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39,003,434 | The company, which installs windows, doors and conservatories, said revenues rose by 2.3% to £21.9m for the 12 months to the end of February.
Pre-tax-profits climbed by 27.7% to £159,000.
The Dunfermline-based firm, which employs nearly 400 people between its domestic and commercial arms, has now posted growth for six successive years.
The firm said its manufacturing business showed "steady improvements" last year as a result of increased demand from new-build developers.
Sales for the division, which employs 90 staff in Cowdenbeath, rose by £200,000 to £7.5m.
CR Smith executive chairman Gerard Eadie said: "We have progressively invested in both the manufacturing and sales operations to keep pace with customer demand, on both the domestic and commercial side of the business.
"Our commercial business is steadily growing. We have a strong proposition for new-build developers including a high-quality bespoke product, delivered reliably and efficiently because of the investment made and capabilities of our factory.
"As we continue to market ourselves to this sector, we can see the commercial arm of CR Smith expanding and have been planning accordingly." | Fife-based home improvement specialist CR Smith has posted an increase in profits and turnover. |
37,752,220 | Cookstown-based LCC Group and Norway's Statoil ASA built the facility at Maydown in 2005.
LCC has now bought out its joint venture partner, saying the acquisition will allow it "to control costs and pass savings on to customers."
It recently won a contract to supply aviation fuel to EasyJet.
Beginning as a coal merchant in 1986, LCC employs more than 180 staff, having diversified into oil, electricity and gas distribution.
The Maydown terminal is used to import and store oil for markets in Ireland, north and south.
LCC- which also owns the Go chain of filling stations - reported a turnover of £544m in 2015. | A Northern Ireland energy company has taken full control of an oil terminal in County Londonderry in a "multi-million pound deal." |
27,767,017 | Geologist Dr Alan Cobb said it was "possible" and "probable" that the water collected after manager Malcolm Fyfield inspected it.
He told Swansea Crown Court water could have rushed in from an older Victorian mine underneath Gleision drift mine.
Mr Fyfield and owners MNS Mining Ltd deny manslaughter charges.
David Powell, 50, Charles Breslin, 62, Philip Hill, 44, and Garry Jenkins, 39, drowned when water gushed into the area they were working in after they blasted into a flooded old section of the mine.
The miners had been using explosives to create a tunnel into the old workings to improve air circulation.
Dr Cobb, a chartered engineer and expert on the behaviour of underground water giving evidence on behalf of MNS Mining Ltd, said water could have flowed in from a mine underneath Gleision if the workers had made a connection with the workings.
He told the court it was impossible to say where the water had come from, but said it could have been stored in the sandstone the mine was carved from.
Mr Fyfield had told the jury he noticed only a "ponding" of water when he inspected the area the day before the incident.
Dr Cobb agreed it was possible, if not probable, that the water had not been there at the time of the inspection.
The trial continues. | Water which flooded a mine killing four workers may not have been there the day before when the area was inspected, a jury has heard. |
40,288,386 | 15 June 2017 Last updated at 17:24 BST
Nick-named 'Insight', it's job will be to search for black-holes, and help scientists to understand them better.
Black holes are pretty mysterious things, and so far scientists don't really know much about them.
Using special x-ray technology, Insight will aim to study black holes and send its findings back to researchers here on Earth. | China has just launched its first ever x-ray telescope into space. |
36,406,924 | The visitors added 28 to their overnight total as they were bowled out for 264 in their first innings.
Somerset got to 46-0 in reply before veteran spinner Batty ripped through their batting order as the hosts collapsed to 102 all out.
However, Jack Leach (3-37) helped reduce Surrey to 94-6 at the close.
Having decided against enforcing the follow-on, Surrey crumbled to 51-6 before Zafar Ansari (26 not out) guided them through to a lead of 256 runs at the close.
Marcus Trescothick and Tom Abell gave Somerset a solid foundation to their first innings, but the home side's batting line-up fell apart once the pair had departed in successive overs.
Batty, ably supported by pace bowler Stuart Meaker (3-39), took all 10 wickets between them for just 56 runs.
But slow-left-armer Leach, who took 4-34 in Surrey's first innings, kept Somerset in with a chance of forcing a victory with three more wickets when Surrey batted for a second time. | Surrey captain Gareth Batty took 7-32 before Somerset responded strongly as 18 wickets fell on day two of their Division One fixture at Taunton. |
38,387,278 | Media playback is not supported on this device
Kvitova, 26, said she was "fortunate to be alive" following a "burglary" incident on Tuesday when she struggled with an intruder.
Surgeons spent almost four hours repairing tendons and nerves on her left hand - her playing hand.
Her spokesman said that considering the damage, "the surgery went well".
"The injury is serious, but the surgeon says Petra is young and healthy and there is no reason why she can't resume tennis," publicist Karel Tejkal told the AFP news agency.
According to her manager Katie Spellman, Kvitova will wear a cast for six to eight weeks and cannot bear weight on the injured hand for at least three months.
That rules her out of the Australian Open next month, which is the first Grand Slam tournament of the 2017 tennis season.
It is understood she allowed someone posing as a utilities man access to her apartment in Prostejov, Czech Republic, and while defending herself in a struggle, suffered the injuries to her hand. The intruder is believed to have then run away and is being sought by police.
Earlier on Tuesday, Kvitova said she was "shaken", adding the injury was "severe" but that she would "fight this".
Tejkal added: "It was a random crime, nobody was going to attack or rob her as Petra Kvitova."
Kvitova is ranked 11 in the world and has won a career total of 19 titles, including Grand Slam victories at Wimbledon in 2011 and 2014.
"Thank you for all your heart-warming messages.
"As you may have already heard, today I was attacked in my apartment by an individual with a knife. In my attempt to defend myself, I was badly injured on my left hand.
"I am shaken, but fortunate to be alive. The injury is severe and I will need to see specialists, but if you know anything about me I am strong and I will fight this. Thank you all again for your love and support and now I would appreciate some privacy while I focus on my recovery."
Kvitova had announced earlier on Tuesday that a foot injury forced her to withdraw from January's Hopman Cup in Perth, Australia.
She had only returned from pre-season training in Lanzarote last week, despite her right foot requiring a protective boot for much of the time.
It meant her hopes of playing in the first Grand Slam of the season were already doubtful, with the Australian Open getting under way on 16 January.
Kvitova had finished the 2016 season strongly, picking up titles in Wuhan and Zuhai, as well as winning the Women's Tennis Association's annual sportsmanship award, for the fourth year in succession. | Two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova will not play tennis for at least three months after surgery following a knife attack at her home. |
35,239,814 | The device was demoed at the CES tech show where it autonomously detected and avoided a fallen object.
Intel part-owns Yuneec, the company behind the drone, and provided the device's 3D camera sensor.
The RealSense technology involved uses infrared lasers to detect the distance of nearby things.
Should evasive action be necessary, the aircraft takes it on its own.
At CES, the Typhoon H drone followed a cyclist through a small course on stage, complete with a handful of mock "trees".
When one of these obstacles was made to fall in the drone's path, it dodged it, and thereby avoided a collision.
"The drone was able to stop, wait and go round that obstacle as well - following the rider all the time," said Intel's chief executive Brian Krzanich.
"Any other commercial drone out there would have crashed into the tree."
The Typhoon H also has a 4K camera which has can pan 360-degrees and take photographs with a 12 megapixel sensor.
Intel said it would be on sale within six months. It is set to cost $1,799 (£1,200).
Features such as collision avoidance are not likely to prevent the kind of tumbles which nearly caught skier Marcel Hirsher last month, commented IHS analyst Tom Morrod, when a drone malfunctioned.
"There's a safety aspect which is probably not going to go away - things that fly occasionally crash," he said.
However, he added, the benefits of more intelligent drones are not to be underestimated.
"Things like collision avoidance, self navigation, spatial awareness - all of these technologies that take away the manual control of the drones are enabling drones for commercial purposes," he said.
"Those could be security or delivery or maintenance, all of those types of applications - that's going to be what really drives the market."
Another safety conscious drone at CES comes in the form of Belgian firm Fleye's device. It encloses its spinning blades within both a shell and a cage to help reduce the risk of injury.
However, as a demo for the BBC proved, it is still possible for the device to swerve off-course and crash.
Parrot announced another new drone - one capable of flying much further and faster than helicopter-inspired devices, thanks to a fixed wing design.
The Disco drone can fly for up to 45 minutes and follow a pre-planned flight path via GPS waypoints.
Its on-board camera is embedded into the drone's nose and captures video in 1080p high definition.
Parrot hopes to make the device available later in 2016.
"This 'drone on steroid' speaks to the innovation in this wave of consumer drones," said Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Research.
"We believe this is a $3bn market opportunity over the next few years and high-octane drones like Parrot's are a sign of things to come."
Read more of our CES articles and follow the BBC team covering the show on Twitter. | Chip-maker Intel has revealed a collision-avoiding drone that automatically dodges obstacles in its path. |
37,109,169 | He does not appear to have given any press interviews in his past career, and his official biography reveals little, beyond a steady rise over many years of service to the Kremlin.
Before his Kremlin promotion the Estonian-born high flyer served as a diplomat, including a stint at the Tokyo embassy.
But an investigation by BBC Russian into Mr Vaino's academic work reveals intriguing details about him and may offer clues about his worldview.
Like many officials of his generation, reports say he has a master's degree in economics and has contributed to various scientific publications.
In 2012 an article appeared in a specialist journal called Economics and Law written by an "AK Vaino" - widely believed to be one and the same person as Mr Putin's new chief of staff.
It was titled "The capitalisation of the future".
Written in a dense academic prose - which many Russian commentators this week said they found almost impossible to understand - and accompanied by even more complex charts and diagrams, the article outlines new ways of organising and understanding society.
Mr Vaino argues that the economy and society in general have become too complex to manage by traditional means. Governments need to seek new ways of regulating and controlling them.
The article describes a new device called a "nooscope" which, it says, can tap into global consciousness and "detect and register changes in the biosphere and in human activity".
The "nooscope" bewildered many in Russia this week. Does the device really exist, they asked. What does it actually do? Is Mr Vaino really serious?
BBC Russian tracked down Viktor Sarayev, an award-winning economist and businessman who has co-authored a number of articles with Mr Vaino.
He described the nooscope as "a device that scans transactions between people, things and money", and claimed it was an invention of parallel significance to the telescope and the microscope.
But he was less forthcoming about whether it actually existed, or was still under development.
Leading Russian academics meanwhile expressed deep scepticism about the theories and solutions propounded by Mr Vaino and his collaborators.
"There isn't any science in this," says Simon Kordonsky, a philosophy professor at Moscow's Higher School of Economics.
He dismissed the article as indulging in "mythological" hypotheses about the future which, he said, contrasted with the genuinely progressive ideas explored by the first generation of Russian reforming economists in the early post-Soviet years.
"If we evaluate this article by its meaning, then without doubt it's a cause for concern," says another philosopher from the same institute, Prof Vitaly Kourennoy.
"It represents a utopian idea which has no connection to science. It's propounding some kind of all-embracing system of government that has to be enforced by top officials."
Viewed from this perspective however, Mr Vaino's theories perhaps begin to make more sense.
They could actually be seen as part of a pattern that has emerged in Russian politics over the past decade, as President Putin has sought to reassert control after the chaos of the early 1990s.
Some observers also draw parallels with the approach of one of Mr Vaino's predecessors - former presidential adviser and deputy prime minister Vladislav Surkov.
Dubbed by one Russian politician as "a puppet master who privatised the political system", Mr Surkov is credited with inventing the theory of "managed democracy", through which President Putin now runs Russia unchallenged.
Widely seen as a master of political spin, Mr Surkov specialised in manipulating information in a way which often left his interlocutors unsure as to where the facts ended and the fiction began.
This also appears to be an approach used by Dmitry Kiselyov, the powerful head of the state-run Russia Today media network, and a man often referred to as "the Kremlin's chief propagandist".
Tasked with broadcasting the Kremlin's point of view, both to Russians and the rest of the world, Mr Kiselyov told the BBC earlier this year that "the age of neutral journalism" had passed.
In expounding his theories about the "nooscope" Anton Vaino seems to be echoing these more high-profile Kremlin colleagues.
There is no way to prove that the world "exists in reality and not in our imagination", he writes in the Economics and Law article, explaining why the nooscope is needed to interpret and manage world events.
Prof Kordonsky feels he has heard it all before.
"It's a state of mind," he told BBC Russian. "It's a rejection of the current realities. They want to change things but they don't want to understand what things are really like. They have a perception of potential greatness […] and they're suggesting a way of changing the country and building a better tomorrow."
If AK Vaino the political scientist and Anton Vaino the new chief of staff really are the same person, as most Russians presume, then the coming months may show if the nooscope can really deliver a "better tomorrow". | Russian President Vladimir Putin's new chief of staff Anton Vaino has reached the top shrouded in mystery. |
37,229,898 | Concerns had been raised about the "inappropriate" use of Redcar cemetery, on Teesside, as a PokeStop.
Local Labour MP Anna Turley wrote to Nintendo about the issue and said she was "pleased" it had now been removed.
The move will allow people to "pay respects to their loved ones in peace", she added.
Ms Turley said: "It is clearly a very popular game that has encouraged people to explore their surroundings, which is great, but there need to be boundaries so that users can enjoy the game without upsetting others.
"The developer has been quick to solve the problem to make sure that is the case."
She asked Nintendo to consider avoiding places of worship and cemeteries after a constituent contacted her about the "impact on the people paying their respects to loved ones", she said.
Game guidelines set out by Nintendo and its co-developer Niantic remind players to be respectful and conduct themselves "in an appropriate manner".
Pokemon Go players have been involved in hundreds of police incidents since the gaming app phenomenon launched.
Developer Niantic has been approached for comment. It has previously stated it takes the issue of "player safety" seriously.
In County Down a man jumped out into a busy dual carriageway while trying to catch a Pokemon, while children got lost in caves in Wiltshire and, in America, a man crashed into a police car while playing behind the wheel. | A cemetery which saw children "charging about" playing Pokemon Go has been removed from the augmented reality game. |
15,873,652 | At the Old Bailey, Junior Henry, of Weltje Road, Hammersmith, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years youth detention.
The incident took place on Ladbroke Grove, at its junction with Oxford Gardens, on 29 August.
The victim, aged 20, was stabbed in the abdomen and hand during the attack on Ladbroke Grove.
The Old Bailey heard how Henry had been given a chance to turn his life around when he was given a community order following a gang fight when he was 12 in which a man was murdered.
The Recorder of London Judge Peter Beaumont said: "You left this court with my warning ringing in your ears that your behaviour was challenging the boundaries of the order, as well as testing the patience and understanding of the court.
"You did not heed the warning. You took up a knife in circumstances where you, of all people, did not have to use it and you knew the consequences of doing so."
The judge lifted an order banning publication of Henry's identity. | A youth of 17 has been detained for stabbing a man on the evening of the Notting Hill Carnival. |
30,579,567 | George Mpanga is inspired by the injustice he saw growing up on the Stonebridge Park estate in north west London.
After studying politics, psychology and sociology at Cambridge University and running poetry workshops for children in London, he is now preparing to release his debut album on Island Records and publish his first poetry collection.
The 23-year-old says he wants to inspire others to achieve better things. "I want people to be aware of their power," he says.
He is the first artist to be announced from the BBC Sound Of 2015 top five. One act from the top five is being unveiled every day this week, leading up to the announcement of the winner on Friday.
The list was compiled by asking 139 DJs, critics and broadcasters to name their favourite new acts.
Are you a poet or a rapper first?
Chronologically I was a rapper first, but at this point in time I'm primarily a poet.
When did you discover the power of words?
I was always into music and my mum used to talk me through a lot of lyrics. I remember her sitting me down and talking to me about the Bob Marley song Buffalo Soldier. "Dreadlock Rasta/Taken from Africa/Brought to America/Fighting on arrival/Fighting for survival." It made a big impression.
At the same time, I grew up in church and again my mum used to read the Bible with me. And then I saw the pastor commanding an audience, and thought, I want to do that. I remember watching the film of Malcolm X and seeing what he did with words and thinking, I really want to do that.
When did you move from rap to poetry?
I believe rap to be a specialist form of poetry - specialist only in that it is very strict on time metre, which you can find in traditional forms of poetry. In William Blake's poem London, you find a lot of very regimented thought.
I would argue that I did start off writing in a traditional poetry form but the extension of that was I was performing them. But if you took the music away, the essence was exactly the same as what William Blake was offering.
You say you draw on your early life in the inner city. How does that inform what you do?
It made a profound impact on me. I was exposed to quite a range of life. I saw people lose loved ones, I saw people make a lot of money, make a lot of change.
When I was in year six - I must have been 10, 11 - I took a shine to these kids who were in my primary school. They were lovely kids. Sunshine every time they opened their mouths. I remember them flippantly mentioning that the night before, their dad was beating up their mum and their big sister had to fight him off with a baseball bat. They didn't understand the gravity of what they were saying. But this disturbed me.
I remember trying to fight everything, trying to save everyone from every calamity. At some point I realised that I'm not going to be able to save everyone, but that when I do have the platform I will do everything to enact structural change...
A lot of my frustrations stem from the fact that I can't share my blessings with my family and friends, my community. There are structural things that keep them in place, whether that's the disintegration of their family or their inability to organise themselves financially and sustain their communities financially, or the lack of political influence on the things that affect them.
All of these things make it harder for me to move forward professionally with everyone I grew up with. That needs to change.
How can you make a difference?
I need to be an example of what I think needs to happen. So for example I'm self-employed. I have an enterprising mind. I demonstrate these things and I think it will be beneficial if everyone has a degree of enterprise.
I need to be an example, but at the same time there's the content. My EP, The Chicken and the Egg, is about premature parenthood. Discussing that helps. For one thing, you're giving visibility to the issue. Secondly, you're providing some sort of catharsis for anyone who can relate.
Do you write about yourself or do you create fictional characters?
I draw partially from personal experience and I also draw from observation.
Did the premature parenthood thing happen to you?
No. It didn't happen to me. It happened all around me.
Why try to bring about structural change through entertainment and not politics?
Because the political space is too regulated. And it's already exclusive. Entertainment isn't as exclusive. If I'm known for making sounds that people want to hear, it's much harder to justify stymieing that process.
Is it possible to enact structural change through music and poetry?
Yeah. Apart from the fact that anything's possible, it's very obvious. I speak. You listen. You come to my gig. All we need to do is make decisions. That's it. Job done.
Where do you see yourself in five years time?
I see the manifestation of everything I'm talking about now.
I see myself providing the structures for people to enact and demonstrate of all the things I'm talking about - autonomy, taking control, owning the entertainment space.
If what I'm saying sounds too lofty for you, demonstration's the highest form of argument. First I'm going to show you how to do it, then I'm going to invite you to do it. | George the Poet, a spoken word performer and rapper who wants to use his voice as a force for change in society, has come fifth on the BBC Sound Of 2015 list, which showcases emerging artists for the coming 12 months. |
26,071,108 | Media playback is not supported on this device
Jonathan Toews, Sidney Crosby and Chris Kunitz scored as Canada became the first team to retain the Olympic title since the Soviet Union in 1988.
The Canadians are also the first team in 30 years to go through a Games unbeaten, inspired by the energetic Toews and Crosby's breakaway goal.
Sweden were without Washington Capitals centre Nicklas Backstrom who failed a drug test prior to the game.
The 26-year-old was dropped from the team after testing positive for what Swedish Olympic Committee spokesman Bjorn Folin said was a substance found in an allergy medication that the player had taken for the past seven years.
"It was a shocking message to get," said goaltender Jhonas Enroth after the final. "We found out two hours before the match."
Canada finished with 10 gold medals and 25 in total for third place on the medal table behind Russia and Norway.
At their home Games in Vancouver four years ago, the Canadians won 14 gold medals and topped the table, an achievement capped off by Crosby's famous overtime winner against the United States but this year's final proved nowhere near as close a contest.
In Backstrom's absence, a depleted Sweden lacked the creativity to match Canada.
Sweden's Gustav Nyquist hit the post early in the first period but his side subsequently faded.
Once Toews had opened the scoring from close range in the first period, converting Jeff Carter's assist, Canada only ever looked destined to increase their lead.
Crosby's sublime second-period finish beat goaltender Henrik Lundqvist, who had impressed during Sweden's run to the final.
Kunitz's shot into the roof of the net, having stolen the puck from a sleeping Swedish defence with 10 minutes remaining, made certain of victory. | Canada beat Sweden 3-0 to win men's Olympic ice hockey gold at Sochi 2014. |
39,527,503 | Located in the constellation of Orion, the explosive event happened some 500 years ago sending giant streamers of dust and gas across interstellar space.
Researchers say the clash produced as much energy as our Sun would over 10 million years.
Details of the event have been published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Huge explosions in space are mostly associated with supernovas, which can take place in the dying moments of giant, ancient stars.
This new image though shows an explosion taking place at the other end of the stellar lifecycle.
Stars are born when a massive cloud of gas starts to collapse under its own gravity. At a distance of 1,500 light years from Earth, a number of very young stars began to form in a region called the Orion Molecular Cloud 1, (OMC-1).
Gravity pulled these proto-stars closer at increasing speed until about 500 years ago, two of them either grazed or collided head-on, triggering a powerful explosion that hurled gas and dust debris out into space at more than 150km per second.
Back in 2009, researchers first saw hints of the scale of the explosion. Now using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimetre Array (Alma), based in northern Chile, astronomers have been able to see the violent event in high resolution.
"What we see in this once calm stellar nursery is a cosmic version of a 4 July fireworks display, with giant streamers rocketing off in all directions," said lead author Prof John Bally from the University of Colorado.
The team has discovered new details about the structure of the streamers that extend past the explosion for almost a light year. The team members are learning about the distribution and high-velocity motion of the carbon monoxide gas inside the huge gas trails. It may also help their understanding of the star birth process.
"Though fleeting, proto-stellar explosions may be relatively common, by destroying their parent cloud, as we see in OMC-1, such explosions may also help to regulate the pace of star formation in these giant molecular clouds," said Prof Bally.
Scientists expect that explosions such as this one are most likely short-lived, with the remnants of the debris seen by Alma lasting only for centuries.
"People most often associate stellar explosions with ancient stars, like a nova eruption on the surface of a decaying star or the even more spectacular supernova death of an extremely massive star," Prof Bally said.
"Alma has given us new insights into explosions on the other end of the stellar life-cycle, star birth."
Follow Matt on Twitter and on Facebook. | Scientists have captured a dramatic and violent image of the collision between two young stars that tore apart their stellar nursery. |
40,915,356 | The election of Donald Trump to the White House has been cited as a factor in the re-energisation of activists and groups in America that reject both left-wing ideology and mainstream conservatism.
Social media is also said to be playing a large part in promoting these ideologies.
A prominent US civil rights group, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) says that it is currently tracking more than 1,600 extremist groups in the country.
But who are these groups, how popular have they become, and what do they hope to achieve?
Here is a look at the most visible of the white supremacist movements in the US today.
The alternative right (or alt-right) is a disparate group of provocateurs who hate political correctness and love Mr Trump, although critics say they are bigoted white nationalists.
This movement's recent rise is said to have been encouraged in part by the rhetoric employed during the 2016 US presidential election campaign, in which Mr Trump was accused of "textbook racism", anti-Semitism, and anti-Muslim bigotry.
Mr Trump, for his part, denounced the movement in November 2016, saying he disavowed their views.
The phrase "alt-right" started to gain traction in the mainstream media when Mr Trump, as then Republican nominee in July 2016, tweeted an image of Hillary Clinton alongside a six-pointed star resembling the Star of Israel containing the words: "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!".
Alt-right factions, according to a guide written by Breitbart's Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos, include "intellectuals", "natural conservatives" and "the meme team" - mostly young activists with a penchant for internet trolling.
The movement's ideals focus on "white identity" and the preservation of "traditional western civilisation", according to Richard Bertrand Spencer, who coined the term "alternative right" in 2008.
Liberty, free speech and the right to offend are its touchstones. Opponents call it racist, misogynist and anti-Semitic.
Number of members As a predominantly online movement, the alt-right does not officially have membership, therefore exact numbers are hard to come by.
Where are they? The presence of this "amorphous" movement is online and its popularity is said to be increasing nationwide.
Are they growing? A relatively new political movement, the group has gained increased prominence over the past year due to its enthusiastic support for Mr Trump. However estimating its strength is difficult.
America's most infamous supremacist group, the initial KKK was formed by ex-Confederate officers in the southern states of the US in the aftermath of the American Civil War in 1865.
The Klan soon flourished in the south before spreading nationwide in the 1900s.
Divisions of the group discriminate against black Americans, Jews and immigrants, and more recently gays and lesbians.
It became a vigilante movement with the aim of preventing these groups from enjoying the same civil liberties and rights as their fellow Americans.
Members historically wore hooded costumes and carried out lynchings and other violent attacks on those challenging white supremacy in the southern states.
Factions of the group describe it as a "White Patriotic Christian organization that bases its roots back to the Ku Klux Klan of the early 20th century".
Number of members Klan groups are active in most US states and are estimated to have between 5,000 and 8,000 members, according to the SPLC.
Where are they? There are dozens of KKK groups in the US stretching from New Jersey to Los Angeles. Groups include the Confederate White Knights and the Traditionalist American Knights.
Are they growing? In 2016 the Klan said that it was in the midst of a revival with a "surge in membership across the Deep South".
The term neo-Nazi relates to a group of separatist activists who share anti-Semitic ideals and a love for Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.
The views of neo-Nazi groups in the US are protected by the courts and the nation's First Amendment.
In one well-known case, the Supreme Court invoked the First Amendment to uphold the right of a neo-Nazi group to march through the predominantly Jewish town of Skokie, Illinois, and display swastikas.
Number of members There are several high-profile neo-Nazi organisations in the US, including the American Nazi Party and the National Socialist Movement (NSM). The most visible of these groups is the National Alliance (NA). A spin-off of the NA, Vanguard America, participated in the "Unite the Right" march on 12 August 2017 that left one woman dead and dozens of protesters and counter-protesters injured following clashes. The most recent membership figures for the NA, for 2012, are estimated to be at least 2,500, while an article published in the New York Times in 2011 said that the NSM consisted of about 400 members.
Where are they? A number of these groups were formed or originally based in Virginia. They have become more widespread in recent years with members of groups such as the NSM active in 32 states.
Are they growing? The manipulation of the mainstream media is attributed to a rise the far-right neo-Nazi movement, according to the Data and Society Research Institute. Links between US and European neo-Nazis are also said to be growing stronger, according to the SPLC.
National Socialist Movement: Founded in 1994, it is one of the largest neo-Nazi groups in the US, with chapters in more than 30 states.
Council of Conservative Citizens: Founded 1985, sprung from the pro-segregation movement in the southern states.
American Freedom Party: Founded 2009, with origins in California. Has a racist agenda and is against immigration. | The deadly violence on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, comes at a time of a dramatic rise in prominence of far-right movements in the US. |
37,475,223 | He has been charged with qualification for the Commonwealth Games in 2018 and will work closely with Scotland's only professional team, Glasgow Rocks.
Olson has also been given the task of finding players capable of playing for Scotland and Team GB in the future.
He has previously coached sides in Australia, Iceland and United States and played for Falkirk Fury.
Olson said: "To me, this is not an overnight success story but a story in which we will continue to see high-level players come out of the national team and now Rocks programme for years to come.
"We now have an elite model within Scotland and, with the Rocks partnership, we will be able to directly implement a proper training method to allow not only our young players but also key national team players the environment they need to develop and eventually turn into elite players themselves."
A former shooting guard, Olson helped take Fury to their Scottish Cup title in 2009 before moving to play for Wagga Heat of the Australian Waratah League.
He was awarded Eurobasket Icelandic Coach of the Year in 2015 as his side, FSu Academy Iceland, were crowned play-off champions and won promotion to the Premier League.
Olson has also been involved in the USA Under-18 select squad and the Icelandic national team. | Scotland have appointed American Erik Olson as their new national basketball coach on a two-year contract. |
36,691,484 | The Scottish golf club said a recent consultation found that admitting women members was supported by over three-quarters of those who participated.
Muirfield voted in May not to admit women members and lost its right to stage the Open Championship.
Royal Troon, situated in South Ayrshire, is the host for this year's Open, which runs from 14-17 July.
Troon said in January it would review of its male-only membership policy.
Club captain Martin Cheyne said: "We have said a number of times recently that it is important for golf clubs to reflect the society in which we exist and the modern world that looks to us.
"Therefore, I am delighted with the decision taken by Members of Royal Troon this evening and look forward to welcoming women to our great Club.
"It is the right decision for the Club today, and for the generations of golfers that will follow."
The vote came just two weeks before the Ayrshire course was due to be the venue for the Open.
Mr Cheyne added: "Tonight, we turn our attention to jointly hosting the 145th Open Championship with our great friends at The Ladies Golf Club, Troon.
"We can now all be focused on golf and showcasing this wonderful club and golf course to the huge global audience that this most prestigious Championship commands."
The decision has been welcomed by the sport's governing body, the Royal and Ancient.
A statement from it said: "We welcome this decision by the membership at Royal Troon and recognise its significance for the club.
"Our focus today is very much on The 145th Open in just under two weeks' time but we can now look forward to many more great Championships at Royal Troon in years to come."
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: "A victory for equality and common sense. Well done, Royal Troon. Hopefully Muirfield will follow suit."
Muirfield's decision in May not to admit women members was greeted with anger in and out of the game and the course was stripped of the right to host the Open.
The East Lothian club held a ballot at the end of a two-year consultation on membership but failed to get the two-thirds majority of its 648 eligible voters required to change policy.
The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, which runs Muirfield, said it is now seeking a fresh ballot. | Royal Troon members have voted "overwhelmingly" at a special meeting to allow women to join. |
22,964,655 | Up to 90 firefighters worked for several hours to control the fire at Walkabout on Queen Street, which started at about 05:30 BST.
Walkabout spokesman Matt de Leon said staff had "safely evacuated" after the fire alarm sounded, but had "lost many of their possessions".
Roads around the fire, which were closed while the blaze was brought under control, have reopened.
Richard Edney, Lancashire Fire Service spokesman, said there had been a "lot of smoke" coming from the fire.
He said there were "over 30 firefighters wearing breathing apparatus, which is quite rare, and it's due to the size of the three-storey building".
Mr de Leon said the bar chain had arranged for the staff to stay in a hotel and was hoping to "find new homes and jobs for them at other Walkabout venues in the UK within the next 24 hours".
"We are also helping them with their personal insurance claims and paperwork, including passports, and have arranged for a counsellor to be on hand for them should they wish to speak to one."
He said that the company was "also trying to find roles for non-live-in staff at our other venues."
He added that the extent of the damage to the building and the cause of the fire were still unknown. | A large fire at a bar in Blackpool has left 12 live-in staff homeless. |
40,293,975 | A large increase of incidents involving e-cigarettes and vitamin D supplements were recorded in recent years.
Contraceptive pills, artificial sweetener and raisins also harm thousands each year, data shows.
Vets reported almost 11,000 UK pet poisonings in 2016, mostly involving dogs, cats and rabbits.
More on pet poisonings and other Devon & Cornwall news here
Gudrun Ravetz, president of the British Veterinary Association said: "E-cigarettes may be harmful if they are ingested by your pet, as e-cigarettes and refills can easily contain sufficient quantities of nicotine to kill a small animal."
Some 113 pets were poisoned by e-cigarettes while 148 cases involved vitamin D tablets, figures from the Veterinary Poisons Information Service (VPIS) show - however they remain a small percentage of the overall total.
Pete Stewart's dog was poisoned after he found and ate "up to four bars of dark chocolate".
Mr Stewart, from London, said: "He seemed completely normal until the next afternoon when he started getting quite hyperactive and shaking, so I took him to the vets immediately.
"It was pretty horrible, they were really worried - they managed to flush his system but the quantity he had was enough to kill a much bigger dog".
1,253
Human painkillers
579 Chocolate
759 Rat poison
253 Artificial sweetener
113 Electronic cigarettes
Elizabeth Mackie's cat, Mr Mistoffelees, died after licking pollen from lilies in what she described as a "traumatic and horrific experience".
The Shropshire pub manager said she had an "overwhelming response" to her story from cat-lovers "right round the globe".
Nicola Brown, from Newquay, also said she had a "massive nightmare" and a "large bill" when her "pride and joy" Shaka the cat was poisoned by lily pollen.
There are no official figures for how many animals die from poisoning, although research into about 1,500 cases by the VPIS shows of those brought to a vet around 8% end in fatality.
Fatal poisoning cases are known to have involved insulin, baby wipes, bleach, morphine pesticides and antifreeze.
Animals' bodies break down certain substances in a different way to humans, which can lead to kidney failure. In chocolate, the problem is a naturally occurring chemical in cocoa beans called theobromine. Symptoms can include vomiting, diarrhoea, hyperactivity, tremors, rapid breathing and fits. | Painkiller tablets, lilies and chocolate were among the biggest causes of accidental pet poisoning in the home last year, leading vets are warning. |
34,656,981 | They have warned thousands more jobs could be lost due to a combination of high energy costs and cheap imports.
Workers from Tata Steel plants in Port Talbot and Llanwern, Newport, joined the demonstration on Wednesday ahead of a Labour-led Commons debate on steel.
Business Secretary Sajid Javid has called for an emergency EU meeting to discuss the crisis in the industry.
Dozens of workers, many wearing "Save Our Steel" T-shirts, gathered at Westminster in a demonstration organised by the Unite and Community trade unions.
Jason Wyatt, an electrician at Tata Steel in Port Talbot, urged ministers to cut business rates and energy costs for his employer.
"We are worried about what the business will do in terms of any short-term measures such as lay-offs," he said.
"The steel works is the biggest employer by a mile in Port Talbot and any job losses would have a massive impact on the area." | Steel workers from south Wales have joined a lobby of Parliament urging UK government action to save the industry. |
38,528,642 | The FTSE 100 edged up by 0.2%, or 14.74 points, to 7,210.05, a seventh consecutive record close.
The index has been benefiting from the fall in the pound against the dollar, as many of the firms are international and make their profits in dollars.
On the currency markets, the pound was down 0.8% against the dollar at $1.2313.
And against the euro it fell 0.43% to €1.1659.
On the stock market, the leading shares were defence group BAE Systems and Lloyds Banking Group.
Neil Wilson from ETX Capital pointed out that Friday's close means the index has risen for five consecutive weeks - the best performance since the Brexit vote in June. | London's leading shares recovered from early falls on Friday to reach yet another closing high. |
36,339,521 | The author is porn star turned Bollywood actress Karanjit Kaur, also known as Sunny Leone - the name that made her famous in the adult entertainment business in the US.
Last month, Juggernaut, a Delhi-based publication house, released Sweet Dreams, a collection of 12 erotic stories by Leone.
It is the first time an original short-fiction collection has been released on mobile phones in India.
Leone's stories are varied: one set in New York sees an Indian IT expert romping with an Indian stripper; in another a dutiful Indian woman has sex with her late husband's ghost.
"I would write on my laptop at all times, in Mumbai or in the quiet of my home in Los Angeles, or during time off on a Bollywood set and it took me four months to come up with the first draft," Leone tells the BBC.
Erotic romance was what Leone says was on her mind while writing the book.
"I've never written before; but I took up the offer from the publishers as a challenge and had a go," she says.
Leone can't recall reading as a child. Growing up in Canada to Punjabi Sikh parents, she recalls being into sports and photography.
The first erotic fiction she ever read was EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey on Kindle. "I remember reading and thinking, 'this is intense', and giggling."
Indian authors and experts in the publishing business say Leone's erotic fiction has come at the right time in the market.
Ananth Padmanabhan, an erotic fiction author, says that India has also succumbed to the "bold erotic effect of 50 Shades of Grey" in the same way Harry Potter influenced fantasy across books and films.
"India has an appetite for erotic fiction despite moral policing and Leone's stories are part of that wave to titillate the market that wants more."
Chiki Sarkar, Juggernaut's publisher, says: "Erotica is one of the high-selling genres for e-books globally and we felt it would work for the smartphone as well."
Moreover, Leone has a massive fan following across India and on social media platforms.
"Leone has about 22 million followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, including many women who have all been enthusiastic about her foray into writing," says Ms Sarkar.
Leone's own story is of an adult entertainment star who has become the most-searched person on Google by Indians.
In 2011, Indian television viewers were first introduced to Leone in the fifth season of the reality TV show, Bigg Boss.
The show, an Indian version of Celebrity Big Brother, had Leone, as a wild card entrant, bringing her closer to Indian television audiences who had until then known her as an American porn star of Indian origin.
Leone dropped out from her studies in Canada when she was 18 to enter the adult entertainment business in the US.
She initially worked as an erotic model and later moved to the adult film business.
Leone recalls she was criticised by many Indians who condemned her job as an adult film star in the US.
"I was called every name in the book," she recalls, adding that she took her time to research about the popularity of Bigg Boss in India before deciding to participate in the show.
Since her Bigg Boss stint, her popularity has been soaring in India.
She has acted in 15 Hindi films, including erotic thrillers, adult comedies, racy entertainers, and a couple of glamorous cameos in south Indian films.
"I am a risk taker and since I was young I always would try as many things as possible to see what was comfortable to me."
She says entering the porn industry, or her acting career in Bollywood and her newly minted author role are all offers that she took on as challenges.
But her rising popularity has also brought criticism from India's moral police.
"I would say there are more important things than me or my job to fight over. Fight to better the plight of poor, naked children on our streets, make your cities cleaner else, plant trees," she says.
When a male TV anchor asked her some uncomfortable questions about her past in an interview in January, she remained calm and dignified.
Her responses won praise from social media users, while the anchor received criticism.
"It (her job as a porn star) just happened; I have no horror story to narrate and I am not ashamed of it. Everything that's happened since then has been only good," she tells the BBC.
As for the future, she has made a song with Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan for his upcoming film Raees. And she is also planning to release a range of perfumes called Lust by Sunny Leone.
"She is the epitome of a strong woman who is unapologetic about the decisions she has taken and choices that she has made in life," says Ms Sarkar.
Rosalyn D'Mello, author of an erotic memoir, says that "by not surrendering to predictable sermons about shame and women's sexuality, Leone challenges existing notions about how a woman can be in charge of how she is perceived".
Sudha G Tilak is an independent Delhi-based journalist. | "Sizzling stories by India's most desirable woman," twinkles the blurb on the smartphone screen, flashing an image of a smiling woman in a red dress. |
18,569,696 | Kenny MacAskill is pushing ahead with plans for single police and fire services instead of regional bodies.
The UK government argued the single services would not be eligible for VAT refunds, worth more than £30m a year.
Mr MacAskill said the policy was in contrast to Westminster's treatment of Academy schools in England.
He said the rules for the government-funded schools were changed to allow VAT to be reclaimed.
Under Section 33 of the VAT Act 1994, local authorities can recover the VAT they pay for supplies, which relate to their non-business activities.
A letter from Mr MacAskill said he had not received any formal reasons for the UK Treasury decision not to allow the new Scottish Police Authority to reclaim VAT but he understood it was because it would be "funded by central government".
Mr MacAskill said the decision would mean the police and fire services in Scotland would be the only ones in the UK unable to recover VAT.
He said: "This decision by the Treasury is unacceptable, unjustifiable and manifestly unfair. This charge on Scottish public sector reform is not levied on similar reforms in the rest of the UK."
Mr MacAskill said the UK government had changed the rules on VAT for Academy schools - which are entirely funded by central government.
He added: "It also ignores the fact that the new Police Authority will continue to be able to receive funding from Scottish local authorities to pay the costs of agreed local priorities.
"This provides a direct link with local taxation, which we consider meets the Treasury's policy on VAT recovery."
The Police and Fire Reform Bill reaches Stage 3 in the Scottish Parliament this week and the new single services are scheduled to begin in April 2013.
The Treasury insists that the Scottish government knew all along that their model for service reform would lead to the loss of VAT exemption.
Public sector union Unison claimed the ending of the exemption would cost the police £26m a year and the new national fire service between £4m and £10m.
A union spokesman said: "It appears that Scotland's public services are going to have to pay a high price for allowing greater ministerial control of our police and fire services." | The justice secretary has said a UK Treasury decision not to allow reformed Scottish police and fire services to recover VAT was "manifestly unfair". |
40,118,772 | His comments follow an internal Tory row over who should have represented the party at a TV debate.
A spokesman for Mr Davies had claimed Mr Cairns had been unwilling to do it.
But on a BBC Radio Wales election phone-in Mr Cairns repeated his claim that Mr Davies was "always down to do" the event, although it was AM Darren Millar who eventually took part.
The BBC Wales Leaders' Debate programme featured leaders from each of the five main parties in Wales, with the exception of the Welsh Conservatives who submitted Mr Millar, their policy director and health spokesman.
Mr Cairns told BBC Radio Wales that Mr Davies was "always down to do" the BBC debate, but that Mr Davies "couldn't do it for personal reasons".
On why he did not step in to take part instead, the Welsh secretary pointed out that most of the other parties were being represented in the debate by assembly members.
"When there are AMs debating we think the best people responsible for that in order to respond to the debate will be an assembly member," he said.
Mr Cairns said he thought Mr Millar did an "exceptional job".
Asked if he backed Mr Davies as leader, he said: "Without a question."
However, a Welsh Conservative source suggested there could be a move against Andrew Davies after the 8 June election.
"A number of members are troubled by the leaders debate shambles and Andrew's boredom with the job," the source told BBC Wales.
"This will be sorted after the election."
In response, a spokesman for Andrew RT Davies said it was "very easy to hide behind a keyboard".
The row over the selection of a panellist for the BBC Wales leaders' debate follows an earlier argument within the Conservative party over the inclusion of UKIP defector Mark Reckless into its assembly group.
Meanwhile a new poll by YouGov, commissioned by Cardiff University and ITV Cymru Wales, has suggested that Labour remain ahead of the Conservatives in Wales.
The poll puts Labour on 46%, up 2% from earlier in May, and the Conservatives on 35%, up 1%.
Support for Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats fell by 1% each - to 8% and 5% respectively. UKIP's support stood at 5%.
It is the second Welsh Governance Centre poll since the election was declared to put Labour ahead - earlier polls to that suggested the Tories could make substantial gains.
Professor Roger Scully said prospects for the election are "starting to look very ominous for Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats".
"Were the two parties to do no better on polling day than in our latest poll, then this would be Plaid's lowest general election vote share since 1987, and the worst ever experienced in Wales by the Liberal Democrats and their predecessor parties," he said.
The poll had a sample of 1014 Welsh adults and was carried out from 29-31 May. | Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns has backed Andrew RT Davies as leader of the Welsh Conservatives "without a question". |
35,416,812 | The PM told the Commons the tax "should have been collected under [the last] Labour government".
Google agreed to pay £130m of tax dating back to 2005 to HMRC, which said it was the "full tax due in law".
But European MPs have described it as a "very bad deal" and Labour said it amounted to a 3% tax rate.
Mr Cameron was challenged during Prime Minister's Questions about the amount of tax paid by the US tech giant, which has made billions of pounds of sales in Britain.
He said: "We're talking about tax that should have been collected under a Labour government, raised by a Conservative government."
He said it was "quite right" that the deal was done independently by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), but he was "absolutely clear that no government has done more than this one to crack down on tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance".
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told the Commons the deal equated to a tax rate of 3% and questioned why there was "one rule for big multinational companies, and another for ordinary small businesses and self-employed workers".
Labour has written to the National Audit Office asking it to investigate HMRC's handling of the settlement, while shadow chancellor John McDonnell has written to Mr Osborne demanding details of how it was reached.
PMQs reaction
PMQs: Labour attacks PM's 'bunch of migrants' comment
Former Business Secretary Vince Cable said Google had "got off very, very lightly" and the chancellor had "made a fool of himself" by hailing the deal as a victory.
Meanwhile, French MEP Eva Joly, vice-chairwoman of the Special European Parliamentary Committee on Tax Rulings, said the deal showed the UK was preparing "to become a kind of tax haven to attract multinationals".
She said MEPs would call George Osborne to appear before them and criticised the attempt to "make publicity out of it" by talking about large-sounding figures which she said were a fraction of what should be paid.
By political correspondent Ross Hawkins
First, George Osborne risked sounding far too content when he hailed the deal as a "victory" and a "major success". Government spokesmen were reluctant to repeat his verdict.
Second, Labour reacted quickly and managed to get a hearing. Their message sounded louder than their internal disputes, for a change.
Third, voters care. The perception that international firms get a better deal than ordinary people is toxic.
It is HMRC that collects tax, not ministers, and the government says it has acted and got results where Labour did not.
But few politicians ever caught the mood of a nation declaring themselves happy with a big business's tax return.
Conservative MP Mark Garnier, a member of the Treasury select committee, said the agreement represented a "relatively small" amount of money compared with Google's UK profits.
News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch tweeted to say he believed the company was only paying "token amounts for PR [public relations] purposes".
Reports in Wednesday's Times newspaper suggest Italy is poised to strike a deal for Google to pay £113m in back taxes to the Italian government, equating to a 15% tax rate. It is not known how many years such a deal might cover.
Google agreed to pay the back taxes after an "open audit" of its accounts by the UK tax authorities and a six-year inquiry by HMRC.
Despite the UK being one of Google's biggest markets, it paid £20.4m in taxes in 2013. The value of its sales in Britain that year was £3.8bn. Google makes most of its UK profits through online advertising in the UK.
The company has been criticised for its legal but complex international tax structures. Its European headquarters are in Ireland, which has a lower corporation tax rate than the UK, and it has also used company structures in Bermuda.
The BBC's economics editor Kamal Ahmed said it was now likely that focus would shift to other large multinational companies' tax arrangements - including Facebook, which paid only £4,000 in tax in the UK last year.
A new "diverted profits tax" introduced by the government, which aims to make international firms pay tax for operating in the UK, would see Google and others pay more tax in the future, he added.
Head of Google Europe Matt Brittin said last week: "We were applying the rules as they were and that was then and now we are going to be applying the new rules, which means we will be paying more tax." | David Cameron has defended the deal UK authorities have struck with Google over tax, saying the Conservatives have done more than any other government. |
28,292,378 | On Friday a researcher told Chinese Central Television the iOS 7 frequent locations function collected data on where individual iPhone users went.
Apple said it would never track users.
It added it did not have access to the data, which was locally stored, was committed to protecting privacy, and that users could turn off the function.
"Unlike many companies, our business does not depend on collecting large amounts of personal data about our customers," Apple said in a statement.
A "crowd-sourced" database of known locations collected from millions of devices was used to speed up its location-finding service, it said.
But no data sent from individual phones could be used to identify the users.
It said: "Calculating a phone's location using just GPS satellite data can take several minutes.
"iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using pre-stored WLAN hotspot and cell tower location data in combination with information about which hotspots and cell towers are currently being received by the iPhone.
"We do this at the device level.
"Apple does not track users' locations - Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so."
Apple made about 6% of the smartphones in China, the researcher said.
In June 2013, China's First Lady, Peng Liyuan, was criticised for using an iPhone during a diplomatic trip to Mexico amid a row between Beijing and the company.
Chinese state media had attacked Apple's differing warranty policies in China and the rest of the world as discriminatory, prompting an apology from the company's chief executive, Tim Cook.
The reputations of US technology companies have also taken a blow in China following former US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden's claims that some were involved in passing data to the National Security Agency.
However, Apple said it had "never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services".
"We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will. It's something we feel very strongly about," it added.
China has also banned government agencies from buying new computers using Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system and placed a greater emphasis on developing its own technology.
The system was branded a threat to security in June this year after being banned in May. | Apple has denied its iPhone threatens Chinese national security after the state broadcaster carried reports it could transmit "state secrets". |
28,832,806 | The 58-year old fell close to Fanad Head lighthouse at 15:00 BST on Sunday.
Mr McCourt was recovered from the sea and received first aid at the scene.
He was then airlifted to Letterkenny Hospital, but was later pronounced dead.
Ian Scott, station officer at Malin Head Coast Guard in County Donegal, said Irish Coast Guard staff made an emergency broadcast when they received the 999 call. A local boat that was in the area responded and went to the man's aid.
"We also tasked our coast guard helicopter from Sligo, both Lough Swilly lifeboats and also our fast response coast guard team from Mulroy," he said.
The station officer added: "All the search and rescue units arrived on the scene and our coast guard team from Mulroy managed to recover the man from the water, they administered CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation).
"He was then transferred to the coast guard helicopter and flown to Letterkenny Hospital." | The man who died after falling from a cliff into the sea in County Donegal has been named locally as John McCourt from Antrim. |
39,975,128 | Mr Nuttall was due to join party activists in Clacton, where UKIP had its only MP elected, on Friday.
But the party's purple battle bus had a wing mirror knocked off overnight and needed to be repaired.
UKIP general election candidate, Paul Oakley, said the bus was "mysteriously damaged" but a party spokesman said it had been accidentally hit by a lorry.
The spokesman said: "A lorry drove a bit too close on its way out early this morning or late last night and just knocked the wing mirror off.
"It's one of those rogue accidents you can't do anything about."
"There is nothing to suggest the wing mirror was knocked off on purpose."
But, writing on Twitter, Paul Oakley, the UKIP general election candidate for Clacton, seemed to suggest that the bus damage might not have been accidental.
He said: "Now hear this! The UKIP battle bus has been mysteriously damaged overnight so will now be in Clacton at the weekend and not today."
Douglas Carswell had been UKIP's only MP until he quit the party and later announced he would not stand for re-election.
Clayton-based councillor Jeff Bray was picked as the town's UKIP candidate over national executive committee member Paul Oakley by three votes.
However, the party's ruling committee later changed its mind, announcing that London-based Mr Oakley will be its candidate. | UKIP leader, Paul Nuttall has postponed a day of campaigning after the party battle bus was damaged. |
29,280,451 | Scientists say chemical changes caused by dry roasting processes may prime the body's immune system - sparking future allergic reactions.
But much more work is needed before humans should consider swapping roasted nuts for raw ones, they say.
The research appears in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
Mice were exposed to peanut proteins through the skin or the stomach.
Animals given the dry roasted samples had a much stronger immune response - the body's way of fighting things that appear foreign to it - than mice given the raw versions.
In humans, immune responses vary. Some can be mild, causing rashes for example, but others can be extremely dangerous, leading to swelling of the mouth and breathing difficulties.
Scientists say it is likely to be the high temperatures used to roast nuts that are responsible for the chemical changes that, in turn, prompt the allergic reactions.
Prof Quentin Sattentau, who led the research, said: "This is the first time, to our knowledge, that a potential trigger for peanut allergy has been directly shown."
And researchers believe the findings may explain the lower allergy rates in East Asian populations where boiled, raw or fried nuts are a more common part of the diet than roasted ones.
But they warn that much more work is needed before doctors make any specific dietary recommendations.
Prof Sattentau said: "We know that children in families with other allergies are more likely to develop peanut allergy.
"However our research is at an early stage and we think that it would be premature to avoid roasted peanuts and their products until further work has been carried out to confirm this result."
Scientists are now exploring methods to get rid of the particular chemical changes that may be responsible for kick-starting the immune system.
According to NHS Choices, nut allergies, including peanuts, are relatively common in both school-aged children and adults.
And peanuts are one of the most common causes of fatal allergic reactions to food.
People with peanut allergies are advised to avoid them and many carry auto-injector pens to reduce the severity of any reactions that do occur. | Roasted peanuts are more likely to trigger an allergic reaction than raw peanuts, according to an Oxford University study, involving mice. |
37,277,809 | The car, which appears to be connected to one of the turbines, was designed by Carlo Roberts and Stefan Fulcher in a field in Eye, Suffolk.
Mr Roberts admitted to being "obsessed with aerial views" and said "the idea of a turbine powering a car seemed very interesting".
It was created with the landowner's permission, using a tractor.
More news from Suffolk as it airs
The geography teacher, who has an art degree and a background in community art, said: "After a trip to London, I was amazed at the amount of electric cars there.
"It got me thinking about electric cars and how few there seem to be in the countryside."
The 200m (656ft) etching took him and farm worker Mr Fulcher five hours to mark out and a further 90 minutes to plough.
A member of a local radio-controlled model aircraft club monitored the design from the air using a drone to ensure its accuracy.
The electric car is the latest in a line of collaborative "land art" projects completed by the pair, which included a B-17 bomber, Olympic rings to celebrate London 2012 and a giant poppy to commemorate US servicemen who lost their lives while based at the nearby eye airfield.
"The thing we are always up against is fitting it in with the agricultural calendar and when the tractors are free," Mr Roberts said. | Artists have created an image of a giant electric car in a field of wind turbines. |
40,277,258 | The Charlton striker, 23, made his international debut off the bench in the friendly win over Czech Republic in March 2016.
But in his next outing, the former Celtic forward injured his groin while on loan at Blackburn Rovers, curtailing his international involvement.
"I know I can get there, I know I was pushing at the doors," Watt said.
Watt was on loan at Hearts at the start of season 2016-17 but scored just once for the Scottish Premiership side before returning to the Valley in January. He netted twice for the Addicks in March to take his season's tally to three.
"Last season was just a bump in the road, in my eyes," explained Watt. "I might not have had the best of seasons, but after an injury you are bound to take a dip.
"I have rectified that this summer by not taking as long a break and getting myself as fit as possible, because last summer I never had that. I missed the first three weeks training, so I was behind by maybe six or seven weeks.
"I know I can get there - it is just about me showing people. I love proving people wrong and so hopefully I can do it. I need to set myself a target. If I can be involved in one of those [Scotland] qualifying squads then I can kick on.
"I am 23, I am still a young guy and I have a lot ahead of me."
Watt enjoyed watching the national team draw 2-2 with England at Hampden Park on Saturday - a result which maintained hopes of reaching the finals in Russia - with fellow striker Leigh Griffiths netting two fine free-kicks.
But the experience reminded Watt, who shot to prominence as an 18-year-old when he scored in Celtic's 2012 Champions League win over Barcelona, of his desire to re-engage with the national side.
Strachan's men have four crucial Group F qualifiers before the end of the year, beginning with a trip to Lithuania, and the visit to Hampden of Malta in September.
"On Saturday I was thinking I need to get back there," he said. "After my international debut I played four minutes in my next game before I ripped my groin, so how is that for luck?
"I am not a jealous person, or bitter person. I was buzzing for Griff when he scored the goals. I was buzzing at 2-1 and was sad when it was 2-2.
"The gaffer showed faith in me as well so I was buzzing for him at 2-1 and even at 2-2 because that is an amazing result.
"The gaffer has called me up a few times so I know I need to show him what I can do and hopefully he is there for a long time so I can do that." | Tony Watt insists he can force his way back into the Scotland set-up ahead of the final 2018 World Cup qualifiers. |
39,039,395 | The actress was seen frying a scorpion and eating the leg of a spider which she said had a "really good flavour".
Eating creepy crawlies has been long associated with the TV show I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here.
But should we all be more like Angelina and swap our bacon for bugs?
It's estimated that by 2050 the world will be home to nine billion people, meaning current food production will need to almost double.
As the population grows, there's been a real push to look at sources of food - particularly protein - other than your traditional meat and fish.
Eating insects is said to be one way of meeting this challenge because they are environmentally sustainable, nutritious and can be harvested relatively cheaply and easily in the right conditions.
It's estimated that two million people worldwide eat insects as part of their traditional diet, but Western countries have yet to catch up.
There is a "yuck factor", says the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP). It says Western attitudes towards entomophagy - humans eating insects - are negative because bugs are seen as unclean and disease-carrying.
The rise of agriculture and a change in lifestyle in Western societies has also led to insects being seen as "pests", says the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Mosquitoes and flies invade homes and bite, termites destroy wood, and some insects end up as unwanted extras in restaurant meals - all of which trigger a "disgust" reaction, it added.
However, there has been a slow shift in attitudes with the art of eating bugs being considered a novelty, which has seen a rise in their purchase as an unusual gift.
"They are the original superfood," says Shami Radia, co-founder of Grub which sells a range of edible bugs. "They are high in protein, minerals and amino acids so it makes sense to eat them."
Insects are also better for the environment than conventional livestock farming. They can feed on bio-waste, produce less greenhouse gases, use less water and take up less land than animals.
Bugs also have what's called a high feed conversion efficiency because they are cold-blooded. On average, insects can convert 2kg of feed into 1kg of insect mass, whereas cattle require 8kg of feed to produce 1kg of body weight gain.
There are around 1,900 different species of insects that have been used as food, according to the FAO.
The most commonly eaten insect groups include beetles, caterpillars, bees, wasps, ants, grasshoppers, locusts, crickets, termites, dragonflies and flies.
Despite such a variety of insects being available though, UK suppliers have focused on a more limited choice with the most popular being crickets, mealworms, locusts and grasshoppers.
Grub sellers believe the UK is a long way from embracing spiders and scorpions on our dinner plate.
"We have to take baby steps," says Mr Radia. "It's not something we would sell. You've got to think about what insects to push and what will get people into eating grubs.
"You have to think of the consumer journey. You can start off with cricket powder because you can't actually see the insect and hopefully it will make people more comfortable with eating insects as a whole."
So far, the UK market has seen pop-up shops and restaurants incorporate insects into more traditional dishes such as buffalo worm macaroni cheese, meal worm bolognaise, chocolate cherry cricket brownies or sprinkled on a pizza.
They are also marketed as an on-the-go snack that would sit alongside your roasted peanuts or chia seeds.
Bug sellers say there has been a real shift in the popularity of edible bugs.
Nick Cooper, owner of Crunchy Critters which was set up in 2012, has seen a sales growth rate of 25% year on year with products being sold to schools as well as gyms. He notes there is a particular boom around Halloween and the festive period.
"People are much more aware of eating insects," he said. "There's not that shock horror factor now. The market is definitely heading in the right direction. It won't be an overnight change and will probably be led in the future by youngsters."
Mr Radia believes that eating insects will one day become as popular as eating sushi.
"Behaviour can be changed," he said. "Prawns are ugly and taste delicious and there's no reason why eating insects can't be normalised." | Angelina Jolie cooked up a storm while promoting her latest film in Cambodia by eating bugs with her kids. |
39,119,114 | Rovers had no fit keepers for Tuesday's Championship trip to Ayr United, but their request for a postponement was rejected by the SPFL board.
After Ayr won the match 1-0, Hughes told BBC Scotland: "It's just making a mockery of it, isn't it?
"They need to have a right good look at themselves."
The Kirkcaldy club had gone without a goalkeeper on the bench for their previous three matches.
Conor Brennan injured a foot in Saturday's loss to Queen of the South, while Kevin Cuthbert and Aaron Lennox are recovering from injuries sustained earlier this year.
"I hope they're embarrassed," said Hughes of the decision to play Tuesday's fixture.
"The guys that sit and vote and put their hand up for it to go ahead, half of them couldn't kick the blankets off the bed, never played football. That's the problem - they don't know what it's all about.
"Maybe for the best of Scottish football, we'll take the hit, but this can't happen again in Scottish football.
"We've got four loans in, so we'd have to try to get someone to go back to their club before we could [sign a goalkeeper on loan].
"We'd be looking at someone who is under 21 for the loan and, if we'd brought in a young keeper, I don't think he'd have done any better than Ryan Stevenson.
"He had a great save in the first minute. He acquitted himself very, very well."
Farid el Alagui's header moved Ayr, who are second-bottom of the Championship, to within one point of eighth-placed Rovers.
And, while Ayr manager Ian McCall believed his side were on a "hiding to nothing" because of the "whole circus" surrounding the game, he felt it did not affect the outcome.
"It didn't really influence the game," he said. "He had no chance with the goal and he made a couple of good saves."
Stevenson, 32, played in goal for the final five minutes of Partick Thistle's 4-0 defeat by Hearts in October 2015 after Ryan Scully was sent off with the Jags having used all of their substitutes.
But he wants his stint in goal on Tuesday to be his last.
"It was a strange experience," said Stevenson, who revealed he was wearing gloves belonging to Dundee United goalkeeper Cammy Bell.
"I didn't want to let the boys down and I suppose it's something I can tick off the bucket list.
"I think that's the gloves hung up now. I've got them in the bag and I'll get the shirt framed.
"It's not something you'd have thought you'd have to do in a professional game.
"Hopefully, it's something I'll not be repeating again." | The SPFL should be "embarrassed" by the decision that forced Raith Rovrs to select midfielder Ryan Stevenson in goal, says manager John Hughes. |
38,993,715 | Like a snowball getting bigger as it rolls downhill, momentum is gathering around the warnings of school leaders about impending cash problems.
Head teachers have said a lack of cash might force them to cut school hours.
Ministers were forced by a Parliamentary question to reveal that more than half of academies lacked enough income to cover their expenditure.
And school governors - the embodiment of local civic worthies - have threatened to go on strike for the first time, rather than sign off such underfunded budgets.
Petitions and protest letters have been sent to MPs about cuts to jobs and school services - and warning letters from head teachers will have been sent home to alert parents.
Grammar school head teachers have gone a step further and warned that parents might to have to pay to make up the shortfall.
School leaders see themselves rather like look-outs on the Titanic shouting out that there's a great big iceberg ahead - backed by the National Audit Office's finding that schools face 8% real-term spending cuts, worth £3bn, by 2020.
The spending watchdog says costs for schools are outstripping the budgets allocated by the government.
The missing piece in this debate has been any real sign of movement from the government - other than to keep repeating that school funding is at record levels.
But plenty will be going on behind the scenes, and there is no shortage of "insiders" with views on what's happening.
It's claimed that ministers can't sign a birthday card without getting clearance from 10 Downing Street.
So education ministers are unable to give any indication of funding changes, in part because a consultation is still taking place and more particularly because it isn't in their gift to decide.
But there are options thought to be under discussion.
The government has announced a new formula for allocating funding to schools, responding to years of complaints about regional inequalities.
But a number of Conservative MPs in rural and suburban areas have been energetically lobbying that this slicing up of the cake is still too much in favour of the inner cities.
If the formula was shifted around a little, such as putting less emphasis on deprivation, it could shift funding from London and the big cities towards the shires.
This would not have much electoral cost for the Conservatives as their support is not in these inner-city areas.
But it would be a big call in terms of political purpose to cut funding from areas of deprivation.
Another approach would be to start including pupil premium money - targeted at deprived children - into the general funding equation.
This really would mark the formal detonation of the last pillars of the Cameron and coalition era, for which the pupil premium was a moral touchstone.
There are other more creative possibilities.
It was revealed that of the money earmarked for the ill-fated plan turn all schools into academies, £384m had been taken back by the Treasury.
This £384m has been claimed as being enough to make sure that there are no losers in the funding formula shake-up.
If this cash could be "rediscovered" in a virtual shoebox in the Treasury, it could come back into play, getting the government off a funding hook - without actually having to find new money.
The apprenticeship levy, about to be introduced, has also been seen as a potential pot of money. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says by 2019-20 it will be raising £2.8bn from employers - but only £640m is set to be spent on apprenticeships.
The Department for Education has so far not been able to explain where the rest of this money might be heading.
Of course, another option is that the government refuses to move and schools have to operate within their budgets.
What would this mean in practice?
To take a real-life example shown to the BBC, what happens when a secondary school faces a shortfall of £350,000.
The only way to make such savings is to cut staff - heads and governing bodies will be making such tough decisions.
Which subject should they stop teaching? Which teachers should they make redundant? Should they get rid of counsellors for mental health problems? Should they merge classes? And who gets to lose out on the quality of their education?
This has left head teachers furious.
There has always been a well-developed moaning culture in education, but there is no escaping the outrage among school leaders about the lack of political response to funding worries.
They were even more livid when they found that the government had found money to expand grammar schools - and have written angry letters asking which services they should cut in their own schools.
They see ministers and MPs rather like untrustworthy children who won't take responsibility for their decisions.
There is also brinkmanship on both sides. Will schools really send home children because of a lack of cash?
And the government will worry that if they crack over schools, it would start a feeding frenzy of other demands on public spending.
A Department for Education spokesman said that school funding is already at its highest level - more than £40bn for 2016-17.
And the department says that it has grasped the nettle of introducing a long overdue national funding formula.
"Significant protections have also been built into the formula so that no school will face a reduction of more than more than 1.5% per pupil per year or 3% per pupil overall.
"But we recognise that schools are facing cost pressures, which is why we will continue to provide support to help them use their funding in cost effective ways, including improving the way they buy goods and services, so they get the best possible value." | After the NHS and social care, is the next funding crisis going to be in England's schools? |
33,832,128 | Russell Martin opened the scoring fortuitously, inadvertently turning the ball home after Costel Pantilimon parried a Robbie Brady shot.
Steven Whittaker slammed home a second after a one-two with Wes Hoolahan, who also assisted in the Canaries' third from Nathan Redmond after the break.
Duncan Watmore then scored a late consolation on his Sunderland debut.
The 21-year-old struck with the Black Cats' second shot on target in the 88th minute, by which time many home fans had already left the ground.
The result leaves Dick Advocaat's side, who were beaten 4-2 at Leicester on the opening day, bottom of the Premier League table after two games.
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It was difficult to tell because of Norwich's urgency, fluidity and snappiness in attack.
The away side's opening goal might have had a heavy hint of fortune - goalkeeper Costel Pantilimon was particularly unlucky to concede seconds after brilliantly turning the ball behind for a corner - but it was certainly well deserved.
Manager Alex Neil is now unbeaten in 13 away games since taking over in January and his team were well on top throughout. Hoolahan was composed and inventive and Redmond a constant menace with his pace.
Goalkeeper John Ruddy, relatively untroubled behind a solid Norwich defence throughout, pounded the ground in frustration after seeing Watmore's slightly miscued volley bounce in late on.
It would be interesting to hear the Sunderland manager's thoughts on the work that is still required to transform his side.
There was less of the defensive calamity that marked their opening-day defeat, but instead the Black Cats looked toothless in attack.
Jermain Defoe and Steven Fletcher threatened sporadically but were isolated for long periods with seemingly little connection to midfield, where new signing Yann M'Vila made his debut.
The 25-year-old was outdone by youngster Watmore, whose every enthusiastic contribution was cheered by the home fans.
In truth, though, none of the four attackers on show - including substitute Danny Graham - looked likely to provide the presence Sunderland will need this season.
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Sunderland manager Dick Advocaat: "Two games two defeats, we did not expect. We have to discuss with the players how we go on.
"It was the same in pre-season and you hoped it would change but it is not changing. Myself as well, I am responsible for that, no doubt.
"They can talk and I can talk. Together we have to find out if we can find the solution, otherwise we have no chance."
Norwich City manager Alex Neil: "I thought it was very good, similar to last week in that we dominated the game.
"We had the cutting edge this time though. The first goal is crucial - we didn't look back. I have a great group, they work hard and work as a team."
BBC football analyst Garth Crooks on Final Score: "From what I've seen both last week and this week, I don't think Sunderland are going to stay in the Premier League. Whoever does Match of the Day tonight is going to have a field day." | Norwich City stunned Sunderland at the Stadium of Light to earn a deserved first win of the season. |
34,033,556 | Media playback is not supported on this device
We often compare Usain Bolt to Muhammad Ali - not for his political convictions but his charisma, for the effect he has had on his sport, for the impact he has made on the world outside it.
Coming into this World Championships 100m final on a dark, sweaty night in this giant ball of cold steel, it seemed that we might get the old showmanship but not the old magic.
The best we could hope for, with the twice-banned Justin Gatlin on a 28-race unbeaten run, with Bolt injured for much of the summer and stumbling in his semi-final, was a defeat to set up a future redemption.
Ali's defeat by Joe Frazier at the Garden in 1971, without which the Thrilla in Manila could never have happened; Bolt knocked out in the Bird's Nest to set up the Revival in Rio in 12 months' time.
Yet it seemed too great a burden for a man who has looked not only mortal this summer but for the first time truly fallible.
Bolt had raced the 100m on just two days this season before arriving at the scene of his unforgettable coronation in 2008. So bad was his pelvic injury that not until late July did he record a time that hinted he could even be competitive in Beijing.
Ali could compensate for his declining speed and the power and fury of his rivals with ringcraft and tactics, by scheming and slipping and refusing to surrender until the other man had fallen.
The 100m does not afford those nuances. Nine-point-something seconds. Which man gets there first. There is no hiding place and no time for comebacks.
And yet Bolt, once again, proved us all fools.
His was an ugly heat and a horrible semi-final. He almost fell from his blocks and had to fight with eyes-wide desperation to even make the final.
What could he possibly do up against the relentless consistency of Gatlin? These have been the American's times this year: 9.74secs, 9.75, 9.75, 9.78. In his heat he ran 9.83, in his semi 9.77.
When Ali went to Zaire to take on the dead-eyed might of George Foreman, witnesses to the build-up spoke of the fearsome percussive force of the ascendant's right hook on the heavy bag.
So it was with Gatlin's times. Bang. Bang. Bang.
I spoke to Gatlin's camp in the afternoon before this showdown, heavy grey skies and dark thunder clouds over the city, a portent for the superstitious of what might lie ahead for the sport if a man who has twice been banned for drug offences were to win its premier event.
There was not just confidence but near certainty. There was talk of a 9.6-something. There was talk of how much the 33-year-old American wanted the lane next to the ailing Jamaican, so he could shock Bolt mentally in the first few metres before destroying him physically in the next 95. There was talk of a new era.
Even on the blocks Bolt seemed beset by self-doubt. There were the usual games - pretending to smooth his hair back, playing peekaboo into the camera's lens when the world looked closer - but also sweat on his brow and a flicker to his eyes.
Lots of people have never seen Bolt beaten. He has been - by Yohan Blake at the Jamaican trials in 2012, by Gatlin himself in Rome two years ago - but never when it really matters, never on the world stage.
This seemed the moment for the old narrative to fall apart. Instead it was Gatlin - relentless Gatlin, predictably brilliant Gatlin - who cracked and fell.
From the blocks Bolt was ahead. At 20 metres he was relaxed. By 40 he was driving, and by 60 Gatlin was tying up - technique coming apart, rhythm going, those 28 victories falling away in his slipstream as the yellow blur to his left refused to come back to him.
Ali beat Foreman through rope-a-dope and bravery and immense mental fortitude. Bolt found his own way: belief when others wondered, speed when we feared it gone, a strength in body and mind that Gatlin could not match.
Bolt's reaction time to the gun was six thousandths of a second faster than Gatlin's. By the end the margin had stretched only a little, to a single one-hundredth of a second. A fraction between them, a chasm in charisma and class.
This was never good vs evil, as some tried to bill it in advance. Gatlin is a dope cheat, not a serial killer or child abuser.
Neither is it a new plot line. There have always been dopers and deceit among the fastest men and women in the world, whether it is Ben Johnson in Seoul or Carl Lewis failing three tests before he even got to those 1988 Olympics, Marion Jones winning in Sydney 12 years later on a blend of EPO and human growth hormone or her one-time husband Tim Montgomery using the same to break the world record before ending his career in jail for dealing heroin on the streets.
Bolt said before Sunday that he couldn't save the sport on his own. He hasn't. There were three other one-time dopers in this final. Tyson Gay, Mike Rodgers and Asafa Powell send out a message of their own: cheat and you can still prosper, cut a deal and you can come back in the time it takes a torn hamstring to heal.
But on a night that could have ended with the sport no longer teetering on the abyss but plummeting over it, the victories of Bolt and, a few hours earlier, Jessica Ennis-Hill in the heptathlon, gave the believers something to cling to and the doubters reason to perhaps think again.
One day Bolt will be gone, and with him the greatest wonder of our sporting age. Athletics must learn to both flourish without him and win some of the battles he has fought almost singlehandedly over the past few years.
For now we should give thanks for him and Ennis-Hill: smiling assassins of cynicism, unstoppable reminders that sport can sometimes be about hard work and heroics as well as the darker, dispiriting side of human nature. | From a man who has delighted in pulling off the impossible, this was perhaps the greatest miracle of all. |
36,384,063 | A substantial rise in television revenue aligned with changes in the salary cap has seen players paid in excess of £500,000 per year.
But Rowe has urged that wages must not spiral out of control.
"There is a concern amongst the Premiership chairmen that we do need to try to control player salaries," Rowe told BBC 5 live.
"Every time we lift the salary cap, the wages go up and up and up," he added.
"Everybody appreciates that most of these guys have a short time as a professional sportsman and need to earn a lot of money - and their career could finish tomorrow - but we need to try to strike a balance."
Rowe's club is preparing for its maiden Premiership final on Saturday, just six years after winning promotion from the Championship.
And he feels the extra money coming into the game is currently being misused, with individual players being paid extortionately rather than revenues going towards growing and improving squads as a whole.
"It [should be] about us getting bigger squads, employing more people, and improving facilities," Rowe continued.
"I think the agents are a major problem. Every time we lift the salary cap, they come along and want to bump all the salaries up another 10-15%.
"It's very difficult if every time you get extra money it's disappearing on players' salaries."
Rowe believes the clubs should act now before the situation gets out of hand, adding: "I do not want to see us go the way of football.
"I don't think we will, but I think we should see a bit of sense, and put things in place now before it does get away from us.
"Maybe once we have got our (long-term) agreement with the RFU sorted, maybe that's the next area we should concentrate on."
Rowe has been involved with Exeter since 1993, and has been the driving force behind turning the Chiefs from an amateur operation into one of the leading clubs in Europe:
"My ambition was to get us into the Premiership. We achieved that six years ago. And then the ambition was to win the Premiership and win to Europe.
"We can do the first bit this coming Saturday, and move on to Europe another day."
Hear from Tony Rowe on the 5 live Rugby podcast. | Exeter Chiefs chairman Tony Rowe has warned against the escalating player salaries in the Premiership. |
35,739,244 | The former Manchester United boss had been sitting next to David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham, at a dinner shortly before Christmas when he apparently made the disclosure.
It's a big claim but with the season entering its final stretch Tottenham remain firmly in the hunt for the Premier League title.
They have not won the league since 1961 - but they are second in the table, five points behind Leicester.
And if the men from the Lane do go on to clinch the title, their 44-year-old Argentine manager will undoubtedly be given a huge amount of credit for what would be an achievement as stunning as it was unexpected.
But who exactly is the man who might be about to bring the Glory, Glory Days back to the Lane?
Marcelo Bielsa is not known as El Loco - The Madman - for nothing. He rambles on for hours at news conferences but never gives interviews. He reckons that if players were machines he would never lose.
He once turned up at the house of a 14-year-old Pochettino in the small town of Murphy at 2am. He was accompanied by Jorge Griffa, at the time also a coach at Newell's Old Boys and credited with unearthing the likes of Gabriel Batistuta and Carlos Tevez. After inspecting the teenager's legs, the story goes, they promptly signed him.
But mad or not, Bielsa is probably the key figure in Pochettino's footballing life.
"He is like my father," said the Spurs boss when his compatriot was linked with the Swansea job earlier in the season. "I know him since I was 14 at Newell's Old Boys."
Pochettino was born in Murphy, Santa Fe, the son of a farm labourer, and remained with Newell's, based two hours up the road in Rosario in the north of Argentina, until he moved to Spanish side Espanyol in 1994.
At the age of 18, the central defender won the Argentine title at Bielsa's Newell's in 1991 and reached the final of the Copa Libertadores the following season, losing to Tele Santana's Sao Paulo on penalties. It was a stunning achievement for a modest club.
"When we won the titles and reached the final of the Copa Libertadores, we were very similar to the squad that we have now at Tottenham in terms of the average age of the squad and in the balance between younger and experienced players," Pochettino said recently.
"There were very good youngsters - like me - and very good experienced players. A similar balance, a similar project."
Bielsa espoused an intense, fast-tempo and high-pressing game, suffocating the opposition. He needed - and had - complete buy-in from his youthful side for this to work.
"That Newell's side was a team shaped with lots of youngsters," said Argentine football journalist Martin Mazur. "It was nothing like the present day, when the system needs to promote youngsters to fill the gaps of the mid-20s generation that is almost entirely playing in Europe. In the late 80s and early 90s, Argentine exports were limited and it wasn't natural or easy to bet on a new generation.
"Bielsa was promoted after working with the academy, but had no illustrious history as a player or as a manager.
"He was frowned upon by veteran players such as Tata Martino or Juan Manuel Llop, and was admired by a core of young players, namely Pochettino and Fernando Gamboa, who became soldiers of his cause: attacking football, high pressing, mechanised movements, new training methods close to exhaustion, physical dominance, a dynamic 4-3-3 that could reshape into a 3-4-3 depending on the circumstances.
"Actually, more than soldiers, they were all generals with their responsibilities, but also active in the decision-making process. Pochettino was the left centre-back or stopper, and he grew up with that style and embracing the audacious and ambitious plan of defying odds and history."
It is difficult to underestimate the impact that Bielsa had on the careers of Pochettino and fellow defenders such as Gamboa, Eduardo Berizzo and Julio Saldana.
Bielsa tasked them with scouting the opposition and asked them to present their reports in front of the squad. In an age before the internet, he told them to read three newspaper reports of their previous game, as well as sports weekly El Grafico.
Bielsa went on to manage Argentina at the 2002 World Cup, with Pochettino fouling England striker Michael Owen for the penalty David Beckham converted - the only goal of the match. Argentina travelled to Japan and South Korea as one of the favourites but failed to qualify from their group.
"Owen had the ball. I stuck out my foot and he dived. In that moment, Michael was more Argentine than me," said Pochettino.
Pochettino retired from international football that same year. By that time he had not only played under Bielsa at Newell's and in the national team but also, briefly in 1998, at Espanyol.
"Pochettino's years in Spain and France, while playing internationally for Argentina, naturally made him more mature, but the mindset didn't change," added Mazur. "Some players realise they want to be managers when they're close to hanging up their boots. Pochettino was a manager almost from the first day he wore them."
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Pochettino moved to Europe in 1994, when he joined Barcelona-based La Liga side Espanyol. He was popular at the Catalan club, making nearly 300 appearances over the course of the next 12 years.
The highlight of his playing days with Espanyol was a Copa del Rey triumph in 2000, and although he then left to join Paris St-Germain and later Bordeaux, he was popularly received when he returned to the club, winning another Spanish Cup in 2006.
Pochettino's ascent into management was far from immediate, with nearly three years elapsing between the end of his playing career and his appointment at Espanyol.
During that time he gained the necessary qualifications and served as assistant coach for the club's ladies' team.
When the call came, it was sudden and urgent. German Bona, who reports on Espanyol for newspaper Sport, recalls: "He took over in January 2009 with the team in the relegation zone.
"He was the team's third coach of the season and it was a huge challenge in a very important season because the club were moving to a new stadium in the summer and didn't want to start there in the second division."
Pochettino, using methods forged playing under Bielsa, had an immediate impact, leading his team to a famous 2-1 win against bitter rivals Barcelona at the Nou Camp to spark a much-improved run of form which ultimately led to a comfortable mid-table finish.
He kept the team in that position for another three years, but eventually dire financial problems and internal boardroom strife took their toll and, after a poor start to the 2012-13 campaign, Pochettino was sacked.
"If there's one thing that stands out from his time at Espanyol, it was the way he controlled everything at he club," added Bona.
"He changed lots of small details at Espanyol that other coaches wouldn't have noticed, such as what and when the players ate, and he was a leader in everything that he did. You could see that people listened to him and were convinced by him."
Pochettino had an insatiable work ethic and expectations of similarly high standards from everyone around him.
"He spent many hours every day at the training ground," recalls Bona. "He arrived early in the morning and left late at night, which isn't particularly common in Spanish football.
"He wants a team which works like a clock, where everything functions perfectly. Not just the players, but also everything which surrounds the team: the medical staff, his assistants, club officials and so on."
A final characteristic of Pochettino's time at Espanyol, which is now being witnessed at White Hart Lane, was his willingness to embrace young players into his plans, introducing more than 20 youth-teamers into the senior ranks during his three years in charge.
Many Southampton supporters were far from pleased when their club decided to discard Nigel Adkins in January 2013 after he had won back-to-back promotions from League One to the Premier League. Former Saints midfielder Jamie Redknapp said the chairman was "deluded".
Their anger was not soothed by the decision to appoint someone who could not speak English and had never worked in the country before.
They were complaining again when Pochettino left, but this time because the club had failed to keep him. He had arrived with Saints third from bottom in the Premier League and left in May 2014 after Southampton had finished eighth.
"I don't have a life outside football," said Pochettino when interviewed during his first few months at St Mary's.
"I spend about 12 hours per day at the training ground. Basically my life is to go from the hotel to the training ground. I am living fully dedicated to this club. In football there is not really a timetable, we just work all day long. I don't consider this work - this club is a passion."
Jack Cork was at Southampton for the whole of Pochettino's time there and was sold to Swansea in January 2015.
"Things settled down quickly after Mauricio arrived," Cork told BBC Sport. "It was always his way or no way, but we were a young team and he gave us confidence - and his message was always to enjoy our football.
"I don't think he did an interview in English the whole time he was there but he always managed to get his message across to the players. He was quite calm most of the time.
"I remember one game at Wigan when we had come from behind to take the lead with five minutes to go. We conceded in the last minute and I thought he was going to be really angry. Instead he had a few minutes to himself in the shower and came out and shook every player's hand.
"He was full of ideas. We went on a pre-season tour to Spain and he had organised a team-building exercise which involved an arrow. Each player had to place the point of the arrow into the soft tissue area of their throat while a team-mate held the other end. You then had to push against the arrow until it bent or snapped.
"It was plastic or something and there was no chance of injuring yourself. It was all to do with building up trust in your team-mates. We also had to walk across hot coals. The players all embraced it.
"There was always lots of running and a lot of training with Mauricio. At times it was very tough. You needed two hearts to play the Pochettino way. Goalkeeper Kelvin Davis once brought the clock out of the dressing room to remind him how long the session had been.
"But his methods worked. We started the 2013-14 season with just one defeat in the first 11 league games.
"There was a lot of talk towards the end of the season that he was going. I remember bumping into him and asking him outright if he was leaving. He laughed and played it down. Because of the timing of his departure, just after the end of the season, there were no big goodbyes because everyone was away. I've seen him since and he's always taken the trouble to ask me how I'm doing and how my family are."
Tottenham gave Pochettino a five-year contract in May 2015. In his first season he took the club to the Capital One Cup final. This season they are in contention for the Premier League title.
Pochettino has not explicitly said he prefers working with younger players but the teamsheet at Spurs tells its own story. A study last year showed Tottenham had the youngest squad in the Premier League.
Harry Kane, Dele Alli, Eric Dier, Ryan Mason - these and more have flourished under Pochettino. Rather like Bielsa at Newell's all those years ago, the Argentine has empowered his young players.
Writing in his Daily Telegraph column in November, Gary Neville observed: "In my role as an England coach I have noticed the difference in psychology and application when Tottenham players come into the camp.
"They now arrive prepared for the battle, ready to play, ready to work. They look like they want to partake in the meetings. All the things you would want from responsible players are there.
"It seems to me that Pochettino has given the younger players the confidence to express themselves, off the pitch as well."
The Argentine continues to place an emphasis on the collective. One of his ideas is to use "big spaces", for example playing five-a-side on a bigger pitch than normal, so players have to run further to close down opponents.
There's an emphasis on video analysis, too, and he will get players in to show them clips of good and bad moments.
Unlike his mentor Bielsa, Pochettino is not quite so single-minded and inflexible in his tactical system. He gives his players more freedom, more inspiration - within a clear structure. But he does love attacking football and that can be seen in the Spurs team.
Danny Rose called him "a friend" at the start of last season. Adam Lallana, who played for him at Southampton, searched him out at the end of Liverpool's game at White Hart Lane in October and obviously holds him in very high esteem.
But beware - cross him and you could be frozen out. Certain players on the outside say weeks have gone by without him speaking to them. After Andros Townsend joined Newcastle for £12m in January, he said he would have liked "a better exit". He had been cast adrift after he clashed with one of the club's fitness trainers.
Pochettino remains measured in public - sometimes bordering on soporific. He belongs to an ever-expanding group of managers who never seem to say anything interesting - but that plays well with his employers at White Hart Lane. No unnecessary problems, no needless headlines.
He does not moan about referees, discuss transfers, criticise other managers. In this regard Pochettino is the opposite of predecessor Harry Redknapp.
He might seem boring in interviews, but those who know him say he is socially adept, the sort of guy you would enjoy chatting to in the pub.
Perhaps he would be chatting to you about how hard he works his players, because until last month the team were still doing double training sessions each day - unheard of at that stage of the season.
He is also big on mutual respect and insists all players shake hands with each other every morning before training.
"It is just small things but it means a lot to create a real team," said the Argentine. "You feel your team-mates, you feel your people."
The story goes that one day the Spurs boss was having breakfast with chairman Daniel Levy when six players came up to them and shook their hands. Levy was taken aback.
If Tottenham do manage to overhaul Leicester and win their first Premier League title, there will be plenty more handshakes coming Pochettino's way this summer.
Additional reporting by Neil Johnston and Andy West. | Early in February, several newspapers ran a story claiming Sir Alex Ferguson rated Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino as the best manager in the Premier League. |
11,766,777 | Restaurateurs and hoteliers can now look forwards to a two year bulge in tourism numbers, with the 2011 wedding to be followed by the 2012 Olympics.
Meanwhile media companies can expect exceptional viewing figures.
And some economists think that a feel-good event could help lift broader consumer spending out of the doldrums.
"Extraneous events can increase feelings of economic and other wellbeing," says Professor Stephen Lea of Exeter University, who specialises in economic psychology.
While many consumers have been directly affected by the recession, or fear they will be, he says there is also a large group of people who are merely affected by the atmosphere of doom and gloom.
These people - who may have experienced better circumstances this year and anticipate better circumstances next year - still tend to rein in their spending with others during the recession.
But if the wedding sparks a feel-good factor, he thinks many in this group may choose to increase their discretionary spending on electronics goods, home improvements and other things that might otherwise be postponed.
"The great advantage is that generally these people are not borrowing, but spending out of savings or increased income," he adds.
A more tangible benefit to the UK economy could come from tourism.
According to recent research by tourism board Visit Britain, the attraction of royalty already accounts for £500m in tourist spending each year in normal times.
"Our culture and heritage reputation is very strong around the world," says Visit Britain spokesman Paul Eastham. "At the heart of that lies the monarchy."
He notes that in 1981, Charles and Diana's wedding was cited as the reason tourists were most likely to visit the UK.
International viewing figures for the television broadcast of Charles and Diana's wedding were estimated at over 750 million.
"People like to be on the spot when historic events happen," he adds, saying the coming wedding is "likely to produce a very positive additional premium on what we normally see".
He also brushes off any concern that the 2011 wedding may sap tourist numbers for the 2012 Olympics.
"From our point of view it's almost ideal," he says, claiming there would be a "halo effect" for the UK of showcasing its two tourism strengths: pomp and circumstance followed by a hi-tech sporting event.
The timing of the announcement is good news for retailers specialising in Royal commemorative items, who expect to have a range of products available in time for Christmas.
The UK Gift Company, which specialises in Royal items anticipates an upturn in business of about 30% to 40%.
Plates and mugs still lead demand, according to managing director Stephen Church, although he also expects stiff trade in hand painted boxes for trinkets.
He said the leading china houses would produce items ranging in price from more than £1,000 for limited editions to less than £5.
Mr Church added that he was amazed that so many people of different age groups bought such items.
The older generation tended to be most keen, but young men would still be attracted to items such as cufflinks to mark the occasion, he said.
Some William and Kate items have already been produced.
Four years ago, Woolworths was so confident that the couple were to be engaged that it produced a commemorative mug and plate.
The relationship has survived since then, but Woolworths on the High Street has not - with the final stores closing in January 2009.
The longevity of memorabilia is also obvious from the items still on sale on internet auction sites from previous Royal weddings.
A quick glance at what is on offer from Prince William's parents' marriage sees glass bowls on sale for £19.50.
Other items include glasses, a bell, newspaper cuttings from the day, coins, spoons and even a bottle of "wedding ale". | Next year's royal wedding is set to give the UK economy a boost, with tourism, merchandising and broadcasting among the best placed sectors. |
30,496,166 | The sparrowhawk is sent down a length of clothes line, picking up speed as it approaches a busy woodland bird table.
Thermal cameras record changes in bird body temperatures as the perceived risk of predator attack rises.
This allows researchers to measure how animals respond to environmental changes without taking blood samples.
Dr Ross MacLeod, from the university's Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, said: "We're studying the birds because we want to understand how animals are responding to environmental change, particularly climate change.
"We look at the birds because they are a very good way of understanding how individual animals are being stressed by different environmental risks."
The research is taking place at the Scottish Centre for Ecology and the Natural Environment on the eastern shore of Loch Lomond.
It is complex and painstaking work but relies on a low-tech piece of equipment - a sparrowhawk, obtained from a taxidermist, and fitted with a pulley.
Dr MacLeod said: "The thermal imaging is brilliant because you can just take a picture, and you can see how the temperature changes in their faces in the same way as it does in humans.
"If you are embarrassed, your face gets hotter. You can actually measure the stress of a human or a bird just by using these thermal imaging cameras."
The scientists believe their work could have a range of valuable practical applications.
Researcher Paul Jerem said: "It is very likely that we'll be able to use this technique across a wide range of species and so essentially anywhere that you can film an animal, you can collect data using this technique.
"It's a vast advance when you compare that to having to trap the animal, take a blood sample and then to analyse the blood." | Scientists from Glasgow University are using thermal images of birds and a stuffed sparrowhawk on a pulley system to measure stress in the natural world. |
38,100,785 | The Australian government in May said Neil Prakash, a senior recruiter for the so-called Islamic State group, had been killed in a US air strike.
He died in the Iraqi city of Mosul, Attorney-General George Brandis said at the time.
But the New York Times, citing senior US sources, now reports that Prakash is still alive.
Prakash handed himself to Turkish authorities several weeks ago, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said.
Profile:The confused Buddhist who became a top IS jihadis
Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Counter-Terrorism, Michael Keenan, said the government could not comment on intelligence matters.
"The government reported Prakash's death in May on the basis of advice from the US government that he had been killed in an air strike," he said in a statement on Friday.
"But as we have said previously, the government's capacity to confirm reports of deaths in either Syria or Iraq is limited. These places are war zones, with many ungoverned spaces."
Prakash, also known as Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, has been linked to attack plots in Australia and appeared in propaganda videos and magazines.
Using the acronym of the previous name of IS, Mr Brandis said in May that Prakash was a "prominent Isil member and a senior terrorist recruiter and attack facilitator".
"Prakash has been linked to several Australia-based attack plans and calls for lone-wolf attacks against the United States," he said.
"He has actively recruited Australian men, women and children, and encouraged acts of terrorism."
The Melbourne man, of Cambodian and Fijian heritage, converted to Islam from Buddhism in 2012. He left Australia for Syria in 2013. | An Australian militant thought dead is still alive and under arrest in the Middle East, according to reports. |
34,651,960 | Robert Braithwaite, 72, founder of Sunseeker yachts, bought the da Vinci robot which will be used in advanced keyhole surgery for cancer patients.
He said it was a "pleasure" to pay back the hospital that treated him for bowel cancer earlier in the year.
Tas Qureshi, the surgeon who treated him, called the gift "incredible".
The Dorset Cancer Centre will use the robot, which was developed in California, to treat rectal, gynaecological, head and neck cancers.
Mr Qureshi, consultant colorectal surgeon and lead for laparoscopic keyhole surgery, said the robot's "greater range of movement" would "allow easier access to areas difficult to reach with traditional key hole surgery".
He said it meant better targeting and removal of cancers, and less chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
He added: "I would like to place on record our sincerest gratitude to Robert."
Mr Braithwaite offered to make a donation after recovering from surgery to treat his tumour.
When Mr Qureshi said Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust would welcome funds towards the "game-changing" robot, Mr Braithwaite offered to pay for the whole thing, as well as its ongoing maintenance.
He said: "Dorset has played a huge part in my life.
"It has been home to Sunseeker since the early 70s... and I am exceptionally proud and grateful to this hard working team and the Dorset community who have always been very supportive of our ambitions."
Debbie Fleming, chief executive of the trust, said: "We're indebted to Mr Braithwaite for this incredibly generous gift."
The first patients will be treated by the robot later in the year. | A multi-millionaire was so impressed with the treatment he received as a patient at Poole Hospital that he gifted it a £3.5m surgical robot. |
34,732,530 | The attack took place in a parked car on Daldowie Road, near Hamilton Road, in the Mount Vernon area of Glasgow, between 01:30 and 02:00 on Sunday.
The car is believed to have been parked beside green wrought iron gates. Officers want to trace the driver of another car which may have passed by.
Police would not give details about the age or sex of the victim.
Det Insp Graeme McLachlan said: "The stretch of road where this assault took place is not heavily used, especially at this time of the morning.
"I am particularly keen to speak to any drivers who were in the area around the time of the incident and noticed a car parked at this location. They may have vital information that would assist with our inquiry." | Police investigating a rape in Glasgow have appealed for help in tracing a driver who may have passed the scene. |
35,124,739 | "Mad" or "Black Friday" is one of the busiest nights of the year as it marks the start of the festive season for many who are finishing work.
A triage unit will be set up in Cardiff city centre, Swansea has a help point and Wrexham's welfare centre will open.
The Welsh Ambulance Service said it took 800 calls last year.
On a typical Friday night it receives about 630 calls.
"Parties and get-togethers are a big feature of this time of year which in turn puts pressure on ambulance crews and clinical contact centre staff," said Gordon Roberts, the trust's interim assistant director of operations.
"It's easy to forget how much alcohol you have consumed when you're enjoying yourself, but while we are dealing with alcohol-related incidents, we could be delayed in treating someone whose situation really is life or death.
"We are not killjoys but we are asking the public to drink responsibly and enjoy themselves safely."
Wales' four police forces have been carrying out a campaigns throughout the festive period.
South Wales Police said officers would have a "visible presence" in Swansea.
Supt Jane Banham of North Wales Police said: "We know from experience that at this time of year some people will come to harm due to alcohol excess and it is the emergency services and local councils who are left picking up the pieces.
"We make a significant contribution to keeping our town centres safe so people can enjoy a good night out.
"But we must get the message across that people need to take greater responsibility for themselves and their friends to reduce the likelihood of them being injured, becoming a victim of crime, or being involved in violence through excessive drinking." | Emergency crews across Wales are urging revellers to drink sensibly as they make the most of the final Friday night out before Christmas. |
36,129,283 | Afghanistan veteran David Seath, 31, had a cardiac arrest three miles short of the finish, near the 23-mile mark, close to Southwark Bridge.
He received immediate medical attention and was taken to St Thomas' Hospital but died later.
Capt Seath's friends are planning to complete the marathon in his honour, starting at the place where he collapsed.
More on this and other news from London
"We will walk as one, the final three miles of the marathon, starting where he fell," wrote Capt James Walker-McClimens on a fundraising page set up following his death.
The page has so far raised more than £64,000 for Help for Heroes. Capt Seath's own page has raised almost £40,000.
Capt Walker-McClimens served with Capt Seath in the 19th Regiment The Royal Artillery The Highland Gunners in Tidworth.
They both went on tour to Afghanistan in 2012, returning at the same time.
"He was the greatest type of guy you could imagine - everyone loved him. He was funny, outgoing, generous - he was just not a bad guy in any way shape or form."
"In the Army we don't like unfinished business. It was something he wanted to do, he wanted to do the full marathon, so we are going to complete it for him," he said.
The exact cause of death is yet to be established.
Capt Seath's mother, Libby, said: "David has achieved more in 31 years than most people do in 70. He lived his life on the edge and to the full."
Capt Seath, from Cowdenbeath, Fife, commanded a specialist team while serving as a fire support team commander for 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery, based in Plymouth.
He completed two master's degrees at the University of Aberdeen before attending the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the elite officer training centre, in 2009.
Lieut Col Jon Cresswell, Commanding Officer of 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery, said the regiment was "devastated".
"Witty, charming and polished, Dave was a fabulous host and stylish performer."
He said Capt Seath had been selected to train future officers of the Afghan National Army in the rank of a major.
"We have lost one of the great characters of our regiment and take strength from the memory of his example and leadership."
Speaking earlier in the House of Commons, Defence Minister Philip Dunne used his opening remarks in response to an urgent question on ship building to pay tribute to the 31-year-old.
He said the thoughts of MPs were with the family and friends of Capt Seath "at this difficult time".
Shadow defence secretary Emily Thornberry also offered condolences to the family on behalf of the Labour Party.
In 2012, 30-year-old Claire Squires died close to the finish line. A fundraising campaign set up following her death raised more than £1m for the Samaritans. | An Army captain who collapsed while running the London Marathon has died. |
31,158,497 | West Midlands Fire Service said eight crews tackled the blaze at St Alban's Church of England School, in St Alban's Close, Wednesfield.
It began at about 20:15 GMT. The school said it would be closed on Friday as a result of the damage caused. Police are investigating.
The school has 177 pupils, aged from three to 11. | Arsonists are believed to have started a severe fire which ripped through a primary school in Wolverhampton. |
35,714,087 | He said illegal economic migrants were risking "lives and money" for nothing.
Mr Tusk visited Greece and Turkey on Thursday to discuss ways to reduce the flow of migrants travelling west.
More than 25,000 migrants have been left stranded in Greece by a tightening of border controls to the north, raising fears of a humanitarian crisis.
On Thursday, a group of migrants blocked a railway line on the Greek side of the border with Macedonia to protest at the restrictions.
They were imposed after several Balkan countries decided only to allow Syrian and Iraqi migrants across their frontiers. Austria also decided to limit numbers.
The move effectively barred passage to thousands of people seeking to reach western Europe, including Afghans as well as some more likely to be regarded as economic migrants.
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After meeting Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Athens on Thursday, Mr Tusk said he was appealing to "all potential illegal economic migrants", wherever they may be from.
"Do not come to Europe," he said. "Do not believe the smugglers. Do not risk your lives and your money. It is all for nothing."
He also said EU member states must avoid taking unilateral action to deal with the migrant crisis.
Separately, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande discussed security and migration issues in the French city of Amiens, including conditions at the French port of Calais, where thousands of migrants hoping to enter the UK have been living rough.
After the talks Mr Hollande warned of "consequences" for management of migrants heading to Britain if the UK voted to leave the European Union in a June referendum.
Earlier, French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron said his country could allow migrants to travel unchecked to the UK in the event of a so-called "Brexit".
He told the Financial Times newspaper that an exit vote could end a bilateral deal allowing the UK to vet new arrivals on French territory.
Authorities in Calais have been clearing part of a sprawling camp known as the Jungle, from where many migrants are trying to enter the UK illegally.
Ahead of an EU-Turkey summit on the issue on Monday, Mr Tusk travelled to Turkey later on Thursday for talks with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
Mr Davutoglu said that the flow of Syrian refugees would lessen if the cessation of hostilities in the conflict held, adding that violations by Syrian government and Russian forces had left it vulnerable.
Turkey already accommodates over 2.5 million Syrian refugees - at an estimated cost of €7 (£5.4bn). The EU has pledged €3bn to Turkey, which is calling for more support.
Mr Davutoglu repeated that they expected the opening of new chapters for Turkey's longstanding EU membership bid and progress on visa-free travel to the EU for Turkish citizens.
Turkey has already offered to sign readmission agreements with 14 countries, a move that could enable it to take back migrants rejected by the EU more efficiently.
Turkish officials also say they have managed to prevent almost 25,000 migrants from travelling to Europe this year. But almost 130,000 have made their way to Greek islands during the same period.
In the EU summit in Brussels next week, there will be calls on Turkey to do more to reduce the numbers of migrants.
Mr Tusk said earlier this week that Europe was ready to grant "substantial financial support" to countries neighbouring war-torn regions such as Syria and Iraq.
"But at the same time we expect a more intensive engagement from our partners as an absolute precondition to avoid a humanitarian disaster," he said.
Turkey has expressed frustration at the lack of a common position from the EU on the crisis.
BBC Europe Correspondent Chris Morris, who is on the Greek island of Lesbos where 75,000 migrants have already arrived so far this year, says the EU wants to see arrivals in Greece drop below 1,000 a day.
New figures suggest last year's total of one million seaborne migrants arriving in Europe could be matched well before the end of the year.
The number of migrants stuck in Greece has soared, after Macedonia began restricting passage to all but a small number. More migrants are en route from Athens.
Earlier this week, the European Commission adopted plans to distribute €700m (£543m; $760m) of emergency humanitarian funding between 2016-18 to help tackle the crisis.
Greece has asked the European Commission for nearly €500m in assistance to help care for 100,000 asylum seekers.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said nearly 129,500 migrants had arrived in Europe by sea so far in 2016, plus another 1,545 by land. It said 418 had drowned or were missing.
A note on terminology: The BBC uses the term migrant to refer to all people on the move who have yet to complete the legal process of claiming asylum. This group includes people fleeing war-torn countries such as Syria, who are likely to be granted refugee status, as well as people who are seeking jobs and better lives, who governments are likely to rule are economic migrants. | European Council President Donald Tusk has warned illegal economic migrants against coming to Europe, during a new push to solve the EU migrant crisis. |
39,304,509 | Yusra Mardini and her sister Sara were forced to swim for hours alongside their overloaded boat as it crossed from Turkey to Greece.
Yusra later competed for the first ever Refugee Olympic Team at the 2016 games.
UK production company Working Title has agreed to buy the rights to her story for a film that Stephen Daldry is tipped to direct.
"It's rather important that we find someone who can act and swim," he told the Daily Mail.
Mardini, 18, the daughter of a swimming coach, left her hometown with her sister in 2015 after their house was destroyed in the Syrian conflict.
Her remarkable 25-day journey took her to Beirut in Lebanon, across the Aegean Sea and finally to Germany.
In the final part of the journey, Mardini, Sara and another young woman dragged the broken-down boat full of refugees - many of whom could not swim - towards the shore, clinging to a rope dangling from the side.
Mardini's first German home would temporarily be a refugee camp, and one of her first questions in this unfamiliar city concerned finding the nearest swimming pool.
An Egyptian translator put the sisters in touch with Wasserfreunde Spandau 04, one of Berlin's oldest swimming clubs.
"They saw our technique, saw it was good, they accepted us," she says.
After training there, she became one of two Syrians to be chosen by the International Olympic Committee for its first refugee team.
She won her qualifying heat in the 100 metres butterfly, though her time was not quick enough for her to progress.
"This is just a great story about a kid with an ambition, just like Billy Elliot," said Working Title's Eric Fellner.
Daldry received an Oscar nomination in 2001 for directing Billy Elliot and went on to direct the West End musical version.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected]. | A teenage refugee who fled Syria and went on to swim at the Rio Olympics is to have her story turned into a film. |
29,612,656 | Novelist and amateur historian Peter Burke wants to test his theory that the king recovered and lived for 40 years after the battle on 14 October 1066.
He is challenging historical records which state that King Harold was killed by William the Conqueror's soldiers.
Battle Historical Society said the theory was unlikely to be true.
Mr Burke is sponsoring a search for the remains of King Harold, widely believed to be buried in the grounds of Waltham Abbey.
He said the alternative version of Harold's death comes from a 12th Century document, Vita Harold, in the British Library which he found while researching his trilogy The Promise.
"It was taken from a young novice priest who took the last rites of an old pilgrim called Christian who declared on his death bed that he was Harold Godwinson, the last Saxon king," said Mr Burke.
"He was hidden in Winchester and brought back to health by a Moorish nurse. He tried to raise an army in Germany but they weren't interested and he spent his life travelling as a pilgrim."
The scan, taking place on the 948th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, is being carried out by the geological survey company which helped to locate the remains of King Richard III in 2012 beneath a car park in Leicester.
Neil Clephane-Cameron, from Battle and District Historical Society, said the story that King Harold survived the battle did not sit comfortably with him.
"The contemporary accounts, both Norman and Saxon, all give the fact that Harold was killed at the battle," he said.
"Even if there is a body at Waltham it doesn't mean that he necessarily survived but it might confirm whether the accounts are correct because there should be be fairly distinctive giveaways." | An underground scan is being carried out at Waltham Abbey in Essex in a hunt for evidence that King Harold survived the Battle of Hastings. |
39,484,825 | Rainwater poured into the venue ahead of Saturday's performance of The Crucible.
Aberdeen Performing Arts (APA) said heavy rain combined with ongoing roof repairs led to the issue.
Customers received a refund and APA said no lasting damage had been caused to the venue.
A spokeswoman said: "Due to persistent heavy rain and ongoing roof repairs, we experienced an issue with water entering the auditorium.
"There was a lack of time to resolve this without causing a major delay to the beginning of the performance.
"The show was cancelled and refunds have been issued. There is no lasting damage and future shows will go ahead as planned." | The operator of His Majesty's Theatre in Aberdeen has said it had no choice but to cancel a show just moments before it was due to start. |
39,361,527 | Lloyd's first-half header was the only goal of the first leg in a game City were unlucky not to win by more.
The USA midfielder rose unmarked to meet a Jane Ross cross on 30 minutes.
Lucy Bronze was denied in either half with a volley off the crossbar and a header just wide in the closing stages.
City are appearing in the last eight of the competition for the first time.
The two sides will meet in the return leg at Manchester's Academy Stadium on 30 March.
The winners will face one of last year's finalists - Wolfsburg or holders Lyon - in the semi-finals in April. | Carli Lloyd's first goal for Manchester City Women ensured they took a lead into the second leg of their Women's Champions League quarter-final against Danish champions Fortuna Hjorring. |
31,438,865 | Lord Fink had accused the Labour leader of making defamatory comments in the Commons about his tax affairs.
But the peer told the Evening Standard he did not want to sue Mr Miliband and the definition of tax avoidance was so broad that "everyone does it".
Mr Miliband challenged David Cameron to say whether he agreed with that view.
Downing Street said the tax evasion row was entirely a matter for Lord Fink and Mr Cameron's view was that "taxes that are due must be paid".
Meanwhile, BBC business editor Kamal Ahmed says he understands the Treasury is preparing legislation to tighten the rules on undeclared income held in offshore accounts.
Lord Fink said he particularly objected to Mr Miliband's use of the word "dodgy" in his attack on Tory donors in the Commons.
He said: "Yesterday (Wednesday) I challenged Ed Miliband to repeat the accusations he made in the Commons - that I used an HSBC bank account to avoid tax and that I was a 'dodgy donor'. He did not. This is a major climbdown by a man who is willing to smear without getting his facts straight."
He did not mention the word "dodgy" in his letter of complaint to Mr Miliband following prime minister's questions.
But although the Labour leader stood by his words in the Commons about tax avoidance, he claimed that he had not been referring specifically to Lord Fink when he talked about "dodgy donors".
Mr Miliband said: "I was very clear about what I said about Lord Fink. Until his extraordinary U-turn 24 hours later, the thing he objected to was me saying he was engaging in tax-avoiding activities.
"I used a general comment about dodgy donors in the Conservative Party and I totally stand by that. I am not saying it about Lord Fink."
He said there were "several questionable donors to the Tory Party".
The row erupted when a list of political donors, including some who had given money to the Labour Party, who had bank accounts with HSBC's private Swiss banking arm was published by The Guardian and the BBC's Panorama.
The bank faces allegations it may have helped wealthy clients avoid or evade tax.
Mr Miliband used the protection of Parliamentary privilege to name Lord Fink, a philanthropist and former hedge fund boss who has donated £3m to the Conservative Party, as one of the UK citizens listed as having an account at the bank's Geneva branch.
Who is Lord Fink?
The Manchester-born son of a grocer, Stanley Fink has been described as the "godfather" of the hedge fund industry, after overseeing the growth of the Man Group, to become the largest listed company of its type in the world.
The 57-year-old quit as the group's chief executive in 2007 to devote more time to his political and charitable interests - he has donated millions to education and health projects, including an academy school in west London and a children's hospital. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.
He was appointed treasurer of the Conservative Party by David Cameron in 2009 and was made a life peer two years later. He stood down as treasurer in 2013. He has donated more than £3m - from an estimated personal fortune of £120m - to the Conservative Party and bankrolled Boris Johnson's first campaign to be London mayor.
He read law at Cambridge before training as an accountant. Married with three children, he has homes in North London, France and Spain.
He then accused David Cameron of being a "dodgy prime minister surrounded by dodgy donors".
A furious Lord Fink made a statement on the steps of Conservative HQ challenging the Labour leader to repeat the allegation outside Parliament and threatened legal action if he did so.
But on Thursday morning, Lord Fink appeared to climb down, telling The Evening Standard: "I don't even want to sue Ed Miliband. If he simply uses the words 'Lord Fink did ordinary tax avoidance' then, no, I couldn't sue him. But if he made the statement 'dodgy' about my bank account, that was potentially libellous. That was the issue I took exception to."
He admitted taking tax avoidance measures "at the vanilla, bland, end of the spectrum", adding: "The expression tax avoidance is so wide that everyone does tax avoidance at some level."
Mr Miliband reacted to Lord Fink's comments by saying: "I think this is a defining moment in David Cameron's leadership of the Conservative Party because it is now revealed that he appointed a treasurer of the Conservative Party who says everyone engages in tax avoidance. I don't think that is the view of most people, I don't think it's the view of the country, and I think it does say something about the Conservative Party and where it has reached.
"The question today that David Cameron has to answer is does he agree with Lord Fink about this? Does he sanction his attitude or does he not?"
The Treasury Select Committee has launched an inquiry into allegations about HSBC's Swiss private bank and will take evidence from the both the bank and HMRC, which is accused of not taking firm enough action against UK citizens hiding money in Swiss accounts.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the row over "dodgy donors" should be the "final wake-up call" on party funding reform. | Ed Miliband has accused Lord Fink of an "extraordinary U-turn" after the Tory donor appeared to drop his threat of legal action over tax avoidance claims. |
33,089,751 | Postal workers will share a 1% stake in the company worth about £50m in addition to the 10% given to them when the government started its sell-off in 2013.
This sale of a 15% stake will be made to institutional investors such as pension funds.
The move has been criticised by Labour.
In his annual Mansion House speech in the City of London, Mr Osborne said: "We want to help the Royal Mail attract more investment and serve its customers, and use the money we raise in return to pay down the national debt."
"And we're also going to make sure that there is a special bonus for the workforce who have done such a great job turning Royal Mail around.
"Thanks to them, Royal Mail's share price has risen, so we're going to give more of the shares to the staff."
But shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna MP said: "It's disgraceful the government is rushing to dump its stake in Royal Mail to City speculators without giving ordinary investors a look-in."
Last month, Royal Mail reported an increase in full-year profits as cost cuts helped the company in a "challenging" market.
It reported £740m in annual adjusted operating profit before transformation costs, up 6% from a year earlier.
Revenues in the year to 29 March were barely changed at £9.4bn.
UK parcel volumes grew by 3%, although revenues from its parcels business rose by just 1%. Letter volumes fell by 4%, with revenues from letters down 1%. | The government will sell half of its remaining shares in Royal Mail, and give a further stake to employees, Chancellor George Osborne has said. |
40,066,211 | Kelly Brewster, 32, from Sheffield, was among 22 people who died in the suicide bomb attack at a pop concert at Manchester Arena on Monday.
Her family paid tribute to a "selfless, soft and kind hearted heroine" who shielded her sister Claire Booth and 11-year-old niece from the blast.
About 300 people gathered in the city to release balloons and pay tribute.
More on this and other Yorkshire stories
Her cousin Donna Brewster said: "She's a hero and she deserves to be remembered a hero and not some evil person's victim. She was a hero that night and I, for one, am so proud of her and I know my family is."
She described the 32-year-old as "a much-loved girl".
"She was such a lovely girl. It's so touching all the support the family's had," said Ms Brewster.
The balloons were released in Richmond Park to the tune of the One Direction song What Makes You Beautiful.
Floral tributes were laid in the Peace Gardens including a large bouquet by Sheffield boxing champion Kell Brook.
The former City School pupil attended the Ariana Grande concert with her sister and niece, who are both among the injured in Manchester.
Mrs Booth has a broken jaw and her daughter has two broken legs, according to reports.
Donna Brewster said: "They're both not great but we'll get there and we'll support each other. We're a very strong, loving family. We're very close. But the family will never be the same without Kelly."
Kelly Brewster's partner Ian Winslow confirmed she had died on Facebook on Wednesday.
The couple had recently put a deposit down on a new home and were planning to start a family. | Hundreds of balloons have been released to remember a "selfless" victim of the Manchester terror attack. |
40,673,053 | The Ligue 1 club said in a statement that "important European clubs" have made contact with the 18-year-old France forward without permission.
Monaco may ask world governing body Fifa and the French league to consider disciplinary action.
BBC Sport understands Manchester City are the only English club accused. They have refused to comment officially.
A City source, however, told BBC Sport the two clubs developed a positive relationship over their two Champions League meetings last season.
It is understood negotiations over the sale of Bernardo Silva to City for £43m earlier in the summer were positive, and the ongoing dialogue over £50m-rated full-back Benjamin Mendy has also been cordial.
The source added they did not believe City had conducted themselves in such a way that would breach the trust that exists between the two clubs.
Arsenal have also been strongly linked with Mbappe, and Monaco reportedly rejected an £87m bid for the France international in June.
Mbappe scored 26 goals in 44 appearances for Monaco last season as they won Ligue 1 for the first time in 17 years and reached the semi-finals of the Champions League.
Monaco claim clubs have breached regulations of both Fifa and the Ligue de Football Professionnel.
Fifa rules state: "A club intending to conclude a contract with a professional must inform the player's current club in writing before entering into negotiations with him."
BBC Sport contacted Fifa but it is yet to provide a response. | Monaco have accused some of Europe's top clubs of making illegal approaches for teenage striker Kylian Mbappe. |
35,993,767 | The first group arrived in Turkey on Monday, but since then the process has stalled, partly due to a surge in last-minute asylum applications in Greece.
It is thought another two boats will arrive on Friday carrying migrants expelled from Greece under the EU deal.
Around 200 people, mainly Pakistanis, were sent back to Turkey on Monday.
Under the EU deal with Turkey, migrants who have arrived illegally in Greece after 20 March are expected to be sent back to Turkey if they do not apply for asylum or if their claim is rejected.
And for each Syrian migrant returned to Turkey, the EU is due to take in another Syrian who has made a legitimate request.
Of those being returned to Turkey on Friday, the non-Syrians will be taken to deportation centres while any Syrians will be taken to refugee camps to take the place of Syrian refugees who will be directly resettled in the EU.
But Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that his country will only implement this deal if the EU sticks to its side of the bargain:
"There are precise conditions. If the European Union does not take the necessary steps, then Turkey will not implement the agreement," Mr Erdogan said in a speech at his presidential palace in Ankara.
But German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country has taken in the bulk of the asylum seekers so far, was more upbeat.
"I am very happy today. However, I know that we have not yet completed all the tasks before us," she told a news conference during a meeting with French counterpart Francois Hollande in eastern France.
The arrangement has alarmed rights groups, who say Turkey is not a safe country for migrants.
Amnesty International has accused Turkey of illegally returning Syrians to their homeland, something Turkey denies.
On Thursday Amnesty also raised the alarm on the lack of information and help available for migrants on the Greek islands.
People detained on Lesbos and Chios have virtually no access to legal aid, limited access to services and support, and hardly any information about their current status or possible fate," said Amnesty Deputy Director for Europe Gauri van Gulik.
"The fear and desperation are palpable," Reuters quoted her as saying.
"They show that in addition to Turkey not being safe for refugees at the moment, there are also serious flaws on the Greek side of the EU-Turkey deal."
152,137
in 2016, up to 4 April
37% of 2016 arrivals are children
53% arrive on Lesbos
366 died on Turkey-Greece route
853,650 arrivals in 2015
Migrants on the Greek border with Macedonia clashed with police on Thursday, demanding that the border be reopened so they could continue with their journey that way.
One million migrants and refugees have entered the EU by boat from Turkey to Greece since last year.
Many are keen to travel to Germany and other northern EU countries, and experts have warned the deal could force them to take alternative, more dangerous routes.
A note on terminology: The BBC uses the term migrant to refer to all people on the move who have yet to complete the legal process of claiming asylum. This group includes people fleeing war-torn countries such as Syria, who are likely to be granted refugee status, as well as people who are seeking jobs and better lives, who governments are likely to rule are economic migrants. | A second wave of migrants is expected to be sent back from Greece to Turkey on Friday as part of an EU deal to reduce the numbers reaching Europe. |
36,038,667 | The decision paves the way for the country to re-enter bond markets after more than a decade.
A panel of judges rejected claims made from holdout creditors who had not accepted any of the offers made by Argentina to pay its debt.
The country will now be allowed to proceed to pay those claims that have been settled.
On Thursday it is due to pay off four of its biggest creditors.
However, first payments are only expected next week, when Argentina plans to start raising $12.5bn in new bonds to be issued internationally.
Settling the country's debt default has been one of the main campaign promises made by President Mauricio Macri, who came to power in December last year.
Holders of the bonds had refused part-payment offered by Argentina and were trying to stop it making payments in the hope of gaining the full amount.
Starting in 2005 the country began to workout deals to repay lenders reduced amounts.
It had reached settlements with 93% of its lenders, but certain holdout lenders refused to accept cuts to the original loan and interest they are due.
Argentina's last President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, called these holdout bondholders "vultures" and refused to negotiate with them. | A US appeals court has cleared the path for Argentina to begin making payments on $9bn (£6.33bn) in bonds. |
13,085,649 | Air Marshal Peter Walker filled the vacancy left by Sir Fabian Malbon's departure in February.
As Lieutenant Governor of the Bailiwick he represents the Queen in the islands.
After being sworn in on Friday he fulfilled his first official engagement by inspecting a parade, which gathered outside the Royal Court.
AM Walker served as a fighter pilot and worked in a number of senior roles in both the Royal Air Force and NATO during his 32 year career in the forces.
Former Governor Sir John Coward, who served in the post from 1994 to 2000, said the role would present AM Walker with a steep learning curve and it was "daunting but very enjoyable". | Guernsey's Lieutenant Governor Designate was officially sworn in to office at a ceremony led by the Bailiff. |
38,981,310 | The girl suffered face, arm and shoulder injuries when she came out of her pushchair in Darlaston on Wednesday morning.
The child was treated by paramedics at the scene before being taken to Walsall Manor Hospital, ambulance staff said.
The accident took place in Pinfold Street, shortly after 10:00 GMT. No-one else needed treatment, West Midlands Ambulance Service said.
More on this and stories from Birmingham and the Black Country | A four-month-old baby was injured when her pushchair was hit by a car. |
39,056,836 | Under-20s coach Murty, 42, has been in charge of the Ibrox first team since Mark Warburton's departure this month.
He has won one and lost one of his two games in charge.
"The feeling will be and has been that I'm going to take this period to assess whether I am cut out for it or not," Murty said.
"I don't mean in terms of tactical or technical knowledge, just in terms of temperament, whether this is an environment I want to operate in or whether I want to be more of a developmental person.
"But I will take my own time in assessing that."
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Murty was animated on the touchline as Rangers lost 2-1 at Dundee on Sunday, seven days after beating Greenock Morton by the same scoreline in the Scottish Cup.
At one point, the former Scotland defender crouched to the ground and ended up standing on his head as he bemoaned a missed chance.
"I normally transition out of that into a handstand and it normally looks quite smooth," he joked.
"I was certain we had just got back to 2-2, and I kind of wanted just to curl up into a ball and hide, and it didn't turn out that way.
"Personally, I am absolutely mortified but professionally I think I have larger concerns than how I looked on the sideline.
"If you ask any football person, this game grips you. It gets you deep in your soul, and the way you express that depends on the person.
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"At that moment in time, that's the way it came out. As I grow more experienced and I decide whether I want to do this full-time or not, I'm sure I will have much better control over it.
"Imagine what would have happened if we had scored?"
Rangers, who visit Inverness Caledonian Thistle on Friday, have reportedly held interviews to fill both the manager's job and a director of football post.
And Murty explained: "They [the club] have not put any timescale or any pressure on me, the only communication I have had from all members of the board is: 'Keep doing what you are doing, can we help you at all?' So that's been great.
"If it's tomorrow that it changes, if it's next week, whenever it is, I will just be continuing on and making sure I do the best for the players.
"It's a great opportunity for me to take my coaching to another level." | Graeme Murty says his spell as interim boss at Rangers is teaching him whether he has the "temperament" to be a first-team manager. |
38,883,401 | Ben Kitto, from Scarborough, had used the laser jamming device on the A64 in North Yorkshire in June.
The 41-year-old pleaded guilty to speeding and attempting to pervert the course of justice at York Crown Court on Monday.
He was given a two-month jail term, suspended for 12 months, and ordered to pay £2,200 in fines and costs.
Kitto was also ordered to do 100 hours of unpaid work and was given five penalty points on his driving licence.
Read more about this and other stories from across North Yorkshire
The judge, Andrew Stubbs QC, told Kitto that he had "narrowly" avoided jail due to his "exceptional character".
Kitto, the court heard, had raised thousands of pounds for charities in Scarborough.
The jamming device, which could be used to prevent the police from recording a speed, had been fitted beneath the front number plate of his BMW car.
Kitto was estimated to have been driving at between 81.9 and 91mph (131 and 146km/h) on the A64 between Malton and York.
Police realised he had been using a device after reviewing video footage, and Kitto was later arrested at home.
Judge Stubbs told him: "For you it appears the speed limits were an inconvenience.
"This arrogance led you to fill your car with gadgets, both legal and illegal, to allow you to operate outside the law."
What are jammers? | A man who fitted a device to his car to jam police safety cameras has been given a suspended prison sentence. |
37,776,995 | And he believes he is a better player now than the one that scored four times in 48 games for St Johnstone.
"St Johnstone was a while ago, about four year ago," said the 27-year-old, who has signed until the end of the season after leaving Crewe Alexandra.
"And I am a slightly different player now - a bit more experienced."
Striker Haber, who joined Crewe from Stevenage in 2014, scored 10 times in 50 appearances last season as the Railwaymen were relegated from England's League One.
He had already earned the first of his 26 caps for Canada before joining St Johnstone in 2010 after leaving West Bromwich Albion.
"That was my first real taste of first-team football for a prolonged period of time in the UK," said Haber, who has also found the net three times for his country.
"I was still learning the game, so I definitely feel a lot different now."
Dundee manager Paul Hartley lost his two top scorers this summer, when Kane Hemmings and Greg Stewart were sold to Oxford United and Birmingham City respectively.
Faissal El Bakhtaoui arrived with a goalscoring reputation after helping Dunfermline Athletic win League One last season, while Yordi Teijsse had been prolific with Quick Boys in Netherlands' fourth tier.
However, Hartley has earmarked the striking department as a problem as his side have gone nine games without a victory - and lost their last five - with El Bakhtaoui also sidelined through injury for the next three weeks.
The manager is looking for Haber, who impressed on a week's trial after being released by Crewe, to make a difference.
"He will add height and strength and he is someone who stays in the box," said Hartley.
"The majority of his goals have come from inside the box, so hopefully that gives us a different dimension."
Haber scored for Canada in a 4-0 victory over Mauritania earlier this month.
"He has played two games for Canada recently, so his fitness looks okay," added Hartley ahead of Wednesday's visit to Dens Park by second-bottom Partick Thistle. | New signing Marcus Haber feels fit and ready to make his Dundee debut as they look for the goals needed to lift them off the foot of the Premiership table. |
28,803,561 | Staff at Ferguson Shipbuilders in Port Glasgow turned up to work on Friday to learn most of the 77-strong workforce were being made redundant immediately.
Joint administrators from KPMG said the business had gone bust due to a lack of orders and mounting cash flow pressure.
GMB official Alex Logan said staff were "shocked". The Scottish government is to set up a task force to help workers.
Mr Logan said: "There was no warning about this at all and it has come as a complete shock to the workforce.
"We've had an idea since before the summer that something was going on but have been unable to get any information from the management.
"We thought that maybe the yard was going to be sold but there was no indication it was going to close."
The GMB said a "skeleton staff" had been retained to finish work on existing projects and help maintain the yard.
Mr Logan was attempting to organise a mass meeting of staff to discuss their options.
Blair Nimmo, joint administrator and head of restructuring for KPMG, said: "Ferguson Shipbuilders is a leading name in the industry with a rich heritage dating back more than 110 years and is the last commercial shipbuilder operating on the River Clyde.
"However, a lack of significant orders and mounting cash flow pressure has led to the group's inability to continue trading.
"We would like to thank staff for their co-operation during this difficult period. We will be working with employees and the relevant government agencies to ensure that the full range of support is available to all those affected."
Mr Nimmo added: "We would encourage any party who has an interest in acquiring the group's business and facilities to contact us as soon as possible."
Originally formed in 1902, Ferguson Shipbuilders employed 77 staff at the time of the administration appointments.
Whilst best known for its shipbuilding capability, the yard is also known for engineering and joinery, materials handling, fluids distributions, system hydraulics, power distribution and management and civil engineering.
KPMG said the business had "experienced significant cash flow pressure in recent months" and a "lack of financial strength" had effectively "hindered its ability to secure new vessel contracts from its core customer base".
Recent attempts to secure investment into the business have proved unsuccessful, the administrators said.
They are now "assessing all available options" to complete the yard's remaining work and are aiming to determine "whether an early sale of its business, infrastructure, and assets can be secured".
Jim Moohan, GMB Scotland senior organiser and chair of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU), called on First Minister Alex Salmond to intervene.
He said: "This is the last remaining commercial shipbuilding yard in Scotland. It has now locked its doors to the workforce.
"Unless the Scottish government intervenes this puts the final key in the door of commercial shipbuilding which has a history of several hundred years in Scotland.
"Not to intervene will be an utter betrayal by the Scottish government and the First Minister, Alex Salmond."
Finance Secretary John Swinney said the Scottish government would set up a task force to help workers affected by the closure.
"The loss of any jobs in Port Glasgow is a devastating blow and we will work closely with the administrator to deliver an integrated service to those losing their jobs," he said.
"We will also convene a task force which will aim to secure new opportunities for this commercial shipyard on the Clyde.
"I have spoken to the leader of the council and we have agreed to work together on the task force to secure these opportunities. I will visit Port Glasgow on Monday to start this process."
Mr Swinney described the yards facilities and workforce as "significant assets".
News of the firm's financial failure has brought strong responses from the local community and across Scotland.
Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont said: "My sympathy goes out to all the workers at the Ferguson shipyard whose jobs are threatened and we will do all we can to prevent the closure of the yard.
"Scotland's shipbuilding industry is a vital part of our economy and supports many well paid jobs but it is still largely dependent on defence contracts and this latest blow highlights just how difficult it is to win other contracts.
"But I believe we can still save this shipyard and every avenue must be explored. We stand ready to work with the Scottish government and do all we can to prevent job losses as a matter of priority."
Scottish Conservative west of Scotland MSP Jackson Carlaw said: "The Scottish government certainly has some serious questions to answer on this.
"They must have been alerted to this situation coming down the tracks.
"Dithering when dozens of jobs are at stake is completely unacceptable, and the workers deserve a full explanation."
Inverclyde Council leader Stephen McCabe said: "I am shocked by this news about Fergusons but can assure the workforce and community that we will do all that we can to help.
"I am setting up a dedicated task force to support the workforce at Fergusons and to engage with the owners, union and both the Scottish and UK governments."
David Watt from the Institute of Directors said: "Given the proud heritage Scotland, and particularly the Clyde, has in shipbuilding, it's sad to see one of the few remaining yards in jeopardy, potentially significantly reducing Scotland's capabilities in the future."
In recent years, Ferguson Shipyard completed work to deliver two sea-going roll-on roll-off vehicle and passenger diesel-electric hybrid ferries for CalMac.
The yard also completed work for Babcock related to the contracts for two huge Royal Navy aircraft carriers.
GMB official Mr Logan said that at the time of the administration, work was also ongoing to convert a boat into a fish factory - for a company based in the north of Scotland. | Administrators have been called in to the last remaining shipyard on the lower Clyde with the loss of 70 jobs. |
35,882,898 | Four years ago, ministers promised a decision on the matter by 2015.
The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) and other groups have warned that delays risk the welfare of beavers already in parts of Scotland.
The government said it and Scottish Natural Heritage were giving landowners advice on managing the animals.
Scotland has two beaver populations, despite the species being hunted to extinction in the 16th Century.
An official trial re-introduction has been conducted at Knapdale Forest in Argyll. But beavers are also thriving in the Tay catchment.
There have been suggestions in the past of releasing beavers in parts of the Cairngorms.
Farmers and landowners have said the animals damage trees and cause flooding in fields alongside burns and rivers.
In January, BBC Scotland reported that beavers that were heavily pregnant or had recently given birth were among those shot by landowners in Tayside.
The following month, RZSS and the Scottish Wildlife Trust said there was an "urgent" need to have beavers recognised as a native species.
Earlier this week, RZSS spoke out again on the issue.
The National Trust for Scotland has also called for a decision "as soon as possible". It supports controlled, licensed reintroductions of beavers.
RSPB Scotland has described the government's statement as "extremely disappointing".
Environment Minister Dr Aileen McLeod has now said in a statement that "complex issues still under careful consideration", a final decision on beavers within the context of Scottish wildlife and land management would be taken later this year.
She said there were measures already available, such as Nature Conservation Orders, to protect beavers.
Dr McLeod said: "We understand that there are those for whom beaver activity can pose problems - particularly farmers with low-lying areas, often with highly productive farms but which are at risk of flooding or water logging from the damming activities of beavers.
"We are working closely with SNH, who are providing advice on mitigation and alternatives to lethal control but also guidelines regarding welfare considerations arising from the shooting of beavers, where this is the only option available.
"We are aware of and share the concerns raised by the recent information about the killing of beavers during the breeding season and we ask all land managers to heed the advice set out regarding when there are likely to be dependent young and shooting is particularly discouraged." | The Scottish government has said any decision on the formal re-introduction of beavers to Scotland will not be taken until later this year. |
27,770,787 | After what must be an unprecedented amount of leaking, Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw has delivered his verdict.
So what do we know now?
Ofsted believes there was an organised campaign of infiltrating schools, undermining head teachers and governors running state schools like private fiefdoms.
Whether or not the anonymous Trojan Horse letter was a fake, Sir Michael believes that the warnings were real. Schools were being targeted for takeovers by people with a particular religious agenda.
It doesn't say who was involved or how they were organised, but head teachers told Ofsted they felt bullied and under pressure.
Leaders of schools caught up in the claims, such as Park View, have passionately rejected such claims - and say that it is a view shaped by pre-conceptions about schools serving a predominantly Muslim community.
They warn of "knee-jerk reactions" and say they have "nothing to hide".
But the decisions have already been taken and letters sent out which will begin the process of changing how the schools are run.
The investigations have been framed by fears of extremism - but the strongest warnings from the inspections have been about how the schools were being managed.
Governors were accused of effectively taking on the role of managers, with the teachers as their intimidated staff.
The response from the Department for Education has been to insist that schools instil a stronger sense of "British values" in pupils, and deliver an inoculating shot of democracy, tolerance and mutual respect.
Ofsted has called for more structural changes - such as tightening the monitoring of academies and improving the training and openness of governors.
But what would stop this happening again?
The biggest complication for those running England's schools is that it is a system with a built-in vulnerability to energetic entryism.
The principles promoted by successive governments - of ever-greater school autonomy and parental choice and community involvement - are seen as great strengths in improving schools.
But it also means a fine balance between the ideal of local control of a public service - and the risk of takeovers by self-appointed community leaders.
And there are longer term questions for a country of ever-widening diversity. What happens if more parents want a type of school of which others disapprove? | The inspection reports into the so-called Trojan Horse allegations have finally been published. |
35,292,650 | The actor interviewed Mexico's most wanted drug lord in October in northern Durango state, at a meeting organised by Mexican actress Kate del Castillo.
The security forces came close to catching Guzman shortly afterwards.
They finally arrested him on Friday in a raid in which five people died.
Attorney General Arely Gomez said the security forces had been following Guzman's lawyer, who led them to Sean Penn and Mexican actress Kate del Castillo.
Who is 'El Chapo' Guzman? - The crime lord had humble beginnings.
Who is Kate del Castillo? - Actress was instrumental in arranging the interview
Did Sean Penn break the law? - Unusual interview raises questions in the US and Mexico
Penn's 'El Chapo' interview scorned - It has been called "grotesque" and "maddening"
El Chapo extradition 'could take year' - American officials want Joaquin Guzman back in the US.
Kate del Castillo had been contacted by Guzman's lawyers years earlier after she had addressed Guzman in an open letter asking him to stop trafficking in drugs and start "trafficking in love" instead.
Ms Gomez said that following his escape from a maximum-security jail in July, Guzman again contacted del Castillo through his lawyers to ask her to produce a film about his life.
Del Castillo has not commented but in an article for Rolling Stone magazine, Penn said the actress had put him in contact with the fugitive drug lord.
They both then travelled to a remote mountain hideout where Penn proceeded to interview Guzman.
Ms Gomez said that meeting had provided them with important intelligence and helped them track down the fugitive.
"It was an essential element, because we were following [Guzman's] lawyer, and the lawyer took us to these people and to this meeting," she told local radio.
Mexican newspaper El Universal published photographs on Monday which suggest Penn and del Castillo were under surveillance by the authorities at the time.
The Associated Press news agency asked Penn if he was worried about the images. He wrote back in an email, saying: "I've got nothin' to hide".
Guzman's escape in July 2015 - his second from a maximum-security jail - was a major embarrassment for the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto.
But on Monday, the authorities proudly showed journalists around the house Guzman had been hiding in in Los Mochis.
It feels like a voyeuristic journalism package holiday. The marines flew us here and showed us around the house that the feared criminal escaped from.
"Over there you can see how the cans burst from the force of the grenades," an official from the attorney general's office pointed out in the kitchen.
"And over here, this was the spot where the second person died," he said pointing to a patch of blood measuring about two metres by two metres.
In one room was a walk-in wardrobe with a floor-length mirror. You would never have guessed it was actually a door, but behind it was a narrow set of stairs leading to a tunnel.
It was through this tunnel that Guzman managed to escape. But this time it was not for long, as the marines got wise to his signature escape route and hunted him down a few hours later on a nearby highway.
President Enrique Pena Nieto praised the security forces for the arrest of "the world's most wanted criminal" in a brief televised speech on Monday.
"With this action, 98 of the 122 most dangerous criminals no longer pose a risk to society," he said. "We're going after all of them!" | Mexico's Attorney General has said that the meeting between Hollywood actor Sean Penn and fugitive cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman had been an "essential" element in his arrest. |
40,519,325 | It becomes the fourth airline this week to announce the electronics ban has been lifted on US-bound flights.
The US imposed the ban in March on direct flights from eight mainly Muslim countries to address fears that bombs could be concealed in the devices.
Qatar Airways and its Doha hub airport said they had strengthened security.
The airline said that "with immediate effect, all personal electronic devices can be carried on board all departures from Hamad International Airport to destinations in the United States".
It comes after Etihad, Turkish Airlines and Emirates announced that the ban had been lifted on their US flights.
The airlines and their respective hub airports have worked with US authorities to increase their security checks.
Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are yet to announce the ban has been lifted.
Last week, US Homeland Security announced measures including enhanced screening, more thorough vetting of passengers and the wider use of bomb-sniffer dogs for US-bound flights from 105 countries.
Airlines expressed hopes at the time that the measures would pave the way for the lifting of the electronics ban.
Saudia, the flagship carrier for Saudi Arabia, said this week that passengers would be able to take the electronics on US flights from 19 July. | Passengers on Qatar Airways will be allowed to take laptops and other large electronic devices in the cabin on US flights, the airline has announced. |
34,062,893 | A UN-linked tribunal asked India to suspend its court case, pending international arbitration.
The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea also rejected Italy's request for the marines to be freed while they await the final ruling.
The case has led to a bitter diplomatic row between Delhi and Rome.
The Supreme Court has adjourned the case until the third week of January.
The tribunal said that in addition to halting all current court proceedings, both countries should "refrain from initiating new ones which might aggravate or extend the dispute".
Both sides should submit a report to the tribunal by 24 September ahead of hearings, it added.
Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone face murder charges and are on bail awaiting trial.
Mr Girone is currently staying in the Italian embassy in Delhi, while India's Supreme Court has allowed Mr Latorre to temporarily return to Italy on health grounds.
The marines were guarding an Italian oil tanker when they opened fire, killing two men off the Kerala coast in South India. The marines said they mistook the fishermen for pirates.
Italy says that as the shooting took place in international waters, the men should be tried in Italy.
However, India wants the men tried in an Indian court. It has ruled out the possibility of the death penalty. | India's Supreme Court has halted all legal proceedings in the case of two Italian marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen in 2012. |
35,264,491 | The Port of Dover plans to remove up to 3m cubic yards (2.5m cubic metres) of sand and gravel.
The area being explored in the recommended Marine Conservation zone covers an areas of 4.5 square miles about eight miles (12km) from Dover.
The sand and gravel will be transported to the Western Docks for land reclamation and construction works.
The Port of Dover wants to relocate its cargo business to a new terminal at Western Docks to create extra space within Eastern Docks for ferry traffic.
The redevelopment plans also include shops, hotels and bars and the creation of a new marina.
Dover Harbour Board has previously said the plans would create 600 new jobs.
The Goodwin Sands are a series of shifting sandbanks. They provide habitat for grey and common seals and birds and are the site of hundreds of historic shipwrecks.
Bryony Chapman, from the Kent Wildlife Trust, said: "It's bound to have an impact on the sediment habitats there and the important mussel beds and ross worm reefs which provide the basis for the food chain.
"We are also really worried about the amount of sediment being removed and what impact that could have on coastline and important conservation areas on the coast."
Alan Breck, project manager for Dover Western Docks Revival, said an environmental impact assessment was being undertaken to assess the effect dredging would have on the area.
He said: "Goodwin Sands contains an important aggregate resource and has been dredged previously for fill aggregate for infrastructure projects at the Port of Dover and Port of Ramsgate." | Dredging on the Goodwin Sands would impact wildlife and endanger eco-systems, conservationists have said. |
37,651,250 | The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee told the BBC the Department of Health has drawn up proposals to cut funding by 12% from December.
It said the cuts were "madness" and would damage the NHS and social care.
The Department of Health said no final decision had been made. An announcement is expected shortly.
Sue Sharpe, chief executive of the PSNC, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the changes would throw the health service into "chaos", as more people would be forced to turn to GPs instead of pharmacists.
In a letter to the Department for Health seen by the BBC, she wrote: "The proposals were and remain, founded on ignorance of the value of pharmacies to local communities, to the NHS, and to social care, and will do great damage to all three. We cannot accept them."
The PSNC - which negotiates with the Department of Health and NHS England on behalf of pharmacies - said it had been told pharmacies would receive £113m less than expected from December 2016 to March 2017 and £208m less the following year.
The cuts amount to 12% in the coming months and 7% for the next financial year, compared with current spending.
Earlier this year, the then health minister Alistair Burt suggested between 1,000 and 3,000 pharmacies could be closed after spending cuts, although the Department of Health now says it does not recognise the figure.
Officials have been negotiating cuts to the money pharmacies receive from government since last December.
Plans for a £170m cut this year were delayed after 2m people signed a petition opposing the change.
Pharmacies get around 90% of their income from the money government pays for dispensing prescriptions. It costs the taxpayer £2.8bn a year.
A Department for Health spokesman said it was investing £112m to put 1,500 pharmacists in GP's surgeries.
He said: "We have worked collaboratively with the PSNC and have listened to their suggestions and counter proposals over the course of many months.
"Ministers are considering a proposed package for the sector and no final decision has been taken, but we are committed to offering more help to those pharmacies people most depend on compared to others." | Pharmacies in England could face steep funding cuts within weeks that will force some to close, the industry's negotiating body has said. |
36,122,028 | Media playback is not supported on this device
The Red Devils reached the final of the competition on Saturday by beating Everton 2-1 at Wembley.
Van Gaal, 64, had been expected to leave at the end of the season - one year before his contract expires.
"I'm not looking at anything other than this competition," the Dutchman said when asked about his future.
"We live in the present. For the future, I discuss this with my board."
Progressing to a record-equalling 19th FA Cup final means Manchester United, fifth in the Premier League, have the chance to end a disappointing season with a trophy.
They had to work for their win against Everton, who finished strongly before Anthony Martial struck the injury-time winner.
Van Gaal felt his side should have won by a more comfortable margin, but he accused referee Anthony Taylor of making decisions that "changed the game".
After Marouane Fellaini's opener, Everton were awarded a penalty midway through the second half when Timothy Fosu-Mensah was adjudged to have fouled Ross Barkley.
David De Gea saved Romelu Lukaku's spot kick but the Toffees equalised through Chris Smalling's own goal.
"The referees are deciding the game and not the players any more," Van Gaal told BBC Sport.
"I think we deserved to go to the final. I think the referee... we didn't have any fouls in our benefit. He changed the match I think." | Manchester United boss Louis van Gaal will leave it up to the club's board to decide whether he should remain at the club even if he wins the FA Cup. |
26,238,612 | Born into a well-off family with links to the business and oil sector, Lopez, now 44, was educated in the United States and has a master's degree from Harvard University.
He came to prominence when he was elected mayor of Caracas's Chacao district, a position he held from 2000 to 2008.
While he was barred from running for re-election in the 2008 polls for allegedly misusing public funds, he did not retire from public life.
His supporters say the charges were politically motivated as he was neither convicted nor put on trial over the allegations.
But the BBC's Irene Caselli says Lopez has long been seen as a "problem" - not only by the government but also by some outside observers.
In a 2009 classified cable published by Wikileaks, the political counsellor of the US embassy in Caracas, Robin D Meyer, wrote that Lopez had become a "divisive figure within the opposition".
"He is often described as arrogant, vindictive, and power-hungry - but party officials also concede his enduring popularity, charisma, and talent as an organiser," the US diplomat wrote.
During the protests in 2014, Lopez used social media to found a movement with the hashtag #lasalida, which in Spanish means both "the exit" and "the solution".
The Venezuelan government has indeed been quick in reminding citizens of the part Lopez played in past unrest.
In 2002, parts of the opposition, backed by elite businessmen and some military leaders, briefly removed then President Hugo Chavez - Nicolas Maduro's late predecessor - from power.
The coup came after street protests, in which Lopez took an active role, prompting the government to label him a "coup leader".
But a large sector of Venezuela's middle class identify with Lopez and his strategy, our correspondent says.
"If Leopoldo [Lopez] is attacked by the government, the people will defend him," student leader Daniel Alvarez said last year.
David Smilde, a Caracas-based senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, said Lopez was an appealing figure for people to rally around.
"He is visible, attractive and talks well," he said.
But even if anger at Lopez's conviction manages to unify Venezuela's middle class behind him, he will still be faced with the government's wide base of popular support. | Leopoldo Lopez - who has been jailed for nearly 14 years for inciting violence during mass protests in 2014 - is considered a political maverick and has long been a thorn in the side of the government. |
39,416,221 | Southampton Itchen MP Royston Smith called on the government to fund a planned £4m memorial to the plane.
The memorial would feature a replica aircraft in Mayflower Park, overlooking Woolston where the plane was built.
Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Jane Ellison, said funding would be given "full consideration".
The planned 131ft (40m) stainless steel replica will be one-and-a-half times the size of the actual plane.
Mr Smith told a debate at Westminster Hall the plane was a "symbol of freedom".
"In a world divided and troubled, the Spitfire reminds us how we stood up against evil and we prevailed," he said.
The aircraft was designed by RJ Mitchell at the Supermarine Spitfire factory in Woolston.
Thousands of Spitfires - which played a crucial role in the Battle of Britain in World War Two - were built at the site.
The factory was also the reason much of Southampton was destroyed by German bombing during the war.
Mr Smith said the government's contribution could come from Libor fines levied over inter-bank lending.
Labour MP for Southampton Test, Alan Whitehead, and Eastleigh's Conservative MP Mims Davies also spoke in favour of a memorial.
Ms Ellison acknowledged the "passionate" comments during the debate.
"I do want to reassure all colleagues that should further Libor funding opportunities arise, any application from this the National Spitfire Project which falls within the published scope will of course be given full consideration along with other applications."
Attempts to raise funds for the statue via crowdfunding, after city council planners gave permission for it to be built in 2014, have to date failed to raise the cash needed. | A national memorial to the Spitfire would be a "fitting tribute" to those who flew and worked on the World War Two fighters, an MP told Parliament. |
18,690,303 | The 75-year-old has been on hunger strike in recent years at Ashworth psychiatric hospital in Maghull, being force-fed daily to keep him alive.
He has requested a transfer to a Scottish prison, where there is no precedent for force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike.
Brady's fate will be determined by a mental health tribunal. A previous tribunal hearing in July 2012 was postponed after Brady fell ill days beforehand.
Few killers achieved the notoriety, or attracted as much public loathing, as the so-called "Moors Murderer".
He was jailed in 1966 for three counts of murder, and has been detained at the top-security psychiatric hospital since 1985.
But the real number of victims was higher: over a period of 18 months, Brady and his accomplice, Myra Hindley, kidnapped and murdered five children and teenagers in north-west England.
They buried at least three of their victims on Saddleworth Moor, near the Lancashire town of Oldham.
Details of the crimes shocked Britain, not least because Brady's accomplice was a woman but also because of the complete lack of remorse either showed during the subsequent trial.
Brady was born Ian Stewart on 2 January 1938, the illegitimate son of a Scottish waitress.
His violent personality was shaped by an unstable background. His mother neglected him and he was raised by foster parents in the Gorbals, Glasgow's toughest slum.
After a spree of petty crime as a teenager the courts sent him to Manchester to live with his mother and her new husband, Patrick Brady.
Ian assumed his stepfather's name, continued his criminal activities and developed into a fully-fledged teenage alcoholic.
By now he had acquired new interests, building up a library of books on Nazi Germany, sadism and sexual perversion.
He first met Myra Hindley when she worked as a secretary at the same company in Manchester in which he was working as a stores clerk.
For Hindley it was love at first sight. Brady impressed her by reading Mein Kampf in the original German.
As their relationship developed, they began taking obscene photographs of each other before turning their attention to kidnapping, child molestation and murder.
Between July 1963 and December 1964, 16-year-old Pauline Reade, 12-year-old John Kilbride and Keith Bennett, also 12, were reported missing, all in the Manchester area.
Another victim, 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey, disappeared on 26 December 1964.
Authorities were baffled by what they referred to as the "unrelated" cases, and were left without a single piece of solid evidence.
In the meantime, Brady and Hindley were intent on a campaign to corrupt Myra's brother-in-law, David Smith, and recruit him into their circle.
A petty criminal with convictions of his own, Smith was amused when the conversation turned to murder and he questioned Brady's ability to follow it through.
On 6 October 1965, Brady offered a practical demonstration with Edward Evans, a homosexual teenager, striking him fourteen times with a hatchet before finishing the job by strangling him.
Horrified, Smith phoned the police next morning, directing them to Brady's address.
The officers found Brady and Hindley at home. In a room upstairs they discovered Mr Evans' corpse. The bloody murder weapon was also recovered, along with Brady's collection of books on perversion and sadism.
A 12-year-old girl and neighbour recalled several trips she had made with the couple to Saddleworth Moor, and the police launched a search which uncovered the body of Lesley Ann Downey on 16 October.
Four days later, another search of Brady's flat turned up two left luggage tickets for Manchester Central Station, leading police to a pair of suitcases.
Inside the cases, they found nude photographs of Lesley Ann Downey, along with tape recordings of her final tortured moments, pleading for her life as she was brutally abused.
A series of seemingly innocent snapshots depicted portions of Saddleworth Moor, and detectives paid another visit to the desolate region on 21 October, unearthing the body of John Kilbride.
Police announced that they were opening their files on eight missing persons, who had disappeared over the previous four years, but no new charges had been added by the time the couple went to trial.
Jurors were horrified by the Downey tape, and by Brady's bland description of the recording as "unusual".
On 6 May 1966, both defendants were convicted of killing Edward Evans and Lesley Ann Downey. Brady was also convicted of murdering John Kilbride, while Myra Hindley was convicted as an accessory after the fact.
Brady was sentenced to concurrent life terms on each count, while Hindley received two life terms plus seven years in the Kilbride case.
Nineteen years later, in November 1985, Brady was transferred from prison to a maximum-security hospital after being diagnosed a psychopath.
There, he confessed to the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, whose remains had still not been found, in an interview with tabloid reporters.
Searchers returned to the moors a year later, with Myra Hindley joining them for an abortive outing in December 1986 and Brady joining them in 1987.
They uncovered the remains of Pauline Reade on 30 June 1987, nearly a quarter-century after her disappearance.
It took pathologists a month to decide that the girl had been sexually assaulted, her throat slashed from behind.
The whereabouts of the remains of Keith Bennett are still unknown.
The Director of Public Prosecutions announced in 1988 that, in the public interest, there would be no prosecution of the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett.
In August 1987, Brady posted a letter to the BBC, containing sketchy information on five "new" murders he said he had committed, but police decided there was insufficient evidence to pursue an official investigation.
Brady had accepted from the start that he would never be released, unlike Myra Hindley who, in trying to secure parole, claimed that Brady had forced her into the murders by abusing and torturing her into submission.
But Brady reacted to her allegation by claiming that "for 20 years I continued to ratify the cover I had given her at the trial whilst, in contrast, she systematically began to fabricate upon it to my detriment".
Myra Hindley died in 2002, still a prisoner.
Brady has said he would rather die quickly than rot slowly in jail.
But his attempts to force the authorities to allow him to starve himself to death have failed. In March 2000 a judge described his hunger strike as part of his "obsessive need to exercise control".
The mental health tribunal's decision on his request to be moved to prison will dictate whether or not Brady can take control of how he dies. | Moors Murderer Ian Brady wants to be allowed to die. |
40,712,528 | The Vatican treasurer, 76, is accused of historical assaults involving "multiple complainants", Victorian police said last month.
He has said he will strenuously defend himself against the allegations.
Cardinal Pell made no comment as he entered Melbourne Magistrates' Court flanked by police officers.
Dozens of local and international media representatives have gathered outside the court, along with security guards and other onlookers.
The filing hearing, which is expected to be brief, will take place in a courtroom that can accommodate about 50 people, local media said.
Last month, Cardinal Pell said he was "looking forward" to his day in court.
Cardinal Pell had to slowly wade through a legion of camera crews and reporters to reach the entrance of the court.
He has vowed to vigorously defend himself against the allegations, and here he was at the start of what could be lengthy legal proceedings.
Rarely has an Australian court been besieged by such a large media contingent, with their satellite trucks and coverage taking the story all over the world.
Pedestrians were forced off the pavement on to the road outside, while one passing motorist paused briefly to shout abuse at reporters.
Supporters of Australia's most prominent Catholic figure had also gathered, queuing patiently to witness the hearing.
A middle-aged woman told me she was here with friends to "support George" as other curious onlookers captured the scene on their smartphones.
Cardinal Pell arrived in his home country earlier this month, after being granted a leave of absence from the Vatican to fight the charges.
Victoria Police said they had made the decision to charge the cleric after receiving advice from prosecutors earlier this year.
"Cardinal Pell is facing multiple charges and there are multiple complainants," Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton said last month.
Last month, Cardinal Pell told reporters: "I am innocent of these charges, they are false. The whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me."
He said in a press briefing at the Holy See that he had been the subject of a "relentless character assassination".
As Vatican treasurer, Cardinal Pell is considered to be the third-ranking official in the Catholic Church. | Cardinal George Pell has arrived at an Australian court, amid a large media scrum, to face charges of sexual assault. |
19,640,175 | The crude production posted on YouTube has sparked violent protests and riots across the Muslim world for its depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.
It is unclear who made the film, but it has been linked to an Egyptian Coptic Christian living in the United States.
An arrest warrant has also been issued for US Christian pastor Terry Jones.
One woman and seven men, including Mr Jones, are accused of "insulting the Islamic religion, insulting the Prophet and inciting sectarian strife", according to the prosecutor's office.
It said international police agency, Interpol, would be notified of the warrants.
However, Interpol later denied it had received a request and noted that its constitution forbade it from "undertaking any matter of a predominantly political, military, religious or racial nature".
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a convicted fraudster living in California who has already been questioned by police there, is among those facing charges, the prosecutors office said.
The film, a crudely-made portrayal of the life of the Prophet Muhammad ignited angry protests last week, mostly outside US and other Western diplomatic offices.
The unrest in Cairo has been among the most violent. Demonstrators there managed to scale the US embassy, tear down the US flag and replace it with an Islamist one.
Mystery has shrouded the individuals behind the film, entitled Innocence of Muslims.
Florida-based Mr Jones is said to have promoted the film.
He sparked protests two years ago when he pledged to organise a mass burning of copies of the Koran in Florida.
In a separate development, a Copt who lives in central Egypt was on Tuesday sentenced to six years in prison after being convicted by a misdemeanour court of blasphemy, insulting the Prophet Muhammad and insulting President Mohammed Mursi.
Cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were allegedly published on his Facebook page. The man, who is a teacher, denied the charge. | Authorities in Cairo have ordered the arrest of seven US-based Egyptian Coptic Christians for their alleged involvement in an anti-Islam video. |
37,657,954 | Analysis by the King's Fund think tank, seen by the BBC, suggests 40% of the 58 trusts saw budgets cut in 2015-16.
It found six of them had seen budgets cut three years in a row.
An NHS spokeswoman said mental health services were "wider" than trusts, and care was funded in other ways.
Mental health spending overall was up 8.4% in 2015/16 compared to the previous year, the NHS said.
Neil Jewell, who had schizophrenia, died after failings in his care, accepted by the Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust (NSFT) looking after him.
Its chief executive says improvements in care have since been made, but he warned mental health care missed out on funding in comparison to acute hospitals.
NSFT is one of the six trusts identified as having had its budget cut three years in a row.
Inspectors have just recommended the trust be taken out of special measures after almost two years, despite saying safety there is still inadequate, and raising concerns about high death rates.
Chief executive Michael Scott said: "If NSFT had received the same growth in funds that NHS acute services had received over the last four years it would have had £30m more in its budget."
Last year, for the first time, NHS commissioners in England were instructed to increase money for mental health, in line with increases in their own budgets - something called "parity of esteem".
King's Fund chief executive Chris Ham said: "Cuts in mental health services are just as risky as cuts in acute hospital services. We are talking about people in crisis who need expert support in a timely way.
"If they don't get it, it's bad for them and their families - and for the communities in which they live.
"The crisis in mental health services is real and serious. We all need to wake up to that reality."
He added: "Parity of esteem is a laudable ambition that hasn't been followed through in practice."
Neil Jewell had a heart attack in January 2014 while being reintroduced to his medication.
He had not had enough medication over the Christmas holiday period. When he was seen by a mental health team in early January, he was not offered a safe hospital bed and was driven 75 miles while he was having a psychotic episode, under restraints, to a different unit, where he died.
His sister, Christine Welfare, says there was a catalogue of failings in local mental health services both in the community and in hospital.
"It was a complete nightmare - it should never have happened. And then you start getting angry.
"These are people's lives. Anybody in society, no matter who you are, can suffer at various times in their lives with mental health issues and it's very important that people sit up and take notice."
Michael Scott said: "Our thoughts are with this patient's family and friends. This is an extremely sad situation, and they have our deepest sympathy.
"Since his death, our trust has ensured that patients based in the community have a named mental health professional or duty worker co-ordinating their care, to offer greater support.
"We also try to work closely with families and carers wherever possible, and with a patient's consent."
A spokeswoman for NHS Clinical Commissioners said: "Mental health trusts provide invaluable and critical services but it must be recognised that mental health service provision is wider than trusts.
"To get the best possible outcomes for their population, clinical commissioners are also investing in out-of-hospital care that focuses on prevention, recovery and community-based care.
"They are also looking at partnerships with voluntary and third-sector providers, and crucially investing in primary care mental health services." | Mental health trusts in England are still having their budgets cut, despite government assurances they would be funded on a par with physical healthcare, figures suggest. |
37,415,057 | It was to prove a baptism of fire for O's interim manager Andy Edwards, who stood in after Andy Hessenthaler was sacked on Monday.
With only 20 seconds on the clock, Orient captain Robbie Weir lunged in with a heavy tackle on Ben Purrington and was shown a red card by referee Charles Breakspear.
On 12 minutes, the table-toppers took the lead when David Goodwillie slipped a free-kick past a static home defence for Spencer to run on and slide the ball past keeper Alex Cisak.
Then O's midfielder Liam Kelly limped out of the game with an injury before Orient's problems were further compounded when their debutant defender Jens Janse saw red after being adjudged to be the last man when he brought down Jake Jervis.
The home side showed battling qualities against an Argyle outfit for whom Graham Carey was an influential playmaker.
However, the visitors failed to add to the slender advantage as Cisak parried away a Carey effort and then saved a close-range shot by Spencer.
Early in the second period, Nigel Atangana, who had replaced Kelly, was himself substituted after suffering a leg injury.
The one-way traffic continued after the break as the heroic Cisak prevented the visitors causing further damage producing outstanding saves from Spencer and Carey while a number of other Plymouth opportunities went sailing wide of the goal.
Argyle finally found the target again with six minutes of normal time remaining when Spencer crossed for substitute Donaldson to tuck the ball home from close range.
Report supplied by the Press Association.
Match ends, Leyton Orient 0, Plymouth Argyle 2.
Second Half ends, Leyton Orient 0, Plymouth Argyle 2.
Corner, Plymouth Argyle. Conceded by Jordan Bowery.
Attempt blocked. David Goodwillie (Plymouth Argyle) right footed shot from outside the box is blocked.
Attempt missed. Graham Carey (Plymouth Argyle) right footed shot from outside the box is too high.
Corner, Plymouth Argyle. Conceded by Alex Cisak.
Corner, Plymouth Argyle. Conceded by Tom Parkes.
Attempt blocked. Craig Tanner (Plymouth Argyle) right footed shot from the centre of the box is blocked.
Attempt missed. Callum Kennedy (Leyton Orient) right footed shot from long range on the right is too high from a direct free kick.
Nauris Bulvitis (Plymouth Argyle) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Foul by Nauris Bulvitis (Plymouth Argyle).
Jay Simpson (Leyton Orient) wins a free kick on the right wing.
Craig Tanner (Plymouth Argyle) hits the bar with a left footed shot from outside the box.
Goal! Leyton Orient 0, Plymouth Argyle 2. Ryan Donaldson (Plymouth Argyle) right footed shot from the centre of the box to the centre of the goal. Assisted by Ben Purrington.
Attempt missed. James Spencer (Plymouth Argyle) right footed shot from the right side of the six yard box is close, but misses to the left.
Attempt saved. Craig Tanner (Plymouth Argyle) right footed shot from the centre of the box is saved in the bottom right corner.
Substitution, Leyton Orient. Jordan Bowery replaces Paul McCallum.
Ben Purrington (Plymouth Argyle) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Gavin Massey (Leyton Orient).
Nicky Hunt (Leyton Orient) is shown the yellow card.
Substitution, Plymouth Argyle. Ryan Donaldson replaces Connor Smith.
Foul by Gary Miller (Plymouth Argyle).
Jay Simpson (Leyton Orient) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Ben Purrington (Plymouth Argyle) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Sandro Semedo (Leyton Orient).
Attempt missed. David Fox (Plymouth Argyle) right footed shot from outside the box is high and wide to the left.
Substitution, Plymouth Argyle. Craig Tanner replaces Jake Jervis.
Corner, Plymouth Argyle. Conceded by Callum Kennedy.
Corner, Leyton Orient. Conceded by Ben Purrington.
Attempt blocked. Callum Kennedy (Leyton Orient) right footed shot from outside the box is blocked.
Ben Purrington (Plymouth Argyle) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Foul by Ben Purrington (Plymouth Argyle).
Jay Simpson (Leyton Orient) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Attempt saved. James Spencer (Plymouth Argyle) left footed shot from outside the box is saved in the top centre of the goal.
Corner, Leyton Orient. Conceded by Sonny Bradley.
Foul by Connor Smith (Plymouth Argyle).
Tom Parkes (Leyton Orient) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Attempt missed. Graham Carey (Plymouth Argyle) right footed shot from outside the box is high and wide to the left.
Attempt saved. David Fox (Plymouth Argyle) right footed shot from outside the box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Corner, Plymouth Argyle. Conceded by Alex Cisak. | Goals from Jimmy Spencer and Ryan Donaldson earned League Two leaders Plymouth victory at nine-man Leyton Orient. |
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The British Olympic heptathlon champion, 29, was racing for the first time since July 2013 following injuries and the birth of her son, Reggie.
Tiffany Porter won in 12.86 seconds, with fellow Briton Lucy Hatton second and Ennis-Hill third in 13.14.
Olympic champion Greg Rutherford won the long jump with a leap of 8.01m.
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Ennis-Hill, who claimed gold at the London 2012 Olympics, is targeting the defence of her title in Rio next year.
But her preparations have been hampered by a recurring Achilles problem.
Returning to the track in a four-woman field in her favourite discipline, Ennis-Hill was always unlikely to challenge European champion Porter, but she declared herself satisfied with her performance in front of an appreciative crowd on Deansgate.
"You always put pressure on as an athlete, and that can take the enjoyment and fun out of it, but I enjoyed that," Ennis-Hill told BBC Sport.
"I loved soaking up the atmosphere. It's a starting point. I'm a bit disappointed to not get sub-13 but I can build on this and get sharp."
In the women's 200m hurdles, Ennis-Hill's heptathlon rival Katarina Johnson-Thompson was pipped to the line by her fellow Briton Meghan Beesley.
Beesley won the event for the second year in a row in 25.28 seconds, just 0.03 secs ahead of European Indoor pentathlon champion Johnson-Thompson.
"It's a bit daunting - it just looks so far up the straight," said Johnson-Thompson after running the distance for the first time. "But it's a bit of fun and I got there in the end."
In the women's 150m, Britain's Dina Asher-Smith pulled off a surprise victory over European 100m and 200m champion Dafne Schippers of the Netherlands.
Asher-Smith pulled away in the closing stages of the race to win in 16.82 seconds.
Rutherford, who will look to add the world title to his Olympic, European and Commonwealth crowns later this year, won the long jump with his first leap of the competition.
"You always want to jump further but the weather conditions aren't great," he said. "I just couldn't quite get what I wanted. I love doing these events when you are so close to the crowd and it's always good to win."
Michael Rodgers of the United States won the men's 100m in 10.25 secs, with Britain's Richard Kilty 0.04 secs behind in second. | Jessica Ennis-Hill marked her return to competitive athletics with third place in the 100m hurdles at the Great City Games in Manchester. |
37,577,698 | Carl Gregory suffered fatal injuries in a car park in Margate Road, Broadstairs, Kent, on Tuesday night.
Two men, aged 20 and 27, who are believed to have been known to him, are being held on suspicion of murder.
Mr Gregory's family stressed that "contrary to media reports, Pokemon Go cannot be attributed to his death".
More news from Kent
In a tribute, they described him as a "loving son, brother and grandson", who would be greatly missed by family and friends.
Mr Gregory died at the scene after emergency services were called to the car park at about 22:15 BST. | A man who died following an incident in a car park has been described as a typical 20 year old who enjoyed gaming, modern technology and Pokemon Go. |
21,319,168 | The crash happened at 18:30 on Sunday near Yucaipa on the edges of the San Bernardino National Forest, some 80 miles (128 km) east of Los Angeles.
It took rescuers more than two hours to get all the passengers out of the bus.
Officials said 27 people were taken to nearby hospitals, at least six of them in a critical condition.
The cause of the crash is not yet clear, but California Highway Patrol spokesman Mario Lopez was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that the bus driver reported brake problems as he descended a road leading from the Big Bear ski resort area.
The bus was in collision with a sedan car and a pick-up truck pulling a trailer, Mr Lopez said.
Her colleague, Michelle Profant, described the gruesome scene.
"It's really a mess up there with body parts," she said.
Some of the passengers were said to have been thrown from the bus, while others were trapped inside.
As firefighters worked to free those stuck, rescuers from at least eight different agencies were on the scene to help stabilise and transport the wounded, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The passengers were part of a tour group from Tijuana in Mexico, the Department of Transportation spokeswoman Michelle Profant was quoted by AP as saying.
A representative from the Mexican consulate reportedly went to the crash scene. | At least eight people have died and dozens are wounded after a tour bus collided with two other vehicles on a mountain road in southern California. |
36,708,780 | 4 July 2016 Last updated at 20:37 BST
He was speaking to BBC Newsnight's Adam Parsons in his first interview since the collapse of BHS.
Mr Chappell bought BHS in 2015 for £1. He took a total of £2.6m out of the company, including a £600,000 salary. The business collapsed this year with the loss of up to 11,000 jobs and a big hole in the pension fund.
Watch the full interview on BBC Newsnight at 22:30 BST on BBC Two - or catch up afterwards on iPlayer | The former owner of BHS, Dominic Chappell, has defended the money he took out of the company as a "drip in the ocean". |
38,079,396 | Judge Jose Perals also called for a five-year sentence for former Barcelona president Sandro Rosell and a fine of 8.4million euros (£7.2m) for the club.
It asked to drop charges against current president Josep Maria Bartomeu.
Rosell, Neymar and his father are set to stand trial.
Under the Spanish legal system, prison terms of under two years are typically suspended.
The case stems from a complaint by Brazilian investment group DIS, which owned 40% of Neymar's transfer rights and alleges it received less money than it was entitled to from transfer fee.
Rosell resigned as the club's president in 2014 for his role in the affair and testified in court in February alongside Bartomeu, Neymar and Neymar's father.
The club struck a deal with prosecutors in June to settle a separate case, paid a £4.7m fine and avoided trial on charges of tax evasion over the transfer.
Barcelona thought they had brought the affair to a close when judge Jose de la Mata archived the case in June, although Spain's public prosecutor successfully overturned the ruling in September, allowing the case to proceed.
Neymar's Barcelona team-mate Lionel Messi was sentenced to 21 months in prison for tax fraud earlier this year. He has appealed against the sentence.
Since moving to the Nou Camp, 24-year-old Neymar has won two La Liga titles, two Copa del Rey trophies, the Champions League, the European Super Cup, the Spanish Super Cup and the Club World Cup.
He signed a new five-year contract with Barcelona in October. | Spanish prosecutors have called for Barcelona forward Neymar to be sent to prison for two years for his part in a corruption case over his transfer from Brazilian club Santos in 2013. |
20,553,183 | The 8in x 24in (20cm x 60cm) photo from 1941 was sold by a man who had bought it from one of Monroe's classmates.
It was taken at the Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High School in Los Angeles.
Karen Fairweather, of Omega Auctions in Stockport, said the only other photo from the event had fetched £15,000 because it boasted Monroe's signature.
The photograph, which sold to an online UK bidder, had belonged to one of the actress's classmates called Barbara Chapbaum, who had it signed by several of her friends but not the future Hollywood legend.
A collector from the North East of England bought it off Ms Chapbaum several years ago and has now sold it.
At the time of the photograph, Monroe, then aged 15, was a brunette whose real name was Norma Jeane Baker.
Five years later she began modelling which eventually led to her acting career which saw her star in such movies as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, Some Like It Hot and The Misfits.
The star died on 5 August 1962. | A rare photo of Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe at her school graduation has sold for £990 at auction in Greater Manchester. |
35,595,103 | Police in Plymouth sped to the Drake's Circus shopping centre after members of the public reported a man thought to be carrying a rifle.
But when the armed response vehicle arrived at the scene officers found the man was carrying a lightsaber in a bag.
In a tweet Devon and Cornwall Police quipped, "May the force be with you!"
A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall Police said officers were called just before 12:00 GMT to reports of a man in his 50s "possibly in possession of a rifle".
The misunderstanding was made clear when officers approached the man and no arrests were made.
Lightsabers originated in the Star Wars movies and are classed as toys, rather than weapons. | Armed police officers called to reports of an armed man at a busy shopping centre found the suspect carrying a lightsaber. |
11,371,138 | The number of Nato forces peaked at about 140,000 in 2011, but decreased in subsequent years as Nato countries wound down combat operations, handing over control to local security forces.
Countries with troops still in Afghanistan include the US, Georgia, Germany, Turkey, Romania, Italy, the UK and Australia.
Nato ended its combat mission in Afghanistan in December 2014, leaving a 13,000-strong residual force used for training and counter-terrorism operations, including 9,800 US troops.
The US originally planned to withdraw all but a small embassy-based force of 1,000 troops by the end of 2016.
However, due to a growing Taliban threat, US President Barack Obama has announced he will maintain troop numbers at 9,800 for most of 2016.
About 5,500 troops will still be in the country when he leaves office in 2017.
The top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen John Campbell, said last week that an enhanced military presence would be necessary if the Taliban were to be repelled.
That depends on how you look at it.
On 18 June 2013, the last Afghan districts - mainly along the eastern frontier, and in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban - moved formally from Nato forces to a full Afghan combat lead, a handover with great symbolic impact.
But if improving security for the average Afghan is the criterion by which success is measured, the answer is very different.
Militant violence has increased across the country following the departure of most foreign forces last year.
After more than a decade of war, the Taliban are a long way from being defeated and remain a formidable fighting force.
In recent weeks Taliban militants succeeded in briefly seizing the provincial capital of Kunduz, before eventually being repelled by Afghan forces.
It was their most significant military gain since being ousted from power in 2001.
Al-Qaeda also continues to operate in Afghanistan, while Islamic State militants have also conducted attacks in the country.
The Afghan government will welcome the move to extend the US military presence.
President Ashraf Ghani's government signed a Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the US in September 2014, allowing US soldiers to stay in the country to train and assist Afghanistan's security forces.
Earlier this year, Mr Ghani also said that a slower withdrawal would allow Afghan forces to be better trained and equipped.
Relations between the US and Afghanistan have significantly improved under Mr Ghani - his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, had refused to sign the BSA with the US. | International troops were sent to Afghanistan by the Western military alliance Nato after the Taliban were ousted in 2001 following the 9/11 attacks in the United States. |
23,421,571 | Richard Pope, Simon Odoni and Paul Gunter conned British investors out of £80m.
This was then funnelled off into US bank accounts for them to enjoy a lavish lifestyle.
The men were the backbone of an international crime gang that swindled at least 2,300 UK citizens.
The City of London police believe it's the UK's biggest boiler room scam.
"These men are amongst the most arrogant, ruthless and destructive criminals the City of London police have ever dealt with and deserve every day they will spend behind bars," said Det Insp Kerrie Gower, who led the investigation.
The men co-ordinated what police described as a network of Spanish boiler rooms, employing hundreds of people to cold call investors, using high-pressure and misleading sales tactics to con them into buying worthless shares.
Most of the victims were retired professionals whose losses ranged from a few hundred pounds to £1m.
Andrea Goswami, from Yorkshire, still can't find the words to describe her loss. Her husband Mark killed himself after losing around £200,000.
"How could they be so arrogant to think they could get away with it, and have no conscience about it, and just to destroy people's lives in this way, just for money and just for sheer greed, and is it greed that's all that it's about - they say money's the root of all evil and they are evil for what they've done," she said.
"I'm never going to get my life back - the life I had with my husband, my chances of a happy married life with my daughter - we were trying for another child at the time, those hopes have been destroyed. Financially it's been devastating and it's a struggle, it will continue to be a struggle because of what they did."
Mark Goswami's money, and all the other stolen savings, were used to expand the criminal network and pay for the gang's extravagant purchases.
They included a £350,000 private plane, 26 properties and a number of luxury cars and speedboats.
The sentencing marks a major milestone in a seven-year transatlantic investigation involving an array of law enforcement agencies, from Spain to Florida.
John Joyce, special agent in charge in Tampa, Florida, said the case was a great example of how law enforcement partnerships worked on an international scale.
"The United States Attorney's Office, HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] and the US Secret Service worked this case with their law enforcement partners from London to investigate, prosecute and convict Mr Gunter, Mr Odoni and Mr Pope.
"Their sentences should send a clear message to other fraudsters."
The fraud began in 2004 when Pope, 55, Gunter, 64 and Odoni, 56 acquired the identity of several fraudulent US-based companies. Call centres based in Spain were then used to try to sell fake stock to unsuspecting investors.
Websites and glossy brochures were used to give credibility to the gang's bogus investment opportunities.
The enormity of the case first came to light in 2006 when the City of London police linked a number of inquiries in the UK to activities under investigation by federal agencies in the US.
"The devastation and the impact that victims have suffered has been huge and it's had drastic consequences to individuals lives - marriages breaking down, selling of properties, individuals losing their businesses, having to work again when they were about to go in to retirement," said Det Insp Gower.
"The enormity and scale of the devastation, I can't even say in words what has happened in relation to this case."
Andrea Goswami travelled halfway round the world to tell her story in a Tampa courtroom.
"Going into the courtroom was the hardest thing I have ever had to do," she said.
But she was determined to get justice for her husband.
She said he was utterly destroyed by the realisation he'd been conned and the shame of losing everything he had invested in. Andrea only discovered the true scale of the losses after he died.
"He didn't want me to worry about it. My husband's a very proud man and he would never have told me the truth, he would have soldiered on. If he hadn't been so desperate at that time, if he'd only been able to talk to me about it - we could've got through it.
"He must have been so desperate about the situation and obviously didn't know what to do for the best - he'd feel like he failed us. It wasn't his fault but he wouldn't have seen it that way because that's the sort of person he was - very loving, kind and caring and very intelligent and wanted to do the best."
Richard Pope, originally from St Albans in Hertfordshire, was arrested in Spain and extradited to the US. He pleaded guilty in March 2011 of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud between 2004 and 2008.
In March 2013, the trials of Paul Gunter and Simon Odoni took place with Pope testifying against them. Both men were found guilty of three counts of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud, as well as 19 counts of mail and wire fraud and 19 counts of money laundering.
Pope and Gunter had originally worked together in insurance in the UK.
Gunter had lived in London but later emigrated to the US.
Odoni, also originally from St Albans, tried to avoid his bail in the UK by relocating to the Dominican Republic, living in one of the beachside properties purchased through the scam.
He was later arrested in Florida while travelling through Miami Airport.
Paul Gunter was sentenced to 25 years, Simon Odoni got 13 years and 4 months while Richard Pope received a far shorter sentence in return for his co-operation of 4 years and 9 months.
All three men are spending years behind bars. But no sentence will be long enough for Andrea Goswami and her family.
"They've got families of their own. Would they do that to their own families? It doesn't even bear thinking about what sort of a mind they must have. To me it's incomprehensible and it makes me so, so angry that when I see what they bought with all the victims' money - they bought houses and boats and cars and property and left us with nothing. No amount of money can ever ever replace my husband." | Three British men have been sentenced to a total of 43 years in prison in the United States for their part in one of the UK's biggest investment frauds. |
35,999,738 | Tooting Fire Station manager Sally Harper's daughter Katie Holloway, 22, joined the same south London station where her mother started in 1988.
The service had only seven women firefighters when the Ms Harper joined, compared with more than 300 now.
The new recruit was "immensely proud" of the role of women in the brigade.
Ms Harper said: "Katie may have joined the same station as me, but it has changed so much since the late '80s.
"My locker was in a cupboard, which I had to go through the men's changing rooms to access.
"After giving birth to my first daughter, Joanne, I was the first firefighter to come back to station after having a baby and attitudes towards women in the fire service were sometimes very challenging."
Ms Harper recalled a teacher's reaction at a school play when her daughter said: "I'm driving a fire engine like my mum."
"The teacher tried to correct her and said 'don't you mean your dad?' and Katie came straight back with 'No. Like my mum'," she said.
Ms Holloway, who has just completed her first full tour of duty, said: "I'm immensely proud of the work my mum and others have done for women in the fire service, which makes it a completely different experience to when she joined."
Her mother will be retiring later this year. | A mother and daughter have created history by serving as firefighters at the same time in the 150-year-old London Fire Brigade. |
37,209,271 | Nick Thomas, 45, from Ellesmere in Shropshire, was pulled unconscious from the water as he neared the end of the 21-mile endurance feat.
A spokesman for the Channel Swimming and Piloting Federation said he was taken from the water "less than a mile from the finish in France".
Mr Thomas had set off from Dover on Saturday morning and had been swimming for about 16 hours.
He was pulled unconscious from the water on Sunday before being given CPR and taken to Calais where he was pronounced dead.
"There was an extremely experienced support team on board the support vessel," the spokesman added.
"It is an extreme sport, we know the risks. He was doing what he loved doing. Our thoughts are with his family."
The 45-year-old had successfully swum the Channel in 2014 as part of an Enduroman ultra triathlon but at that time was wearing a wetsuit.
He was not wearing one on Saturday to comply with the Channel Swimming Association's rules for cross channel swimming.
Enduroman Ultra Events, which was tweeting his solo progress, wrote: "Our friend Nick Thomas left us whilst doing what he loved - he just kept going.
"He'll always be a part of what we do and who we are." | A man has died while trying to swim the English Channel. |
38,849,393 | The incident happened on the B4314 Princess Gate, Narberth, at about 20:15 GMT on Thursday.
Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service said the women were not trapped but have been taken to hospital. The extent of their injuries is unknown.
The car was winched out from underneath the tree, the fire service added.
High winds caused disruption on several roads across Wales on Thursday evening.
The A485 was partially closed by a fallen tree at Llanilar in Ceredigion, as was the A470 in Brecon.
Trees also came down on the A4075 at Yerbeston in Pembrokeshire and the A5104 at Penyffordd in Flintshire.
The A55 Britannia Bridge across the Menai Straits was closed to high-sided vehicles. | Three women have been injured after a tree fell onto a car in Pembrokeshire during high winds. |
28,088,743 | Presiding officer Tricia Marwick will formally receive the giant tapestry which has been touring the country.
She will call for people from across Scotland to help stitch a new People's Panel into the artwork.
It is hoped the new panel will be "a colourful commemoration of the parliament building and its link to the Tapestry".
Tapestry artist Andrew Crummy will be present at the ceremony, as will author Alexander McCall-Smith and historian Alistair Moffat.
The Great Tapestry of Scotland is the world's longest embroidered tapestry.
The 143m-long design tells the "story of Scotland" across 160 intricate panels.
Each covers a different period of Scottish history, from the Battle of Bannockburn to the reconvening of the Scottish parliament in 1999.
It took 1,000 volunteers more than 50,000 hours to complete the work, which is 70m longer than the famous Bayeux Tapestry in Normandy.
The charitable trust which looks after the tapestry will display it at the parliament until 13 September. | The Great Tapestry of Scotland returns to Holyrood later, with the public being urged to help complete it. |
38,894,024 | The United Automobile Workers union negotiated a profit sharing deal in 2011.
It is worth up to $1,000 per $1bn of profit the company makes in the continent.
However, net profit for the whole of GM dropped 2.7% last year to $9.43bn after foreign exchange losses.
A jump in sales in mid-size pick-up trucks and SUVs aided sales in the US. Chevrolet was the fastest growing US GM brand in 2016, increasing its share of the US retail market by 0.5 percentage points.
A year earlier, payments of up to $11,000 were awarded to union workers after $11bn of North American profits were posted. The award is based on working more than an average of 35 hours per week during the year.
In Europe, the company reported a narrower loss of $257m, compared with $813m in 2015, as sales rose.
GM sold a record 10 million vehicles in 2016, up 1.2% from 2015, with 3.04 million vehicles sold in the US.
In China, deliveries rose 7.1% to a record 3.87 million vehicles and in Europe, its Opel and Vauxhall marques posted a 4% sales increase.
GM said fourth-quarter net profit fell partly because of $500m in currency losses, mostly from the decline of the pound.
The carmaker forecast profit per share in 2017 would be the same or slightly better than last year. | Workers paid hourly at General Motors in the US will receive bonuses of $12,000 (£9,700) after the firm made a profit of $12bn in North America. |
40,328,605 | Ryan Smyth, 29, from Windsor Gardens in Bangor, was also charged with possession of a firearm and ammunition with intent to endanger life.
He applied for bail but was refused during a hearing at Downpatrick Magistrates Court.
A detective told the court: "We believe the murder was part of ongoing mounting tensions within South East Antrim UDA."
He said the police had carried out a number of searches, but had yet to find the murder weapon.
Mr Horner, 35, was shot in front of his three-year-old son outside Sainsbury's on the outskirts of Bangor three weeks ago.
Ten days ago, a 28-year-old man from Newtownards, Alan Wilson, was also charged with the murder. | A man has appeared in court charged with the murder of Colin Horner outside a Bangor supermarket last month. |
35,683,137 | Media playback is not supported on this device
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Scrum V is every Sunday throughout the rugby season on BBC Two Wales, online or on demand. | Scrum V highlights as Scarlets' pro 12 title challenge takes a wobble with defeat at Edinburgh. |
34,667,089 | Nathan Matthews said he held the power tool using one hand and had acted alone when he dismembered his stepsister after accidentally killing her.
But the prosecution say his account of Miss Watts' death is a "complete nonsense" and he and his girlfriend were "in it together" from the start.
Mr Matthews and Shauna Hoare deny murder and conspiring to kidnap Becky.
Under examination about how he cut up the body at 14 Cotton Mill Lane, Mr Matthews said it "took a while" to dismember Becky's body, but said it was "stupid" to suggest it might have been six hours.
Mr Matthews said he believed Miss Watts could be subdued and kidnapped in "five minutes", while his girlfriend was in the garden at 18 Crown Hill, smoking a cigarette.
But things had gone "horribly wrong" and he could not tell anyone about it.
"The truth is, I didn't plan for this, for what happened," Mr Matthews said.
Mr Matthews claimed Becky had not put up a violent struggle for her life and had not screamed or called out when he attacked her, wearing a mask and covering her mouth with tape before trying to get her into a suitcase.
Prosecutor William Mousley said his account of events on the morning of 19 February were exposed as a "complete nonsense" when examined in any detail.
He suggested that Mr Matthews had never worn a mask - and that Miss Watts had laughed at him thinking it "all rather pathetic" - and Mr Matthews "lost it and killed her".
But it would also have been an "awful lot easier" to kidnap Becky, if he had help, Mr Mousley suggested.
Mr Matthews, of Hazelbury Drive in Warmley, South Gloucestershire, admits perverting the course of justice, preventing lawful burial and possessing a prohibited weapon.
Ms Hoare, 21, of Cotton Mill Lane, Bristol, denies murder and conspiracy to kidnap, a weapons charge, perverting the course of justice and preventing a burial.
Two other men, Donovan Demetrius, 29, and James Ireland, 23, deny assisting an offender.
The trial continues. | The man accused of murdering Becky Watts said he closed his eyes when he used a circular saw to cut up her body. |
30,892,550 | The city will vote on 7 February and counting is due on 10 February.
Ms Bedi will challenge the former chief minister and anti-corruption campaigner Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Delhi has been without a government for a year after Mr Kejriwal resigned when his anti-corruption bill was blocked.
Since then, the state has been governed directly by the federal authorities.
"Today the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] parliamentary board met... and decided that Kiran Bedi will fight for the BJP in the coming Delhi election," party president Amit Shah told reporters at a late-night press conference on Monday.
"She will be the chief ministerial candidate," he added.
In her first comments since joining the BJP, Ms Bedi has promised good governance and to make Delhi safer for women.
Ms Bedi, 65, was the first woman to join the Indian police service in 1972 and held several senior positions, working in traffic, prison management and drug control, and later serving as a UN peacekeeping adviser.
She attracted global attention when she headed Delhi's notorious Tihar Jail, where she introduced yoga and literacy classes for inmates.
Ms Bedi and Mr Kejriwal worked together during the anti-corruption campaign, led by social activist Anna Hazare, but the two have had a falling out in recent months.
Mr Kejriwal congratulated her on her nomination and challenged her to a public debate.
Ms Bedi said she accepted the challenge, but said she would debate him "on the floor of the house".
The AAP did not do well in last summer's general election, but in recent weeks Mr Kejriwal has once again emerged as the major challenge to the BJP's electoral hopes in Delhi.
The BJP was the single largest party in the 70-member state assembly in the December 2013 election when the party won 31 seats and one seat was won by its ally the Shiromani Akali Dal.
But because the BJP fell short of a majority in the assembly, Mr Kejriwal formed a government with support from the Congress party. The AAP had 28 seats while the Congress had just eight.
Mr Kejriwal resigned on 14 February after 49 days in office after opposition politicians blocked his bill, which would have created an independent body with the power to investigate politicians and civil servants suspected of corruption. | India's governing BJP party has named former senior policewoman Kiran Bedi as its candidate for chief minister in upcoming Delhi elections. |
37,961,500 | The woman was attacked in an alleyway in Tunbridge Wells.
She first saw the man in Mount Pleasant Road at about 02:00 GMT on Friday. Two passers-by walked her to Camden Road, but she later saw the man again. He raped her near Albion Road.
An 18-year-old man has been arrested and remains in custody. Kent police are trying to find witnesses.
Det Insp Geoff Payne said: "We would also particularly like to speak to two men, who before the incident, came forward to offer assistance to the victim and walked with her." | A woman has been raped by a man she had seen while walking through a town centre in the early hours. |
35,737,027 | The world number three is 12 under par, with overnight leader Adam Scott (73) and defending champion Dustin Johnson (71) nine under.
England's Danny Willett (72) is two shots further back, alongside Phil Mickelson (70) and Bubba Watson (71).
Northern Irishman McIlroy has not dropped a shot for 33 holes.
He has switched to a 'crosshanded' putting method after missing the cut at the Honda Classic last week.
"It was good. The wind was coming from a different direction so it made the course play a little bit tougher," said McIlroy.
"I played a solid round of golf, didn't make any mistakes. I felt really good about it. I'll have to do the same thing tomorrow."
McIlroy, who started the day two behind Australia's Scott, birdied the first, fifth, seventh and 10th before parring the last eight holes, sinking testing putts at the 12th and 18th.
American Johnson sank a six-foot birdie putt at 16 to reach 10 under but bogeyed the last, while Scott also slipped back with a late bogey, dropping a shot at 17.
McIlroy is aiming to win his 12th PGA Tour title and first since Quail Hollow last May, and his 20th career victory overall. | Rory McIlroy fired a four-under 68 to move into a three-shot lead going into the final round of the WGC-Cadillac Championship at Doral. |
25,212,514 | A spokesman confirmed the effort was being headed up by Andy Rubin, who was previously in charge of the Android operating system.
The spokesman was unwilling to discuss what kind of robot was being developed.
But the New York Times reports that at this stage Google does not plan to sell the resulting product to consumers.
Instead, the newspaper suggests, Google's robots could be paired with its self-driving car research to help automate the delivery of goods to people's doors.
It notes the company has recently begun a same-day grocery delivery service in San Francisco and San Jose, called Google Shopping Express.
That would pitch the initiative against Amazon's Prime Air Project, which envisages using drones to transport goods to its customers by air.
"Any description of what Andy and his team might actually create are speculations of the author and the people he interviewed," said Google of the NYT article.
One UK-based expert welcomed the news.
"This is a clear sign that days of personalised robotic technology entering the mainstream market is imminent," said Prof Sethu Vijayakumar, director of the Robotics Lab at the University of Edinburgh.
"Movement and sensing systems for robotics technology have made great strides. Now, with mainstream companies like Google taking up the challenge, other elements such as robust software integration, standardisation and modular design will pick up pace."
The search giant's robotics project is based in Palo Alto, California, and will have an office in Japan - one of the world's leading nations in the field.
Speaking to the NYT, Mr Rubin said Google had a "10-year vision" for bringing the effort to fruition.
"I feel with robotics it's a green field," he said.
"We're building hardware, we're building software. We're building systems, so one team will be able to understand the whole stack."
The companies acquired by Google to jumpstart its effort are: | Google has revealed it has taken over seven robotics companies in the past half a year and has begun hiring staff to develop its own product. |
36,811,976 | The Welsh 400m hurdler, 32, met the Olympic qualifying time in May, but failed to win automatic Rio selection at the British Championships.
The 2012 Olympian failed in his appeal against the decision.
"I'm pretty disappointed he hasn't been selected," Jackson told BBC Sport.
"I think what he's capable of is under 49 seconds - I truly believe that - and if you can get under 49 seconds, you can be in the final."
A British Athletics statement explained that because Williams was only eligible in round four of the organisation's selection process, the "selection panel would need to believe he would win a medal in Rio or at a future Olympic Games" in order for him to be included.
Williams has never won an Olympic medal, but did claim gold at the 2012 European Championships.
Asked if Williams could feel hard done by, Jackson said: "I think so. I have really mixed emotions with that [British Athletics' stance]. Sometimes it feels like they favour some athletes over others.
"They say Rhys may not be able to do it [win a medal], but I know Rhys had a really good, consistent winter and he's put a lot of time and effort in there and has no injuries.
"He's always scrapping for that great result he's capable of, and when you've had the winter preparation he has, he's more than capable of doing that.
"You just never know what you can do when you go to a major championship. It's not like he won't get through the first round - he's likely to get through to the semi. And when you get through to the semi, anything can happen."
Williams, who received a four-month ban for doping in 2014, had previously spoken of his belief that he could be selected for Rio.
But he was left out of the squad after missing out on a place in the top two at the British Championships in June and finishing fifth at the European Championships in July.
Seren Bundy-Davies was the only Welsh track and field athlete named in Great Britain's team for the Olympics when it was announced on Wednesday.
It means Wales will have just one athletics competitor at an Olympics for the first time since the 1952 Helsinki Games. | Rhys Williams has reason to feel aggrieved about his omission from Team GB's squad for the Rio Olympics, says former 110m hurdles world record holder Colin Jackson. |
35,695,648 | Abu Anis only realised something unusual was happening when he heard the sound of explosions coming from the old city on the western bank of the Tigris as it runs through Mosul.
"I phoned some friends over there, and they said armed groups had taken over, some of them foreign, some Iraqis," the computer technician said. "The gunmen told them, 'We've come to get rid of the Iraqi army, and to help you.'"
The following day, the attackers crossed the river and took the other half of the city. The Iraqi army and police, who vastly outnumbered their assailants, broke and fled, officers first, many of the soldiers stripping off their uniforms as they joined a flood of panicked civilians.
It was 10 June 2014, and Iraq's second biggest city, with a population of around two million, had just fallen to the militants of the group then calling itself Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham/the Levant (Isis or Isil).
Four days earlier, black banners streaming, a few hundred of the Sunni militants had crossed the desert border in a cavalcade from their bases in eastern Syria and met little resistance as they moved towards their biggest prize.
Rich dividends were immediate. The Iraqi army, rebuilt, trained and equipped by the Americans since the US-led invasion of 2003, abandoned large quantities of armoured vehicles and advanced weaponry, eagerly seized by the militants. They also reportedly grabbed something like $500m from the Central Bank's Mosul branch.
Despite territorial losses, IS survives, thanks in no small part to its status as "the best-funded terrorist organisation" in history. While most people decry the validity inferred from the name of IS as a "state", the group's financing is certainly more reminiscent of a state than that of organisations such as al-Qaeda that relied heavily on donations to fund their operations.
Islamic State: The struggle to stay rich
"At the beginning, they behaved well," said Abu Anis. "They took down all the barricades the army had put up between quarters. People liked that. On their checkpoints they were friendly and helpful - 'Anything you need, we're here for you.'"
The Mosul honeymoon was to last a few weeks. But just down the road, terrible things were already happening.
As the Iraqi army collapsed throughout the north, the militants moved swiftly down the Tigris river valley. Towns and villages fell like skittles. Within a day they had captured the town of Baiji and its huge oil refinery, and moved on swiftly to seize Saddam Hussein's old hometown, Tikrit, a Sunni hotbed.
Just outside Tikrit is a big military base, taken over by the Americans in 2003 and renamed Camp Speicher after the first US casualty in the 1991 "Desert Storm" Gulf war against Iraq, a pilot called Scott Speicher, shot down over al-Anbar province in the west.
Camp Speicher, by now full of Iraqi military recruits, was surrounded by the Isis militants and surrendered. The thousands of captives were sorted, the Shia were weeded out, bound, and trucked away to be systematically shot dead in prepared trenches. Around 1,700 are believed to have been massacred in cold blood. The mass graves are still being exhumed.
Far from trying to cover up the atrocity, Isis revelled in it, posting on the internet videos and pictures showing the Shia prisoners being taken away and shot by the black-clad militants.
In terms of exultant cruelty and brutality, worse was not long in coming.
After a pause of just two months, Isis - now rebranded as "Islamic State" (IS) - erupted again, taking over large areas of northern Iraq controlled by the Kurds.
That included the town of Sinjar, mainly populated by the Yazidis, an ancient religious minority regarded by IS as heretics.
Hundreds of Yazidi men who failed to escape were simply killed. Women and children were separated and taken away as war booty, to be sold and bartered as chattels, and used as sex slaves. Thousands are still missing, enduring that fate.
Deliberately shocking, bloodthirsty exhibitionism reached a climax towards the end of the same month, August 2014.
IS issued a video showing its notorious, London-accented and now late executioner Mohammed Emwazi (sardonically nicknamed "Jihadi John" by former captives) gruesomely beheading American journalist James Foley.
In the following weeks, more American and British journalists and aid workers - Steven Sotloff, David Haines, Alan Henning, and Peter Kassig (who had converted to Islam and changed his name to Abdul Rahman) - appeared being slaughtered in similar, slickly produced videos, replete with propaganda statements and dire warnings.
In the space of a few months, IS had blasted its way from obscurity on to the centre of the world stage. Almost overnight, it became a household word.
Seven-and-a-half thousand miles (12,000km) away, then Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott summed up the breathtaking novelty of the horror. It was, he said "medieval barbarism, perpetrated and spread with the most modern of technology".
IS had arrived, and the world was taking notice. But the men in black did not appear out of the blue. They had been a long time coming.
The theology of murder
The ideological or religious roots of IS and like-minded groups go deep into history, almost to the beginning of Islam itself in the 7th Century AD.
Like Christianity six centuries before it, and Judaism some eight centuries before that, Islam was born into the harsh, tribal world of the Middle East.
"The original texts, the Old Testament and the Koran, reflected primitive tribal Jewish and Arab societies, and the codes they set forth were severe," writes the historian and author William Polk.
"They aimed, in the Old Testament, at preserving and enhancing tribal cohesion and power and, in the Koran, at destroying the vestiges of pagan belief and practice. Neither early Judaism nor Islam allowed deviation. Both were authoritarian theocracies."
As history moved on, Islam spread over a vast region, encountering and adjusting to numerous other societies, faiths and cultures. Inevitably in practice it mutated in different ways, often becoming more pragmatic and indulgent, often given second place to the demands of power and politics and temporal rulers.
For hardline Muslim traditionalists this amounted to deviationism, and from early on, there was a clash of ideas in which those arguing for a strict return to the "purity" of the early days of Islam often paid a price.
The eminent scholar Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780-855), who founded one of the main schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence, was jailed and once flogged unconscious in a dispute with the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. Nearly five centuries later, another supreme theologian of the same strict orthodox school, Ibn Taymiyya, died in prison in Damascus.
These two men are seen as the spiritual forefathers of later thinkers and movements which became known as "salafist", advocating a return to the ways of the first Muslim ancestors, the salaf al-salih (righteous ancestors).
They inspired a later figure whose thinking and writings were to have a huge and continuing impact on the region and on the salafist movement, one form of which, Wahhabism, took his name.
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab was born in 1703 in a small village in the Nejd region in the middle of the Arabian peninsula.
A devout Islamic scholar, he espoused and developed the most puritanical and strict version of what he saw as the original faith, and sought to spread it by entering pacts with the holders of political and military power.
In an early foray in that direction, his first action was to destroy the tomb of Zayd ibn al-Khattab, one of the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad, on the grounds that by the austere doctrine of salafist theology, the veneration of tombs constitutes shirk, the revering of something or someone other than Allah.
But it was in 1744 that Abd al-Wahhab made his crucial alliance with the local ruler, Muhammad ibn Saud. It was a pact whereby Wahhabism provided the spiritual or ideological dimension for Saudi political and military expansion, to the benefit of both.
Passing through several mutations, that dual alliance took over most of the peninsula and has endured to this day, with the House of Saud ruling in sometimes uneasy concert with an ultra-conservative Wahhabi religious establishment.
The entrenchment of Wahhabi salafism in Saudi Arabia - and the billions of petrodollars to which it gained access - provided one of the wellsprings for jihadist militancy in the region in modern times. Jihad means struggle on the path of Allah, which can mean many kinds of personal struggle, but more often is taken to mean waging holy war.
But the man most widely credited, or blamed, for bringing salafism into the 20th Century was the Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb. He provided a direct bridge from the thought and heritage of Abd al-Wahhab and his predecessors to a new generation of jihadist militants, leading up to al-Qaeda and all that was to follow.
Born in a small village in Upper Egypt in 1906, Sayyid Qutb found himself at odds with the way Islam was being taught and managed around him. Far from converting him to the ways of the West, a two-year study period in the US in the late 1940s left him disgusted at what he judged unbridled godless materialism and debauchery, and his fundamentalist Islamic outlook was honed harder.
Back in Egypt, he developed the view that the West was imposing its control directly or indirectly over the region in the wake of the Ottoman Empire's collapse after World War One, with the collaboration of local rulers who might claim to be Muslims, but who had in fact deviated so far from the right path that they should no longer be considered such.
For Qutb, offensive jihad against both the West and its local agents was the only way for the Muslim world to redeem itself. In essence, this was a kind of takfir - branding another Muslim an apostate or kafir (infidel), making it justified and even obligatory and meritorious to kill him.
Although he was a theorist and intellectual rather than an active jihadist, Qutb was judged dangerously subversive by the Egyptian authorities. He was hanged in 1966 on charges of involvement in a Muslim Brotherhood plot to assassinate the nationalist President, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Qutb was before his time, but his ideas lived on in the 24 books he wrote, which have been read by tens of millions, and in the personal contact he had with the circles of people like Ayman al-Zawahiri, another Egyptian who is the current al-Qaeda leader.
Another intimate of the al-Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden said: "Qutb was the one who most affected our generation." He has also been described as "the source of all jihadist thought", and "the philosopher of the Islamic revolution".
More than 35 years after he was hanged, the official commission of inquiry into al-Qaeda's 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in 2001 concluded: "Bin Laden shares Qutb's stark view, permitting him and his followers to rationalise even unprovoked mass murder as righteous defence of an embattled faith."
And his influence lingers on today. Summing up the roots of IS and its predecessors, the Iraqi expert on Islamist movements Hisham al-Hashemi said: "They are founded on two things: a takfiri faith based on the writings of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and as methodology, the way of Sayyid Qutb."
The theology of militant jihadism was in place. But to flourish, it needed two things - a battlefield, and strategists to shape the battle.
Afghanistan was to provide the opportunity for both.
Rise of al-Qaeda
The Soviet invasion in 1979, and the 10 years of occupation that followed, provided a magnet for would-be jihadists from around the Arab world. Some 35,000 of them flocked to Afghanistan during that period, to join the jihad and help the mainly Islamist Afghan mujahideen guerrillas turn the country into Russia's Vietnam.
There is little evidence that the "Afghan Arabs", as they became known, played a pivotal combat role in driving the Soviets out. But they made a major contribution in setting up support networks in Pakistan, channelling funds from Saudi Arabia and other donors, and funding schools and militant training camps. It was a fantastic opportunity for networking and forging enduring relationships as well as tasting jihad first hand.
Ironically, they found themselves on the same team as the Americans. The CIA's Operation Cyclone channelled hundreds of millions of dollars through Pakistan to militant Afghan mujahedeen leaders such as Golbuddin Hekmatyar, who associated closely with the Arab jihadists.
It was in Afghanistan that virtually all the major figures in the new jihadist world cut their teeth. They helped shape events there in the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, a period that saw the emergence of al-Qaeda as a vehicle for a wider global jihad, and Afghanistan provided a base for it.
By the time the Taliban took over in 1996, they were virtually in partnership with Osama Bin Laden and his men, and it was from there that al-Qaeda launched its fateful 9/11 attack in 2001.
The formative Afghan experience provided both the combat-hardened salafist jihadist leaders and the strategists who were to play an instrumental role in the emergence of the IS of today.
Most significant was the Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who more than anybody else ended up being the direct parent of IS in almost every way.
A high-school dropout whose prison career began with a sentence for drug and sexual offences, Zarqawi found religion after being sent to classes at a mosque in the Jordanian capital, Amman. He arrived in Pakistan to join jihad in Afghanistan just in time to see the Soviets withdraw in 1989, but stayed on to work with jihadists.
After a stint back in Jordan where he received a 15-year jail sentence on terrorist charges but was later released in a general amnesty, Zarqawi finally met Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in 1999. By all accounts the two al-Qaeda leaders did not take to him. They found him brash and headstrong, and they did not like the many tattoos from his previous life that he had not been able to erase.
But he was charismatic and dynamic, and although he did not join al-Qaeda, they eventually put him in charge of a training camp in Herat, western Afghanistan. It was here that he worked with an ideologue whose radical writings became the scriptures governing subsequent salafist blood-letting: Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir.
"The brutality of beheading is intended, even delightful to God and His Prophet," wrote Muhajir in his book The Theology of Jihad, more generally referred to as the Theology of Bloodshed. His writings provided religious cover for the most brutal excesses, and also for the killing of Shia as infidels, and their Sunni collaborators as apostates.
The other book that has been seen as the virtual manual - even the Mein Kampf - for IS and its forebears is The Management of Savagery, by Abu Bakr Naji, which appeared on the internet in 2004.
"We need to massacre and to do just as has been done to Banu Qurayza, so we must adopt a ruthless policy in which hostages are brutally and graphically murdered unless our demands are met," Naji wrote. He was referring to a Jewish tribe in seventh-century Arabia which reportedly met the same fate at the hands of early Muslims as the Yazidis of Sinjar did nearly 14 centuries later: the men were slaughtered, the women and children enslaved.
Naji's sanctioning of exemplary brutality was part of a much wider strategy to prepare the way for an Islamic caliphate. Based partly on the lessons of Afghanistan, his book is a detailed blueprint for provoking the West into interventions which would further rally the Muslims to jihad, leading to the ultimate collapse of the enemy.
The scenario is not so fanciful if you consider that the Soviet Union went to pieces barely two years after its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Naji is reported to have been killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan's Waziristan province in 2008.
Iraq fiasco
The fallout from the 9/11 attacks changed things radically for the jihadists in late 2001. The US and allies bombed and invaded Afghanistan, ousting the Taliban, and launching a wider "War on Terror" against al-Qaeda.
Bin Laden went underground, and Zarqawi and others fled. The dispersing militants, fired up, badly needed another battlefield on which to provoke and confront their Western enemies.
Luck was on their side. The Americans and their allies were not long in providing it.
Their invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003 was, it turned out, entirely unjustified on its own chosen grounds - Saddam Hussein's alleged production of weapons of mass destruction, and his supposed support for international terrorists, neither of which was true.
By breaking up every state and security structure and sending thousands of disgruntled Sunni soldiers and officials home, they created precisely the state of "savagery", or violent chaos, that Abu Bakr Naji envisaged for the jihadists to thrive in.
Iraq was on the way to becoming what US officials are now calling the "parent tumour" of the IS presence in the region.
Under Saddam's tightly-controlled Baath Party regime, the Sunnis enjoyed pride of place over the majority Shia, who have strong ties with their co-religionists across the border in Iran.
The US-led intervention disempowered the Sunnis, creating massive resentment and providing fertile ground for the outside salafist jihadists to take root in.
They were not long in spotting their constituency. Abu Musab Zarqawi moved in, and within a matter of months was organising deadly, brutal and provocative attacks aimed both at Western targets and at the majority Shia community.
Doctrinal differences between the two sects go back to disputes over the succession to the Prophet Muhammad in the early decades of Islam, but conflict between them is generally based on community, history and sectarian politics rather than religion as such.
Setting himself up with a new group called Tawhid wa al-Jihad (Tawhid means declaring the uniqueness of Allah), Zarqawi immediately forged a pragmatic operational alliance with underground cells of the remnants of Saddam's regime, providing the two main intertwined strands of the Sunni-based insurgency: militant Jihadism, and Iraqi Sunni nationalism.
His group claimed responsibility for several deadly attacks in August 2003 that set the pattern for much of what was to come: a suicide truck bomb explosion at the UN headquarters in Baghdad that killed the envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 20 of his staff, and a suicide car bomb blast in Najaf which killed the influential Shia ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim and 80 of his followers. The bombers were salafist jihadists, but logistics were reportedly provided by underground Baathists.
The following year, Zarqawi himself was believed by the CIA to be the masked killer shown in a video beheading an American hostage, Nicholas Berg, in revenge for the Abu Ghraib prison abuses of Iraqi detainees by members of the US military.
As the battle with the Americans and the new Shia-dominated Iraqi government intensified, Zarqawi finally took the oath of loyalty to Bin Laden, and his group became the official al-Qaeda branch in Iraq.
But they were never really on the same page. Zarqawi's provocative attacks on Shia mosques and markets, triggering sectarian carnage, and his penchant for publicising graphic brutality, were all in line with the radical teachings he had imbibed. But they drew rebukes from the al-Qaeda leadership, concerned at the impact on Muslim opinion.
Zarqawi paid little heed. His strain of harsh radicalism passed to his successors after he was killed by a US air strike in June 2006 on his hideout north of Baghdad. He was easily identified by the tattoos he had never managed to get rid of.
The direct predecessor of IS emerged just a few months later, with the announcement of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) as an umbrella bringing the al-Qaeda branch together with other insurgent factions.
But tough times lay ahead. In January 2007, the Americans began "surging" their own troops in Iraq from 132,000 to a peak of 168,000, adopting a much more hands-on approach in mentoring the rebuilt Iraqi army. At the same time, they enticed Sunni tribes in western al-Anbar province to stop supporting the jihadists and join the US-led Coalition-Iraqi government drive to quell the insurgency, which many did, on promises that they would be given jobs and control over their own security.
By the time both the new ISI and al-Qaeda leaders were killed in a US-Iraqi army raid on their hideout in April 2010, the insurgency was at its lowest ebb, pushed back into remote corners of Sunni Iraq.
They were both replaced by one man, about whom very little was publicly known at the time, and not much more since: Ibrahim Awad al-Badri, better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Six eventful years later, he would be proclaimed Caliph Ibrahim, Commander of the Faithful and leader of the newly declared "Islamic State".
Territorial takeover
Baghdadi's career is so shrouded in mist that there are very few elements of it that can be regarded as fact. By all accounts he was born near Samarra, north of Baghdad, so the epithet "Baghdadi" seems to have been adopted to give him a more national image, while "Abu Bakr" evokes the first successor to (and father-in-law of) Prophet Muhammad.
Like the original Abu Bakr, Baghdadi is also reputed to come from the Prophet's Quraysh clan. That, and his youth - born in 1971 - may have been factors in his selection as leader.
All accounts of his early life agree that he was a quiet, scholarly and devout student of Islam, taking a doctorate at the Islamic University of Baghdad. Some even say he was shy, and a bit of a loner, living for 10 years in a room beside a small Sunni mosque in western Baghdad.
The word "charismatic" has never been attached to him.
As a youth, Baghdadi had a passion for Koranic recitation and was meticulous in his observance of religious law. His family nicknamed him The Believer because he would chastise his relatives for failing to live up to his stringent standards.
Who is Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?
But by the time of the US-led invasion in 2003, he appears to have become involved with a militant Sunni group, heading its Sharia (Islamic law) committee. American troops detained him, and he was reportedly held in the detention centre at Camp Bucca in the south for most of 2004.
Camp Bucca (named after a fireman who died in the 9/11 attacks) housed up to 20,000 inmates and became a university from which many IS and other militant leaders graduated. It gave them an unrivalled opportunity to imbibe and spread radical ideologies and sabotage skills and develop important contacts and networks, all in complete safety, under the noses and protection of their enemies.
Baghdadi would also certainly have met in Camp Bucca many of the ex-Baathist military commanders with whom he was to form such a deadly partnership.
The low-profile, self-effacing Baghdadi rang no alarm bells with the Americans. They released him, having decided he was low-risk.
But he went on to work his way steadily up through the insurgent hierarchy, virtually unknown to the Iraqi public.
By the time Baghdadi took over in 2010, the curtains seemed to be coming down for the jihadists in the Iraqi field of "savagery".
But another one miraculously opened up for them across the border in neighbouring Syria at just the right moment. In the spring of 2011, the outbreak of civil war there offered a promising new arena of struggle and expansion. The majority Sunnis were in revolt against the oppressive regime of Bashar al-Assad, dominated by his Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shia Islam.
Baghdadi sent his men in. By December 2011, deadly car bombs were exploding in Damascus which turned out to be the work of the then shadowy al-Nusra Front. It announced itself as an al-Qaeda affiliate the following month. It was headed by a Syrian jihadist, Abu Mohammed al-Julani. He had been sent by Baghdadi, but had his own ideas.
Jostling with a huge array of competing rebel groups in Syria, al-Nusra won considerable support on the ground because of its fearless and effective fighting skills, and the flow of funds and foreign fighters that support from al-Qaeda stimulated. It was relatively moderate in its salafist approach, and cultivated local relationships.
Al-Nusra was slipping out of Baghdadi's control, and he didn't like it. In April 2013, he tried to rein it back, announcing that al-Nusra was under his command in a new Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (Syria or the Levant). Isis, or Isil, was born.
During the short and turbulent period over which it has imposed itself as a major news brand, so-called Islamic State has confused the world with a series of name changes reflecting its mutations and changing aspirations, leaving a situation where there is no universal agreement on how to refer to it.
But Julani rebelled, and renewed his oath of loyalty to al-Qaeda's global leadership, now under Ayman al-Zawahiri following Bin Laden's death in 2011. Zawahiri ordered Baghdadi to go back to being just the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) and leave al-Nusra as the al-Qaeda Syria franchise.
It was Baghdadi's turn to ignore orders from head office.
Before 2013 was out, Isis and al-Nusra were at each other's throats. Hundreds were killed in vicious internecine clashes which ended with Isis being driven out of most of north-west Syria by al-Nusra and allied Syrian rebel factions. But Isis took over Raqqa, a provincial capital in the north-east, and made it its capital. Many of the foreign jihadists who had joined al-Nusra also went over to Isis, seeing it as tougher and more radical. In early 2014, al-Qaeda formally disowned Isis.
Isis had shaken off the parental shackles. But it had lost a lot of ground, and was bottled up. One of its main slogans, Remaining and Expanding, risked becoming empty. So where next?
Fortune smiled once more. Back in Iraq, conditions had again become ripe for the jihadists. The Americans had gone, since the end of 2011. Sunni areas were again aflame and in revolt, enraged by the sectarian policies of the Shia Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki. Sunnis felt marginalised, oppressed and angry.
When Isis decided to move, it was pushing at an open door. In fact, it had never really left Iraq, just gone into the woodwork. As it swept through Sunni towns, cities and villages with bewildering speed in June 2014, sleeper cells of salafist jihadists and ex-Saddamist militants and other sympathisers broke cover and joined the takeover.
With the capture of Mosul, Isis morphed swiftly into a new mode of being, like a rocket jettisoning its carrier. No longer just a shadowy terrorist group, it was suddenly a jihadist army not only threatening the Iraqi state, but challenging the entire world.
The change was signalled on 29 June by the proclamation of the "Islamic State", replacing all previous incarnations, and the establishment of the "caliphate". A few days later, the newly anointed Caliph Ibrahim, aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, made a surprise appearance in Mosul in the pulpit of the historic Grand Mosque of Nour al-Din al-Zangi, heavily laden with anti-Crusader associations. He called on the world's Muslims to rally behind him.
By declaring a caliphate and adopting the generic "Islamic State" title, the organisation was clearly setting its sights far beyond Syria and Iraq. It was going global.
Announcing a caliphate has huge significance and resonance within Islam. While it remains the ideal, Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders had always shied away from it, for fear of failure. Now Baghdadi was trumping the parent organisation, setting IS up in direct competition with it for the leadership of global jihadism.
A caliphate (khilafa) is the rule or rein of a caliph (khalifa), a word which simply means a successor - primarily of the Prophet Muhammad. Under the first four caliphs who followed after he died in 632, the Islamic Caliphate burst out of Arabia and extended through modern-day Iran to the east, into Libya to the west, and to the Caucasus in the north.
The Umayyad caliphate which followed, based in Damascus, took over almost all of the lands that IS would like to control, including Spain. The Baghdad-based Abbasid caliphate took over in 750 and saw a flowering of science and culture, but found it hard to hold it all together, and Baghdad was sacked by the Mongols in 1258.
Emerging from that, the Ottoman Empire, based in Constantinople (Istanbul), stretched almost to Vienna at its peak, and was also a caliphate, though the distinction with empire was often blurred. The caliphate was finally abolished by Ataturk in 1924.
So when Baghdadi was declared Caliph of the Islamic State, it was an act of extraordinary ambition. He was claiming no less than the mantle of the Prophet, and of his followers who carried Islam into vast new realms of conquest and expansion.
For most Islamic scholars and authorities, not to mention Arab and Muslim leaders, such claims from the chief of one violent extremist faction had no legitimacy at all, and there was no great rush to embrace the new caliphate. But the millennial echoes it evoked did strike a chord with some Islamic romantics - and with some like-minded radical groups abroad.
Four months after the proclamation, a group of militants in Libya became the first to join up by pledging allegiance to Baghdadi, followed a month later by the Ansar Beit al-Maqdis jihadist faction in Egypt's Sinai. IS's tentacles spread deeper into Africa in March 2015 when Boko Haram in Nigeria took the oath of loyalty. Within a year, IS had branches or affiliates in 11 countries, though it held territory in only five, including Iraq and Syria.
It was in those two core countries that Baghdadi and his followers started implementing their state project on the ground, applying their own harsh vision of Islamic rule.
To the outside world, deprived of direct access to the areas controlled by IS, one of the most obvious and shocking aspects of this was their systematic destruction of ancient cultural and archaeological heritage sites and artefacts.
Some of the region's best-known and most-visited sites were devastated, including the magnificent temples of Bel and Baalshamin at Palmyra in Syria, and the Assyrian cities of Hatra and Nimrud in Iraq.
It wasn't just famous archaeological sites that came under attack. Christian churches and ancient monasteries, Shia mosques and shrines, and anything depicting figures of any sort were destroyed, and embellishments removed even from Sunni mosques. Barely a month after taking over Mosul, IS demolition squads levelled the 13th Century shrine of the Imam Awn al-Din, which had survived the Mongol invasion.
All of this was absolutely in line with IS's puritanical vision of Islam, under which any pictorial representation or shrine is revering something other than Allah, and any non-Muslim structures are monuments of idolatry. Even Saudi kings and princes to this day are buried without coffins in unmarked graves.
By posting videos of many of these acts which the rest of the world saw as criminal cultural vandalism, IS also undoubtedly intended to shock. In that sense, it was the cultural equivalent of beheading aid workers.
And there was a more practical and profitable side to the onslaught on cultural heritage. In highly organised manner, IS's Treasury Department issues printed permits to loot archaeological sites, and takes a percentage of the proceeds.
That is just the tip of the iceberg of a complex structure of governance and control put in place as IS gradually settled into its conquests, penetrating into every aspect of people's lives in exactly the same way as Saddam Hussein's intelligence apparatus had done.
Captured documents published by Der Spiegel last year give some idea of the role of ex-Baathist regime men in setting up and running IS in a highly structured and organised way, with much emphasis on intelligence and security.
Residents of Sunni strongholds like Mosul and Falluja in Iraq, and Raqqa in Syria, found that IS operatives already knew almost everything about everybody when they moved in and took over in 2014.
At checkpoints, ID cards were checked against databases on laptops, obtained from government ration or employee registers. Former members of the security forces had to go to specific mosques to "repent", hand over their weapons and receive a discharge paper.
"At first, all they did was change the preachers in the mosques to people with their own views," said a Mosul resident who fled a year later.
"But then they began to crack down. Women who had been able to go bare-headed now had to cover up, first with the headscarf and then with the full face-veil. Men have to grow beards and wear short-legged trousers. Cigarettes, hubble-bubble, music and cafes were banned, then satellite TV and mobile phones. Morals police [hisba] vehicles would cruise round, looking for offenders."
A Falluja resident recounted the story of a taxi-driver who had picked up a middle-aged woman not wearing a headscarf. They were stopped at an IS checkpoint, the woman given a veil and allowed to go, while the driver was sent to an Islamic court, and sentenced to two months' detention and to memorise a portion of the Koran. If you fail to memorise, the sentence is repeated.
"They have courts with judges, officials, records and files, and there are fixed penalties for each crime, it's not random," said the Falluja resident. "Adulterers are stoned to death. Thieves have their hands cut off. Gays are executed by being thrown off high buildings. Informers are shot dead, Shia militia prisoners are beheaded."
An activist based in Raqqa from a group called Al-Sharqiya 24 has been keeping a diary of what life is like under Islamic State group rule.
Life under 'Islamic State': Diaries
There are IS departments that carry the organisation's grip into every corner of life, including finance, agriculture, education, transport, health, welfare and utilities.
School curricula were overhauled in line with IS precepts, with history rewritten, all images being removed from schoolbooks and English taken off the menu.
"One thing you can say is this," said the Mosul resident. "There is absolutely no corruption, no wasta (knowing the right people and pulling strings). They are totally convinced they are on the right track."
One recent story tells a lot about IS and its ways.
As Iraqi security forces were pressing forward in areas around Ramadi earlier this year, civilians were fleeing the battle - and IS fighters, losing the day, were trying to sneak out too.
Two women, running from the combat zone, approached a police checkpoint.
As they were being waved through to safety, one of the women suddenly turned to the police, pointed at the other, and said : "This is not a woman. He's an IS emir [commander]."
The police investigated, and it was true. The other woman was a man, who had shaved, and put on makeup and women's clothes. He turned out to be top of the list of wanted local IS commanders.
"When IS arrived, he killed my husband, who was a policeman, raped me, and then took me as his wife," the woman told the police.
"I put up with him all this time, waiting to avenge my husband and my honour," she said. "I tricked him into shaving and putting on makeup, then denounced him to the police."
"Nour" is a woman from Raqqa, the so-called Islamic State's (IS) capital inside Syria. She managed to escape the city and is now a refugee in Europe, where she met up with the BBC.
This story is based on her experiences and those of her two sisters, who are still inside the IS-held city.
Taking on the world
Having taken over vast swathes of territory in Iraq with their lightning offensive in June 2014, the militants might have been expected to calm down and consolidate their gains.
But, like a shark that has to keep moving or else it will die, IS barely paused before initiating a new spiral of provocation and reprisals that was predictably to draw it into active conflict with almost all the major world powers.
Already, the June offensive had threatened the approaches to Baghdad, prompting the Americans to start bringing in hundreds of military advisers and trainers to see how to help the struggling Iraqi army.
Just two months later, the attack on Kurdish areas in the north triggered US air strikes in defence of the Kurdistan capital, Irbil, and then to help stave off the threat of genocide to the Yazidis. Fourteen other nations were to join the air campaign.
Ten days later, IS beheaded James Foley and the others followed, in line with the doctrine of exemplary brutality as punishment, deterrent and provocation. The most shocking was to come some months later, with the burning alive of the downed Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh. Shock intended.
The US-led bombing campaign was extended to Syria in September 2014 after IS besieged the Kurdish-held town of Kobane on the Turkish border. Coalition air strikes turned the tide there. IS lost hundreds of fighters killed at Kobane and elsewhere. More revenge was called for. IS turned abroad.
From the declaration of the caliphate until early 2016, some 90 terrorist attacks were either carried out or inspired by IS in 21 countries around the globe, from California to Sydney, with an estimated 1,400 victims killed. The attacks carried the same message of punishment, deterrence and provocation as the hostage beheadings, while also demonstrating IS's global reach.
At the same time, they carried through the militants' doctrine of distracting the enemy by setting fires in different locations and making him squander resources on security. For IS, "the enemy" is everybody who does not embrace it. The world is divided into Dawlat al-Islam, the State of Islam, and Dawlat al-Kufr, the State of Unbelief.
The most consequential of these atrocities were the downing of a Russian airliner over Sinai on 31 October 2015 and the Paris attacks on 13 November, provoking both Russia and France to intensify air strikes on IS targets in Syria.
The lone-wolf massacre at a gay club in Orlando, Florida, on 12 June 2016, while apparently inspired rather than organised by IS, would undoubtedly further stiffen the US's already steely resolve to finish the organisation.
Had IS gone mad? It seemed determined to take on the whole world. It was goading and confronting the Americans, the Russians, and a long list of others. By its own count, it had a mere 40,000 fighters at its command (other estimates go as low as half that).
Could it really challenge the global powers and hope to survive? Or could President Barack Obama fulfil his pledge to "degrade and ultimately destroy" IS?
Final showdown
If there seems to be something apocalyptic about IS's "bring it on" defiance, that's because there is.
When the organisation first brought out its online magazine - a major showcase and recruitment tool - just a month after the "caliphate" was declared, it was not by chance that it was named Dabiq.
A small town north of Aleppo in Syria, Dabiq is mentioned in a hadith (a reported saying of the Prophet Muhammad) in connection with Armageddon. In IS mythology, it is the scene where a cataclysmic showdown will take place between the Muslims and the infidels, leading to the end of days. Each issue of Dabiq begins with a quote from Abu Musab Zarqawi: "The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify - by Allah's permission - until it burns the crusader armies in Dabiq."
The prospect of taking part in that final glorious climax, achieving martyrdom on the path of Allah and an assured place in paradise, is one of the thoughts inspiring those heeding the IS call to jihad.
That could help explain why the organisation seems to enjoy an endless supply of recruits willing to blow themselves to pieces in suicide attacks, which it calls "martyrdom-seeking operations" (suicide is forbidden in Islam). Hundreds have died in this way, and they happen virtually daily.
It's one of the elements that makes IS a formidable fighting force that will be hard to destroy even in strictly military terms.
IS is in many respects a project of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath party, but now with a different ideology. Former agents or officers of Saddam Hussein's regime dominate its leadership... They represent a battle-hardened and state-educated core that would likely endure (as they have done through US occupation and a decade of war) even if the organisation's middle and lower cadres are decimated.
Is Islamic State invincible?
The head of security and intelligence for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, Masrour Barzani, tells the story of a frustrated would-be suicide bomber who screamed at his captors: "I was just 10 minutes away from being united with the Prophet Muhammad!"
"They think they're winners regardless of whether they kill you or they get killed," says Barzani. "If they kill you, they win a battle. If they get killed, they go to heaven. With people like this, it's very difficult to deter them from coming at you. So really the only way to defeat them is to eliminate them."
Probably for the first time in military history since the Japanese kamikaze squadrons of World War Two, suicide bombers are used by IS not only for occasional terrorist spectaculars, but as a standard and common battlefield tactic.
Virtually all IS attacks begin with one or several suicide bombers driving explosives-rigged cars or trucks at the target, softening it up for combat squads to go in. So much so that the "martyrdom-seekers" have been called the organisation's "air force", since they serve a similar purpose.
Formidable though that is, IS as a fighting force is much more than a bunch of wild-eyed fanatics eager to blow themselves up. For that, they have Saddam Hussein to thank.
"The core of IS are former Saddam-era army and intelligence officers, particularly from the Republican Guard," said an international intelligence official. "They are very good at moving their people around, resupply and so on, they're actually much more effective and efficient than the Iraqi army are. That's the hand of former military staff officers who know their business."
"They are very professional," adds Masrour Barzani. "They use artillery, armoured vehicles, heavy machinery etc, and they are using it very well. They have officers who know conventional war and how to plan, how to attack, how to defend. They really are operating on the level of a very organised conventional force. Otherwise they'd be no more than a terrorist organisation."
The partnership with the ex-Baathists, going back to Zarqawi's early days in Iraq, is clearly a vital component in IS success.
But that does not mean its fighters are invincible on the battlefield. The Kurds in north-east Syria were fighting IS off with no outside help for a year before anybody noticed. And even now, IS makes what would conventionally be seen as costly mistakes.
In December 2015, they lost several hundred fighters in one abortive attack east of Mosul alone, and probably 2,500 altogether that month. In total some 15,000 are estimated to have been killed by Coalition air strikes since August 2014.
But they seem to have little difficulty making up the numbers. With a population of perhaps 10 million acquiescent Sunnis to draw on in Iraq and Syria, most recruiting is done locally. And if IS remains in place, there will soon be a new generation of young militants.
"I didn't join out of conviction," says Bakr Madloul, a 24-year-old bachelor who was arrested in December at his home in a Sunni quarter in southern Baghdad and accused of taking part in deadly IS car bomb attacks on mainly Shia areas, which he admits.
Bakr says he was working as a construction foreman in Kurdistan when IS took over Mosul. He was detained for questioning by Kurdish security, and met a militant in jail who persuaded him to go to Mosul, where he joined up with IS and manned a checkpoint until it was hit by a Coalition air strike.
He was then sent back to his Baghdad suburb to help organise car bombings. The explosives-packed vehicles were sent from outside Baghdad, and his job was to place them where he was told by his controller, usually in crowded streets or markets.
"Only one of the five car bombs I handled was driven by a suicide bomber," he says. "I spoke to him. He was 22 years old, an Iraqi. He believed he would go to paradise when he died. It's the easiest and quickest way to Heaven. They strongly believe this. They would blow themselves up to get to Heaven. There were older ones in their 30s and 40s."
"I asked my controllers more than once, 'Is it OK to kill women and children?' They would answer, 'They're all the same.' But to me, killing women and children, I didn't feel at all comfortable about that. But once you're in, you're stuck. If you try to leave, they call you a murtadd, an apostate, and they'll kill you or your family."
Bakr knows he will almost certainly hang. I asked him if he would do the same things over if he had his life again. He laughed.
"Absolutely not. I would get out of Iraq, away from IS, away from the security forces. I took this path without realising the consequences. There is no way back. I see that now."
But up in Kurdistan, another IS prisoner, Muhannad Ibrahim, has no such regrets.
A 32-year-old from a village near Mosul with a wife and three children, he was a construction worker for a Turkish company when IS took over the city. Two of his older brothers had died fighting the Americans there in 2004 and 2006. He joined IS without hesitation and was commanding a small detachment when he was captured in a battle with the Kurds.
"We were being oppressed by the Shia, they were always insulting and bothering us," he says. "But that's not the main motivation, religious conviction is more important. All my family is religious, praise be to Allah. I came to IS through my faith and religious principles."
"If I had my time over again, I would take the same path, the same choices. Because I am convinced by this thing, I have to go to the end. Either I am killed, or Allah will decree some other fate for me."
Taming Mosul
Defeating IS militarily is less about its own strengths and vulnerabilities than it is about the deficiencies of the forces arrayed against it. IS is as strong as the weaknesses of the failed states whose collapse into "savagery" has left room for it to take root and grow.
Iraq and Syria have to be the primary focus, as the commander of Coalition forces, Lt Gen Sean MacFarland, spelled out in February 2016:
"The campaign has three objectives: one, to destroy the Isil parent tumour in Iraq and Syria by collapsing its power centres in Mosul and Raqqa; two, to combat the emerging metastasis of the Isil tumour worldwide; and three, to protect our nations from attack."
It goes without saying that Coalition air strikes, deadly and effective as they are, have their limitations. Only in co-ordination with cohesive, motivated ground forces can the territory taken by IS be regained. And that's the crippling problem, in both countries.
The Kurds in the north of both Iraq and Syria have made considerable progress in pushing IS back from areas they regard as theirs, with the help of Coalition air strikes. But they are neither capable of going all the way, nor should they: in both countries, they would stir up acute communal sensitivities in the Sunni Arab areas where IS is rooted.
Pro-government forces in Iraq largely dislodged IS from Diyala province and the Tikrit area north of the capital in 2015, but that was mainly the work of Iranian-backed Shia militias who leapt to the defence of Baghdad and the south as IS descended in June 2014 after the army collapsed.
Using them in mainly Sunni areas is fraught with risk.
Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar to the west, was recaptured at the end of 2015 in an offensive spearheaded by the government's US-built Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), with the Shia militias kept out of this Sunni stronghold. The city was left in ruins, its entire population fled.
When that even more iconic Sunni citadel, Falluja, became the focus of the next government offensive, launched at the end of May, the limitations of the official state forces soon became even more apparent.
The CTS spearheaded the advance from the south, but on other fronts, it was primarily the Iranian-backed Shia militias which were fighting their way in around the other sides of the city, backed by an array of government units and some anti-IS Sunni tribal elements.
The militias were not supposed to enter the limits of the city itself, but they swiftly took control of the deeply Sunni surroundings, amidst allegations of abuses against civilian males detained for vetting as IS suspects.
The Falluja battle did not augur well for the much bigger challenge awaiting in the north - Mosul, something like 10 times the size, and the real core of the IS state enterprise.
The Americans would clearly have liked Mosul to be retaken by the end of 2016, as a legacy item for President Obama.
But the ferocious battle for Falluja would inevitably take a toll on the CTS, whose already limited numbers could not be easily or swiftly replenished. The alternative, to accord an even bigger role to the Shia militias in this heavily Sunni area, could be laden with perilous consequences.
Over in Syria, IS was also under pressure by mid-2016. Something of a race was developing for the group's supposed headquarters at Raqqa.
Despite objections from their Turkish Nato allies, the US-led Coalition was providing backing with air strikes and advisers to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), largely composed of seasoned Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG) fighters leavened with some Sunni Arab elements, as they slowly eroded IS control in northern border areas controlling the approaches to Raqqa.
At the same time, Syrian government forces supported by Iranian-backed Shia militias and Russian air power were starting to thrust eastwards from Hama towards Raqqa.
Who would get there first, and with what consequences for the future shape of Syria?
The civil war truce engineered by the Russians and Americans in February had largely broken down, and the Geneva peace talks had stalled, leaving all the cards up in the air in a conflict whose outcome has always defied prediction.
But even if IS was to lose all its territory in Syria - still a distant prospect in mid-2016 - it is much less deeply embedded in the Sunni population there than in Iraq. Disgruntled Syrian Sunnis have many other vehicles for pressing their grievances against the Assad regime.
So it keeps coming back again to Iraq, and specifically, to Mosul. Ten times the size of Raqqa. And that's not the only reason for its significance.
"Mosul is the beating heart of IS," says a senior Western official in northern Iraq. "IS is essentially an Iraqi creation. The tragic reality is that at the moment, it is the main Sunni political entity in Iraq. From the West, it's looked at as a kind of crazed cult. It's not. Here in Iraq it represents an important constituency. It represents a massive dissatisfaction, the alienation of a whole sector of the population."
"That's not to say that the people in Mosul are enthusiastic about IS, but for them, it's better than anything that comes from Baghdad."
But if a Mosul offensive does go ahead, the fear is that a wrongly-conceived short-term victory, if it is achieved, will turn into long-term disaster, given the total lack of national reconciliation between Sunnis and Shia in the wake of the sectarian carnage that followed Saddam's overthrow in 2003.
Sunni grievances in Iraq are such that if IS did not exist, it would have to be invented. Without reconciliation and a sense of Sunni empowerment and partnership in a credible national project, IS in some shape or form will always be there, just as the Taliban are now resurgent in Afghanistan despite everything that was done to oust them.
But the Iraqi expert on radical movements, Hisham al-Hashemi, believes that IS could be badly damaged if the Coalition succeeds in one of its top-priority tasks - to kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Leaders have been killed before, and replaced with little obvious effect on the course of history. But Hashemi believes Baghdadi is different.
"IS's future depends on Baghdadi," he says. "If he is killed, it will split up. One part would stay on his track and announce a new caliphate. Another would split off and return to al-Qaeda. Others would turn into gangs following whoever is strongest."
"The source of his strength is that he brought about an ideological transformation, blending jihadist ideas with Baathist intelligence security methods, enabling him to create this quasi-state organisation."
Hashemi believes only Baghdadi can hold it together. There have been numerous false reports of him being hit in air strikes, but he appears to be stubbornly and elusively still alive, not seen in public since that mosque appearance in early July 2014.
The Americans are unlikely to rest until they have killed Baghdadi, not least because of their belief that he personally repeatedly raped an American NGO worker, Kayla Mueller, and then had her killed in early 2015.
But even if they do get him, and even if IS does break up, the Sunni problem in Iraq will not go away.
Capitalising on chaos
IS had in any case been busy spreading its bets and developing other territorial options beyond the "parent tumour" of Iraq and Syria.
Libya proved the most promising. It had just the kind of failed-state anarchy, the "savagery", that left room for the jihadists to move in, forging alliances with local militants and disgruntled supporters of the overthrown regime of Muammar Gaddafi, just as they had done in Iraq.
IS signalled its arrival there in typical style, issuing a polished video in February 2015 showing a group of 21 bewildered Egyptian Christian workers in orange jumpsuits being beheaded on a Libyan beach, their blood mingling with the waters of the Mediterranean as a warning to the "crusader" European countries on the other side of the sea.
The man who voiced that warning was believed to be the IS leader in Libya, an Iraqi called Wissam al-Zubaydi, also known as Abu Nabil. By coincidence, Zubaydi was killed in a US air strike on the same day IS struck in Paris, 13 November 2015.
The US and its allies were powerless to halt IS advances in Libya.
The group took over a big stretch of the coast around the central city of Sirte, which was to Muammar Gaddafi what Tikrit was to Saddam Hussein. Another American air strike in February killed (among nearly 50 other people) Noureddine Chouchane, reputedly an IS figure responsible for the deadly attacks on Western tourists in his native Tunisia.
By the summer of 2016, however, the militants were under pressure in Libya too. Militias loyal to the Government of National Accord, which had been born out of UN efforts in late March, were pressing in on Sirte.
But Libya remained a deeply fragmented country, and its new government far from powerful or universally accepted. There would likely continue to be pockets of chaos there for the jihadists to exploit.
And there was no shortage of other possibilities already beckoning - Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia... wherever there are dysfunctional states and angry Muslims, there are opportunities for IS, competing strongly with a diminished al-Qaeda as a dominant brand in the jihadist market.
Adding the extra risk for the West, that that competition could be another spur for spectacular terrorist attacks which they know are being actively plotted.
Clearly, IS has lost a lot of ground since it reached the high tide of its expansion in 2014 and it is under daily pressure wherever it exists.
But the outside powers, working with whatever local forces on the ground they can muster, will have to sustain a monumental effort if they are eventually to succeed in completely uprooting IS militarily, a prospect still far from achievement.
If that were to happen, IS would of course mutate back into the shadows as a sinister terrorist outfit with global reach, either plotting or inspiring spectacular strikes both in Middle East conflict countries and in the West, something that is already happening.
With no territorial base, its already diminished appeal and credibility as an idealised Islamic state would more or less evaporate.
But other voids that it has filled, and the failures and dysfunctions which enabled IS to happen, would remain, because they have been largely unaddressed.
Battle for minds
In the first 18 months after the declaration of the "Islamic State", the number of foreign fighters making their way to join jihad in Syria and Iraq rose dramatically. The New York-based security consultancy Soufan Group estimated that 27,000 foreign jihadists had made the trip from 86 countries, more than half of them from the Middle East and North Africa.
Clearly, the caliphate had appeal, despite - perhaps in some cases because of - its graphically publicised brutality. A tribute to its extraordinary skill in using the internet and social media as a propaganda and grooming tool.
Ten months after vowing to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the organisation, President Obama ruefully acknowledged that IS "has been particularly effective at reaching out to and recruiting vulnerable people around the world including here in the United States, and they are targeting Muslim communities around the world".
And he put his finger on the real challenge, monumentally greater than the comparatively simple task of defeating IS militarily:
"Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas, a more attractive and more compelling vision," he said.
On a relatively normal day... there was a total of 50 distinct pieces of propaganda. The photo reports and videos included depictions of an IS offensive in northern Syria and eulogies for the dead in Salahuddin... Overwhelmingly, though, the propagandists were preoccupied with a carefully refined view of 'normal' life.
Fishing and ultraviolence
The problem is that when disenchanted people in the region look around them - especially the young, the idealistic, or the hopeless unemployed who have no future - they see scant evidence of "better ideas" or attractive and compelling visions.
They see the ruins of an "Arab Spring" which raised hopes only to dash them cruelly.
The brutal, corrupt dictatorships which it shook have either fragmented into chaos and sectarian and tribal upheaval, like Syria itself, Libya, Yemen and (with Western intervention) Iraq, or the "deep states" of their former regimes came back, even more harshly in the case of Egypt, more gently in the case of Tunisia.
While many of the European jihadists may have heeded the call for other reasons, socio-economic factors play an important part in radicalising some of the Arab jihadists, and will continue to do so unless addressed.
The flow of recruits, both fighters and families, leaving their homes in Europe to live under so-called Islamic State rule in Raqqa in Syria has slowed dramatically.
"It reached its peak in 2013-14, when it was far easier for jihadists to cross the 822km-long (510-mile) Turkey-Syria border, when IS propaganda on social media went largely unchallenged, and when IS was on a roll militarily, seizing ever more territory across northern Syria and north-western Iraq.
"While all three of those factors have now changed to the detriment of IS, the underlying factors propelling young Britons and Europeans towards joining the group have not gone away. So what are they?
Islamic State: What is the attraction for young Europeans?
One of the biggest contingents is from Tunisia, where a detailed survey in the poorest suburbs of the capital Tunis showed clearly that the radicalisation of young people there had far less to do with extreme Islamic ideology as such than it did with unemployment, marginalisation and disillusion after a revolution into which they threw themselves, but which gave them nothing, and left them hopeless.
A rare insight into the types of people who volunteer to join IS came with the emergence in European media in March 2016 of batches of what are believed to be "secret" IS files with personal details of recruits.
The data from 2013-14 purported to identify members from at least 40 countries. It included names, addresses, phone numbers and skill sets - a potential treasure trove for intelligence agencies trying to track and prosecute nationals who have signed up with the group.
IS is also filling a desert left by the collapse of all the political ideologies that have stirred Arab idealists over the decades. Many used to travel to the Soviet Union for training and tertiary education, but communism is now seen as a busted flush. Arab socialism and Arab nationalism, which caused such excitement in the 1950s and 1960s, mutated into brutal, corrupt "republics" where sons were groomed to inherit power from their fathers.
In this vacuum, IS took up the cause of punishing the West and other outsiders for their actions in the region over the past century:
The roots of IS also lie in a crisis within Islam.
"Isil is not Islamic," said President Obama, echoing statements by many Western leaders that "IS has nothing to do with Islam".
It has.
"It is based on Islamic texts that are reinterpreted according to how they see it," says Ahmad Moussalli, professor of politics at the American University of Beirut. "I don't say they are not coming out of Islamic tradition, that would be denying facts. But their interpretation is unusual, literal sometimes, very much like the Wahhabis."
Hisham al-Hashemi, the Iraqi expert on radical groups, agrees.
"Violent extremism in IS and the salafist jihadist groups is justified, indeed blessed, in Islamic law texts relied on by IS and the extremist groups. It's a crisis of religious discourse, not of a barbaric group. Breaking up the religious discourse and setting it on the right course is more important by far than suppressing the extremist groups militarily."
Because ancient texts can be interpreted by extremists to cover their worst outrages does not implicate the entire religion, any more than Christianity is defined by the Inquisition, where burning at the stake was a stock penalty.
Extremist ideas remain in the dark, forgotten corners of history unless their time comes. And IS time came, with Afghanistan, Iraq, and everything that followed.
"Salafism is spreading in the world, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Arab countries," says Prof Moussalli.
He blames the Saudis for stifling the emergence of a moderate, democratic version of Islam, the "alternative Islamic discourse" to salafism that President Obama would like to see.
"A moderate Islamic narrative today is a Muslim Brotherhood narrative, which has been destroyed by the Gulf states supporting the military coup in Egypt," says Prof Moussalli, referring to the Egyptian military's ousting of the elected President Mohammed Morsi, a senior Muslim Brotherhood figure, in July 2013.
"We lost that opportunity with Egypt. Egypt could have paved the way for real change in the area. But Saudi Arabia stood against it, in a very malicious way, and destroyed the possibility of changing the Arab regimes into more democratic regimes that accept the transfer of power peacefully. They don't want it."
Saudi Arabia's ultra-conservative Wahhabi religious establishment and its constant propagation have raised ambiguity over its relations with radical groups abroad. Enemies and critics have accused it of producing the virulent strain of Wahhabism that inspires the extremists, and even of supporting IS and other ultra-salafist groups.
But Jamal Khashoggi, a leading Saudi journalist and writer who spent time in Afghanistan and knew Bin Laden, says that simply is not true
"We are at war with IS, which sees us as corrupt Wahhabis." he says.
"IS is a form of Wahhabism that has been suppressed here since the 1930s. It resurfaced with the siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979 and spread here and there. But Saudi Arabia didn't back it at all, it saw it as a threat. So it's true that salafism can turn radical, just as the US right-wing produces some crazy lunatics."
Hundreds of people died in a two-week siege when extremist salafists took over the Grand Mosque, the holiest place in Islam, in protest at what they saw as the Kingdom's deviation from the true path.
More recently, Saudi Arabia's security forces and its Shia minority have in fact been the target of attacks by IS, and the kingdom has executed captured militants. It has an active deradicalisation programme.
But Mr Khashoggi agrees that the Saudis made a huge mistake when they backed the overthrow of the elected Muslim Brotherhood president in Egypt and the subsequent crackdown on the movement, which has pushed political Islam into the arms of the radicals.
"There were no pictures of Isis, Bin Laden or al-Qaeda in Tahrir Square," he says. "It was an opportunity for democracy in the Middle East, but we made a historical blunder for which we are all paying now."
But the Kingdom's extreme conservatism, its distaste for democracy, and its custodianship of the shrines in Mecca and Medina to which millions of Muslims make pilgrimage every year, have made it one of the main targets for calls for an unlikely reformation within Islam as part of the battle to defeat IS and other extremist groups.
"We must accept the fact that Islam has a crisis," says a senior Sunni politician in Iraq.
"IS is not a freak. Look at the roots, the people, the aims. If you don't deal with the roots, the situation will be much more dangerous. The world has to get rid of IS, but needs a new deal: reformation, in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, al-Azhar [the ancient seat of Sunni Islamic learning and authority in Cairo]."
"You can't kill all the Muslims, you need an Islamic reformation. But Saudi and Qatari money is blotting out the voices so we can't get anywhere. It's the curse of the Arab world, too much oil, too much money."
Regional rivalry
IS is at the heart of yet another of the region's burning themes - the strategic geopolitical contest, the game of nations, that is taking place as Syria and Iraq disintegrate.
When the US-led coalition destroyed the Iraqi state in 2003, it was breaking down the wall that was containing Iran, the region's Shia superpower, seen as a threat by the Saudis and most of their Sunni Gulf partners since its Islamic revolution in 1979.
Iran had for years been backing anti-Saddam Iraqi Shia factions in exile. Through those groups, the empowerment of the majority Shia community in Iraq after 2003 gave Iran unrivalled influence over Iraqi politics.
The arrival of the IS threat led to even more Iranian penetration, arming, training and directing the Shia militia who rose in defence of Baghdad and the South.
"If it weren't for Iran, the democratic experiment in Iraq would have fallen," says Hadi al-Ameri, leader of the Iranian-backed Badr Organisation, one of the biggest Shia fighting groups.
"Obama was sleeping, and he didn't wake up until IS was at the gates of Erbil. When they were at the gates of Baghdad, he did nothing. Were it not for Iran's support, IS would have taken over the whole Gulf, not just Iraq."
For Saudi Arabia and its allies, Iranian penetration in Iraq threatens to establish, indeed largely has, a Shia crescent, linking Iran, Iraq, Syria under its minority Alawite leadership, and Lebanon dominated by the Iranian-created Shia faction Hezbollah.
From the outset of the war in Syria, the Saudis and their Gulf partners, and Turkey, backed the Sunni rebels in the hope that the overthrow of Assad would establish Sunni majority rule.
So then a north-south Sunni axis running from Turkey through Syria to Jordan and Saudi Arabia would drive a stake through the heart of the Shia crescent and foil the Iranian project, as they saw it.
That is essentially what IS did in 2014 when it moved back into Iraq, took Mosul and virtually all the country's Sunni areas, and established a Sunni entity which straddled the suddenly irrelevant border with Syria, blocking off Shia parts of Iraq from Syria.
If IS had just stayed put at that point and dug in, who would have shifted them? Had they not gone on to attack the Kurds, the Americans would not have intervened. Had they not shot down a Russian airliner and attacked Paris, the Russians and French would not have stepped up their involvement.
"Had they not become international terrorists and stayed local terrorists, they could have served the original agenda of dividing the Arab east so there would be no Shia crescent," says Prof Moussalli.
We may never know why they did it. Perhaps their virulent strain of salafism just had to keep going: Remaining and Expanding.
Could they now just row back and settle in their "state", stop antagonising people, and eventually gain acceptance, just as Iran has after its own turbulent revolution and international isolation?
It seems unlikely, for the same driving reasons that they made that escalation in the first place. And even if IS wanted to, the Americans also seem set on their course, and they have proven implacable in their pursuit of revenge for terrorist outrages.
But what is the alternative? Given the problem of assembling capable ground forces, can the Americans be complicit in a takeover of Mosul by Iranian-backed Shia militias, and of Raqqa by Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian regime forces or other non-Sunni groups like the Kurds? Is their hostility to IS so strong that they would watch the Iranians connect up their Shia crescent? And would the Saudis and Turks go along with that?
There are no easy answers to any of the challenges posed by IS in all the strands of crisis that it brings together.
That's why it's still there.
Author: Jim Muir
Editor: Raffi Berg
Production: Ben Milne, Susannah Stevens
Graphics: Henry Clarke Price
Video: Mohamed Madi | All images are subject to copyright |
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