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Landmines from World War Two have been exploded in Sark. | Nearly 80 explosives, brought to the island by the occupying German forces, were discovered in a field on the west of the island on Thursday.
The bomb disposal unit from Guernsey Police travelled to the island to examine the explosives.
Officers said 28 of the 78 landmines were still live. The mines were detonated in controlled explosions.
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Denise Welch is worried about our collective mental health. | By Helen BushbyEntertainment and arts reporter
"Mental health services are going to be on their knees," says the actress and Loose Women star, amid the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic.
"We're talking about a possible second wave - it's going to include mental health, and undiagnosed mental illnesses of other kinds."
Psychiatrists warned last month of a "tsunami" of mental illness from problems stored up during lockdown.
Welch, 62, is no stranger to mental illness, calling it her "unwelcome visitor".
Her first depressive episode was sparked in 1989 by the birth of her son Matthew (now the frontman of The 1975), and she's spoken out about her debilitating mental health struggles and addictions ever since. She's also said she wished there was more information and medical help available during the early years of her illness.
Three marriages, two children and one viral video later, she has written a book documenting the pain she's experienced, and how she and her family have survived.
The book was prompted by the massive response she got after she "very impulsively" tweeted a video of herself during an episode of clinical depression.
"I was overwhelmed, blindsided by the response, because I've talked out about this for 31 years, so it was actually a shock to me that so many people seem to be desperate to hear what I have to say about my illness," she tells BBC News.
Welch, whose acting roles include Waterloo Road, Coronation Street and Soldier Soldier, admits she's "somebody who is very sensitive and tends to take on the worries of the world".
She says of the coronavirus pandemic: "It's been a very frightening time for everybody, and some people have dealt with that better than others."
She's quick to add that "obviously, I don't come at this as any kind of medical person", but having chatted with friends, young people and mental health charities, she's seen people with anxiety fall into two camps during lockdown.
"There were people who went into massive anxiety early on because of lockdown - people were unsure about their jobs, but mostly because of health anxiety," she says.
"But I was also talking to a lot of young people, and they found a solace in it, because of a lack of status anxiety in lockdown.
"A lot of young people live their lives in a 'compare and despair' world, and [suddenly] that didn't exist."
"Other people can't work, or they find it very difficult to, so the fact that many people weren't able to work has given some people a little comfort bubble."
"With lockdown starting to ease a little bit, we're now dealing with massive strains on the mental health service, because those people are now getting anxiety."
She worries for her many friends in the theatre industry, saying: "They are not just losing their jobs, they're losing their careers. And I've found that I've got a bit overwhelmed by that."
So, given her own history of anxiety and depression, what advice does she offer to people dealing with similar feelings?
Denise Welch's mental health survival tips
1. Allow yourself to be overwhelmed
"What I've found that for my own sanity, is that I've had to take some time in the day to allow myself to become overwhelmed with the worries of the world. It's not just the worries about family, it's the whole globe. "
2. See what you can do to help others
"I do what I can in little bits, whether that's making a video for somebody or just checking in on somebody, or tweeting. There's a hashtag #ExcludedUK on Twitter and it's about all of those freelancers who haven't got any money.
"So if you have got a job, maybe take a little bit of time each day to see what you can do to help others, even if it's just social media awareness."
3. Be a bit selfish
"I think that we have to protect our own mental health and be a bit selfish
"I have to look after my family and make sure that they're okay... but if I want to go upstairs and take some time out and have three hours watching The Real Housewives of anywhere in the world, I'm not going to feel guilty about it.
"I think that self care and retreating into your little bubble - it's not to be pooh-poohed. That's basically how I've managed to survive."
Welch has also spoken many times on the panel of ITV's Loose Women about mental health, and discussed her post-natal depression on breakfast TV with Lorraine Kelly.
She writes in her book: "Post-natal depression is the cruellest, most unforgiving and isolating condition, because not only are you submerged in a pitch-black nightmare of mental illness, but you also have a totally dependent child who can't survive without you."
She adds that when she first got ill, "I would have given anything to see a woman come on the television and talk about having my illness.
"Someone who was well, who had a couple of children and could smile and say, 'I've been where you are right now. But look at me now. Yes, I still have it, but in between I live this great life with my two children. You will get better."
But despite having spoken publicly about her condition in the past, it was still a "big decision" to write the book, which spares no details on her life.
"Much as I was frightened about writing it, because I knew it would be triggering, I knew I would have to really invest in order to write a really good book, something I was proud of."
She was also wary of press interest in some of the book's revelations, saying: "Anything to do with alcohol and drug use always creates a tabloid headline dream for them, you know?"
But she went ahead because: "I wanted to write the book that I needed throughout my illness.
"And that's what I feel that I've written. If I die tomorrow, I feel that this is my legacy and I'm happy with that.
"I honestly feel that this book is the book that I would have given anything to read when I needed it."
The actress is keenly aware that her writing might reach a different audience than other memoirs that tackle mental health.
"I think it's important there's different types of people, so for example, people like Stephen Fry and Ruby Wax have done wonders for the mental health world.
"But my audience tends to be a bit more 'Betty from Bolton', who wouldn't necessarily look to people who they see as being Oxford-educated people, because they feel that they wouldn't relate to them.
"So I am more relatable to a certain group of people, because of the type of TV I do, and I'm a Loose Woman. It's important that there's somebody for everybody."
She adds that a chapter in the book is written by "my husband, my dad, my sister, my sons and my best friends - because the people who live with those with depression are very under-represented".
"I always used to say that if the shoe had been on the other foot, and I was living with me, I don't know how tolerant I would have been. And so I'm very, very grateful for the people in my life."
Despite aspects of her life being having been blighted by depression, the star remains upbeat.
"I still say that if all the world's problems were in my front room in piles, I would still pick my pile, because my life outside of my depressive episodes is wonderful."
The Unwelcome Visitor: Depression and How I Survive It by Denise Welch is published by Hodder & Stoughton on 25 June.
Information and advice
If you or someone you know is struggling with issues raised by this story, find support through BBC Action Line.
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£330bn seems a lot of money - so what does it mean, and how much time does it buy? Scottish ministers have opted to use £2.2bn of crisis funding in similar ways to England. The support is for business, and particularly helpful for small and medium-sized ones. Will it help big manufacturers, as car plants shut down, and what will it do for the most insecure and low-paid workers? That's yet to become clear. | Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland
There's a lot about the current crisis that challenges the wirings of the brain. For many of us, the scale of the global challenge and the changes to life, work and family just don't compute.
The £330bn, announced on Tuesday by the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, fits that same pattern of incomprehensibly big numbers. In the US, they're going for over a trillion dollars. That much moola surely ought to overwhelm a mere microbe?
So how to explain it, and the other measures set out by Rishi Sunak six days after his last big bazooka fell well short of meeting the challenge?
Well, it's not real money. It's a guarantee that stands behind real money. A bank may not wish to lend to your business if you are at heightened risk of default through the next few months. Or if it does, it'll price in a lot of risk.
But if the government is guaranteeing that money to the bank, then it's taking on the risk, and the cost of borrowing is closer to the very low rates of interest at which banks can access funds from the Bank of England.
As a result, we - the taxpayers - could be on the hook for a third of a trillion pounds, to add to the two trillion or so that now make up Britain's government debt. But to run up that extra debt would require all the lenders to collapse and all that debt to turn sour. And if things got all that bad, the economy would be in such dire straits anyway that we'd be contemplating government default.
On the rebound
The reckoning is that such money will provide a bridge from here to the point at which the restrictions on socialising and travel are withdrawn, and we come out of our Covid-19 hibernation spending with wild abandon - frolicking like cows being put out to spring pastures.
At that point, the businesses would still be there to ramp up operations and get back to business as usual. But they'd be carrying more debt, and this looks like it's based on a one-year loan, so it would have to be refinanced.
Will a year be enough? An alarming academic paper was published on Monday evening by public health statisticians in London, suggesting that the new strategy for suppressing coronavirus may get over a peak of activity this summer, but it may not be sorted out until a vaccination is available, and the best estimates for that are 18 months of frantic development and production.
Taking a loan to keep a cash-strapped business solvent until August or September is one thing if you can be confident of growth roaring back thereafter, but that may not be the case until well into next year.
Meanwhile, for airlines and perhaps airports, which are to have another support package worked out, there's the awkward question of how much capacity there should be. Should this be used as an opportunity to scale back the sector, as part of the drive to reduce climate-changing emissions?
Gig economy
The Rishi Mark 2 economic support package went back to the retail, leisure and hospitality sector, a day after it was torpedoed with the request that people should not go out to restaurants, bars and clubs.
There's a big wedge of money to give it a business rates holiday for a year - not just the smaller premises, but all of them.
That was announced for England, and matched by Fiona Hyslop, the Scottish economy secretary, when she announced how the £1.9bn of funding that comes to Holyrood from the chancellor's crisis splurge on Tuesday.
There will be a £10,000 grant for those businesses that fall beneath the threshold of the existing small business rates relief scheme. And for mid-sized businesses in those targeted sectors in shops, pubs, restaurants, clubs, hotels, etc, there will be a £25,000 grant.
That is real money. And those are real grants. Will they get anywhere close to persuading owners to shutter their businesses and lay off their staff?
The new governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, hopes so. He wants firms to think hard before they sack workers, to get in touch and see what is on offer.
But it's money splurged without any strings attached to employment, or incentives to retain workers. There is still a big gap where business says it needs big wage subsidies, of as much as 75%, as used in European countries. Payroll and other taxes could be delayed or abandoned for months or a year, starting with VAT this month.
Companies also want regulations relaxed. The Scottish Tourism Alliance, for instance, wants a temporary dropping of the requirement on tour operators to repatriate customers, as that could prove a big obstacle to getting foreign bookings restarted.
The speed of the response, and of getting those grants and loans into business bank accounts, is vital. Customers stayed away, because they were told to, restaurants are closing, staff are being laid off.
Earlier today, I was in a fishmonger who supplies high-end restaurants in Glasgow. With one such closure, he had 400 oysters and no market. I could have taken a pack in return for a charity donation - if only I liked oysters.
Stephen Leckie, of the Scottish Tourism Alliance, who runs the Crieff Hydro group of 11 hotels, gave an example of his financial challenge. Crieff Hydro costs £60,000 a day in fixed costs, "just to open the doors". Peebles Hydro is nearly £40,000 more. Some 46% of his costs are in pay.
Yet he says - and he was talking about the industry rather than his own business - hotels are going for a typical 80% occupancy in April and May to 30% or even 10%. This is the time of year when finance is running low and when bookings and trade should be picking up sharply. But instead of serving customers, office staff are busy taking cancellations. "That's catastrophic," Mr Leckie told John Beattie on Radio Scotland's Drivetime programme. "It's unheard of for one night, let alone a prolonged period."
There was a small part of Rishi Sunak's announcement addressed to helping individuals and families, with a mortgage holiday of three months. If you get on well with your bank, you might have got such a break from payments anyway.
And if you rent? An appeal by the Scottish government to landlords to go easy on arrears, while doubling the length of time - from three to six months - before arrears can lead to an eviction.
For the self-employed and gig economy workers, there was a promise of an employment support package. It's yet to be thrashed out. Unions and employers are working with government, and it's likely to require another humongously mind-boggling sum of money.
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At least 14 people have drowned when a boat carrying Rohingya refugees sank off the south coast of Bangladesh, officials say. | The boat was destined for Malaysia and included Rohingya refugees from camps in Bangladesh, local authorities told the BBC.
All of the dead bodies recovered are reportedly of women and children.
An official told the AFP news agency that 70 people were rescued. Many are still missing.
The boat capsized in the Bay of Bengal near Saint Martin's island.
In August 2017, a deadly crackdown by Myanmar's army on Rohingya Muslims sent hundreds of thousands fleeing across the border into Bangladesh.
Most have been placed in refugee camps and some have tried to flee in boats to Malaysia.
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This week the British papers revelled in news about how much the BBC's on-air stars get paid, though the salaries of their counterparts in commercial TV remain under wraps. In Norway, there are no such secrets. Anyone can find out how much anyone else is paid - and it rarely causes problems. | By Lars BevangerBBC News, Oslo
In the past, your salary was published in a book. A list of everyone's income, assets and the tax they had paid, could be found on a shelf in the public library. These days, the information is online, just a few keystrokes away.
The change happened in 2001, and it had an instant impact.
"It became pure entertainment for many," says Tom Staavi, a former economics editor at the national daily, VG.
"At one stage you would automatically be told what your Facebook friends had earned, simply by logging on to Facebook. It was getting ridiculous."
Transparency is important, Staavi says, partly because Norwegians pay high levels of income tax - an average of 40.2% compared to 33.3% in the UK, according to Eurostat, while the EU average is just 30.1%.
"When you pay that much you have to know that everyone else is doing it, and you have to know that the money goes to something reasonable," he says.
"We [need to] have trust and confidence in both the tax system and in the social security system."
This is considered to far outweigh any problems that may be caused by envy.
In fact, in most workplaces, people have a fairly good idea how much their colleagues are earning, without having to look it up.
Wages in many sectors are set through collective agreements, and pay gaps are relatively narrow.
The gender pay gap is also narrow, by international standards. The World Economic Forum ranks Norway third out of 144 countries in terms of wage equality for similar work.
So the figures that flashed up on Facebook may not have taken many people by surprise. But at a certain point Tom Staavi and others lobbied the government to introduce measures that would encourage people to think twice before snooping on the salary details of a friend, neighbour or colleague.
People now have to log in using their national ID number in order to access the data on the tax authority's website, and for the last three years it has been impossible to search anonymously.
"Since 2014 it has been possible to find out who has been doing searches on your information," explains Hans Christian Holte, the head of Norway's tax authority.
"We saw a significant drop to about a 10th of the volume that was before. I think it has taken out the Peeping Tom mentality."
There are some three million taxpayers in Norway, out of a total population of 5.2 million. The tax authority logged 16.5 million searches in the year before restrictions were put into place. Today there are around two million searches per year.
In a recent survey 92% of people said they did not look up friends, family or acquaintances.
"Earlier I did do searches, but now it's visible if you do it, so I don't do it any more," says a woman I meet on the streets of Oslo, Nelly Bjorge.
"I was curious about some neighbours, and also about celebrities and royalty. It could be good to know if very rich people are cheating, but you don't always know. Because they have many ways of reducing their income."
The tax lists only tell you people's net income, net assets and tax paid. Someone with a vast property portfolio, for instance, would probably be worth far more than the figure found in the lists, because the taxable property value is often far less than the current market value.
Hege Glad, a teacher from Fredrikstad south of Oslo, remembers that when she was young, adults used to queue up to examine the "enormous, thick" books of income and tax data, published once a year.
"I know my father was one of those looking. When he came home he was in a bad mood because our well-to-do neighbour was listed with little income, no assets and, most of all, a very small amount of tax paid," she says.
While she approves of Norway's transparency in this area, she notes that it can have negative effects. She has seen this in school.
"I remember once coming into school and a group of boys were very keen to tell me about the massive amounts of money the dad of one of the others in the class was making.
"I noticed a couple of other boys who usually were part of this gang had pulled back, saying little. The mood was not very nice," she says.
There have been other stories about children from low-income families who have been bullied in school, by classmates who looked up their parents' financial situation.
BBC pay
But Hans Christian Holte thinks the government currently has the balance about right.
The fact that anonymous searches are no longer permitted discourages criminals from searching for wealthy people to target.
And yet, the restrictions introduced in 2014 have not stopped whistleblowers reporting things they find suspicious.
"We like people to do searches which could help us in investigating tax evasion and the amount of tips that we get has not gone down," he says.
"Maybe the Peeping Tom part has more or less vanished, but you still have the legitimate reasons for searching and also some good effects of that openness."
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A stranded pony has been winched up an 80ft (24m) cliff edge after becoming stranded on a shingle bed in Ceredigion. | RSPCA Cymru said the animal, believed to have been trapped for a week, was rescued in Gwbert on Thursday.
The pony was reached by boat and sedated before being lifted to safety by a team of 13 officers.
A veterinary inspection found the animal to be fit and well despite being weak from the ordeal.
Animal welfare officer Andrew Harris said: "This pony was in a hopeless situation and was facing certain death.. it was amazing to be involved in such a happy ending."
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A man has appeared in court charged with causing the death of a 25-year-old man by dangerous driving. | James Gilbey, from Bramely, died after he was hit by a car, which allegedly failed to stop, while crossing Stanningley Bypass on 13 July.
Majid Malik appeared at Leeds Crown Court charged with causing his death.
Mr Malik, of Silverhill Avenue, Bradford, did not enter a plea and was remanded in custody to appear at the same court on 2 October.
Eight other men arrested in connection with Mr Gilbey's death have been released on police bail.
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Two-thirds of rap legends De La Soul have returned after a long absence on a new concept album which sees them performing in the alter egos of a young band aiming for the big time.
In 1989, De La Soul's Posdnous, Dave and Maseo rewrote the rules of rap music with their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising. Now, Pos and Dave have returned with French producers Chokolate and Khalid in the form of First Serve, a fictional band making a break for the big time. | By Kev GeogheganEntertainment reporter, BBC News
It was the Frenchmen, Paris-based Chokolate and Khalid, who approached the American rappers with the concept.
Having worked with UK dance artists Gorillaz on their 2006 single Feel Good Inc and more recently on their Plastic Beach album, Pos - whose real name is Kelvin Mercer - says he and Dave were keen on the idea of another music collaboration.
"Me and Dave thought what they were suggesting sounded cool," explains Pos. "That's what we and even Maseo have always been interested in - in terms of De La Soul, is the project itself.
"If it draws us in and if we have the time, we will do it."
The album's story follows wannabe rappers Jacob and Deen, from their daydreams in the basement of Deen's mum's house, through their meteoric rise and fall, to their jubilant reunion.
The name First Serve comes from the band's ethos "First come, first serve. Get what you deserve."
"Everyone loved it," said Pos.
Pos insists that rather than struggling to fit lyrics into the narrative arc, the tracks "unfolded naturally".
"At first they wanted maybe a black exploitation thing but then we settled on the story and from there it was just so simple."
Disco samples
The album itself is unapologetically retro and upbeat with Pos and Dave's rhymes laid over old school samples and disco and funk beats.
It sounds, in comparison with the current crop of dark, truncated urban beat and electronic-sampled hip hop, a little old-fashioned.
Not necessarily a bad thing, as hip-hop fans will hear shades of classic 90s rap like the Jungle Brothers, Jurassic 5 and The Pharcyde.
But a concept album? Is there a worry that some fans will dismiss the album as a novelty?
"Not really," says Pos. "I think that when people heard about the project, if they know De La Soul, I hope they would think Del La are known for putting as much quality into what they do, regardless of whether its something serious like (1996 album) Stakes Is High or fun like 3 Feet High and Rising."
The rap concept album is, in of itself nothing new, the past couple of years has seen releases like Lupe Fiasco's The Cool and The Roots' Undun following rough narrative arcs.
"Even before that there was Prince Paul's Prince Among Thieves," agrees Pos.
"There's nothing new to it but I think it's still fresh, from a lyrical standpoint I think the content we gave each song, it still comes off a little refreshing."
Now more two decades separate the fictional characters of First Serve with De La Soul's debut in the music industry.
During that time, the world has seen the rise of the internet and social networking and a year-on-year fall in music sales, matched by the rise of digital music piracy.
"Would I want to be an artist today starting out, knowing what I know now?" says Pos. "Not necessarily because it's a lot harder.
"There's so much more technology that allows so many more people to be involved and the dream of getting signed by a label is no different than when we were coming up, but it's a little more bloody to be honest."
He adds: "With technology, a lot of music has to be free and labels want a share of merchandise, so it means a lot of artists sign up to 360 music deals.
"When we were coming up, they took a piece of the music but whatever we generated outside of that, that's what we got."
It has been nearly 25 years since the release of De La Soul's debut album. Dropping in the middle of the rise of the gangsta-rap of Ice T and NWA, 3 Feet High and Rising was a landmark, an oddity even, with its self-effacing humour and positivity - which even saw them unfairly labelled "hippies".
Their second album De La Soul Is Dead featured a smashed flowerpot on its cover.
With an eighth studio album ready for later in the year - their first for eight years - their legacy can be heard through bands and artists like A Tribe Called Quest, Arrested Development, Outkast and Common.
"It's great to hear," says Pos. "People will say, 'Your words and your music made me feel like I can do this and can do it this way. This is who I am, I'm not a person who stands in the street, I'm not always a person who's got to be bad, I want to tell jokes, I want to make music of all types.
'De La has done it, maybe I can do it.'"
De La Soul's Plug 1 & Plug 2 present... First Serve is released on 2 April.
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You've read the book about Wales, now see the country. | That is the message from Literature Wales, as it launches a series of tours to showcase the locations made famous by best-selling authors.
It believes one key to tourism is to kindle the imagination for places and people celebrated by iconic writers.
Eight summer excursions include a mix of walking and bus tours in English and Welsh dealing with the backdrops of authors like Hedd Wyn and JRR Tolkien.
The star attraction this year is a personal guide by Owen Sheers around the setting to Resistance, his 2007 World War II novel which is also in production as a film.
It is based on an alternate history following the failure of the Normandy landings, and a successful counter-attack and invasion by Nazi Germany.
It centres around Sheers' home town of Abergavenny, and even though it describes fictional events, it draws heavily on the sights and sounds of the area.
Peter Finch, chief executive of Literature Wales - formerly Academi - said: "Our main motivation is to promote the literature of Wales and to inspire new writers; but our interests are shared with so many others.
"If we can bring in tourists and boost the local economies while we're at it, then all the better."
'Extremely nervous'
He believes the combination of actual places and imaginary circumstances has helped to popularise the tours.
"Last year I was extremely nervous when we ran a tour based on Raymond Williams' novel, Border Country, taking tourists to an empty piece of countryside which was the setting for a fictional signal box," he said.
"But I'm happy to say that I was totally wrong.
"I'd completely under-estimated the power to inspire of the Welsh countryside, the writings of our authors and the imaginations of the readers."
"I think often Welsh people hide our lights under a bushel, valuing our own literature, but ignoring how important it also is to people from outside Wales.
"Our tours have been taken up by people from all over the world; some who are serious critics, but others who know virtually nothing and go away with a thirst to read more."
Tours run from May until the end of September, and also include a look at the Black Mountain landscape which inspired Tolkien's Middle Earth, Chris Meredith's guide to the Table Mountain of his poetry, and a look at the Rhymney Valley through the eyes of Idris Davies.
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A charity has put copies of the late Bill McLaren's famous rugby commentary crib sheets up for sale in order to raise funds. | The A3 size documents contain up to 1,000 detailed facts and figures for each of the many matches he covered.
Copies of the "Big Sheets" are being sold by the Bill McLaren Foundation set up in his honour.
The first document available is from the 1993 match between the Barbarians and the All Blacks.
The charitable foundation was set up after the commentator's death in January.
It was set up to support the development of rugby and its values, and to recognise his contribution to the game.
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On 1 April, 2014, a Magnitude 8.2 earthquake rocked northern Chile. Six people died, 2,500 homes were damaged and 80,000 people were displaced. Just over one year later, a M7.8 earthquake strikes Nepal. Over 6,200 people (and counting) have been killed, entire towns and villages flattened and millions of people left homeless. | By Kate RaviliousScience writer
Chile's earthquake barely made the news, whilst Nepal's has brought complete and utter devastation. How did two such similar earthquakes have such disparate effects?
A huge part of the answer is, of course, building standards and wealth.
Since Chile's terrible M9.5 earthquake in 1960, where over 5,500 people died, the country has taken big steps in modernising its buildings, designing them to withstand the shaking produced by great earthquakes.
Meanwhile, in Nepal, few buildings were up to code, and many toppled when the earthquake struck.
But wealth and building codes don't tell the entire story: the geology is different, too.
Nepal sits on a continental collision zone (India is smashing into Asia) and its earthquake fault is well disguised: most of the fault is buried deep underground and surface ruptures are quickly covered by muds washed down by monsoon rains and the dense jungle.
Furthermore, the speed of this continental collision (around 4.5cm every year) means that major quakes only hit Nepal every few decades. Chile's fault meanwhile is obvious - a whopping great trench where the Pacific Ocean floor dives underneath South America at a rate of nearly 10cm per year - with major earthquakes occurring every year, making earthquake-resilience a priority.
As continental collision zones go, Nepal's is at the simpler end of the spectrum and has been relatively well studied.
Indeed, geologists had identified Nepal's most vulnerable segment of fault just weeks before the recent deadly quake struck.
Other countries in continental collision zones are underlain by a nightmare of widely dispersed faults, splintering across thousands of kilometres of land.
All the way from the Mediterranean to Indonesia, lies a restless network of earthquake faults, created by the African, Arabian and Indian plates forging northwards into the Eurasian plate. Massive cities - including Istanbul, Tehran, Tabriz and Ashkhabad - are situated on some of the most dangerous land on Earth.
"Because continental faults are less confined, they rupture less frequently, with some faults only coming to life every few thousand years - well beyond human memory or recorded history," explains James Jackson, a geologist at Cambridge University, UK, who heads up Earthquakes Without Frontiers, a project to increase resilience to continental earthquakes.
Since 1900, earthquakes on continental faults have killed twice as many people as earthquakes on ocean-continent boundaries.
Over the last few years, Jackson and his colleagues have been tracking down these elusive continental faults in Iran, Kazakhstan and China.
Using high-resolution satellite images, they can spot anomalies in the landscape that hint at where the fault may lie.
Meanwhile, seismic reflections help to draw a picture of what lies underground. And back in the lab, the scientists study regular satellite snapshots of the Earth's surface to monitor how the planet's surface is deforming.
"We can see exactly where the Earth is being stretched apart or sheared, enabling us to map which parts of the Earth are under greatest strain," says Richard Walters from Leeds University, a member of the Earthquakes Without Frontiers team.
Inverted expenditure
In Nepal's case, much of this information was already available, and indeed a great deal of work had been done by local organisations (such as the National Society for Earthquake Technology) to prepare for the next big earthquake - training stonemasons, retrofitting schools and hospitals, educating people about earthquakes and stockpiling vital resources.
"It does appear that there has been much less loss of life than would have been expected from such a large earthquake (though the toll could still turn out to be in the tens of thousands) and there is evidence that the programmes of the Nepalese government and some of the non-profit agencies did save lives," says Philip England, a geologist at Oxford University, also part of the Earthquakes without Frontiers team.
If nothing else the devastating earthquake in Nepal will hopefully highlight to the international community how vital it is to build earthquake resilience.
"Five times more money is spent on a response [to an earthquake] than it is on helping people to prepare," Katie Peters, from the Overseas Development Institute in London, told Sky News earlier this week.
The first results from the EU's Sentinal 1 satellite show that last Saturday's earthquake in Nepal did not rupture the surface, suggesting that significant strain may still be stored on that segment of the fault, and that another large earthquake could hit in the coming decades.
"Appalling though this event is, it could have been far, far worse. Let's hope that this event is the trigger for a more positive outcome next time," says England.
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Council tax is being marginally reduced in Blackpool. | Blackpool Council leader Simon Blackburn (Lab) announced there will be a reduction of 0.01%, during a budget meeting at the town hall.
There has been no news on the 300 job cuts expected to be announced by the council as it seeks to save £14.1m in the next financial year.
Tory group leader Tony Williams called it a "political budget" and said the loss of jobs was being ignored.
Mr Blackburn said he was intending to freeze the council tax for the next three years but decided that for the next financial year there should be this small drop.
He described the reduction as a "symbolic gesture".
The decrease in council tax will work out as an annual reduction of nine pence for residents in band D households.
On Thursday, Lancashire County Council announced a surprise 2% drop in council tax.
Conservative County Council leader Geoff Driver said: "The county council has managed its finances very well despite huge reductions in funding and that has put us in a strong enough position to cut council tax while announcing new investments and continuing to make savings."
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A body has been found in the search for a man who went missing in the Jubilee River in Datchet.
| Emergency services were called to The Myrke at about 19:00 BST on Friday following reports that people were in the water.
A man in his 20s is believed to have "got in to difficulties" and a body was found in the river on Saturday afternoon, police said.
Another man was treated in hospital for the effects of the cold.
Supt Kate Ford said: "Sadly a body has been recovered from the water and is believed to be the man for whom we were searching."
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Britain was seen to lag behind other countries during the global airship-building race of the 1920s and 1930s. But a quirky scientific experiment 85 years ago briefly gave a boost to the image of the giant aircraft. | By Justin ParkinsonBBC News Magazine
As airship R100 crossed the Atlantic on its maiden voyage, the captain stuck his arm out of the window. In his rubber-gloved hand was a round piece of glass.
Every three hours during the trip from England to Canada, Squadron Leader Ralph Sleigh Booth, or another member of the 44-man crew, repeated the action, for five minutes at a time.
A couple of thousand feet below, a passenger on a steam ship heading in the same direction, Lester Dillon Weston, watched with great interest through a telescope pushed through his porthole. Booth was carrying out an experiment aimed at ensuring the human race could continue to feed itself. The piece of glass was a Petri dish designed to pick up spores released by a fungus known as wheat rust, which had destroyed large areas of crops in North America.
Cambridge University scientist Dillon Weston - a man with a passion for aviation - was keen to find out whether spores could cross the Atlantic. He decided to use airships, still at the experimental stage as passenger craft, to aid his research.
"It wasn't just Dillon Weston who benefited from this," says Ruth Horry, a researcher at Cambridge University's history and philosophy of science department. "People were suffering a sort of airship fatigue in Britain. The government had spent lots of money on developing them and nothing seemed to be coming out of it.
"So the fact they could be used to aid scientific endeavour was very useful for publicity. That's why the captain took part in the experiment. It was excellent PR."
Airships, quiet but huge, had not always been popular with Britons. Germany had used them to drop bombs on Britain during World War One. After one was shot down over Cuffley, Hertfordshire, in 1916, the pilot responsible, William Leefe Robinson, was awarded £3,500 and a Victoria Cross.
In contrast, after the war, the government became involved in efforts to turn airships into luxurious passenger craft, able to compete with ocean liners and linking the British Empire more quickly. It was envisaged that they could get from England to Australia in 10 days, India in six and Canada in three. Cruising speeds were lower than those for aeroplanes but during this era using the latter was expensive and involved many stop-offs.
"The public was pretty much in favour of airships," says airship historian Dan Grossman. "I don't think people were tired of them by 1930 but maybe that there was a sense that the British effort could move on a bit quicker."
Other countries' programmes had resulted in tales of bravery which enthralled the public. In 1926, the airship Norge became the first aircraft to reach the North Pole, on an expedition organized by Norwegian Roald Amundsen and American Lincoln Ellsworth. Germany's LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin had made a five-stage flight around the world in 1929, amid huge press coverage - unsurprising as media mogul William Randolph Hearst was the tour's major backer.
Airship disasters
The 720ft-long R100, built by Vickers at Howden, East Yorkshire, set off from Cardington, Bedfordshire, in July 1930. Its inflated volume was more than five million cubic feet and its construction involved 58,200ft of tubing and five million rivets.
Its opulent design included a double staircase leading down to the dining room, flanked by panoramic windows, and a two-tier promenade deck. It could carry 100 passengers, sleeping in bunk beds, and had a nautical theme, with the use of portholes as windows. The official brochure described the R100 as like a "small hotel" and "intermediate in comfort between a Pullman coach and ocean liner".
Costing about £450,000 to build and run, the maiden voyage coincided with Dillon Weston's trip to Canada for a year-long study of the effects of fungi on crops.
Dillon Weston persuaded those in charge of Sqn Ldr Booth's mission to assist his experiment. As a former member of the Cambridge University Air Squadron, he had previously badgered friends to fly around Cambridgeshire in planes to test his Vaseline-coated collection dishes. His involvement in the R100 voyage was timely for the government, as it gave it an added note of practicality.
"Devastating yet invisible plant diseases were an important enemy to conquer and new aviation technologies were vital in winning the war against them," says Horry. "Newspaper coverage of the time showed that the scientist who chased invisible diseases captured both tiny spores and the imagination of the public. 'Disease germs two miles up - flying scientists chase them,' declared one newspaper."
"No plane would have been able to carry the equipment needed for any scientific expedition across the Atlantic at that stage, so the airship was vital," says Grossman.
Dillon Weston watched some of the flight from below, but the 64mph cruising speed of the R100 was far greater than that of the Ausonia, on which he sailed. The R100 took just over three days to travel from Bedfordshire to Montreal, where 100,000 people came to see it. The Toronto Star newspaper christened it a "wonder airship" and the Manchester Evening News called it a "beautiful sight, the sun glinting brilliantly" on its hull.
The R100 was nicknamed the "capitalist airship" because a private firm had built it, while its sister ship, the R101, became known as the "socialist airship", having been constructed by the Air Ministry, although both were to transport only wealthy travellers. The R101, despite the proximity of millions of cubic feet of hydrogen, had a smoking room on the lower deck. The floor and ceiling were made of light asbestos.
When he arrived in Canada, Dillon Weston collected the Petri dishes to analyse, for what he thought was the start of a series of experiments. But this was not what happened.
On 5 October 1930, the R101 crashed near Beauvais, northern France, en route to Karachi. The hydrogen ignited, killing 48 of the 55 passengers and crew. Among them were aviation minister Lord Thomson of Cardington, who had pushed for the government to promote airship building, and his valet.
Grossman feels Thomson was partly to blame for demanding the R101's launch before sufficient testing. Having arranged an official dinner at the planned stop-off point in Ismalia, Egypt, Thomson decided against refuelling there, to avoid eating amid noxious smells. This meant overfilling the balloon, Grossman argues, meaning more rubbing on girders and hydrogen leakages. Thomson also reportedly brought a 129lb carpet and two cases of champagne, weighing 52lbs, on board.
The crash was a PR disaster, with pictures of the site splashed across newspapers and survivors appearing fully bandaged in photographs.
The British Airships Scheme was abandoned with what the historian Nick le Neve Walmsley has called "extraordinary haste", with the R100 being scrapped. Manned airships programmes largely ended after the German Hindenburg crashed at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in May 1937, with the loss of 35 of those on board.
Dillon Weston, who died in 1952, used a Bunsen burner to create glass models of the spores he analysed, which can be seen at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge. He never wrote his full report, not considering the evidence gained from the R100 conclusive on the movements of wheat rust spores. But Horry has used flight papers, telegrams, family letters and newspaper reports to re-trace his journey.
Although Dillon Weston's experiment was never repeated, Horry believes its "piggy-backing" spirit continues in Nasa's gathering of peripheral scientific data on its missions. "It sounds brave to stick an arm out of an airship window," she says. "But really, like going into space, the brave thing was flying the airship in the first place."
More from the Magazine
The longest aircraft in the world has been unveiled at an airfield in Cardington, England, from where the great airships of the 1920s flew.
The world's longest aircraft in the making (February 2014)
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On social media Michaella McCollum seems confident, even comfortable, in the spotlight - but in real life it seems a different story. | By Serena KutchinskyNewsbeat online editor
The former drug mule appears fragile.
The 26-year-old occupies a weird kind of semi-celebrity status. More than 28,000 people who follow her private Instagram account see snaps familiar to many aspiring influencers - a mix of pouting selfies, glam holiday shots and cute pictures of her one-year-old twins. But she's also often featured in the gossip pages of tabloid newspapers.
Her smile is warm, if slightly nervous, and her voice is soft. She pushes her long blonde hair out of her eyes at regular intervals while we talk over video chat from her home in Northern Ireland, during her babies' nap time.
The unease she's showing could be due to the fact McCollum is better known as one of the Peru Two - two women arrested trying to smuggle £1.5m worth of cocaine into Ibiza in 2013.
McCollum and the woman arrested with her, Melissa Reid, quickly became notorious. Pictures of the pair looking shell-shocked as customs officers arrested them in the middle of Lima's crowded airport were everywhere.
People on social media debated whether they looked sorry for their crime, while wondering how two 20-year-olds go from partying in Ibiza to getting mixed up with an international drug smuggling ring.
They looked so relatable, like anyone you might meet on a night out on holiday. They claimed that they were naive, but were convicted of drug smuggling and spent more than two years in a series of grim, cockroach-infested Peruvian prisons.
McCollum was granted early release in 2016 and returned home, but her reputation followed her. As a convicted criminal, she says it's been hard to find work, make new friends and have relationships.
She feels "like everyone is judging her" and claims her experience has left her with "trust issues".
Her fellow prisoner Reid has kept a comparatively low profile, but McCollum has now written a book about her experiences. She says the title, You'll Never See Daylight Again, was based on a threat made to her while she was in jail.
Escape to Ibiza
There were signs from the start that going to Ibiza was a bad idea, McCollum tells Radio 1 Newsbeat.
"I didn't know much about the island. I was having problems at home and just wanted to escape, but didn't know where to. I'd worked in bars before and did like partying, so when I saw people on Facebook saying they were going there I got the idea. I thought I'd have a really good summer."
She bought a one-way ticket. It was her first time leaving the UK and her mum and sisters - she's one of 10 - came to see her the day before she left, "crying hysterically".
"I was like, 'Why are you being so dramatic?'.
"They told me afterwards they had a feeling that something was going to happen, that I wasn't supposed to go there," she says.
On the day of her flight McCollum forgot her passport and was running late. Once she got to the airport she realised she didn't have her boarding pass and was fined by the airline. Then her hand luggage was too heavy, and she was fined again.
"I just thought it was bad luck," she says.
The way she tells it, McCollum was running away from her life in Northern Ireland. In the book she describes growing up amongst gambling, drugs, death threats against her Catholic family and an abusive boyfriend.
McCollum claims although she wanted these more personal details cut out of the book, fearing they would make her "more vulnerable", she was persuaded it would help people "connect with the person she was at the time".
But this isn't a bid to make people feel sympathy for her, she says.
"It was never put in there for me to play the victim. It's just to give people the whole image of who I was. Obviously, everybody can have an opinion of me going to Ibiza and Peru but I'd gone through some things in life that had led me to that point.
"If I hadn't got involved in drugs at a young age I definitely wouldn't have gone to Ibiza - or continued taking drugs, or got myself in that situation."
A dreadful decision
McCollum says she was at a party and high on acid, the psychedelic drug LSD, when a new friend asked her to "go on a trip" to "pick up a package" in Barcelona.
She writes now that it was the "worst decision of my life" and says her thinking was confused at the time. She knew she didn't want to go back to Northern Ireland and the £5,000 they were offering seemed like a ticket to a new life. She tells Newsbeat that she assumed she would be transporting drugs, but had no idea of the scale of the operation she would become part of.
It all happened pretty quickly after that. In the book, she recalls a drug-fuelled pit stop for breakfast at McDonald's, writing that: "Of everything I've done, everything that I regret, sniffing Class A drugs off a table in McDonald's is up there. But that's hindsight for you."
Before she'd had time to fully sober-up she found herself boarding a plane to Mallorca. The plan had changed - she was no longer going to Barcelona, her final destination was now Peru, with a few days stopover on the neighbouring Balearic island.
Once in Mallorca, she was introduced to Reid and the pair spent several days at a house filled with guns and strangers who booked their onwards flights to Lima - Peru's capital - where it was planned they would pick up the drugs.
"I didn't really know where Peru was but I didn't think it was in South America. I'd never heard of it before. Because I was first told I was going to Barcelona and then Mallorca, I thought that Peru was going to be somewhere in Spain too. I know it's so stupid but I just really didn't know. I hadn't travelled."
The truth about her destination finally dawned when, concerned about how long the flight was taking, she asked the man in the seat next to her for information about their destination. It was at that moment she says her "heart dropped". She'd watched enough movies to know that South America was associated with serious drug crime.
When they arrived and she saw the level of security and military presence at the airport she started really "freaking out".
So, why didn't she try to escape? After all, it was only her and Reid alone in Peru, pretending to be tourists together, for several days.
"It's something I ask myself all the time," says McCollum.
It's true that their Spanish contacts had taken their personal mobiles and told them they were being watched, but they had no interactions with anyone else until the drugs were delivered to their hotel on the last night.
It was only then - when she saw the amount they were meant to bring back - that reality started to sink in, she claims.
"When I saw how much drugs there were I started getting more scared because I realised this was a really, really big thing. Until then, I thought I was just taking back something small - which is still a big deal - but there were about 38 packages in total. It was a real shock.
"I was scared and thought 'I just want to get it over with and get back home'. I don't know what would have happened if I had just walked away, maybe nothing. But I wish I had listened to my gut and walked away."
'Mum... I'm in jail'
She didn't.
Instead, along with Reid, she packed her suitcase with 11kg of cocaine hidden in cereal packets and, after an anxious night, headed for the check-in queue at Lima airport. It wasn't long before they were surrounded by sniffer dogs and police who escorted them into a side room. Once the test on the drugs in Reid's case came back positive, their fate was sealed.
"The whole room erupted," McCollum recalls. "Within minutes it was filled with 30 or 40 people. That's when I realised it was over. I just felt numb, I didn't move or say much. I still couldn't believe it was me in that situation."
It's clear McCollum doesn't find it easy reliving these experiences. She often looks on the brink of tears during our conversation. "We were like deer caught in the headlights," she says quietly.
Both her and Reid then endured a "really, really horrible search" and were chained to metal chairs for 24 hours wondering what lay in store for them. The pair, whose personalities had clashed up to this point, found themselves suddenly bonded by their shared nightmare.
"I started thinking about my family for the first time and I looked at Melissa, and we both started sobbing… I just felt so stupid and sad."
Her first phone call with her mum is something she'd rather forget. "It was awful," she says. A few days had passed since her arrest and at this point her family were making desperate appeals for information on social media, believing she was missing.
"When I called and said 'Hello', my mum knew it was me. She started shouting and screaming and all my family members came on the phone - everybody was really happy. I was trying to talk but mum was too busy. When I finally said, 'I'm in jail' she didn't really understand and the call cut off before I could explain. So, it wasn't until the next day when it was in the papers that she found out I'd been arrested for drugs."
Sat in court handcuffed together in December 2013, McCollum and Reid were jailed for six years after pleading guilty to drug trafficking.
The next two years and eight months of McCollum's life were spent in a series of Peruvian prisons, where the bed was a concrete slab, food was often riddled with bugs and you could find a knife aimed at your head for trying to change the TV channel.
Looking back, she's grateful to have got through it without being beaten up or "touched".
'I could have made a lot of money'
McCollum learnt Spanish while serving time and it's clear she has tried to turn her life around. Now, she lives at home with her mum and her twin sons, and recently took and passed three A-levels. She hopes a degree in business is next.
She's still friends with Reid, although they don't see each other - which she puts down to living in different countries.
"We'll always have a bond," McCollum says, admitting that at times they only had each other. "I'm really grateful that she was there. She helped me through some difficult times - she understood everything because she was going through it too."
As much as McCollum is trying to put her past behind her, there will be some who say that she's cashing in on her crime by putting her story back in the spotlight. So, why tell it now?
It's not about the money, she insists - although any profits from the book will go directly to her.
Since returning to the UK, McCollum says she's had "several" approaches to do different TV shows.
"I could have made a lot of money doing that if I was money-orientated," she says, adding that press attention has made it hard for her to "return to her life and get a job".
Instead, her argument is that she wants people to stop judging her and to draw a line under that chapter in her life. She also talks about wanting to bring awareness to the consequences of things like drug smuggling.
The book ends on a positive note with McCollum, who says she hasn't touched drugs since that time in Mallorca, writing that now "everything is exactly as it should be". But speaking to her it's clear that she's still struggling to come to terms with what she did - and that those experiences and her reputation are likely to haunt her for the rest of her life.
"It's hard to talk about it because it's still very emotional for me. It's something I want to overcome and let go of. I want to deal with the emotions that I bottled up. I'm hoping through this process that I'll be able to heal."
Drug trafficking and the cocaine trade: the facts
In the UK, drug trafficking Class A drugs like cocaine carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment (25 years).
European drug cartels are reported to make around £21bn (€24bn) a year from the sale of illegal drugs, according to Europol - that's twice what it took to fund the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Eight thousand people die from drug-related deaths every year in the EU.
The cocaine trade alone accounts for £4.9bn (€5.7bn) a year.
Cocaine is Europe's most commonly used illicit stimulant drug, with about 3.6 million adults (aged 15-64) estimated to have used it in the last year.
Young adults are thought to be behind record levels of Class A drug use in England and Wales.
Cocaine is highly addictive. It's associated with a range of physical and mental health problems from heart attacks to depression and anxiety. The risk of overdose increases if you mix cocaine with other drugs or alcohol.
65% of organised crime groups involved in trafficking cocaine are also involved in other criminal activities like money laundering, human trafficking and extortion, according to Europol.
In 2019, drug deaths in England and Wales soared to the highest levels on record, with cocaine deaths doubling in the past three years.
Cocaine production also causes serious damage to the environment including deforestation.
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Thieves using a digger have ripped a supermarket cash machine out of a wall and escaped with its contents. | The raid happened in the early hours of Wednesday at the Co-op store in Market Deeping, Lincolnshire.
Police are looking through CCTV footage, while forensic officers examine the scene.
Officers, who are appealing for witnesses to contact them, believe two or three people were involved and left the scene in a car.
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Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg | Politicians and commentators react to the news that former Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe has died aged 85 after a long battle with Parkinson's Disease.
"Jeremy Thorpe's leadership and resolve were the driving force that continued the Liberal revival that began under Jo Grimond. Jeremy oversaw some of the party's most famous by-election victories and his involvement with the anti-apartheid movement and the campaign for Britain's membership of the common market were ahead of his time."
Lord Steel of Aikwood, who succeeded Mr Thorpe as leader
"He had a genuine sympathy for the underprivileged - whether in his beloved North Devon where his first campaign was for 'mains, drains and a little bit of light' or in Africa, where he was a resolute fighter against apartheid and became a respected friend of people like President Kaunda of Zambia."
Former Liberal Democrat minister Sir Nick Harvey, who represents Mr Thorpe's former constituency of North Devon
"Jeremy Thorpe was a colossal figure in the revival of the Liberal cause in post-war Britain and today's Lib Dem politicians continue to feast on his legacy. His charisma, energy and innovative campaigning lit up his generation of British politics. He was the first to embrace fully the television age, the first to hit the campaign trail in a helicopter and both the first and, rather memorably, the last to deploy a hovercraft.
"He would have shone in whatever walk of life he chose, but it was to the lasting benefit of Liberalism that he rejected the Conservatism of his ancestors and devoted himself to progressive causes at home and abroad. In North Devon he was a greatly loved champion of the community and is remembered with huge affection to this day."
Former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell
"Jeremy Thorpe's enforced resignation as leader of the Liberal Party and his subsequent departure from Parliament should not obscure the fact that in his day he was an outstanding parliamentarian with a coruscating wit, and a brilliant campaigner on the stump whose interest and warmth made him a firm favourite with the public."
Greg Hands, deputy government chief whip and Conservative MP for Chelsea and Fulham tweets:
"One of my earliest political memories was of Jeremy Thorpe arriving to campaign where I lived in Looe, on a hovercraft on the beach, 1974."
Michael Crick, political correspondent for Channel 4 News tweets:
"Jeremy Thorpe had been top TV reporter in '50s, early '60s for ITV's "This Week". Big intvs w Kenneth Kaunda, King Hussein, Hastings Banda"
Businessman Roland Rudd tweets:
"Jeremy Thorpe also remembered as incredible showman using hovercraft in campaign and photographed hurdling fence on eve of feb 74 election."
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When the Harry Styles video for Treat People With Kindness was released it became an immediate hit. Its choreographer Paul Roberts had created dances for One Direction - though with 1D there was no Phoebe Waller-Bridge to consider. So how did Roberts combine the two stars' talents to create the energy-lift which people have been craving in the Covid gloom? | By Vincent DowdArts correspondent, BBC News
Styles' video for Treat People with Kindness came out on New Year's Day - though it was shot in London in February 2020.
Choreographer Roberts had worked often with Styles in the One Direction years. Roberts says the timing of the shoot, at the art deco Troxy in Stepney, east London, turned out to be fortuitous.
"We had a great time but we didn't know how lucky we were. Looking back it was about three weeks before the world started to burn. Maybe that's partly why people are loving it now - the video has such a carefree sense to it."
Roberts has had 20 years as one of the UK's most in-demand commercial choreographers. He created dances for the 2019 Spice World tour and has worked with everyone from Katy Perry to Sir Paul McCartney.
He devised work for the dance group BalletBoyz and, as well as stage work, he choreographed One Direction in videos such as Kiss You, Steal My Girl and Best Song Ever.
"So when Harry got in touch to say he wanted me for a new video it was a thrill. The only definite thing was it would be a song from the album Fine Line - but we didn't even know which song would be chosen."
With One Direction, Roberts spent six years working with a hugely successful boy band whose members insisted dance would never become a major part of the act.
'Waiting for 10 years'
Wasn't that a choreographer's nightmare?
"It was always really interesting working with One Direction. I knew very early on that there was a magic about them and I could see they had other skill-sets aside from being this very good-looking five-piece - and then four-piece - band.
"In personal moments you got to see them flourish. They'd mess around doing silly dance moves but I'd think, 'Actually if you wanted to dance really well you sure as hell could do it.'
"So when Harry contacted me and we spoke about doing a video with a lot of dance I was like, 'Well I've been waiting 10 years for this.'" Styles knew he wanted Phoebe Waller-Bridge to have an equal presence.
"I believe Harry went to see Phoebe in the West End when she had her success with Fleabag. They went out to dinner and got on really well. That's when Harry started to think how they could work together in some way."
Before shooting began there was a five-week rehearsal period - far more generous than most projects ever get. But a lot of the time Styles and Waller-Bridge weren't in the same room or indeed country.
"I was with Harry in a dance studio in London and we had all kinds of music to try out from modern alternative stuff to old school big band and Glenn Miller. We were exploring. Only on the third day did we begin to apply what we'd done specifically to the Treat People With Kindness track.
"Meanwhile Phoebe was in Canada working on the James Bond script. But fortunately I had a brilliant assistant on the project called Jared Hageman so Jared flew out to work with Phoebe. And eventually Harry needed to be in LA so I went there.
"He was amazingly devoted to the whole thing. He'd be shooting the Watermelon Sugar promo in Malibu and they'd wrap at 8pm but he'd get in a car and come to the studio and we'd rehearse moves until gone midnight."
Roberts says by then it was clear the choreography would at least nod to the Hollywood of an earlier age.
'Dance language'
"The directors Ben and Gabe Turner sent me a link to a black and white movie from 1943 called Stormy Weather. There is a justly famous sequence in it with the Nicholas Brothers, Fayard and Harold, called Jumpin' Jive.
"I think it's the greatest dance-sequence ever filmed and Gabe and Ben and Harry all wanted our video to have some of the same feel.
"I think in Harry's head he wanted to push himself to the absolute limit of what he was capable of. We were never talking about just an average soft-shoe shuffle.
"So the reality was that I and Jared would talk constantly and exchange material from thousands of miles part. And of course Phoebe and Harry would also pitch in ideas.
"We wanted to find a dance language that would take things as far as we could possibly go with Phoebe and Harry, without it becoming comedic.
"Actually my big worry was practical - that they'd both start out with massive energy but that as the weeks progressed you'd have these two incredibly busy people with no time for everything needed to make the project special. But neither would give up, not for a moment."
Nostalgia for better times
He says it was important the dancing had a contemporary edge as well. "Harry and Phoebe are modern artists and very intelligent. They're fashion forward-thinking.
"I find that once you've stopped giving artists their steps it's often quite nice to step back and just watch how they interpret the music. Sometimes little gems can be grabbed and put into the mix.
"It was discovered very early on that both Harry and Phoebe had huge potential. The delight came from their energy combined with the talent of the film-makers plus the extended period of time we had to rehearse.
"I work in a world where budgets have shrunk considerably so it was a big investment for managements and Harry's label."
Roberts remembers the two stars finally came together for little more than the last week of the project, including the shoot. But there was still time to bring in a ballet dancer to give guidance on "port de bras" - how to hold your shoulders or extend an arm gracefully.
"Harry and Phoebe are both decent and generous beings. So we all kept it fun, despite the blood, sweat and tears which had gone into the preparation.
"When finally we were together they could layer on little side-eyed glances or maybe some tiny movement of the face which the camera would pick up. Above all we wanted a sense of style [no pun intended] and panache."
He says the fact most of us feel a real lack of either style or panache in our lives has given Treat People With Kindness an impact as a video it might not otherwise have had.
"The whole thing has a nostalgia for a time where you could be in a club and socialise with friends with no social distancing. I think the chemistry Harry and Phoebe have together just oozes joy. And for most people joy is in short supply."
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About 50 Orange Order lodges have taken part in the annual parade in the County Donegal village of Rossnowlagh. | The march comes before the annual 12 July celebrations in Northern Ireland, marking the 1690 Battle of the Boyne.
Orangemen from Northern Ireland took part in the parade.
They were joined by lodges from Cavan, Leitrim, Monaghan and the host county, all in the Republic of Ireland.
The demonstration made its way along a one-mile route starting just outside the village, before a religious service at the field.
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Six Kenyan politicians accused of links to the violence which followed the 2007 elections are to appear at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Some Kenyans have been lobbying for the case to be deferred. As Kenyan analyst Gitau Warigi writes for the BBC Focus on Africa magazine, this has more do to with politics than justice | The ICC tug-of-war has provoked another savage bout of infighting within Kenya's shaky coalition government.
The Kibaki wing of the coalition, the Party of National Unity (PNU), is spearheading the deferral campaign and has even instigated a motion in parliament to have Kenya withdraw entirely from the Rome Statute, the treaty that underpins the ICC.
President Mwai Kibaki is entirely fixated with the predicament of Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of independence leader, Jomo Kenyatta.
He is also worried about the case of his closest confidante Francis Muthaura, a secretary to the cabinet and that of the former police commissioner, Hussein Ali.
The case against these three is that they organised retaliatory attacks against the initial perpetrators of the massacres. Overall, the violence left 1,200 people dead and more than 500,000 homeless.
The rival Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) faction, led by Prime Minister Raila Odinga, is pulling in the opposite direction and has insisted the country's obligations to the Rome Statute be upheld.
Justice unserved
Whatever the debate, this is in fact about politics rather than justice and it is threatening to destroy the political settlement that ended Kenya's post-election crisis.
Mr Kenyatta and William Ruto, the former higher education minister who has also been summoned to The Hague, have been saying they will be candidates in the 2012 presidential election when Mr Kibaki's tenure comes to an end.
An indictment by the ICC would almost certainly end these ambitions.
The foremost beneficiary would be Mr Odinga, already being prejudged by opinion polls as the 2012 presidential frontrunner. Yet the ICC matter is hurting the ODM leader almost as much.
It has intensified the long-running feud between Mr Odinga and Mr Ruto.
Those who are backing Mr Ruto have been driven into a marriage of convenience with the PNU, and specifically Mr Kenyatta, with the sole intention of stopping the prime minister's political ambitions dead in their tracks.
Improbable as it sounds, a whispering campaign that Mr Odinga somehow wrote the list of targets for Mr Ocampo, is spreading among both Mr Kenyatta's and Mr Ruto's core supporters.
The other silent beneficiary of the ICC ruckus is Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, but he has opted to play his cards more tactfully than his bitter foe Mr Odinga. With an eye on 2012, he has deliberately chosen to be the face of the government's anti-ICC campaign.
By doing this Mr Musyoka is making a critical investment, drawing on potential supporters in the areas that Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto control.
The expectation is that he will reap the rewards come election time. If indeed the ICC was to put Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto out of political circulation, then Mr Musyoka may be looked upon kindly for his efforts.
So far, the question of his sincerity is being delicately side-stepped.
What is beyond doubt is that if this previously implausible alliance between Mr Kenyatta, Mr Ruto and Mr Musyoka ends up fronting a joint candidate - who the vice-president fervently hopes will be himself - the numbers they can call up would easily overwhelm Mr Odinga.
Already, that is apparent in parliament where the ODM's dominance has been eroded with the defection of Mr Ruto's allies.
Political backfire
The person who could end up paying the highest price over the ICC imbroglio is Mr Kibaki himself. He is the person whom victims of the violence look to for restitution and justice.
Mr Kibaki's uncharacteristically unsubtle campaign to forestall any ICC trials has left the victims pained and disillusioned.
More so as they see the president hobnobbing with characters like Mr Ruto in whose area most of the violence and destruction was carried out.
Meanwhile, the ICC business remains unfinished, with Mr Ocampo suggesting that the court's decision on indictments could come very soon.
Kenya's lobbying has gone a notch higher to target UN Security Council members. However, there is no guarantee the council will heed Kenya's and the AU's deferral request.
Under ICC rules, a deferral is allowed if a state party guarantees that it has established a credible and independent judicial process to try the crimes in question.
The state party must also demonstrate that it is singularly committed to prosecuting those crimes.
Kenya has yet to demonstrate a commitment on either front.
If anything, attempts to create a special tribunal to try the cases arising from the post-election mayhem have failed twice in the Kenyan parliament.
Gitau Warigi is a political columnist with the Sunday Nation newspaper and an online editor with africareview.com
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As a senior police official in northern England calls for safe rooms for the injection of hard drugs, attention has focused on similar projects around Europe.
County Durham's Police and Crime Commissioner Ron Hogg points to an experiment in Copenhagen, which Danish police say has saved lives and helped clean up drug-ridden districts. | By Maddy SavageBBC News, Copenhagen
The harsh Danish winter has yet to set in but Louise Hultman has just pulled on a thick, woolly hat.
"I haven't washed my hair for days, it looks horrible," she says. "Life is difficult when every moment is about getting your next fix."
The 23-year-old has been taking hard drugs since she was 15 and says she steals to fund her addiction to heroin and cocaine.
But these days she injects inside one of Copenhagen's so-called drug consumption rooms, where she can access sterile needles and get help from nurses if anything goes wrong.
Addicts shoot up from inside individual booths spread along a spotless metal bench.
They bring their own drugs, which remain illegal in Denmark, but police in this neighbourhood, Vesterbro, no longer prosecute them for possession.
"I feel ashamed when I shoot up on the streets. If somebody passes by, they should not see my problem," says Louise, her eyes glazed following her most recent drug dose.
"So it's great we have somewhere to go now. And I feel safer here," she adds.
A clean environment
Copenhagen is home to the biggest, most open drug scene in Scandinavia, with up to 8,000 users concentrated in a 2.5km radius.
The capital's first drug consumption room launched a year ago, following a change in national legislation. It is funded by the city council, which spent more than a decade lobbying the government for permission to launch the project.
A second room opened in August 2013 and a third is planned for Aarhus, Denmark's second-largest city.
"We are providing a clean environment for long-term addicts and we have found that they are now much more likely to access other health services in the area," says Ivan Christensen, who manages the drug rooms in Copenhagen.
He says it is impossible to know how many lives have been saved by the project, but there has not been a single death on the premises, despite more than 100 overdoses.
"Two of my best friends died this year because they weren't near a room like this," says Ms Hultman.
Safer streets
Vesterbro is the city's former meat-packing area and is now its red light district. The largest drug room is tucked behind a homeless shelter scrawled with graffiti and opposite a bar boasting to be one of the world's best strip clubs.
But like Hackney in east London or Berlin's formerly communist Mitte, this neighbourhood has quickly become a hub for young creative people and some of the Danish capital's hippest bars.
Police believe the drug consumption rooms are crucial to help clean up the area as it becomes increasingly gentrified.
They say the amount of drug-related litter on the cobbled streets has reduced tenfold over the past year, there are fewer street fights between addicts and there has been a drop in burglaries in the area.
"You have to find new ways to deal with drug addicts. You can't succeed by putting them into jail," argues Deputy Chief Superintendent Kaj Majlund.
"You have to have a dialogue with these junkies and get them into the drug rooms so they can get help."
Domino effect
Denmark is not the first country to launch drug consumption rooms. Switzerland pioneered the idea in the 1980s and since then others have opened in Germany, Spain, Norway, Canada and Australia.
Trials have also taken place in three parts of the UK: London, Brighton and County Durham. Brighton City Council will vote on whether to introduce a permanent project in 2014.
Commissioner Ron Hogg in County Durham wants his region to go even further, supplying "safe heroin" for addicts rather than make them bring their own.
Deputy Chief Superintendent Kaj Majlund says he is happy to pass on his number if other places want advice.
"I would say try it, try it, try it and you will see that it helps," he smiles.
Conservative critics
But not everyone is convinced by the concept.
"Yes the addicts are no longer out on the streets confronting tourists or children," says Peter Buurskov, who runs a hotel a few streets away from the main drug district.
"On the other hand these rooms keep people in the system because they are surrounded by other addicts."
It is this kind of voter that the city's opposition Conservative party leader, Rasmus Jarlov, is hoping to attract when he stands in mayoral elections next month.
He worries that in the longer term consumption rooms will increase drug dealing in the area and encourage more people to shoot up.
"We all want to help the drug addicts of Copenhagen but we think that maybe we should use the resources on getting them out of drugs instead of providing facilities where they continue to take drugs and a zone where police cannot enforce the drug laws," he argues.
The road home
Back at the consumption room in Vesterbro, manager Ivan Christensen stresses that his staff are developing a rapport with long-term users who previously had no access to support services for addicts and says he has noticed a "growing interest" in rehabilitation programmes.
Ms Hultman is amongst those on the waiting list; she is hoping to get a place in Sweden, where her family lives.
But other addicts say that they will continue to take drugs, no matter how much time or money is spent on programmes designed to help them.
"I don't have the balls to get into rehab," says Fransesco Raccio, 37, who started using when he was at boarding school.
"It's very hard, it takes a lot of courage, you have to be 100% sure and you have to do it for yourself and not for anybody else. I tried that once and it didn't work."
"I understand the critics, but in the end if people want to do drugs they will do drugs. Why not help us with these rooms, which are a better place for us?"
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Imagine you got a bargain. You bought a £1m house for £100,000. And imagine you get a great deal on the mortgage. It's only a tiny portion of your disposable income. Anyone hearing that would think you'd done well. | Chris CookPolicy editor, Newsnight@xtophercookon Twitter
Anyone except an official from a finance ministry.
All around the world, governments use a particular way of thinking about debt. If they applied it to our story, they would see the £100,000 debt and the flow of payments to service the mortgage.
But they would not notice you had a £1m asset and were living in a cavernous house rather than a tiny flat.
That is the consequence of a focus on a particular sort of net debt and the deficit. Governments have a way of thinking that focuses on cash-flows and liabilities.
Debts and assets
But a new IMF report, released today, has pointed out that this focus - which misses the benefit of non-financial assets - can be extremely misleading.
The Japanese state, for example, looks like a global laggard if you just look at debt - it has debt three times its national output.
But because it owns a lot of stuff, the aggregate fiscal position is a lot better. It has a big mortgage. They also have a lot to show for it.
Conversely, Germany has little debt, but also little stuff to offset it. (Norway, which has a huge fund of oil money salted away, is in clover.)
Britain's debt looks like a bigger problem when you consider that our government owns relatively little to offset it. Of the states they analysed, only Portugal has a worse overall position, relative to the size of their economy.
This is not the only thing worth considering: Russia's apparent solvency on this measure is a rather rosy way of presenting its current state.
And there are risks to states owning a lot of stuff: if our state still owned Pickfords removals, would you trust it not to make regulation work better for them than other removers? They could end up dampening competition, which can lead to poor outcomes for consumers.
And the state can be a bad owner: if it is politicians who decide on what gets investment, politics can make it difficult to get money into things. Our railways, under nationalisation, were not renowned for being a growing network crawling with slick new locomotives.
Slightly odd accounting
Our Treasury has tended to take the view that it should seek to minimise the complexity of its balance sheet. It dislikes holding onto assets that it could sell - even if that means selling things at a steep discount, For example, it loses money when it sells tranches of the student loan book.
But this is rarely recognised: the slightly odd way we do public sector accounting means that even if I take a £100bn asset and sell it for £10bn, it shows up in the accounts as a £10bn windfall. The real effect - a net loss of £90bn - is disguised.
Conversely, if the state buys up private assets - as Labour has proposed - then our official national accounts will turn blood-red because we will need to issue debt to buy out the current owners. But that is because we ignore the assets: so long as the Treasury pays a fair price we will really be exchanging, say, £100bn of government debt for £100bn of shares.
There are strange consequences to our aversion to holding public assets.
The government is keen, for example, for hospitals to shed extra land they have nearby. Sell it and use the money to build, they say. This is also a bet that we will not be desperate for land adjacent to large hospitals for expansion in the next few decades. A bold punt - and one we took without much thought for decades ahead.
Governments could learn a lot from what people ask when they hear from friends who are first-time buyers: they are more interested in the house than the mortgage.
You can watch Newsnight on BBC 2 weekdays 22:30 or on Iplayer. Subscribe to the programme on YouTube or follow them on Twitter.
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It all began on 5 December 2001 - a grey winter's day in Afghanistan. | By Lyse DoucetChief international correspondent
Far away, in the early hours at the grand Petersberg Palace in Bonn, Afghan delegates at a UN conference finally agreed that Hamid Karzai would be their new interim leader.
In Kabul, I heard the news on BBC World TV and immediately reached for our satellite phone.
"Hamid, what's your reaction to being chosen as the new leader?" I shouted down the crackling line when the former mujahedeen spokesman I had known for years answered his satellite phone at his makeshift military base in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
"Am I the new leader?" he replied, a note of anticipation rising in his voice.
Still dealing with the last remnants of Taliban resistance, Hamid Karzai had just survived an aerial attack by a stray US bomb that killed three US soldiers and many Afghan fighters.
He had not received the call from Bonn and he did not even mention the incident.
"Are you sure?" he queried.
I told him I had heard the news on the BBC.
"That's nice," was his first, simple reaction in his signature, folksy style.
So began the Karzai years in power.
As they near their end, errant Nato attacks and a deeply strained relationship with his most important ally count as his "biggest disappointments".
"Do you remember that day nearly 13 years ago?" I ask him as we stand close to the arch of the Haram Sarai palace in the heart of the heavily fortified palace compound.
"We arrived at 04:00 and there was no electricity or heating," he recalls.
Hamid Karzai facts
When Afghanistan's newly chosen leader made it to an expectant Kabul on 13 December - the day the first winter snowflakes fell - he told me: "The first priority is total peace and security for the people of Afghanistan."
Speaking inside a cold dark palace that day, surrounded by Afghan fighters and friends, he also spoke of other priorities including "an economic possibility so that our people earn a decent living... a fight against terrorism to finish it completely... to make Afghanistan a country ruled by law, ruled by regulations, that gets back its institutions".
Wearing the same kind of grey Karakul cap he still dons to this day, he spoke of how "good would come" if foreign troops were able to help Afghans, as they built their own security forces.
Now, two smartly dressed sentries stand guard outside the Haram Sarai entrance, on the edge of manicured lawns fringed with roses in colourful bloom.
Afghanistan today is, undeniably, a different country.
But there is still no peace or prosperity for the vast majority of Afghans who had dared to hope that the end of Taliban rule would also finish three decades of punishing war.
In 2001, Hamid Karzai seemed to embody the hopes of an entire nation - a mujahid from the war against the Soviets who was not a warlord; a Pashtoon tribal leader who was an ardent nationalist; an English-speaking Afghan at ease in the West who kept the best of his country's traditions.
Much to the surprise of those who worried he was not up to this greatest of challenges, he strode confidently on to the world stage with charm, charisma and that distinctive green silk chapan.
But re-building a land shattered by poverty and war turned out to be much harder than anyone expected. A leader who lacked the resolve to face up to powerful warlords, and the resources to fight or negotiate with the Taliban on his own, grew ever more frustrated and angry.
After his narrow escape in a 2002 assassination attempt in Kandahar, which we witnessed at first hand, he has been forced to spend most of his time in his veritable fortress. But in conversation and speeches, he constantly invokes his meetings with Afghans from more ordinary walks of life, who come to see him or whom he meets on his rare forays beyond the walls.
"Do you feel you failed the Afghan people?" I ask the leader who was first selected in Bonn, confirmed by a traditional assembly or Loya Jirga, and then elected in two presidential polls.
"Afghanistan is a much better country," he responds, without hesitation, as we sit in the elegant marbled hall that became his place of choice for formal interviews. As he prepares to leave office he agreed to sit down with me and my colleagues from the BBC's Persian and Pashto services.
"We still have problems, we are still a poor country, one of the poorest in the world. We have a long journey ahead of us as a nation."
He speaks with visible affection of a country that "became the home of all Afghans. We practised democracy, we voted, there's education, freedom of speech, of expression, and Afghanistan's flag is flying all over the world".
But then a 56-year-old leader with a trim grey beard and three young children expresses regret.
"There are many happy children, but sadly too many children that became sad, who lost their families."
For a man who promised his people peace, he says "lack of peace is a regret I will take with me".
"I wish there was not so much loss of life and the war on terrorism was fought genuinely in the right place."
A few years ago, in an outburst of private pain at a public gathering, he invoked his love for family and nation.
"For God's sake we must stop this violence," he implored the Afghan gathering as he wiped his tears to thunderous applause. "I fear my son Mirwais will have to leave this country. I want him to grow up here."
The Karzai Years
World News GMT times as follows:
Sat 12 Jul 12:30
Sun 13 Jul 00:30 , 07:30, 19:30
BBC News Channel (BST)
Sat 12 Jul 14:30
Sun 13 Jul 05:30, 10:30, 16:30
Mon 14 Jul 01:30
As foreign combat forces prepare to pull out at the end of 2014, Afghans grow increasingly worried about a declining economy, deteriorating security and the threat of a Taliban return.
But President Karzai remains stubbornly optimistic about his country and his people.
"The year 2014 turned into a devil for Afghanistan, an evil for Afghanistan, but it proved wrong," he said, summing up what has become known among Afghans as "2014 paranoia".
"We're moving forward, let me repeat myself, if it is Afghanistan alone, and its people, we will have no problem. If there is a broader international conspiracy for the region, then of course we will fall victim."
Now he sees conspiracies in many places.
Over nearly 13 years, over tea served in the palace's delicate china cups, I have heard the president's language about his Western allies evolve from special friends to "a business-like relationship" to "treacherous".
"Foreign forces have not brought any stability to Afghanistan and they will not," he now insists with a deeply felt sense of betrayal.
"Yes, we do need international support where we don't have the means to sustain ourselves, that is welcome, we are grateful."
But when it comes to the "war on terrorism" he reiterates his often-repeated view that the "fight has to be genuine and true and that is not in the homes and villages. It has to go to the sanctuaries and training grounds and to the financial support to terrorists beyond Afghanistan".
It is a point Hamid Karzai has stressed since he came to power. Everything from satellite imagery to telephone intercepts back his view, and the view of many Afghans, that the root of the problem lies in sanctuaries of the Taliban and other armed groups in neighbouring Pakistan.
Western leaders, who had warmed immediately to a well-spoken Afghan with an infectious sense of humour, now speak with dismay about what they see as erratic behaviour verging on paranoia.
I point out that his Nato allies are astonished and angry when he accuses them of deliberating trying to create instability.
"The consequences are what we see," he explains. "Intention is a different issue, it's hidden from us.
"I see the results. The region is a lot more unstable, there is a lot more violence. I hope that can be reversed and I hope that I'm termed wrong one day by the West, by their good work to bring more stability."
The imbroglio over the 2009 presidential election also still festers like an open wound. Despite credible reports of significant fraud, he holds Washington's perceived desire to see him replaced entirely responsible for a crisis that led to a bitter standoff between him and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.
"How can a nation which talks about promoting democracy do so much to destroy it?" he remarked in a conversation last year, pointing to comments from former US Defence Secretary Robert Gates who wrote how top US diplomats had tried to manipulate the election outcome "in a clumsy and failed putsch".
Even though the president's outlook is now clouded by seeing America's hand in every failure, there is always some evidence he can use to support what can often be extraordinary claims.
At his desk where he took some of the most difficult telephone calls with his allies including from Washington, I ask him when the conversations started changing from being very friendly to being, at times, barely on speaking terms.
He says the turning point was 2007 and the main issue was civilian casualties.
"But I never hung up the phone," he insists.
In recent years he has repeatedly railed against Nato attacks that mistakenly kill innocent Afghans.
His critics point out that he lashes out in that direction more often than he does against casualties from Taliban attacks even though UN figures make it clear the vast majority of deaths and injuries are caused by violence from insurgent groups.
And when it comes to the Taliban, President Karzai firmly rejects any suggestion that their brazen and brutal attacks confirm a rejection of peace talks.
"The Afghan Taliban are in contact with me every day with exchanges of letters, meetings, and a desire for peace," he insists, brushing aside their frequent statements that they will not talk to a leader they dismiss as an "American puppet".
Again he lays the blame for the failure of negotiations squarely at the door of Washington and Islamabad, not the Taliban.
And what about his own responsibility when it comes to another issue that troubles Afghans - the rampant corruption? Why did he look the other way and not hold his officials and allies to account?
"Hang on!" he declares. "Who brought the contracts? The Afghan government didn't give any contracts, the US did that.
"The layers of sub-contractors, the billions of dollars thrown in, who did that?" he demands.
A recent Pentagon report backs up his claim that far too much money flooded a fragile system unable to absorb and control it.
But last year's assessment from Transparency International ranks Afghanistan as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, just above North Korea and Somalia.
"I will take responsibility for the petty corruption in the day-to-day administration and delivery of services," the president concedes. "But the big money is not ours nor did we have control of it."
After nearly 13 long hard years, Hamid Karzai insists he is now ready to go, that it is time for a new leader to do "what is undone".
In 2001, he seemed to be the right man at the right time. For many Afghans, the challenges of 2014 need a new leader at the helm willing to confront the major problems and issues Hamid Karzai was unable or unwilling to resolve, including what many Afghans regard as a vital bilateral security agreement with the US.
We often called Hamid Karzai the "big tent" man.
He insisted everyone should have a place in the new Afghanistan, even the warlords who, repeated human rights reports said, should be tried for war crimes. He refused to allow the formation of political parties that would have helped Afghanistan move away from faction-based movements into a more mature political culture.
He always insisted there was no "opposition" in one big Afghan nation. Years ago, a frustrated UN envoy said Hamid Karzai should have been a "priest", not a politician.
His friends say he was like his father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, from whom he inherited the mantle of the Popalzai tribe when he was murdered. He did not like confronting people, and instead relied on his personal armoury of teasing, cajoling and bestowing rewards.
Over the years, Afghans looking for positions or permissions were infuriated by a leader who would make promises to one group in the evening, and a rival group in the morning.
Hamid Karzai wanted to be like a father of the nation who could heal his country's wounds and strengthen its institutions to allow it to stand on its own two feet.
He understood instinctively how power worked, through tribal and militia networks, right down to village level. An Afghan friend told me of his amazement when the president was able to name district chiefs from across the country.
But he never felt he had the power of his office.
As commander in chief, he was thwarted in the early years by having fewer men and less money than the powerful warlords. In later years, he was embarrassed and angered by well-resourced foreign armies who went into Afghan villages doling out money and conducting raids.
One US commander once told me that when he went to see the president to inform him that they would soon launch an offensive in Kandahar, the president replied that it was the first time he had been informed in advance.
The leader who famously never took holidays, save a few days walking in the hills of Scotland, now says he will take the shortest of breaks and then focus on many other projects, including writing. No-one doubts that in his newly-built house, on the edge of the palace, he will continue to play a role.
He describes himself as "more experienced, quite realistic, no more wishes or ideas about others that are not as I thought they were, and hardened".
As night falls, he resumes the routine he has kept almost every day since he entered the palace. He walks home inside ever-multiplying palace walls, flanked by aides and bodyguards who struggle to keep pace with his brisk stride. Two armoured vehicles bring up the rear of his procession.
Inside his own gate, he runs into the arms of his first daughter, three-year-old Malala, as his eldest son, eight-year-old Mirwais, cycles enthusiastically with his friends, weaving circles across sprawling lawns.
"Did you miss your Daddy?" he asks his pretty, doe-eyed daughter as he hugs her close. "Let's go then."
Post-war Afghanistan
$60bn
in civilian aid 2002 - 2012
35.8% below poverty line
8.6m children in school
17,605 civilians killed since 2008
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Speculation and rumour about Kim Jong-un's health may amount to nothing, but questions about who might succeed him in the short or long term will always be there. The BBC spoke to analysts about the contenders and whether history is on their side. | A male member of the Kim family has been in charge of North Korea ever since its founding by Kim Il-sung in 1948 - and the mythology of this family runs deep throughout society.
Propaganda about its greatness begins for citizens before they can even read: pre-schoolers sing a song called: "I want to see our leader Kim Jong-un."
So how can you imagine a North Korea without this symbolic and political figure at the top? How would elites organise themselves, as well as society as a whole?
The easy answer is: we don't know. More interestingly, they don't know either. They have never had to do it.
There has always been a Kim...
As Kim Jong-un was being prepared for power, they even began using the term "Paektu Bloodline" to help legitimise his rule.
Paektu is the sacred and mythologised mountain where Kim Il-sung is said to have waged guerrilla war and where Kim Jong-il was reportedly born. Kim Jong-un still goes there when he wants to emphasise important policy decisions.
There has always been a Kim at the ideological heart of the country.
What would North Korea be like without such an heir? Kim Jong-un, 36, is believed to have children - but they are far too young. It is thought he has three children, the oldest being 10 and the youngest three. Kim Jong-un himself was considered young when he took power - he was 27.
It is likely that some sort of group leadership would emerge, perhaps as in Vietnam, that leans heavily on the founder's teachings and legitimacy to boost their own standing.
Observers can track who holds certain key positions and can follow news and open-source intelligence about important institutions, but can't really tell how factions are developing, nor who is holding power through personal rather than institutional bonds. Moreover, sometimes vice or deputy directors wield more real power than the titular heads of institutions. This makes all predictions extremely difficult.
The three remaining Kims
There are three Kims who could potentially be involved in the political make-up of North Korea if Kim Jong-un were to disappear. They all face limitations in carrying on family rule.
The first is Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un's younger sister. She is said to have been a favourite of her father who commented on her precocity, her interest in politics from a young age. Her manner is efficient, mild and one suspects rather observant. Much has been made of her closeness to her brother. At the Singapore Trump-Kim summit she was famously on hand to pass him a pen to sign the agreement with, and at the next summit in Hanoi, was pictured peeking out from behind corners as her brother posed for statesman-like photos.
Yet she was not above a temporary demotion after the Hanoi summit - purportedly because of its failure although this will never be confirmed. She doesn't sit on the top policy-making body, the State Affairs Commission, but is an alternate member of the Politburo and vice director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department (PAD) of the Workers' Party of Korea. These may seem like incomprehensible acronyms but the PAD is a powerful organisation that ensures ideological loyalty in the system.
She is a woman, however, and this makes it hard to imagine her occupying the top position in such a deeply patriarchal country. North Korea is an extremely male state, in which gender carries rigid expectations. Being supreme leader, and certainly running the military, does not fit in the range of womanly duties.
The second is Kim Jong-chul. He is Kim Jong-un's older brother, but has never appeared interested in politics or power. (He is known to be interested in Eric Clapton.) At most, he could be a symbolic link to the Kim family: perhaps made the head of a foundation and put forward to read the odd speech.
The final one is Kim Pyong-il, Kim Jong-il's half-brother. His mother - Kim Jong-il's stepmother - was angling to have him become Kim Il-sung's successor. She failed and was sidelined by Kim Jong-il as he rose in influence. Kim Pyong-il was sent to Europe in 1979, where he has held various ambassadorships, returning to North Korea only last year. This means it is very unlikely he has the network to be a central player in elite politics in Pyongyang.
The second-most powerful man in North Korea right now
There are other individuals who have been central in the Kim Jong-un era, but it is difficult to know who among them would form co-operative relationships and who would compete with one another.
One is Choe Ryong-hae. He has had his ups and downs under Kim Jong-un, but having weathered a few storms currently sits on the presidium of the politburo and is also first vice chairman of the State Affairs Commission. Last year he became the first new president in 20 years, replacing the aging Kim Yong-nam - so he is the person who represents the North at international engagements.
Choe has also held high positions in the military and the Organization and Guidance Department (OGD) of the Worker's Party of Korea, responsible for enforcing loyalty throughout the regime. This is an extremely powerful organisation: it enforces the adherence of all citizens to North Korea's ideology. He is probably the second most powerful man in North Korea.
The old spymasters and rising political grandees
Another is Kim Yong-chol. This general paved the way for the Trump-Kim summits, meeting US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo several times. He has been head of the United Front Department (responsible for relations with South Korea) and the Reconnaissance General Bureau, the country's main intelligence service. He seems to have suffered a demotion following the collapse talks with the United States, but it is unlikely this spymaster will remain obscure for long.
Yet another is Kim Jae-ryong. As well as being on the State Affairs Commission, he is Premier of the Cabinet, a moderately influential position. Relatively little is known about him, but his star has risen in the past years as others have fallen. He is known for managing industries and ran the most isolated province, home to key military-industrial sites, for several years. This may mean he has been closely involved in the nuclear program.
Jong Kyong-taek is responsible for the State Security Department, which investigates and punishes political crimes. It also helps physically protect the leadership. These are crucial responsibilities that help enforce stability in the system.
Hwang Pyong-so is another official who has held top military posts and has run the OGD in the Kim Jong-un era. Like Choe (and many others) he has been disciplined; he doesn't seem to have been rehabilitated in the same way, however. Other 2010s foreign policy stalwarts Ri Yong-ho and Ri Su-yong have also seen roles diminish recently. They have been replaced by Ri Son-gwon and Kim Hyung-jun. The former is said to be an ally of Kim Yong-chol.
The military enforcers
A handful of top generals of the Korean People's Army (KPA) would also certainly exert influence in any transition period. Currently, two men sit atop the General Political Bureau of the KPA, Kim Su-gil and Kim Won-hong. This bureau enforces political loyalty in the military, something that would be absolutely crucial during periods of uncertainty.
Kim Won-hong, helps illustrate how difficult it is to predict how power would be shared if Kim Jong-un were no longer there. Kim Won-hong and Hwang Pyong-so had been thought to be rivals, competing to influence Kim Jong-un at the other's expense.
Amongst top elites, who would clash and who would ally? Would there be pro and anti-Kim Yo-jong factions? Would the fear of instability stop rivalries from getting out of hand? After all, it is in no elite politician's interest to see the state collapse, opening the door for some kind of takeover by South Korea, or even China.
There is currently no perfect contender: his sister would have to overcome the sexism and the break from tradition of a male heir. Anybody else is not directly descended from that all-important Paektu bloodline. but in the end, they will all have to think of the unity of the state they have defied every international norm to preserve.
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Give or take, the fourth anniversary of the Arab Spring coincided with the resignation of Yemen's government following a confrontation with a Houthi insurgency, leaving Tunisia as the only regional country that continues to inch along a path towards more pluralistic governance. | By PJ CrowleyFormer US Assistant Secretary of State
Yemen is back to square one.
The collapse of the government of Yemeni President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi is bad news on several levels.
The headlines in western media have focused on what this means for the threat posed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) or for Iran's ambitions in the Middle East.
These are important questions.
Certainly given the identification of the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, there is a justifiable concern that AQAP will take advantage of potential chaos.
While the Houthis have been battling the government for several months, they have also been fighting al-Qaeda. It is perhaps its only overlapping interest with the West.
The Houthis are not enamoured with the US policy in Yemen, nor drones. But even the Houthis seem to recognise the potential value of Monday's drone strike that allegedly killed three al-Qaeda operatives.
But being the enemy of an enemy only goes so far.
The relative ease with which the Houthis gained strength in recent months, took over de facto control of the capital and became the country's new kingmaker is remarkable and undoubtedly disconcerting to Yemen's primary backers, the United States and Saudi Arabia.
The United States has been training Yemeni forces under a counterterrorism effort US President Barack Obama termed a "model" several months ago. While that may be true, the model is clearly a work in progress.
The Saudis have poured billions into Yemen to try to ensure the political primacy of the Sunni majority over the Shia minority. The Houthis are a Shia Zaidi sect.
The Houthis apparently received support from Iran. Their dramatic rise does suggest that no strategy in Yemen is likely to succeed without taking Iran into account.
The Obama administration has been careful to avoid mixing other pressing issues with the ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran, but it needs to find out what the Houthis and the Iranians want in Yemen and what they can live with.
A more fundamental question is: Can Yemen, arguably the region's weakest country, even survive this latest crisis intact?
This is not a given.
Not so long ago Yemen was two countries - North and South. It only unified in 1990 after a process that took two decades. Like everything else in Yemen, the bond is fragile.
The proximate cause of the Houthi confrontation with the Hadi government was a failure to implement an acceptable power-sharing agreement based on a shared future vision for Yemen.
The government was considering constitutional changes that would have established a new federal system in Yemen. Hadi favoured the creation of six federal regions and the Houthis just two. At stake is the question of how to divvy up income from Yemen's energy sector.
The Houthis participated in both the 2011 revolution that upended the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh - who is nonetheless now backing them - and the National Dialogue Conference that followed. Intriguingly, the Houthis appear to want to be part of the solution, but don't necessarily see themselves as the solution.
Since none of the key players in Yemen want to see the country divide and open the door for another mini-caliphate, the potential exists for an inclusive political process that leads to an interim government, constitutional changes and new elections.
Parliamentary elections last occurred in 2003 and presidential elections are overdue.
Even these basic steps will be a heavy lift. Yemen will need help pulling it off.
Mr Obama's brief stopover in Saudi Arabia en route home from India, leading a high-powered bipartisan delegation to pay respects to the Saudi royal family following the death of King Abdullah, was an important gesture and provided a valuable opportunity to discuss Yemen with the new monarch, King Salman.
In turn, the United States needs to broaden its counterterrorism approach in Yemen.
The Obama administration has become far too tactical. Drones have a role to play, but the secret to success in Yemen is ultimately better governance and economic growth.
Just as the crisis in Syria was less about democracy but the price of grain, so too cuts in fuel subsidies in Yemen contributed to the current unrest.
Most American aid to Yemen is military. Whacking bad guys is important, but what Yemen desperately needs is more economic assistance.
Its economy is stagnant; it imports 90% of its food, and is running out of water.
What Yemen needs is a long-term commitment from the United States and the international community.
If there is one thing we now understand about the transformation under way in the Middle East, helping a country like Yemen save it from itself will take not years, but decades.
P.J. Crowley is a former Assistant Secretary of State and now a professor of practice and fellow at The George Washington University Institute for Public Diplomacy & Global Communication.
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Andy Jassy is not a household name. | By James ClaytonNorth America technology reporter
He is, though, about to take on one of the biggest jobs in global business - replacing Jeff Bezos as chief executive of Amazon.
Accompanying the appointment of a new football manager comes endless speculation. What will the style of play be? Are they the right fit at the club? Can they manage the big stars?
Business is no different.
Yet with Amazon's new chief executive, we kind of know what to expect.
Amazon's business is so big it essentially acts as an umbrella organisation for many different companies.
Mr Jassy has been at the company for 23 years, conducted plenty of interviews, and has been pretty open about what makes him tick.
He also runs its most lucrative business - Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Amazon's quarterly results, announced on Tuesday, confirm that AWS is the driving force behind its profits - accounting for about half of the company's operating income.
It saw the potential for the outsourcing of computing and storage, that companies use to run things like websites, before its rivals.
Google and Microsoft got into the game later - and now offer similar services. However, there's a clear market leader in the field, and that's Amazon.
According to one estimate, AWS accounts for about a third of worldwide cloud infrastructure spend.
It's a long way away from where Amazon started - as an online shop selling books.
Mr Jassy, who founded AWS in 2003, nurtured this side-bet of Amazon's into a money-spinner - and became the obvious successor to Mr Bezos.
And the way Mr Jassy has relentlessly developed AWS is strikingly similar to the way Mr Bezos went about building Amazon, and he is most certainly moulded in his predecessor's image.
AWS has become so successful it's even become a focus of anti-trust campaigners - and the Federal Trade Commission. So should it be hived off from Amazon entirely?
Investors want Amazon to have many more offshoots like AWS - hugely profitable firms all under the company's banner.
That's what Mr Jassy has delivered before, and that's what they hope he can do again.
Amazon has a burgeoning advertising business. It has acquired companies like Whole Foods and Ring home security systems, and is venturing into pharmacy. And don't forget Amazon Prime. All of these businesses have plenty of room to grow.
You might expect shares in Amazon to take a dive on the news that Mr Bezos had stepped back. But the market seemed pretty relaxed about the move. They know Mr Jassy, and see him as an able replacement.
It's not uncommon for a hyper-rich founder to do this - there are precedents. Think of Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Google or Bill Gates at Microsoft. Those two companies have done fantastically well under Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella respectively.
And Mr Bezos is not leaving, remember. He'll be less involved in running the everyday aspects of the company, but Amazon is still his baby, he'll still be the most influential person in whichever room he finds himself at the company.
Mr Bezos's move then is capturing headlines. However, Amazon has become a very big, very successful company - and that's likely to continue under Mr Jassy.
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When Rachael Powell's one-year-old daughter met her grandparents for the first time after months of Covid-induced separation, she "absolutely screamed the place down" as she "didn't know who they were". | By Rachael LazaroBBC News
The 39-year-old was on maternity leave with Emmeline when the first national lockdown was announced in March and she had to shield.
"I was really looking forward to going to coffee shops, meeting other mums and going to baby classes and then everything stopped," she says.
"I felt guilty that she didn't get any of that and have that interaction."
The mum from Monton in Greater Manchester is far from alone in having those concerns.
Many parents believe their babies' development has been hit by the impact of coronavirus.
Baby classes have been cancelled, restarted and cancelled again, while meet-ups with fellow parents now feel like a luxury enjoyed only in the distant past.
Rachael says it left her feeling "cheated" out of her maternity leave and upset that even simple things like visits from Emmeline's grandparents had become fraught.
"She just screamed - absolutely screamed the place down," she says.
"I couldn't leave her in the same room as them. She didn't know who they were."
Rachael says Emmeline had managed to have some interactions with other babies when classes started up again with new Covid-secure guidelines, but it was "just not the same" as when she took her baby's seven-year-old brother Charlie to classes when he was her age.
"It was good at first, because she got to do songs and activities, but as a mum, you didn't get anything from it as I was sat so far away from other mums.
"And, as Emmeline was getting bigger and wanting to get off the mat and see other children, the whole thing became about keeping her on the mat."
Liz Osler, who runs Little Groovers music classes in Greater Manchester, agrees that Covid-secure sessions are "the opposite of what the groups are about really".
"Children are usually encouraged to be sociable and come up and select an instrument, but now they're given instruments in a bag and you've got to keep the bag on your mat."
However, she believes it is still worthwhile hosting the sessions, as they give parents somewhere to go during a difficult time.
She says everyone was "so happy to be able to do something normal, even though it's not normal", but reorganising her business had meant "massive financial outlay" on items such as headsets and loud speakers and on booking larger venues to allow for social distancing.
She says running the classes also means she is "on pins all the time".
"Before Covid, I was in the moment... and now the music is the last thing on my mind [as] all I'm doing is thinking about everyone's safety.
"I can't wait for when children can be sociable with each other and we can blow bubbles and just enjoy the music together.
"You just want to fast-forward to when it's all over."
Delimar Recio, who is originally from Venezuela and lives in Walkden, Greater Manchester says that pressure of having to second guess her one-year-old daughter Sabrina's interactions is hard.
The 31-year-old says while it was "frustrating" to have a burgeoning support network taken away when the first lockdown was announced, the easing of restrictions was also stressful because of Sabrina's natural curiosity.
"She wanted to reach out and touch the other babies and crawl towards them," she says.
"I had to hold her back and she was crying.
"I thought 'what is the point if she was going to get upset all the time?'."
Education consultant and child psychologist Dr Paul Kelly says classes and meet-ups are vital to a baby's development and Covid was having a "massive impact".
"We are social creatures, social beings - it is pre-programmed in our brains," he says.
"When children's brains are stimulated, they grow."
Dr Kelly says there is also an impact on parents, who are missing out on "mutual support", adding: "An informal get-together is massive in terms of benefitting both parent and child."
For him, people should "grab what they can, when they can" during these uncertain times and focus on "how you can enhance [your baby's] development... rather than spending time thinking about how your child might be behind".
Both mums say they have been surprised by what their daughters now take in their strides.
Rachael says Emmeline "just clung on to me" when she first started nursery and was "quite teary", but, "after a week or two", stopped crying and settled in, while Delimar says Sabrina is now used to video-calling and is slowly getting used to meeting more people.
"After the first lockdown, she'd cry if she saw a new person," she says.
"Now she's more friendly."
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The Thanksgiving holidays will provide little respite from rhetoric in a highly polarised US. | Nick BryantNew York correspondent@NickBryantNYon Twitter
In this week of Thanksgiving, a holiday observed by most Americans regardless of creed, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation or politics, it seems untimely to talk of national discord and divisiveness.
However, a shared activity and shared menu of turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie is something altogether different from a genuine act of commonality. In these angry times, America seems incapable of putting aside its differences, of truly coming together and even of engineering temporary political ceasefires.
Calamitous events are instantly politicised. Even as the death toll continues to mount in California, the wildfires have sparked rancorous debates about forestry policy and global warming. Terror attacks claimed by ISIS are invariably followed by rows about immigration.
Each successive multiple shooting fuels the unending fight between those who believe thoughts and prayers offer an adequate response and those demanding tighter controls on firearms and gun ownership.
The massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh last month also shone a light on an alarming rise in anti-Semitism. The Anti-Defamation League reported a 57% spike in anti-Semitic incidents in 2017.
Donald Trump's visit to Pittsburgh, a customary presidential act at such times of bereavement, became contentious rather than communal, with a Jewish social justice group mounting street protests because of his unapologetic embrace of nationalism and his characterisation of some of hate-spewing racists in Charlottesville as "decent people".
This kind of protest, which drew widespread community support, would have been almost unthinkable under most recent presidents. Given the prevailing mood of acrimony, however, and Donald Trump's role in stoking it, it came as no surprise.
Even acts of sacred remembrance, such as the recent trip to France to mark the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War One, become needlessly controversial. Prior to Mr Trump heeding the advice of the Secret Service not to travel by motorcade to an American war cemetery when Marine One was grounded by bad weather, a decision seized upon by critics as a dereliction of presidential duty, the trip had already taken an ugly turn.
He arrived in France saying he planned to "celebrate" the end of World War One, a discordant choice of word. The moment Air Force One touched down in Paris, he also picked a fight with his host, the French president Emmanuel Macron. If ever there was a moment to observe a diplomatic ceasefire, surely it was the anniversary of the Armistice.
Read more from Nick
Long before Donald Trump arrived in Washington, the esteemed American political scientist James Q Wilson shrewdly observed: "Once politics was about only a few things. Today, it is about nearly everything."
That dictum seems especially pertinent now. Politics comes to the war cemeteries of France, to American football stadiums on a Sunday afternoon, to the charred cul-de-sacs of Paradise, California, to the National Cathedral in Washington.
When political leaders from both sides gathered there to remember the late Republican Senator John McCain, President Trump was deliberately excluded. John McCain decided before his death that a bipartisan coming together was possible only in the enforced absence of America's head of state, a view widely shared amongst those who packed the pews.
Division, of course, is nothing new. From the country's fractious founding through to the modern-day, this great American experiment has always been explosively combustible. Just visit the Civil War battlefields of Gettysburg, Antietam or Manassas; or the trouble-spots of the civil rights and Vietnam era, such as Birmingham, Selma, and the campuses of "Ole Miss" or Kent State University. The past forty years, if anything, have been relatively peaceable if measured in urban violence, political assassinations or '60s-style mass demonstrations.
But what makes this era so unsettling is the ingrained polarity of the politics.
During the civil rights era, when policy makers in Washington feared the country might be overwhelmed by the racial fury breaking loose in almost every major city, progressive Democrats and moderate Republicans joined forces to defeat segregationist Democrats and unsympathetic Republicans. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, which sounded the death knell for southern segregation, would never have been enacted were it not for bipartisanship.
Likewise during Watergate, Democrats and Republicans buried their differences to serve the national interest and to avert a full-blown constitutional crisis. Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee joined Democrats in voting to subpoena those incriminating White House tapes. Moderate Republicans helped draft articles of impeachment - though Richard Nixon resigned, of course, before they were put to a full vote of the House of Representatives. The poser of the famed question, "What did the president know and when did he know it?" was not some liberal firebrand but rather Senator Howard Baker, a Republican from Tennessee.
Gone, it seems, is an era when moments of national mourning and commemoration, such as the Challenger space shuttle disaster or the 40th anniversary of the D-Day landings, were politically benign; when a US president could speak on behalf of all of his compatriots, as Ronald Reagan did so memorably on both occasions. But it is also important to point out that the politicisation of national tragedies and convulsions by no means started with Donald Trump.
Along with the soothing words uttered by Bill Clinton in response to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, when 168 people were murdered in a domestic terrorist truck bombing, came an attack on unnamed right-wing figures whom he accused of recklessly stoking anti-government sentiment - the "loud and angry voices in America today," as he put it, "whose sole goal seems to be to try to keep some people as paranoid as possible." It was a valid point to make, but also a highly political one at a time of national grieving. For a president then struggling for relevancy in the aftermath of the Republican Revolution in 1994, Clinton saw in the rubble of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building a partisan opportunity. The bombing marked the turning point of his troubled first term, and the start of a comeback that culminated two years later in his re-election.
The attacks of September 11th offer another case study. The national unity and patriotic bipartisanship - crystallised on the floor of a joint session of Congress when then-Democratic Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle hugged George W Bush - proved short-lived. In the run-up to the Iraq war, the White House pushed through a war authorisation vote ahead of the 2002 congressional mid-terms, seeking to tag Democrats who opposed it as soft on terrorism. President George Herbert Walker Bush, by contrast, had waited until after the 1990 mid-terms to seek congressional approval for the first Gulf War, a deliberate act of depoliticisation.
What marks out Donald Trump is the speed and apparent relish with which he douses these moments of crisis and mourning with politics. Divisiveness is his default setting, conflict defines his presidency, and though he often pays lip service to national unity in scripted comments and formal statements, his authentic self usually finds quick expression on Twitter. His talent lies in being a partisan attack dog rather than a national consoler.
This month's midterm congressional elections, at which a divided nation produced a divided result, highlighted America's disunity. They reinforced a historic realignment where Democratic strength is now concentrated in the cities and their suburbs, and Donald Trump's America lies beyond.
The political map, rendered in deeper shades of red and blue, looks more partitionist. Almost the entire western seaboard and most of the northeast coastline is now Democratic. On a road trip hugging the Pacific Ocean, you could travel from the southernmost tip of California to the northern-most tip of Washington state and step foot in only one congressional district represented by a Republican. New York City no longer has a single Republican congressman or congresswoman.
Conversely, the landlocked states of America look like a giant red sea, save for a few isolated blue archipelagos.
Though it is an exaggeration to speak of political no-go areas for the Republicans and Democrats, large swathes of the United States resemble one-party fiefdoms. Texas hasn't elected a Democratic Senator since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988. That was also the year California last voted in a Republican Senator. It should come as no surprise that the new Congress convening in January will be the most ideologically polarised in decades.
Donald Trump is not the cause of this disunity. His victory in 2016 was the culmination of a politics that has continually become more wilfully and aggressively partisan. Both Democrats and Republicans have accelerated this trend. His presidency, however, has widened and deepened the breach. His political business model, after all, has long been based aggravating points of cultural, economic and racial contention, whether on birtherism or immigration. At his rallies, he often looks and sounds more like the leader of a cult than the leader of a nation.
As he told rally-goers in West Virginia ahead of the mid-terms, in one of those inadvertently insightful sound-bites he delivers from time to time: "It's so easy to be presidential, but instead of having ten thousand people outside trying to get into this packed arena, we'd have about 200 people."
The problem for Trump is not the ongoing adulation of rally-goers. Even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue, as he once famously boasted, some would probably not cast off their Make America Great Again caps. It is the wider audience outside. Though his blue-collar base remains solid, and his strength in rural states helped the Republicans retain control of the Senate, the mid-terms became a revolt of white-collar suburban voters. This was especially true of college-educated women, whose unexpectedly high support for him in 2016, even in the aftermath of the Access Hollywood comments, helped him beat Hillary Clinton. For all the polarity, moderates and registered independents can still sway presidential elections.
The mid-terms suggested that the America turned off by Donald Trump is more heavily populated than the America happy with his performance as president. Even in the Senate, where Trump interpreted the results as validation of his leadership, preliminary vote tallies suggest some 45 million Americans cast their votes for Democratic Senate candidate, as opposed to 39.3 million for Republican candidates.
Presidents commonly rebound after mid-term setbacks, as Barack Obama did in 2012 and Bill Clinton did in 1996. Trump's three predecessors were all two-term presidents. The Electoral College means he could lose the popular vote by a heavy margin, as he did in 2016, and still win the White House. Also it would be an act of analytical folly to write him off, a repeat of the colossal mistake so many pundits made in 2016.
However, as the respected political statistician Nate Silver noted earlier this week: "His base alone will not be enough to win a second term."
In 2016, Donald Trump benefited from the politics of division. But this avowed nationalist has struggled to be a truly national leader. The polarisation which fuelled his rise also has the potential to bring about his fall.
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Every year, about 50,000 women walk into an IVF clinic in the UK, hoping it will help them achieve their dream of parenthood. But despite almost 40 years of research, the treatment fails 70% of the time. The BBC's Sophie Sulehria shares her struggle of trying for a baby. | By Sophie SulehriaBBC News
I didn't think it could happen to us.
We had been married for six months and had no reason to think we couldn't have children. All our friends had become pregnant so easily, it should have been the next step.
But four years of IVF treatment and £38,000 later, our baby dream feels further away.
Listen to Sophie's story here on BBC Radio 4's PM programme
Jonny and I met in 2009 and two years later, we were married. We bought our first house together which we were going to renovate ourselves, excited to earmark the spare room as the nursery.
We'd always wanted children, from the moment we met we talked about it. I didn't have a thought in my head it would be hard for us. But of course, it was.
By the end of 2013 I was pulling my hair out. Although people warned me it could take time, I knew something was seriously wrong.
I had always had acute tummy pain but was repeatedly told by doctors it was "probably IBS". But when I didn't fall pregnant, I started to join up the dots.
A laparoscopy confirmed it was far worse than we had feared - I had stage four endometriosis, a condition where tissue that behaves like the lining of the womb is found in other parts of the body.
It was suffocating my reproductive organs and had started to grow on my diaphragm, kidneys and liver.
It was that day we were told it would probably be impossible to have children naturally. I remember Jonny collapsing into a chair, unable to take in the news.
Blood tests also revealed I was suffering from premature ovarian failure. I was in my early 30s and had the egg count of a 50-year-old.
We needed to move quickly if we wanted to try IVF with my own eggs, so we started treatment on the NHS in April 2014.
Even after a huge amount of medication, they were only able to collect one egg, though it was "top quality".
As I waited the two weeks until I was able to do the pregnancy test, I was certain it had worked.
'I had IVF for a couple I'll never meet'
My endometriosis story
'I wish IVF had never been invented'
Sadly I was wrong and we were forced to face doing the whole thing again. But this time we would have to pay privately.
Time was of the essence as with every month that passed by, my egg reserve got lower and lower.
Three more years of hell ensued - six rounds of unsuccessful IVF, at a total cost of £38,000.
We had to borrow money from family and with each failed round, the news has got worse and worse. How could this be happening to us?
I hit complete depression. My body didn't feel like my own and my phobia for needles was getting worse, yet every day I had to face up to five of them.
But the hardest part of it all was my mind, I was all-consumed with being a mum.
People would only have to mention their baby news and I would have a meltdown. Everywhere I turned, people would be pregnant.
The worst year was 2016. Some days I couldn't get out of bed, just staring into space thinking how far away the dream of being a mum felt.
But it was Jonny I felt for more. Not only did he have to face the fact he may not be a dad any time soon, but he also had to live with me. This wasn't the woman he married - a low, depressive person who couldn't have his children.
'I wish I could do more' - Jonny Baker
When I first heard the words "you won't be able to have children naturally", it hit me like a wrecking ball.
Since that day my positivity and determination to build a family with the woman I love so dearly has rarely wavered, but when it does, it feels like overwhelming waves of raw emotion with no end in sight.
People have said what a great support I have been to Sophie and what a rock I am. The reality is, my weaknesses are often hidden, covered by a brave face.
I always wish I could do more, I wish I could fix this, make everything OK.
The reality of how I've coped with the journey is simple - Sophie.
She is the only reason I have been able to, and still can, get up every morning. I will continue to do everything I can for her and our future family, however that comes.
Sophie and I used to talk about our life together, building a family, home and future filled with love and joy.
I know this can all still happen, just in a different way than we envisaged, and more than ever we are determined to make that happen.
I had no idea about the 70% IVF failure rate until we became one of the statistics.
We are now nearing the end of our fourth year of our fertility journey and I can't remember what life was like before we started trying for children.
But if we want a family, we may need to start looking at other ways to do so.
So what do people do when "baby plan A" starts to move further and further away?
What other options are out there for us to become parents? What does "plan B" look like?
We have no idea. Do we look at adoption? Fostering? Using donor eggs?
In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF)
Source: Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority/Fertility Network UK
We don't have a solution, we don't have a baby, and we don't know what to do next.
Over the next few months we will be exploring our options as part of the PM series on BBC Radio 4.
It wasn't an easy decision for us to make, to bare our souls to millions of people.
However, if it helps one other man, woman or couple start to face the next step in their journey to have a family, then it is worth it.
Sophie Sulehria will be sharing her story and exploring her options as part of a three-month series on PM on BBC Radio 4.
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"This is the greatest achievement I can say for this school. [The students] are finding it a great favour that they should be the first school in Africa to have this kind of a project. It is very exciting. They wonder how they got there." | By Fiona GrahamTechnology of business reporter, BBC News
Beatrice Nderango is the headmistress of Gakawa Secondary School, which lies about 10km from Nanyuki, a market town in Kenya's rift valley, not far from the Mount Kenya national park.
The school is situated in a village that has no phone line and no electricity. The people that live here are mostly subsistence farmers.
"We don't really have a cash crop, but the farmers do a bit of farming," says Mrs Nderango.
"They grow potatoes, a little bit of maize, but we don't do well in maize because of the wild animals. They invade the farms."
Although Kenya has fibre optic broadband thanks to the Seacom cable, most of rural Kenya is not connected and until now getting online would mean travelling to town.
But all of this is changing, thanks to technology that uses the unused parts of the wireless spectrum that is set aside for television broadcasters - the white spaces.
The colour of television
The project is part of the 4Afrika Initiative, an investment programme being announced by technology giant Microsoft, that also includes a new Windows Phone 8 smartphone for the region and investment in help for small businesses on the continent, and in education and internships.
For the white spaces project, the company is working with a Kenyan ISP, Indigo Telecom, and the Kenyan government.
The ISP is installing wireless 'base stations' - or masts - that are solar-powered, to get round the lack of mains electricity.
The base stations act as a link to the nearest main cable connection to the internet, without the expense of extending the fibre-optic network.
The signal supplied is much more powerful than normal wifi.
"What we are calling TV white space, that is just a different set of frequencies. It is between 400 megahertz and about 800 megahertz, and those radio frequencies will just go further," says white spaces expert Professor Robert Stewart of Strathclyde University.
"They can go through walls, they will kind of bend around hills, they will give you much better connectivity. And of course, that's why the TV guys chose that in the first place."
Local schools, a healthcare clinic, a government agriculture office and a library have been connected in the first part of the pilot.
Ms Nderango says internet will benefit teachers and students alike.
"Students will now be introduced to e-learning, they will be able to carry out the assignments, they'll be able to do a lot of research," she says.
"To add to that, there is the exposure to the rest of the world."
And she believes the wider community will benefit as well.
"It will change lives, because on the internet you can access information about skills.
"The farmers for example will improve their skills, and learn entrepreneurship."
Business networking
Microsoft's Fernando de Sousa says getting rural areas online is a crucial part of making them economically viable.
"There is... a commercial responsibility that both private and public sector have across Africa to bring technology and bring access that can then drive economic growth, economic development and sustain employability, especially outside of the metropolitan areas," he says.
"It is going to significantly increase the ability for innovation and the great ideas that Africans have to actually reach markets and become available for use by consumers... I think that there is a fantastic opportunity for Africa to showcase its own capabilities in the world because of the increased access."
The next step is to open the network more generally to the business community in the area.
"The commercial viability of actually deploying white spaces on a broad spectrum across the communities, is something that is very important... because a. it can't be a subsidised service; and b. it is not a private government or community network," says Mr de Sousa.
"It really needs to be a commercially viable network. Bringing small businesses online and enabling them to use the technology is very, very important."
This is not the first time that TV white spaces have been used in this way - in the UK pilots are underway on the Isle of Bute in Scotland and in Cambridge.
In the United States, Wilmington, North Carolina, has a white spaces project in place, and the Air.U partnership hopes to connect rural college campuses. There are several test beds around the world.
More is planned. In Africa, Google is sponsoring a project in South Africa that will connect 10 schools in the Western Cape for six months, that will launch soon.
There are obstacles: in many countries this part of the spectrum is licensed, and the way it is used is changing as television services move to digital. National and international regulators are looking at how to allocate space, to avoid having competing services trying to use the same space.
For now, and probably in the long term, TV white space networks will be complementary to fibre-optic broadband rather than a replacement. But Strathclyde University's Prof Stewart, one of the men behind the pilot on the Isle of Bute, thinks that for remote rural areas it may be the most cost-effective option.
"If we find that rural communities in developing or developed countries can access this without significant expense, then it will make a difference," he says.
"It is not going to solve all the problems. It is not for everyone. But it will solve problems for some folks."
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A mental health trust says only a third of people with suspected dementia are getting a consultation within the prescribed four weeks.
| Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership Trust guidelines also say any further treatment should start within 13 weeks of the consultation.
Another third of people are being seen within 10 weeks and the final third take longer, figures show.
The partnership said it was due to the success of an awareness campaign.
The partnership trust, which operates in Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, says it has increased training for GPs and held a number of public events to raise awareness of dementia.
The guidelines are agreed with the South West Strategic Health Authority.
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Firefighters had to be called after sparks from a steam train started a fire on a railway embankment in Dorset. | The fire covered an area of grassland by Swanage Railway between Corfe Castle and Afflington Bridge.
It was reported by a member of the public shortly before 16:30 BST on Sunday and tackled by 17:00.
A Dorset Fire spokesman said: "A steam train passed through throwing out hot sparks which resulted in the very dry track side vegetation catching alight."
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Anyone making a road trip across America will sooner or later run across a giant statue - a cowboy, an American Indian chief or a lumberjack, perhaps. Many, now half a century old, are falling apart, but one man and his friends are tracking them down and bringing them back to life. | By Jasmine Taylor-ColemanBBC News, Illinois
On the concrete floor of an Illinois garage, a giant rests in pieces. His head is the size of a wardrobe, his bulging torso bigger than a double bed.
The 23ft-high (7m) colossus stood for 45 years outside Two Bit Town, a now-abandoned tourist attraction in Lake Ozark, in the heart of the American Midwest. Chief Bagnell, as he was nicknamed, was one of thousands of giant statues designed to entice travellers to pull off US highways.
Now he is getting a makeover thanks to Joel Baker, a television audio technician by day who is America's leading restorer of fibreglass figures made in the 1960s and 70s.
"Over the years these guys have been in the weather and the wind. Some of them have been hit by cars," says Baker as he weaves his way through the outhouse strewn with body parts.
With the help of three friends, he has spent his evenings for past three months stripping off layer after layer of paint from Chief Bagnell's body. They have patched up cracks and painstakingly polished around every feather in the warrior's headdress, and every wrinkle in the face.
What started out as a fun hobby for Baker five years ago, tracking down the statues made by a California-based boat building firm, International Fiberglass, has developed into a mission to save and repair them.
The firm began making giant human figures in 1964 after a restaurant in Arizona ordered a model of Paul Bunyan, a giant lumberjack in American folklore. It made hundreds more over the next decade, of which between 180 and 200 still exist, according to Baker.
After Paul Bunyan came cowboys, golfers, pirates and goofy-looking country bumpkins, advertising everything from tyres to golf courses.
"These giants were just going out all over America," says Baker.
The first American Indians were purchased by Pontiac dealerships, while the cowboys were made for Phillips 66 petrol stations.
The figures were also a common sight outside car repair workshops often carrying an exhaust pipe - a muffler in American English - and have become known as Muffler Men.
But there were also about 20 female models - so-called Uniroyal Gals, made for the Uniroyal tyre company in 1966, some clad in a bikini, others in a skirt, T-shirt and heels.
By today's standards the gals in bikinis, the stereotyped American Indians and country bumpkins might be considered inappropriate. But they reflect the values of the period - and so it's no surprise that the vast majority of Muffler Men were white and male.
"The American hero was this big brawny guy who's going to change your tyre or chop down your tree," says author Doug Kirby, one of the founders of RoadsideAmerica.com which maps the giants' locations.
"It's all quite politically incorrect now, of course."
For Baker and his fellow enthusiasts, the Muffler Men epitomise the road culture and mass production of the 1960s - but the idea of building models of epic proportions to attract passing trade goes back much further in American history.
The founding father was James V Lafferty, who built a six-storey elephant on a strip of undeveloped coastal land just south of Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1881.
Lucy the Elephant was intended to attract property buyers and visitors and still stands as a tourist attraction today, having survived Hurricane Sandy in 2012. In 1882, Lafferty filed a patent on giant buildings "of the form of any other animal than an elephant, as that of a fish, fowl, etc.", which he claimed was his invention.
One of the first examples of giant novelty architecture at the roadside was a 64ft-high (20m), bright orange wooden bottle on the outskirts of Auburn, Alabama.
Built in 1921 to advertise Nehi soft drinks, and billed as "the world's largest bottle", the structure housed a service station, grocery shop and living space. It burned down in about 1936, but the area on the map is still called The Bottle.
Traders had always relied on images rather than words to advertise goods to America's multilingual immigrant population, says Brian Butko, a historian whose books include Roadside Giants and Roadside Attractions.
But as time went on, scale became important.
"It is a lot harder to attract attention when cars are going by at 50 mph," says Butko. "That's where the roadside giants got started. They were trying to draw people off the road from long distances away."
When the modern American road trip really got going after World War Two, with the rapid growth of car ownership and the new interstate highway system, more and more businesses competed to cater for road-weary travellers.
"A lot of the people I talk to say Muffler Men remind them of their childhood in the 60s," says Joel Baker. "They remember being in the back of their dad's car, they remember the make and model of the car and driving by whatever restaurant the Muffler Man stood at."
But just as Muffler Men multiplied thanks to the success of the car industry, they suffered when it stumbled in the 1970s. International Fiberglass ceased operations in 1972, and slowly attitudes towards its giants began to change.
"There was a sense of embarrassment about these models," says Butko, when the fuel crisis and subsequent recession caused some dealerships, fuel stations, and repair workshops to close. More efficient cars had less need to stop in small towns, and just drove past.
Many of the Muffler Men were "just trashed", says Joel Baker.
Among those that were simply neglected, he has discovered many in dire condition, with arms and heads falling off. It's the contrast between childhood memories of the models and their current state that has driven him to take action.
And it seems communities are beginning to appreciate the figures again as other authentic elements of the roadside, such as diners and petrol stations, disappear.
"In lots of places, they went from tacky things that half the town hated, to becoming a cherished landmark," says Kirby.
Businesses are also harnessing their pulling power once more.
Shawn Fennel, who owns a repairs garage for vintage cars near Nashville, Tennessee, paid $20,000 (£14,000) for a Muffler Man to stand on his forecourt last year, and transported it across the country from El Monte, California.
"It's every day that somebody stops and has their picture made," Fennel says.
Doug Kirby says travellers are also taking greater interest, and sometimes going out of their way to see one.
"There's awareness that a roadside attraction or model is something of a rarity," he says. "It's a fun diversion, something that's pretty simple - just as it always was."
So Muffler Men made in the 1960s are still doing their job.
In the garage, Joel Baker and his team are slowly revitalising the giant war chief, with a view to reinstalling him in Lake Ozark this summer.
Two colleagues spray the model with grey primer to prepare for repainting. Baker stands back and smiles with satisfaction.
"There's a pull to these giants," he says. "That's why they were made - to attract attention. And it worked."
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Millions of people in China are celebrating being single on the social network Sina Weibo - because it's "Singles Day" on 11 November. Here's BBC Trending's quick guide to the day and the huge viral phenomenon, driven by online retailers, that it has become.
What is it? | BBC TrendingWhat's popular and why
It's meant to be a day set aside for single people to spoil themselves. The date is four single 1s - 11.11 - or as they call it in China, "bare sticks" - in other words, you're unattached.
Who started it?
It's hard to be sure but an often repeated explanation is that it started as a grassroots movement among students at Nanjing University in the early nineties. They bought themselves presents, as a sort of "anti-Valentines day".
So it's just grown from there?
No - it's grown because of heavy promotion by online retailers and brands. In 2009, the online retail giant Alibaba decided to turn the day into a massive marketing opportunity. Every Singles Day, Alibaba offers huge discounts, aimed at those who are single. It's also a shopping day for other brands and retailers - China Daily called it "China's Black Friday" last year, comparing it to the big US sales day after Thanksgiving, after sales of 10 billion yuan (US $1.63 billion) were recorded on just one online shopping site.
So it's big, then?
It's one of the biggest online conversations each year. It's perhaps no surprise that the Singles Day hashtag on Weibo has reached hundreds of millions of people over the years - because the online retailers who help drive it know their sites are just a click away.
But wait - people are also getting married this "Singles Day"? Er...
This appears to be a growing trend. Last year, the Xinhua news agency reported a "wedding boom" on Singles Day. It seems some people see the "bare sticks" next to each other (11.11) as a romantic symbol of singles finding one another.
What's this picture?
This twist on Communist-style propaganda art is used all over the internet to represent Singles Day, including on the Weibo page for the hashtag. The slogan translates as: "Our Singles Day strength".
What's going viral this Singles Day?
The Chinese account of the US sitcom, the Big Bang Theory, has been making jokes about the upcoming day on Weibo. Some students are sharing selfies of themselves holding boards explaining why it's OK to be single and stating that they aren't interested in finding a partner. One student has dreamt up a fake "Singles card" that looks like a marriage licence, which is also drawing clicks. But big brands are still among the top Singles Day trends.
Research by Kerry Allen
Blog by Whitney Henry and Mukul Devichand
Next story: Should drivers over 70 years old be retested?
A man whose wife killed by an elderly driver, who mistook the accelerator for the brake, has started a popular online petition calling for over-70s to be retested every three years.READ MORE
You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending, and find us on Facebook. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending.
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Guernsey's education minister has said her department "has nothing to fear" from a review of its services. | It follows Chief Minister Lyndon Trott's suggestion to the Policy Council of a root-and-branch review of the island's education services.
The council is due to decide if it will take place at a meeting later.
Deputy Carol Steere, who has offered to resign over poor GCSE results, said if a review received backing, her department was happy to face it.
She said: "I say bring it on, the department will say bring it on. We have nothing to fear from a review."
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Six Victoria Cross medals were won by one regiment on the first day of the Gallipoli campaign. But they had never all been in the same room - and one appeared to have disappeared altogether. It took a feat of detective work to bring them together at last. | By Andrew BomfordBBC Radio 4 PM Programme
Collectively, they were known as the "six VCs before breakfast". These Victoria Crosses - the highest UK and Commonwealth military honour there is - were awarded for valour shown by soldiers from the Lancashire Fusiliers in a famously bloody dawn assault near Cape Helles, Turkey, on 25 April 1915.
It was the opening salvo in the ultimately doomed Gallipoli campaign of World War One, which resulted in more than 100,000 deaths among British, Australian and New Zealand troops, plus allies from other nations on one side, and the Turkish troops of the Ottoman Empire on the other.
The VC citation describes the hail of deadly machine gun fire the Fusiliers faced while landing at W beach, and how they overcame supreme difficulties to cut the barbed wire entanglements under fire and gain control of the cliffs above the beach.
The citation reads: "Among the many very gallant officers and men engaged in this most hazardous undertaking, Captain Bromley, Sergeant Stubbs, and Corporal Grimshaw have been selected by their comrades as having performed the most single acts of bravery and devotion to duty."
They had gone down in Army folklore, but the six VCs had never been together in the same place.
Two of the six were already on display at the Fusiliers Museum in Bury, Lancashire, and three more were owned by Lord Ashcroft, an avid collector of war medals, and on permanent display at the Imperial War Museum in London.
Then there was the sixth VC, which was missing and hadn't been seen in public for the best part of a hundred years.
Tales of bravery
It was Sarah Stevenson, collections officer at the Fusiliers Museum, who first came up with the idea, three years ago, of getting all six together at the museum for the 100th anniversary celebrations of the campaign.
But this was no easy task - even before the missing VC could be located. None of the war medals had ever been loaned out elsewhere before, and initial approaches to the Imperial War Museum were rebuffed.
Undaunted, displaying the sort of can-do attitude you'd expect from a 30-year veteran in the Army, Col Brian Gorski, chairman of the Fusiliers Museum, took up the task of hunting down and acquiring the missing VC with gusto.
"At one moment of time I thought we'd never get there, when everything went dead for two or three months," he admits, "I thought, I'm going to give this whole thing up."
He began his search with what little was known about the recipient of the missing VC, awarded posthumously to Capt Cuthbert Bromley.
At Gallipoli, Capt Bromley was shot in the back and the knee, but carried on fighting. Later he was hit by shrapnel in the ankle. He died the following August, when the troopship he was on, the Royal Edward, was torpedoed and sunk in the Aegean Sea with the loss of almost 1,000 lives, while sailing back to Gallipoli from hospital in Egypt.
Col Gorski showed me the makeshift Bromley family tree he began compiling on a whiteboard in the museum office, working on the assumption that someone in the extended family still owned the VC.
Using public records, and by trawling archives in East Sussex where the family originated, he traced each family line down from Cuthbert's three brothers and a sister. He even searched graveyards in Sussex, and visited old addresses, in what seemed at first like a fruitless task.
At one point during the search, Stevenson appeared on BBC North West Tonight, appealing to anyone who knew of the whereabouts of the VC to come forward.
"It was a long and eventful journey," says Col Gorski. He eventually discovered family members still living in the same area where Cuthbert Bromley had lived - including a cousin, Louise Bromley.
Email exchanges eventually led to another cousin of Louise, Nick Bromley, who lived in London. Crucially, Nick owned Cuthbert's Victoria Cross. It was sitting in its presentation case on his sideboard.
At first Nick was surprised to have been contacted, but then he remembered the anniversary. "I was very honoured that we'd been approached," he says. He thought it was only right that the medals should be reunited for the occasion.
Nick showed me various letters which the family had kept, written by Capt Bromley to his mother, another Louise Bromley, from the battlefield at Gallipoli.
On yellowed paper, and written in pencil, faded after 100 years, they give a tantalising, fascinating and somewhat quirky insight into life during the battle.
29 April 1915
My Dearest mother,
I'm laid up with a bullet wound, nothing serious at all, clean through the flesh and I'm as fit as can be. The regiment suffered rather heavily in the recent fighting. I quite enjoyed myself and hope to be about again very shortly. Fondest love, Cuthbert.
PS Writing bad is not due to wound but awkward position lying down.
3 June 1915
My Dearest Mother,
I got your letter of 6 May. Very fit. We're close up to brother Turk now. Only fifty yards away in places. The show has changed from open work to trench warfare. But we shall get them out soon. Lovely climate here and sea bathing. I hope all goes well at home.
Fondest love to you and Mary. Cuthbert.
14 June 1915
My dearest Mother,
Here we are again. I'm in command now until someone senior returns. Life is alright. I find the want of change of clothing a distinct drawback. An occasional box of good Egyptian cigarettes or a nice light pipe, or one or two khaki handkerchiefs or a toothbrush would be most acceptable. Although my toilet is pretty spasmodic. I hear Bulgaria and Romania are coming in. This is good.
Best luck, Cuthbert
Cuthbert was fond of drawing little sketches on his letters. In one - in what might seem now a little like the 1915 equivalent of a selfie - he depicts himself bayonetting a Turkish soldier, and captions the picture: "Daily Routine." In another he draws a picture of the injury to his ankle by a piece of shrapnel and writes: "Straight through 2' to 2½'".
Lord Ashcroft, who had bought three of the six Fusiliers Victoria Crosses and displayed them in his extensive collection at the Imperial War Museum, agreed to temporarily lend the medals to the Fusiliers Museum after being approached personally by Col Gorski.
As well as being a prominent donor to the Conservative party and prolific political pollster, he also has a fascination with military history and, in particular, with the concept of heroism during warfare.
"The 'six before breakfast' was an action of collective bravery," he says. To put it into context, he said, the Lancashire Fusiliers had started the day with 27 officers and 1,002 other men, and 24 hours later a headcount revealed just 16 officers and 304 men.
This week, I watched alongside delighted staff at the Fusiliers Museum, as the culmination of three years hard work came together with the arrival of the three Ashcroft VCs, to join the Bromley medal and the other two VCs.
The medals arrived on Monday under tight security in a large wooden box. Each is worth well over six figures.
For the first time all six VCs are in the same place, at the same time, just in time for the 100th anniversary celebrations.
"I'm feeling so emotional - I might cry," says Stevenson as she checks through the medals before placing them in alarmed glass display cases.
"It's quite moving when you realise what they did to deserve these medals, and here they all are on their 100th anniversary. It's a very special moment."
The next day 21 members of the family of John Grimshaw, one of the Victoria Cross holders, came to the museum to see the medals in place.
"It's the first time I've seen them all together," says 72-year-old Edna Aspinall, who is John Grimshaw's niece. "I tell all my children and grandchildren about it. It's something that makes us so proud."
John Grimshaw died in 1980, aged 87.
She continues: "I remember as a child Uncle John coming to visit and my mother telling us to take the milk bottle off the table. We all had to smarten up whenever he visited. To us, he was a hero - but he was our hero."
What was Gallipoli?
Why is Gallipoli still celebrated in Australia and New Zealand on Anzac Day?
Andrew Bomford's report will feature on Radio Four's PM Programme at 17:00 BST on Thursday 23 April
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There's nothing quite like that sinking feeling of coming home and seeing the "sorry we missed you" delivery card on the floor. That's a trip to the sorting office you can't quite be bothered with. | But spare a thought for the delivery drivers, working flat out in the run-up to Christmas.
"If you can't put a parcel in an outbuilding or letter box, you can't deliver it."
That's the experience of courier Sally Smith, who often drives 100 miles in a single day.
Her "extremely busy" route goes from Lossiemouth in northern Scotland.
"Everyone in my depot is sound and they wouldn't do stupid things. For me, I've got a military base on my route and a lot of customers there that I have to support," says Sally.
She's had Christmas cards, biscuits and chocolates from happy customers.
But up and down the country, there are other disgruntled people - furious at either not receiving a parcel or finding it stuffed in a neighbour's bin.
"If couriers stuck to the guidelines that have been set out, we'd be returning about 70% of the parcels," Sally explains.
"It's a case of using your own discretion.
"The bad stories just make us look bad and it's a shame. The majority of drivers I know are really nice - and they'll go out of their way to help you in any way they can."
Talking of bad stories - earlier this week, the Hermes courier firm "apologised and provided compensation" after one driver did a poo in a customer's shed, before bagging it up and leaving.
Unsurprisingly, Sally accepts that sort of incident is "totally unacceptable".
"Couriers will often make arrangements with customers and they'll say: 'I know I'm not going to be in on this day so I'll leave the door open for you.'"
As Christmas draws closer, she's looking forward to visiting the Kinloss barracks, where she has a "great relationship" with the military families who are stationed on site.
She'll give a bag of sweets to the guards and personnel, before receiving one in return.
But if you're delivering everyone else's Christmas shopping, how do you manage to buy your own?
"I don't! I haven't started. I'll probably have to do mine on Christmas Eve."
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A 36-year-old man has been arrested and charged in connection with disorder-related offences outside Celtic Park last Sunday. | The man is the latest person to be charged after hundreds of fans converged on the ground to call for the sacking of manager Neil Lennon.
Police Scotland said he was released on an undertaking and a report had been submitted to the procurator fiscal.
There were violent scenes at the ground after Celtic lost to Ross County.
Police Scotland deployed officers, at least 12 vehicles and the force helicopter. Three officers suffered minor injuries.
Glasgow is currently under level four of the Scottish government Covid restrictions, meaning protests are prohibited.
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Thomas Cook's flight from Orlando to Manchester landed at 08:52 BST - according to Flight Radar , it was the stricken operator's final flight. The BBC has spoken to some of the passengers who were on board, as well as people in Leicester from where the holiday firm's first excursion left in 1841. | Anthony Speak, 64, and Wendy Willis, 57, said the atmosphere on the flight was very different from their outward journey on 8 September.
"The staff were crying and it was very sombre," said Ms Willis.
"But the staff were brilliant and very professional, despite not having a job when they landed."
"We saw one of the girls in floods of tears," added Mr Speak, from Dudley, West Midlands.
Stephen and Tracy Curran, from Cumbria, who also flew to America on 8 September, said they had constantly been checking for updates on their holiday-provider's fate.
"We thought it would be a close call," said Mrs Curran.
"We didn't know what had happened until we landed - the staff didn't know either.
"There was a plane that was due to take off an hour after us - but it's still there."
Susan Macintosh, 55, said she felt "very fortunate" to have made her flight back to the UK.
Ms Macintosh, along with her family, praised Thomas Cook staff for their professionalism, adding it was an emotional moment when the pilot made an announcement marking the end of an era.
The family had been waiting for the latest news as speculation heightened about the future of Thomas Cook.
Her son-in-law Kenneth McGuinan, 31, said: "For the past couple of days I have been constantly checking [to see what is happening]."
What to do if you are affected
If you are abroad, the UK government has pledged to get everyone home.
Customers can visit the Civil Aviation Authority's special Thomas Cook website. Those scheduled to return to the UK within the next 48 hours or who are having problems with their accommodation or need special assistance can ring 0300 303 2800 in the UK or +44 1753 330 330 from abroad.
Customers have been urged not to cut short their holiday or go to the airport without checking the website for more information about their return journey.
Those whose future holidays have been cancelled will be informed of how they can claim a refund on the website.
There was also sadness in Leicester, from where Victorian entrepreneur Thomas Cook organised his first holiday.
The 12-mile (19km) rail excursion to Loughborough in 1841 was an attempt by the cabinet-maker and Baptist preacher to offer working-class people a diversion from drinking, which he saw as the root cause of society's ills.
"Thomas Cook is part of Leicester life, part of its history," Sally Pick said.
"We've lost something famous about Leicester.
"I feel bad for the staff who may lose their jobs, and the holidaymakers abroad."
Ivor James, 70, said the company's collapse was "sad" and a "great shame".
He said he used to book holidays with the firm in the 1990s but now goes online.
"People may have fallen out of love with the package holiday because of holidays on the internet," Mr James said,
"I think the mobility of people getting to Europe and cheap flights hasn't helped them."
Yvonne Russell said she had seen the internet have a similar effect on the retail industry in which she works.
"Online means no-one comes to the High Street," she said.
A caller to BBC Radio Manchester said emotions were also running high on the last Thomas Cook flight from Cancun.
The woman, who gave her name as Trish, said the captain asked the passengers to "please bear in mind the staff here are working under tremendous pressure" and they didn't know whether they would have jobs or not.
"We would like you to remember that we also have families and children and bills to pay," the pilot apparently told passengers.
"The staff were all excellent but were all crying," Trish said.
"It was horrendous to see."
'Bereavement'
She said the captain told passengers he had more than 25 years of service with Thomas Cook and signed off saying: "This is a sad day."
Prospective passengers have been speaking of their heartbreak after their holidays were cancelled.
Chloe Hardy, 26, from Burbage, Leicestershire, was due to fly to Zante in Greece on Thursday with 33 friends and family for her wedding at a Thomas Cook hotel.
"I tried to hold on to the tiny bit of hope Thomas Cook was going to be OK," Ms Hardy said.
"It's a nightmare. You never think it's going to happen to you.
"It's devastating, it feels like bereavement."
She said the wedding had been 15 months in the planning but "it's been for nothing".
At the head office in Peterborough
By John Devine, BBC reporter
Thomas Cook employs 9,000 people in the UK and about 1,000 work here. Cars have been streaming in since about 7am and if you didn't know otherwise, you'd think it was business as usual.
There are several members of the media here but people have not been willing to talk, understandably. There has been a lot of "no comment" and one man just said: "I've lost my job."
One woman was coming out of the car park in tears with two children in the back of the car. She said her partner worked there.
There have been people huddled together in groups outside the offices, obviously discussing what has happened.
Stoke-on-Trent travel agent Andy Dean described the collapse as "massive", and said he had been inundated with people trying to make other arrangements.
"My first thought was for the people whose jobs and livelihoods will be affected and for those people whose holidays have been affected," he said.
"It isn't just flights, it is accommodation as well."
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A car transporter has crashed into a low bridge in Perth, causing tens of thousands of pounds of damage to luxury cars it was carrying. | The roofs of at least two new Range Rovers were crushed in the accident in Marshall Place at about 08:00.
Police were called to the scene as debris on the road caused rush-hour traffic problems.
Network Rail later tweeted to say the bridge had been inspected by engineers and was "passed fit for rail traffic".
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The accountancy firm RSM McClure Watters is to undertake the business case for the expansion of the University of Ulster's Magee campus. | The business case will assess the need to increase student places there. Work on the project will begin at the end of March.
A draft report is expected by the end of June, with the final report due in September.
The plan will assess provisions needed to serve 9,400 students.
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As one of the most talked-about TV series around the world, HBO's fantasy drama Game of Thrones has made stars out of its main actors. Now 27-year-old Kit Harington, from Worcester, who plays Night Watch soldier Jon Snow, has just taken his first lead role in big-budget Hollywood movie Pompeii. | By Emma JonesEntertainment reporter, BBC News
Made by Resident Evil director Paul WS Anderson, Harington plays a Celtic slave, Milo, forced to fight as a gladiator in the city of Pompeii in AD79 - the year an eruption from nearby Mount Vesuvius wiped out the population of the Roman town.
The 3D film portrays the volcano, the earthquake and then the tsunami that engulfs Pompeii, adding up to a sizeable movie budget of $100m (£60m).
"I took the part deliberately a year ago because it was a lead role, and I wanted to try that out," Harington says. "Then once I was in it, I stopped feeling the pressure.
"It's only when it's done and you're the centre of attention, talking about it, that it hits you that the success of the movie is resting on your shoulders. But I really enjoyed it and I want to do more lead roles again, if I'm allowed."
Anderson describes Pompeii as "the Las Vegas of the Roman Empire" - it was where the Romans came to gamble and have fun on the Italian coast. Pompeii's unique history is down to the town, and its residents, being perfectly preserved across the millennia after they were buried in volcanic ash.
Excavations began in the 18th Century, and since then, the site near Naples has attracted thousands of tourists each year. But Harington admits he didn't go until after the film was finished.
"I didn't have time before we started shooting. I know it's bizarre, but I went after we wrapped. I wanted to go to this place that I'd be pretended to be in for so long. I'm ashamed to say I didn't do a whole amount of historical research, I took the script as gospel.
"But then I went to all the exhibitions and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we were very historically accurate. I mean, we're a big-budget action movie and we're bound to take historical liberties. But not many.
"We were very painstaking in re-creating Pompeii in Toronto, where we shot the film. I think we built around 30 different sets, including the Coliseum where the gladiators fight. It was strangely similar walking through the real town."
Ancient disaster movie
Inevitably, Harington admits, there will be comparisons to Ridley Scott's Oscar-winning 2000 drama Gladiator. "But I'm not about to try and do Russell Crowe impressions. There is a lot in this movie that is Gladiator-esque, but you can't make a historical film featuring gladiators that won't.
"The main focus in this is the volcano erupting, then the earthquake and then the tidal wave. Really, it's an ancient disaster movie."
Two of Harington's co-stars in Pompeii, Keifer Sutherland and Jared Harris, have also enjoyed huge success in big-budget TV dramas, 24 and Mad Men respectively. Harington's Thrones co-stars, including Peter Dinklage, Emilia Clarke, Sophie Turner and Lena Headey, have all been offered film roles off the success of the TV series.
Harington believes that "TV has been able to offer all actors opportunities it couldn't have a decade ago - and it's made my film career happen. Certainly the quality of television is on an equal footing to film now, but I can't think of committing to any other TV series apart from Game of Thrones.
"Actually, I'm contracted to them right now anyway, so I can't, but it's the only one I want to do. I'm doing all my film roles in between shooting for the series, I can't even change my hair or my beard for parts, which limits me - I've got to look like Jon Snow.
"I'm always amazed by how much people love the character of Jon though, I suppose he's one of the truly good people who's managed to survive so far. I know that I'll be thought of as him for a long time - sometimes fans come up to me and are really upset that I'm not actually Jon Snow, wearing fur and fighting Wildlings."
'Star on the rise'
Game of Thrones, originally written as a novel by author George RR Martin, has much of its roots in ancient and medieval history - including Jon Snow's military stronghold, The Wall, loosely based on the Roman Hadrian's Wall in the North of England.
"I think Thrones has had a real impact on producers being willing to invest money in period pieces in film and television in order to make something look historically accurate, as I think it's tapped into a fascination we all have with the past," the actor says.
"I'm not sure that Thrones could qualify as a historical set piece though, it's got too much fantasy in it, and it's not 'swords and sandals' the way Pompeii is.
"I don't have much luck with my roles though, do I? I'm either Jon Snow, stuck in the Night's Watch, unable to get married or leave, or I'm a gladiator in an arena about to die horribly every day. I'm really stuck as to which of my characters has the worst life. For real life this is amazing though - I never thought I'd make it this far as an actor."
Critics have declared themselves "not blown away" by Pompeii, volcanic eruption or not, with the Hollywood Reporter saying, "the lava flows, as does the cheese".
The Washington Post notes that "Harington's star is on the rise, but his first starring role doesn't showcase what he can do from an acting viewpoint. His startlingly defined six-pack abs are the most memorable part of the character."
Kit Harington says he's "very proud of the film - it's old-fashioned action with great special effects" but admits that he's "had enough of historical characters for now" - although he will star in fantasy adventure Seventh Son, with Julianne Moore, next year.
"I was desperate to do something contemporary after Pompeii and the last series of Thrones," he says, "and now I'm filming the movie version of another hit TV series, Spooks. I just had to go and be someone modern for a change."
Pompeii is in the UK cinemas now.
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Camilla, Duchess of Rothesay, visited a small Scottish school while Prince Charles attended the wedding of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank . | The Duchess of Cornwall's arrival at Crathie Primary in Aberdeenshire was delayed by a tree on the road due to high winds.
She was given a tour of the school - which has nine pupils - before visiting a new games pavilion in nearby Braemar.
Princess Eugenie married her partner in Windsor Castle.
It is understood that Friday's school invitation was a long-standing one.
After apologising for her late arrival, she told her guides, 11-year-old Logan Beedie and Zara Jones, 10: "It's nice and blowy outside, isn't it?"
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Fungi might be one of the world's most diverse kingdoms of life, but we know surprisingly little about them. Now this is about to change with scientists creating the first genetic library of the UK's fungi. | By Rebecca MorelleScience reporter, BBC News
Providing a splash of colour before winter hits, the fungi at Deer Park Farm in Devon are putting on a spectacular display.
They come in every variety: from red, fairytale-like toadstools to slimy, alien tentacles poking out through the soil.
These steep fields contain some of the UK's rarest varieties of a family of fungi known as waxcaps, and they have attracted the attention of scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London.
The researchers are collecting samples of DNA to take back to the lab for analysis. They are starting to create a genetic database of the UK's fungi, beginning with the waxcaps.
Dr Martyn Ainsworth, a senior researcher in fungal conservation from Kew, says: "It is a huge kingdom, and relatively under-explored and under-studied.
"I think we know so little about them because, scientifically, they are hard to work on.
"We can grow a certain number in the lab, but there is a whole host of fungi that we would recognise as mushrooms and toadstools in our woodlands, and some of the most commercially important ones such as ceps, porcini and chanterelles, which we cannot grow in the lab.
"This has held back a lot of research."
Mushroom mystery
But, fungi, which fall between plants and animals on the tree of life, are the hidden helpers of our environment: they recycle waste and dead matter, and provide plants with water and nutrients.
"They are absolutely fundamental to ecosystems. Fungi are really the behind-the-scenes team that are doing all the work," adds Dr Ainsworth.
One basic question that the team is trying to answer with the genetic library is just how many species of fungi there are.
Currently, the UK is thought to contain anywhere between 12,000 to 20,000 species, but Dr Bryn Dentinger, a senior mycologist from RBG Kew, is trying to find the unique gene sequences that will help conservationists gets a handle on this number.
He says: "Because of their cryptic nature, fungi are very difficult to identify by morphology alone.
"But now, with genetic techniques, we finally have the tools here we can accurately diagnose the number of species we have at a much faster rate than before."
Early results already suggest that some waxcaps that were currently considered to be single species, could actually be two or more distinct species.
"There is a lot of hidden diversity that DNA sequencing is allowing us to reveal," Dr Dentinger added.
But despite their apparent abundance, scientists are still concerned about the future of some species of fungus.
Habitat destruction and nitrogen pollution from fertilisers are causing serious declines, and one group that has been particularly affected is the waxcaps.
In fact, their sheer presence is now used as an indicator to show that a grassland habitat is healthy, and a glut of waxcaps can lead to an area being given a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) conservation designation.
Future of fungi
Audrey Compton and John Whetman, who own Deer Park Farm, say that when they bought their farm 10 years ago, it already had some fields packed full of fungi, which they have simply left alone to allow the mushrooms to thrive.
Mrs Compton explains: "We have some really ancient grasslands here; they haven't been ploughed up, they are too steep for a tractor, they haven't been fertilised, haven't had pesticides, and therefore, they are more or less as as nature intended.
"And as long as we graze them the right amount, we're going to have beautiful summer flowers and wonderful autumn fungi."
The researchers from Kew say that delving into the DNA of fungal species will help to conserve them - because if we are unsure of how many species there are, how can we keep track of the ones we are losing?
Dr Ainsworth explains: "It is answering these basic first questions: how many species we have got and then looking to see what are their ecological requirements.
"And then when you know those things, then you can begin to manage habitats in a conservation-minded kind of way."
While the scientists are beginning their sequencing project with waxcaps, which has been funded by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and Scottish Natural Heritage, they are keen to broaden it out to other fungi and say the same techniques could be applied to create a worldwide genetic library of this Kingdom.
This, admits Dr Dentinger, could take decades - although he says it would be worth the effort.
"The total diversity of mushrooms is a difficult number to estimate - 700,000 to over 5 million - and modern molecular data is supporting the higher numbers of fungi," he explained.
"Clearly there is a lot out there - and the only way we can do this is anybodies lifetime is to use DNA sequencing.
"It is a daunting task, but it's also incredibly exciting. It is an exciting time to be a mycologist."
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In September 1945, China's long and bloody war with Japan finally came to an end - millions had died and thousands of foreigners were held in internment camps. As Japan surrendered, my great-uncle was sent to Shanghai to find out what had happened to British citizens trapped during World War Two. | By Rupert Wingfield-HayesBBC News, China
By 1945, China had been fighting for eight years, longer than any other Allied power. It had lost perhaps 14 million people, second only to the Soviet Union.
On 9 September, inside an assembly hall at the military academy in Nanjing, the Chinese Chief of Staff Ho Ying Qin waited for the arrival of Japanese general Yasutsugu Okamura. At two long tables the victors and vanquished sat facing each other. A few feet away a small group of foreigners sat watching. In the middle, in the uniform of a British major-general, sat my great-uncle, Eric Hayes.
Gen Hayes had started his career fighting in another forgotten war - the 1915 invasion of Mesopotamia. In 1919 he was sent to Siberia to fight with the Whites against the Bolsheviks. He spent two years in Bolshevik prisons, becoming fluent in Russian.
In late 1944 he was sent on another obscure mission, to be commander of British forces in China. Britain didn't really have any forces in China, but Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist regime was now an ally in the war against Japan.
In 1938, as the Japanese swept across eastern China, Chiang's nationalist regime had taken refuge in Chongqing, deep in the mountains of western China, clinging to the banks of the Yangtze River. Mao Zedong and his communist guerrilla army were far to the north in the caves of Yanan on the high Loess plateau of Shaanxi.
My great-uncle took up residence at Number 17 Guo Fu Road, a few hundred metres from Generalissimo Chiang's headquarters.
For years the people of Chongqing had been terrorised by Japanese aerial bombing. Japan wanted China out of the war and was trying to force Chiang Kai-shek to negotiate a truce.
"When the Japanese planes first arrived we had no idea about bombing," says Su Yuankui, a small, energetic-83-year old. "We went out into the streets to look at them. But then we heard the explosions and saw houses burning."
Su's family lived in an old three-storey house but soon the whole population of the city was digging tunnels to use as bomb shelters. But there were never enough of them, and in June 1941 it led to a terrible disaster.
"Just after dinner we heard the siren and ran to the shelter," Su tells me. "People kept coming in behind us - more and more. My father said, 'It's no good, the air is getting bad, we should get out.' But people were still flooding in. People began fighting, pulling their hair and their clothes, even biting. They couldn't breathe."
Su crouched down in a corner trying to find air. He blacked out.
"The next morning there were dead people on top of me. Rescuers were pulling them off. They shook me and I woke up. They were shocked. 'Look this little one is alive!' they shouted."
Outside on the street hundreds of bodies were laid out. It's not clear exactly how many died that day, perhaps 3,000. Among them were Su Yuankui's two older sisters.
On 15 August 1945 China's long nightmare came to an end. Two weeks later, in Tokyo Bay, Japan signed the Instrument of Surrender. On the same day in Chongqing, Gen Hayes received orders to get to the Chinese capital, Nanjing, as soon as possible. He hitched a ride aboard an American C46 transport, already filled with war correspondents.
"The plane was also filled to capacity with petrol, and as a result, we waddled off the ground with some difficulty at the last moment and with further difficulty cleared the surrounding hills," he wrote.
Arriving in Nanjing on 3 September, he found what he described as a "fantastic situation".
"We found that we were only the sixth Allied plane to land at Nanking airfield, which was still entirely under Japanese protection, if not control. At that time in Nanking there were only some fifty Americans and 200-300 Chinese Commando troops, against 70,000 Japanese quartered in the city."
The Japanese empire in China had collapsed over night. It was clear to my great-uncle that the Japanese army in Nanjing was not happy with its orders.
"The Japanese army gave me the impression of being extremely tough and dangerous as indeed it had proved itself in battle," he wrote. "There is clearly no realisation of the extent of the disaster Japan has suffered. It regards itself, with some reason, as an undefeated army which, to its regret, has been ordered by the emperor to lay down its arms."
The surrender ceremony, scheduled for 5 September, was delayed for four days, and so Gen Hayes decided to travel on to Shanghai. His orders were to find out what had happened to the city's large British community.
There were no planes, and the train service was still completely under Japanese control. At Nanjing railway station the trains were crammed with Japanese troops. The first-class compartment was occupied by a Japanese general and his mistress, who were not about to make way for a British general.
"I appeared to be faced with one of two unpleasant alternatives, either to beat a retreat with what dignity I could muster and so lose a great deal of face, or to attempt to have a compartment cleared of Japanese and so risk an unfortunate incident," he wrote.
In the end a third option was found. The Japanese ejected a group of Chinese from another carriage.
"Let us hope the ejected Chinese were puppets!" my great-uncle wrote. Puppets was the term used for those who had collaborated with the Japanese occupation.
Even in victory the Chinese were still being humiliated by foreigners.
Once in Shanghai, Gen Hayes found that most of the British community was still living in Japanese internment camps.
One 13-year-old girl, Betty Barr, was interned with her family a the Lunghua camp, along with JG Ballard and his family (of Empire of the Sun fame). Lunghua was the largest internment camp in Shanghai with around 1,600 Britons.
Now 83, Betty still lives in Shanghai with her Chinese husband, George. Today the Lunghua camp is an elite Chinese boarding school, but many of the buildings from the 1940s are still there. As we walk around the leafy campus Betty points to where the Japanese camp commandant, Tomohiko Hayashi, had his office; the assembly hall where they would put on amateur dramatics; and the pond where they got water to flush the toilets.
For two-and-a-half years they were virtually cut off from the world, not knowing who was winning or when it might all be over.
"We had nothing except for rumours that must have come from secret radios," Betty says. "And then in May 1945 we saw American planes in the sky over here writing V - V - V in the sky for VE day… so we knew that Germany had been defeated."
Life in the camp was monotonous and the internees were hungry, but the Chinese in Shanghai were suffering much more. Betty's future husband, George, was living in a tiny attic with his mother and seven siblings. His father had been sent to work in a coal mine in Manchuria, in the north-east of the country, where he died. The children were slowly starving.
"My mother, she had to sell my younger sister to get money," he says. "That morning she brought pancakes. We were so happy! We hadn't eaten them for several months. Suddenly I saw my mother was sad and not eating. I asked her why are you not eating? She said, you are eating your younger sister's flesh!"
In Lunghua camp Betty's American mother kept a meticulous diary. On 14 August 1945 she wrote: "Allies have accepted Japanese surrender, but no confirming message coming from Japanese. Fears that Japanese army in China will fight on. People greatly depressed wondering why no news."
But a day later the mood had changed completely:
"Confirmed that the war is over. Great jubilation! Thanksgiving service at 3pm out of doors. Six flags unfurled on top of F block. Entertainment on both roofs until midnight, clear sky, bright moon. Perfect."
But the end of the war brought more uncertainty. Shanghai was in chaos, no-one knew who was in charge. So Betty's family stayed put at Lunghua.
Finally, nearly three weeks later on 6 September, her mother wrote: "Gen Hayes British General in charge in China came here today, with some others. Went to Nanking for treaty signing. Says we repatriates will be sent to Manila to be sorted."
With him, Gen Hayes brought some very unwelcome news. The allies had agreed that after the war the Shanghai International Settlement would be abolished. Nearly a century earlier the British had forced Imperial China to hand over a large chunk of Shanghai to British rule. Other countries had followed suit. Inside these so-called "concessions" foreigners had their own town councils, police forces, laws and courts.
"I found a remarkable lack of realisation of the implications of the abolition of extra-territoriality and of the fact that from now on Shanghai will be essentially a Chinese city," Gen Hayes wrote.
It was the end of an era. Many foreigners wanted to stay. But within four years they would all be gone. As Mao's communist forces swept south in the summer of 1949 the foreign community fled. For the next 30 years Europe and America turned away from China - and forgot the part it had played in the bloodiest war in history.
Read Gen Hayes' report in full
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Nine climate change protesters delayed an emergency ambulance flight taking off after they stormed Aberdeen Airport, a court has heard. | Five men and four women are on trial facing breach of the peace and vandalism charges at Aberdeen Sheriff Court.
It follows an incident at the airport involving a group called Plane Stupid in March 2009.
An airport duty manager told the court the flight was unable to leave.
The defendants are Mark Andrews, 26, from Edinburgh; William Boggia, 44, from Ballater, Aberdeenshire; Matilda Gifford, 25, Daniel Glass, 26, Emilia Karwowska, 20, Jonathan Agnew, 24, and Josephine Hanson, 25, all from Glasgow; James Kerr, 35, from Paisley, Renfrewshire; and Katherine Mackay, 21, from Shipley, West Yorkshire.
All nine deny the charges against them.
The trial continues on Wednesday.
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US First Lady Melania Trump is visiting Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Egypt to promote children's welfare on what is her first major foreign trip alone. | President Donald Trump has not visited Africa since taking office in January 2017. In February, a row broke out after he allegedly used "shithole" to describe some African nations.
Mrs Trump's week-long trip to the continent is seen as an attempt to heal some of the divisions.
Pictures from AFP and Reuters
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For Sudeep Choudhury, work on merchant ships promised adventure and a better life.
But a voyage on an oil tanker in West Africa, in dangerous seas far from home, would turn the young graduate's life upside down.
His fate would come to depend on a band of drug-fuelled jungle pirates - and the whims of a mysterious figure called The King. | By Kevin PonniahBBC News
The MT Apecus dropped anchor off Nigeria's Bonny Island shortly after sunrise. Sudeep Choudhury was at the end of a draining shift on deck. Looking towards land, he could make out dozens of other ships. On the shoreline beyond them, a column of white oil storage tanks rose out of the ground like giants.
He had breakfast and then made two phone calls. One to his parents - he knew they worried about him, their only child - and one to his fiancee, Bhagyashree. He told her that everything was going to plan and that he would call her again later that day. He then clambered into bed for a sleep.
It was 19 April, 2019. The small, ageing oil tanker and its crew of 15 had spent two days sailing south from the port of Lagos to the Niger Delta, where oil was discovered in the 1950s by Dutch and British businessmen seeking a swift fortune. Although he knew that vicious pirates roamed the labyrinthine wetlands and mangroves of the delta, Sudeep felt safe that tropical South Atlantic morning. Nigerian navy boats were patrolling and the Apecus was moored just outside Bonny, seven nautical miles from land, waiting for permission to enter port.
The warm waters of the Gulf of Guinea, which lap across the coastline of seven West African nations, are the most dangerous in the world. It used to be Somalia, but now this area is the epicentre of modern sea piracy. Of all the seafarers held for ransom globally last year, some 90% were taken here. Sixty-four people were seized from six ships in just the last three months of 2019, according to the International Maritime Bureau, which tracks such incidents. Many more attacks may have gone unreported.
The bountiful oil found here could have made the people of the delta rich, but for most it has been a curse. Spills have poisoned the water and the land, and a fight over the spoils of the industry has fuelled violent crime and conflict for decades. In the villages above the pipelines that have netted billions for the Nigerian government and international oil companies, life expectancy is about 45 years.
Militant groups with comic book names like the Niger Delta Avengers have blown up pipelines and crippled production to demand the redistribution of wealth and resources. Oil thieves siphon off thick black crude and process it in makeshift refineries hidden in the forest. The level of violence in the delta ebbs and flows - but the threat is always there.
Sudeep woke up a few hours later to yelling and banging. The watchman in the ship's command room, high above the deck, had spotted an approaching speedboat carrying nine heavily-armed men. His cry of warning ricocheted around the 80m-long ship as the crew scrambled. They couldn't stop the pirates, but they could at least try to hide.
Sudeep, just 28 but the ship's third officer, was in charge of the five other Indian crew working on the Apecus. There was no oil on board, so he knew the pirates would want to take human cargo for ransom. Americans and Europeans are highly prized because their companies pay the highest ransoms but in reality, most sailors come from the developing world. On the Apecus, the Indians were the only non-Africans.
With less than five minutes to act, Sudeep gathered his men in the engine room in the bowels of the ship before running upstairs to set off an emergency alarm that would notify everyone on board. On his way back down, he realised he was only wearing the underwear he had gone to sleep in. Then he caught his first glimpse of the attackers, who were wearing T-shirts and black face coverings, and brandishing assault rifles. They were alongside the vessel, confidently hooking a ladder onto the side.
The Indians decided to hide in a small storeroom, where they crouched among lights, wires and other electrical supplies, and tried to still their panicked breathing. The pirates were soon prowling around outside, their voices echoing above the low hum of engine machinery. The sailors were trembling but stayed silent. Many ships that sail in the Gulf of Guinea invest in safe rooms with bullet-proof walls where crews can take shelter in exactly this kind of situation. The Apecus didn't have one. The men heard footsteps approaching and the bolt slid open with a clang.
Get up.
The pirates fired at the floor and a bullet fragment struck Sudeep in his left shin, lodging itself just an inch from the bone. The men marched the sailors outside and up onto the deck. They knew they had to move very quickly. The captain had put out a distress call and the gunshots might have been heard by other ships.
The attackers ordered the Indians to climb down a ladder onto the waiting speedboat, which had two engines for extra speed. Chirag, a nervous 22-year-old on his first deployment at sea, was the first to comply. With the pirates' guns trained on them the others followed, as did the captain.
The six hostages - five Indians and one Nigerian - squatted uncomfortably on the overcrowded boat as it began to motor away. The remaining crew, including one Indian who had managed to evade the attackers, emerged onto the deck. They watched as the pirates sped off towards the delta with their blindfolded captives, leaving the Apecus floating in the tide.
The text message from the shipping agent arrived in the middle of the night.
Dear Sir, understandably Sudeep's vessel has been hijacked. The Greek owner is co-ordinating the matter. Don't get panicky. No harm will come to Sudeep. Please keep patience.
Pradeep Choudhury and his wife Suniti, sitting in their bedroom, were left reeling by this perfunctory message. They had spoken to their son just hours earlier. Pradeep began forwarding the text to family members and Sudeep's closest friends. Could this really be true? Had anyone heard from their son?
Sudeep, as anyone who knows him will say, was mischievous growing up. He was restless, always wanting to get out of the house for an adventure. And his parents, especially his mother, would constantly worry about him. They have lived in Bhubaneswar, a small city in the state of Odisha on India's eastern coast, for most of Sudeep's life. It's a place that Indians living in the centres of power and influence - Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore - rarely, if ever, think about, but running a small photocopying shop from the front of their home gave the Choudhurys a comfortable life.
On the busy pavements near their home in central Bhubaneswar, the faces of deities stare out from modest shrines. But before he left for Africa, Sudeep didn't really believe in any kind of god. Life would be what he and Bhagyashree could make of it. They met when they were teenagers. Now a software engineer, she has the air of a girl who would have been popular at school.
The couple are the kind of aspirational young Indians whose dreams far eclipse the stable, traditional family lives that their parents craved. There are tens of millions like them in India, armed with degrees and certificates but coming of age in a lumbering economy that continues to churn out many more graduates than well-paying jobs.
For Sudeep, a job in merchant shipping promised an escape from all of that. He was lured by stories of good money, plenty of work and a chance to see the world. And he's not alone - after Filipinos and Indonesians, Indians make up the largest contingent of global seafarers, working as deckhands, cooks, engineers and officers. Some 234,000 of them sailed on foreign-flagged vessels in 2019.
But getting the right qualifications is complicated and Sudeep studied for five years, set on a path that cost his family thousands of dollars. At the age of 27, he finally qualified as a third officer and got a tattoo on his right forearm to celebrate: a little sailing boat bobbing on a cluster of triangles representing the sea, with a large anchor cutting straight through the middle like a dagger.
On the first morning after the sailors were kidnapped, dozens of men emerged from the forest and fired their guns into the sky for nearly half an hour to celebrate. The five Indians, who had been left on a car-sized wooden platform floating on a mangrove swamp, stared hopelessly at the brown water below them.
To get to their jungle prison they had been taken on a snaking, hours-long boat ride through the waterways of the delta. In those first days, the message from the pirates - reinforced with occasional beatings - was clear: if no-one pays a ransom, we will kill you.
Sudeep was still living in his underwear and itched all night under buzzing mosquitoes that left his skin dotted with bites. He hadn't been given a bandage for the wound on his leg, so he had pushed mud into the hole. The humidity of the jungle meant the men were never dry. They shared a single dirty mat for a bed, and would snatch brief minutes of sleep before jolting awake and remembering where they were.
Early on, the pirates had dragged a skeleton up from the swamp to show the sailors what had supposedly become of a former hostage whose boss had refused to pay. That wasn't the only macabre threat. On another day, they were shown a pile of concrete blocks. Try anything and we'll strap these to your legs and drop you in the ocean, the pirates told them.
A rotating cast of guards kept watch from the riverbank, 10 or so metres away. They spent their time fishing, smoking marijuana and drinking a local spirit made from palm sap called kai-kai - but they also watched the hostages closely, occasionally training a gun on them and yelling out a warning, as if their captives might suddenly dive into the murky water and swim away.
Over time, Sudeep would try to strike up a relationship with some of these men. He would gently ask them how they were, or if they had children. But the response was always silence, or a blunt warning. Don't talk to us. They appeared to be under strict orders but never referred to their leader - who seemed to be based elsewhere in the jungle - by name. He was just "The King".
Sudeep and the other men - Chirag, 22, Ankit, 21, Avinash, 22, and Moogu, 34 - had little choice but to try to conserve their energy and wait for something to happen. Their lives fell into a kind of lethargic routine. Once a day, normally in mid-morning, they would get a bowl of instant noodles to share between the five of them. They would carefully ration the meal, passing around a grimy spoon and each taking one mouthful. They would repeat the ritual in the evening and hand back the empty bowl.
They were given nothing to drink except muddy water, which was often mixed with petrol. Sometimes they were so thirsty they drank saltwater from the river. The Nigerian captain was kept separately in a hut nearby. He was treated better and the Indians began to loathe him for it.
To pass time, the five men would talk about their lives back home and their plans for the future. They would watch the nature around them - snakes slithering up trees, birds taking flight through the mangroves. They would pray. If the pirates spotted a monkey, the quiet would be broken. The Indians would watch them scramble after it, spraying the animal with bullets. It would later be cooked over a bonfire but the meat was never shared with them.
The sailors tried to keep track of each passing sunset by etching small arrows into the wooden planks that they slept on. They were at times delirious - some of them, including Sudeep, contracted malaria. In whispers, they would imagine a scenario where the pirates came to kill them and they fought back. If they were going to die, they could probably kill at least three of them on the way down, right?
At moments like this they laughed, but it was a constant battle not to sink into despair. During the many quiet hours in which they would simply lie under the beating sun, Sudeep would think over and over what he could do to get them out, and what he would tell the Indian High Commission or his family if he got a chance to call. In his head, he was still trying to plan his wedding.
The pirates' initial demand was for a ransom of several million dollars. It was an exorbitant sum and one they must have known was unlikely to be paid. But these kinds of ransom kidnappings involve complex and drawn-out negotiations, and in the undiscoverable warrens of the Niger Delta, time always seemed to be on their side.
About 15 days after the attack, the pirates took Sudeep on a boat to another part of the forest, and handed him a satellite phone so he could appeal directly to the ship owner, a Greek businessman based in the Mediterranean port of Piraeus called Captain Christos Traios. His company, Petrogress Inc, operates several oil tankers in West Africa with swashbuckling names like the Optimus and the Invictus.
Sudeep knew little about Capt Christos but had heard he was an aggressive, bad-tempered man. "Sir, this is terrible. We are in a very bad condition. And I need you to act very fast because we might die here," he told him. His boss, furious about what had happened, was apparently unmoved. The pirates were incensed. "We just want money," they would say over and over again. "But if your people don't give us money, we will kill you."
Their business model is dependent on the compliance of ship bosses who, usually covered by insurance, will pay significant amounts to free their crew after weeks of negotiations. But in this case they were up against a stubborn ship owner. The key now, the kidnappers knew, would be to reach the families.
Back in India, Sudeep's parents spent their nights lying awake. They knew so little about what had happened that their minds veered towards the worst in those hours before dawn broke, when the streets of Bhubaneswar would briefly be still. They feared their son would never emerge from a pirates' den that they could scarcely imagine.
There was no way the family could afford to pay the pirates directly and it was never considered as a serious option. The Indian government doesn't pay ransoms but they hoped it would help them in other ways - by assisting the Nigerian navy to find the pirate camp, or forcing the ship owner to pay up. Bhagyashree and Swapna, a formidable cousin of Sudeep in her mid-30s, took charge of this effort. They corralled the family members of the kidnapped men into a WhatsApp group so they could co-ordinate efforts to get their boys freed.
It soon became clear to Bhagyashree that the pirates would gain nothing by killing the sailors. But she was nervous about how long their patience would last. Pressuring the ship owner from all directions seemed the only feasible way to get her fiancee out. And so in the car, in the bathroom stall at work, and at home lying in bed, she was online, tweeting, firing off pleading emails to anyone who might be able to help.
After three weeks of near-silence, on day 17, the families had a breakthrough. A sister of one of the kidnapped men, Avinash, received a call from her brother in the Nigerian jungle. He told her that all the men were alive but they really needed help. The other families would go on to receive calls from their sons in the coming days - but not Bhagyashree and the Choudhurys.
Strange relationships began to be forged. A relative of one of the sailors who works in the shipping industry, a man called Captain Nasib, began calling the pirates regularly on their satellite phone to check on the men's condition. But the tinny audio recordings he posted in the WhatsApp chat did not reassure the families. The ship owner "does not care" about the lives of his men and is "playing around", a pirate angrily told Capt Nasib in one phone call.
On 17 May 2019 - day 28 - the pirates gave Sudeep the chance to speak to Capt Nasib, who assured him that the ordeal would only last a few more days. But Sudeep, as the ranking officer, was told he had to keep everyone's morale high in the meantime. "I'm trying," Sudeep can be heard responding in Hindi in a crackly recording of the call. "Tell my family that you talked to me."
Every few weeks the Indians were moved from one jungle lair to another. As negotiations with Capt Christos seemingly broke down, The King himself began to visit them. He would never say much, but the other pirates treated him with a reverence that suggested fear. His status as the group's leader almost seemed a consequence of his sheer size. All the pirates were muscle-bound and threatening but The King was especially hulking - at least 6ft 6in. He carried a much larger gun than the men under his command, and a leather belt filled with bullets was always strapped around his massive frame.
He would turn up every four or five days and calmly smoke some marijuana before the captives. He would say that Capt Christos was still not playing ball and that this would have consequences. The King spoke deliberately, and with better English than the other men. After many weeks in captivity, the sailors were becoming bony and thin; their eyes were a pale yellow and their urine was at times blood-red. Each visit from the King felt like it brought them closer to the fate of the skeleton they had seen pulled from the mud.
Then events took a more bizarre turn. Up until this point, what had happened to the Apecus seemed to be just another opportunistic ransom kidnapping. But in late May, unbeknown to the men who sat festering on those planks in the swamp, machinations were unfolding that seemed to point to a far more complex series of events.
The Nigerian navy had publicly accused the tanker company of being involved in the transport of stolen crude oil from the Niger Delta to Ghana. The attack on the Apecus and the kidnapping, according to the navy, had actually been provoked by a disagreement between two criminal groups. There had even been arrests. The ship company's manager in Nigeria had apparently confessed to being involved in illicit oil trading.
Capt Christos, the ship's owner, fervently denied this. In emails seen by the BBC, he blamed the Indian government for getting the Nigerian navy to detain his vessels and staff in order to force him to "negotiate with terrorists" and pay an "incredible" ransom. Indian authorities dispute this version of events. The Nigerian Navy didn't comment.
It was a precarious situation for the captives. But the accusations - which put Capt Christos's tanker operations in Nigeria at risk - did seem to spur him to reach a resolution with the pirates. And so on 13 June, Sudeep's family finally learned from a government source that negotiations were complete and that payment was being arranged. At the same time, the sailors in the jungle were told that their ordeal might be coming to an end.
The men woke up on the morning of 29 June 2019 like they had almost every day for the previous 70 days. At mid-morning, after handing over the bowl of noodles, one of the guards beckoned Sudeep over and whispered that if things worked out, this could be his last day in the jungle. Two hours later the guard returned with confirmation: the man bringing the money was on his way.
The frail Ghanaian man in his mid-60s who approached in a boat that afternoon, nervously clutching a heavy plastic bag with US dollars peeking out of the top, did not look like a seasoned negotiator. Within minutes of his arrival, it was clear something was not right. A group of pirates began beating the old man. The King, bellowing about the money being short, pulled a small knife out of his belt and stabbed him in the leg, leaving him writhing on the muddy ground. He then approached the Indians and told them that while the Ghanaian would be staying, all six captives were free to go. His men wouldn't stop them, but if another pirate group picked them up, they were on their own. He looked Sudeep in the eye: "Bye-bye."
The men did not hesitate. They ran to the water's edge, where the fishing boat that had brought the bag man was parked. Sudeep told the driver to take them where he had come from. After more than two months he was still in his underwear, though the pirates had given him a torn T-shirt to wear. The boat rocked unsteadily from side to side as it motored away.
After nearly four hours, the driver said he was out of fuel and stopped at a jetty. In the distance, on the outskirts of a small village, a group of barefoot men were playing football. The ragged sailors approached them. When they explained they had been kidnapped, they were ushered into a house and given bottles of water which they gulped down one after the other. Three of the village's biggest men kept guard outside the guesthouse they were housed in during the night. The Indians, though weak, finally felt safe. "It was as if God himself appointed them as our saviours," Sudeep said later.
The men were soon in bustling Lagos, waiting for a flight to Mumbai. Alone for the first time in his hotel room, Sudeep poured himself a cold beer, ran a bath and examined his scars. A pirate had inflicted a fresh wound with a fish cleaver on his shoulder a few days before, which stung as he gingerly lowered himself into the steaming bath. An Indian diplomat had given him a packet of cigarettes and over the next hour, he smoked 12 of them one after the other, staring at the ceiling as the water around him slowly cooled.
It's been eight months since the men were released. Suniti, wearing a yellow sari, sits on the kitchen floor, rolling chapatis on a round block of wood. A few metres away her husband watches the Indian cricket team play New Zealand on TV.
"Sudeeeeeeep!" Suniti calls her son to come downstairs and eat but it sounds like a cry of yearning, as though she's checking he's still here. He lost more than 20kg in the 70 days that he spent in the jungle and returned with sunken cheeks. His mother weighed him every few days for the first month, feeling buoyed with each kilo gained.
Bhagyashree passes her mother-in-law a metal plate, her red and gold wedding bangles sliding down her arm as she does so. "I was confident he would return," she says. "It's just the start for us, so how can I spend life without him? I believed in the Almighty - that he would come, that he had to come. Nothing can end like this."
They finally got married in January. The couple have their own space upstairs, but every evening the four of them eat as a family in the small living room on the ground floor. On this night cousin Swapna - who campaigned ferociously for Sudeep's release - is visiting, and sings a 1960s Bollywood love song after dinner.
Back in his tight-knit family and community, Sudeep appears to have found stability. He is working at the local maritime college, teaching young sailors about safety at sea, although he has put his own ocean-faring days behind him. He shows flashes of joy with his family and friends, but it's hard to tell what mark months in a pirates' den has left behind. They rarely talk about it.
"The trauma is still there," he tells me, as we drive around the dark streets of Bhubaneswar with pop music playing on the car speaker. "But it's okay. I got married and all my friends and family are here... If I go to the sea then that thing will come again in my mind."
The ordeal is over but Sudeep and the other men remain tangled in a bureaucratic mess to try to get someone to take responsibility for what happened to them. Since returning, they have not received their salaries, nor any compensation. Sudeep reckons he's owed close to $10,000 in wages for the more than seven months he spent on the ship and in captivity. Capt Christos did not respond to detailed questions about the kidnapping, whether he disputed that he owed Sudeep money and about the fate of the Ghanaian man left behind with the pirates.
He said in an email: "All the kidnapped personnel was safely released and return [sic] to their homes, thanks to Owners ONLY!" The company continues to deny that the Apecus was involved in the purchase of illegal oil, and instead argues it was at Bonny Island for repairs and to pick up supplies. A court case is pending in Nigeria.
What happened to Sudeep underscores the vulnerability of those who find themselves in trouble or exploited at sea - a frontier where regulations and labour protections in theory exist but are difficult to enforce. Seafarers are on the front line of global trade - Nigerian oil ends up at petrol stations across Western Europe, including the UK, as well as India and other parts of Asia. Stories like Sudeep's, of which there are many, also reflect the human cost of security failings in the Gulf of Guinea. Unlike Somalia, Nigeria - the largest economy in Africa - will not allow international navies to patrol its waters.
After all he's been through, it seems cruel that Sudeep should need to go through another fight. But he says that he wants to pursue it until the end. "I faced this and that means I can face anything in my life," he says on another late-night drive. "No-one can break me down mentally. Because for me it's a second birth, I'm living another life."
I ask him if it really feels that way. "It's not feeling that - it is my second life," he replies. We park outside his house - it's past 11pm but the lights are still on inside. Bhagyashree and his parents are waiting.
Designed by Manuella Bonomi; Photos by Sanjeet Pattanaik, Getty Images and www.marinetraffic.com/Dennis Mortimer
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Decades ago when gay people faced ostracism and the threat of prosecution in the UK and other Western nations, many chose to marry and disguise their sexuality. But even with increased tolerance now some choose to take the same path. | By Victoria Derbyshire & Megan BramallVictoria Derbyshire programme
Nick, who is in his 50s, has been married to his wife for 30 years. He is also gay.
He thinks his wife had suspicions about his sexuality for years, but things came to a head when he had an affair with a man.
"She asked if I wanted to leave and I didn't. She's my best friend really above all else, so we've decided we would like to remain together as best friends," he says.
Nick isn't his real name - many of the couple's friends and family don't know he's gay and he wants to remain anonymous to protect his wife.
From the beginning, there was unhappiness in the marriage, with doubts about whether they had made the right decision. He'd always felt uncertain about his sexual orientation and this troubled him more and more as he got older.
Like many men in his situation, Nick, a nurse, found himself living a double life. On the surface he was a happily married man, but he was also using gay pornography. He'd get drunk with a gay friend and, he says, "events took their course".
His wife was angry and upset when she found out about six years ago, and Nick knew there was no point denying the truth any longer.
"I felt it was the right opportunity to be honest and tell her what she'd already suspected of me, but there'd been an understanding that if I didn't do anything we wouldn't talk about it - and when I did we had to talk about it."
Nick acknowledges it would have been better for her if he had admitted sooner that he was gay and needed to act upon it. She told him she was disappointed that he hadn't been able to trust her enough to be honest with her, and that if she had known she would have accepted it.
"I still feel inordinately grateful to her each day that she was so tolerant after that," Nick says. The couple chose to stay together not for the sake of children - they don't have any - but because of their feelings for each other.
"Things couldn't have gone better with my wife that, you know, we still love each other and we're still together but it could have been so very different."
While the couple have stayed together, they no longer have a physical relationship and sleep separately.
Nick has promised his wife that he will never again have sex or a relationship with a man - he says he owes it to her.
But can he stick to that promise? He says: "I'm hoping so, it's my intention to. It didn't feel like a choice in the past, it felt like it was enforced on me. I'm now making that choice that I would like to, in a sense, remain celibate."
Nick is a member of a support group called Gay Married Men, based in Manchester and founded 10 years ago. Men travel from around the country to attend meetings.
Group founder John says most of the men are older - they married women in the 1970s and 80s when society was more hostile to gay people.
Now society is more tolerant, they are more comfortable with coming out as gay. But why did they get married in the first place?
Nick says many men who contact the website say they did so to try to "sort themselves out".
Andy, 56, a student, adds: "At times you think you're going through a phase and as you've once or twice heard people say, 'You find the right woman and she'll turn you and you'll be a real man.'
"Unfortunately society, at the time when I got married nearly 30 years ago, you were either straight or queer and queer was a really vindictive word."
John, a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University who was married for seven years, says it took him a long time to realise he was gay. He knew his sexuality was ambiguous but he didn't have the vocabulary to define it.
"I didn't know what a gay man was. Truthfully, I thought a gay man lived in London. Which people laugh at and it is funny now, it's really strange but I had this kind of naivety.
"I knew gay men were like Larry Grayson, John Inman and, you know, they were camp and effeminate. Well, I didn't feel like camp or effeminate so I couldn't be gay, could I?"
Group members are at different stages - some just suspect they may be gay, others are living with unknowing wives, some are separated or divorced and some have re-married to men.
John is now married to a man who has been his partner for 23 years, but says he still finds parts of his life raw and upsetting.
Andy is divorcing his wife after 30 years and four children - she has a new partner.
He says: "I still love her, I'm very close to her, in fact we describe each other as best friends - which may sound odd, but when we've got children together…"
Some remain married because of the expectations of friends and family, or because they have children and don't want to break up a family.
John says the men are often quite desperate and struggling to cope with no support - many are suffering from quite severe depression.
"We've had bursts of tears when people have come because they're so upset and also so relieved to find out there are other people that are just like themselves. Because that's part of the problem, because we're a myth, we don't exist.
"We don't exist in [the] gay world - we're on the cusp of [the] gay world because we're married men. We don't exist in [the] straight world. So we seem invisible."
The group members say they don't judge anyone and Nick, who helps run the site, says his main message is that people don't have to struggle alone.
"There are people who are successfully managing their sexuality with their family. You still have connection with your children and you don't have to be cut off, out in the cold.
"I'm definitely happier, a weight has lifted and I can be honest with my wife."
The Victoria Derbyshire programme is broadcast on weekdays between 09:15-11:00 BST on BBC Two and BBC News Channel. Follow it on Facebook and Twitter.
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The funeral of Scotland The What? comedy star Steve Robertson has been held. | Family and friends gathered for a private service at Aberdeen Crematorium.
The former lawyer and rector of the University of Aberdeen died last month after a short illness.
A memorial service is expected to be held at a later date. Mr Robertson, George Donald and William "Buff" Hardie made their debut in 1969.
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An Iraqi woman with terminal cancer is set to fly home to her eight-year-old son after well-wishers raised more than £60,000 for a private medical flight. | Arij Altai, 38, came to Southampton five years ago to study for a PhD in linguistics at Southampton University.
After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, she had to stay behind when her husband and son flew back in September.
Mrs Altai's friend, Deborah Cornah who set up a fundraising page said: "We're overwhelmed, thank you."
Mrs Altai's dying wish is to see her son Ali again, she said: "I don't want to die now, before I see my son."
It is understood she may only have weeks to live.
Arrangements are now being made for the six-hour specialist medical flight with a doctor and nurse from Southampton to Baghdad.
It is hoped Mrs Altai will fly home in the next few days.
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The Iraqi army has been stepping up air strikes on the Islamic State (IS) group's positions in northern Iraq in preparation for an expected offensive to retake the city of Mosul.
BBC Persian's Nafiseh Kohnavard is the first ever journalist to be allowed to fly on an air mission over the occupied city. | By Nafiseh Kohnavard BBC Persian, Erbil Airport
It's 01:00 at Erbil Airport in northern Iraq and army mechanics are carrying out final checks on a military helicopter. It's a Russian-made Mi-17 modified to carry two rockets.
As we arrive, soldiers are scrawling messages like "This one is for you Islamic State!" and "You are doomed!" on them.
The missions are a joint operation between the Iraqis and the Americans, and most of the pilots are US-trained.
We're joined by General Ahmed Thwenee, an air force veteran who explains that helicopters can deliver more precise strikes because they fly at low altitudes. Of course, that leaves them more exposed to fire from the ground, as the general experienced first-hand when he was shot in the leg on a previous mission.
As our crew pose for photos on the tarmac, a US military advisor asks if we're sure we want to go. "This is going to be a dangerous operation," he says.
Bombing his home
The target is a sulphur factory 25 miles (40km) outside Mosul. We're told IS are using it to produce bombs and to train suicide bombers. We fly with two other helicopters and we're escorted by a US war-plane high overhead.
It's freezing cold inside the chopper. A gunner is sitting at the open doors, machine-gun at the ready.
Down below in the darkness I see the twinkling lights of a string of villages captured by Islamic State in the past year.
Hassan our pilot is from Mosul. He still has relatives in the city and heard recently that his house had been occupied by IS.
It's clear from his expression just how personal these missions are for him. He tells us that he's asked for permission to bomb his house, but was told it's too big a risk to the civilian population.
A burst of flame
After half an hour we reach the target and hover overhead, waiting for orders to strike. Although it's incredibly noisy on board, a scary silence seems to descend.
Then suddenly it's all go. The first two helicopters dive down and dance over the target, firing their rockets.
Then it's our turn to swoop in.
We see a burst of flame right below us, and then after a couple of seconds we hear a big boom. Hassan swoops the helicopter round in a big arc to make sure they've hit their target. The machine gunner gives the thumbs up and we're off.
The whole thing took just twelve minutes but it felt like the longest twelve minutes of my life.
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A 63-year-old man has appeared in court charged with the murder of man stabbed to death at a house in Hull.
| Colin Cadamartriea is accused of killing Jarrad Marsh at the property in Albert Avenue on Saturday.
Police said 31-year-old Mr Marsh died at the scene, despite treatment by paramedics and police officers.
Mr Cadamartriea, of Albert Avenue, appeared before Hull Crown Court and was remanded in custody. He will face a trial in June.
More on this and other Hull stories
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A man has been arrested after the body of a 49-year-old man was found in Lincolnshire. | Police were called to a house on Neville Avenue, Spalding, at about 11:40 GMT on Sunday and discovered the man's body.
Officers said a man from the Spalding area had been detained on suspicion of murder.
The arrested man, aged 59, remains in custody for questioning, according to Lincolnshire Police.
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Each week we feature pictures shared with us from across Oxfordshire.
| Find out how you can join in and submit your images below.
If you have a great image of the county send it to us by email to [email protected].
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Two Scottish wildcat kittens have been born at the Alladale Wilderness Reserve in Sutherland. | The kittens are part of a captive breeding programme set up to help conserve the endangered species.
The adult cats involved were genetically tested by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland before they bred.
Scottish wildcats are under threat from cross-breeding with domestic cats, disease and habitat loss.
The reserve is working with organisations including Scottish Wildcat Action and The European Nature Trust in an effort to help conserve wildcats
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Google has suspended work on Project Ara, its modular smartphone. | By Rhiannon WilliamsTechnology reporter
The project, which the company launched in 2013. was designed to let users buy a basic phone and add different modules like a keyboard or other sensors,
Google had announced during its developer conference I/O in May, its intentions to have a developer version ready to ship in the autumn.
It will now concentrate on its other phones, tablets and other hardware lines, reports Reuters.
Project delays
Project Ara has suffered numerous setbacks since it began life as a Motorola venture, which Google owned before later selling.
The idea was to create a smartphone which could be customised to owners' tastes with interchangeable "modules" including screens, cameras and processors.
In 2014, a trial was announced in Puerto Rico, centred around providing buyers with a smartphone frame and a range of 20 to 30 clip-on modules.
However, this pilot scheme was delayed and eventually cancelled last year, with the team blaming "lots of iterations" in the design.
In May this year, Google said a new version of the modular phone would be less customisable than originally planned.
The main display and processors could no longer be swapped - a redesign Google said offered more space for other parts with more unusual functions.
Modular handsets
Modular phones could help consumers upgrade their handset without having to buy an entirely new model, as well as reducing technological waste.
However, the individual components are expensive to manufacture.
LG released the modular LG G5 phone earlier this year to a lukewarm response.
On launch it only supported two additional modules - a high-definition audio processor and a camera grip. The battery can also be exchanged, but doing so causes the phone to reboot.
"Project Ara went against every lesson the smartphone market has learnt over the years, eliminating the removable battery for example," says Ian Fogg, senior director of mobile and telecoms at analysts IHS.
"The original concept of making all modules user-changeable is an incredibly hard thing to do.
"By redesigning it so only certain modules were swappable dramatically simplified the project, but it undermined the point of how important swapping those bits out was to the consumers. It went right against every bit of industry wisdom."
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Cutting VAT on the tourism industry is a "non-runner" while there is such a large budget deficit, according to the new Wales Office minister Lord Bourne. | By Brian MeechanBBC Wales business correspondent
The Cut Tourism VAT campaign calculates almost 6,000 jobs would be created in Wales if the tax was reduced to levels similar to other parts of the EU.
Dropping the rate from 20% to 5% would boost the Welsh economy by almost £170m a year, it added.
But Lord Bourne said tourist attractions need to be better promoted.
The former Welsh Conservative leader has recently been appointed as a minister in the Wales Office.
He told the Wales at Work programme that the focus should not be on tax cuts for businesses operating in the tourism sector.
"What is important is that people are aware of the fantastic things that exist in Cardiff and throughout Wales," he said.
"We have free entry to national museums for example... many countries don't have that free entry."
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The Scottish government's draft budget for the coming year includes funds to study the idea of setting up a "citizen's income". So what is a basic income system, and how might it work in Scotland? | By Philip SimBBC Scotland political reporter
What is a basic income system?
The basic income system is a radical redesign of tax and welfare - completely redrawing the relationship between the state and the citizen.
Under such a system, every individual would be given a cash payment at regular intervals, without any requirement to work or demonstrate a willingness to work. Several different figures have been suggested, mostly in the rough area of £100 a week for adults.
As the name suggests, it would be universal - paid out to every citizen regardless of their wealth, employment or personal status - and would be enough to cover the basics of life. It would serve as a replacement for existing benefits payments such as jobseeker's allowance.
The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), a charity which has undertaken extensive studies about basic income, call it "a basic platform on which people can build their lives - whether they want to earn, learn, care or set up a business".
Enthusiasm about the possibilities of a basic income has sprung up in several countries in recent years, but it is by no means a new idea. References to such a scheme date back as far as 1516, and have been debated by political theorists and philosophers ever since.
What could the benefits be?
The money distributed in a citizen's income system is given out with no strings attached, so the idea is that it affords the individual freedom of choice.
Beyond the basics of food and shelter, people can put the money towards education or training, or launch entrepreneurial enterprises or creative endeavours.
A guaranteed safety net could see more people take a punt on starting a business or volunteering in their community - or they could devote more time to caring for relatives or friends, something which may become more and more necessary with an aging population.
Giving everyone money unconditionally also cuts out a huge amount of bureaucracy in the welfare system. No forms have to be filled in, no appointments kept at the jobcentre, no eligibility interviews held or home visits conducted.
While there would be great cost and upheaval in setting up such a system, once established it would be relatively cheap and simple to run - in stark contrast to the current system.
It could also cut out some loopholes in the current system which can disincentivise work. Because the payments would be guaranteed, jobless people would be able to take on limited or seasonal work without facing having their benefits cut off.
Proponents also point to the looming issue of automation. If a significant number of workers are made redundant by machines, something like a basic income might become necessary as people go through retraining for different fields or find their new role in life.
What could the downsides be?
Opponents of basic income schemes baulk at the idea of paying people to do nothing; they fear it would be ruinously expensive and foster a generation of unmotivated couch potatoes.
As noted above, backers hope that a basic income would make all work pay and encourage more people into work - but there are concerns it might have the opposite effect.
The SAK trade union in Finland, where a pilot programme of basic income is currently being run, argue that the system might reduce the labour force by tempting new parents or those close to retirement to cut their hours.
They also call the model being trialled "impossibly expensive", a criticism repeated by most opponents of the basic income.
One Welsh economist voiced fears of a "tremendous tax" as a result of the "extremely expensive socialist experiment", suggesting that it would be a disincentive to work both for low earners and those on higher incomes who would effectively pay for the system via their taxes.
On that latter point, concerns have been raised about social cohesion in a basic income society; at present the welfare state is justified on the grounds of people receiving redistributive payments on the basis of need, but would the taxpayer be as happy to fund a system where people could avoid contributing by choice?
There are also questions over what this would mean for immigration and open borders. Say Scotland had a basic income system and England did not - would the jobless of Carlisle or even the continent flock north in search of a payday?
The whole point of the basic income is that it is universal, so restricting it only to locals would run the risk of creating second-class citizenries - but leaving it open to all comers might not be practically possible.
Another more political complaint is that the state would play a very central role in any country with a basic income system, involved closely in the life (and bank balance) of every citizen.
And as for the job-stealing robots, detractors point out that concerns about technology are nothing new. The labour market has always evolved, with the workforce moving from the farm to the factory to the office - machines might yet prove the equal of humankind, but not yet.
What are councils doing?
The Scottish government has set aside £100,000 in the draft budget to help fund basic income pilots at local authority level.
Four councils have been linked to potential pilot programmes - in Glasgow, Fife, North Ayrshire and Edinburgh.
Even the most advanced of these are at a very early stage - mostly currently focused on feasibility studies of how a pilot could be carried out, rather than how a system could be rolled out across a council area or the country as a whole.
In general, the pilot schemes would be limited to a specific area, with unconditional payments sent out to individuals for a period of about two years. However, the start of the pilots are still some time off.
North Ayrshire Council, for example, set aside £200,000 in this year's budget to examine a basic income - but it is expected to take 12 to 18 months just to design a pilot scheme.
Equally, work at Fife Council is "recognised as a long-term project", with initial work "focussed on desk research and engagement with interested groups", and that in Glasgow is "at the very early stages".
Fife councillor David Alexander noted: "We must be realistic, this is a very complex issue which will take years of investigation and groundwork.
"It's far too early to say where a pilot might happen - we don't even know if it will be the right thing to try. But it could be a game changer, so we're taking it seriously, because we know we have to try new things and learn as we go."
And even once they get up and running, the pilots would have to run for several years before they could be evaluated - so any decisions about the wider future of basic income in Scotland is a long way off yet.
In fact, it may well be for a future Scottish government, after the next election in 2021, to look at the matter in earnest.
Could this really happen in Scotland?
For all the trials in what is proving a rather long pipeline, is there a realistic possibility of Scotland actually adopting a universal basic income system?
To get down to brass tacks, how much would it cost? Reform Scotland crunched the numbers for a £100-a-week system, and reckoned it would cost just over £20bn a year in Scotland.
There's no getting away from it: that's a lot of money. But, by scrapping a raft of benefits which the citizen's income would replace, removing tax-free personal allowances and hiking all rates of income tax by 8%, they reckon £18bn could be raised.
All of that would still leave a £2bn shortfall, but Reform Scotland argue this is not insurmountable via other savings and the hope that more people would join the workforce.
It's not just about money, though - as with most other things in Scottish politics, there is a constitutional element.
Anthony Painter from the RSA told MSPs on Holyrood's social security committee that there was a "basic problem" for them - a lack of powers.
He said a citizen's income would be "a wholesale change to the system of social assistance and tax", a "holistic change" - and as such, "you need to have powers over the whole system in order to implement a full universal basic income".
Siobhan Mathers from Reform Scotland told the same committee that it was "really quite difficult to run the numbers" even with newly-devolved welfare powers, adding that "it is easier to do pilots than it would be to roll out a wholescale change".
The main problem for a Scottish system as it stands would be the interaction with the aspects of tax and welfare which remain reserved to Westminster, such as Universal Credit. Many of the benefits which would be replaced by a basic income are not under Holyrood's control.
Effectively, any Scottish basic income scheme would have to be set up either in partnership with the UK government, or with its blessing via the devolution of further powers.
Has this been tried elsewhere?
As mentioned above, a two-year pilot programme is currently running in Finland, where 2,000 unemployed people are given a €560 (£490) monthly income, whether they wanted it or not.
This is the largest and most advanced trial currently running, at least in Europe, but results will not be published until 2019. Nicola Sturgeon has recently tweeted out links to studies of the Finnish experiment.
The government in Ontario, Canada is running a basic income project in three communities, focused on people on low incomes, although the payments vary, based on earned income.
Charities in the US have also set up projects giving unconditional cash transfers to villagers in Kenya and Uganda.
However, a proposal to introduce a similar system in Switzerland was comprehensively defeated in a referendum in 2016.
There is dispute over whether or not many of these pilots constitute a "true" universal basic income - for example the Finnish scheme focuses only on currently unemployed people, rather than society as a whole. Another pilot programme ongoing in Holland has been criticised as amounting only to a minimum guaranteed income.
To be a real test of a true UBI, a pilot programme would have to be mandatory, rather than voluntary, and include the already-wealthy too - something which may prove problematic, if the system penalises them through increased taxation.
All of this will have to be borne in mind as councils draw up their plans for pilots of their own.
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A man has been charged with murdering a woman who died in south-west London. | The victim was discovered by police at an address in Ranyard Close, Chessington, in the early hours of Saturday morning.
The 48-year-old woman was later pronounced dead at the scene.
Keith Bettison, 71, also of Ranyard Close, has been charged with murder. He will appear at Wimbledon Magistrates' Court on Monday.
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On the face of it, things may not look bad. | Soutik BiswasIndia correspondent
Since the first case of coronavirus at the end of January, India has reported more than 150,000 Covid-19 infections. More than 4,000 people have died of the infection.
To put this in some context, as of 22 May, India's testing positivity rate was around 4%, the death rate from the infection around 3% and the doubling rate of infection - or the amount of time it takes for the number of coronavirus cases to double - was 13 days. The recovery rate of infected patients was around 40%.
All this is markedly lower than in the countries badly hit by the pandemic.
Like elsewhere in the world, there are hotspots and clusters of infection.
More than 80% of the active cases are in five states - Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh - and more than 60% of the cases in five cities, including Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad, according to official data.
More than half of people who have died of the disease have been aged 60 and older and many have underlying conditions, hewing to the international data about elderly people being more vulnerable to the disease.
The more than two-month-long grinding lockdown, official data suggests, has prevented the loss of between 37,000 and 78,000 lives. A paper published in Harvard Data Science Review appears to support that - it shows an eight-week lockdown can prevent about two million cases and, at a 3% fatality rate, prevent some 60,000 deaths.
"Infection has remained limited to certain areas. This also gives us confidence to open up other areas. It is so far an urban disease," says VK Paul, who heads the medical emergency management plan on Covid-19.
This is where such claims enter uncertain territory.
India is now among the top 10 countries worldwide in terms of total reported infections, and among the top five in the number of new cases.
Infections are rising sharply, up from 536 cases on 25 March when the first phase of the world's harshest lockdown was imposed. The growth of infections is outpacing growth in testing - tests have doubled since April but cases have leapt fourfold.
Epidemiologists say the increase in reported infections is possibly because of increased testing. India has been testing up to 100,000 samples a day in the past week. Testing criteria has been expanded to include asymptomatic contacts of positive patients.
Yet, India's testing remains one of the lowest in the world per head of population - 2,198 tests per million people.
The bungled lockdown at the end of March triggered an exodus of millions of informal workers who lost their jobs in the cities and began returning home in droves, first on foot and then by train. Some four million workers have travelled by rail from cities to their villages in more than half a dozen states in the past three weeks.
There is mounting evidence that this has already led to the spread of infection from the cities to the villages. And with the messy easing of the lockdown earlier this month, there are growing fears of infections spreading further in the cities.
Rising infections and a still-low fatality rate possibly points to milder infection in a younger population and a large number of asymptomatic cases. The focus, says Amitabh Kant, CEO of the government think-tank NITI Aayog, should be "bringing down fatalities and improving the recovery rate".
But if the infection rate continues to grow, "things are going to get pretty grim in a few weeks time," a leading virologist told me.
Doctors in the capital, Delhi, and the western city of Mumbai tell me they are already seeing a steady surge in Covid-19 admissions and worry about a looming shortage of hospital beds, including in critical care.
When the infection peaks in July, as is expected, a spike in infections could easily lead to many avoidable deaths as hospitals run out of beds for, or delay treatment to, infected patients who need timely oxygen support and clinical care to recover.
"That is the real worry. A critical-care bed needs an oxygen line, a ventilator, doctors, nursing staff. Everything will be under pressure," Dr Ravi Dosi, who is heading a Covid-19 ward at a hospital in Indore, told me. His 50-bed ICU is already full of patients battling the infection.
With the lockdown easing, doctors are feeling jittery. "It's a tactical nightmare because some people have begun going to work but there is a lot of fear", says Dr Dosi.
"One co-worker sneezed in the office and 10-15 of his colleagues panicked and came to the hospital and demanded they get tested. These are the pressures that are building up."
One reason for the confusion is the lack of - or the opacity of - adequate data on the pandemic to help frame a strategic and granular response.
Most experts say a one-size-fits-all strategy to contain the pandemic and impose and lift lockdowns will not work in India where different states will see infection peaks at different times. The reported infection rate - the number of infections for every 100 tests - in Maharashtra state, for example, is three times the national average.
"The infection is not spreading uniformly. India will see staggered waves," a leading virologist, who insisted on anonymity, told me.
The lack of data means questions abound.
What about some 3,000 cases, which are not being assigned to any state because these people were found infected in places where they don't live? (To put this into context, nine states in India have more than 3,000 cases.) How many of these cases have died or recovered?
Also, it is not clear whether the current data - sparse, and sporadic - is sufficient to map the future trajectory of the disease.
There is, for example, no robust estimate of carriers of the virus who have no symptoms - last month a senior government scientist said at least "80 out of every 100 Covid-19 patients may be asymptomatic or could be showing mild symptoms".
If that is indeed true, then India's fatality rate is bound to be lower. Atanu Biswas, a professor of statistics, says the predicted trajectory could change "with the huge inclusion of asymptomatic cases". But, in the absence of data, India cannot be sure.
Also, epidemiologists say, measures like the doubling time of the infections and the reproduction number or R0 have their limitations. R0, or simply the R value, is a way of rating a disease's ability to spread. The new coronavirus, Sars-CoV-2, has a reproduction number of about three, but estimates vary.
"These measures are good when we are in the middle of a pandemic, less robust with fewer cases. You do need forecasting models for at least a month's projection to anticipate healthcare needs. We should always evaluate an aggregate of evidence, not just one measure, but a cascade of measures," Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, told me.
Others say even calculating the number of recorded infections every day is "not always a good indicator of how an infection is spreading".
A better option would be to look at the number of new tests and new cases every day that would provide a "degree of standardisation", K Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, told me.
Likewise, he believes, a measure of how many Covid-19 deaths have occurred compared with the size of a country's population - the numbers of deaths per million people - is a better indicator of the fatality rate. Reason: the denominator - the country's population - remains stable.
In the absence of robust and expansive data, India appears to be struggling to predict the future trajectory of the infection.
It is not clear yet how many deaths are not being reported, although there is no evidence of large scale "hidden deaths".
Epidemiologists say they would like to see clearer data on deaths due to pneumonia and influenza-like illnesses at this time over the past few years to quantify excess deaths and help with accurate reporting of Covid-19 deaths.
They would also like to see what racial disparities in infections and deaths there are to help improve containment in specific community areas. (In Louisiana, for example, African Americans accounted for 70% of Covid-19 deaths, while comprising 33% of the population.)
What is clear, say epidemiologists, is that India is as yet unable to get a grip on the extent of the spread of infection because of the still limited testing.
"We need reliable forecasting models with projection for the next few weeks for the country and the states," says Dr Mukherjee.
Epidemiologists say India needs more testing and contact-tracing for both asymptomatic and symptomatic infections, as well as isolation and quarantine.
There's also the need to test based on the "contact network" to stop super-spreader events - frontline workers, delivery workers, essential workers, practically anybody who interacts with a large group of people.
"We have to learn how to manage and minimise risk in our daily lives as the virus is going to be with us," says Dr Mukherjee.
Without knowing the true number of infected cases India is, in the words of an epidemiologist, "flying blindfolded".
That can seriously jeopardise India's fight against the virus and hobble its response in reviving the broken economy.
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The story of 16-year-old India Ballancore, who was gifted the £85 cost of a train ticket home by a kind-hearted stranger after she had missed her service, has captured the imagination of people on social media. | By Alex Therrien & Alex ReganBBC News Online
"This has always been a story about human kindness and if nothing else, encourage others to look after one another," India's mother Andrea said.
But what help is there for people who find themselves in a similar situation, who have no money to get home and no-one to help them?
Stranded without a train ticket
Most of us have missed a train, either through our own fault or because of rail delays and cancellations.
But what happens when your ticket is not flexible and you can't get another train home?
In the case of minors like India who have missed their train and have no money for a replacement ticket, and would otherwise be stranded, train companies will arrange for a friend or a relative to pay for a ticket at another station.
This also applies to other "vulnerable" people - such as the elderly, those with mobility or mental health difficulties or victims of crime.
Alternatively, if the station you are at has an electronic ticket machine, a friend or family member can purchase a ticket online and you can collect it by typing in the booking code. But beware, this only works for some rail franchises, carriers like Virgin require you to have the bank card you ordered the tickets with on collection.
There also may be a delay in the electronic code becoming active for other franchises.
In cases where train operators are to blame for you missing a train - such as when a last service is cancelled or delays on a connecting service cause you to miss it - the company has a responsibility to arrange alternative transport.
This can be a taxi, a bus or another train service with a separate operator. If this is not possible, it will, if it "reasonably can", arrange overnight accommodation.
The campaign group Rail Future says travellers who find themselves in this situation should ask whoever is on duty at the station to arrange alternative transport.
If there are no staff around, you should complain to the train's operator and seek compensation, the group says.
It recommends keeping receipts, recording with precise times what happened, and even taking photos of customer information screens.
No phone or cash
If you have found yourself stuck with no cash and no phone to contact someone to help you out, your best bet might be a police station.
Police Scotland will help those who are stranded by giving them a cash amount from its petty cash fund if a relative lodges money at another police station.
The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) said it was unlikely that police stations in England and Wales would get involved in money in quite the same way, but did advise people who find themselves completely stranded to get in touch with a police officer or go to a police station.
Police stations can help stranded people get in touch with their families if they have no other means of contact.
No cash at the pump
It's a situation that can easily catch drivers out. You put a full tank of petrol into your car, only to realise you've left your cash and bank cards at home.
What happens next? Do the forecourt staff siphon the fuel out of your tank? Is your car towed until you come up with the money?
Luckily, staff do not go to these extremes.
Petrol stations have a "no means of payment" form, where customers fill in their personal details and - dependent on company policy - have between 24 and 48 hours to return to pay for fuel.
Toll crossings
You find yourself driving towards a toll crossing, but don't have the right means of payment.
It's something that can easily catch out new drivers or people unfamiliar with a certain route, especially in the past when many crossings either did not accept card payments or required you to have the exact change.
Nowadays, more crossings do accept cards or allow you to pay later at home if you don't have the right means of payment.
The Severn bridges between England and Wales also allow you to pay after crossing, although the tolls are now set to be scrapped entirely by the end of 2018.
At the Dartford Crossing, between Kent and Essex, the physical tolls themselves have been removed, but a payment still needs to be made within 24 hours of using the crossing, either online, by phone or post.
Your passport and cash are stolen abroad
It is every holiday-maker's worst nightmare.
What do you do if your cash and passport is stolen or lost while you are abroad? Luckily, the Foreign Office can help.
Embassies across the world have the ability to issue emergency travel documents in order to get travellers back to the UK.
In some cases, consular services can also help Britons who have got into trouble abroad get home through repatriation service.
The Foreign Office will pay for the costs of getting stranded travellers home, and potentially money for lodgings before a flight, but these fees will have to be repaid once they return to the UK.
The government will not charge people under 18 to be repatriated.
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The tech industry is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the BBC Microcomputer. | The system was built by Acorn Computers as part of the BBC's Computer Literacy Project.
It ran a new programming language, BBC Basic (beginners all-purpose symbolic instruction code), and helped bring computing into people's homes and schools.
However, trying to establish an "official" launch date is trickier than it sounds.
Although the computers were demonstrated at trade exhibitions and reviewed in the press in 1981, a production snag pushed back deliveries.
A circuit, which controlled the "high definition" screen display, was found to have a higher than acceptable failure rate.
A redesign was ordered and as a result only a few hundred computers out of a planned batch of 3,000 were ready in time for the start of The Computer Programme when the first episode was broadcast in January 1982.
This initial hiccup proved far from fatal. After Acorn overhauled its production system, the Model A and the more expensive Model B went on to sell more than 1.5 million units, wildly exceeding expectations.
The BBC asked seven people whose lives were changed by the computers for their memories.
Mike Lynch, Co-founder of Autonomy
The BBC Micro was pretty fundamental to how my life turned out, in that it was the first computer I ever owned.
I still remember exactly how much it cost - a whopping £400, which I raised through a vast amount of odd jobs, saving money, begging, and borrowing, all in order to get my hands on one.
When I did, it was truly inspirational and a revelation for me.
I feel very lucky to have been part of the early days of home computing with the BBC Micro, because you could actually get at everything and do everything; not only could you access all of the devices directly through the software, but you could even take the lid off - they gave you a circuit diagram and you could mess with it.
The first thing that I tried to do was become as famous as Duran Duran by turning this 8-bit microprocessor into a sampler, so that I could become a pop star and have hordes of women screaming after me.
This involved religiously programming the computer, as well as also taking the unprecedented steps of cutting tracks on the PCB for bits that were upsetting its ability to make music.
I learnt more about practical computing and solving programming problems from dealing with the BBC Micro than I could ever have learnt on any university computer science course.
I still have my original BBC Micro in pride of place; I look back at it and it brings back the fondest memories of a time when all seemed possible.
Mike Lynch is the co-founder and chief executive of Autonomy, the business-analytics software firm which was bought by Hewlett Packard earlier this year.
Conrad Wolfram, Co-founder of Wolfram Research
I kept to the deal with my mum over her buying a BBC Micro: she'd write, I'd play around and help her set up.
What I hadn't signed up to was ongoing parental tech support or her game-playing addiction that the likes of Defender and Pac-Man produced.
My programming time got rather curtailed - but fortunately most people's didn't.
The Beeb introduced a generation of British children to the power of programming and indeed I want to see this return in a modern form, part of my computerbasedmath.org agenda.
To be honest I was never an aficionado like some of my friends, being more interested in getting real results (which the Beeb wasn't always great for) than the intricate quirks that led to that end.
But I was fond of the Beeb, liked its funky orange function keys - cool compared to the staid Apple II at school - and even quite enjoyed that I had to glue a matchstick to prop up the failing space bar, a standard fix I found out about at school.
That was the kind of problem solving and frustration a Beeb taught.
And boy, have we come a long way. That's really what today's anniversary reminds me.
Conrad Wolfram is European co-founder of Wolfram Research, makers of Mathematica software and the knowledge engine Wolfram Alpha.
David Darling, Co-founder of Codemasters
I started coding games at home when I was 11 years old with my brother Richard. We graduated to selling them by mail order, then to setting up a games company.
The 8-bit era of home computing in the 1980s was one of the most important and exciting times in the development of technology.
There was an explosion of creativity, most of it coming from self-taught young men like us working at home.
Everything was possible, the potential was infinite. At Codemasters we rode the crest of a wave creating games very quickly then selling millions of them, mostly in the UK and the rest of Europe.
It laid the groundwork for a whole myriad of industries that grew out of what the talent went on to do.
The BBC computer was central to the whole revolution because it added two veneers of respectability, firstly because it carried the good name of the BBC and secondly because it was used in schools.
We had a BBC at our school and we played some amazing games on it: Scramble, Defender and Pac-Man-type games of a very high quality.
The era came to an end when the technology split into two, the IBM PC and the Nintendo game console.
But ironically we have a resurgence of exactly the same kind of massively creative ecosystem again today with the emergence of powerful mobile devices and the app markets that serve them.
David Darling CBE is the co-founder of Codemasters and now runs Kwalee, a smartphone game developer.
David Allen, Television producer
It started with a man from the Wirral suggesting the BBC did an electronics series for soldering-iron enthusiasts.
It ended with one of the most ambitious projects the BBC has ever mounted - its own name on 1.5 million home computers, a best-selling book, hundreds of thousands of people learning systematically how to make micros do things and over 100 television and radio programmes, all of which came under the umbrella of The BBC Computer Literacy Project (1982-86).
I was lucky enough to be the project editor and also series editor for the television series.
These followed huge amounts of audience research and soul-searching by the BBC about what it could or should do to prepare people for the Micro Revolution, as it was called.
The BBC Micro itself arose because manufacturers we approached couldn't agree on a common programming language so we decided that we needed one of our own which we thought was better than all of theirs.
I think we succeeded.
We certainly produced a versatile machine as able to do things like control the BBC's very own robot as well as create a handy spreadsheet. We helped to enthuse a whole generation of people who now are in senior positions in the IT industry.
The UK lives or dies by innovation.
I hope that the BBC can spearhead a new kind of of national initiative based round the immense possibilities thrown up by the "future internet", where people and things communicate to improve our lives.
David Allen produced the BBC 2 television series Micro Live as part of the BBC's Computer Literacy Project.
David Braben, Chairman of Frontier Developments
The BBC Micro and the Acorn Atom - which in many ways was very similar - inspired a generation.
It was so easy to learn on, to the extent just about everyone could write the program like this without even realising they were learning:
10 PRINT "Fred smells of wee"
20 GOTO 10
It brought a confidence and familiarity with simple programming that stayed with those lucky enough to experience it for the rest of their lives.
It also came with everything you needed to program - even including one of the best assemblers around then and now - built in to the machine without any complex installation required.
There were many other machines around, all capable of being programmed, like the Commodore Pet, Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81, Apple 2, and then in the following years Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, even curios like the Oric Atmos, Tatung Einstein, and MSX.
But it was the BBC Micro that had the impact - mainly because of its spread throughout UK schools.
The impact it has had 30 years on is amazing.
Just look around places like Cambridge's Science Park to see the results. Many of these companies were founded by people whose thorough introduction to technology came through the BBC Micro.
I hope machines like the Raspberry Pi can go on to do something similar for today's kids!
David Braben is chairman and founder of Frontier Developments, and a co-founding trustee of the charity The Raspberry Pi Foundation which plans to sell an ultra-low-cost computer.
Dan Crow, Chief technology officer of Songkick
My first computer was a ZX81, but it was my BBC Model B that really got me into computers.
Here was a real computer, satisfyingly chunky and with a proper keyboard. The BBC Micro was where I learned my trade.
To do anything you had to use the Basic programming language, so you learned the essentials of programming just to play a game or use a word processor.
It was a very open system with excellent documentation and the accompanying TV series was very encouraging.
A great community grew up, with magazines such as Beebug, and user groups across the UK.
In those early days programs were listings you typed in, or supplied on cassette tapes.
The community encouraged experimentation and sharing: almost everyone was figuring out computers for the first time, so there was a strong sense of learning together.
Tips and techniques were shared as people discovered all the things you could do.
Though limited compared to modern machines, the BBC Micro was a real computer capable of amazing things.
It captured the imagination of a generation of programmers.
It is still the computer I had the most fun with. I owe my career to Acorn and the BBC Micro.
Dan Crow is chief technology officer at the tour date tracking service Songkick. He previously worked at Apple and Google.
Jason Fitzpatrick, Chairman of the Centre for Computing History
The BBC Micro was hugely influential in my life.
My mum could see that I was hugely interested in computers and although a single parent at the time, she scraped together the money to buy one for me.
I was so grateful. It wasn't long before I had it wired up to disco lights and then promptly blew its chips off! She then had to pay the repair bill too - thanks, Mum!
Because of its expandability and capability, it was probably responsible for more small start-up companies than any other computer of its time.
A huge number of companies started designing, manufacturing and selling third-party add-ons from bedrooms and garages across the country.
I was one of them. I created a simple little memory expansion and sold a few via the classified ads.
And let's not forget some ground-breaking games like Elite were written for the BBC Micro.
Elite was the first immersive wire-frame 3D computer game and would later be the inspiration for many other games in this new genre.
I wasted many, many hours on that one! Yet I still have the cheek to tell my son not to spend so much time on the Xbox playing games!
Most importantly, the BBC Micro was my favourite computer.
I had the ZX81, I had the VIC-20, but my BBC Micro was the machine that set my trajectory in a career in computing, electronics and programming. Happy Birthday Beeb!
Jason Fitzpatrick is the Chairman and Chief Geek at the Centre for Computing History near Cambridge. He also runs a technical props company for the film and TV industry.
Next week The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park opens a new gallery looking at the Computer Literacy Project and the Origins of the BBC Micro.
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A 62-year-old man died when he was hit by a car after apparently falling into a road in Scarborough. | He was struck by a black BMW X1 on the A170 Stepney Road at about 18:00 GMT on Saturday.
The driver, a 39-year-old man from Scarborough, was uninjured.
The pedestrian was pronounced dead at the scene, while a 31-year-old man accompanying him received minor injuries. Police have appealed for witnesses.
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Myanmar's military - the leaders of its recent coup - are funded by a huge chunk of the national budget. But the armed forces also draw a vast and secretive income from sprawling business interests: | By Joshua CheethamBBC News
At Yangon's popular Indoor Skydiving Centre, visitors can experience the thrill of jumping out of a plane from the safety of a vertical wind tunnel.
But few people spiralling through this high-flying attraction may realise that it is part of a huge, military-run business empire - one completely woven into the fabric of national life.
Critics argue that this lucrative network has made Myanmar's coup possible and put the military's accountability into free fall.
Civilian businesses talk of an environment like "Sicily under the Mafia", while activists say that democratic reforms can only be possible only when "the military [is] back to barracks".
Two conglomerates bankrolling the military
Myanmar's military - the Tatmadaw - began its involvement in business after the socialist coup of Ne Win in 1962.
For years, military battalions were required to be self-sufficient and encouraged to develop stakes in local enterprises to fund their operations.
While this practice has been phased out, two military-run conglomerates were established in the 1990s as the government began privatising state industries.
Both organisations - Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) and Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL) - have since become a key source of wealth for the Tatmadaw, with stakes in everything from banking and mining to tobacco and tourism. MEHL also operates the military's pension fund.
Several military leaders and their families hold extensive business interests as well, and have been subject to sanctions in the past.
Aung Pyae Sone - the son of coup leader Gen Min Aung Hliang - owns several companies, including a beach resort, and has a majority stake in national telecoms carrier Mytel.
The full extent of these business interests is hard to quantify. But experts say that the military's business clout remains significant, despite recent democratic reforms, and the coup could partly be an attempt to protect these financial interests.
'Insulated from accountability'
The little we do know about the military's financial reach has only come to light in recent years.
A UN report in 2019, spurred by Myanmar's crackdown on Rohingya communities, concluded that business revenues enhanced the military's ability to carry out human rights abuses with impunity.
Through a network of conglomerate-owned businesses and affiliates, the UN said the Tatmadaw had been able to "insulate itself from accountability and oversight".
Details about MEHL's structure and finances were also revealed in two internal reports - one filed by the conglomerate in January 2020, the other leaked by activist groups Justice for Burma and Amnesty International.
They showed that the conglomerate is run by the military's top brass, including several leaders of the ongoing coup. Around a third of all shareholders are military units, while the rest are owned by former and current Tatmadaw personnel.
The leaked report said that, between 1990 and 2011, MEHL paid its shareholders 108bn kyats in dividends - worth $16.6bn, according to official exchange rates at the time.
It also suggested that the military uses MEHL shares to reward loyalty and punish bad behaviour. One table lists 35 people who were stripped of their dividends for reasons like desertion and imprisonment.
The MEHL has not commented publicly on the leaked report.
Renewed calls for sanctions
In the wake of the coup, advocacy groups have issued further calls for targeted sanctions against the military and its access to the global financial system.
Many activists want to see the conglomerates dismantled as well.
In a statement to the BBC, Justice for Myanmar accused the military of being in "an unlawful conflict of interest".
"The wealth stolen by the military and their businesses belongs to the people of Myanmar and must be returned to them," they added.
The US has added both conglomerates to a trade blacklist, and rolled out fresh sanctions against military and government figures, along with three mining companies. Canada, New Zealand and the UK have also introduced their own targeted measures, though none of them has focused on the conglomerates directly.
Campaigners argue that historically weak sanctions have emboldened the Tatmadaw to carry out the coup and to continue alleged human rights abuses.
But experts have told the BBC there is a strong appetite to ramp up sanctions - at the right time.
"The world is still waiting to see how this plays out," says George McLeod, managing director of Access Asia, a risk management firm specialising in the region. "From what I've heard from people on the inside, Norway is trying to form some kind of groundwork to bring about a negotiated solution."
In the meantime, there is increasing resentment among some local business figures about the conglomerates' power.
"They almost describe it in the same way that a business owner operating in Sicily would talk about the Mafia," Mr McLeod told the BBC. "You have to deal with them if you cross their radar. But you don't want to."
'They want to be an international player'
The Tatmadaw are already starting to feel the pressure from foreign investors.
Japanese beverage firm Kirin has ended two lucrative deals with MEHL that have helped it to dominate Myanmar's beer market. Singaporean businessman Lim Kaling has also cut his investment in a tobacco firm linked to the conglomerate.
Local protesters, meanwhile, have been boycotting companies with ties to the new government - including jewellery shops and cigarette brands.
Calls for international sanctions aren't universal, however. China and Russia have rebuffed efforts by other members of the UN Security Council to condemn the Tatmadaw.
Experts agree that while sanctions are an important piece of the puzzle, they must work in tandem with legal and diplomatic pressure, and arms embargoes.
The Tatmadaw's deputy chief, Soe Win, has told the UN that they are ready to face international pressure if necessary.
Without multilateral action, Myanmar could become a pariah state once more, says Peter Kucik, a former sanctions advisor at the US Treasury.
"This group of generals in power right now is more or less the same group that was in power under the SPDC regime (a military junta which ruled Myanmar from 1997-2011), and they've shown that they're perfectly comfortable living in an isolated country," he told the BBC.
But while the country could lean back on trade from partners like China, local business figures are wary of this prospect, adds Mr Kucik.
"They want to deal with top-tier Japanese companies, they want to deal with Western companies, and they want to be a player on the international stage in the same way as Thailand," says Mr Kucik.
Whatever happens next, advocacy groups say that pulling on the military's purse strings, and reforming their conglomerates, will be essential to democratic reform.
"That's what the people of Burma want," says Anna Roberts, director of Burma Campaign UK. "They want the military back to barracks, and they want a civilian economy and a civilian federal government that respects their wishes."
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A man has been charged in connection with alleged threats made against SNP politician Joanna Cherry. | The Edinburgh South West MP reported the incident to officers on Monday.
This was the same day Ms Cherry was dropped from her justice role on the SNP's frontbench team at Westminster.
Police Scotland said a 30-year-old man had been charged with a communications offence and a report would be submitted to the procurator fiscal.
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The traditional school sports day has been one of the casualties of the changes schools have had to introduce to cope with the coronavirus pandemic. But, from a sack race in a pillow case to toilet roll jumping, children and teachers have been adapting sports day traditions to celebrate what would for many be the highlight of the school calendar. | By Charley AdamsBBC News
There has been a "massive disruption" to children's activity levels - before the virus, on average almost 47% of children were active for 60 minutes a day, which has fallen to 19%, explained Mike Diaper from Sport England.
"It is important to help our children get active," said Mr Diaper, the organisation's executive director of children and young people. "It will help them deal with the stresses and strains of these difficult days."
He said it had been great to see schools running virtual sports days to encourage children to remain active.
Youth Sport Trust, which organised a National School Sport Week at Home in June, said: "We wanted to ensure young people still felt that sense of fun they get from school sports days and that sports days do not get cancelled completely this year."
So what have pupils been up to while abiding by lockdown rules?
PE teachers in Blackburn have been setting the students a "beat the teacher" challenge each day for the pupils to do at home. The students then send in their scores to compare to the teachers' results.
Hollie Southward, one of the PE teachers, said they were activities suited for the home.
Noah in year 7 took on a speed bounce challenge to see how many bounces he could do over a broom in 30 seconds and also competed in an obstacle course.
Priestley Smith School in Birmingham, a specialist school for vision impaired pupils, got children to try tea bag throwing and teachers read a sport-themed bed time story to pupils, explained Chloe Manley.
Some pupils have not been back at school for weeks so it was an ideal opportunity to engage with the children at school and at home, added Mrs Manley.
The PE lead at St Breock Primary School in Wadebridge, said a sports week helped the children at home "connect with us at school".
When they told the children about the plans "the excitement was unbelievable", said James Ross from Cornwall.
Children at school and home competed in similar activities with those taking part in school all having separate PE equipment bags to keep them safe.
In Kent, a reception class has been practicing a socially distanced egg and spoon race ahead of a full school sports event.
Pupils at Valley Invicta Primary School will be able to earn points for their house before the winner is announced at the end of the week.
The sports day activities have been designed to abide by social distancing rules.
Pupils in Edinburgh have been trying home high jumping with toilets rolls and tennis ball and spoon races.
"We ensured that all events could be completed in any space that families had available and that any items of equipment needed were easily found in any house," explained PE and sport director Mike Leonard, from George Watson's College.
The teachers recorded some events alongside the school mascot, Rex, for the pupils to try at home, aiming to make the day as inclusive and fun as possible.
Teachers in Cornwall have been preparing challenges for their students to try at home, such as toilet roll keepy uppies and tea bag throwing.
PE director at Mounts Bay Academy, Ian Veal, said they were avoiding traditional sports day activities to "hopefully include all pupils" and not exclude any without equipment at home.
After all the tutor groups have completed the sports day activities, the PE department will add up the scores and announce the winners.
In Sheffield, Tajman had "great fun" taking part in her first sports day, including doing an obstacle course in the garden.
The four-year-old's father said they had been "keeping her active" during lockdown with lots of different activities outside.
Girls High School Sheffield asked its pupils to carry out five different activities.
Head of PE Steve Wareham said: "As soon as we knew sports day was going to be missed this year, my PE team were really keen to try and do something."
The staff at Chelmer Valley High School in Essex made sure all the activities could be done individually and easily at home, such as speed bouncing, sock throwing and chair squatting.
All images subject to copyright.
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Residents living near supermarket developments, farmers supplying the stores and bodies representing workers and the retail industry reveal how they feel about the expansion of the so-called 'big four' - Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons.
| The residents
In 2007, Tesco proposed an 80,000 sq ft store on the site of an old Thorntons chocolate factory in Belper, Derbyshire.
A group of residents decided to get together to campaign against the store and created the Belper Against Tesco Superstore (BATS) group.
Tesco owns the land, which is near the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site, but has yet to submit a planning application to build the superstore.
Andy Minion, spokesman for the group, said the town already had three supermarkets and feared another one, on the edge of Belper, would encourage shoppers away from the high street.
"We have a number of Tescos... in Heanor, Alfreton - they are both edge of town developments," he said.
"You look at what was once a perfectly OK high street in the town and the shutters have gone up, they are full of charity shops and empty units."
However not everyone is against the Tesco development. A Facebook group called Belper for Tesco has 600 members.
One member, Deborah Sanders, said: "I thought Belper was trying to move forward and having Tesco and other shops is the only way."
Plans for a new Sainsbury's in the market town of Louth, in Lincolnshire, were turned down by East Lindsay District Council in December 2009.
Keep Louth Special, a group set up in 2008 to campaign against the council selling the town's cattle market to the highest bidder, which it feared would be a supermarket chain, spoke against Sainsbury's plans.
Alan Mumby, chairman of Keep Louth Special, said the group was not "anti-supermarket" but wanted to protect Louth's high street and its independent traders.
"There are too many instances all over the country where town centres have died," he said.
The farmers
Andy Bloor, 57, runs a 310-acre dairy farm in Dutton, Cheshire, which supplies 1.5m litres of milk to Tesco each year.
He is chairman of the 800-strong Tesco Sustainable Dairy Group, which was formed four years ago to ensure farmers received a price for their milk which covered production costs.
He said Tesco provided him with a rolling 12-month contract and paid enough to ensure he could invest in his business.
"We are getting a better price and we have confidence that if we invest they [Tesco] will still be in the market for our milk," he said.
"With any business, you cannot just stand still because costs are going up. If you do not re-invest and improve we will end up going backwards and slowly the wheels of the business will come off."
He said the price was constantly reviewed and would be looked at again in January.
David Handley, chairman of UK campaign group Farmers for Action, feels differently about supermarkets. He blames them for the decline of the British agricultural industry.
The dairy farmer said they were ignoring their corporate responsibility by not fairly paying farmers for their produce, which was putting many out of business.
"The dairy industry has shrunk by nearly 50% in eight years, the pig industry in the UK is virtually decimated," he said.
"Fruit and veg growers are getting less and less.
"As we get less and less home-produced food the pressure comes on where it's going to come from."
He said farming had declined since the mid-1990s, which he said was the last time farmers could earn a decent living.
"Multi-national retailers of the likes of Tesco, Walmart [which owns Asda], I hold them totally to blame for this," he said.
"They are the ones that control the purse strings in the supply chain."
Tesco said it had local buying teams dedicated to working with small, regional suppliers to sell local produce in stores.
The union
The growth in the big four supermarket companies is welcome news for the union which represents many of their employees.
Usdaw, which has nearly 400,000 members ranging from check-out staff to supermarket section managers, says it has seen people who had given up all hope of ever working again have their fortunes reversed by a new store opening in their town.
John Hannett, the union's general secretary, said: "A lot of the supermarkets that have opened (have been) in areas that are run down and there are people who are long-term unemployed, including many with learning difficulties, who have been given opportunities they would never have been given.
"You can imagine how important these jobs are in these times.
"If you go into some of the areas that I've been to where people have located supermarkets they've been scarred by long-term unemployment. The idea of an interview alone was daunting and all of a sudden they're being viewed as somebody with something to offer."
The union believes further expansion by the big four should be encouraged.
"There are areas where planning permission is rejected or there's strong local community opposition [but] when these stores open you often find the reaction that was there dies down," Mr Hannett said.
"From my perspective if it brings good jobs and keeps people employed, at the end of the day that's what people want. We can only see a positive developing out of this, especially in those kind of communities where there really are no prospects for people."
The retail sector
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) says in the past 10 years the year that saw the biggest growth in supermarkets was 2001.
It says expansion among the big four is driven by customers, not corporate greed.
BRC spokesman Richard Dodd said: "If you look at the figures for the last 10 years from 2000 to now, in fact overall grocery space rose each year by between one and two per cent which is obviously very low growth.
"[It is] modest growth and actually surprisingly consistent over the years.
"Anyone who is saying supermarkets are actually growing more rapidly than ever is actually wrong.
"Why is supermarket floor space growing at all? The answer is all of this is driven by customers. The people who have the power in retailing are the customers."
The BRC, which represents the top nine biggest food retailers, says local opposition to new supermarket developments usually evaporates when the new store opens and customers flock through the doors.
"Quite often there's a small but vocal minority who make their feelings very well known and usually generate some publicity and they come out with all these lines about it's not wanted here and it's going to kill the high street," Mr Dodd said.
"The supermarkets have got long experience about where would be an appropriate place to open a store. The retailers generally get these judgements right.
"Most of the store opening that is going on now either is the convenience store or it's about bringing the particular name to an area where it's under-represented at the moment.
"If customers genuinely don't want the store they won't use it and it won't last five minutes."
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Some of the most famous English phrases use people's names to convey a meaning, from the Bob of "Bob's your uncle" to the Gordon Bennett we call upon when we must not swear. But are these expressions, and others like them, based on real people? And if so, how did they become household names? | By Jennifer MeierhansBBC News Online
Betty Martin
The phrase "all my eye and Betty Martin" is used to declare something as nonsense.
There are a number of theories as to who the mystery woman - or indeed man - was, says Benjamin Norris, assistant editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.
"One idea is that it stems from Latin words used to call on the goddess of Crete 'O mihi Britomartis', or St Martin of Porres 'O mihi, beate Martinehe'," he said.
Eric Scaife from the Yorkshire Dialect Society said: "St Martin was the patron saint of innkeepers, so if you had had a few it may sound different - you would be talking rubbish!"
Could it be that British soldiers or sailors abroad heard locals uttering these Latin words in disbelief and anglicized them?
"I suspect she was a character of the lusty London of 1770s and no record of her exists," wrote lexicographer Eric Partridge in his Dictionary of Catchphrases (1977).
Mr Norris said in northern England the phrase is sometimes uttered as "all my eye and Peggy Martin".
"It seems relatively unlikely that we will be able to discover the identity of the individual in question for sure," said Mr Norris.
Bob's your uncle
The term is used to mean "and there you have it" or the equivalent of the French "et voilà".
Its origin could have been a satirical swipe at Conservative prime minister Lord Salisbury's controversial decision in 1887 to appoint his nephew Arthur Balfour as chief secretary for Ireland, wrote journalist Fraser McAlpine, in his BBC America Anglophenia blog.
Mr Norris agreed: "In light of Lord Salisbury's Christian name being Robert - 'Bob', of course, being a familiar form of this name - and the appointment being seen by many at the time as nepotistic this theory is an appealing one.
"Though, if it is true, it does not easily explain why the phrase is first recorded in the 1930s."
McApline and Mr Scaife have also both questioned whether the phrase could have something to do with Sir Robert Peel, who created the Metropolitan Police Force - where officers were commonly known as "bobbies".
"Perhaps he had a roguish nephew who was believed to have been kept from prison by his uncle," McAlpine wrote.
"Then there's the name itself, which appears to have been used as a catch-all name for someone you don't know, in much the same way that Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and that lot constantly referred to, well, anyone, as Clyde," he wrote.
Murphy's law
This expression conveys the sense that "if anything can go wrong it will go wrong".
It was created by aerospace engineer Captain Edward A Murphy while he was working on a series of US Air Force studies to test human tolerance to acceleration and deceleration, according to Brewer's Dictionary of Irish Phrase & Fable.
He coined the phrase after he observed someone setting up an experiment that required the attachment of 16 accelerometers, according to Brewers.
Each consisted of a sensor that could be attached to its mount in two different ways - and the subject had attached all of them the wrong way round.
"It is quite widely accepted as true and it also fits the chronology of our evidence for the phrase, with the earliest recorded use of Murphy's law in Genetic Psychology Monographs: 1951," said Mr Norris.
Davy Jones
The expression "to go to Davy Jones's locker" means to be drowned at sea.
"This item of nautical slang is shrouded in mystery, though we do know that the figure of Davy Jones was seen to represent the spirit of the ocean, sometimes even being interpreted as essentially a sea-devil," said Mr Norris.
The use of Davy Jones's locker to refer to the depths of the sea, frequently considered as the graveyard of those who have drowned, has been around since 18th Century, he said.
For instance, in his 1751 work Peregrine Pickle, Tobias Smollett refers to Davy Jones as "the fiend that presides over all the evil spirits of the deep".
Gordon Bennett
This man's name is often used in place of a swear word when making an exclamation of anger, surprise or frustration.
There were two famous Gordon Bennetts who might have been the source - a father and son.
James Gordon Bennett senior (1795-1872) was a Scottish-born journalist, famous in the US for founding the New York Herald and conducting the first ever newspaper interview.
His son, of the same name, was something of an international playboy. Mr Scaife described him as "a dandy... known for driving fast cars and causing consternation and surprise".
Gordon Bennett used his inheritance to sponsor the Bennett Trophy in motor racing from 1900 to 1905, and in 1906 established a hot-air balloon race that is still held today.
He holds the Guinness Book of Records entry for "Greatest Engagement Faux Pas".
One very drunken evening he turned up late to a posh party held by his future in-laws, and ended up urinating into a fireplace in full view of everyone. The engagement, unsurprisingly, was broken off.
However Mr Norris said of the Gordon Bennett expression: "It seems most likely to be a euphemistic substitution for 'gorblimey', which is itself a phonetic rendering of a colloquial or regional pronunciation of 'God blind me'."
This story was inspired by phrases sent in by readers of England's oddest phrases explained.
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My Money is a new series looking at how people spend their money - and the sometimes tough decisions they have to make. Here, Chelsea Thomas from California records her spending over a week and shares tips for saving. | We're looking for more people to share what they spend their money on. If you're interested, please email [email protected] or get in touch via our My Money (World) Facebook group, or if you live in the UK, please join our My Money (UK) Facebook group and we'll aim to contact you.
Chelsea is 32 years old and lives in Los Angeles. She is the practice manager and patient coordinator of a plastic surgery practice in Beverly Hills. Her interests include participating in animal rescue fundraiser events, and researching new trends in the health and beauty industry. She also likes doing activities with her dog Roscoe, like hiking or dog fashion photo shoots.
She recently went head-to-head with another blogger, Sunneva María Svövudóttir from Reykjavik in Iceland, on World Business Report - have a listen to hear Chelsea talk about what she spent her money on this week.
Chelsea's week: A spontaneous painting project and a pizza party
I woke up at 6:45 today to get ready for work. I am already in a good mood because I normally have to wake up at 6:00 for work, but due to the holidays my daily rush-hour commute to work is cut down by 45 minutes. I work on the other side of LA, so on a normal day it takes me about one hour and 15 minutes to make the 10-mile journey to my job.
However, today the city is almost empty so it takes me under 30 minutes to arrive at work. I would love to live closer to my job, but my crippling student loan debt doesn't allow me the luxury of living near my office, which happens to be situated in one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in the United States.
I arrive a bit early today, so I walk across the street to a coffee shop and get an iced coffee for $3.78 (£2.90). I bring my lunch with me to work and don't spend anything else the rest of my work day.
On my way home from work I need to stop and charge my car since it is fully electric. I charge at a public charger for one hour to get 20 miles which costs me $1.38.
When I get home my boyfriend and I celebrate the fact that neither one of us has to work the next two days by forgetting about our healthy food-only diet and ordering a bunch of pizza. We alternate who pays for meals and today is my turn - $21.75.
After eating enough pizza to make even yoga pants feel too tight, I decide I cannot do anything other than lay on the couch and watch Netflix all night. We make it half way through an hour-long episode, before I pass out asleep for the evening.
Total spend: $26.91
Today is New Year's Eve and I have the entire day off as well as tomorrow - woohoo! My boyfriend and I sleep in and have a light breakfast at home since we both still feel full from our pizza party last night.
We are planning on celebrating New Year's at a friend's house who is throwing a small party. We decide to go to Costco to pick up a bottle of alcohol and hostess gift since they typically have the best prices on items in my area. We decide on a bottle of Japanese whisky $32.84 and a box of liquor filled chocolates $18.60. We also get a bag of dog food while we are there since we are running low $43.57.
We decide to eat leftovers at home versus grabbing a bite somewhere since we are now running behind.
At 8:45 we leave to our friend's party. We call an Uber car and the 24-minute drive to her house costs $26.85. We spend the next few hours drinking cocktails, eating appetizers, and listening to music with friends. At around 1:30 we decide to call it a night and head home. We check the Uber app and the cost to call a car home has now skyrocketed to over $100! There has been a fare surge due to the holiday so we decide to hang out longer and wait for prices to drop.
At around 2:15 we check transportation prices again and they have been cut in half, still not what we want to spend but we are tired and eager to get home at this point. We call the car and spend $50.45 to get back home. Spending the car ride dreaming of getting into warm pyjamas and out of my uncomfortable heels and dress justifies the awful price for just a moment.
My boyfriend and I split the cost of everything 50/50 today so I'm fine with what I've spent, considering it's a holiday.
Total spend: $86.16
Today is New Year's day! A day where it is socially acceptable to lounge around and practice the art of doing positively nothing. I am off work today and because we stayed out so late last night I end up waking up after 11:00am - oops, half the day is already gone.
After complaining I am hungry for 30 minutes but not doing anything about it, my boyfriend agrees to go out and track us down some mid-afternoon breakfast bagels. He returns 30 minutes later with breakfast as well as additional food for dinner later. Both my stomach and my wallet are very happy.
After we eat we spend the rest of the day uneventfully playing video games and watching movies on Netflix, and congratulating ourselves on being adults and not getting drunk last night just because it's a holiday.
I remember my college days of spending an entire paycheck on dresses and drinking just because it was a holiday. Thanks but no thanks - welcome to adulthood. Normally my student loans come out of my account on the first of each month, but the banks are closed today so the withdrawal will not happen until tomorrow. I somehow made it through the day without spending a dollar - a New Year's miracle!
Total spend: $0
Back to work today. I wake up a little late this morning and struggle to get out of bed. My sleeping schedule is messed up from my days off. I eventually get out of bed and realize I wasted so much time I now don't have time to make breakfast.
I grab a protein bar and rush out the door. I get to work and realise I forget to bring my lunch. Ugh, I hate when this happens. When lunch time rolls around I walk down the street from my work to a local juice shop and get an acai bowl $10.90.
Today my student loans also come out of my account $859. I put a big portion of any extra income I get during the year towards my student loans so I can hopefully get them paid off quicker and not have the interest pile up. Sometimes seeing my friends spend their extra income on vacations and travelling I can feel down, thinking that this mountainous black hole of debt will never go away.
However, for the most part I always try to remain positive about the situation. I should feel grateful that I have a job that pays me enough to always pay my bills on time, something that hundreds of thousands of people in America who are plagued with monumental student loan debt struggle to do while also carrying the burden of keeping their families afloat. Thinking of this today is a great reminder to always be thankful and grateful for what I have.
Total spend: $869.90
I wake up early enough today to do a quick meditation. I've been trying to meditate more and more the last few months. I would love to join a local class but the costs in my area are outrageous for something I can do at home.
I pack some berries and chia seed pudding I made for lunch and make my way to work.
At lunchtime I notice I have a notification on my phone to put in my produce delivery order today. I subscribe to a wonderful food delivery service that focuses on the elimination of food waste. Weekly or bi-weekly I log onto my account to shop a list of "imperfect" food items that are perfectly fine but cannot be sold in stores due to being too small, an odd shape, or there is simply a surplus of an item.
We are able to buy an abundance of fresh organic fruits and vegetables this way at highly discounted prices. I have saved so much money using this service over the past few years since I am a vegetarian and my main food staples are fruits and vegetables. The order I place today comes to $16.82 for 10lbs of organic produce. I don't order too much because I still have a little left from last week's order.
My car lease payment has also been automatically deducted from my account today $146.59 as well as my car insurance $142.04 and home insurance $32.01.
On my way home from work I stop and pick up a caprese sandwich and green salad for dinner $13.14. I get home and catch up on some Real Housewives shows since my boyfriend is working late tonight.
Total spend: $350.60
Even though it's Saturday I wake up early. I listen to a podcast and clean up the house a bit while simultaneously drinking coffee and a protein shake. While I am cleaning I notice some stains on the walls that are not coming off. I actually noticed it a few weeks ago but now feel as though they are getting worse and it's driving me crazy!
I don't have any plans today so I make the impromptu decision to paint the walls. My boyfriend tries to talk me out of it saying we should have it done professionally. I briefly look online and see prices of several hundred dollars to have a room painted. No thanks, I'll figure it out.
I drive 10 minutes to a home improvement store and spend an hour picking out brushes and other accessories, and deciding between egg white and ultra pure white. Before admitting to myself I have no idea what I'm doing, and putting everything back in exchange for a pre-assembled painting kit, and googling the best brand of white wall paint to buy. I make it out of the store with probably not everything I need at $83.08.
I rush home and down some leftovers so I can quickly begin painting. Before I know it it's dark out and time to eat dinner. I am only half way done with my painting project so my boyfriend offers to go pick us up some food for dinner (anything to get out of the possibility of painting I suppose).
After eating I spend the rest of the evening painting, scrubbing spilled paint... and thinking about how I should have just paid a professional. However, with the cheap cost of DIY plus spitting the cost of supplies with my boyfriend it was ultimately worth it.
Total spend: $41.54
After spending the entire day inside yesterday painting I wake up feeling like I immediately need to get out of the house. I throw on some clothes and take my dog for a walk to a nearby juice shop. I get a green juice $8.75 and slice of zucchini bread $2.75 for breakfast and a quinoa veggie bowl to go for lunch later $11.99.
After breakfast we walk past a nearby pet shop. My only two money vices in life - makeup/skincare and dog anything. After a three-hour shopper's blackout in Sephora six months ago I actually forbid myself from buying any cosmetics until I run out of what I currently have. Dog stuff is still fair game since he's my one and only child.
I find a bag of treats, a chew toy, lavender-scented waste bags, senior vitamins and a mommy's best buddy t-shirt all on sale totalling $33.95. On the way out I also give a $15 donation to a local dog and cat fundraising team outside.
After lunch I meet a friend for coffee $4.85 and charge my car at a nearby public charger for an hour and 10 minutes while I'm there $1.17.
This evening my boyfriend and I go to a friend's house for dinner, who insists we do not bring anything at all along with us. Afterwards we head home to relax and get ourselves ready for the week ahead.
Total spend: $78.46
How does Chelsea feel about her week?
I spent a little spontaneously this week which is alright because of a handful of monetary gifts I received from family members for the holidays. A lot of my spending this week also went towards food and a few of my monthly bills.
Overall I am fine with my spending this week when looking it over. I try to balance responsible spending while I'm working to pay off my student loans while also allowing myself occasional frivolous spending without guilt or thinking about it since I work hard for my money!
Total weekly spend: $1,453.57 (£1,107)
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The UK's official tally of coronavirus-related deaths has passed 20,000 - a figure the chief scientist once said would represent a "good outcome". It's a huge number and hard to visualise. How can we grasp the scale of this loss? | By Jon KellyBBC Stories
On the afternoon of 17 March 2020, in a Westminster committee room, Sir Patrick Vallance leaned forward in his chair.
Back then, the number of people confirmed to have died in the UK after contracting Covid-19 stood at 71. Stricter measures had just been introduced to tackle the virus. Sir Patrick, the government's chief scientific adviser, was asked if the final tally of British deaths could be limited to 20,000 or below. That would, he told MPs, be "a good outcome".
Eleven days later, with the official death tally now at 1,091, Stephen Powis, NHS England's medical director, repeated Sir Patrick's benchmark. "If we can keep deaths below 20,000," he told the daily Downing Street media briefing, "we will have done very well."
Already - less than six weeks after Sir Patrick's statement, and a month on from Stephen Powis's - the 20,000 figure has been surpassed. No-one can predict what the final number of deaths will be when the pandemic is over, or what will ultimately be considered the benchmark for a "good" outcome.
Nonetheless, the 20,000 figure serves as a landmark and passing it has grim resonance.
Of course, the government is only recording hospital cases where a person dies with the coronavirus infection in their body. Other estimates have been much higher.
"The daily official tally gives a very limited picture of the impact of the virus - if we take into account reporting delays and deaths outside hospital, we probably passed 20,000 deaths attributed to Covid-19 a week ago," says Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter of the University of Cambridge. "There are also many thousands of extra deaths in the community that have not been attributed to Covid-19, either through caution in putting it on the death certificate, or reluctance to send people to hospital."
And even though a ceiling of 20,000 fatalities was considered a hopeful scenario, it was only ever so in the most the limited sense.
A tally on that scale would still be "horrible", Sir Patrick told the Commons Health Select Committee back on 17 March. It would mean an enormous number of deaths. "Having spent 20 years as an NHS consultant as well as an academic," he said, "I know exactly what that looks and feels like."
How many excess deaths?
By Robert Cuffe, BBC News head of statistics
In the three weeks up to Easter, just under 17,000 more deaths were registered than we would normally see at this time of year, a record spike, most of which can be attributed to the epidemic.
But more than half of the coronavirus deaths announced daily have been reported since Easter, so by now the true picture is likely to be far higher.
Registered deaths capture all deaths in the community or care homes and deaths caused indirectly by the virus: people not seeking or getting treatment because our health service is under pressure, or people suffering in the lockdown.
So that gives a better picture of what is really going on. But it takes up to 10 days for deaths to be registered and analysed.
Could most people say they, too, had a sense of the scale of 20,000 lives lost?
That is roughly the population of Newquay in Cornwall and Bellshill in North Lanarkshire. It's the capacity of the Liberty Stadium in Swansea or Fratton Park in Portsmouth. You could visualise those places, if you've seen them.
But while there have been clusters of cases, this comparison obscures the breadth of the virus's impact. Unlike residents of a town or spectators at a sporting ground, the lives lost haven't been concentrated in one particular location. They've been all around.
And if you were to attempt to visualise them, they would not look like a randomly selected cross-section of the population, either. People over 70 are at higher risk. So too are those with underlying health conditions. Data suggest men may be affected more than women, and that there has been a disproportionately large impact on people from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Your perception of the death toll may also differ depending on where you are.
If you live near a main road in London, the UK's coronavirus epicentre, the sound of sirens might have brought home to you the scale of the emergency response. When you look up at the clear spring skies, all but empty of the usual passenger aircraft, your view of the air ambulances carrying patients to hospitals will be unimpeded.
If you live on the Western Isles of Scotland, where the rate of infections has been dramatically lower, the same sensory cues won't be there for you, though you may notice the lack of vapour trails.
The very fact of social distancing makes it harder to commemorate even those you lose who are closest to you. Saying goodbye is often impossible. Numbers at funeral gatherings are strictly limited. You mourn the deaths of loved ones on social media, Zoom and Skype rather than at wakes.
You could compare 20,000 with other death tolls. It's nearly seven times more than the number who lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks and five-and-a-half times more than the number who died as a result of Northern Ireland's Troubles.
But compared with most conflicts and natural disasters, the impact is far more dispersed and hidden. There will be no war cemeteries like those that show the scale of the loss of life in the great conflicts of the 20th Century - though the largest of those, the World War One Tyne Cot Cemetery in Flanders, with its 11,965 graves, would be too small for 20,000 Covid-19 casualties.
Previous pandemics might offer a better, if more ominous yardstick. So far, the toll stands at less than 1/10th of the number of British deaths attributed to Spanish flu after WW1.
But relevant too are the illnesses that kill equivalent numbers each year with minimal attention.
"Twenty thousand deaths represents a huge amount of illness, human pain and personal loss," says Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter. "But it's also important to remember that, although Covid-19 is a far more serious illness than seasonal flu, in each of the winters of 2014-5 and 2017-18 there were over 26,000 deaths associated with flu, which did not receive much attention."
But the most glaring gap in our understanding of the pandemic is the emotional impact of its spread.
Each time a Covid-19 statistic is recorded, how many other people are affected besides? Is it possible to calculate, let alone envisage, the scale of tragedy visited on loved ones, neighbours and friends? Let alone 20,000 times over.
When 82-year-old Ruth Burke became the fourth person in Northern Ireland to die with Covid-19, her daughter Brenda Doherty insisted that Mrs Burke was more than just a number. "I don't want my mum being another statistic," Ms Doherty told BBC Radio Ulster. "She was a loving mother. She was a strong person."
Picture editor: Emma Lynch
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Psssst .. Over here! Lift the tarpaulin and dust down the jargon. Brexit is back on the political menu. Whether you voted for it or not, now is the time to start sitting up and listening again. | Katya AdlerEurope editor@BBCkatyaadleron Twitter
It starts with Monday's online meeting between UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and EU institution leaders (the president of the European Council, Commission and Parliament).
I know you've seen countless "make or break summits", so many "deadlines" come and go, so many threats of "no deal" that came to nought.
So here is an attempt to try and help navigate what's spin and what you should be looking out for. More insights - including deal-making tips from a professional hostage negotiator - in my podcast here.
First off, Brexit has, of course, "happened". The UK left the EU at the end of January. But we're not yet living the next chapter. The transition period we're in means that, in practical terms, little has changed. The UK is still a member of the EU's single market and customs union. The UK isn't going it alone, just yet.
The EU and UK have until the end of this month - according to the Withdrawal Agreement, aka the Brexit divorce deal - to call for an extension to transition. But the UK government has long rejected the idea. On Friday, the EU publicly accepted that UK "no" as definitive.
So, there are six months left to negotiate, sign and seal the parameters of the UK's future relationship with its biggest and closest trade partner.
That's six months left to compromise.
Because without compromise - on both sides - there will be no trade deal come the end of this year.
That is why it's worth keeping a closer eye on things again. The UK government promised a brighter future post-Brexit - a taking back of control over national borders, waters and immigration.
The next half-a-year is when we find out if it will keep those promises.
What compromises, if any, will the UK government make on its Brexit pledges in order to reach a trade deal with the EU and others?
And if the UK refuses to compromise, how might having no deal at all with the EU affect our lives?
Right now, EU-UK trade negotiations are at an impasse, because of political priorities both sides of the Channel.
The government rejects EU demands on competition regulations and fishing because, it says, they fail to respect the UK's post Brexit national sovereignty.
The EU insists without agreement on fishing and competition rules, there'll be no deal at all. It wants restrictions on the UK's ability to slash costly environmental or labour regulations for example, in order to prevent UK businesses becoming more competitive than European ones in their own market. This, says the EU, is imperative to protect the "integrity" of the single market and what it calls "the European project".
But political rhetoric aside, Boris Johnson and EU leaders want a deal. It makes economic sense. This doesn't mean a deal is certain. But the UK isn't walking away from talks this month either, as it once threatened to do.
Instead, after their meeting on Monday, the prime minister and the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are expected to announce a timetable of intensified negotiations this summer, including some face-to-face meetings (Covid-19 permitting) in a declared attempt to break the deadlock.
Prepare for the setting of more deadlines too. Plus dark mutterings from both sides (France's Europe minister was already at it on Thursday) should these deadlines not be met.
The UK says a deal must become clear before the autumn to give businesses and workers the chance to prepare. Spoiler alert: a deal is extremely unlikely to materialise by then.
The EU insists 31 October is the latest date a deal can be reached, if it is to be ratified by the end of the year (the UK's other deadline).
Spoiler alert Number 2: the late October date is also quite possibly not going to be met.
So, does this make no-deal now the most probable outcome?
Not necessarily. A deal is there to be done by December if both sides want one and if both are willing to make concessions. A compromise could be found on fishing, if, for example, EU coastal nations give up the dream of keeping the same quotas they had to fish in UK waters when the UK was an EU member. And if the UK accepts it can't have the exact same fishing agreement Brussels has with much smaller Norway.
On competition rules - aka level playing-field regulations - the EU would need to give up its insistence that the UK mirror the bloc's evolving state aid rules forever in to the future.
The UK concession could be to sign up to not weakening labour and environmental regulations below the current level.
But that is a political decision for the UK. The EU recognises that. And it's really not sure which way the government will eventually jump. Much will depend, Brussels thinks, on whatever else is going on for Boris Johnson domestically, come the autumn.
Give up some sovereignty (as trade negotiators say all deals demand, to a greater or lesser extent) and come under fire from Brexit purists, or walk away, declaring that no deal was possible with the EU, and face an outcry from many in the business community and beyond.
It's at this point in off-the-record chats that my EU contacts love to repeat the phrase they've so often directed at the UK since the 2016 referendum, that "you can't have your cake and eat it". Or as the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier likes to say: "You can't have the best of both worlds."
Whatever the next months may bring, negotiators from both sides privately acknowledge this summer is probably too early for big compromises.
The theory is that the "other side" would simply bank those summer compromises and demand more come the autumn.
And if they're almost there but not quite, come November, the whispered wisdom in Brussels is that with all the "clever lawyers" in town, as they're described to me, it should be possible to find a way of fudging an extension (though for political face-saving reasons, especially in the UK, not actually calling it an extension) for a limited period beyond the end of the year, if both sides want one, and only if they are very close indeed to sealing the deal.
After all my years EU-watching, I cannot imagine the bloc allowing a deal with close neighbour and ally UK to fall through over a deadline, if the UK government too were keen to keep talking.
But this is not an official topic of discussion in Brussels, never mind London, at this stage.
Meanwhile in Berlin, Paris, Rome and elsewhere, EU leaders are still very much focussed on Covid-19 and its fallout.
Yet another reason Brussels predicts the bartering and compromise possibilities will only become clearer come October, with the clock ticking down to the end of the year.
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A pharmacist accused of murdering his wife cheated on her with men he had met on a dating app, jurors have been told. | Mitesh Patel, 37, denies killing his wife Jessica, 34, whose body was found at their home in Middlesbrough in May.
Ahead of the trial starting, Justice James Goss told jurors it was agreed Mr Patel had been unfaithful with men.
When selecting jurors, the judge also ruled out anyone who had used dating app Grindr or visited the Patels' pharmacy in Linthorpe since 2011.
The trial at Teesside Crown Court is expected to last three or four weeks and the prosecution is due to open its case on Thursday.
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A family of geese brought the A1 to a standstill after walking on to the northbound carriageway for a gander. | Traffic Officers held vehicles near Catterick for about 30 minutes while the geese were herded off the road.
It happened shortly after 09.00 BST on Saturday.
Highways England tweeted that the road was reopened at about 09.35, saying: "Good news! The family of approx. 20 geese have been herded off the motorway to greener pastures".
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Newham Council has written to housing associations around the country - including one in Stoke - to try to find accommodation for families on its waiting list.
Jason Paul, a 38-year-old unemployed single parent, tells BBC News his local council in London want to move him to Walsall in the West Midlands. | Mr Paul has lived in the London Borough of Waltham Forest for the past 15 years and was at a loss on being asked to move 138 miles away.
"I am under Waltham Forest Council and they have told me if I don't move to Walsall they will put me and my daughter on the streets.
"I have lived in London all my life - how can they do this to people," Mr Paul said.
A council spokesman said housing people outside the borough was "often not ideal" but "lack of suitable accommodation" was the reason behind such a move.
He has been living with his 14-year-old daughter in a temporary accommodation in Ilford, Essex, since September 2011.
"Ilford is quite near to Waltham Forest, but sending me to Walsall will deny me the right to live in a place where I have lived much of my life," he said.
Before being rehoused, Mr Paul lived with his parents in Waltham Forest and had to move to temporary accommodation to look after his ill daughter.
'Another appointment'
"On Monday I received a letter from Waltham Forest Council saying I must view a property in Walsall on 24 April. If I don't go I will have to leave the accommodation I am in now," he said.
The council's housing office agreed to provide the transport cost of going to Walsall.
"I had another appointment on 24 April so now I am supposed to view the property in Walsall on Thursday.
"If the council has its way, I will be relocated to Walsall by next week," he added.
"I don't understand why the council is doing this to me. I haven't had an explanation from them."
Mr Paul has two sons who are in the custody of his estranged wife and live in Leytonstone, east London.
"If I am relocated to Walsall, I will be denied the right of seeing my sons regularly. My daughter also can't see her brothers," Mr Paul said.
"I have a good rapport with the council. I get on well with my neighbours and I haven't been in any trouble."
'Supply network'
Waltham Forest Council has more than 21,000 people on their housing waiting list, a spokesman said.
"Sadly, there are no suitable properties in Waltham Forest for Mr Paul or 21,000 other people currently on our housing waiting list," he added.
"The council houses people in 14 units in Luton, five units in Margate and recently acquired further units in Walsall.
"None are arrangements with housing associations."
The council was also looking to expand its "supply network" and was working with the neighbouring boroughs to "procure more accommodation in and around Waltham Forest".
Having accepted their duty as a local authority to find accommodation for Jason paul as homeless, the council has scheduled a visit for him to view a property in Walsall on Thursday 26 April, the spokesman said.
"If a property is allocated to him, Mr Paul will be entitled to initiate an independent review should he feel the accommodation is inappropriate."
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While attention has been on infection control and the Channel, it's Northern Ireland which is perhaps the most astonishing and far-reaching aspect of Brexit. So far. Its treatment suggests that it is now English nationalism that will determine whether the UK remains united. Scottish fish exports have become the first to run into problems with paperwork required before trucks leave the country, as well as when they reach France. They're being joined by others. The first eight days have had some allowance for change, but the "period of grace" is ending, and from hauliers to ferry firms and British suppliers of imported goods to the EU, firms are finding the new trading reality is complex and costly. | Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland
The real Brexit - the economic one - arrived alongside a sudden surge in the health crisis. There was relief that "no deal" was avoided, so while being told to stay at home, the nation's attention was, understandably, not on the seismic change that just took place in Britain's place in the world.
A week on, it may seem that the rupture with the European Union's single market and customs union has passed without casualty, while paling into insignificance beside the surge of hospitalisations and deaths, and renewed extraordinary restrictions on individual liberty.
These seem more immediate pressures than the split of Northern Ireland's economy from that of mainland Britain. But in the longer term, we'll surely find time and space to reflect on the extraordinary outcome of the long road to Brexit - that somehow took the UK's marketplace from the world's biggest to one that is smaller than the UK itself.
Perhaps it will be if or when the economic split leads towards a political one. Having played a key role in bringing about Brexit, the unionists of Ulster may find their cause fatally undermined by it.
For those who see the future of the United Kingdom through a Scottish prism, it's easy to miss the growing possibility that a uniting Ireland could pull away from the UK before Scots decide to do so.
And there may not be much resistance. The Conservatives who argued most strongly for Brexit are now less concerned about keeping the UK market united. Their bluff called, the threat to break the 2019 Northern Ireland Protocol withdrawn, the economic border is now in the North Channel. So now, they resort to pretending that it hasn't happened.
How much faster might they ditch their enthusiasm for Scotland's place in the union? The unity of the Kingdom now looks more vulnerable to the choices made by English nationalists than those of the other three parts.
Grace no more
One reason you couldn't feel the tremors from that constitutional seismic activity was that a lot of cross border traffic wasn't moving. Many exporters of goods were holding back, having stocked up across the boundaries, when they didn't know if there would be tariffs or a deal. With stock in place, they could afford to wait and see.
But with fish, not so much. It was one of the big issues through the talks, beyond its relative importance to EU or UK economies. And because it has to be delivered super-fresh, it was the first sector to feel the frost of bureaucracy descend.
Within three days of normal service resuming, dozens of trucks were stuck in France. Calais wasn't ready to receive inbound fish, so drivers had to divert to the slower ferry option to Dunkirk.
From there, they need permission to go on to Boulogne-sur-Mer, where the border post is. It's also the marketplace for around 80% of UK fish produce exported into the EU. But there were glitches in French computer software.
So far, there has been a "period of grace". But come Friday night, exporters are braced for things to get much tougher. French customs officials can make it as tough as they want, with slow inspections, while taking a forensic approach to the paperwork.
So back in Lanarkshire, at the three depots where Scottish food exports have been put into giant chiller halls, and then loaded up for one-day delivery to Boulogne, they're keen to make sure that the paperwork is correct.
Some sectors are used to this, if they send high value salmon and shellfish outside the EU, often air-freighting it. As a result, a truckload of salmon from one producer is relatively simple, and they are getting despatched much faster than others. The Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation say members send 100 tonnes of salmon into France every day in a more normal January, worth £23m over the month.
However, most exporters are new to the bureaucracy of selling into the EU from outside. And it seems too many were not ready for what they faced. The complexity is worst for lorries carrying fish for several different exporters, each of which has paperwork to be processed. They tend to move at the speed of the least well prepared.
"More wrong than right"
Eleven vets are working across the three hubs, with 50 more available to shift from their animal welfare duties at abattoirs. They've been put there by the Food Standards Scotland agency, on instructions from the Scottish government, to avoid dependence on private vets and councils' environmental health officers already overstretched with Covid compliance. While vets are required to certificate meat products going into the EU market, vets or environmental health officers can do so for fish.
The inspectors in Lanarkshire carry their own personal stamp when they sign off these six-page, densely-worded Export Health Certificates. They carry professional liability if they don't do their job properly. And a lot can go wrong with a consignment of seafood, so that's a real risk.
Earlier this week, two trucks took more than five hours to be processed and leave Lanarkshire, when the intention was to have them turned around in as little as 45 minutes, and no more than two hours. One truck took eight hours.
Those on the ground report that the consignment paperwork didn't tally with the goods being loaded. Some paperwork was presented for Northern Ireland but was for goods going to France.
Businesses were warned, observes one of those involved: "You can lead a horse to water..." But if firms thought the Brexit prospect would melt away, as it had twice before, then they were not ready for all the certification; the coding for tax, for health, for the safety inspection by local authorities of the fishing vessel or processing plant, checks of the packaging integrity.
"There's more wrong with their paperwork than there is right," I've been told. The feedback from France is that as much as 90% of the UK inbound paperwork is incorrect.
Only three days in, DFDS, at its logistics hub in Larkhall, was telling clients that a guaranteed one-day service was immediately shifting to three days at best. The difference translates into reduced value to that fish when it arrives at Boulogne-sur-Mer.
The Scottish Seafood Association was sending a message to skippers at sea that they may find quayside prices depressed when they return to port.
Garment trade
Scottish fish were among the first to face the impact of Brexit, but they weren't alone. Supermarket shelves in Northern Ireland have been emptying, either through a rush to secure food, or because businesses simply aren't able to send fresh food as before. Some trucks were delayed as they arrived in Northern Ireland, because the paperwork wasn't right.
Wales is a major route for trucks taking goods into the Irish Republic. One logistics firm, Gwynedd Shipping, had a backlog of 60 trucks by Thursday, unable to generate the computer codes necessary to board ferries for Dublin. The queues may not be obvious, because the trucks are waiting at depots all over the country.
It was only this week that some major UK clothing retailers found that they face double tariffs if they import clothes, for instance, from outside the European Union, and then export them to Ireland and other EU nations.
It makes no sense to pay a 12% tariff on a finished garment, and then pay it again to send it to a shop in Dublin. A shirt from Bangladesh or Cambodia enters the UK tariff free, but a 12% tariff is applied at the EU boundary.
The lesson is clear: cut out the British element, and for goods destined for the EU, bypass the UK, along with any jobs involved.
Red tape
DPD joined in the confusion. The logistics and delivery firm found sending goods from the UK into EU is much more complex than the planning had projected. By Thursday night, it was suspending all such parcel traffic, to review how best to handle the added hassle, delay and cost.
Meanwhile, Stena was warning commercial clients that from Friday morning they'll need a GMR (goods movement reference) number, as well as a PBN (pre-boarding notification). To give you a flavour of it, here's a small part of the advice from Ireland's revenue service, and it seems this even applies to freight moving between Scotland and Northern Ireland:
"All safety and security, customs declarations and transit declarations must be lodged prior to arrival at the ferry port of departure in the third country. Additionally, the Movement Reference Number (MRN) of the aforementioned declarations for all goods carried on a vehicle or trailer, must be included in a Pre-Boarding Notification to be submitted to Revenue prior to the arrival of the goods at the ferry port of departure in the third country.
"Failure to comply with this requirement is an offence, punishable on summary conviction of a fine of €5,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or both."
And all this applies even to empty trailers. You'll probably recall that Brexit was intended to remove the risk of strangulation by Brussels red tape.
Barriers
Even when everyone knows what paperwork is required, and when it is being processed smoothly, it still carries cost. In the Scottish fish exporting trade, for just one example, 150,000 certificates will probably be needed annually.
Says Donna Fordyce, chief executive of Seafood Scotland: "The problem is no longer hypothetical. It is happening right now. We are doing all we can to help companies get the paperwork done. It will take time to fix - which we know many seafood companies can't afford right now.
"The last 24 hours has really delivered what was expected - new bureaucratic non-tariff barriers and no one body with the tools to be able to fix the situation" - least of all a prime minister who observed last week that the trade deal has left "no non-tariff barriers to trade".
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Couples of a certain age, and at a certain stage in their relationship, can expect to be asked if or when they plan on having children. Last year, writer Emily Bingham urged her Facebook friends in a viral post to stop with the intrusive line of questioning. "You don't know who is struggling with infertility or grieving a miscarriage or dealing with health issues," she wrote. But Dan Majesky, who works at the University of Cincinnati, took a different approach. | By BBC TrendingWhat's popular and why
In a vividly detailed Facebook post, Majesky not only announced wife Leah's pregnancy but detailed the pain the couple experienced with infertility and miscarriage.
"It was initially supposed to be a private post letting our friends know that we are expecting a child," Majesky told BBC Trending, "but then we felt we had to acknowledge our miscarriage. We didn't want it to be a secret."
"We're in our thirties," Majesky wrote. "Things are probably a little bit dusty, and a little bit rusty. So, three years ago, we started using apps and calendars to track this and that. Ovulation test sticks. Old wives' tales of positions and timing. We got some late periods. And some periods that never came! But we didn't get pregnant."
He went on to talk about his wife's miscarriage. Some parts revealed the stark shock of the day; "I was so stunned when it happened that I texted my boss that I wouldn't be back that day, but that I'd be back the next, which really cracks me up now."
Other sections described the raw pain of the ordeal; "I don't think it was until around the New Year that I went a day without crying about it."
The Facebook post, which ran to more than 3,000 words, also had moments of humour.
"My job was to try and not say anything dumb, because she also needed to be calm," he went on to explain, "I tried to avoid triggering phrases like 'Hey,' or 'Good morning,' or 'I love you'".
The post, which has been liked more than 40,000 times, clearly struck a digital chord.
"It's not often that we hear about miscarriage and infertility. But I love that you can be so honest," commented one woman, who then went on to tell her own story of infertility. Many noted how testimonies of infertility are not often shared with a male perspective.
"I wrote the piece in one sitting," Majesky told us, "We decided to make the post public when our friends told us that they wanted to share it on their own Facebook walls."
As part of the Facebook post, the couple included a 15-week scan of the baby due to be born in November.
"Although we are so very touched by the support we've received, we do still feel anxious about the pregnancy," Majesky said.
And do they have any advice for people who ask a couple if they're expecting a baby?
"Maybe ask the couple if having children is something they want. Not 'when are you having children'."
Blog by Megha Mohan
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A dispute between two motorists at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary which ended in an assault is being investigated by police. | The road rage-type incident happened near the west gate ambulance bay on Thursday afternoon.
The assailants were described as a woman in her 50s or 60s and a man in his 40s who were in a black Nissan Note.
Grampian Police said the victim was a 28-year-old man.
The force said several vehicles had to queue behind those involved in the incident as it took place, and a spokesperson appealed for any of those motorists to come forward.
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The longest railway tunnel in Wales could be dug out and re-opened to become a tourist attraction. | The Blaencwm tunnel was buried during the Beeching cutbacks of the UK railway network in the 1960s which led to the closure of thousands of train stations.
Volunteers are now drawing up plans to try to re-open the 3,300 yards (3017m) tunnel in Rhondda Cynon Taf.
They hope to receive funding to excavate the tunnel to attract tourists and create a cycle trail.
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Rescuers in Snowdonia have said they are "frustrated" after a lost walker was left behind by another mountaineer.
| Llanberis Mountain Rescue volunteers were put on standby at 15:40 GMT on Tuesday, awaiting confirmation the woman had descended safely with the help of the other walker.
They had to search for the woman after her potential saviour "rushed off into the mist", leaving her on the Pyg track with no torch.
She was found 90 minutes later.
The team have urged mountaineers to continue the "good Samaritan" tradition of helping others, following the incident.
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It is a Finnish company started in 2010, whose first products only emerged in 2011. You've probably never heard of Supercell, but on Tuesday it was valued at $3bn, making it the fastest growing technology firm to come out of Europe in, well, just about ever. | Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter
Supercell is a games business with just two titles, Clash of Clans and Hay Day, which until last week could only be played on Apple's iPhone and iPad. But they have grabbed a huge share of the mobile gaming market, leading the world in terms of revenue, ahead of giants like EA which has 829 titles to Supercell's two.
On Tuesday Japan's Softbank paid $1.5bn to acquire a 51% stake in Supercell. The telecoms firm is doing the deal in conjunction with its own gaming subsidiary GungHo, another major player in the new world of mobile games.
This might look like another of those dotcom deals, where a wealthy corporate giant pays over the odds for a business with big user numbers but no concrete business plan. But Supercell is making money hand over fist - revenues grew from $100m in 2012 to $179m in the first quarter of this year and are on course to hit $1bn for the whole year.
Key to its success has been its ability to crack the Asian market, something many other games developers have tried and failed to do. It has already been working with GungHo and has now brought its games to Android, essential for any firm competing in China.
It all looks like a great success for Finland, also home of the Angry Birds firm Rovio, and for the wider European technology scene. Supercell was backed by London-based venture capital firms including Index Ventures and Atomico. They bought in at a valuation of $770m back in February, so have made their investment back four times over in the space of six months - though existing investors will retain half of their stakes in the business.
That means more money will now be available to invest in other start-ups, and even if Supercell is now controlled from Japan, Tuesday's news will be a great boost for the image of the European games industry.
The UK firm behind the phenomenally successful Candy Crush Saga, King.com, is currently working on its stock market debut, while the Moshi Monsters business Mind Candy is also rumoured to be thinking of an IPO. Both may end up on New York's Nasdaq over the next year.
What is slightly disappointing is that these companies seem to be looking outside Europe - to Asia or the US - when they are seeking the funding they need to progress to the next stage of their development. But European games developers are showing that they have mastered what consumers want in the mobile world and using their skills to build big businesses in a hurry.
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Hundreds of survivors of a rebel attack that has killed at least 72 people in remote villages of India's north-eastern Assam state have taken shelter in a church and school as authorities have imposed an indefinite curfew in the affected areas.
| Police blame the attacks on the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB).
The NDFB wants an independent homeland for the ethnic group to be carved out of Assam. Tuesday's attacks took place in areas populated by non-Bodo people.
Women and children were said to be among the victims of the rebel attacks in Sonitpur and Kokrajhar districts. Those killed and injured were mainly tribespeople who worked in the local tea gardens. Many of them are now leaving their homes and moving to safer places after the violence.
Angry tribespeople have protested against the attacks. On Wednesday, police fired on a group which surrounded a police station in Sonitpur, killing three protesters.
Some 200 tribespeople have taken shelter in a school in Sonitpur district.
Villagers who escaped the attacks told police that the armed rebels came on foot, forced open the doors of their huts and opened fire. Some villagers were pulled out of their houses and gunned down.
At least 100 tribespeople, mostly women and children, have taken shelter in a church in Shamukjuli village in Sonitpur district, where at least 37 people, including 10 women, were killed and 14 others were injured..
There are concerns now that the violence could spread with retaliatory attacks against the Bodos. Troops have been deployed to maintain peace in the region.
Reports said two Bodos were also killed by tribespeople in Karigaon village and there have been incidents of Bodo homes being attacked.
Assam has been plagued by ethnic clashes and separatist violence in recent years.
A number of rebel groups have been fighting the central authorities, demanding autonomy or independent homelands for the indigenous groups they represent.
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The damning report on Liverpool prison by HM Inspectorate of Prisons , published on Friday, says conditions in the establishment are "squalid". But this is just the latest in a series of major problems faced by the jail. | By Michael BuchananSocial affairs correspondent, BBC News
With England's prisons regularly described as being in crisis, because of budget and staff cuts, it takes a special level of incompetence to be called the country's worst jail.
But that is precisely the label bestowed on HMP Liverpool last month by many, including a former prisons inspector, after the BBC revealed the appalling failures at the prison.
The living conditions: rats, cockroaches, blocked toilets and pools of urine, for instance, said to be the worst that inspectors had ever seen, were described by the then justice secretary as "shocking".
But few within the prison service could have been surprised. Not only had they overseen the emerging squalor in the prison, but they'd been told repeatedly over a number of years about the problems.
One of the most damning passages in the leaked report said: "We could see no credible plan to address these basic issues. On the contrary, the presence of inspectors seemed to provoke some piecemeal and superficial attempts at cleaning and the like, but the fear was that this would stop as soon as we left, which is clearly what happened after the last inspection."
One statistic in the document hammers home the point: of the 89 recommendations made by inspectors in 2015, only 22 had been fully achieved.
The prison inspectors' view of the prison service, and its commitment to improving Liverpool, is supported by numerous responses to previous critical findings.
What inspectors said
Reacting to the latest report, Michael Spurr, chief executive of Her Majesty's Prison & Probation Service, said the conditions found by inspectors at the prison were "unacceptable".
And he added: "We are committed to fixing this, have already made changes where we can, and have published a comprehensive action plan to address the chief inspector's concerns."
Some improvements were made. The 2012 and 2014 inspection reports both noted progress and praised the leadership of the jail. But throughout, the physical conditions there remained challenging. "Some seemingly intractable problems," wrote inspectors in an otherwise fairly positive report in 2014.
Money
At the heart of the debate about Liverpool is the amount of money that's been invested in the prison.
Figures from the National Offender Management Service shows the prison's budget has fallen from almost £26m in 2011-12 to less than £21.5m in 16-17, a decrease of more than 17%.
Budgets across the Prison Service fell at the same time, down 22% between 2009-2010 and 2016-2017 according to the Institute for Government. But even if Liverpool's reduction has been slightly less, its starting point, in terms of need, was greater than that of many other prisons.
Staffing was also slashed.
The safe staffing ratio at Liverpool - and many other jails - was considered to be one prison officer to 30 inmates. At Liverpool in recent years, it has sometimes fallen to one to 100.
Some night shifts have left five prison officers looking after approximately 1,100 inmates, although new prison officers have been hired in recent months.
Healthcare
Since 2011, there have been at least 17 suicides in the prison: one of the highest numbers in England, though a problem affecting most jails in recent years.
Organisations including the Howard League for Penal Reform say a lack of staff, providing healthcare, has contributed to the number of suicides in the prison system but the widespread availability of illegal drugs had added to the problems within the prison's healthcare regime.
High numbers of inmates enter the jail with existing drug problems and mental health conditions, and the plentiful supply of drugs, including in recent years psychoactive substances like spice, worsens their health, putting further pressure on the healthcare unit.
Until January 2015, care, commissioned by NHS England (NHSE), was provided by the Liverpool Community Health Trust, but so poor was its performance that it was effectively sacked, with Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust asked to take over.
NHSE gave the new provider £200,000 immediately to hire new staff and equipment. But having subsequently awarded the trust an £8.3m contract, it insisted on annual efficiency savings, which the trust found undeliverable.
Problems hiring medics meant the trust had to rely on expensive agency staff and it said it had to spend significant amounts of its own money subsidising the service.
Lancashire Care says it has made improvements since 2015 but it's no surprise that it is walking away when it ends in March. Unsurprisingly, no provider has bid for the contract.
The lack of prison officers has meant that healthcare staff have been unable to carry out medication rounds. And a lack of specialist secure beds means that patients with acute mental health conditions have not been able to move out of the jail in a timely manner.
Beyond this, there is one other contributory factor: public opinion. There is little pressure on ministers, the Prison Service or the NHS to provide good care to prisoners.
Certainly, some people have a harsh view of prisoners, and would actively support the squalor in Liverpool, as my social media feed has confirmed.
But the vast majority of prisoners - in Liverpool as elsewhere - will be released, and as many experts have pointed out, if they're treated as animals in prisons, why should we expect them to behave any better on the outside?
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The pub is having a torrid Covid-19 crisis, as infection controls have accelerated long-running declining trends of alcohol consumption.
Young people are avoiding drink and pubs, so the on-trade is having to look to "experiences" to draw them back.
Restaurants are under threat too, from overstretched chains and home delivery, while entire town and city centres face radical choices. | By Douglas FraserBusiness and economy editor, Scotland
The pub is under threat as never before: at least a third of howfs and hostelries face permanent closure, according to experts on the sector.
The outlook from the point of view of the Scottish Licensed Trade Association (SLTA) is far worse than that.
Its spokesman, Paul Waterson, said its most recent survey of a tenth of the membership pointed to a third of them being financially non-viable.
But he told me, for a special report on Radio Scotland, that the introduction of 10pm closure, along with restrictions to only two households meeting in groups of no more than six, has greatly worsened the outlook.
The SLTA estimate is now for up to two-thirds of them having to close in the next few months. And whereas it previously estimated 12,500 job losses, that forecast has doubled.
Such projections are what could happen if there is no government intervention to support the sector. And perhaps those numbers are inflated to get the attention of policy-makers.
But I heard also from Spiros Malandrakis, an expert in the on-trade worldwide for Euromonitor marketing consultants. His estimate is for a third to half of British pubs being forced to close, permanently, and in only three months.
Unlike live entertainment and conferences, the root of the problem is not Covid-19. As I found in researching for the radio report, the infection has rapidly accelerated several pre-existing trends that were bearing down on the traditional pub.
Why? Mr Malandrakis told me it's partly the fear that drunkenness can so easily be pictured and placed on social media, permanently and indelibly.
He also said that brewers see Tinder, the dating app, as the biggest threat to their business, as it makes it easy to find a date without getting off your sofa. And he forecasts that the widening, legal access to cannabis will "cannibalise" the alcohol market.
Brewers and distillers are adapting their marketing strategies to drink at home, and enterprising firms have offered cocktails-to-the-doorstep during the Covid-19 crisis.
But for the on-trade, the answers are more difficult to find. They were already responding with more food options. Restaurants, meanwhile, are competing for alcohol sales with bars.
Some have specialised in craft beers on tap that you can't get at home.
In some cases, pubs facing closure have been taken over by their local communities, to retain their role at the centre of village social life.
An answer with a growing feature in London aimed mainly at a young demographic is making the pub into more of an "experience".
You can find axe-throwing, electronic darts, ball pits for adults or pay to let rip pent-up anger by beating up old white goods with a baseball bat.
It has also brought back something that seemed to go out of fashion around 50 years ago: crazy golf.
The new take on the old theme features indoor spaces with extravagant artwork, funky UV lighting and, in normal times when it's allowed, pumping music.
One such outlet is opening in Edinburgh, while Fife-based Angus Wright owns four Jungle Rumble outlets, one in Glasgow drawing on set designers for Game of Thrones to create his ocean-themed basement.
He sees an opportunity for more outlets in locations where retail space is getting much cheaper because commercial landlords are desperately trying to fill it, and to attract more footfall.
In shopping malls, those same landlords are also finding it a struggle to hold on to "casual dining" outlets. While their cocktail menus have undermined bar-going, they are also facing some very tough times due to Covid-19.
Home delivery, often through powerful online presences such as Deliveroo and Just Eat, is gobbling up the industry, and bringing many more "eating out" experiences to the home.
Few restaurants can afford to ignore consumer trends towards takeaways, deliveries, a social media strategy. They find fast food - already very digital - is fast growing its share as well.
In August, it was estimated that UK job losses in such food service firms ran to 22,000, with big numbers going from Pizza Express, Frankie and Benny's, Bella Italia and Byron burgers.
And it's not just restaurants and pubs: high streets and town centres are facing powerful long-term trends in changing consumer behaviour and technology.
Leigh Sparks, retail professor at Stirling University, told me it has to do with too much built space in the wrong locations, the growth of online options and increased localisation forcing retailers to reverse their moves into out-of-town shopping centres and warehouses.
To Malcolm Fraser, the Edinburgh architect whose report on town centres was the starting point for a lot of current urban policy, there is a need to go further.
Government tends to do the easy things, he told me, but it has to go to the root of a lot of town centres' problems by fundamentally reforming the way commercial property and activity is taxed.
You can hear lots more by listening back to a 30 minute report starting at 1 hour 28 minutes, on Good Morning Scotland, from Sunday 4 October:
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When fire destroyed a tenement in Glasgow earlier this week, forcing about 20 people from their homes, the local Sikh temple opened its doors to help. We spoke to some of the worshippers and other locals about the fire - and its impact on the community. | By Jonathan PetersBBC Scotland news
"We always help anybody in crisis, we are always there to help them," said Daljeet Singh Dilber, from the Glasgow Gurdwara.
"This is the basic principle of the Sikh religion."
As emergency services dealt with the fire on Albert Street, in Glasgow's Pollokshields, locals were eager to offer other kinds of help.
Less than half a mile away, members of the Glasgow Gurdwara opened its doors to those affected.
"Food, money, shelter, showers, anything they need," said Mr Dilber, general secretary of the temple.
"Anytime, anywhere in Glasgow, anything that happens then we can help. This is our nature."
As fire spread through the building, gas, electricity and water were cut off in the area. The temple put out a call to the community, on their local radio and social media, saying they could seek shelter in the building.
Worshippers at the Gurdwara, who are celebrating the 550th anniversary of the birth of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, said they were shocked to see such devastation so close by.
"Everybody was offering help," said Shindo Kaur, who works in the office at the Gurdwara. "The fire brigade and the police came to use the toilet. A couple of them had a drink. Anything they wanted really."
Ms Kaur was among the first people on the scene after the fire broke out. She wanted to make sure the community and emergency services knew the temple's doors were open if they needed it.
"Everybody got together, it was a quick response from the community," she said.
"Early on they didn't even have gas and electric, and no water for hours. So a lot of people came here."
The fire in the 143-year-old B-listed building destroyed the shop and the homes above it. It is thought to have started in the Strawberry and Spice Garden minimarket late on Sunday evening.
The loss of a building right in the centre of the community left many residents distressed.
Muhammad and Uzma Ali grew up in Pollokshields. Their daughter, who attends one of the local schools, felt anxious at the sight and smell of the fire.
"It's just really upsetting," said Mr Ali.
Several businesses are still shut in the surrounding area, with reports of extensive damage to the properties closest to the fire.
A rest centre was opened for affected residents in the early hours of Monday morning at the Tramway centre, a short walk from the fire.
Few people attended, which may be due to the help already provided in the community.
Niall Murphy, deputy director of Glasgow City Heritage Trust, said the building was historically significant because of its architecture and position in the community.
"The important thing was that it was one of Glasgow's crosses, and not many of them survive," he said.
The city's traditional Victorian town centre crossroads were almost all demolished during the 1960s and 1970s as the city was redeveloped.
"About 40% of the city was cleared at that point," he explained.
Where the building once stood, blackened timbers, interior walls and doors are now exposed to view.
The fire has left both a physical and symbolic hole in the heart of the community.
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Littering and fly-tipping in a Cambridgeshire village has become so bad that a volunteer group was formed to tackle the problem. Since the start of the year they have collected more than 300 bags of rubbish. But the issue blights many parts of the county, so how are the mayoral candidates planning to clear up the problem? | Tom Gosling, 34, from Sawtry, Cambridgeshire, created a litter-picking group in January after noticing what he called a "litter pandemic" in his village.
The group now has dozens of members who regularly go out and clean up rubbish dumped in trees, bushes and on the roads.
Mr Gosling said: "You go to these beautiful places within your own area and they are tarnished with litter.
"I do get extremely frustrated where it feels a burden's been put on my shoulders to eradicate a fly-tip or litter."
He believes more can be done at a political level to prevent littering and fly-tipping and protect the environment.
All three candidates to be mayor of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority agreed that littering had become a problem, especially in rural areas. However, they disagree on the role of the mayor to tackle the issue.
In alphabetical order, they set out their plans below.
Nik Johnson, Labour
"Tackling the scourge of littering can only be done collaboratively across the public and private sectors but all responsible duty bodies need to recognise their responsibilities as set out in the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
"I will start with a particular focus on the roadsides of the major roads - A1, A10, A14, A47 - using FOI requests to clarify current litter prevention strategies while encouraging the innovative use of marking all disposable wrappers from drive-through restaurants to encourage personal responsibility for litter disposal. "
James Palmer, Conservatives
"Littering and fly-tipping in particular are a blight on rural counties like Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
"However, the responsibility for litter and fly-tipping lies with local authorities not the combined authority. The mayor may offer leadership in any campaign but does not have powers to directly control litter collection or responses to fly-tipping."
Aidan Van de Weyer, Liberal Democrats
"Littering makes people feel that the places they live in aren't cared for. Those who drop litter don't realise the effect of their carelessness.
"So eye-catching signs and campaigns like Keep Britain Tidy can really help. We can do more to support community groups to look after their areas by providing equipment and collecting bagged litter quickly. Residents see that their neighbourhoods are valued and people who litter see the harm they do."
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Who can I vote for in my area?
Enter your postcode, or the name of your English council or Scottish or Welsh constituency to find out. Eg 'W1A 1AA' or 'Westminster'
A special programme with all three candidates - called A Mayor for Cambridge and Peterborough - will be broadcast at 14:20 BST on Sunday on BBC One in the East.
Related Internet Links
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority
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The Magazine recently visited an isolated, slate-roofed shelter in rural Cumbria and asked whether it was the UK's loneliest bus stop. A number of readers suggested even more solitary alternatives. | By Duncan WalkerBBC News Magazine
Serving the village of Milburn in the Eden Valley, England's most sparsely populated area, the Cumbrian stop might see "the odd walker in summer, but nobody now", according to one driver. But locals suggested it might be used by as many as six or seven passengers a week.
But it faces stiff competition. Readers of the Magazine were quick to highlight stops which no bus would deign to visit, and others where a village location would be considered lavish.
A selection of their nominations is below.
The Shaun the Sheep stop - North York Moors
On the northern edge of the North York Moors National Park sits a decaying brick shelter set "in splendid isolation at a road junction in the middle of nowhere", says transport information officer Di Wright.
The only houses visible from the stop are miles away, on the other side of the Dale, and anyone hoping for a ride is likely to face a long wait.
"Currently the stop is served by one bus service, the 26. This comprises one bus, every other Thursday - to get to the nearest town, Guisborough, on market day," says Wright.
Exactly who uses the stop - at Commondale Road End - is difficult to discern.
"I guess only the occasional walker used the stop, or the odd cyclist stopping for a picnic, as any local would have to drive to it," says Wright, who lives in nearby Castleton and drives past it most days.
Fortunately, anyone finding themselves waiting there has options for passing the time.
On a fine day, particularly when the heather is in bloom, the view is "stunning".
But should the rain settle in, there's always the "excellent" Shaun the Sheep graffiti - which appeared in the past year or so - to admire as the hours and days pass by.
Islay Airport's sheep shelter
At a bus stop on the island of Islay, it is real sheep that sometimes make themselves at home, reports Alex Cunnigham.
Undisturbed by would-be passengers at the stop outside Glenegedale Airport - which has several flights a week to Glasgow, Oban and Colonsay - the sheep were able to make it their own.
Cunnigham, from Hawick in the Scottish borders, suggests that the creatures were "sheltering from the weather".
To be fair, the airport bus stop is not particularly lonely, served as it is by several buses a day - although Cunningham, who has visited the island a number of times, says he has never seen a bus or passenger there.
It could be that the sheep simply get to do what they want.
Images from Google Street View reveal that the airport is one of presumably very few in the UK to incorporate a cattle grid into its perimeter security.
The bus stop known as '3300BA0497'
"There is an old wooden bus shelter found deep in Clumber Park, known to me and my team as 3300BA0497. To others it is simply 'Cricket Ground'," says Craig Garrard.
Working for Nottinghamshire County Council's transport department, Garrard installs and maintains bus stops and shelters across the region.
"Sadly, this means I'm quite aware of which bus shelters are where and what runs past them," he says.
3300BA0497 is in the middle of beautiful woodland and parkland on a 3,800 acre National Trust property, but has not seen a regular service "for many years".
But all is not lost. While there may be an absence of buses, there could be some hope of company on a rainy day.
"At least it can still provide shelter to those visitors who have been caught out by a passing shower whilst exploring the grounds," says Garrard.
"If you've parked at the visitors centre then chances are you've been past it."
The 23A to an abandoned village
Once a year a bus service runs across Salisbury Plain to the abandoned village of Imber, says Michael Meilton.
Started five years ago by a group of bus enthusiasts, the trip takes passengers deep into an area that was evacuated by the MoD in 1943 and is now used for military training.
The 23A service takes in other remote locations on the plain, including New Zealand Farm Camp and Brazen Bottom and "is a normal bus service and registered with the traffic commissioners", says Meilton.
"Passengers can get on and off at any point along the route and pay a fare for the journey."
The bus stops at Imber are "not exactly isolated as they do have a ghost village nearby", admits Meilton, from Chippenham, Wiltshire.
But "no-one lives there and it is all out of bound for about 350 days a year".
There are no permanent bus stops in place but, as Gregory Beecroft who also nominated the service notes, "if stops were put up, they might not last long, because the 23A runs through the Army firing ranges".
Cape Wrath - by appointment only
The bus stop for passengers hiking down to a bothy at Kearvaig on Cape Wrath (pictured top) blows all other claims for the title of UK's loneliest "out of the water", says Kevin Roy.
"The road isn't even connected to the rest of the UK road network and the two minibuses that shuttle between Cape Wrath and the Durness passenger ferry are the only non-military vehicles that ever travel on it.
"The bus stop is merely a junction of tracks on a bleak moorland used as a target range by the armed forces, and is not marked by any sign."
The 11-mile route ferries passengers by minibus around the most north-westerly point of the British mainland, which can only be reached by ferry.
And there is no regular timetable, warns Roy.
"The bus drivers will drop you off or pick you up there by arrangement."
It was while waiting here with his wife for a bus that did not arrive that Roy, a technician from Luton, realised that he was at "the end of the earth".
"With dusk and the time of the last ferry approaching, we were alarmed to be waiting on the bleak open moorland for hours."
Their bus had broken down and, eventually, it fell to the driver of the other vehicle to get them to the ferry on his last trip of the day.
Other nominations
Among the many other suggestions for loneliest stop was one on the Isle of Wight named "Middle of Nowhere". "Funnily enough, it's in the middle of nowhere," says Ben Elias, from Hailsham.
In North Northumberland's Glen Valley, a service runs between Kirknewton and Wooler once a week on a Wednesday, says Phil Sage. "It is a vital link for those in the area for shopping, medical appointments and catching up for coffee."
Another weekly service is nominated by Jack Craven of Guiseley, Leeds, who says there is a further catch - it operates only "on Sunday mornings in the summer".
A stop on an A-road in Thorpe Abbotts, Norfolk, is suggested by David Bizley from Woking, who says "the only indicator that there is a bus stop is a slowly collapsing wooden shed". Having used it when staying with his parents, he finds its existence is a surprise to others, as demonstrated by "the confusion and subsequent rapid braking of the driver".
Further afield, but worthy of consideration, is a once a week service from Adrar Bordj Mokhtar in southern Algeria, where there are no proper roads for 400 miles across desert, says Chris Lewis, from Purley.
"If you wanted to sample what is arguably the world's loneliest bus stop, you could in theory get off at an abandoned Foreign Legion post and then wait for the returning bus to pick you up - if you were still alive, that is."
And then there's the problem posed by Eddie Dealtry, from Kendal.
The loneliest bus stop, he suggests, will be neither rural nor seldom-used, but "surely somewhere in one of those cities where people ignore each other".
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People in Scotland have paid tribute to Sarah Everard, lighting candles at home and tying ribbons to park fences.
| After planned vigils by Reclaim These Streets were moved online, event organisers in Glasgow asked people to leave their tributes at locations around the city and go home safely.
A small number of people gathered to light candles at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, but Police Scotland said they left shortly afterwards.
The Scottish government had warned that any vigil in a public place would go against coronavirus restrictions.
All images are subject to copyright
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The maker of OxyContin painkillers has reached an $8.3bn (£6.3bn) settlement and agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges to resolve a probe of its role in fuelling America's opioid crisis. | By Natalie ShermanBusiness reporter, New York
Purdue Pharma will admit to enabling the supply of drugs "without legitimate medical purpose".
The deal with US Department of Justice resolves some of the most serious claims against the firm.
But it still faces thousands of cases brought by states and families.
Purdue called the deal an "essential" step to wider resolution of the matter.
"Purdue deeply regrets and accepts responsibility for the misconduct detailed by the Department of Justice," said Steve Miller, who joined Purdue's board as chairman in July 2018, shortly before the firm sought protection from the litigation by filing for bankruptcy.
The settlement with the DoJ must receive court approval to go forward.
The judge overseeing the bankruptcy case will be weighing how it will affect negotiations with other states and cities that have filed lawsuits against Purdue, many of which have already objected to the terms.
They say it lets the company and its owners, members of the Sackler family, off too lightly for their roles creating a crisis that has claimed the lives of more than 400,000 Americans since 1999.
"DoJ failed," said Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey after the settlement was announced.
"Justice in this case requires exposing the truth and holding the perpetrators accountable, not rushing a settlement to beat an election. I am not done with Purdue and the Sacklers, and I will never sell out the families who have been calling for justice for so long."
Justice Department officials defended the deal as "significant", noting that the department would forego much of the $8bn in fines, allowing the money to be directed to other creditors in the bankruptcy case - such as the communities ravaged by opioid abuse that have sued the company.
They said they continue to review possible criminal charges against executives at the company and some members of the Sackler family.
"This resolution does not provide anybody with a pass on the criminal side," Rachel Honig, federal prosecutor for New Jersey said at a press conference.
What did Purdue do?
The settlement follows years of investigation into claims that Purdue and other drug-makers encouraged over-prescription of opioids, leading to overdoses and addiction which strained public health and policing resources in cities and towns across the US.
Under the terms of the settlement, Purdue will admit to conspiring to defraud the US and violating anti-kickback laws in its distribution of the addictive painkillers.
Those included payments the firm made to healthcare companies and doctors to encourage prescribing the drugs, which were ultimately paid for by public health programmes.
What will Purdue actually pay?
Purdue will pay $225m to the Justice Department and a further $1.7bn towards addressing claims made in other lawsuits.
The settlement also includes a $3.54bn criminal fine and $2.8bn civil penalty, which will compete with other claims in bankruptcy court - such as those made by communities affected by the opioid crisis. It is unclear how much of that sum will actually be collected.
Members of the Sackler family named in the lawsuits have also agreed to pay $225m and give up ownership of the firm.
The company would reorganise as a new company run by a trust for the "public benefit". It would continue to produce OxyContin and other drugs aimed at treating addiction, with the government likely having a significant role.
Purdue backed that idea in an earlier settlement proposal but it is opposed by many states, including Massachusetts.
What about the other claims?
Along with the reorganisation as a "public benefit" firm, Purdue has proposed to settle the wider claims against it with a deal worth more than $10bn.
But critics of the plan want to see the company sold and greater effort made to recover money from some members of the Sackler family. Court documents revealed last year that they had transferred more than $10bn out of the company between 2008 and 2017, as scrutiny of its conduct increased.
Part of the Sackler family, which would commit $3bn to the wider settlement, said in a statement that members that had served on the Purdue board of directors had acted "ethically and lawfully" and that "all financial distributions were proper".
"We reached today's agreement in order to facilitate a global resolution that directs substantial funding to communities in need, rather than to years of legal proceedings," the family said.
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Mark Drakeford was always the front runner, but this result is closer than many people expected. He had the bulk of the support from Labour's big institutions, including Corbyn-supporting faction momentum - which has swelled the ranks of Welsh Labour members in the last couple of years. | By Felicity EvansPolitical editor, Wales
This result is not the resounding victory many predicted. One senior Labour figure and Drakeford supporter whispered to me, "That was close".
Another said: "A win's a win... who can remember what Carwyn's margin of victory was nine years ago?"
He is the ultimate government insider - an adviser to the late former first minister Rhodri Morgan before succeeding him as the AM for Cardiff West and holding a variety of senior positions at cabinet level.
But while he is well known in political circles, many voters have never heard of him. This will be a challenge for him.
His predecessor Carwyn Jones was a strong political campaigner who was perhaps at his best in the glare of the cameras. Mr Drakeford says being in the spotlight is not something he enjoys.
The AM positioned himself as the candidate of the left in this contest, reminding Labour members repeatedly that he was a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn from the very beginning.
He benefitted from Momentum's endorsement as a result. But all the evidence is that Mark Drakeford is a pragmatic politician. There will be no handbrake turns to the left.
But he is a sceptic over the M4 relief road. He intends doing nothing in this assembly term with the partial income tax varying powers on their way to Wales unless compelled to do so.
And he knows jobs and businesses are currently in the shadow of Brexit uncertainty. The chaos at Westminster is something he has little control over.
His reluctance to embrace calls for a second referendum on Brexit caused frustration among some Labour members.
Similarly, his failure to help his colleague Eluned Morgan onto the ballot - it was left to Carwyn Jones to make sure a woman was involved in the contest - led some to question his judgement.
Then there is the party. He will need to bring Welsh Labour back together after the tragedy of Carl Sargeant's death.
Mr Sargeant is believed to have taken his own life after being sacked from the cabinet by Carwyn Jones over allegations of sexual harassment.
Mr Drakeford is an intelligent and experienced politician. But he will also need luck and good judgement.
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Police have imposed a 48-hour dispersal order on a Gwynedd town in a bid to curb anti-social behaviour. | North Wales Police called on parents in Caernarfon to "think very carefully about where your children are".
The force said the order was in place all weekend "to target groups of youths behaving in an unacceptable anti-social manner in the town".
It comes a week after an incident prompted a fast food shop to ban young people unless accompanied by an adult.
The order means that the police can ask a group of two or more people to move on.
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Swansea prison has been told to tackle a security problem after an inspection found drugs could be easily thrown over the wall. | It was also told to improve education and training opportunities in a report carried out by the chief inspector of prisons Nick Hardwick.
But the prison, which holds 455 prisoners, is deemed reasonably safe and there were few violent incidents.
There has been four "self-inflicted" deaths since 2010.
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A report looking to "support and protect" the Isle of Man's food industry will be presented to the Manx parliament of Tynwald in June.
| The Food Security Strategy is a blueprint aimed at supporting farmers and fishermen over the next 40 years.
The Manx fishing and farming industries support about 1,200 island jobs.
Environment minister Phil Gawne said it was essential that the Isle of Man developed a "thriving, innovative, competitive and resilient" food sector.
He added: "Living on an island presents additional challenges, both in delivering economies of scale in local production and ensuring reliable and affordable transport networks for the import and export of goods."
"These additional challenges" had to be factored in to food policy, added Mr Gawne.
The Food Security Strategy report will be debated in Tynwald starting on 17 June.
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In Brussels on Wednesday senior European officials could be seen engaging in a tortuous dance. The European Commission placed Germany under scrutiny for its trade surplus . Europe's economic powerhouse will now find itself investigated as part of an "in-depth review" with a report expected by the spring. | Gavin HewittEurope editor@BBCGavinHewitton Twitter
If the conclusion is that Germany's surplus has been excessive and harmful to Europe's general economy, then potentially the country could be fined or sanctioned if it does not adopt recommendations. Even a light penalty, however, would be a political nightmare with German workers seeing it as punishment for discipline, for low wages, for spending on research and development, for - in other words - being competitive.
The favourite dance step in all this was the tip-toe. Officials said the investigation was being done with an "open mind". They went out of their way to say they were not out to punish success. "We are not criticising the excellent economic performance in Germany," said European Commission Vice-President Olli Rehn but that is, of course, precisely what was happening.
Germany, in effect, is being accused of economic selfishness. The President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, said: "The issue is whether Germany... could do more to help rebalance the European economy."
Officials in Brussels want the political leadership in Berlin to do more for the "European" interest and less for the German "national" interest. They firmly believe that Germany, running a current account surplus of 6% since 2007, is distorting the wider European economy. In September the surplus reached 19.7bn euros (£16.6bn; $26.4bn) - the biggest in the world.
So whilst, time and again, asserting that they are not criticising German competitiveness, they want a change in German policy. They want Germany to open up its service sector. They want to see wages rise. They want greater investment in Germany itself. They want to align salaries with productivity.
Above all they want to see domestic demand in Germany increase so sucking in imports from struggling European countries. One official said that "more demand in Germany can spill over into more vulnerable countries".
Irony
There is an irony to all this. For the past three years the policy - overseen by Brussels- has been to make the rest of Europe more like Germany, basing growth on exports. So countries like Spain have slashed wages and run up a current account surplus.
The wider political point, made by President Barroso, is that Europe's economies are increasingly inter-dependent. Germany's borrowing costs, for instance, have benefited from capital flight from weaker countries.
This whole exercise is part of the new rules adopted to root out economic imbalances which could prove dangerous to the European economy if left unaddressed.
"This is not about the EU running economies in place of national governments," said President Barroso. "It is about ensuring that what is good for individual states is also good for the EU."
Yet once again it highlights a dilemma: that the need to improve the management of the eurozone inevitably impinges on national economic policy, and that causes political unease.
Some of those stresses have been seen in Germany recently, with the potential coalition partners discussing whether referendums were needed when significant powers were passed to Brussels.
The Commission will report just before the European elections, when German voters will have the possibility of backing an openly Eurosceptic party if they do not like what they hear from Brussels. Some voters will agree that Germany should act in the European interest. Some will not.
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It's a tense moment for families when exam results arrive. Emotions are running high. It's not just the students who are under pressure. How should parents avoid saying the wrong thing?
1. Not realising whatever you say is going to be wrong. | By Sean CoughlanBBC News education correspondent
Always being in the wrong is part of the job description of being a teenager's parent. But when the envelope is opened you need to show the right expression to match the results. Otherwise you face a terrible, emergency, gear-crunching change of direction. Just when you've put on your best sympathy-at-a-funeral face, you realise that you're meant to be celebrating. Those results are... absolutely. We're proud of you. Never doubted you for a second. Punch the air.
2. Not really meaning it.
This is a tough one to get around. You've delivered what you thought was a little gem of supportive parenting. It was so sincere that it more or less came with its own orchestra. It's so empathetic that parts of your head have dissolved into soft focus. But you hit the crash barriers at speed, because you're told: "You don't really mean it. You're just saying it. If you think it's a disaster, just say it."
3. Changing your Facebook status to "gutted".
You know the dangerous territory we're entering. A Facebook mother armed with an iPad and something chilled, makes a stray comment about exam results not going entirely to plan. There's a throwaway remark about the Titanic. It's only intended to be a bit ironic, a little joke between parents. Teenagers might laugh a lot but don't mistake this for a sense of humour. Not about these exams, no way. If you want to destroy my life just tell me to my face.
4. "Why would I be disappointed? This is fantastic news, isn't it?"
Keep that smile more frozen than fish fingers in a polar bear's deep freeze. You have to show you're happy. Those grades look impressive, but don't make the error of expecting unbridled joy. For today's high-pressure teenagers, anything that isn't perfect is a disaster. They may as well scrap their career plans right now. The world has ended. Look at all those blonde triplets jumping on the front page of the Daily Telegraph. They've got an A* in everything. Why haven't I? Keep smiling.
5. "Almost as good as your cousin."
Don't even think about it. The most inflammatory parental response is a comparison to the perfect cousin or sibling, so clever that their results illuminate the entire extended family like a constellation of grade A*s shining in the night sky. This has been winding everyone up since nursery school. Also to be avoided are such morale-boosters as: "Congratulations, you've nearly done as well as that eight-year-old in Hong Kong."
6. "Of course these days they more or less give away A-levels."
You might secretly think this, but keep such careless talk to yourself. This generation can only take the exams put in front of them and they've worked harder than we ever did. Mind you, come to mention it, until 1987, there was a limit on the amount of top grades, so in fact... Stop, there's no going back.
7. "If you were really pleased you would pay for my festival ticket."
Difficult one. Of course, we're pleased about the results. Not so much about the blackmail. And have you seen the price of tickets? I know we said that if you revised really hard and got good results we'd be really pleased. But let's not get carried away. There's always room for improvement, look at your cousin...
8. "We still love you anyway. It isn't that bad, considering."
There are some well-intentioned phrases that are about as supportive as a trap door. File them away with "Not the end of the world", "It could have been worse" and "To be honest, I wasn't really ever sure about that university, even though you've already bought the sweatshirt." You may as well start hand-stitching them a banner with "Loser" written on it.
9. Richard Branson didn't go to university.
Folksy optimism works in animated movies about puppies with special powers, not in a world where teenagers' bad news spreads like a plague from text to Tweet to social networking. Avoid life-affirming success-from-failure stories, especially when someone has just unexpectedly found themselves in a failure-from-success story.
10. Looking slightly wistful when you're meant to sound delighted.
You know it's really good news. Everything has gone well. All the hard work has been worthwhile. But you can't help but feel that twinge of parental nostalgia. And the "twinge" is a lump in the throat the size of a supertanker in a canal. Five minutes ago they were bringing home drawings from primary school and now they're getting exam results at the very end of all their school years. Raise a glass and say nothing.
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Mumford and Sons want fans to stand up to ticket touts. | The band are asking their fans to sign a petition so that tougher penalties for touts can be debated in parliament.
In order for that to happen they'll need 100,000 signatures - so far more than 14,000 people have signed the petition.
Little Mix and One Direction are also tweeting their support, using #toutsout.
Mumford and Sons have been using #toutsout
On their Facebook page Mumford and Sons wrote: "If getting onstage is one of the best things about being a musician, seeing your audience get ripped off is undoubtedly the worst.
"At M&S HQ we try hard to ensure that true fans have the best opportunity of getting into shows, at the right price, but are often powerless when faced with organised industrial-scale ticket touting.
"At the moment, the law makes it easy for these shady operators to hoover up tickets and profit at your expense - so we are joining with others across the music and creative communities to a support petition that demands politicians tighten up consumer legislation."
Little Mix have been using #toutsout in support of the petition
The petition is headlined Enforce the Consumer Rights Act to protect music, arts and sport fans from touts.
It says: "Fans are being ripped-off by ticket resales.
"The Consumer Rights Act has not changed this.
"We demand that parliament enact last year's ticket resale amendment, which provides tougher sanctions for resale websites, and also require ticket resellers to reveal their identities."
"On a commercial scale, touting deprives the Treasury of VAT, and performance copyright holders of royalties that should be paid on the mark-ups.
"It also denies artistes the ability to ensure their events are priced so anyone can attend."
One Direction are supporting the petition
A Department for Business Innovation & Skills spokesman said: "In the Consumer Rights Act, the government committed to an independent review of online secondary ticketing.
"The review has been considering a wide range of stakeholders responses to consider how best to represent consumers' interests. We are expecting the review report in late May 2016."
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A man's been charged with attempted murder after a serious assault in Crewe.
| A 32-year-old man was left in a critical condition after sustaining head injuries in an attack on Mill Street at 03:15 GMT on Saturday.
Police said he remained in a serious, but stable condition in hospital.
A 55-year-old man from Ipswich has been charged by officers and is due to appear at South Cheshire Magistrates' Court on Monday.
Related Internet Links
HM Courts and Tribunals Service
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As Ben Field sat in the back of a police van after his arrest, he said: "I think I will get away with most of it." He had seduced two lonely neighbours - murdering one and defrauding the other - but now faces life in prison. | By Jo BlackBBC News
On the surface, 28-year-old Field was a charming, caring and religious young man who gave sermons in his father's Baptist church. But the former churchwarden had a sinister project: to befriend vulnerable individuals and get them to change their wills.
Mark Glover, who led the Thames Valley Police investigation into his crimes, summed him up: "Ben Field is all about Ben Field and nobody else."
Field, of Olney, Bucks, has been convicted of murder and fraud after a 10-week trial. He was described by police as a "cold, calculated, manipulative, controlling, evil man".
The court was told he targeted two lonely neighbours who lived a few doors from each other in the village of Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire.
Peter Farquhar, 69, was a guest lecturer at the University of Buckingham, where Field had studied English literature. Ann Moore-Martin, 83, was a retired head teacher. Both victims were deeply religious, single and had no children.
Mr Farquhar had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances and was well-travelled, but he was also lonely. A gay man, he struggled with his sexuality, regarding it as incompatible with his Anglican faith.
Miss Moore-Martin was Catholic and also went to church regularly. She, like her neighbour, had friends aplenty but was fiercely private. She was very close to her niece, so much so, they regarded each other as mother and daughter.
Field seduced both his victims and they were besotted with him. Mr Farquhar thought he had found someone to love and grow old with, while Miss Moore-Martin's sister-in-law said she seemed hypnotised by him, like "a love-struck teenager".
The defendant proposed marriage to them both and even held a betrothal ceremony with Mr Farquhar in March 2014.
While Mr Farquhar wrote in his journal, "it is one of the happiest moments of my life. Gone are the fears of dying alone", the court was told Field's motive was purely financial gain and that he was also seeing other people.
If he was to inherit Mr Farquhar's house, his victim had to die. And if he was to get away with it, his death needed to look like an accident or suicide.
Field drugged Mr Farquhar, secretly spiking his food and drink by feeding him a cocktail of sedatives and hallucinogens bought off the internet. They were covertly administered in various ways - on his toast, in his tea and broken up in chocolate. A video, found in Field's possession, shows the academic looking exhausted and struggling to form a sentence.
Before his death, Mr Farquhar told friends he was suffering from night terrors, hallucinations and bouts of sleepwalking. Some of his friends thought he had become confused or appeared drunk. He told friends he thought he was losing his mind and compared himself to Shakespeare's King Lear.
Field constructed a narrative to explain Mr Farquhar's behaviour. He told friends he was ill, or that he was drinking more than usual. The prosecution said Field was treated as someone shouldering the burden of looking after him.
In court, Field admitted drugging Mr Farquhar, telling jurors he did it because his partner would often be awake in the middle of night and active in the house, which would disrupt his own sleep.
For months, Mr Farquhar was tormented by his "mystery illness". He saw a number of doctors including a neurologist and had various medical tests. But Field rang NHS 111 and 999 and lied to health workers, telling them the retired lecturer was "a frequent faller" who probably had dementia.
The court heard Field "gaslighted" both his victims, manipulating them psychologically so they ended up doubting their memory and sanity.
Field moved things around the house so Mr Farquhar would get irritated and confused when he couldn't find them - only for Field to arrive and find the missing items immediately.
The jury was told how Field publicly humiliated Mr Farquhar at a book launch at Stowe School by slipping him hallucinogenic drugs. He had retired as the public school's head of English in 2004 to concentrate on writing novels and one book launch attracted a large number of friends. Those who attended told a similar story of a frail, confused and apologetic man slumped at a table, visibly struggling to sign books, who at one point thought he was being attacked by shards of light.
In October 2015, Mr Farquhar died. He was discovered in his living room by his cleaner, a half empty bottle of whisky beside him.
His friends thought he had drunk himself to death - as did the coroner, who certified his cause of death as acute alcohol intoxication. But, during the trial, the prosecution said Field had "suffocated him" when he was too weak to resist.
Before his death, Mr Farquhar had changed his will, giving Field a life interest in his house. When the house was sold, he split the proceeds with Mr Farquhar's brother.
Field had been introduced to Miss Moore-Martin by Mr Farquhar and the defendant pursued her in the same way, taking advantage of her loneliness and working his way into her affections.
Despite the 57-year age gap, they developed a sexual relationship. Unbeknown to her, he took a photograph of her performing a sex act on him. During his evidence he said he thought it could be used as something to blackmail her with if he needed to.
He gave her a number of items so she would feel closer to him. These included a framed picture of him with the words "I am always with you" written in capitals beneath his image, which she placed above her dressing table.
He gave her a hand counter and told her to click it every time she thought of him. In one note, she said she was concerned she had not seen him for several days, and wrote: "My hand tally counter is being well used!"
In another note, the words "clickety x click!" appeared next to hand-drawn flowers and the words "I love you".
When Field wanted money, he lied about needing a new car and Miss Moore-Martin gave him £4,400. He told her his younger brother, Tom Field, was seriously ill with a kidney condition and needed a dialysis machine. It was another lie, but she was taken in and handed over £27,000.
In a recording of a phone call played in court, Field was heard ringing her bank then handing her the phone so she could speak to the operator about releasing money from bonds.
She told the bank: "I'm thinking of withdrawing all the money held in my accounts… I have a very dear friend who is the brother of another dear friend. He's extremely ill, he's got kidney difficulties and is likely to die if he doesn't have his own dialysis machine and I've been thinking of a way in which I can help him."
She ended the call by saying: "In life, one must not be selfish and keep everything to yourself."
Field's deceit extended to writing messages on his deeply religious victim's mirror, in the hope she would believe they were messages from God.
In his sketch books he planned the messages - how the writing would look, what the messages would say and what reasons there could be for them appearing. Some of the messages told her to leave her house to Field.
It worked and she changed her will.
In February 2017, Miss Moore-Martin became ill and suffered a seizure. It was during her hospital stay she confided in her niece about her relationship with Field and the writing on the mirrors. The police became involved and an investigation started.
Miss Moore-Martin reversed her will and changed it back to benefit her family and in May 2017 she died of natural causes in a care home.
Her niece, Anne-Marie Blake, told the court that before she died her aunt had begun to realise she had been duped and could not believe she had been so stupid as to fall for Field's lies.
"She was tortured by it and found it very difficult to get her head around the betrayal," she said.
Mrs Blake said when she met Field at her aunt's house after her hospital admission, she thought his manner was "weird". She challenged him and asked if he had been taking things from her aunt's home, accepting money from her and trying to change her will. He said he had. She also asked him whether he was in love with her aunt to which he said "yes".
During her stay in hospital, Field tried to visit her but he was denied access. The court heard he complained to the police and told the call operator: "A friend of mine was admitted to hospital and when I called the hospital and tried to visit, security have said that I can't see her and for more information I need to contact the police.
"I was calling to see if I could find out anything or what had been said about me, what the situation was."
In court he admitted he had made the calls to see how much the police knew about him and whether he was in trouble. His barrister, David Jeremy QC, asked him what had been the purpose of the call, and he replied: "To find out if my fraud was rumbled or not."
The police investigation established the link between Field, Miss Moore-Martin and Mr Farquhar and 19 months after the latter's death a decision was taken to exhume his body. A second post-mortem examination established he had consumed less alcohol than had been thought and there were sedatives in his system.
Dr Brett Lockyer, a consultant forensic pathologist, said Mr Farquhar died as a result of the combined effects of alcohol and flurazepam, which could have affected his breathing. He said he could not rule out that Mr Farquhar might also been smothered with a pillow. The pathologist said a toxicological analysis showed Mr Farquhar had been repeatedly exposed to lorazepam in the two months before he died, as well as other sedatives.
Field was arrested and his home was searched, where police found diaries and notebooks containing a list of people's names with the title, 100 Clients. It was described by Field in court as a list of "people who may be useful to me, either as targets of fraud or in other ways".
Members of his own family were listed - and so was Miss Moore-Martin. Books about poisoning people and planning a suicide were also discovered.
Principal investigator Mr Glover said: "[Field] got massive pleasure from other people's misery and pain and it was all about financial gain or gain in some shape or form to Ben Field. [He was] a nasty, cruel man."
Although he denied planning to kill the two neighbours he did admit to being in fraudulent relationships with them as part of a plot to get them to change their wills. Field also pleaded guilty to defrauding Miss Moore-Martin out of money he said was for a car and a dialysis machine, but was acquitted of conspiring to kill her.
He stood trial alongside his friend, magician Martyn Smith, 32, from Redruth in Cornwall, who was accused of murder, conspiracy to murder, fraud and burglary. He was acquitted of all the charges.
Field's younger brother, Tom Field, 24, from Olney, was also acquitted of one count of fraud.
Ben Field is now facing a life sentence, but his early confidence that he would "get away with most of it" - secretly recorded while he sat in a police van - was not entirely misplaced.
"In terms of the death of Peter Farquhar, there's a very good chance that Benjamin Field would have got away with that death had it not been for the suspicions that were raised once Ann Moore-Martin was removed from Benjamin's control," said Chris Derrick, of the Crown Prosecution Service.
"In fact, at that stage he had already gotten away with it - it was only due to the new forensics that came from exhuming the body that we were able to build a case that indicated Benjamin Field had in fact killed Peter."
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When a young American woman told police she had been raped, her university started to investigate whether she had violated its "honour code" before the attack took place. At some US colleges even having a man in your room or drinking alcohol is an offence. What is an "honour code" and how is it supposed to work? | By Jasmine Taylor-ColemanBBC News, Washington DC
Madi Barney was so terrified she would be thrown out of Brigham Young University (BYU) she waited four days to tell police in the city of Provo, Utah, that she had been raped in her own flat.
"I just remember sobbing and telling the police officer I couldn't go forward because BYU was going to kick me out," Barney, 20, told the New York Times.
Her fears were borne out when she was summoned to the university weeks later. She learned her police file had been passed to university officials and they had launched an investigation into "honour code" violations.
BYU is a Mormon college, and in order to enrol there Barney had signed up to a strict code of conduct.
By committing to the honour code, students promise not to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes or take illegal drugs. They must refrain from drinking tea or coffee or wearing skirts or shorts above knee-length. And unmarried students must not have sex - even having a member of the opposite sex in their room is a serious offence.
Barney says was told she could not register for any future classes at BYU while its inquiry into her honour code violations was pending. When she complained publicly about her treatment, several other female students said they too had been subjected to investigations after reporting sexual abuse.
This sparked protests at the BYU and a US-wide debate about how victims of rape or sexual assault are dealt with on religiously conservative campuses.
Teresa Fishman, head of the US-based International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI), describes BYU's honour code as "an extreme case", which is "misaligned with mainstream culture". Most US universities have an honour code to uphold ideals of honesty academic fair-play, rather than a dress code or sexual abstinence, she says.
The first honour code dates back to 1736, adopted by the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. During enrolment week, entering students still gather in the university's Great Hall and pledge not to lie, cheat or steal.
Brigham Young University Honor Code
"We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men... If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things."
Full text here
As most of America's earliest higher education colleges were founded by religious denominations, many codes have a "distinctly moral" focus, says Fishman. When they work, they can help students feel a part of their university system and encourage a process of self-policing, she adds.
Under Princeton's honour system, in place since 1893, professors leave the room during exams - trusting students not to cheat and to report anyone who does. This system of students turning in others is a core principle of honour codes in most institutions. The accused will normally go before a panel of peers or faculty members, which then decides on a verdict and a punishment ranging from community service to suspension or complete expulsion.
Despite a number of cheating scandals at US universities in recent years, Linda Trevino, a professor of organisational behaviour and ethics at the Pennsylvania State University, says that over the past 20 years, honour codes have had a positive effect. How well they work depends on whether they become "integral to the culture", she adds.
Some universities have adopted new honour codes as they struggle with preventing students from copying information from the internet. Harvard University introduced a more formal code last year after dozens of students were suspended for cheating.
Not all US universities have an honour code. And only a handful of privately run institutions, such as BYU, use the code to demand students live in accordance with religious beliefs.
Liberty University, a Baptist university in Virginia, has a code of conduct called The Liberty Way, which limits students' hairstyles, clothes and any public displays of affection. Also against the rules are sexual relations "outside of a biblical ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman".
Other universities, including the Southern Virginia University and BYU, espouse the teachings of the Mormon church, and this is reflected in their honour codes (which apply even to students who are not active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).
BYU's strict code has created headlines in the past, with basketball star Brandon Davies expelled in 2011 for having sex with his girlfriend.
The latest news about the treatment of sexual abuse victims has stirred up an even greater controversy.
Most outsiders see disciplining a student who has already suffered sexual assault as unnecessary punishment of the victim, says Ryan Cragun, a sociologist who specialises in Mormonism at the University of Tampa.
However the university's Mormon administration separates the events - the student is not considered at fault for rape, but she is at fault for being intimate with a man, he says.
It comes down to the university interpreting its code to the letter, he says, rather than considering the overall aim to help and protect students.
BYU President Kevin Worthen has admitted a "tension" created by the honour code system and announced a review, following the protests at the university.
In a petition that has attracted more than 111,000 signatures, Madi Barney calls for immunity for students reporting attacks.
Her main objective is simply this: "I don't want anyone to have to go through what I'm experiencing."
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Giles Terera didn't play the main role in Hamilton in London - but his performance still won him the 2018 Olivier award for Best Actor in a Musical . After a year in the physically demanding show Terera knew he wanted a different challenge. Now he's in an intense drama of politics and morality - set in Norway in the 1880s. | By Vincent DowdArts reporter, BBC News
He's also writing a book for young actors, imparting the kind of wisdom he "would have liked to have heard at that age from a working actor".
Revivals of classic plays often lay claim to special contemporary relevance - it's good marketing. But Terera is certain that, even 133 years after it first appeared, Henrik Ibsen's drama Rosmersholm fits the bill.
"I play the brother-in-law of Pastor John Rosmer, whose wife - my sister - has recently died," he says of his new production.
"Rosmer undergoes a crisis of political ideology and a crisis of faith, which disturbs some of those around him. In the play there's an election coming up which gives focus to the drama.
"And of course there might be - although maybe there won't be - an election during the run of this production so that's going to be in the minds of the audience.
"Part of the genius of Ibsen is that he doesn't tell the audience what to think. He sets up a moral dilemma and then says well what would you do? The main characters are debating if we're living life the best way we can. Have we found the best way to run society? That finds such an echo in the big debates now, whether it's Brexit or huge ecological questions. The plays asks how people can be free and fully realise themselves."
In the production, directed by Ian Rickson, Rosmer is played by Tom Burke of the BBC series Strike. Hayley Atwell, currently in Avengers: Endgame, also stars.
Terera comes from Hertfordshire. The surname is Zimbabwean, though he says people tend to guess Portuguese. He was in bands growing up and when he went to drama school he thought he was heading for a career in musical theatre.
"But after a year you have to decide what to specialise in and I chose the acting course. Partly it was that I was discovering Shakespeare and the beauty of language. So now I've done 10 or so things at the National Theatre but I've also been in Avenue Q and then Hamilton.
''Being in Hamilton meant having almost a monk-like way of life. You have to take care of yourself: you need to keep fit and you can't really go for a drink or party. But Lin-Manuel Miranda created something extraordinary and like nothing I'd been in the presence of before and we all wanted to get it right.
"Lin-Manuel had thought I'm not really seeing myself represented on stage so he created the kind of show he wanted to see. That's what I tell young actors who are starting out: create your own work because you can't just sit back and hope people will cast you."
Acting is a tough profession to get started in. But did being a black British performer make it tougher?
"It's as difficult to be an actor of colour in this country as it is to be a person of colour in this country. It's exactly the same. But when I started out it would have been much rarer for a black actor to be cast in the role I'm playing in Rosmersholm. So things are better in that regard.
"But I feel that where we are now is where we should be anyway. In terms of representation there's still a long way to go. It's a work in progress but that's true of society generally: it's not only what's on stage or on TV."
Six years ago Terera co-produced a documentary called Muse of Fire which looks specifically at why so many people find Shakespeare hard to get into and decide it's not for them.
"It's something I found when I was younger but I think it's pretty common. So with Dan Poole, who I was at drama school with, we did a road trip and talked to all kinds of people like Judi Dench and Mark Rylance and Tom Hiddleston. Without fail they all said coming to Shakespeare had been a journey - it takes time. So we wanted to say to young people that Shakespeare is for you too - all the ideas of love and family and age."
Currently he's busy with two writing projects. He's writing a book of advice for young actors, provisionally called The Balancing Act.
"There are lots of books about theatre but they tend to be by directors. When I arrived at Mountview (his drama school in London) I know I was a bit green. I hadn't come to London as a teenager to see plays - though I went to movies a lot. So I thought what would I like to have heard at that age from a working actor."
Terera hopes the book will be out next year - when also his play The Meaning of Zong should be on stage. "It's set in 1783 and it's about a trial which took place in London after a massacre two years earlier on a slave ship in the Caribbean. The trial led to the foundation in Britain of the abolitionist movement.
"We hear a lot about the transatlantic slave-trade and America's involvement but not much about its place in British history. I've been working on the play for a couple of years with the Bristol Old Vic. It's about trying to right a social injustice and it's a real piece of history which no one I know had ever heard of."
Terera is energetic in taking his career beyond just acting. So does he plan to move further into writing and producing?
"One of the great things about having been in Hamilton and winning the Olivier is that now I can have really interesting conversations with different people about projects. I feel like I've always had lots of stories I'd like to explore. So that's what I always say to young actors: make your movie, make your film.
"You can have a camera, you can have editing equipment, you can have a sound mixer and these days it's all in your own bedroom. There's nothing stopping you."
Rosmersholm is at the Duke of York's theatre in London until 20 July.
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