
Goal! Wycombe Wanderers 3, Cheltenham Town 3. Billy Waters (Cheltenham Town) right footed shot from very close range to the bottom right corner following a set piece situation.
Penalty saved! Billy Waters (Cheltenham Town) fails to capitalise on this great opportunity, right footed shot saved in the bottom left corner.
Michael Harriman (Wycombe Wanderers) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Penalty conceded by Michael Harriman (Wycombe Wanderers) after a foul in the penalty area.
Penalty Cheltenham Town. Daniel Wright draws a foul in the penalty area.
Goal! Wycombe Wanderers 3, Cheltenham Town 2. Joe Jacobson (Wycombe Wanderers) converts the penalty with a left footed shot to the bottom right corner.
Penalty Wycombe Wanderers. Garry Thompson draws a foul in the penalty area.
Penalty conceded by Harry Pell (Cheltenham Town) after a foul in the penalty area.
Corner, Wycombe Wanderers. Conceded by Manny Onariase.
Corner, Wycombe Wanderers. Conceded by Aaron Downes.
Corner, Wycombe Wanderers. Conceded by Kyle Storer.
Corner, Wycombe Wanderers. Conceded by Robert Lainton.
Attempt saved. Adebayo Akinfenwa (Wycombe Wanderers) right footed shot from the centre of the box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Attempt saved. Sam Wood (Wycombe Wanderers) left footed shot from outside the box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Corner, Wycombe Wanderers. Conceded by William Boyle.
Attempt blocked. Scott Kashket (Wycombe Wanderers) left footed shot from outside the box is blocked.
Substitution, Wycombe Wanderers. Scott Kashket replaces Dayle Southwell.
Attempt missed. Dayle Southwell (Wycombe Wanderers) right footed shot from the centre of the box is too high.
Corner, Wycombe Wanderers. Conceded by Billy Waters.
Matt Bloomfield (Wycombe Wanderers) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Daniel Wright (Cheltenham Town).
Attempt saved. William Boyle (Cheltenham Town) header from the centre of the box is saved in the centre of the goal. | Wycombe's slim League Two play-off hopes were dampened after drawing 3-3 against 10-man Cheltenham to drop to 11th in the table. |
37,347,432 | The Home Office has been looking at a legal aid funding request for the families ahead of inquests into the 21 deaths and a decision is expected to be made this month.
But campaigners said without legal aid they would not have representation.
A pre-inquest review is due to be held next month.
The relatives want their lawyers, who have so far worked free of charge, to be paid out of public funds, in the same manner as police and other agencies who will be in involved in the inquests.
Q&A: Birmingham bombings inquests
Campaigner Julie Hambleton, from Justice 4 the 21, said: "All families involved in this horrendous atrocity should be able to effectively participate but without funding, without our legal team, we won't be able to do that so we may have to either just not attend or ask for an adjournment."
Twenty-one people died and 222 were injured when the bombs exploded at the Mulberry Bush and The Tavern in the Town in 1974.
Six men were convicted and then acquitted of the atrocity and no-one has since been convicted of involvement in the bombing, which is widely attributed to the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
In June, Birmingham's senior coroner ruled there was evidence that still needed to be heard and gave the go-ahead for fresh inquests. | Relatives of the Birmingham pub bombing victims say they may not take part in forthcoming inquests if they do not get public funding for their legal team. |
39,738,436 | Two building foundations and dozens of pieces of pottery and weapons were unearthed in the excavation, which started in September.
The dig at the old factory site, near Great Central Street and Highcross Street, is open until Sunday afternoon.
One of the mosaics is considered to be the "finest" ever found in more than 150 years in the city.
The rooms in the houses contain mosaics with elaborate patterns and designs.
The mosaic in one reception room is considered "the largest and finest-quality mosaic found in over 150 years in Leicester", the University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) said.
The dig also located pottery, coins, brooches, beads, hair pins, gaming pieces and manicure objects along with a decorated knife handle cast in copper alloy, which depicts a scene showing victims thrown to the lions in an amphitheatre.
Richard Buckley, co-director of ULAS, said: "The excavation has revealed evidence for the homes of some of [Roman Leicester's] wealthier citizens who lived just a short walk away from both the town's baths, now at Jewry Wall, and forum, beneath what is now Jubilee Square.
"Despite huge disturbance from modern buildings, evidence for Roman streets has survived together with fragments of some spectacular coloured mosaic pavements which the public will be able to see from a specially constructed platform." | A Roman street complete with "spectacular" mosaic floors has opened to the public in Leicester. |
39,587,367 | Neil Jackson, 35, from Penylan, pleaded guilty to eight counts of fraud at Cardiff Crown Court on Thursday.
The Crown Prosecution Service said he had advertised his house on Gumtree.
The court heard he falsely took bonds of between £1,000 and £1,400 from eight people, between October 2016 and March 2017.
The case was adjourned for sentencing until 18 May and Jackson has been remanded in custody.
"Jackson persuaded various people to pay him money over a number of months," said senior crown prosecutor Kelly Huggins afterwards.
"He continued his pretence that he was a registered landlord and that the agreements would be honoured.
"Instead, he lied about his son's health in order to delay them and avoid making repayments.
"His victims were relying on him to put a roof over their heads, but the reality was he deliberately took their money and prevented them moving on with their lives." | A Cardiff man has admitted taking more than £10,000 bond money from prospective tenants but then not renting out the property. |
40,397,684 | The state-owned bank said it was moving the jobs, which help to handle loans for small businesses, as part of an ongoing cost-cutting drive.
But the company, which owns RBS and NatWest, added that UK staff would still deal with customers and take the decisions on whether to grant loans.
The Unite union said UK workers and taxpayers would lose out from the move.
"By shipping these jobs to India, RBS will be getting that work done more cheaply at the cost of jobs and livelihoods here in the UK," a spokesman said.
The bank's small business customers will also be unsettled by the decision, according to Mike Cherry, chairman of the Federal of Small Businesses.
"Many small business customers with RBS will be extremely concerned at the idea of local expert staff being sent packing and their roles outsourced to call centres halfway round the world," Mr Cherry said.
He added it was the "wrong way to rebuild trust" after branch closures and a mis-selling scandal that saw thousands of small business customers compensated by the bank last year.
The company, which is still 73% owned by the government after a £45bn bailout in 2008, said staff in Mumbai would take over back-office roles such as background checks.
But it added that UK-based staff would continue to do the work that involved customer contact.
Credit decisions will also be taken in the UK, according to the bank.
by Joe Lynam, business correspondent, BBC News
If you've just agreed a new mortgage or remortgaged, you'll probably not have met the person who decided to give it to you (or not).
That's not the case with small companies. They have a far closer relationship with their bank manager. The latter needs to know what kind of business you have and how you run it.
Some may have fretted that shifting more than 400 jobs relating to SME (small and medium-sized enterprises) lending to India might irrevocably alter than relationship.
And that's why RBS is stressing that all credit decisions will continue to be taken here in Britain and no relationship managers with SMEs will be downsized.
RBS doesn't want to damage its current position as the largest business bank in the UK.
A spokesman for the RBS group said: "As we become a simpler, smaller bank, we are making some changes to the way we serve our customers.
"Unfortunately, these changes will result in the net reduction of 443 roles in the UK."
The company said it would support staff affected by the "disappointing news", including by moving them into new roles where possible.
It comes just weeks after RBS said it would cut 250 IT jobs in the UK and move dozens of the roles to India. | Royal Bank of Scotland is cutting 443 UK jobs dealing with business loans as it shifts many of the roles to India. |
38,450,577 | The brawl broke out after two groups became involved in an row on a train which was travelling between Glasgow Central and Greenock Central.
The incident happened between 09:30 and 09:50 on 17 December.
Three of the people involved later got off the train at Greenock Central and the fourth got off at Greenock West.
One of the men is described as being white, of a sturdy build and was wearing a pink and white shirt, smart jeans and brown boots. He suffered a laceration to the head.
Two other men were both white. One was wearing a blue t-shirt, cream tracksuit and white trainers, whilst the other was wearing a black jacket.
A woman was also believed to have been involved. She had shoulder-length hair and was wearing a pink top. | British Transport Police are attempting to trace four people who were involved in a fight on a train which resulted in one person being injured. |
37,607,649 | Buttler was involved in an angry exchange with home players when he was dismissed following a review in Dhaka.
He was found guilty of "using language or a gesture that is obscene, offensive or insulting" as England were beaten.
The ICC also fined Bangladesh's Mashrafe Mortaza and Sabbir Rahman 20% of their match fee for their roles.
Captain Mortaza and batsman Sabbir were guilty of "using language, actions or gestures which disparage or which could provoke an aggressive reaction from a batsman upon his/her dismissal during an international match".
Javagal Srinath, who is on the International Cricket Council's elite panel of match referees, decided on the punishment.
"The Bangladesh players overstepped in their celebration of Jos Buttler's wicket, which prompted an inappropriate reaction from the dismissed batsman and required the on-field umpires' intervention," he said.
"We all want to see high intensity on the field of play, but only as long as it is not provoking or antagonising or disrespecting the opponent."
The revised ICC code of conduct came into force on 22 September, and one demerit point each has been added to the disciplinary records of the three players.
It is the first such point against Buttler and Mortaza but takes Sabbir's tally to three after he was penalised against Afghanistan in September.
If players reach four demerit points, they risk being banned from "one Test or two ODIs or two Twenty20s, whatever comes first for the player". | England captain Jos Buttler has been reprimanded and two Bangladesh players fined after the second one-day international between the two sides. |
34,894,400 | The M4 eastbound was closed for five hours after the accident between Junction 45, at Ynysforgan, and Junction 44, Llansamlet, at 07:40 GMT on Sunday.
The force said the man's Ford Focus was involved in a collision and he suffered fatal injuries.
Officers asked anyone with information to get in contact. | A man has died after his car was involved in a crash on the M4 near Swansea, South Wales Police has said. |
30,309,796 | Prosinecki, 45, was in charge of Turkish club Kayserispor until December 2013 - his last managerial role.
Vogts quit in October after three straight defeats left Azerbaijan bottom of their Euro 2016 qualifying group.
"I am an optimist and I believe this team has potential," Prosinecki said. "We have to get things back on track." | Former Portsmouth and Croatia midfielder Robert Prosinecki has been appointed as Azerbaijan head coach to replace Berti Vogts. |
40,062,933 | Called Unheard Voices, the event in Inverness on 23 June is the first of its kind in the Highlands.
It will bring together academics, politicians, social workers and community activists.
Topics to be discussed include Brexit, integration, portrayal of Poles in TV dramas and mental health.
Historical links between Scotland and Poland will also be explored, such as the migration of Poles to Scotland after World War Two and the thousands of Scottish emigrants who went to Poland in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Organiser Dr David Worthington, who is head of the UHI's Centre for History, said it was hoped to bring some difficult issues into the open.
He said: "Migration is a complex experience. The Polish case emphasises both positive and negative sides of that.
"There are very difficult issues for host communities and for migrants themselves. I don't want to shy away from that I think it is important to bring people together to talk about these things at the moment."
He added: "I think to do it in the Highlands makes sense, because I would like to think that within this region people are sensitive to issues around migration and are very aware of the historical background in terms of the experience of people from the Highland in relation to this mass movement of people we associate with the Clearances." | The University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) hopes to shed light on the issues affecting Scotland's Polish community. |
29,307,493 | The authorities seemed to agree, with the FBI saying it was looking into allegations that the pictures were stolen.
Apple added it was investigating accounts being broken into and expanded "two-step verification" checks.
But how did Kardashian become the centre of a new leak?
That's pretty tough to answer.
Despite links to iCloud accounts, there is still no evidence about exactly how the photos were obtained in the first place and it's been claimed that some of the pictures in the new leak were taken from a Blackberry.
The original set of photos, which included images of the actress Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton, became available after someone (no-one knows who that person was, but there has been online speculation) posted the pictures to anonymous online message boards 4chan and Reddit.
It's not clear yet where the second set of pictures came from but they were also briefly posted on 4chan and Reddit before being removed, according to reports.
The fact that Kim Kardashian told Newsbeat she doesn't have an iCloud account on her phone also makes it difficult to know how and when the pictures were accessed.
Following the first leak, a Reddit user called johnsmcjohn created a subreddit called The Fappening, which became a destination for users wanting to see the pictures.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it gathered thousands of views and now Reddit has shut it down.
On Sunday, a Pastebin.com feed appeared called The Fappening 2 listed the leaks and claimed that more images would be released shortly.
Again, a bit of a tricky one.
For obvious reasons, it's difficult to say exactly what steps the FBI took between the two "leaks".
That said, following the original set of pictures appearing online, an FBI spokesman told the Associated Press news agency that it was "aware of the allegations" and was "addressing the matter".
According to an incredibly apologetic video called Jennifer Lawrence & Us, he's not going to post "intimate photos like that" anymore and he's trying to "think of other ways to make things right".
The 36-year-old said he would "use this as an opportunity to learn from and grow from and make some changes going forward". Well done Perez.
In simple terms "choose better passwords".
That's the advice from Oliver Crofton, a founder of Select Technology Concierge that provides secure tech services for the rich and famous.
Speaking to the BBC he added: "From experience with incidents in the past it typically comes down to weak passwords."
"They get into the email addresses associated with that individual and then they intercept a re-set request and log in."
Oliver said at least once a month a Select client will call saying they have had a "strange re-set request" that is probably evidence of an attempt to get at their online life.
Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter and Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube | Three weeks ago, Kim Kardashian told Newsbeat that intimate pictures of celebrities being leaked online was "a big wake up call". |
33,209,199 | Otherwise, she said, the summit would not be able to make any decision.
Greece has less than two weeks remaining to strike a deal or face defaulting on a €1.6bn (£1.1bn) IMF loan repayment.
There are fears about the health of Greek banks, amid reports more than €4bn has been withdrawn this week.
On Friday, the European Central Bank (ECB) approved more emergency help for the banks. The amount of extra funding has not been officially disclosed.
Meanwhile, Russia says that it will consider granting a loan to Greece if it is asked.
If Greece fails to make the repayment due to the International Monetary Fund, it risks having to leave the eurozone and possibly also the EU.
The European Commission, the IMF and the ECB are unwilling to unlock bailout funds until Greece agrees to reforms.
They want Greece to implement a series of economic changes in areas such as pensions, VAT and on the budget surplus before releasing €7.2bn of funds, which have been delayed since February.
The emergency summit of leaders from eurozone nations will be held in Brussels on Monday, after negotiations on Thursday failed.
"Let me make it very clear as to the expectations," Mrs Merkel said on Friday.
"Such a summit can only become a summit of decisions if there is something to base a decision on.
"It is up to the three institutions [the ECB, IMF and European Commission] to assess this, and up to now we don't have that assessment."
Valdis Dombrovksis, European Commissioner for the euro, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that there had been "a strong signal" from the Eurogroup to Greece "that it's [the] last moment to engage seriously in negotiations".
Responding to the reports of big cash withdrawals by Greek savers, he said: "It's very clear that one of the most urgent things Greece needs is financial stability."
The Reuters news agency said withdrawals by Greek savers between Monday and Friday reached about €4.2bn, which represents about 3% of household and corporate deposits held by Greek banks at the end of April.
Close to €1bn was withdrawn on Friday alone, the financial website Euro2day said.
"There are no lines [queues] or panic, it has been a quiet and gradual phase of withdrawals," one banker told Reuters.
A fully fledged run on the banks could upset the plans of the Greek government and its creditors, says BBC Europe correspondent Chris Morris.
He says that any introduction of capital controls will depend on the behaviour of the Greek people.
He says that if the outflow of deposits from banks reaches alarming levels which no-one can really cope with, then the decision is taken out of policymakers' hands.
Cars and shoe boxes: Greeks cope with an economic crisis
Peston: Is there any way Greece can avoid default??
Walker: The options for Greece
What impact would Grexit have on UK?
Greece debt crisis: Full coverage
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Friday that there would be a solution to Greece's debt crisis.
"The [eurozone] leaders summit on Monday is a positive development on the road toward a deal," Mr Tsipras said in a statement.
"All those who are betting on crisis and terror scenarios will be proven wrong."
He added: "There will be a solution based on respecting EU rules and democracy which would allow Greece to return to growth in the euro."
Mr Tsipras was at an economic forum in St Petersburg in Russia on Friday with a delegation of ministers and business leaders.
At the forum, Greece and Russia signed a memorandum on extending the planned Turkish Stream gas pipeline to Europe through Greek territory.
Athens said funding would come from Russian state development bank VEB.
Greek Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis said at the signing ceremony that Greece needed support and not pressure, and that co-operation with Russia was not aimed against other countries or Europe.
President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Russia would consider granting Greece a loan.
But the issue was not raised in talks between Mr Putin and Mr Tsipras, he said.
Is Greece close to Grexit?
EU solidarity damaged by Greek splits
Are you in Greece? How have you been affected by the crisis over recent years? You can email [email protected] with your experience.
If you are willing to speak further to a BBC journalist, please include a contact telephone number.
Or WhatsApp us on +44 7525 900971 | German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned there must be a deal between Greece and its creditors ahead of Monday's emergency EU summit. |
26,141,335 | Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez said there would be an investigation into whether the eight had illegally issued identity papers.
The consulates affected are in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans and New York.
The consuls' suspension comes days after local media alleged that they had issued illegal papers in exchange of payments of up to $50 (??30).
The only ones to remain in their posts were the consuls in Washington DC and San Francisco.
An estimated 700,000 people of Honduran origin resided in the United States in 2011, according to the US Census Bureau.
The case came to light after a group representing Hondurans living in the US said a number of consulates were issuing "consular IDs" - documents that bear the crest and flag of Honduras, but which are not officially recognised forms of identification.
President Hernandez said in a statement that such documents were "false" and that any consular staff issuing them would be penalised.
Jorge Rivera, of the Honduran Unity group in Dallas, Texas, said he knew of at least four consulates that had issued such IDs.
"They're selling them for $50 in a number of places and I don't know how the consulates can be doing that because that document is not an approved document," Mr Rivera said.
"They're just trying to make money," he added.
Expatriate Plinio Rodriguez said that the Honduran consulate in Los Angeles had issued him with a "consular ID", which he said he had found "very useful".
Mr Rodriguez told Honduran newspaper La Prensa that the ID was widely accepted by US authorities and even got him access to the prison in California where his son was serving time.
He said he had not been charged for the ID, but knew of others who had. | Honduras has suspended eight of its 10 consuls in the United States. |
36,229,512 | The Borussia Dortmund player has been strongly linked with a move to Manchester City this summer, when Bayern Munich boss Pep Guardiola will take over at Etihad Stadium.
On Friday, Dortmund tweeted the player had suffered a serious injury.
Gundogan, 25, injured his back in 2013 and has also had several knee problems.
He has featured 25 times for Dortmund in the Bundesliga this season and played in four Euro 2016 qualifiers, scoring the winner in September's 3-2 victory over Scotland at Hampden Park. | Germany midfielder Ilkay Gundogan is set to miss Euro 2016 after dislocating a kneecap in training. |
34,463,140 | The presenter said he may not follow the old three-presenter format pioneered by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.
"They're the Three Stooges. They are the Bee Gees. They are that and I'm not. I'm me," he said at the Mipcom TV trade fair in Cannes, France.
"I'm a solo artist at the moment, I'm on my own. So do I form a band or not?"
The star had been expected to recruit two sidekicks, with Zoe Ball, Guy Martin and Dermot O'Leary among those previously rumoured to be in the running.
Evans also appealed to fans to send in their own audition tapes, and has given screen tests to some of those who did.
Speaking in Cannes, he told the Press Association: "We are going to do things differently, because we have to, we want to.
"And also, the second you wander off into the, 'Well, I'm the main host, and this is my mate over here and my mate over here', if there's three of you and you go and make a film together, suddenly you're doing what they did.
"Why would you do that? Because they were brilliant at it. I'm not going to do that.
"So, one thing is for sure, there's not going to be me and one guy there, and one guy there, that's not going to happen."
Evans also gave notice that he would shake up the format of the show, which he said previously consisted of four links and three pre-recorded items.
"We're going to change that," he said. "I can't tell you into what. I know, by the way, but I can't say at the moment.
"We are going to keep some things that I like, and my kids like, and my friends like, and that I liked anyway, but we are not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater."
The Stig - who joined Evans in Cannes - will appear in the new series, which begins next May.
Taking over the show was "formidable", Evans said, adding that it was "the biggest job I've ever had in my life". | New Top Gear host Chris Evans has hinted he won't have co-hosts when he takes over the motoring show next year. |
35,060,868 | Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has joined calls for Mr Trump to be considered for exclusion from the UK.
Mr Trump, who owns two Scottish golf courses, had already been dropped as a business ambassador by Ms Sturgeon.
He has also been stripped of an honorary degree by Robert Gordon University (RGU) in Aberdeen.
An online petition calling for Donald Trump to be blocked from entry to the UK has broken the parliamentary website record and is approaching half a million signatures. It currently has more than 470,000 names, beating the previous high of 446,482.
The Petitions Committee is expected to discuss the petition at its meeting on 5 January.
A rival petition saying Mr Trump should not be banned has reached more than 20,000 although it has been live for a shorter time.
In a briefing to journalists, Ms Sturgeon's spokeswoman said the first minister had made her views on Mr Trump "quite clear".
The spokeswoman added: "She agrees that there are laws around people who make certain comments being allowed in and he should be considered in the same way.
"The home secretary should consider the issue."
Home Secretary Theresa May has the power to exclude an individual if she considers that his or her presence is "not conducive to the public good or if their exclusion is justified on public policy grounds".
Ms Sturgeon was speaking after Mr Trump wrote an article published in the Press and Journal newspaper in which he said politicians should be thanking him for the work he has done in Scotland.
The US presidential hopeful said: "I have done so much for Scotland, including building Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, which has received the highest accolades, and is what many believe to be one of the greatest golf courses anywhere in the world.
"Additionally, I have made a significant investment in the redevelopment of the iconic Turnberry Resort, which will have massive ballrooms, complete room refurbishments, a new golf course and a total rebuilding of the world famous Ailsa course to the highest standards and specifications of the Royal and Ancient.
"If they - Nicola Sturgeon and RGU - were going to do this, they should have informed me prior to my major investment in this £200m development, which will totally revitalise that vast region of Scotland.
"The UK politicians should be thanking me instead of pandering to political correctness."
The billionaire property tycoon added in a tweet: "The United Kingdom is trying hard to disguise their massive Muslim problem. Everybody is wise to what is happening. Very sad. Be honest."
He also thanked the "respected columnist Katie Hopkins" for her "powerful writing on the UK's Muslim problem".
Rapper Snoop Dogg was temporarily excluded from the UK when his visa was refused, while former champion boxer and convicted rapist Mike Tyson was banned in 2013.
R&B singer Chris Brown, who had been sentenced to community labour for assaulting then-girlfriend Rihanna, the pop singer, was blocked in 2010.
Mr Trump had been appointed as a GlobalScot ambassador by Labour's then first minister Jack McConnell in 2006.
However, a Scottish government spokeswoman said on Wednesday that Mr Trump's "recent remarks have shown he is no longer fit to be a business ambassador for Scotland".
Mr Trump - who has developed a golf resort at Menie, north of Aberdeen - was awarded an honorary degree by RGU in 2010.
But the university said his comments had been "wholly incompatible" with its ethos and values. | Donald Trump has hit back at high-profile Scottish snubs in the wake of his call for Muslims to be banned from entering the US. |
27,990,874 | The government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will also present the railway budget on 8 July.
India's economic expansion has slowed markedly, growing by 4.7% in the 2013-14 financial year and marking the second year of sub-5% growth.
Mr Modi's government has promised rapid economic reforms aimed at creating jobs and boosting foreign investment.
Media reports suggest that the federal budget may include measures designed to simplify taxation, reduce inflation and attract private investment.
The government has also spoken about its plans to introduce a general sales tax, encourage foreign investment and speed up approvals for major business projects.
Last week, the government announced an increase in passenger fares and freight rates to improve facilities and recover losses for its state-owned railway, which operates more than 11,000 trains and carries some 13 million passengers daily.
India's previous government presented an interim budget in February - ahead of the general election - to cover expenditure until a new government was installed.
Asia's third-largest economy has been weighed down by factors including high inflation, a weak currency and a drop in foreign investment. | India's new government will present its first federal budget on 10 July, media reports quoting officials said. |
39,558,258 | More expensive repairs and recent government changes to injury payouts pushed up annual insurance costs by 16%, according to Confused.com.
It found drivers paid on average £781 on comparison sites for a comprehensive policy in the year to March 2017.
Average premiums are set to rise to a record high and could pass £1,000 next year, it added.
Newer vehicles have seen some of the biggest rises, because their increasingly complex electronics have made repairs more expensive.
"A prang on a bumper is now not only a piece of plastic to be replaced, but a cacophony of sensors and cameras," a Confused.com spokeswoman said.
Insurers have also raised prices in response to a new formula for calculating compensation payments, according to the comparison site's research.
In March, when the changes kicked in, premiums rose 4%, Confused.com found.
The government altered the so-called Ogden Rate for calculating lump sum payments to accident victims who suffer long-term injuries.
Car insurers have warned that policy costs will "soar" to offset the higher payouts.
Confused.com said the pressure from the new formula, as well as an impending rise in Insurance Premium Tax, could result in premiums increasing throughout the year.
"As the industry adapts to additional pressures... we could be on course to drive past the £858 peak we saw in 2011," said Amanda Stretton, motoring editor at Confused.com.
"As car insurance costs continue to climb, average premiums could even break the £1,000 barrier by next year," she added.
The Confused.com research, which is carried out together with insurance brokerage Willis Towers Watson, checks more than four million car insurance quotes.
Its figures are higher than the Association of British Insurers, which found the average annual comprehensive policy cost £462 in the last three months of 2016.
But both reported that premiums were increasing in part because of rising repair bills.
According to its research, the highest rise in percentage terms came in Scotland, where car insurance prices increased 21% in the Scottish Highlands.
London drivers still paid the most in premiums though, with prices rising 16% to £1,514 on average in east London.
Men also tended to pay £96 more for insurance policies than women across the UK, it found.
Among age groups, premiums rose 11% for 17 year-olds, 23% for 66 year-olds, but dropped 3% for those aged over 71.
And younger drivers, who tend to make larger and more frequent claims, are set to face the brunt of rising insurance costs in the coming months.
"We would expect premiums for younger drivers to increase at a drastic rate over the next quarter and probably flatten out," a Confused.com spokeswoman said. | Drivers saw their car insurance premiums rise by an average of £110 in the last year, a comparison site says. |
39,461,603 | The incident took place in Tudor Street at about 19:00 BST, where two men suffered "significant injuries" and were taken to hospital.
South Wales Police said the armed officers were deployed "to ensure the safety of the public and police officers at the scene".
Investigation are continuing. | Armed police responded to reports of a serious assault in Cardiff on Friday night. |
34,177,189 | Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire councils have delivered a "statement of intent" to the UK and Scottish governments in a bid to secure £2.9bn.
The statement outlines what benefits the funding would bring to the city and surrounding area.
A full bid submission is due to be drawn up by the end of this year.
Items at the top of the local authorities' list include providing more affordable homes, better rail connectivity and improved links to Aberdeen's harbour and airport.
Research into renewable and hydrogen technologies and international trade have also been mentioned.
Jenny Laing, leader of Aberdeen City Council, said: "We believe that the commitments this statement of intent identifies can form the basis for a City Region Deal that will benefit not only the economy of the north east, but the rest of Scotland and the rest of the UK.
"The challenge is to work towards a deal that will maximise the benefits of coordinated new and accelerated investment in the Aberdeen city region.
"We believe this statement articulates the progress that has been made so far and that a deal between the two governments can be made."
Co-leader of Aberdeenshire Council, Martin Kitts-Hayes, added: "We will continue to engage and collaborate with the two governments to deliver a City Region Deal that will ultimately contribute to the economic vision for the north east of Scotland.
"This is a successful region which plays a significant role in contributing to the financial wellbeing of Scotland, the UK and globally.
"By even greater collaboration across industry and all layers of government, we can protect the competiveness of the oil and gas industry already firmly established here and help to power tomorrow's world." | Housing and better connectivity are two of the main priorities set out in proposals for an Aberdeen City Region Deal. |
37,076,400 | Firefighters said the L & M Spray building was unsafe following the blaze which broke out in Gladstone Street at 10:20 BST on Saturday.
Huge plumes of smoke could be seen across the city during the fire - which was started accidentally.
Several streets were closed while the fire was tackled, causing delays in the city centre. | A spray paint factory in Leicester has been demolished after it was severely damaged by a large fire. |
37,992,214 | The Bath second row played every minute of the 32-8 defeat by Australia and the 24-20 win against Argentina.
Wales face Japan on 19 November followed by South Africa a week later.
"I'd love to [play every game]. I'll play as much as I can and whenever I can for sure - after two 80 minutes on the bounce I'm enjoying it," said the 33-year-old Charteris.
"I had a bit of stop-start beginning to the season with a couple of injuries at Bath but I had three or four games on the bounce for them before coming in to this.
"I'm enjoying this and the more games you play consecutively the better you feel, within reason, but after 10 or 15 games you may need a bit of a rest but at the moment I'm feeling good."
"It is tough. My body is still pretty battered three days on from Argentina.
"I think the Japanese are probably smaller but it will be a faster more high tempo game so which will be a different challenge."
Japan beat Wales 23-8 the last time the teams met in June 2013, with eight of interim coach Rob Howley's current squad involved.
Liam Williams, Dan Biggar and Bradley Davies were among the players who started in Tokyo, when a large contingent of players were missing on British and Irish Lions duty in Australia.
"There's quite a few boys now who are regular players or in the squad who played on that Japan tour," Charteris said.
"It was some of the boys' first tour and they were disappointed with the result and I think certainly a lot of boys have stepped on from there and become regular starters for us now." | Luke Charteris says he would be happy to play in all four of Wales' autumn international matches if required. |
36,683,679 | The Aberdeen-based company announced the "encouraging" find after completing drilling at an Eagle exploration well in the Greater Kittiwake Area (GKA).
EnQuest said initial analysis indicated "excellent reservoir properties".
EnQuest anticipates gross total recoverable reserves to be similar in size to those in the nearby Gadwall producing oil field, which was returned to production by the firm last year.
It has estimated total gross recovery from Gadwall at about six million stock tank barrels.
The company said it was continuing to evaluate the Eagle results.
In February 2014, EnQuest acquired a 50% stake as well as operatorship of GKA, which includes the Kittiwake field.
The company also has a 100% interest in the Kittiwake to Forties oil export pipeline.
In an update, EnQuest also reported that its 2016 drilling performance in the Central North Sea had been "excellent".
It said drilling of the Scolty/Crathes development wells was completed ahead of schedule and under budget, while the Crathes reservoir "exceeded expectations", with a small reserves upgrade.
Neil McCulloch, from EnQuest, said: "Following last year's production growth and unit operating cost reduction successes at GKA, this latest success demonstrates EnQuest's ability to create value from maturing assets and from near field exploration opportunities."
In March, EnQuest reported that its pre-tax losses more than doubled last year to about $1.3bn after it took a hit from the oil price slump. | Oil firm EnQuest has reported a new discovery in the Central North Sea. |
36,330,006 | "The population explosion here has created the most congested city in the world," says the founder of Indonesian motorbike taxi and delivery business Go-Jek.
Just look at the numbers. The giant capital on the island of Java has an estimated population of more than 10 million people, with Greater Jakarta accounting for about 30 million. It's also home to an estimated 18 million motor vehicles.
The average speed a car can travel at is about 8km/h - a situation economists agree is hurting the city's growth capacity. Business visitors say they usually schedule just one meeting per day. The traffic is too terrible to make a second, they say.
So what's the solution?
Indonesian-born Mr Makarim thinks he's found it.
His firm, Go-Jek, which was launched in 2011 as a simple motorbike courier business, has evolved into a multifaceted service delivery and app-based transport provider. And it's taking Jakarta by storm.
"I probably wasn't the first to come up with the idea of Go-Jek," 30-year-old Mr Makarim admits. "A lot of people before me have thought of it as well. It's just that we were the first ones to execute this on a large scale."
The Harvard Business School graduate said he started out by approaching groups of informal motorbike taxis in Jakarta.
Referred to as "ojeks", these motorbike drivers work in groups on the city's streets offering anyone a ride for a few dollars. They're experts at weaving in and out of heavy traffic and are regarded as the most efficient and cheapest way to get from one place to another.
"I was doing summer internships during my business school time and I'd just hang out with street ojeks and buy them coffee and find out what their economic condition was like," Mr Makarim says.
"I wanted to find out... what they did and didn't like about their job.
"And that's when I quickly realised there was so much more that these guys could do. They were working 14-hour days with not much to show for it. Maybe just five bookings a day."
So Mr Makarim recruited a handful of drivers to work as freelancers for his start-up courier business.
Initially operating from a small apartment with a few staff taking calls for deliveries "from mostly family and friends", Go-Jek has transformed itself into a mobile app service with some 200,000 freelance drivers together with hundreds of other service providers.
"Within three months, three million people had downloaded the application - something we totally did not expect," Mr Makarim says. "We hit our end-of-year target in two months.
"Within a year we had over 11 million downloads, which was beyond all our expectations."
Customers can use the app to book a motorbike taxi, order food delivery, cleaning services, and even door-to-door beauticians and masseuses. Go-Jek has just launched Go-Car and after partnering with some of Indonesia's biggest banks, the firm is in the process of making its payment system cash free.
But the transformation from a start-up to a fully-fledged business hasn't been easy, Mr Makarim admits. Since 2011 there have been plenty of challenges.
"Our system nearly imploded from overuse soon after it launched. Then there was a temporary 12-hour ban on app-based transportation in Indonesia. We were extremely elated when that decision was overturned by the president and vice president," he says.
Other problems the firm has faced stem from the marketplace it's operating in.
Major competitors on the streets include app-based transport companies Uber and Grab, as well as local taxi companies. Earlier this year, street demonstrations led by traditional taxi drivers against firms like Uber became violent.
Scenes of a Go-Jek jacket being burned on the streets made headlines and some Go-Jek drivers were hurt during the demonstrations.
"That was a big problem that occurred... but we got through that," Mr Makarim says.
"The government is behind us, very supportive, and as long as we're improving the welfare of the majority of the people in the country, then we think people will ultimately support [us]."
Other hurdles the firm has had to overcome include securing financial backers.
"From our start in 2011, I didn't start working for the company full-time until after we got some investment backing," Mr Makarim says.
Singapore-based NSI Ventures, which is part of the Northstar Group, first invested in Go-Jek in 2014.
Other investors reportedly involved include Sequoia Capital, SoftBank, Vertex Venture and Yuri Milner's DST Global, though Mr Makarim prefers not to discuss the details of their involvement.
He's clearly grateful for their input, though. Earlier this year, he said the firm was aiming for a valuation of more than $1bn.
"Before [we had investors] I couldn't afford myself, so I had to go work for other people," he says. "I came onboard full-time in 2014 and we launched the app in 2015."
Mr Makarim refuses to discuss the firm's financials, but when asked if he would sell Go-Jek for the right sum, he says: "Sell up? Well... our investors need to profit at some point from their investment, but I don't see a sale happening anytime soon." | Nadiem Makarim is forthright about traffic conditions in his home town of Jakarta. |
32,462,517 | William Kerr, 53, absconded from a bail hostel in Hull in March and was wanted on emergency recall to prison.
North Yorkshire Police arrested him in the Waterloo area of London on Friday, following an appeal on BBC Crimewatch.
Kerr was jailed for life in June 1998 for the murder of Maureen Comfort in Leeds. Her body was found in a bedroom cupboard and she had been strangled.
He was released on license earlier this year. | A convicted murder who sparked a nationwide hunt after breaking the terms of his license has been arrested. |
10,531,419 | The find, published in the journal Nature, pushes back the arrival of the first humans in what is now the UK by several hundred thousand years.
Environmental data suggests that temperatures were relatively cool.
This raises the possibility that these early Britons may have been among the first humans to use fire to keep warm.
They may also have been some of the earliest humans to wear fur clothing.
The discoveries were made in Happisburgh, in the north of Norfolk. At the time there was a land bridge connecting what is now southern Britain with continental Europe.
There are no early human remains, but the researchers speculate that the most likely species was Homo antecessor, more commonly - and possibly appropriately - known as "Pioneer Man".
Remains of the species have been found in the Atapuerca region of northern Spain, and dated to 0.8-1.2 million years ago. So the species could well have been in Britain at around that time, according to Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London.
"If the climate was good and the land bridge was there, there's no real reason they couldn't have come (to Britain) as far back as 1.2 million years ago," he told BBC News.
Pioneer Man was much like our own species in that it walked upright, used tools and was a hunter gatherer.
But physically the species looked rather different. It had a smaller brain, strong brow ridges and big teeth, with some primitive features such as a flat face and no prominent chin on the lower jaw.
The discovery raises many new questions, such as how these creatures dealt with the cold winters that existed at the time. Scientists have also speculated that they may have used shelters and clothing.
It also raises the possibility that Britain was the first place where fire was used in a controlled way for warmth.
"Although we don't have the evidence for fire or of clothing to get through the winters up here, I think they must have had some extra adaptations," said Professor Stringer.
"I think the evidence suggests that they were living at the edge of the inhabited world in a really challenging environment and indeed they were real pioneers living here in Britain, nearly a million years ago," he said.
The research was led by Dr Nick Ashton of the British Museum, London, as part of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project.
"The discovery is immensely surprising because we are dealing with an incredibly early date," Dr Ashton said.
He added that the environmental data that indicated the relatively low temperatures was "even more surprising".
"It's unusual to find humans in such a cool climate this far north at this very early date," he said.
This area of Norfolk was quite a different place one million years ago.
"The [River] Thames was flowing through this area. And at the site we have sediments laid down by the Thames," he explained.
Pioneer man was eventually wiped out by an Ice Age. These occurred about every 100,000 years, and each time that happened Britain was depopulated.
As conditions became more benign, a new group of humans arrived.
There were at least eight different waves of people that came in and died out before the last wave, which is the one that survives today. | Researchers have discovered stone tools in Norfolk, UK, that suggest that early humans arrived in Britain nearly a million years ago - or even earlier. |
35,526,081 | The incident happened at an address in West Main Street in Armadale, at about 20:40 on Tuesday.
Stuart Robertson, 27, and John Cowan, 18, both faced a charge of assault to severe injury, permanent disfigurement, danger of life and attempted murder.
They appeared in private hearing at Livingston Sheriff Cout and made no plea or declaration.
They were remanded in custody after
The men were also charged with assault to severe injury, the Crown Office confirmed.
The case was committed for further examination and they are expected to appear in court again next week.
Both male victims were 22 years old. One sustained a minor injury and the other received treatment for a non-life threatening injury. They have since been discharged from hospital. | Two men have appeared in court charged with attempted murder following an attack of two men in West Lothian. |
38,754,635 | Eike Batista - who was once the country's richest man - was among nine people issued with arrest warrants on Thursday in connection with a wider $100m corruption scandal.
He is accused of paying $16.5m (£13m) in bribes to former Rio governor Sergio Cabral to win government contracts.
Mr Cabral was detained in December.
According to reports, police failed to find Mr Batista when they raided his home in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday and believe he may have flown to New York using a German passport.
Mr Batista's lawyer, Fernando Martins, said he was travelling and planned to turn himself in on his return.
However, police said they would class him a fugitive if he did not contact them soon and would seek his arrest through Interpol.
During much of the last decade, Eike Batista was seen by many as the face of Brazilian capitalism.
Bold, extravagant and charismatic, he made most of his fortune during the commodities boom that brought great wealth to Brazil.
But Mr Batista has plenty of critics too. Some say he was overconfident and sold projects to investors that were too good to be true - and were never concluded.
And in the past years, he made the headlines with all sorts of legal troubles - being accused of money-laundering and even stock exchange fraud.
In the process, he is reported to have lost all of his fortune, which at one point was estimated to be about $34bn.
Some will say that Mr Batista remains a symbol of the Brazilian economy, where false promises of great wealth ended in crisis and court battles.
Mr Batista, 60, made his fortune during Brazil's commodities boom of the last decade, with his Grupo EBX conglomerate spanning mining, oil, shipbuilding and logistics.
By 2012 he was listed by Forbes Magazine as the world's seventh richest man, with an estimated fortune of $35bn.
But by 2013, Grupo EBX had collapsed after global demand for commodities crashed, and Mr Batista's wealth slumped to under $1bn.
His arrest has been linked to a wider corruption probe in Brazil into the so-called "Car Wash" scandal.
It has focused on relationships between members of the current PMDB party administration, the former Workers Party administration, and some of Brazil's most prominent businessmen over contracts at oil company Petrobras and other state firms.
More than 100 people, including Brazil's most powerful building tycoon, Marcelo Bahia Odebrecht, have been convicted of crimes such as bribery, racketeering and money-laundering. | Police are seeking one of Brazil's best known businessmen after he failed to turn himself in as part of a corruption investigation. |
33,425,411 | Felix Kjellberg, 25, known to fans as PewDiePie, records himself playing video games and uploads his reactions online.
He has 37 million followers on the video-sharing website - more than One Direction and Taylor Swift.
"He appeals to an attractive demographic of teens and young adults," said Ian Maude, from Enders Analysis.
"It's strange to imagine that somebody can earn so much from YouTube, but the equivalent of half the UK is watching his videos," he said.
On Tuesday, Mr Kjellberg posted a video titled Let's Talk About Money which has clocked up 1.6 million views in under 24 hours.
Addressing his fans, the Swedish gamer said: "Whenever it comes out how much I made a certain year, people just get so shocked. A lot of people are also very, very angry."
"They think I just sit on my ass all day and yell at the screen over here. Which is true. But there's so much more to it than that," he added.
Expressen looked at dividends paid by Mr Kjellberg's companies in order to work out how much he had earned.
In July 2014, Mr Kjellberg confirmed to an audience on Reddit that he had earned "roughly" $4m in 2013.
Responding to critics, he posted: "I still spent far more money on charities than anything I've ever spent for myself."
YouTube continues to be a profitable enterprise for its top tier stars, who earn money from advertisements placed around their videos.
The site's terms and conditions forbid creators from disclosing how much they earn, but on Monday gamer Olajide Olatunji, known as KSI, told the newspaper Metro he had earned enough money to buy his parents a house.
Although some stars supplement their income with product placement deals, Mr Kjellberg says he does not do very many.
"I make more than I need from YouTube," he wrote on Reddit. "With that freedom, but also to respect my fans for making that possible, I don't end up doing many endorsements."
Mr Maude, of Enders Analysis, has a word of caution for anybody eyeing up YouTube with dreams of becoming a millionaire.
"As with many things, a few people at the top do exceptionally well but there's a long tail of people who don't make any money at all," he said.
"People have to see something special in you. It doesn't happen for everyone."
In his video posted on Tuesday, Mr Kjellberg said: "It seems like the whole world cares more about how much money I make than I do myself."
He thanked fans for their support and added: "I'm just happy doing this. I would be doing it even if I was not as big as I am." | YouTube's most popular star earned $7m (£4.5m) in 2014, according to Swedish newspaper Expressen. |
32,065,073 | Their high fitness levels also appear to increase their chances of surviving cancer if they are diagnosed later on.
University of Vermont researchers said even small improvements in fitness could help to reduce cancer risk.
Cancer Research UK said investigating links between men's fitness levels and cancer risk was a new approach.
Being physically active and eating a healthy, balanced diet are already known to be important factors in reducing people's risk of developing cancer and other diseases.
But study author Dr Susan Lakoski said it would be more beneficial to tell people how much they needed to improve their fitness in order to reduce their risk of cancer to acceptable levels.
This could come in the form of a personalised plan, which should start with measuring their cardio-respiratory fitness.
This study of 14,000 men aged between 46 and 50, in Texas, tested their cardio-respiratory fitness levels at the outset by making them run on a treadmill to the point of exhaustion.
After that, their fitness levels were regularly tested over an average of six and a half years between 1971 and 2009.
Between 1999 and 2009, 1,310 of the men had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, 200 with lung cancer and 181 with colorectal cancer.
The study found that the men with high levels of fitness in middle-age reduced their risk of lung cancer by 55% and their risk of colorectal cancer by 44%, compared with the men with low levels of fitness - those who took more than 12 minutes to run or walk a mile.
However, the study found that the fit men in middle age did not appear to reduce their risk of prostate cancer.
The authors said the exact reasons for this were unknown but men with high cardio-respiratory fitness may be better at looking after their health and therefore more likely to undergo screening for prostate cancer, making them more likely to be diagnosed.
Dr Lakoski said fitness prior to a cancer diagnosis was important.
"This preventative message starts earlier than you think, way before you develop cancer.
"Your health behaviours and your fitness earlier in life has an impact 20 or 30 years later - and that's what people don't realise."
In the study, she said as long as people were above the low-fitness category, they already had a lot of advantages.
Tom Stansfeld, health information officer at Cancer Research UK, said: "Investigating links between men's fitness levels and cancer risk, rather than just the amount of physical activity they do, is a new approach.
"The results reconfirm the benefit of physical activity in decreasing men's risk of bowel cancer.
"Interestingly, the study also found a positive effect of fitness on reducing lung cancer risk, but more research is needed to understand this potential link better."
He said other research in women had shown that increased levels of exercise could reduce the risk of breast and womb cancers.
He added: "Being regularly physically active is great for your overall health and, as this study demonstrates, has benefits far beyond the health of your heart." | Very fit men in their late 40s are less likely to get lung cancer and colorectal cancer than unfit men, a study in JAMA Oncology suggests. |
37,428,533 | Media playback is not supported on this device
The festival starts on Saturday with a mass-participation one-mile open water swim across the famous lake, with 4,500 people expected to take part.
Then, on Sunday, the British Open Water Swimming Championships take place, including an elite invitation race.
Joining the swimming on both days will be Rio 2016 Olympian Jack Burnell and BBC Breakfast's Louise Minchin.
Get Inspired takes a look at the journey of four of the first-timers.
Swim motivation: It may have been 40 years ago but Carol Carter has never forgotten the joy and terror of giving birth to her son Mark, who was born 13 weeks premature.
He weighed just 1lb 13oz, and staff at West Middlesex Hospital didn't think he would survive.
Now, nearly four decades, later Mark is a healthy father and grandfather. He is also the inspiration for Carol to take on the Swim Serpentine and raise money for the charity that helped her.
Carol says: "It was a long time ago but it's not something you forget. I don't know why he came so early and he was just so small when he was born.
"I remember him being wrapped up in silver foil and whisked away. It was hard because I couldn't hold him or touch him and he was in hospital for three months. But the doctors and nurses saved his life and I'll be forever grateful. That's why I'm happy to be swimming for Tommy's.
Find out how to get into swimming with our special guide.
"I was quite a good swimmer when I was younger but after I got married and had children I didn't swim for quite a long time. Then, two years ago, I joined a gym and started building up the lengths in the outdoor swimming pool.
"Open-water swimming really is special. I don't think once you have done it you go back to an indoor pool. The other morning I was out early in the morning with the sun shining overhead, there were ducks around and geese flying overhead. It was amazing."
Swimming for: Tommy's
Target sponsorship: £500
Swim motivation: In 1984, Lee Menday was badly injured in the Falklands while serving in the Royal Navy. The injury left him in constant pain and resulted in surgery to have his lower leg amputated.
Now, at the age of 57, Lee is preparing for the Swim Serpentine, to give back to a charity who have supported him throughout.
Lee says: "It was hard at times. Physical training was the whole of my life. As part of my job in the Navy, I organised sports on my ship and on other ships. I enjoyed my career but the injury ended that.
"After my last operation I knew the place to be to start my rehabilitation was the pool. I got to the point with my swimming where I started to see progress and then I wanted to take it further - that's when Swim Serpentine came along.
"To now be in a situation where I can raise money for a charity like Blesma is great. If there has ever been an issue during my injury, the charity has been there to help and look after me."
Swimming for: Blesma
Target sponsorship: £500
Swim motivation: When 24-year-old Theodora Moss found out two years ago that she had Stage 2 Lymphoma it had a big impact on her life and her love for swimming.
Studying at medical school at the time, Theodora had chemotherapy while maintaining her studies. Because of her weakened immune system, she was not allowed to swim in public pools, but then found open-water swimming.
Theodora says: "As I lay in my student flat hearing friends come crashing in at 4am, I felt defeated by the injustice of it all. I simply could not believe this was happening to me.
"As my treatment came to an end and the spring arrived, I discovered the wonder of wild, open-water swimming. There were none of the coughs and colds I had to be wary of in public pools. Diving into a clear Yorkshire river I have never felt more alive.
"Every inch of my skin tingled and as the water flowed past I felt the worries wash away with it. That summer I swam as much outside as I could, from the Yorkshire Dales to Tooting Lido and the Cornish coast, and so was born a new obsession.
"Trekstock are an amazing charity run by young people for young people and their refreshing and inspiring network of young people and support programmes have helped me get my life back on track - open-water swimming included!"
Swimming for: Trekstock
Target sponsorship: £2,000
Swim motivation: For 10-year-old Mae Webster, life has not been easy. At the age of two she was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis and has spent years on medication to try to keep the condition in check.
Mae had been making a steady progress until she had a relapse this year. That spurred 33-year-old mum Keri to take on the challenge of Swim Serpentine.
Keri says: "Mae had a flare-up earlier this year and ended up back in hospital. It was then that I decided to do something. I knew I had to do something positive to help children like her, who live with this incredibly painful and debilitating condition on a daily basis.
"Mae has been really supportive of me since I started training and she has found it quite inspiring. But to me, Mae is the real inspiration. She is so strong.
"Everyone pictures childhood as running and jumping around without any problems but Mae can't do these things without being in pain.
"Arthritis is hard to understand - not just the fact that you can get it at any age, but the fact that it is often a lifelong and very invisible condition.
"Arthritis Research UK has been an invaluable source of information for us. That's why I am honoured to be raising funds for the charity, and raising awareness."
Swimming for: Arthritis Research UK
Target sponsorship: £350
Target time: 35 minutes
Get yourself out in the water. Take a look at our guide to getting into swimming to find out where to start. | The first Swim Serpentine - a two-day event in London's Hyde Park - takes place this weekend. |
35,611,719 | Anne MacAskill, 67, from Skye, and her friend Kay Simpson, 69, will tackle the challenge later this year to raise money for charity.
The venture will be carried out in a 22-year-old Renault Express in memory of Ms Simpson's late partner Duncan Strachan.
The women will travel across Europe and Asia, starting in July.
Rally entrants must finish the event by 12 September.
Danny MacAskill has gained international acclaim and recognition for risky feats performed on a bike, including stunts on Skye's Cuillin Ridge and riding along rooftops in Gran Canaria.
Videos of his stunts attract millions of internet hits. The short films include one shot at his family home on Skye that features his mother.
On her forthcoming driving challenge, Mrs MacAskill said: "We have an agreement. I don't worry about him and he does not worry about me.
"But he is delighted that I'm doing this. I've never done anything like it before." | Stunt rider Danny MacAskill's mother is to take part in the 10,000-mile (16,093 km) Mongol Rally in an old van. |
38,085,127 | The colt was discovered alive alongside a toilet, bath and other rubbish on Meadow Lane in Shirebrook, Derbyshire, at about 20:20 GMT on Tuesday.
Nearby farm owner Tony Perrin said the "skinny and scrawny" horse was "kicking its legs but couldn't move".
The RSPCA, which is investigating, said the foal died before a vet could attend and the body has been removed.
Mr Perrin, who was called by police to assist, told Mansfield Chad: "It was awful - when I arrived it was still alive.
"This is the second time this has happened down here."
The 64-year-old said the injured foal must have been left after 18:00 GMT by whoever illegally dumped the rubbish.
Derbyshire Police said it had received a call from a member of the public who found the horse and contacted the RSPCA.
An RSPCA spokesperson said: "As our nearest available officer was 80 miles away dealing with an emergency, we requested that police send officers to the scene.
"Sadly, the officers later informed us that the colt - which we believe had suffered from a broken neck - died of his injuries before a vet could attend.
"The body was left at the site overnight and an RSPCA officer attended the following day to investigate the circumstances in which he was dumped at the scene.
"We would like to hear from anyone who may know where this horse came from or who may have seen anything suspicious in the area to contact us." | A horse with a broken neck has died after being dumped among fly-tipped rubbish. |
34,703,571 | The group reported a fourth consecutive month of declines in factory activity, with growth at its slowest pace since May 2013.
The index stood at 50.1. Any number above 50 is considered expansion.
The strong US dollar has hurt exports and caused a number of job cuts at plants across the country.
According to the ISM, the number of manufacturing jobs declined by 8% last month compared to September.
The index for new orders rose to 52.9 up from 50.1, suggesting the slowdown may end in the coming months.
A decrease in spending by the oil industry has also taken its toll on manufacturing and is likely to continue to do so, analysts said.
"Until oil prices rebound significantly and stay high for a while you're unlikely to see a boost in their capital expenditures," said Dan North chief economist for Euler Hermes North America, the largest provider of trade credit insurance.
He added that the strong dollar and global economic slowdown are also worrying for the industry.
"We expect that in the long term we will still have a strong dollar. Combine that with global weakness and our exports will still suffer," Mr North said.
Separately, the US Commerce Department also reported a seven year high in construction spending.
It said that spending on new homes, highways, offices and other facilities was up 14.1% from the year before.
Both private and public sector spending was up.
Private home construction - the largest section of the industry- was up 17.2% compared to the previous year. | US manufacturing grew at its slowest pace in two years in October, according to data released by Institute for Supply Management (ISM). |
34,062,988 | Winger Wilson, 18, has not played for the Reds' first team, but was part of the senior squad on their pre-season tour of Asia and Australia this summer.
He has agreed a deal that will keep him at Gresty Road until January.
Scottish left-back Kingsley, 21, has joined the Alex on an emergency 93-day loan.
He began his career in Scotland with Falkirk before signing for the Swans in June 2014.
Kingsley played 12 times in League One for Yeovil Town in a three-month loan spell last season.
The pair's arrival brings the number of summer signings made by the Railwaymen to seven with both available to make their debuts in Saturday's League One game at Wigan.
Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page. | Crewe Alexandra have signed Wales international Harry Wilson and defender Stephen Kingsley on loan from Liverpool and Swansea respectively. |
32,402,723 | But its most revered residents of all are the ones that shun the five-star facilities and never ever pick up a tab.
The exclusive isle - off the north coast of Antigua and Barbuda - is the site of the world's longest running research programme for critically endangered hawksbill turtles.
And they have been here far longer than their human counterparts.
Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of the study, funded entirely by Jumby Bay's well-heeled homeowners who include the likes of Lord Sainsbury, the former chair of the eponymous British supermarket chain, and author Ken Follett.
It has collated more data than any other project about the intriguing creatures which were previously considered too skittish to study, and is one of the only places in the world where their numbers are increasing.
The last three decades have seen almost 450 hawksbills tagged for monitoring purposes and the number of those nesting there increase three-fold.
Every single turtle laying eggs on the island's Pasture Beach is identified thanks to meticulous hourly patrols by researchers and volunteers every night for the duration of the five-and-a-half-month annual nesting season.
Dr Seth Stapleton, from the University of Minnesota who is overseeing the work, said 2014 had been a record year with nearly 90 hawksbills spotted.
"When the project started there were about 30 individuals nesting per season. What's even more remarkable is that we are continuing to see some of the same turtles that were first tagged in the late 1980s returning to nest here. They were originally tagged when they were probably 15 to 20 years old, and a few are still reproducing decades later."
Long hunted for their beautiful brown and gold shells - used to make everything from sunglasses to jewellery - the population of hawksbills worldwide has declined by 80% in the last 200 years.
They have been listed as critically endangered since 1996.
Although the trade is now banned, they still face horrendous odds with only one in 1,000 hatchlings making it to adulthood thanks to omnipresent marine predators.
Exacerbating matters further is hawksbills' late maturation; they do not usually begin to reproduce until they are at least 15 years old.
Dr Stapleton said the Jumby Bay study had been integral in providing fundamental information about hawksbills.
"Many details we now take for granted we learned there - for example, that they don't nest every year; they nest four or five times in one year, laying around 150 eggs each time and then skip a year or two," he explained.
"But there's still so much we don't know, such as how long they live. My ballpark guess would be 50 to 60."
Because turtles are tagged when in their so-called 'nesting trance' - a daze-like state during the egg-laying process when they are oblivious to their surroundings and unable to move quickly - most of the data gathered is about adult females.
Researchers are now taking genetic tissue from the hatchlings to compile information about the males, too.
Plans for the upcoming year also include deploying three satellite transmitters to track hawksbills' movements by GPS.
"This will enable us to better assess where they travel after nesting," Dr Stapleton added.
Hawksbills play a key environmental role by eating sponges which helps keep coral reefs healthy.
Ashton Williams, of Antigua's Environmental Awareness Group (EAG), said sadly a small number of turtles were still poached for their meat on the mainland.
"We were following tracks recently at Rendezvous Bay when the marks suddenly stopped. We could see where a turtle had been flipped over and dragged away," he said.
"Thankfully the younger generation aren't that interested in turtle meat but some of the older folk still have a taste for it. There's also a myth that the eggs are an aphrodisiac."
Mr Williams has been working to protect Antigua's marine life for the last 35 years.
"What I love most about turtles is their determination. The female leaves her environment and puts herself in so much danger all for the survival of her offspring," he said.
"When she goes into her nesting trance she's totally vulnerable to predators. To go through all that just to be killed by a man, it really hurts."
Happily for Jumby Bay's reptilian population, the private isle is one of the world's densest hawksbill nesting sites with one every two to three metres.
Donna Cook, the resort's spokeswoman, said the scheme would not be possible without the generosity of private homeowners.
"It's an amazing project," she added. "The island is one of the few places on earth where turtles are completely safe." | The private Caribbean island of Jumby Bay may be home to some of the world's most affluent and influential people. |
34,314,851 | Media playback is not supported on this device
Pick almost any of the teams at this year's tournament and compare them to their 1987 equivalents: the backs will be as heavy as forwards used to be, and today's forwards will be three stone heavier than yesterday's big men.
Sure, all of us are bigger on average than even our recent ancestors, but rugby union's new dimensions are a remarkable testament to the additional time, money and expertise that came in when the sport went professional in 1995.
Or that is what the sport's bosses will tell you.
But there is another theory to explain how the game got bigger, faster and stronger. It is why governing body World Rugby is spending more money on anti-doping than ever before, the federations are catching more cheats than ever before and anti-doping agencies are talking about the sport more than ever before.
Put simply - and it is a simple idea - rugby union got on the gear.
"There is going to be a temptation to dope, that will be too strong for some to ignore, in any situation where your success depends on physical characteristics from early on," said one anti-doping expert, who wished to remain anonymous.
"That is what made cycling so vulnerable: young guys, desperate to stand out in a team environment, where the advantage to be gained from doping would be enough to ensure a career.
"Is rugby any different? The physiology is but the concept is the same."
But it is just a theory and every theory, like elite athletes, needs to be tested.
Is rugby union, to paraphrase Tony Blair, still a pretty straight sort of sport, or is it as low down and dirty as baseball's asterisk years,cycling's EPO era or Russian athletics?
When it comes to anti-doping, there is a very obvious Catch-22. Take it seriously and catch people (because there are cheats in every area of human activity), or pretend to take it seriously and catch nobody.
Do the former and you have a "drugs problem"; do the latter, no problem…until a superstar makes a mistake and the edifice of propriety collapses.
You hear this dilemma a lot when you talk to people involved in the game's anti-doping efforts. They are well aware of the fact that rugby union tops UK Anti-Doping's (Ukad) banned list and that the trend over the last 12 months suggests the situation is deteriorating.
But they believe this is really a reflection of the sport's values and them doing their jobs properly.
"We have grasped the nettle," said Stephen Watkins, the manager of the Rugby Football Union's (RFU) anti-doping programme.
"All our testing is intelligence-led and targeted, and we get information from the police, the Border Agency, Ukad and the clubs themselves. They share their suspicions.
"Our experience is that the rugby fraternity does not tolerate it."
That sentiment is echoed by Watkins' counterpart at World Rugby, David Ho, who said the game's "values" of fair play and mutual respect were the difference between rugby union and sports more afflicted by doping.
"I think other sports are envious of those values," said Ho, whose organisation has just increased its anti-doping budget by 30% to £1.5m a year, the same amount the IAAF, the governing body of athletics, spends on drug testing.
The RFU carried out nearly 800 tests last season, up almost a third on the previous campaign with increases at every level from the Under-17s in the top clubs' academies to those on Six Nations duty.
The biggest increase, however, came in the tiers just below the Premiership, and this is where players are getting caught.
Sixteen of the 48 people serving Ukad bans come from rugby union. Rugby league is next, then boxing. Cycling, for so long doping's poster boy, is in a tie for sixth.
No player has tested positive in England's top flight for more than four years, but rugby union is responsible for 11 of the 25 cases recorded by Ukad in the last 12 months.
Read one of these sorry stories and you have almost read them all: an amateur, for a team you have never heard of, wants to get bigger so buys "something" - sometimes a steroid but usually a mislabelled or contaminated supplement with a macho name - from the internet, or a "bloke at the gym" and fails the first drugs test they are given.
Some of these cases are attempts to enhance performance - unequivocal cases of cheating - but others look a lot like symptoms of a much wider problem.
"Go to any newsagents and look at the magazines: the women's ones are all about losing weight, the men's ones are about gaining it," said Watkins.
"We know societal steroid use is up and it is very probably under-reported. The sad fact is that some of that falls into our sphere."
I have heard exactly the same explanation from anti-doping experts in Australia and South Africa: "bigorexia" is the issue, not cheating.
Dr Glen Hagemann is responsible for the one of the best bits of research we have into what is happening at the margins of professional rugby. He asked 12,463 students in 23 rugby-playing schools in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province what they were taking and why.
The most shocking of his findings were that almost one in 10 18-year-old boys had tried steroids, and rugby players were the most likely group to have done so.
The main reason they gave, though, was vanity.
"Steroids have become a lifestyle drug and many of the students did not even see it as cheating," said Hagemann, who does not think doping is a serious problem at the elite level in South Africa.
"I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I am saying there is a genuine interest in keeping it clean.
"If there is a problem, it is in the schools, where you cannot test without the school's permission, and at the club level, where there is very little testing."
Professor Stephen Moston, from the University of Canberra, has carried out similar studies in Australia, with similar responses.
"It's everywhere now - it's become normal to some groups," said Moston, when asked by reporters about doping among junior athletes.
"Young athletes think they are supposed to dope and there's no serious attempt to stop them."
Aurora Andruska, who led the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority's bruising investigations into team-sponsored doping in Australian Rules Football and rugby league, is certainly not frightened to ruffle the feathers of the sports establishment. But she agrees with those who think elite rugby union is relatively clean.
"I have concerns about performance-enhancing drugs across all of society - everybody from actors to doormen to prison officers - but when we looked at rugby union the problem areas seemed to be with guys trying to get that first contract, and then later when they were trying to hang on to it," said Andruska.
But there are some voices singing a different tune.
Laurent Benezech is no stranger to French rugby's dog house.
"When I was a player I set up a players' union - the federation thought I was a communist," the 48-year-old said with a chuckle.
"So I am used to being the pain-in-the-arse guy."
That pain got more acute when Benezech, who was capped 15 times by France in the mid-1990s, started to talk and write about doping.
It began when French anti-doping expert Francoise Lasne told a 2013 senate inquiry into cycling's problems that when it came to positive tests it was rugby union that led the way.
Lasne was simply stating a fact, just as Ukad chief executive Nicole Sapstead was stating a fact when she said much the same thing to a panel of MPs investigating athletics.
But French rugby was not in the mood for such straight-talking and Lasne was indignantly attacked by players, past and present, and the game's administrators.
Benezech, a thoughtful man, was troubled by this, particularly as he already harboured suspicions about the size and speed of the players he was watching in France's Top 14, European rugby's strongest league.
So he told French newspaper Le Monde that doping was rife in French rugby and always had been. His motivation was to warn players about the health risks of doping, especially when done in an unregulated fashion.
But there was no sign of gratitude in the response he got from the French players' union: it hit him with a defamation writ from more than 130 current players, each one asking for 2,000 euros in damages.
He would eventually be cleared, after the judge ruled he had spoken in good faith, but it was a stressful experience and it probably explains why his next contribution to the debate was a book called Rugby: Where Are Your Values?
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Benezech was much in demand last week when the story of an investigation into alleged fraud by a pharmacy that supplies RC Toulon - the winner of European rugby's premier competition, the Heineken Cup - was splashed across the French media.
The details of the investigation remain unknown but RC Toulon's colourful owner Mourad Boudjellal got on the front foot last week by saying the pharmacy, and not the club, was under the microscope, with the issue being the possible defrauding of the French health service.
"No player is concerned in this affair," said Boudjellal, before adding that jealousy of Toulon's success and French rugby politics were the reason the club had been dragged into the story.
The club has had issues in the past, though, with England's Steffon Armitage and Welsh prop Eifion Lewis-Roberts both testing positive for morphine, only to later be cleared of intentional wrongdoing. And the club has always been firm in its denials of cheating.
But Benezech believes many top clubs are exploiting grey areas in the anti-doping rules to manage injuries and keep players on the park.
Some would argue that is common sense for a successful team at the sharp end of a contact sport, and Benezech does not necessarily disagree: he just would prefer it to be done more honestly and safely.
"There is an equation for performance in top sport: steroids for muscles, growth hormone and cortisone for recovery, EPO for red blood cells and perhaps beta-blockers for concentration," he explained.
"You simply change the methods and quantities for each sport.
"Are rugby players cleverer than everybody else so they don't need to use these things? Is rugby somehow different?"
World Rugby, which only has 79 violations on its website after 12 years of global testing (the list mentioned in the opening paragraph, topped by Russia), says it is and points to just four positive tests from more than 2,000 samples in the last year as evidence of those "values".
There is a problem with putting too much faith in tests, though, as athletics should have learned with Marion Jones and cycling with Lance Armstrong.
"I had big legs but a small upper body and I never tested well in the gym," said former South Africa Under-21 player Carlo Del Fava.
"Put me on a field and I was OK, because I was aggressive and had decent ball skills, but my bench press was poor and in South Africa that was everything."
So Del Fava bought some unbranded steroids from a guy at the gym. He only had enough money to buy three injections' worth and had no idea what he was doing. But that was no defence when he failed a test and he was given a two-year ban in 2002.
He took his punishment, though, and came back more determined than ever. He would eventually play 54 times for Italy and enjoy a 10-year club career that took him around Europe. But most importantly, he rebuilt his reputation.
That is something Sam Chalmers, the son of former Scotland and Lions star Craig Chalmers, is trying to do now after he made the same mistake as Del Fava in 2013. He too was trying to rectify a size issue.
World Rugby has belatedly realised the benefit of persuading poachers to become gamekeepers and both Chalmers and Del Fava have appeared in videos produced by the governing body as part of its Keep Rugby Clean initiative.
But these two cases fit the narrative that rugby union has settled on: we do not have a problem, just isolated cases of youngsters making bad decisions, often because they want to look better on the beach.
This explanation makes sense only if you believe people who have got away with something stop doing it when they have achieved a certain goal, such as a better bench press, bigger biceps or a professional contract.
That is not the experience of rugby league in England and Wales, where Ukad continues to catch players higher up the chain, or in South Africa where rugby union is the most tested sport.
Khalid Galant, the chief executive of South African Institute for Drug-Free Sport, said that "gym culture and the ubiquity of supplements" were "a major problem", even at Super 15 level.
"I have been amazed at what I perceive to be rugby's naivety regarding doping," said the anti-doping expert quoted earlier.
"They really do believe these values give them some immunity.
"If you confront them they stand behind their testing, which other sports have clearly shown is basically impotent. I believe doping will grow to become rugby's biggest challenge." | A world championship has started, the governing body promises a record number of drugs tests and Russia top the global banned list…no, you have not heard this one before, this is rugby union, a sport that has certainly grown up since its first World Cup in 1987. |
25,663,249 | The migration, which will be complete by mid-2015, will end the need for the "paper counterpart" document drivers have to keep with their licence.
Insurers said "honest" motorists could see premiums fall by up to £15 a year.
At the moment, insurers cannot check licence or traffic offence details when they sell policies, meaning they have to "price in" risk factors.
The Association of British Insurers says premiums are pushed up by the fact that firms have to take account of the risk that drivers either do not tell the truth about speeding points to get a lower quote, or simply make a mistake.
"Significant cost savings" would also result from "reducing the need to obtain paper copies of licences from policyholders", the association added.
By Brian WheelerBBC News
Most of us would struggle to find the official document we are meant to keep with our driving licence. But from the middle of next year we will not need to.
All the information on it - such as speeding points - will be available online. It is one of 25 public services set to go digital by 2015.
Cabinet Office minster Francis Maude says the days when government IT projects were a by-word for disaster are over.
Britain now leads the world. And it has already saved taxpayers more than a billion pounds a year.
But critics point to universal credit.
The government's flagship welfare reforms rely heavily on new IT systems - and these have been hit by cost over-runs and delays straight from the bad old days.
A system due to be launched by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) will allow insurers to access the information using an individual's licence number.
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said anyone with a driving licence would be able to use the online database while there will be an assisted service for those who find it difficult to use the internet. They will be able to get help from a call centre, library or post office.
Most of the UK's 40 million drivers would see falls in premiums, he suggested.
"This will enable insurers, for example, to price much more accurately, because they will not have to take anything on trust," he said.
Driving records are one of 25 public services set to go digital by 2015, with Mr Maude claiming the UK now leads the world in online migration of public services.
The paper counterpart to the driving licence photo card is due to be phased out by 2015 while it was announced in December that paper car tax discs would also be scrapped.
The DVLA said that "although some services cannot be delivered digitally, such as assessing a customer's fitness to drive, we can improve the processes supporting the delivery of these services through making greater use of digital tools".
It has not ruled out job cuts at the DVLA headquarters in Swansea, after the new digital system launches in June, but is awaiting the outcome of a review of staffing levels.
The car rental industry will also be affected by the new system - but it denied government claims that it would reduce the cost of hiring a vehicle.
"There are around 10 million car rental transactions in the UK each year and the majority of rental bookings are approved very quickly and at no cost by checking the driver endorsement and qualification information contained on the driver licence counterpart," said a spokesman for the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association.
When that is not available, rental companies rely on the DVLA's expensive telephone-based system to access driver information.
"The DVLA has confirmed its plans to withdraw the counterpart from 2015 and has promised the industry that it will provide a viable online database.
"This project has not yet begun, but we hope that any solution will be cost-effective and provide real-time, 24/7 access. Even if this is achieved, it is very unlikely to be quicker or cheaper than the current system of checking the paper driver licence counterpart."
Initially, the new system will check users' identities by asking for their postcode and National Insurance number but, in common with other digital government services, it will eventually allow people to use their bank's system to prove their identity on websites providing government services.
Clicking on an icon will allow people to complete the check required by their bank, mobile phone company, or other service provider.
The approach would cut the number of passwords people need to remember, and avoid the need for a central government system to establish identities.
"This is something that is a problem for countries that do not have an ID card system and a national ID database," said Mr Maude. | Moving all driving records online could reduce the cost of car insurance for most people, ministers have said. |
33,062,393 | Ava-Jayne Corless was attacked while sleeping at a house in Blackburn, Lancashire, in February 2014.
Lee Wright, 27, had denied the claim his pet, called Snoop, was a banned pit bull-type that contravened the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991.
At Blackburn Magistrates' Court, Wright was warned he was facing jail and will be sentenced later.
District Judge Gerald Chalk asked for a pre-sentence report to be obtained.
The judge agreed there was no evidence to suggest Wright had known the dog was of a prohibited breed.
He said both expert witnesses had relied on the American Dog Breeders Association as standard in making their assessment of the dog, but said it was "comment rather than definitive".
Wright had disputed the pet was a banned pit bull type dog in contravention of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, saying he believed it to be an American pit bull.
Ava-Jayne was killed in February 2014 at the defendant's house on Emily Street, Blackburn, as her mother Chloe King and Wright - her then-boyfriend - slept.
They believed the dog was in the kitchen blocked in by a speaker and a golf bag stand.
Police said at the time the dog - which was destroyed after the attack - had been identified by experts as a pit bull terrier-type.
During the two-day trial, expert witness Peter Olsen, a retired veterinary surgeon, had examined the dead dog and concluded it shared a "substantial number of characteristics" with a pit bull.
But veterinary surgeon and animal behaviourist expert Elizabeth Kendal Shepherd said she was "unable to form any reliable opinion" about the dog's breed. | The owner of a dog that mauled an 11-month-old baby to death has been found guilty of owning a banned breed. |
32,887,898 | Kenneth Hall, 49, from Bridgwater, Somerset, sold details about killers held at the hospital to the News Of The World and Mirror newspapers.
They included Robert Ashman, who attacked MP Nigel Jones and killed his assistant with a samurai sword in 2000.
Hall pleaded guilty to misconduct in public office at the Old Bailey and will be sentenced next month.
The offences took place between 29 June 2002 and 6 October 2004.
Hall's wife Karen, who was also a nurse at Broadmoor, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the commissioning of the offence by allowing money she knew her husband was getting by selling stories to go into her account.
The mother-of-three did not sell any stories or disclose any confidential information herself, and was sentenced to five months in jail suspended for one year on Tuesday.
The Old Bailey heard how Hall made thousands of pounds selling stories to a freelance reporter, Anna Gekoski, who often worked for the News Of The World.
He later also made contact with a reporter at the Mirror.
Prosecutor Stuart Biggs said Hall "was both providing care and treatment to patients with mental health illnesses and personality disorders" when he sold the stories.
"And so he had responsibilities in respect of the risk they posed to each other, themselves and the community."
The court heard that Hall smuggled out patient notes relating to Ashman, leading to a number of stories, including one headlined, "Samurai Nut Could Be Free In 18 Months".
Mr Biggs said Hall also forged notes when he could not smuggle the originals out of the hospital.
In an email to Ms Gekoski, from 19 September 2003, Hall wrote: "Hope it goes in as a lot of work went into getting copies of those."
But the prosecutor said: "Many of the contents are fabricated. There is sometimes some truth, and sometimes there is more truth, but there is at least exaggeration.
"In this case it's a complete fabrication."
Hall also pleaded guilty to forgery.
Mr Biggs said: "In two different ways the public official abused his position.
"He had the credibility of the newspaper to create false documents, and he, on the rare occasions he was able, took out of the hospital a true document, with obvious sensitive and confidential information."
Sentencing Mrs Hall, who suffers from poor mental health and walks with a stick, Judge Timothy Pontius said it was a "tragedy" to see her in court.
But he said that in knowing her husband was making money by selling confidential information, she had encouraged the offending.
The judge told Hall, meanwhile, that a prison sentence "must be uppermost in the court's mind".
He was bailed to return to the Old Bailey for sentencing on 26 June. | A mental health nurse at Broadmoor high security hospital has admitted selling stories about patients to journalists. |
35,945,006 | Ryan was responding to speculation that the 29-year-old rugby league convert is being viewed as an England possible.
"He's got the quality and potential to do that," Ryan told BBC Sport.
"But to play for England he's going to have to play well in an area that's got stronger over the last few weeks."
Auckland-born Te'o, who played one rugby league international for Samoa in 2008, qualifies for England through his mother, who was born and raised there.
He is currently in his second season with Irish provincial side Leinster, who he joined from Australian rugby league side South Sydney Rabbitohs, where he had been a team-mate of Sam Burgess, who was about to make the same switch.
He is not scheduled to join Worcester until the end of this season, but already Ryan has been asked about what path lies ahead for the second of this winter's five pre-agreed signings.
"He's a player of quality and he's English qualified but I've not had any conservations outside that," Ryan told BBC Hereford & Worcester.
"I know he's ambitious and that he's got aspirations to play Test rugby and I know he wants to do that through playing for Worcester. But I have no idea whether anyone else shares that line of thought.
"He's a real talent, a real athlete and is really driven to be successful. He's very direct. There's still things we think we can add to his game, but he's still got a lot to learn. The fact that we are bringing in a player of his quality, that he wants to come and that he sees what we're doing here is more important to me."
The speculation about Te'o comes on top of this week's revelation that Wigan and England winger Josh Charnley plans to switch codes to join Sale.
But it also comes at the end of a season in which the fate of Burgess in England's ill-fated Rugby Union World Cup campaign served as a warning to the dangers of over reliance on cross-code converts.
Worcester Warriors have so far have made five signings for the 2016-17 season.
They will also be bringing in another centre, New-Zealand-born Jackson Willison from French side Grenoble.
They have also signed three forwards, South Africa-born Northampton hooker Matt Williams, Bath lock Will Spencer and Bristol flanker Marco Mama. | Worcester Warriors boss Dean Ryan says that Leinster centre Ben Te'o, one of the club's signings for 2016-17, already has the potential to play rugby union for England. |
38,656,150 | Midfielder Evans, 21, is a senior Wales international.
Former Aston Villa goalkeeper Leach 20, has represented England at under-20 level.
Both players were key members of the Vixens side that won promotion back to the English top flight last season. | Bristol City Women duo Georgia Evans and Caitlin Leach have both signed six-month contract extensions with the Women's Super League One club ahead of the 2017 WSL Spring Series. |
40,386,466 | A spokesman for the GMB union, which represents 63 firefighters at the site, said the action would be 24-hour strikes starting in July.
He said members felt they were not getting the right pay and were doing work above their role.
Sellafield Ltd said further talks are planned for 30 June but "arrangements are in place" to cope with action.
The Sellafield nuclear reprocessing and decommissioning site employs about 10,000 people.
GMB senior organiser for Sellafield, Chris Jukes, said almost all of the site's firefighters, who voted two to one in favour of industrial action, are part of the union.
He said: "The firefighters do a vitally important job and they feel completely taken advantage of by management, relying on doing work over and above what they are paid for.
"It is sinful that this highly skilled group of workers have been put in this position."
A spokesman for Sellafield Ltd said the firm was "committed to resolving" the issues.
He added: "The safety and security of the Sellafield site are our overriding priorities.
"We have arrangements in place to ensure the site remains safe during any industrial action." | Firefighters at the Sellafield nuclear site have agreed to take industrial action in a dispute over pay. |
36,288,036 | Dylan Day was set up to raise the profile of his work, both in Wales and overseas, through a series of events.
They kick off in New Quay, Ceredigion, where sand artist Marc Treanor will re-create the event's 2016 logo.
On Saturday afternoon, Max Porter was announced as the winner of the £30,000 Dylan Thomas Prize for his book Grief is the Thing.
Chairman of judges Prof Dai Smith said: "Max Porter, the judges felt, takes the common place of grief, the pall of death, the loss of loved ones, the things that we will all experience and transforms the ordinary through an extraordinary feat of imaginative prose, but prose that slips in to poetry and out again."
Other events are being held in Swansea, Laugharne, London and New York - all have strong links to the poet.
The launch of a new walking app will take place in Swansea, with a promenade performance beginning at Castle Square and ending at the restored Dylan Thomas birth place.
Laugharne in Carmarthenshire will celebrate its literary links with storytelling in the castle, music in the boathouse and an evening event at the Tin Shed.
In Fishguard a weekend festival is planned, with highlights including an Under Milk Wood walk and a screening of the new Welsh language film shot in Solva.
Other literary events are planned in Italy, Australia and Argentina.
Welsh singer and songwriter Cerys Matthews has encouraged people to get involved.
She said: "I've enjoyed celebrating Burns Night over the years and often wanted to celebrate Dylan Thomas in the same way.
"Enjoy the chance to savour the brilliance of his work."
The winner of the 10th annual International Dylan Thomas Prize is also set to be announced during a ceremony at Swansea University, with a £30,000 prize for the best published literary work.
Dylan Day is organised by Literature Wales and is held on 14 May, the date Under Milk Wood was first read on stage in New York in 1953. | An international day to celebrate the life and work of poet Dylan Thomas is being held on Saturday. |
40,455,944 | Premier League champions Chelsea will also enter an Under-21 side, as they did last season.
Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool have turned down the chance to participate.
The competition features 16 Under-21 teams from clubs with Category A academies, in addition to the 48 League One and League Two clubs.
Last season was the first time it was played under the new format.
Coventry beat Oxford in front of almost 75,000 at Wembley but prior to that the competition had been heavily criticised due to its low crowds, restrictive rules for the League One and Two teams, and the absence of most of England's major clubs.
Tournament regulations were tweaked in the summer, allowing greater flexibility in selection and fixture dates.
This has encouraged City and Tottenham to enter, in addition to Newcastle and Fulham, who are new entrants from last season.
Prize money has been increased to £3m per season, with the winner getting £100,000.
Tottenham head of player development, John McDermott, said: "We know the Checkatrade Trophy will provide a massive challenge for us and we look forward to testing ourselves."
*new teams highlighted in bold | Tottenham and Manchester City are among the new clubs who will play in next season's Checkatrade Trophy. |
35,840,520 | A contraflow system and a reduced speed limit will affect the A338 Spur Road over the two-week school holidays.
Dorset County Council said suspending the project for the break would "cost around four weeks of time, and would mean us finishing at the end of June".
The authority has advised motorists to "plan ahead".
The £22m project, which started in September, is due to finish at the end of May.
It involves a re-development of the route between the Ashley Heath Roundabout and Blackwater Junction. | Motorists are being warned to expect delays at Easter as diversions set up while the main route into Bournemouth is rebuilt will remain in place. |
36,226,402 | A senior police officer in the state told BBC Hindi that Colonel Jasjit Singh had been arrested on Thursday.
He is accused of directing his men to loot gold worth 140m rupees ($2.1m;£1.8m) that was being smuggled into Mizoram from Myanmar in December last year.
Mizoram shares an international border with Myanmar.
The police official told BBC Hindi that eight other army personnel were also arrested from the state's capital Aizawl for their role in the robbery.
Mr Singh knew about the smuggling of gold on this route and ordered his armed men to loot the vehicle, he said.
The police took action after the driver of the vehicle, C Lalnunfela, filed a complaint with the police on 21 April.
Mr Lalnunfela said he had earlier been too worried about his safety to complain, but decided to go the police after his friends and family talked him into it.
The Indian army has also started its own investigation into the matter. | An Indian army officer has been arrested for looting smuggled gold in the north-eastern state of Mizoram. |
27,225,422 | His status is such that the phrase to be "paxoed" has entered the media lexicon, meaning a journalistic "going over" to be avoided by hapless politicians.
However, many of Westminster's toughest and wiliest operators have succumbed.
The journalist has been no respecter of standing or affiliation, giving an equally rough ride to interviewees, whether they were Conservative or Labour, prime ministers, masters of the universe or junior officials.
Some hardened politicians reportedly refused to appear on the programme when he was presenting while others donned their tin hats and became regular sparring partners.
Perhaps more than any other, Michael Howard's appearance on Newsnight in 1997 has entered broadcasting and political folklore.
In the middle of a Tory leadership contest, Mr Howard was asked about his relationship with the former head of the Prison Service, Derek Lewis, whom he had sacked in 1995 after a series of escapes by IRA prisoners.
The Newsnight host famously put the same question 12 times to the former home secretary without appearing to get a satisfactory answer.
He later played down what many immediately hailed as a moment of journalistic genius, suggesting that he could not think of anything else to ask him as the interview progressed.
The BBC had well-documented run-ins with the Labour government in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, with much probing about the relationship between Tony Blair and George Bush.
In a 2003 edition, Jeremy Paxman took a different tack and appeared to take the prime minister genuinely by surprise when he asked him whether he and the US president had prayed together.
The same question has been posed several times since then but it was Paxman who asked it first.
Like Mr Blair, William Hague is regarded as one of the most talented media performers of his generation but that did not protect him when he was put on the spot in 2009 about Tory donor Lord Ashcroft's tax status.
As before, the Newsnight host deployed the tactic of asking the same question, or variations on the same question, on multiple occasions and the then shadow foreign secretary seemed taken aback by this.
Some politicians have literally had their careers made or broken by their appearances on Newsnight.
Junior Treasury minister and rising Conservative star Chloe Smith was dispatched to appear on the programme in 2012 to talk about a proposed delay to a rise in fuel duty.
What followed was painful to watch as the minister struggled to appear on top of her brief and give the appearance that she was privy to what was going on in the upper echelons of her department.
Chancellor George Osborne was criticised for not going on the programme himself and allowing Ms Smith to take the fire.
Although remaining magnanimous about the encounter, Ms Smith was moved to another job in a reshuffle that year and has since left the government.
The Newsnight host has not always had it his own way, of course, and some of his most memorable encounters have taken place when his subjects have fought back.
Media magnate Conrad Black famously chided Jeremy Paxman as a "gullible, priggish, English fool" when questioned about his (Black's) conviction for fraud and subsequent imprisonment.
And many felt the legendary interviewer finally met his match when he came up against Russell Brand last year.
His joust with the comedian and provocateur, in which Russell Brand mused on the point of voting and the need for a popular revolution, became an instant hit on social media.
The Newsnight host took his interviewee to task for not being "arsed" to vote but had to admit afterwards that he had also failed to do so on one recent occasion. | In his 25 years in the Newsnight hot seat, Jeremy Paxman has earned a reputation as one of the most fearless and feared interviewers in the game. |
33,873,523 | They will be permanently exhibited at a colonial-era cloister in Cartagena's historic centre.
Garcia Marquez set several of his works in the city, including Love in the Time of Cholera.
He died in Mexico in April 2014, where he lived for many years with his family.
The decision by his wife Mercedes Barcha and his two sons to bring his cremated remains to Cartagena was welcomed by his Colombian friends and many others in the country.
Garcia Marquez arrived in the city in 1948 and found a job as a journalist with a local newspaper, El Universal. To the end of his life, he kept a holiday home in Cartagena, which he visited frequently.
The celebrated author of One Hundred Years of Solitude also established a foundation there to train Latin American journalists, the Fundacion Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano.
Its director, Jaime Abello, said the decision to bring his remains to the city made sense.
"Cartagena is where Garcia Marquez built his home, the only one he ever built," he said. "Many members of his family live there and it's where his parents are buried."
"Garcia Marquez and his wife never stopped being Colombian, despite living many years abroad," said Mr Abello. | The ashes of the Colombian Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez will be taken to the Caribbean city of Cartagena in December. |
40,851,164 | The Dutchman, who joined United as a 16-year-old, has made 12 league appearances for his parent club.
The 19-year-old, who has also played in midfield, signed a new contract at Old Trafford in October that runs to 2020.
"I still have a lot to learn and therefore getting the opportunity to play more games on a regular basis will help my development," said Fosu-Mensah.
He was previously a youth player at Ajax under new Palace boss Frank de Boer, who said he intends to play his compatriot as a right centre-back or full-back.
Palace have already signed Chelsea and England Under-21 midfielder Ruben Loftus-Cheek on loan until the end of the season.
Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page. | Crystal Palace have signed Manchester United defender Timothy Fosu-Mensah on a season-long loan. |
34,122,208 | "This is a quest Los Angeles was made for," said LA mayor Eric Garcetti. "This city is the world's greatest stage."
The bid sets out $6bn (£3.8bn) in proposed public and private spending.
Los Angeles hosted the Olympics in 1932 and 1984, and if chosen would join London as another three-time-host city. It replaces Boston, which dropped out.
Los Angeles City council voted 15-0 to allow Mr Garcetti to negotiate with the US Olympic Committee, effectively giving the city's Olympic ambitions its blessing.
Boston had pulled out as the US candidate in July, after concerns that local funds would be used to pay for budget overruns.
Mr Garcetti said LA would stage games both "spectacular" and "profitable."
Much of the infrastructure needed for the games already exists in LA, but council members had to be reassured that the Games would not subject LA residents to unchecked spending or debt.
Many conversations about the potential games' cost to LA are to come later, council members said.
The host city will be chosen in 2017. Other cities being considered include Rome, Paris, Hamburg and Budapest.
Atlanta held the last Summer Games in the US, in 1996. Salt Lake City, Utah, hosted the Winter Olympics in 2002. | The US Olympic Committee (USOC) has named Los Angeles as the US bid for hosting the 2024 games. |
37,128,340 | Holly Parkinson was one of the midwives caring for newborn Joshua Titcombe at Barrow's Furness General hospital in November 2008.
She faced being struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council after being found to have committed a string of errors.
These included not reporting Joshua's low temperature to doctors.
Joshua was one of 11 babies to die after being treated at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust over a nine-year period.
Mrs Parkinson was among a number of employees investigated after an inquest five years ago heard staff repeatedly missed chances to spot and treat a serious infection which led to Joshua's death after just nine days.
Mrs Parkinson will now be unable to practise for nine months, after which her case will be reviewed.
She has apologised to the baby's family but, eight years later, remains in denial about her role in what happened, a panel at the hearing in London was told.
Joshua, from Dalton-in-Furness, died after suffering pneumococcal septicaemia and a lung haemorrhage.
A hearing last month found Mrs Parkinson, who had been working as a midwife for five years at the time, failed in her duty to look after him properly, causing him to "lose a significant chance of survival".
She did not get a doctor when she recorded Joshua's low temperature, and admitted failing to document advice that observations should be carried out on the newborn.
The failures denied Joshua "any opportunity to be seen, assessed and treated" by a paediatrician, the panel ruled.
Chairman Stuart Gray said Mrs Parkinson appeared to still be in denial and "not fully accepting" of the impact of her actions.
He said she was at times "evasive, controlled and detached" when explaining what happened.
Mr Gray added: "There is a risk, albeit a low risk, of repetition which could once again place patients at risk of harm."
A number of other hearings involving midwives who worked for the trust are under way.
An inquiry led by Dr Bill Kirkup found last year found that a "lethal mix" of failures at the trust led to the unnecessary deaths of 11 babies and one mother between 2004 and 2013. | A midwife whose failings led to the death of a baby boy in Cumbria has been suspended for nine months. |
38,132,842 | The changes, announced by the payments industry, will allow consumers to double check they are paying the right person.
When money is taken from an account by a direct debit, consumers will also be asked to confirm the payment.
The plans are designed help prevent fraud, and stop accidental transfers.
They are due to come into force by 2020 at the latest.
"Around £755m was stolen from UK bank accounts last year, and the problem looks set to worsen as criminals become more technologically savvy," said Ruth Evans, chair of the Payments Strategy Forum, which is recommending the changes.
"We need to address the issue head on."
The first new safeguard will be known as "Confirmation of Payee".
When a bank account holder makes a payment online, a message will come back from the bank, confirming the name of the person they are paying.
Only when they click "OK" will the payment go through.
This should stop people paying the wrong person accidentally, or being tricked into doing so by fraudsters.
The second proposed safeguard is "Request to Pay".
When a company wants to take a regular payment from a customer's account - for example gym monthly membership fees, or a mobile phone company charging for extra data used - the consumer will receive a message asking them to approve the payment.
Again they will have to click "OK" for the payment to be processed.
The plans have been welcomed by the Payments Systems Regulator (PSR) and personal finance experts.
"This is just the start, the ambitious reforms should make it far less likely you'll be hit with hefty fees for missed payments, much easier for you to stay informed about where your cash is going, safer for you to bank online and simpler for you to change account," said Hannah Maundrell, the editor in chief of Money.co.uk.
"It's rare you read an official paper that seems to 'get' all of the issues and addresses them sensibly. Simply put, these plans are brilliant news for everyone with a bank account."
However, Which? was less enthusiastic.
"This is a welcome first step, but is not a cure and won't be enough to protect people from bank transfer scams," said Alex Neill, managing director of Which? Home and Legal Services.
"With scams on the rise and scammers becoming ever more sophisticated, the financial regulators need to go further to ensure banks adequately tackle bank transfer fraud and safeguard us from scams."
The plans also involve the consolidation of three payment system operators:
The Payments Strategy Forum said the new provider would be simpler, more accessible and more responsive to innovation. | Two new safeguards to protect people when they pay online or via banking apps have been welcomed as "brilliant news" by a personal finance expert. |
33,027,445 | Football's world governing body said on Thursday that it paid the FAI 5m euros (£3.6m) after France controversially beat Ireland in a World Cup play-off.
FAI boss John Delaney said a deal was made to drop a claim against Fifa.
Mr Kenny said the payment, agreed in 2010, was "quite extraordinary".
Fifa is facing criminal investigations after allegations of "systemic and deep-rooted" corruption within the organisation, and its president Sepp Blatter is stepping down.
Mr Delaney said on Thursday that he had believed the FAI had a case against Fifa after French striker Thierry Henry's handball in the build-up to a decisive goal in the 2009 match in Paris which caused Ireland to miss the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
A Fifa spokesman confirmed it had "entered into an agreement with FAI in order to put an end to any claims" against it.
The fall-out has now spilled over into a summit of Ireland's cross-border peace-building North South Ministerial Council in Dublin, where Mr Kenny called on the head of Irish football to shed light on the payment.
The taoiseach (Irish prime minister) said: "I would say that any questions that need to be answered here in the interests of transparency and accountability... John Delaney should answer and will answer all of those questions, I'm quite sure."
Mr Kenny added that he believed the FAI chief's position remained "tenable".
The Irish sports minister Paschal Donohoe said he had spoken with Mr Delaney and pressed him to bring "clarity and certainty" to the matter.
"It is a significant amount of money, it is obviously something that the country does have a lot of interest in," Mr Donohoe said.
"It is in everybody's interest that these matters be cleared up."
He said he was "absolutely not aware" of any such payment and would be surprised if any of his predecessors knew about it.
Former Fifa vice-president Jim Boyce said he was "astounded" by the revelation and the FAI's payment should be investigated.
On Friday, the Republic of Ireland assistant manager Roy Keane refused to comment on the payment.
"Not today, I'm not in the mood for all that stuff today," he said when asked about the controversy.
But when asked whether Mr Delaney was "a distraction" to the national team's on-field matters, he joked: "Isn't he always?" | The Irish prime minister has urged the chief executive of the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) to explain a multi-million euro sum it was paid by Fifa to prevent a legal battle. |
32,526,461 | Mr Alexander said he was "lifting the lid" on plans including limiting child benefit and tax credit to two children.
He claimed his party blocked the move, which he said was worth £8bn.
The Conservatives said they recognised none of the proposals, which were "definitely not" party policy.
"This is desperate stuff from Liberal Democrats who are now willing to say anything to try and get attention," a Conservative spokesman added.
In other election news, with a week to go before polling day:
The Conservatives have said they want to find a further £12bn in savings to the welfare bill, which they argue is achievable given that £21bn has been saved in the past five years.
They have yet to specify where the savings will be made, and Mr Alexander said the list of measures he revealed to the Guardian "shines a light" on the scale of cuts the Tories would have to make to working-age benefits.
The Guardian said the measures were contained in a paper circulated to the four most senior Cabinet members by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith in 2012.
Mr Alexander said the proposals also included removing child benefit from 16 to 19 year-olds, as well as means testing the payment.
The coalition government has already restricted child benefit - aimed at helping parents cope with the cost of bringing up children - for parents earning £50,000 a year.
This election issue includes access to benefits (apart from pensions), poverty and inequality.
Policy guide: Where the parties stand
Mr Alexander said: "I'm lifting the lid on this now because the Conservatives are trying to con the British people by keeping their planned cuts secret until after the election."
Rachel Reeves, Labour's shadow work and pensions secretary, said: "This evidence confirms the Tories' secret plan to cut family budgets."
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's The World at One on Wednesday, Conservative Chief Whip Michael Gove said working age benefits would be "frozen not cut" for two years under his party's proposals.
The welfare row comes ahead of the special edition of Question Time, broadcast from Leeds Town Hall and shown live on BBC One and broadcast on BBC Radio 5 live from 20:00 to 21:30 BST.
Mr Cameron will be first up, followed by Mr Miliband and then Mr Clegg. They will each appear separately to face audience questions, with David Dimbleby hosting. Each leader will be questioned for 30 minutes. The questions, which will be submitted by audience members on the night, will vary between the different leaders.
There will also be separate Ask the Leader programmes. On BBC One in Scotland, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon will take questions at 21:30 BST, and in Wales it will be the turn of Plaid Cymru's Leanne Wood after the News at Ten.
At that time, viewers in England will be able to watch Nigel Farage taking questions from an audience in Birmingham. This programme will be shown later in the evening on BBC One in Wales.
The Question Time show is the final programme of four that were agreed after drawn-out negotiations between parties and broadcasters over the timing and line-up of this year's election TV debates. | Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has said the Conservatives proposed to "slash" child benefit while the two parties were in government together. |
35,630,686 | Football's world governing body found he had breached an earlier ban that barred him from all football activity.
Makudi, a former member of Fifa's executive committee, was banned for 90 days in October after allegedly breaching Fifa's code of ethics.
The 64-year-old was part of the group when it voted on who should host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in 2010.
According to Fifa, Makudi was "still involved in the affairs" of his national association during his suspension.
Makudi has also been fined 3,000 Swiss francs (£2,133). | Fifa has banned former Thai football federation president Worawi Makudi for three months. |
34,390,345 | They were investigating how the 4mm-long insect decides when to pounce.
Apparently the flies are not much good at judging the size of a target, so they use a strategy based partly on how fast a potential meal is buzzing past.
That means the researchers could trick the flies into going for targets that were far too big, but further away and faster-moving than expected.
The experiments, published in the journal Brain, Behaviour and Evolution, used a species called Coenosia attenuata, which is so good at killing other airborne critters - including fruit flies - that organic farmers use it as a biological control mechanism.
C. attenuata is an unfussy eating machine, explained Dr Paloma Gonzalez-Bellido - and that was partly why she started to study the little predators.
"It didn't look like they have a template for what they're looking for," she told BBC News.
"They go after things that are very slow, after things that are fast, after things that are white, things that are black..."
But a fly can't just pounce on everything. So what cue is the creature's brain looking for?
Many predators are able to gauge the size of their prey, using information like the comparison between two eyes to judge how far away it is and then calculate its size accordingly, before they decide whether to strike.
This includes dragonflies, which have much bigger eyes and brain than C. attenuata.
Dr Gonzalez-Bellido and her colleagues at the University of Cambridge set out to see whether these diminutive diners could do the same sums.
"We don't really know how well such small animals see; we don't really know what the constraints are on the system," she said.
In video experiments, her team presented the flies with moving beads of different sizes and speeds, as well as real fruit-fly meals. Every pounce was monitored using two cameras, so that the movement could be tracked precisely.
The cameras witnessed some extremely poor decisions, in which the 4mm insects set off after beads 12mm across. And the team saw similar mistakes when they observed the insects outside the lab.
"In the wild, we see them take off after bees - and then turn around, halfway through the flight," Dr Gonzalez-Bellido said.
Since the flies seemed unable to use a target's actual size in their decision, the researchers set about testing the role of various other factors.
This included calculating how big - and how fast - each target would appear to the fly, taking into account the exact distance between them.
Using these apparent or "subtended" values, instead of actual ones, the researchers discovered a particular ratio between size and speed that usually triggers a pounce.
"[A target] has a subtended size. But something that subtends a size could be small and close, or large and far away. So in theory, they could go after an aeroplane," Dr Gonzalez-Bellido explained.
"One way of solving this problem is to match up the size with the speed. So a plane may have the right subtended size, but it won't come across the retina at the right speed."
This relatively simple formula for picking a target, the researchers say, has probably evolved because of the tiny size of the fly's brain and eyes - but also because the decision has to be made extremely fast.
The killer flies in the study, on average, went for targets about 8cm away and they covered that distance in less than 0.4 seconds.
"If they take too long, it'll be gone," Dr Gonzalez-Bellido said. "And one way to take less time is not to bother working out how far away it is."
Furthermore, the experiments showed that the flies can detect extremely small targets, which will only trigger activation in a single lens of the fly's compound eye.
"That means that they've really tuned the system," said co-author Dr Trevor Wardill. "They really are doing quite well with a pretty tiny eye."
Follow Jonathan on Twitter | Neuroscientists have recorded the first video footage of a tiny killer fly catching its prey in mid-air. |
40,860,635 | Ghadami, who has played Kush Kazemi since 2014, said it was "such an honour" to be on the dancing show.
"It's going to be exciting, challenging and terrifying all at once and I am so looking forward to stepping out of my comfort zone and learning to dance."
He joins The Saturdays singer Mollie King in the 2017 Strictly line-up.
The 35-year-old, who won best newcomer at the TV Choice awards in 2015 for his portrayal of the gym-loving market trader, has also appeared in Doctor Who, Silent Witness, The Bill and Law & Order.
He stars in EastEnders alongside Tameka Empson, who was in Strictly last year.
Other contestants for this year's show will be named in the coming weeks.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected]. | EastEnders actor Davood Ghadami has been named as the second celebrity contestant to be taking part in this year's Strictly Come Dancing. |
30,210,311 | What is school performance data?
School performance data is statistical information showing how well pupils in England have done in public examinations taken at key points in their educational journey.
Data is published for children's attainment in national curriculum tests, often known as Sats, which are sat at the end of primary school at age 10 or 11.
At secondary school level, data is published detailing pupils' performance in GCSEs (and equivalent exams) at age 16 and A-levels (and equivalents) at age 18.
Secondary schools are considered to be "underperforming" if fewer than 40% of their pupils get five GCSEs at grade A*-C, including English and maths, and if the school has a below average score for pupils making the expected progress between Key Stage 2 (end of Year 6) and Key Stage 4 (end of Year 11) in English and maths.
Yes. From this year, only a pupil's first attempt at a qualification is included for league tables, aiming to end the practice of schools repeatedly entering pupils for exams in order to could boost their ranking.
The list of qualifications included has also been restricted to those which the government says are of the highest, academic quality and the number of non-GCSEs counting has been capped at two.
This is part of government reforms designed to make the exams and accountability system more rigorous.
The recognition of some popular unaccredited International GCSE qualifications have been phased out and no longer count for league table purposes.
Overall GCSEs have been toughened with exams taken at the end of the course and detailed changes to core subjects.
This year, primary schools are considered to be "underperforming" if fewer than 65% (up from 60% last year) of pupils get a Level 4 in maths, reading and writing, and pupils are not making the expected progress in these three subjects between the end of infants (age six or seven) and age 10 or 11, when they prepare to leave primary school.
Results of English grammar, punctuation and spelling tests are not taken into account in these floor standards.
In the past, only media organisations used the data to produce rankings in the form of school league tables.
But now the Department for Education effectively publishes tables, with a facility on its website that allows users to rank schools by different measures.
Wales and Northern Ireland abolished league tables in 2001, followed by Scotland in 2003. Scottish exam data is still published online.
It is not in a format where schools can be easily compared.
Wales recently began publishing tables placing schools in one of five performance bands.
The performance data in league tables is used widely by parents to judge how well schools in their area perform.
Supporters argue that the tables help drive up standards by increasing the accountability of schools and providing valuable information for parents.
Research carried out by Bristol University suggested the abolition of league tables in Wales had led to a drop in standards in the lowest 75% of schools.
Opponents say comparing schools in this way is too crude a measure of a school's quality, achievements and character.
They argue that the tables often say more about the intake of a school than the teaching and learning that goes on there.
And increasingly head teachers says the constant state of flux in the exams system makes comparisons between not very meaningful.
It is claimed they encourage competition rather than collaboration between schools in local areas and can lead to middle-class parents pushing to get their children into top schools, further driving down standards at less popular schools.
There are also suggestions that children are pushed into subjects and choices that make the school look good, rather than broadening their education.
The tables show how well a particular year group of pupils at a given school has performed in tests or exams. Most of the pupils will have started school a few years before taking the tests or exams and there may have been changes of staff or policy at the school in the interim.
The tables do not include information about the more holistic elements of a school such as extra-curricular activities on offer - for example, sport and drama - or details about a school's pastoral care system.
Some of these details may feature in the school's Ofsted report.
It is always advisable to visit a school - most schools run open days or evenings for prospective pupils and parents. | The BBC News website looks at key questions about the publication of school performance data in England. |
20,150,730 | Merson, aged 24, outlasted his final opponents in a marathon session that finished just before dawn after nearly 12 hours in Las Vegas, Nevada.
"I feel pretty good - got all the tears out so now I feel relaxed," the man from Maryland said after the game.
The no-limit Texas hold 'em series started in July with a field of nearly 7,000 players.
Jesse Sylvia finished in second place, netting $5.3m.
"That was nuts, man," the 26-year-old professional player from Las Vegas was quoted as saying by the Associated Press after the marathon match.
Before the final showdown, Merson and Sylvia eliminated Jake Balsiger, denying the the 21-year-old man from Arizona the chance of becoming the youngest World Series of Poker champion.
Balsiger's consolation, however, was a $3.8m cheque for the third place. | Professional US card player Greg Merson has won the World Series of Poker, going home $8.53m (£5.3m) richer. |
40,304,895 | The fast food chain said it was "reconsidering all aspects of its International Olympics Committee business" as part of a plan to re-invigorate its business.
The IOC said it understood "that McDonald's is looking to focus on different business priorities".
The partnership began in 1976.
"For these reasons, we have mutually agreed with McDonald's to part ways," said the IOC.
The next Olympics will take place in Japan during 2020.
McDonald's had extended its sponsorship agreement with the Olympics in 2012 for a further eight years.
As a "Top Partner", it paid a reported $100m for each two-game deal covering the summer and winter Olympic Games up to and including 2020.
McDonald's partnership with the IOC will end immediately, but it will continue to be a sponsor of the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018.
The IOC said on Friday: "The financial terms of the separation was agreed by all parties, details of which are confidential."
A number of companies have ended partnerships with the Olympics recently, including AB InBev's Budweiser, the hotels group Hilton and US telecoms giant AT&T.
McDonald's has been restructuring its business to arrest a decline in sales. Steve Easterbrook was appointed as chief executive in 2015 when he said he would "not shy away from the urgent need to reset this business".
Commenting on the "mutual" decision to part ways with the IOC, Silvia Lagnado, global chief marketing officer at McDonald's, said: "As part of our global growth plan, we are reconsidering all aspects of our business and have made this decision in cooperation with the IOC to focus on different priorities."
The IOC said it has no immediate plans to appoint a direct replacement in the "retail food operations sponsorship category" which will be reviewed. | McDonald's and the International Olympics Committee (IOC) are ending their long-running sponsorship deal three years early. |
40,658,911 | The pair were found at an address in Alpha Road, Croydon, at about 07:20 BST. The woman, 37, was taken to hospital in a critical condition.
The man, aged 25, was also wounded but his injuries were not thought to be life threatening.
A 34-year-old man was arrested at the scene on suspicion of attempted murder. Police said the trio knew each other. | A man and a woman have been hurt in a suspected hammer attack in south London. |
40,730,161 | Media playback is not supported on this device
Frampton, 30, has not fought since his loss to Leo Santa Cruz in their WBA featherweight title fight in January.
Gutierrez, 24, has lost one of his 35 bouts and has earned 24 knockout wins.
"What happens if I lose this fight? There is no future," said Frampton, also a previous IBF world super-bantamweight champion.
Santa Cruz's victory over the Northern Irishman in Las Vegas six months ago avenged Frampton's triumph in New York last July.
Despite that first career defeat, Frampton believes he can re-establish himself as the planet's best featherweight.
"I lost a close fight with an under-par performance to a three-weight world champion.
"If I'm performing, I still believe I'm the best featherweight in the world and I believe I can beat guys like Leo Santa Cruz.
"But I don't want to overlook this guy Gutierrez. He is a very good fighter. He's had as many knockout wins as I've had fights."
Frampton had hoped to fight Santa Cruz for a third time this summer but with the WBA champion refusing to travel to Northern Ireland and a mooted contest with IBF champion Lee Selby also not materialising, he is instead fighting Gutierrez in his home city's SSE Arena.
"The most important thing for me was to come back and fight at home," added Frampton.
"But I need to look good. I need to be impressive and show the rest of the featherweights that the last fight was just a blip."
While Frampton has insisted he will not under-estimate Gutierrez, ranked eighth by the WBC, the Belfast man believes the home town crowd could help him clinch a knockout triumph.
"The noise, the atmosphere in the arena inspires me and the Chris Avalos fight (February 2015), the last time I fought in Belfast, I think that was my best performance even though some people say that was my first fight against Santa Cruz.
"If I'm performing, and with the way the last couple of weeks in sparring have gone, if I can carry that into the ring on Saturday night then I think I will get rid of this guy (knock him out)."
Both fighters attended a public workout with Gutierrez noticeably slimmer than when he attended the fight announcement in Belfast six weeks ago. | Carl Frampton has said defeat by Mexican Andres Gutierrez in Saturday's WBC world featherweight title eliminator could prove "career-ending". |
38,574,924 | Suzanne Goodall, from Beddau, Pontypridd, launched the hospice in Sully, near Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, in 1999, after 11 years of fund raising.
She was awarded an MBE in 2004 and officially retired in 2011, although remained in contact with the charity.
A spokesperson for Ty Hafan said Ms Goodall was a "true inspiration to staff and families".
"Her dedication and commitment meant that hundreds of families across Wales have been given a light in the dark while facing the realities of caring for a child with a life-limiting condition."
Ty Hafan provides specialist one-to-one care and outreach services to life-limited children and their families.
Ms Goodall came up with the idea for the charity after hearing about a friend's experiences volunteering in a children's hospice in Yorkshire and discovering that there were no such facilities in Wales.
The spokesperson added: "Suzanne's endless motivation to continue providing the best possible care and support to these families never wavered and she has remained a much-loved and highly respected figure throughout the charity.
"We are all deeply saddened by today's news and will greatly miss Suzanne's warmth and determination.
"Every one of us at the charity will honour her legacy by continuing to do all we can to support families who need us." | The founder of Wales' first children's hospice, Ty Hafan, has died, aged 95. |
35,545,575 | Bill Milward "turned up the ball" for the second day of Royal Shrovetide Football in his hometown of Ashbourne, Derbyshire.
The game has been played almost every year since at least the 17th Century.
The match ended in a 1-1 draw after the Down'Ards goaled the ball late on Wednesday evening.
Mr Milward said: "I did practice a little bit - I tried with one hand to start but it over balanced me.
"Every year you look forward to Shrovetide. It's one of them things that gets in your blood."
Day one ended with a goal for the Up'Ards - those born north of Henmore Brook, but Matthew Etherington goaled for the Down'Ards at Clifton Mill, on Wednesday.
Mr Milward added: "Best day of my life - I couldn't have had a better time of it."
He first took part in the sometimes violent game when he was "about nine or 10" and continued to play until the outbreak of World War Two.
The veteran - awarded a Legion d'Honneur last year - drove an amphibious landing craft when the allies launched their invasion of Nazi occupied France in 1944.
The crowd sang happy birthday to Mr Milward as well as the traditional renditions of Auld Lang Syne and God Save The Queen before he threw the ball into the crowd.
Shrovetide Football through the ages | A D-Day veteran who started an ancient game of football on his 100th birthday has said it was one of the best days of his life. |
17,139,423 | The wandering spider, commonly known as a banana spider, was spotted crawling out of the fruit in Asda's Chesser branch on Tuesday.
A shop worker caught the female arachnid in a plastic jar before calling the Scottish SPCA.
The spider, with a 10cm leg span, was taken to the Edinburgh Butterfly and Insect World where it later died.
Shop worker, Petra Merriman, 45, caught the spider.
She said her male colleagues had been "in panic" after discovering the spider.
She said: "All the boys were running round like headless chickens.
"One of the chaps who was putting a box of bananas in the display took a lid off a box and saw it was curled around a banana.
"We got a phone call in the back office saying come and deal with this spider.
"The guys all said 'I'm not going.' I said I would. I'm not arachnophobic at all."
She added: "I brought a pot with a secure lid down with me, and I just popped it in.
"I didn't have to touch it, I just put the pot underneath it.
"Nothing like this has ever happened here before."
Kevin Thom, of Edinburgh Butterfly and Insect World, said: "It isn't deadly but its venom contains high levels of serotonin.
"If bitten you would experience pain, swelling, muscle spasms and flu-like symptoms which could be very unpleasant, depending on the amount of venom that was injected.
"These spiders can survive transport from abroad by shutting down and becoming very cold.
"They awaken when they warm up, which is often under bright shop lights.
"This female has possibly suffered shock in transit or it may simply have been her time to die." | A venomous spider from Colombia has been found in a bunch of bananas by an Edinburgh shop worker. |
32,447,064 | Nine people were detained after the Hamal was intercepted by the Royal Navy frigate HMS Somerset and the Border Force cutter Valiant.
It happened about 100 miles east of the city on Thursday.
The Tanzanian-registered boat was escorted back to Aberdeen, to allow a full search to be carried out.
A spokesman for the National Crime Agency (NCA) said: "A vessel was boarded by a team from the Royal Navy frigate HMS Somerset and Border Force cutter Valiant about 100 miles east of the Aberdeenshire coast.
"The vessel was accompanied into Aberdeen where a full search is now being carried out by specialist Border Force officers with operational support from Police Scotland.
"Nine crew were detained for questioning by investigators from the NCA's Border Policing Command."
The Border Force acted on information supplied by NCA, which recently replaced the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
The Border Force is a law enforcement agency responsible for frontline border control operations in the UK. | A boat is being searched at Aberdeen harbour after it was boarded in the North Sea on suspicion of carrying drugs. |
25,253,299 | Most comments, headlines and captions are reflecting a sense of sadness, but add that the world needs to "follow his legacy and celebrate his life".
The Mail and Guardian headline reads: "Madiba: A symbol of the power of good".
The Herald says Mr Mandela was "a son of our soil, the founding father of our nation, who spent his entire life fighting to change our lives for the better".
The paper further highlights the importance of the leader's legacy for South Africa and the world.
"In every village, suburb, township, church, school and community hall in South Africa, men, women and children are in mourning for a man who was hidden from history for 27 years, yet lived in our imaginations as the feisty, courageous and utterly human symbol of liberation most of us yearned for," it says.
A commentary in South Africa's Business Day echoes similar sentiments, saying the nation has lost its favourite son.
"Our nation has lost a colossus, an epitome of humility, equality, justice, peace and the hope of millions; here and abroad... The large African baobab, who loved Africa as much as he loved South Africa, has fallen. Its trunk and seeds will nourish the earth for decades to come... Rest in peace, Comrade President Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela," it adds.
Most papers feel Mr Mandela's achievements and his ideas remain etched in the collective memory of millions of people around the world.
The Mail and Guardian, in an editorial, says "our farewell bid to Nelson Mandela must not be final - we must refuse to say goodbye to his example, his ideals, and the dream we share with him".
Mr Mandela's friend and anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Kathrada paid his tribute in an article in the Times Live website.
"Farewell my elder brother, my mentor, my leader. With all the energy and determination at our command, we pledge to join the people of South Africa and the world to perpetuate the ideals and values for which you have devoted your life," he writes.
The Citizen reflects the emotions of people in Soweto - a city Mr Mandela made his home for many years - about their Tata (father).
"We are not here to mourn but to commemorate, honour, and celebrate him because of everything he has done," the paper quotes a resident as saying.
The Star published a full-page picture of Mr Mandela on its front-page with "The World Weeps" as its top headline - perhaps a message that shows how much the nation loved and admired their hero.
The website of IOL, a group which owns several news websites in South Africa, explains why a mood of celebration is prevailing over mourning in South Africa.
"His charisma, generosity of spirit, and an unwavering commitment to the well-being of his fellow humans, earned him love and acclaim across the globe," it says
And finally, The Citizen gives the link to what it calls Mr Mandela's first-ever TV interview.
BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. For more reports from BBC Monitoring, click here. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook. | "The end of your long walk, the end of an era, may your legacy live on" - this headline in a South African daily sums up the sombre mood among the public and the press over Nelson Mandela's death. |
40,508,069 | Katie Leong, 52, was convicted of attempted murder in March after blinding Daniel Rotariu, 31, at their home in Leicester on 26 July 2016.
Leong, who was described as being "fixated" with acid attacks, is serving a minimum of 17 years in prison.
Mr Rotariu suffered burns and nearly died following the six-second attack.
Live updates from the East Midlands
During the trial, Mr Rotariu said he was woken in the middle of the night by a "burning" feeling.
The court heard Leong had poured sulphuric acid at 96% concentration over him, causing burns to a third of his body.
On Wednesday, Leicester Crown Court was told Leong has £13,000 in assets, as well as £1,500 in a Post Office savings account and £4,800 lodged with her sister, amounting in total to £19,300.
Leong appeared before Judge Nicholas Dean QC and asked for some of her funds to be left for her eventual release.
The 52-year-old, who represented herself, told the court: "I want to state that obviously I am in prison for a while and when I come out I don't want to be dependent on my family.
"I need a little bit myself for when I come out."
Judge Dean replied: "That is not really how it works. You are not giving anything, I am making an order that you pay compensation.
"My concern is to try and provide some measure, and it can only go a very modest way in truth, of compensation because of the horrific injuries."
The Independent Police Complaints Commission is currently investigating Leicestershire Police's handling of information received about Leong prior to the assault. | A woman jailed for life trying to kill her boyfriend by pouring acid over him while he slept has been ordered to pay him about £19,000 in compensation. |
30,228,827 | Hughes died on Thursday after being hit on the neck by a delivery from Abbott during a domestic match in Australia.
"I chatted to him on Thursday night and I was incredibly impressed by the way he was holding himself and his maturity," said Sutherland.
Some ex-cricketers fear Abbott, 22, may never play again following the tragedy.
"This isn't a moment in time thing, it's a grieving process that affects people in different ways," added Sutherland in a news conference on Friday morning in Sydney.
"We, and the relevant experts, will provide Sean with all of the support that he needs."
A tearful Abbott visited Hughes at St Vincent's Hospital before he died and was comforted by the batsman's sister, Megan, and Australia captain Michael Clarke.
The New South Wales bowler is also receiving counselling from Cricket Australia.
But former England bowler David Lawrence, who hit West Indies batsman Phil Simmons on the temple with a delivery in 1988, thinks Abbott's career could be over.
"I know what Sean is going through," Lawrence told BBC Radio 5 live.
"My thoughts go out to him. I don't think he'll play cricket again."
Hughes, who played 26 Tests for his country, collapsed face first on the ground after being struck by a bouncer from Abbott during a Sheffield Shield game between South Australia and New South Wales on Tuesday.
Hughes, 25, had been wearing a helmet but the ball missed it, striking him at the top of the neck and causing a vertebral artery dissection, which resulted in a "massive bleed" on the brain.
Abbott was pictured in the aftermath of the incident cradling Hughes, while other players waved medical staff on to the pitch.
Retired fast bowler Lawrence is concerned that Abbott may never get over the tragic event.
"When you turn and run in to bowl again, you are just going to have those images in your head," Lawrence told BBC Radio 5 live. "Will he ever be the same bowler again? I don't know."
Lawrence was just 24 when he struck Simmons, who was not wearing a helmet, with a delivery in a tour match in Bristol 26 years ago.
The batsman's heart stopped and he required emergency brain surgery, but he went on to make a full recovery.
"What gave me comfort was I was able to see Phil 48 hours after and he was able to tell me it wasn't my fault," Lawrence added.
"The bowler in this instance wouldn't have been able to do that. Hughes didn't make a recovery, wasn't able to talk to him."
Former England captain Michael Vaughan told BBC Radio 5 live that Abbott "was only doing his job".
He added: "It will take along time to heal. I just hope we get him back on the cricket pitch."
Ex-England all-rounder Ian Botham tweeted: "A very sad day for the world of cricket. So sorry for Phillip Hughes and his family. Spare a thought for Sean Abbott."
Shane Warne also called for the cricket world to support Abbott.
"It's important for friends and the cricket community to get round Sean," the Australian legend told Sky Sports News. "I'm sure he'll be distraught, but it's not his fault. Hopefully he'll be OK and can bounce back."
Matthew Hoggard, another former England paceman, told BBC Sport that the bouncer is part of a fast bowler's "armoury" and Abbott would not have been attempting to injure Hughes.
"You bowl it to be intimidating, but you don't bowl it to try and hurt people," said Hoggard.
"To bowl a ball that has resulted in somebody dying has got to be absolutely devastating. Hopefully he can get the support around him and find the strength to carry on.
"I'm sure Phil would have wanted it because it was a tragic accident."
Simon Hughes, BBC Sport's cricket analyst and former Middlesex bowler, fears Abbott will "need a lot of counselling" and a break from the game.
"I've hit people before, obviously not with those terminal circumstances," Hughes said. "It's a terrible feeling when you injure anyone in sport, even though you are trying to intimidate them.
"I don't know how he's going to cope with it because it never happened before, certainly in professional cricket, where a bouncer has actually effectively killed a batsman. He's going to need a lot of counselling."
Media playback is not supported on this device
Former Australia fast bowler Shaun Tait, who roomed with Phillip Hughes on international duty, told BBC World that bouncers are "part of the game" and warned against any kneejerk reactions.
He added: "There is no blame being thrown at anyone. It's a freak accident.
"Whether they change the rules or whether they design new helmets, I don't know. That might happen. That's up to the powers-that-be. It's their decision, but the game rolls on. I think Phil would like the game to roll on."
Ex-Australia bowler Jason Gillespie told BBC Radio 5 live: "We're all feeling for Sean Abbott, who was just out there doing his job. They were very good mates and he was the first one there when Phillip fell down.
"He's 22 years old and he's got the cricket world in front of him and who knows how he's going to go on from here? The one thing he will have in place is absolute support from the cricket community."
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said it was important for people to "remember Sean Abbott", adding the New South Wales bowler would be "absolutely devastated at this tragic accident". | Sean Abbott is "holding up well" as he comes to terms with the death of Phillip Hughes, says Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland. |
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