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More than 700 migrant children taken from their parents at the US border with Mexico remain in federal custody, despite a court-ordered deadline on Thursday to reunite them. Bringing the distraught families together has proved chaotic. | By Hugo BachegaBBC News, Washington
The journey from Guatemala through the Mexico desert had been "Todo bien, gracias a Dios" (all fine, thanks to God) and, in May, Lilian Martinez Lopes finally crossed into the United States carrying her only son, aged five.
The 24-year-old, who had planned to seek asylum here, did not speak a word of English and hoped Google Translate would help in her new life. Her husband had come four years earlier and they planned to reunite in Houston, where he now lived.
Then the immigration agents came to her. "They told me, 'We'll take your son to a shelter.'" She was surprised. Nobody had told her that migrant families caught crossing illegally were being separated, part of a "zero-tolerance" policy of the Trump administration.
She had little time to say goodbye. "Don't let them take me," Ms Martinez recalled her boy plead. "But what could I do?" Crying, she watched him go.
"I didn't know we'd be separated," Ms Martinez said. "If I knew it I wouldn't have come."
The more than 2,500 separations were often traumatic. Shouting officers caught people by surprise and took scared children from their parents in the middle of the night, activists said. One mother in Texas said agents had told her the migrants were criminals and the children would be given up for adoption, leaving her in panic.
Adding to the chaos was the fact that adults and youths had to go through two separate immigration systems. In theory, they received the same identification number, known as A-file, which would make it easier for them to be located. That, however, was not the case for everyone. Some families had different numbers; others no number at all.
Ms Martinez was taken to Arizona's Eloy Detention Center, operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), part of the Department of Homeland Security. Her son, now classified as an unaccompanied minor, was in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of Health and Human Services, and had been sent to one of the many shelters across the country.
She just did not know where.
To help the migrants navigate the mess, non-profit groups and volunteers played detective. With no official protocols in place, they tried, first, to guess the A-file of the parent based on the number of the child. If this failed, they looked at where they crossed the border to call detention facilities. "It [was] hard to describe the level of uncertainty and fear," said Megan McKenna, senior director of communications at Kids in Need of Defense (Kind).
For many, it felt a bit like a cat-and-mouse game.
"I prayed to God to help me. I had to be strong because of my son," Ms Martinez said about her time in custody. Despite the network of support the mothers had built - "They told me, 'Don't get depressed, your son needs you'" - the uncertainty was driving some of them desperate.
People had given up on their asylum requests and agreed with voluntary deportations believing this would speed up the reunifications, despite no proof of that, according to advocacy groups. They said some were pressured to sign papers they could not read or were not being told of all their rights. (Officials said 431 parents had left the country, without specifying if their departures were voluntary or not, and could not be reunited for now.)
Ms Martinez, however, felt lucky in a way as she had been able to call her son a few times. Many at her prison and elsewhere waited for weeks to hear from their children.
"[My son] told me 'Mami, I love you.' He said he was behaving well and that he cried for me every night." Ms Martinez said she had told him not to, but he said he would anyway, that he missed her. "When I talked to him, I kept myself under control. But later I'd collapse crying... You can only imagine what went through my mind to hear these words."
Yet she still did not know where he was. All she had was a picture of him with a number annotated by pen on its back and something else that she could not understand. "I told [the officers] that I needed to call my husband," her main bet to locate their son. "I begged to them. But they said, 'No, you have to wait.'"
At the heart of the policy, which the Trump administration maintained was necessary to deter illegal immigration, was a decision to prosecute all adults with irregular entry in the country. (Despite the criticism towards the separations, the president's crackdown on illegal immigration enjoys strong support, especially among conservatives.)
Given the mammoth task, cases were being heard in groups in courtrooms at the border.
One morning in McAllen, Texas, in June a judge welcomed at once about a dozen men, aged between 20 and 50. One tried to ask him in broken English where his children were, in vain. The shelters for the minors included caged areas separated by chain-link fencing, warehouses and desert tents in places where temperatures regularly reach 40C (105F). Some later said they were forced to clean bathrooms as part of the rules.
Another man cried to the judge saying he did not care if he got deported as long as he had his son back. Pleas like this had become so common that those who witnessed it were apparently left untouched.
With their parents in custody, children, including toddlers, were forced to appear by themselves in hearings, many unable to properly explain their stories let alone understand proceedings. They were often seen crawling around or playing with a pen, said Lisa LeSage, a lawyer from the non-profit group Immigration Counseling Service.
"Even a five-year-old who wasn't traumatised can't always tell you their address or what their parents look like or their last names. How do you expect a child to do all that?"
And so, there were those who could not say which country they came from. Others did not even know what a lawyer was. "It [was] horrific," Ms LeSage said. Outrage grew even bigger when, days later, an audio emerged, reportedly from a border facility in which children cried for their parents. An agent joked: "We have an orchestra here."
Read more on US immigration
The Trump administration, at first, stuck by its policy, defying critical media coverage, uproar from activists and politicians, and protests across the country. Even First Lady Melania and Mr Trump's daughter, Ivanka, were said to be against the policy. A visit by Melania to a shelter meant to be a show of solidarity became another source of discord when she wore a jacket emblazoned with the slogan, "I really don't care do u?"
Ms Martinez was losing hope that any official help would come to her. "Even when we asked about the time or the day, [the officers] didn't give us any answer. They told us: 'Why do you want to know it?'"
Hearing her son cry on their calls made her wonder how he was processing it all. Health experts were concerned that the children's immune systems, the development of their brains and even their personalities could be affected. They were also said to be at greater risk of suffering from long-term psychological conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder or heart disease and diabetes later in life.
"This is really extreme, it's nothing like we have seen before," said Michelle Brané, director of Migrant Rights and Justice at the Women's Refugee Commission, a New York-based non-governmental organisation. "It's like torture."
With domestic and international fury growing and a number of legal challenges, Mr Trump - who initially tried to blame Democrats for the measure - was forced to reverse his own policy. (He insisted, though, that people should come to the US legally.) Judge Dana Sabraw, from San Diego, California, then gave the administration 30 days to reunite all the families.
A "Herculean task", said Tony Martinez, mayor of the border city of Brownsville, Texas.
Weeks after being detained, Ms Martinez was finally given an indication of where his son could be, when a social worker told her that what she had on the picture was the name of a shelter in Houston. (The number was their A-file.) But her case was not a priority. Judge Sabraw ruled that those under the age of five were to be sent to their families first.
The usual method of identifying the children involved going through all birth certificates, which would take a very long time. Officials, under enormous pressure to meet the deadlines, said even DNA tests were to be carried out. Many saw there a proof that there was no clear policy in place.
Then came a breakthrough for Ms Martinez. Her asylum request was deemed credible - criteria includes proving fears of persecution in an applicant's home country. She was ready to search for her son.
As the adults were being released with electronic ankle monitors, non-profit groups, again, provided help. Immigrant Families Together (IFT), a movement that assists detained families, raised $50,000 (£38,000) to pay for Ms Martinez's $25,000 bail and cover her expenses. (Reports said people had left custody without anywhere to stay, or unable to pay for transportation costs.)
"It was a surprise [when they said,] 'You can go.' I cried. I couldn't believe it."
When Ms Martinez was released earlier this month, Dionne Ukleja, a volunteer with IFT, picked her up. They went to a nearby department store to buy her some clothing and other essentials. Later, as they met, Ms Martinez gave the photograph she had to a lawyer who came with Ms Ukleja and a translator.
On Google, they searched for the word written on the picture only to find out that the shelter was in a different city, some three hours away in southern Texas. Ms Martinez, who had felt she was about to see her son again, was left devastated.
The volunteers drove her and her husband, who had now joined them, to Corpus Christi. They called the local press and other activists to follow the reunification but when they arrived at the shelter they were perplexed: nobody would receive them. Many parents had already complained about the difficulties of contacting those who had taken the minors, complicating their efforts even further.
The shelter's supervisor eventually came to meet them, and reported Ms Ukleja to the police, angry that people were filming the property. (They were also live tweeting it.) Sometime later Ms Martinez was allowed to enter the building. She came back sobbing and silent. The translator who had gone with her broke the news to those outside.
"The son is not here. They don't know where he is." They were back at square one.
As other families were slowly being reunited, pain was already giving space to relief while they tried to readapt their lives. There were, however, stories of those who blamed their parents for the separation or could not recognise their own mothers and fathers.
For Ms Martinez, the question was still, where could her son be. They called the social worker who had said her son was in Houston. It was a weekend and the worker said there was nothing she could do. Ms Ukleja was left fuming. They kept calling her, but she stopped answering the phone.
When she replied, she gave them a different number, of her supervisor. Getting in touch with her was also difficult but when they reached her, she gave them something new. Her son was in foster care. They did not know what to do. Ms Martinez had everything: his birth certificate, her bail paper, the A-file numbers connected in the system. Still, it seemed almost impossible to be reunited with her son.
As they met in a cafe to discuss their options, Ms Ukleja's phone rang. It was another social worker, who gave them an address, of the local Health and Human Services office, and said her son's documents were ready. He was, in fact, already waiting for his mother.
When they met, they hugged each other for a long time, exchanged kisses and cried together. "It was amazing and heart warming," Ms Ukleja said.
Even now, there is little clue of what comes next. Officials said more than 1,800 migrants children were reunified with their families. They now faced a lengthy and tortuous legal process to determine their asylum requests, and many could end up being deported. Children whose parents were no longer in the US were likely to be sent to a relative in the country or placed in foster care. A few may never see their parents again.
Ms Martinez and her family were still adjusting to their new lives. Her son often had nightmares and feared he could be taken away again. It was not being easy for her either.
"It was the greatest pain one could suffer," she said. "Children are sacred. You do not play with them."
With reporting by the BBC's Aleem Maqbool, Haley Thomas and Miguel Amaya in Houston; Angélica M Casas in McAllen, Texas; Colleen Hagerty in Phoenix; Jessica Lussenhop and Ritu Prasad in Washington; pictures by Alejandra S Casas in McAllen
Follow Hugo on Twitter: @hugobachega
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Police investigating the death of a man found with stab wounds in a street have arrested a man on suspicion of murder. | The victim, aged 30, was taken to hospital from Epping Road, Epping, at about 20:00 BST on Tuesday, 23 June, but died later that evening.
It is believed he was attacked in a car park between the Robin Hood and Wakes Arms roundabouts in Epping New Road.
Essex Police said a 30-year-old London man was arrested on Tuesday and later released on bail until 24 July.
Detectives said they were still keen to hear from anyone in the area between 15:00 and 20:30 on 23 June.
Related Internet Links
Essex Police
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A 70-year-old man has been remanded in custody after being accused of murdering his wife. | David Maggs is charged with killing wife Linda Maggs, 74, at her home in Pontypool in Torfaen on Saturday.
Mrs Maggs was found dead at a property in Lansdowne in the Sebastopol area of the town at about 09:20 GMT.
Mr Maggs appeared before magistrates charged with murder on Monday and his hearing at Cardiff Crown Court on Tuesday was adjourned until 7 May.
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Since Iran's nuclear programme became public in 2002, the UN, EU and several individual countries have imposed sanctions in an attempt to prevent it from developing military nuclear capability. Iran insists its nuclear activities are exclusively peaceful, but the world's nuclear watchdog has been unable to verify this. | Iran and world powers agreed an interim deal in 2013 which saw it gain around $7bn in sanctions relief in return for curbing uranium enrichment and giving UN inspectors better access to its facilities. World powers also committed to facilitate Iran's access to $4.2bn in restricted funds.
What do the sanctions entail?
Several rounds of sanctions in recent years have targeted Iran's key energy and financial sectors, crippling its economy.
The four rounds of UN sanctions included:
The EU also imposed its own sanctions, among them:
Japan and South Korea have also imposed sanctions similar to those of the EU.
As well as more recent sanctions aimed at Iran's financial, oil and petrochemical sectors, the US has imposed successive rounds of sanctions since the 1979 Tehran hostage crisis, citing what it says is Iran's support for international terrorism, human rights violations and refusal to co-operate with the IAEA.
The US sanctions prohibit almost all trade with Iran, making some exceptions only for activity "intended to benefit the Iranian people", including the export of medical and agricultural equipment, humanitarian assistance and trade in "informational" materials such as films.
What has been the effect of the sanctions in Iran?
As a result of the EU embargo and the US sanctions targeting other major importers, Iran's oil exports had fallen to 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) by May 2013, compared with an average 2.2 million bpd in 2011. In January 2013, Iran's oil minister acknowledged for the first time that the fall in exports was costing the country between $4bn and $8bn (£2.5bn-£5bn) each month. Iran is believed to have suffered a loss of about $26bn (£16bn) in oil revenue in 2012 from a total of $95bn (£59m) in 2011.
In April 2013, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast that Iran's gross domestic product (GDP) would shrink by 1.3% in 2013 after contracting by 1.9% the previous year.
The White House estimated that Iran's oil exports would remain at a level of about one million bpd during the six months of the previous interim agreement. It estimated that Iran would accrue $1.5bn during that period from sales of petrochemicals, trading in gold and other precious metals, and the renewed transactions with foreign firms involved in the automotive sector.
How would lifting sanctions affect the Iranian economy?
The "P5+1" group (US, UK, France, Russia, China plus Germany) has said that in the event of a deal being reached, sanctions should be eased in a phased manner, with restrictions on imports of nuclear-related technology remaining for years.
Iran wants the UN sanctions suspended soon after any agreement is reached. The loss of oil revenue, which accounted for a half of government expenditure, and isolation from the international banking system, had caused Iran's currency, the rial, to lose two-thirds of its value against the US dollar and caused inflation to rise to more than 40%, with prices of basic foodstuffs and fuel soaring.
Many Iranians therefore see the lifting of the sanctions as an essential first step in improving the economy.
During his first election TV programme in 2013, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was quoted as saying that "sanctions will... be resolved, and economic prosperity will also be created".
"I said it is good for centrifuges to operate, but it is also important that the country operates as well and the wheels of industry are turning," Mr Rouhani said, in a documentary broadcast in 2013.
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Locations across the UK are eerily empty following the introduction of strict new measures to try to slow the spread of coronavirus. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said everybody should stay at home and go out only for specific reasons.
| Here are a selection of images from locations around the UK showing scenes before and after the "lockdown".
Crowds gathered at the gates outside Buckingham Palace on 13 March 2020, while only a couple of figures pass by on 24 March.
Traffic queues on London's Tower Bridge on 16 March 2020, but only a few vehicles can be seen on 24 March, the day after the prime minister's announcement.
Visitors congregate outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London, on 28 January 2014 but on 24 March 2020 there's barely anybody to be seen.
Crowds of people flocked to Barry Island to enjoy the beautiful weather on 14 September 2019. Compare this with 25 March 2020
It was a similar scene in Bournemouth. Holidaymakers pack the beach on 28 June 2019 but on 23 March 2020 only a few people can be seen strolling along the edge of the shore.
People walk across the Millennium Bridge in London, with St Paul's Cathedral in the background, on 13 March 2020 while all is quiet a few days later on 25 March.
Ticket holders gather for the sold-out play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at London's Palace Theatre on 12 March 2020. Just a few days later theatres, along with restaurants and other non-essential businesses, were forced to close as part of the measures to try and slow the spread of coronavirus.
Waterloo station in London is one of many busy transport hubs around the country which look very different at the moment while people are asked to only travel if it is absolutely necessary. Commuters can be seen thronging the concourse on 12 March 2020 but look at the difference on 25 March.
The streets in the centre of Bath were busy with visitors and shoppers on 11 March 2020 and but on 24 March the shops were closed and the streets empty.
All pictures subject to copyright
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Han Sung-ok, 42, seemed determined to pick through nearly every lettuce on the market stand. She turned each one over and examined it while her six-year-old son clambered on the fence nearby. | By Laura BickerBBC News, Seoul
The vegetable seller in the southern Seoul suburb looked on, annoyed. This was one picky customer and she didn't even buy a lot of vegetables - only one or two items for as little as she could pay. On this occasion it was a lettuce for 500 won (about $0.40; £0.33).
Uttering only a few words, Han handed over her money and left with her son.
Just a few weeks later, both were dead.
Having fled food shortages in her native North Korea and dreaming of a new life, Han and her son are believed to have starved to death in one of the wealthiest cities in Asia. Their bodies lay undiscovered for two months until someone came to read the water meter and noticed a bad smell.
Mother and son were found apart on the floor. The only food in their tiny rented apartment was a bag of red pepper chilli flakes.
'If only she'd asked...'
One of the last people to see her alive was the vegetable vendor in the street outside her apartment complex. She saw her in spring - around the same time the police say Han withdrew the last 3,858 won ($3.20; £2.60) in her bank account.
"Thinking back, it gives me shivers," she said. "At first I hated her for being picky, but now I think about it, I am sorry for her.
"If only she'd asked nicely, I would have just given her some lettuce."
She's one of many we spoke to who are asking questions which begin with the phrase "If only". If only the authorities had noticed her plight. If only the government had done more to help defectors. If only she'd asked for help.
Their horrific deaths have prompted outrage and anger and a great deal of soul searching.
Han's journey to freedom as a North Korean defector should have made her remarkable, but in this city of 10 million people, she appears to have been invisible. Very few people knew her. Those who did, say she spoke very little and would walk around almost disguising herself with a hat and avoiding all eye contact.
But this city knows her now.
Her photograph has been placed among flowers and gifts in a makeshift shrine in Gwanghwamun in the centre of Seoul. Dozens of mourners are shouting her name through loudspeakers, though few there knew her personally.
"It just doesn't make sense that after going through all that hardship and challenges to come to South and she dies of starvation. It breaks my heart," one defector mourning at the shrine told us. "When I first heard the news, it was too absurd to believe.
"This cannot happen in South Korea. Why did nobody know about this until they died?"
But one of the reasons no-one knew is because Han appears to have wanted to stay hidden.
A laugh with a dark side
Escaping North Korea can feel almost impossible. More people have attempted to scale Mount Everest this year than leave the impoverished state. Even if you get past the soldiers and surveillance at the border, defectors face a journey of thousands of miles through China. Their aim is to get to a South Korean embassy in a third country. Usually in Thailand, Cambodia or Vietnam.
But getting through China is a huge risk. If caught, they're sent back to North Korea and could face a lifetime of hard labour in one of its notorious gulags. Female defectors who hand money to disreputable brokers hoping for help often find themselves imprisoned and sold as brides or sex workers.
In Han's case, it is difficult to verify how and when she left North Korea. Two defectors who claim to have spoken to her believe she was sold to a Chinese man as a bride and had a son with him. We cannot verify this account.
But she arrived in Seoul alone, 10 years ago, and certainly didn't open up to many of her classmates at the Hanawon centre.
All defectors face a mandatory 12-week basic education at such a centre, affiliated with Seoul's Unification Ministry, to adjust to life in the South. Han's class was one of the largest since the centre had been set up. It had more than 300 people in it. They all knew how hard it was to get through China.
"I knew she went to China first. I knew because even when she laughed and was bright, there was a dark side," one of her classmates told us.
"I asked her what was wrong but she brushed me off.
"I'm the type of person not to push too much on personal matters, so I said, 'I don't know what it is, but if you go outside, as long as you work hard you can live a good life. South Korea is a place that you get what you work for. You're young and beautiful, you won't have a hard life. Whatever you do don't be ashamed and live with your head up'."
Han appeared to do well in her new life at first. The authorities help defectors find subsidised apartments, and she along with six of her classmates were settled in the same neighbourhood, Gwanak-gu.
"She was so pretty and feminine," her classmate said. "I believe she was the second person after me in our class to get a job. At first, she worked briefly at a coffee shop in Seoul University. Even there, I heard she made a good impression. What we remember is that she was smart, feminine and we thought she was someone who would be able to take care of herself.
"We didn't expect this to happen."
It is difficult to find out how, from this promising start, Han ended up destitute. She was so private.
Two defectors in her apartment complex told us they believe she had persuaded her Chinese husband to move to South Korea. As a family, they relocated south to Tongyeong where he worked at a shipyard. She had a second son who was born with learning difficulties.
Eventually it is thought her husband went back to China without her, taking the eldest son with him. She was left alone with no job and caring for a disabled child.
Her neighbours say she missed her older son terribly.
She moved back to where her South Korean life had started - the subsidised housing apartments in Gwanak-gu in Seoul. She applied for help at the community centre in October last year and received 100,000 won ($94) each month in child allowance.
12weeks of adaptation training
$6,000-$32,400settlement benefits (depending on size of household)
$13,300-$19,100Housing subsidy
Freeeducation in public schools and universities
It is at this time that Han and her son appear to have fallen through a gap in the welfare system.
She could have claimed much more than the universal child benefit. A single parent is entitled to six to seven times that amount each month. But that would have required a divorce certificate and it is our understanding that she didn't have one.
The community centre staff said they visited her apartment for their annual welfare check in April but she wasn't home. They were not aware of her son's condition. She hadn't paid the rent of her subsidised apartment or her bills for some time. In some other countries this would have raised a red flag to social services. It doesn't appear to have happened in South Korea.
She was also no longer eligible for help as a North Korean defector because the protection period of five years had expired.
'This is a death by indifference'
When they gathered at the shrine in Gwanghwamun, in front of Han's smiling portrait, the debate among the defector community continued.
"This is absurd, how ironic a North Korean escapes hunger and comes to South to die of starvation!"
"What did the South Korean government do? This is death by abandonment."
"This is a death by indifference."
"Where is the system, where is the police?"
However her former classmate said this is not how she wants her friend to be remembered.
"I don't want to cause a row, pointing fingers at whose fault this is. We should just come together as one and vow to never let this happen again. It really hurts my heart how things are turning out, how people are taking advantage of this for their purpose."
So what lessons can be learned?
The last reports we received about Han from a neighbour claim she was distracted and anxious. A far cry from the bright woman who arrived at the Hanawon centre 10 years ago.
At no point did Han ask for help. But should help have come to her?
Mental health care for North Korean refugees is one area that could be improved, according to defectors and psychiatrists. Most defectors have suffered a number of human rights violations and trauma ranging from extreme hunger, sexual assault, being forced to witness public executions and the fear of human traffickers in China.
The rate of psychological trauma is higher among those who have travelled through China, according to a study by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea.
Dr Jun Jin-yong from the National Centre for Mental Health said it is common for defectors to suffer anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. But because there are so many stigmas associated with mental health in the North, many aren't aware that they're suffering or that help is available.
Anyone suffering mental illness in North Korea is sent to a hospital in the mountains called Number 49. Most never return. It is perhaps understandable that North Koreans are unaware that psychiatric help is available.
"We need services that are more defector-friendly and to guide defectors to find these services," Dr Jun said.
"Defectors have a lower approachability than South Koreans on mental health issues because they have a prejudice against mental health. So we should continue to advertise mental health support to defectors so that they can receive help."
According to a settlement survey of North Korean refugees in South Korea, about 15% admit to having suicidal thoughts. That's about 10% higher than the South Korean average. Most say economic hardship is the main reason they feel unable to cope.
There is also more of a sense of community in North Korea. We've been told that, north of the border, Han and her son would not have been allowed to shut themselves away in their apartment.
Joseph Park who also escaped from North Korea 15 years ago, decided to run coffee shops in Seoul to cultivate a community for defectors. He believes the shocking deaths of Han and her son were not caused by a lack of government policy, but can be partly blamed on certain aspects of South Korean culture.
"South Korea is a society where you can live without relationships. In North Korea you need relationships to survive," he told us.
"I think that's the big difference. In South Korea, you can survive without having a relationship with your neighbour. But in North Korea, you need relations with your neighbour and the system forces you to have relations as well.
"For example, in North Korean schools, if someone doesn't come to class, the teacher would send all the classmates to the missing student's house. So naturally, there can't be anyone left out. In North Korea it would be not possible for someone to be out of touch for a month like that."
Thousands of North Koreans live hugely successful and fulfilling lives in the South. But it does require them to change and to adapt to their neighbours' ways. Defectors have told numerous studies they are made to feel different, and face discrimination.
The results of a post-mortem on Han and her son are expected soon, but South Korea's Unification Ministry is already examining Han's case in the hope lessons can be learned.
What is clear is that those from North and South often still feel separate - even when they live in the same city.
Perhaps Han's story should give pause for thought for all in Seoul in the hope that this society will never again have to ask itself, if only.
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A 13-year-old boy has been sentenced to four years in custody for the rape of a nine-year-old boy and sexual assault of two others when he was 11. How does the system deal with such young sexual offenders and their victims?
| By Claire HealdBBC News
Put yourself in the position of a child counsellor who has been assigned the task of meeting a young person who has been convicted of committing sexual abuse crimes so grave they are being held in a secure unit.
Is this young person a monster with nothing to redeem them? Or a vulnerable child with their own problems to be fixed?
That is the kind of scenario that Professor Simon Hackett has often found himself in. He is an expert in child protection and acts as chairman for the National Organisation for the Treatment of Abusers (Nota).
He says of the children convicted of sex crimes: "We sometimes have this image of them as demons, paedophiles. We have to deal with those things that they have done and protect others.
"But, by and large, these are vulnerable and abused children.
"I always used to feel a sense of anxiety on sitting down in a room with the child or young person.
"But, when I met them, I was often struck by how normal they seemed. They need our help for the horrific things they have done, but we shouldn't forget that they are, first and foremost, children."
The kind of issues Prof Hackett has faced are highlighted by the case of a Blackpool boy sentenced in Preston on Friday.
The boy admitted multiple rapes of a nine-year-old boy and sexual touching of two boys aged seven and 11.
The age of the perpetrator and his victims is strikingly young. But there are only a few such convictions for rape or sexual assault each year in the UK:
In reality, however, these convictions are a tiny fraction of the actual number of incidents. Children's charity the NSPCC says about a third of sexual abuse is committed by minors.
In many instances children are not prosecuted - either because the case results in a caution, or the abuser is below the age of criminal responsibility (10 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; 12 in Scotland).
"Only a small proportion are convicted," says Prof Hackett, "but a significant amount of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by children and this also includes those under the age of 10".
His research has found the average age of child sex abusers is dropping, perhaps partly because the teachers, social workers, police - the professionals working in child protection - are better at detecting it.
His 2013 study of 700 cases of children referred to professionals because of their sexually abusive behaviour found one third were aged 13 or under; more than 100 were 11 or under.
The youngest studied was four years old. Prof Hackett says: "Half of the group had themselves been sexually abused, more than half were physically abused or neglected.
In the Blackpool case, the court heard the boy was a "high" risk for committing further offences. So, how does the criminal justice system proceed?
The NSPCC has developed a national framework to guide local areas as they work with children who display harmful sexual behaviour (HSM).
It runs Turn the Page, a service providing therapy for children, and family support.
Work takes place in stages.
A first step is to try to ensure the offender and the victim are safe - from reoffending or from the community. Adults working with the children set out a safety plan and monitor their behaviour.
They assess the offence - was it normal behaviour, or not? A single or multiple incident? Was there consent, or violence?
Via social workers and the justice system there may be help at home for low level offences. In the most serious cases, removal and custody to a foster placement or a secure unit.
Offenders have therapy, from a psychiatrist, psychologist or social worker, be that general help or specialist therapists working with highly deviant offenders.
Prof Hackett has sat down to counsel child offenders many times, often in secure units.
He explains to them why their behaviour is harmful to other people, so they realise the impact. Abusers are taught to manage risks and triggers for their behaviour.
How long the therapy continues varies. There might be a court order, for a given period of time; short doses of three to six months; or treatment over several years.
Despite cases like the one in Blackpool, he says, there is "a hopeful message" for families whose children have a sexual behaviour problem.
In his study of 69 children followed up in adulthood "the vast majority were not offending sexually" a result borne out by other international studies.
Support and the passage of time means the majority grow up and out of the behaviour. It is a small proportion who go on to be prolific sex offenders.
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Norwich is famed for its churches - and was said to have one for every week of the year. But whether or not they should be open for public services during England's current lockdown, along with other places of worship, has divided opinion. Why? | By Kate ScotterBBC News, East
'We need to heed the message to stay at home'
Under the government legislation, places of worship are able to remain open for services during England's current lockdown.
But Norwich Cathedral has decided to suspend public worship and move its services online from Wednesday.
The Dean of Norwich, the Very Reverend Jane Hedges, says the decision was made with a "heavy heart".
But she says with regard to the coronavirus pandemic, it is "important to reinforce the message that people should stay at home".
The cathedral says its "virtual doors" remain open online to both worshippers and visitors alike via its the website and social media.
The Sunday Eucharist will be live-streamed every week on the cathedral's YouTube channel and full details of how people can participate in daily worship at home are available on the cathedral's website.
In line with government guidance, the Norman building remains open daily for individual prayer.
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Dean Hedges says: "We all need to look out for each other at this time and to heed the message to stay at home as much as possible."
She says they will resume public services "as soon as we can".
"While we may not be able to gather for public worship or welcome general visitors at this time, we hope the cathedral's digital worship and online events will be of help and comfort to people at this difficult time for everyone," she adds.
The cathedral's organists will play weekly online organ recitals throughout the lockdown.
'We need to play our part'
Norwich Central Mosque has decided to suspend its communal worship, usually attended by about 95 people on Fridays.
Secretary Sirajul Islam says: "We have reviewed the situation with everything that's going on and we should play our part to not allow a big gathering and not spread the virus.
"We will being doing another review in two weeks."
He says the mosque, on Aylsham Road, is still open for private prayer, which he says is needed to offer people "relief" and a place to go for those who are isolated.
"We need to pray in this time of the pandemic," he adds.
'It's a place for comfort and solace'
Meanwhile, Norwich's Roman Catholic cathedral, St John the Baptist, remains open for 17 masses a week.
It is the second largest Roman Catholic cathedral in the country, behind Westminster Cathedral, and says it has the space for people to remain socially distanced.
Cathedral coordinator Daniel Justin says while they would normally welcome 1,200 people across all of five of Sunday masses, they are currently limited to 170 per service.
He says they are seeing about 50 to 70 people per mass, which is "like a postage stamp in this building".
Mr Justin says: "As long as we can maintain our plans to ensure our place of worship is safe, we must keep our church open for mass and private prayer.
"It really is a place where people can come for comfort and solace."
He says parishioners must wear masks, wipe down their benches before they leave and sanitise their hands, and the Unthank Road cathedral is cleaned after each service.
They have encouraged people to attend the various masses across the week, rather than fill up the Sunday service, and they also stream their services live online, he adds.
What are the rules?
In the areas of the UK where communal worship is allowed, a number of common measures are in place:
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The Duke of York has officially opened Yorkshire Air Ambulance's support base near Wakefield. | The charity has moved to Nostell Priory from Leeds Bradford Airport to improve coverage and response times to patients in West and South Yorkshire.
Facilities at the base include offices, training rooms, a large hanger and helipad.
Prince Andrew, a former naval helicopter pilot and instructor, is patron of the charity.
The charity currently operates two helicopters, one based at Nostell and the other at Topcliffe near Thirsk in North Yorkshire.
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Tuesday's duelling courtroom dramas in New York and Virginia were the kind of body blows that would stagger, if not fell, most presidencies. And those were just the two top headlines in a day that contained a string of dismal news for Donald Trump. | By Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter
Will any of this matter? The president - at least among his base - has appeared politically bulletproof. Bulletproof for now, however, doesn't necessarily mean bulletproof forever. At some point, the projectiles - perhaps after the mid-terms, when Republican control of Congress and power to set the political agenda may be blunted - may start finding the mark.
Here's a look at just how bad a day this was for the president.
Cohen has implicated Trump in criminal conduct
The president's former personal lawyer didn't just stand in court on Tuesday and accuse the president of lying - although he did do that.
By saying that Mr Trump - "individual-1" in the plea agreement - directed him to make or oversee payments in 2016 to secure the silence of women poised to accuse the president of having adulterous affairs with them, he effectively implicated the president in the commission of a crime.
Cohen admitted that his payments constituted campaign contributions that either were directed from an illegal corporate source or in excess of allowable amounts for an individual. Both acts carry a five-year maximum prison sentence.
The president in the past has denied having any knowledge of the payments. His legal team has since walked that back and asserted that he only had general knowledge after the fact. Now, however, Cohen is saying Mr Trump knew about them from the start.
And it's not just Cohen's word against the president's. In the case of the payment to Karen MacDougal - "woman-1" in the plea agreement - his lawyer has already released an audio recording in which Cohen and then-candidate Mr Trump discussed the issue.
Add to this the fact that "woman-2", adult film actress Stormy Daniels, is now poised to resume her lawsuit against Mr Trump to get out of her non-disclosure agreement brokered by Cohen. A judge put the suit on hold pending the criminal investigation into Cohen, which now appears to be resolved. That suit could turn up more evidence of Mr Trump's involvement in the illegal $130,000 hush-money payment Cohen has now confessed to making to her on the eve of the 2016 election.
It's heavy seas ahead for the president any way you look at it.
Special counsel team notches a trial conviction
Special Counsel Robert Mueller was under considerable pressure to get a conviction in his case against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort. Even though the charges did not directly relate to the central thrust of his investigation into possible Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, it was the first time his team had to face a jury.
If they had walked away without a conviction, either through a hung jury or an outright acquittal, the accusations from Trump loyalists that the investigation was a waste of resources and time would have reached a fevered pitch.
It wasn't an across-the-board victory for Mr Mueller, given that the jury couldn't reach a verdict on 10 of the 18 counts, but convictions on tax fraud, failing to disclose foreign bank accounts and bank fraud are points on the board.
Add that to the numerous indictments of Russian individuals and companies and plea agreements already reached with Trump campaign officials George Papadopolous, Michael Flynn and Rick Gates, as well as with London lawyer Alex van der Zwaan and computer programmer Richard Pinedo, and the special counsel team is producing a growing list of accomplishments.
Pressure on Manafort mounts
After the verdicts were announced, Manafort's lawyer told the press that his client was "disappointed". That may be a bit of an understatement. Even with convictions on only eight of the 18 criminal counts against him, Mr Trump's former campaign chair could be looking at a lengthy prison sentence.
And Manafort faces a second trial in Washington DC next month for money laundering, acting as an unregistered foreign agent, conspiracy to defraud the US, making false statements and witness tampering. It's the bulk of the legal case against the long-time Washington lobbyist.
Manafort's lawyers had insisted on the two separate trials, perhaps because they thought they he had a better chance of acquittal from an Alexandria jury or friendlier federal judges in the Northern Virginia district. If so, that plan backfired.
Manafort may be hoping for a presidential pardon, given that Mr Trump has said his prosecution was politically motivated and that he was a "good man". The president can only pardon for federal crimes, however, and Manafort's conviction on tax fraud opens him up to future state-level charges, which Mr Trump has no power to forgive.
Now 69-year-old Manafort is facing a lengthy prison sentence - and more legal battles to come. And while he hasn't shown a willingness to co-operate with Mr Mueller's investigation so far, that could change.
Manafort, after all, attended the June 2016 Trump tower meeting set up by Donald Trump Jr with Russian nationals, originally billed as a means to gather damaging information about Democrat Hillary Clinton. He took a series of cryptic notes on the topic, which he might be willing to explain to the special counsel - in exchange for lightened sentence.
Having one's former campaign chair end up as a convicted felon is not good news. If Manafort flips, however, a bad day for Mr Trump could, in hindsight, be a catastrophic one.
Flynn is still co-operating
Buried under Tuesday afternoon's news was another nugget from the special counsel's office, that it has requested the sentencing of former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn be delayed once again.
"Due to the status of the investigation, the Special Counsel's Office does not believe that this matter is ready to be scheduled for a sentencing hearing at this time," Mr Mueller's lawyers told the court overseeing Flynn's plea deal.
That would indicate that Flynn, who has admitted to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials during the Trump presidential transition, is still co-operating with Mr Mueller and that his usefulness to the investigation is ongoing. It might also mean that a formal sentencing hearing could reveal information Mr Mueller would prefer to keep secret at this time.
Either way, it's a sign that, behind the scenes, gears are still grinding in Mr Mueller's investigation.
Another early Trump supporter is charged
Two weeks ago Chris Collins of New York, the first member of the House of Representatives to endorse Mr Trump's presidential bid, was indicted for insider trading. On Tuesday afternoon, Duncan Hunter - the second congressman to do so - was charged with using campaign funds for personal expenses, including trips for his family to Hawaii and Italy.
Earlier in the day Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren unveiled a sweeping programme of political reform measures she said were necessary to address widespread political corruption in Washington DC. That included a ban on all lobbying by former top government officials, a prohibition of all members of Congress and White House staff from holding individual corporate stocks and a requirement that all president and vice-presidential candidates disclose eight years of tax returns.
Similar calls for fixing a broken political system helped Democrats sweep into power in Congress in 2006. It did the same for Republicans in 1994. Mr Trump's "drain the swamp" rhetoric was a constant rallying cry for his supporters in 2016.
After Tuesday's onslaught of convictions, pleas and indictments, Warren's slate of proposals could prove to be a potent mid-term weapon for Democrats this November, if they know how to use it.
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A 13-year-old girl has died in unexplained circumstances after being found unwell at a house in Merseyside, prompting a police investigation. | Paramedics were called to Sandon Close in Rainhill, St Helens, at 23:15 GMT on Sunday following reports of a teenager being taken ill.
She was taken to hospital but died three hours later.
Police are treating the death as unexplained and post-mortem tests were due to be carried out.
The girl's family have been made aware and were being supported by officers, Merseyside Police said.
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Is it a revamped "Snoopers Charter," or is it an essential set of 21st century powers, to fight organised crime and terrorism? | Mark D'ArcyParliamentary correspondent
Should the government be able to access your internet browsing history, bug your computer or smartphone, access and hold data on your medical history, trade union activities and much, much more?
If so, what protections and procedures should be in place to control the process? How far should judges ride shotgun as ministers authorise intrusive powers? Should there be a watchdog to protect the citizen?
These are some of the issues to be fought out next week, when the Commons holds two days of detailed debate on the Investigatory Powers Bill (here is my regular rundown of what is coming up in Parliament next week).
This is the latest bill aimed at giving the security services and the police up-to-date powers to monitor activity on the internet - it comes with a long back-story: first there was the Communications Data Bill (the original Bill dubbed the Snoopers Charter, by its opponents) which was dropped after being savaged by a committee of MPs and Peers; then there was DRIPA, the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIPA), which only made it through Parliament after a clause was added to make it expire at the end of December. Now the IP Bill aims to renew and update those powers.
The key to understanding what is going on, as this legislation returns to the Commons for two days of detailed Report Stage debate, next week, is the Parliamentary timetable and the mathematics in both the Commons and the Lords.
The Bill has to be passed before the DRIPA expires in December - otherwise the legal authority for the existing powers will lapse (although there's always the option, in extremis, of passing an emergency mini-bill to continue the existing powers for a couple of months).
Government concessions
Then there's the maths - faced with some formidable backbench Tory critics, the government cannot rely on its narrow Commons majority, and needs at least the acquiescence of Labour to get the Bill through the House - and it has no majority at all in the Lords, so a roughing-up in the Commons may mean peers think they then have a licence to fillet the Bill of its most controversial provisions.
And there's plenty of scope for controversy. The ur-text on this are the speeches by Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham and Labour's frontbench superlawyer, Sir Keir Starmer, at the Second Reading debate in March (the bill has been "carried over" from the previous session), where they set out their key concerns.
Then, Labour abstained - arguing that a new framework for investigatory powers was needed, but this wasn't it.
They set out a shopping list of changes required to gain their support. And since then an intensive process of behind the scenes negotiation has been under way - both between Labour and the government and with dissident Tories and amongst the opposition parties (providing, whisper it quietly, a rare example of Labour-SNP cooperation).
This week, that process produced a couple of major government concessions.
Trade unions
First the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, David Anderson QC, has been commissioned to examine the operational case for the powers in the Bill (Labour being unconvinced by the evidence produced by the government, thus far).
He will report back before the Bill reaches its Committee Stage in the House of Lords, and the government will have a hard time resisting any recommendations he makes, and would probably face defeat in the Upper House, if it did.
Second, the government has agreed to accept Labour amendments making it clear that the powers in the Bill cannot be directed against legally-constituted trades unions.
In addition, Home Secretary Theresa May has put down a new "privacy clause" (NC5) giving the various authorities allowed to employ the investigatory powers a duty to "have regard to: (a) whether what is sought to be achieved by the warrant, authorisation or notice could reasonably be achieved by other less intrusive means, (b) the public interest in the integrity and security of telecommunication systems and postal services, and (c) any other aspects of the public interest in the protection of privacy".
This gives critics of the Bill some of the safeguards they want.
Another government amendment will add a requirement for "exceptional and compelling circumstances" to justify the retention and examination, of health records. There is also movement on providing special protection for MPs, lawyers and journalists.
Plenty of issues remain, however.
'Judicial review'
All the opposition parties remain concerned about the extent to which the Bill would require people's internet connection records (ICRs) to be kept for 12 months.
This would reveal which websites had been visited by who - although not the detail of what had been looked at within a particular site. There is still considerable dispute over the threshold of seriousness which should be crossed before this information could be accessed.
Then there's the question of how authorisation should be granted. In the Bill, the security services apply to the Secretary of State for a warrant and then a Judicial Commissioner reviews the minister's decision under 'judicial review principles' - effectively checking that a proper process has been followed, rather than considering the merits of the application.
Both Labour and former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis, a long-standing critic of the government's approach on investigatory powers and an important player on the Tory benches, have amendments down to tighten up this "double-lock" scrutiny mechanism and remove reference to judicial review principles throughout the Bill.
Both want to give the Judicial Commissioner the same power as the Secretary of State to determine whether a warrant is required based on the evidence available.
Major flashpoints
And David Davis goes further, with a new clause (NC 22) to reverse the approval process, so that an application for a warrant is first made to a Judicial Commissioner, rather than the Secretary of State - although Labour look unlikely to support that.
This area could be one of the major flashpoints; the government will probably resist any further erosion of ministers' role, on the principle that ministers, not judges, should take such decisions - and be accountable to Parliament for them.
The SNP want even more controls - they're particularly concerned about equipment interference, one of the most intrusive powers in the bill, which would allow the direct bugging of computers, smartphones and other devices - and where it's applied to Parliamentarians, which includes those in the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Welsh Assembly, they want both the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister to sign off on equipment interference warrants.
They are also calling for heavier supervision of the use of investigatory powers - with amendments to replace the proposed Investigatory Powers Commissioner with a bigger, all-singing, all-dancing Investigatory Powers Commission.
And across the opposition parties there is a move to ensure that the appointment of the Commissioner (or, if agreed, the members of the SNP's Commission) can be made, except on the recommendation of independent judicial appointments bodies in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
'Unlawful use'
Meanwhile, UKIP's Douglas Carswell has an amendment to require the appointment of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner to be agreed by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament.
Lib Dem former Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael has an amendment to address the problem that, because of the nature of the business, people who are wrongly subject to intrusive surveillance are unable to secure redress.
To deal with this he proposes giving the Investigatory Powers Commissioner the power to notify those who have been a subject to an interception warrant/equipment interference/covert human intelligence gathering etc, when the authorisation or warrant against them has fallen.
This would allow someone who is notified of their surveillance to take a case before the investigatory powers tribunal and would discourage the police or security services from mounting fishing expeditions based on very little evidence. A similar system is already in place in Germany, Belgium and California. This probably goes too far for Labour.
The political parties are not the only players. The Intelligence and Security Committee, the high-powered parliamentary watchdog, chaired by the former Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, has weighed in with amendments designed to put privacy at the heart of the Bill.
They start with New Clause 4, which creates a criminal offence of "unlawful use of investigatory powers".
'Operational purposes'
It's not a completely new offence, but the idea is to create a catch-all crime, taking in what the committee calls the "intrusive investigatory powers in the Bill," rather than relying on offences scattered across several pieces of legislation.
Another amendment (25) aims to limit the potentially broad scope of thematic warrants involving people who "share a common purpose" by ensuring that they also must be engaged in a particular activity.
Then there's New Clause 2, to allow the ISC to refer matters on behalf of Parliament, to the Commissioner and to provide a mechanism for the Committee to be informed of the outcome. And there's a proposal that the list of "Operational Purposes" for which the powers can be used is reviewed at least annually by the Prime Minister.
Other amendments have come from individual MPs: the Conservative Stephen McPartland's New Clause 6 is designed to limit access to Communications Data to the Intelligence Services and Law Enforcement Agencies only.
"There is no rationale for organisations such as Food Standards Agency and Gambling Commission to have the same incredibly intrusive powers as the Intelligence Services, Mr McPartland said.
Conservative ex-minister Sir Edward Leigh wants to require the Secretary of State to consult the Speaker before deciding to issue a warrant that applied to an MP's communications - and a further cross-party amendment extends that to the presiding officers of all UK legislatures.
SNP concerns
And the SNP go further - proposing a new clause (NC23) to ensure applications for a targeted equipment interference warrant or targeted examination warrant against Parliamentarians are decided by a Judicial Commissioner, without the involvement of the Home Secretary - and it would also provide extra safeguards to the correspondence of Parliamentarians when a warrant for hacking is sought.
This is just a cross-section of some 400 amendments.
Of course, many will not be selected by the Speaker for debate, while others will be grouped together, but there will be plenty of issues on which the government, faced with a combination of most of the Opposition parties, plus an array of Tory dissidents, may be forced into concessions.
There's a delicate political dance here, because while ministers are not in a strong position, Labour (which would be the essential keystone of any government defeat) cannot afford to be painted into a corner where it looks soft on terrorism.
While almost the entire Opposition abstained at Second Reading, few are expected to do so when Third Reading is reached on Tuesday.
But it would take a monumental bust-up over some really crucial point for Labour to vote against - especially when they know that the Bill will certainly be highly vulnerable to further amendment, when it reaches the House of Lords.
The SNP, meanwhile, say the government has not responded to their concern.
Justice spokesperson Joanna Cherry MP said: "For the UK government to dismiss reasonable SNP amendments outright means they run the real risk of putting opposition parties in the position of having to vote against the Bill in its entirety.
"That is not a decision that we would take lightly - so I call on the Home Secretary to urgently reconsider adopting our proposals before next week's vote."
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The mother of an 11-year-old girl whose body was found in a stream had received a text from her saying "I love you but so sorry", an inquest has heard. | Ursula Keogh, from Halifax, was last seen at about 15:30 GMT on 22 January dressed in her school uniform.
Her body was later discovered in Hebble Brook in the Paris Gates area of the West Yorkshire town.
The inquest into her death, held at Bradford Coroner's Court, was adjourned until April.
More on this story and others from around Yorkshire
Opening proceedings, coroner David Urpeth was told that Ursula had a history of self harm and her mother raised concerns after receiving the message.
West Yorkshire Police continues to investigate the circumstances of the death, but it's not thought to be suspicious.
In a statement from Lightcliffe Academy, where Ursula was a pupil, the secondary school described her death as a "heartbreaking loss".
"Our thoughts and prayers are with Ursula's family and friends and at this very difficult time," it said.
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Tens of thousands of British servicemen endured the brutalities of Japan's prisoner of war camps during World War Two. Theirs was a remarkable story of survival and courage, write Clare Makepeace and Meg Parkes. | Looking today at 94-year-old Bob Hucklesby from Dorset, with his hesitant gait yet determined demeanour, it is almost impossible to imagine what his mind and body once endured.
He was one of 50,000 servicemen to experience one of the worst episodes in British military history and will be one of those leading Saturday's VJ day commemorations.
Along with 50 other PoWs, he will attend a service at St Martin-in-the-Fields, in London, and then lay wreaths at the Cenotaph in Whitehall.
Never before, or since, have such large numbers in Britain's Armed Forces been subjected to such extremes of geography, disease and man's inhumanity to man, as were the prisoners of the Japanese in World War Two.
A quarter died in captivity. The rest returned home sick and damaged.
For three-and-a-half years, they faced unrelentingly lethal conditions.
The average prisoner received less than a cup of filthy rice a day. The amount was so meagre that gross malnutrition led to loss of vision or unrelenting nerve pain.
Diseases were rife. Malaria and dysentery were almost universal.
Dysentery, an infective disease of the large bowel, reduced men to living skeletons. Tropical ulcers were particularly gruesome.
Lt ME Barrett, who worked in the ulcer huts at Chungkai prison camp in Thailand, wrote about them in his diary. "The majority were caused by bamboo scratches incurred when working naked in the jungle… Leg ulcers of over a foot in length and maybe six inches in breadth, with bone exposed and rotting for several inches, were no uncommon sight."
Random beating and torture was meted out at will by sadistic, brutal and unpredictable captors.
Lt Bill Drower, an interpreter at Kanburi Officers' camp in Thailand, dared to challenge his captors over one translation. He was severely beaten and kept in solitary confinement for the final 80 days of the war.
At the time of his rescue, following the Japanese surrender, he was close to death from malnutrition and blackwater fever, a rare but extremely dangerous complication of malaria.
On top of these horrific conditions, the majority of PoWs worked as slave labourers to keep Japan's heavy industry going. They toiled relentlessly on docks, airfields, in coalmines, shipbuilding yards, steel and copper works.
These brutalities are now well-known among the horrors of WW2.
Less is known about the extraordinary spirit of the prisoners of war - a spirit the cruelty of the Japanese signally failed to conquer.
It is a remarkable story of how they overcame appalling adversity during the war - and how, having survived, they had to do so again in peace because they were so haunted by the horrors they had endured.
One crucial means of survival in the camps was to form strong bonds with fellow prisoners - close friendships were a lifeline in Japanese captivity. Having a small group of three to four mates was essential. They shared food and workload, and nursed each other when sick.
RAF aircraftsman Derek Fogarty, captured in Java, recalled in a 2008 interview: "You bonded like a brother. If a person was sick you took them water, you did their washing. We were so close and it got closer and closer over the years, people would die for their mates, that's how close things got."
Without these mates, many more prisoners would have died.
Dental officer Capt David Arkush remembered in a 2007 interview how "everybody had dysentery. They lay in their own excreta. Unless they had a mucker, a pal, to look after them they stood little chance of survival."
Across individual camps, PoWs pooled their skills and trades to help one another.
Doctors, denied tools or medicine, needed the expertise of others. Medical orderly and former plumber Fred Margarson ran secret PoW workshops at Chungkai hospital camp in Thailand where he supervised the making of artificial legs for tropical ulcer patients.
His friend Gordon Vaughan, a Post Office engineer before the war, made vital medical instruments for examining dysentery patients from old tin cans, and surgical forceps from pairs of scissors.
In even the most miserable conditions, men supported each other through humour. Jack Chalker, a bombardier captured at Singapore, remembered the skeletal patients in a dysentery hut on the Thai-Burma railway.
They ran a lottery as to "who would be sitting on the only bucket in the hut when it finally collapsed". "Such things" he recalled "provided a great deal of laughter".
As many as a quarter of the prisoners died, but 37,500 British servicemen who had initially been taken into captivity lived to see VJ day.
Many thousands of them had to wait up to five weeks, or longer, before the camps they were in could even be found by the Allies. Almost all of them sailed the 8-10,000 miles back to Britain, disembarking in either Liverpool or Southampton, more than five months after the war in Europe had ended.
The main victory celebrations had faded long ago for most Britons. They were now preoccupied with post-war problems of finding work and feeding their families.
Rather than feeling jubilation, these returning ex-PoWs were full of shame and guilt at having surrendered, and having survived. These feelings of guilt were compounded by a difficulty in telling people about what they had been through.
Jack Chalker experienced a physical block when he tried to answer a question during an interview in 2010. "The words just wouldn't come out. I couldn't speak, not a sound would come. It was very frightening. I felt such a fool and I didn't want it to happen again so I decided not to speak about it."
Many turned to each other for support, just as they had done in captivity.
Soon, PoW clubs sprang up in village halls and pubs across the country.
These clubs provided a place where former prisoners could meet regularly and where the trials and the friendships of prisoner-of-war life were understood.
Barbara Wearne, whose husband was captured at the fall of Singapore and died in 1966, leaving her with four young children, attended some of the PoW meetings in Plymouth.
She observed the conversations between these men. She recalled, in an interview in 2007: "They were back again as they had been in prisoner camp, and they were buddies again. They could talk and understand each other. I think that that's one of things they must have missed terribly when they came back, to lose that fellowship."
The gatherings also saw some bizarre activities.
The London Far East Prisoner of War Social Club held its first "Tenko" night in 1948.
Tenko was the Japanese command for roll call, an order made familiar to the British public through the 1980s TV drama series. Every day in captivity started with the same routine. Prisoners were woken between 5am and 6am, and lined up for a tedious process of being counted and recounted.
PoWs spent these Tenko nights comparing notes about their time in captivity. Then, at 10pm, the command was cried out, and two Japanese officers and two Korean guards appeared.
They were British ex-PoWs dressed in enemies' uniforms, souvenirs from their time in captivity. Hundreds of PoWs jumped to obey the order, and then paraded round the floor in a parody of the grim, daily processions.
These performances were not just confined to the Tenko nights.
The London Far East Prisoner of War Social Club also organised annual reunions. The venues, first the Royal Albert Hall and then Royal Festival Hall, were always brimming.
The Far East PoW sketch was often the hit of these evenings.
Just as at the Tenko nights, ex-prisoners took on the role of their Japanese guards. Others played themselves from those dark days. The guards slapped and bashed the prisoners.
In photos of these sketches, there is no hint that PoWs found the plays disturbing. The actors are beaming. Those who took the role of the guards appear to revel in the chance to mock their captors, through their greatly exaggerated po-faced expressions.
In 1956, Bryn Roberts commented: "It gives great pleasure to us and to them [the actors] to be able to laugh at some of the things that were not so entertaining when we were prisoners."
These sketches probably had a therapeutic value. They have similarities with a form of therapy called psychodrama, now widely practised across the globe, and used for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Imagining the harrowing events they had endured in a safe environment, and expressing previously forbidden emotions, may have helped PoWs deal with their trauma.
The bonds of friendship found at these annual reunions were unique. They were deep, lifelong and enriching. Through the reunions many men found something positive had emerged out of such horrific times.
Senior officers used their local business and professional connections to help men less fortunate find work.
Many suffered intermittent bouts of fever or chronic diarrhoea, the consequence of malaria and dysentery. As early as 1946, and for subsequent decades, at first dozens, then hundreds, and eventually thousands of men with persistent tropical infections sought medical attention.
Members of local clubs took care of their disabled and afflicted, as well as the widows and families of those who had died. When the London Social Club was first started in 1947, members paid five shillings a year into a fund to help any ex-prisoner known to be in hospital or undergoing economic hardship.
Soon PoWs ensured they received financial support on a much greater scale.
Shortly after the war, local clubs started calling for compensation for how the Japanese had treated these men. Miners from the Rhondda Valley, who had been put to work on the Thai-Burma railway, wanted a share of the £1,250,000 proceeds that Thailand had paid for it after the war.
Ex-PoWs in Lancashire and Cheshire, inspired by a provision made for ex-prisoners in the United States, called for a dollar for each day of their imprisonment.
This was the beginnings of the POWs breaking their silence.
In 1950, these men united to demand, in a loud and confident voice, that compensation be paid to them by the Japanese. This compensation, they insisted, should be one of the terms of the peace treaty with Japan, which was at the time being negotiated and which would formally end World War Two.
The claim was about far more than just money.
It was about informing the rest of the world what Far East PoWs had been through. The "humiliation, the semi-starvation, the cruelty of enforced labour, the many atrocities, and the shocking disease" these men had suffered.
It was about making sure nothing similar ever happened again. "Only in this way," one piece of their campaigning literature emphasised, "will the ex-enemy government realise they cannout get away with such things."
PoWs took their case to the local and national press. Newspapers carried supportive headlines, such as "Justice for Victims of Far East Terror" and "Compensation for Atrocities Urged".
PoWs lobbied Parliament. For two-and-a-half hours the House of Commons debated the issue, and then voted in favour.
In the 1950s, each and every Far East PoW, or the next-of-kin of those who had died, received the equivalent of approximately £1,500 in today's money.
Over 40 years later, in 2000, the Far East PoWs won another campaign. Surviving Britons who had been held captive by the Japanese, or their widows, would receive a one-off payment of £10,000 each.
In total, almost half of all British Far East PoWs became part of a club or association at some point in their lifetime. This is an extremely high number.
As a comparison, no more than one-tenth of the five million veterans who went through the slaughter of World War One went on to join the British Legion.
Bob Hucklesby is one of the longest-standing members of Far East PoW organisations, having been involved for the past 65 years.
Today, our attention will be concentrated on him and the few surviving Far East PoWs.
These men inspire awe. They are the last remaining tangible link to that horrific episode over 70 years ago, and to the spirit that helped them to survive.
For Hucklesby, the focus of the 70th anniversary VJ day commemorations should not be on him, or his fellow survivors, but on those they left behind.
Seventy years after their cruel deaths, he remembers them more than ever. Today, he wants us to think of them, of the "many young men in their prime who never came home, and who suffered terrible conditions before they died".
More from the Magazine
It's 70 years since Japan surrendered and World War Two ended. But when war with Japan first broke out at the end of 1941 Britain had been woefully unprepared - not least because almost no-one in Britain could speak Japanese.
How the UK found Japanese speakers in a hurry in World War Two
Dr Clare Makepeace is a cultural historian of warfare and teaching fellow at UCL.
Meg Parkes, honorary research fellow, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, is co-author of Captive Memories (Palatine Books, 2015).
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Eminem's surprise album Kamikaze has made UK chart history. | By Jimmy BlakeNewsbeat reporter
It's the rapper's ninth record in a row to go to number one, breaking the record for most consecutive chart-topping albums - a title previously held by Led Zeppelin and ABBA.
Fans and artists tell Radio 1 Newsbeat the milestone confirms Eminem as the "greatest of all time".
And while plenty agree, some say reaching the landmark means it's "high-time for him to retire as an act".
'Eminem is the GOAT'
Speaking to Newsbeat at the GRM Daily Rated Awards, Ray BLK described Eminem's career as "iconic".
"He's a rapper who really expresses himself - a lot of other rappers don't do that. Maybe they're afraid to.
"I loved his really comedic phase when he was doing really funny videos as well."
The comedy era of Eminem came early in the rapper's career.
Tracks like My Name Is from 1999's The Slim Shady LP and 2002's Without Me were accompanied by videos which often saw him taking on light-hearted storylines.
It was the era when Krept & Konan had his music "on repeat".
"He is one of the best artists in the world, period. In his creativity, videos - everything.
"Eminem is the GOAT - that's the word that comes to mind straight away when you think about him."
His status hasn't come without controversy though - Eminem's lyrics have always split opinion.
We don't have enough time to list the many, many subjects he's rapped questionably about over the years - but the list includes domestic abuse and school shootings.
And he's been regularly criticised for the homophobic slurs that have featured in his songs - which even appear on Kamikaze in a diss directed towards Tyler, The Creator.
It's the sort of thing that can't be overlooked, according to leader singer of Imagine Dragons, Dan Reynolds.
He tweeted: "It's never ok to say a word that is filled with hate. I don't care what year you were born in or what meaning it has to you.
"If it contributes to hate and bigotry then it is hateful. period."
The use of homophobic lyrics is also criticised by Dan Stubbs, Commissioning Editor at NME.
Speaking to Annie Mac on Radio 1, he said: "Twenty years ago when he first came out, no-one would have blinked at this but the world has changed and he should have changed with it.
"I think it's a blot on an album that didn't need it. On an album with lots of things to talk about, this one's taken attention because it's shocking."
Beyond the lyrics
For producer Steel Banglez, it's the team working around Eminem that have been the most inspiring.
"Mike Elizondo, who works with Dr. Dre, is a producer who I really idolise," he says.
"He's the guy behind Lose Yourself and he made a lot of the Marshall Mathers EP.
"I was in the studio with him at the start of this year - his production style is what's influenced me."
Big Narstie says Eminem is a "lyrical genius", but wonders whether other artists could potentially achieve similar success with access to the "money machine that Eminem's got behind him".
"If someone could throw 30 or 50 million behind my project... wow.
"I'd love to see what he's done being achieved by an independent label with a budget of like, £25,000."
Time to retire?
The album's had a generally positive response from fans, too.
It's a contrast from the reaction to 2017's Revival, which was "skewered by reviewers".
"I don't know what he was doing with that Pink jam," long-time fan Vikar tells Newsbeat.
Vikar clearly wasn't a fan of Need Me, which features the singer.
And after being disappointed by Revival generally, he wasn't expecting much from Kamikaze.
"But when I heard it I thought, he must have realised the mistakes he was making before.
"He's changed his choppy flows and maybe not working with Rick Rubin helped. The Dr. Dre touch has boosted it."
Despite being positively surprised, Vikar thinks it might be time for Em to hang up his mic.
"Eminem is a brand so however good or bad his albums are, they're always going to go to number one because he has such a fandom.
"When he released Revival I thought he should have stopped, but it wouldn't have been a very good album for him to retire with.
"Now that Kamikaze's out I'm not sure if he can produce a better album.
"He should quit releasing albums now. He could start producing albums for other people - but this seems like the right album for him to retire with."
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Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 every weekday on BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra - if you miss us you can listen back here.
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Plans to redevelop the site of Taunton's former livestock market have been submitted. | The Firepool development includes flats, office accommodation and a park.
It will be built on the 4.5 acre Priory Bridge Road site close to the River Tone.
Firepool represents the first phase of Project Taunton, a 123-acre town centre regeneration scheme.
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At a quarry in Cambridgeshire, archaeologists say they have discovered Britain's "Pompeii - a number of well-preserved dwellings dating back to the Bronze Age. The artefacts found there reveal new details about the period between 2500 and 2000BC and those who lived through it. | By Kayleen DevlinBBC News
What did they eat?
One of the finds at Must Farm quarry in Cambridgeshire were pots with meals still inside. According to Selina Davenport, an archaeologist who helped uncover the Bronze Age dwellings, the find suggests that the pots were being used to make pottage.
"Think porridge and add a few extra herby things, and if you were lucky you might have had honey to dollop in the middle. It isn't a great meal, and if someone put a bowl in front of you, you wouldn't light up," says Chris Gosden, Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford.
"What people mainly ate was vegetable based dishes, so the discovery of pottage isn't a great surprise, as meat was something saved for special occasions."
'Complicated' woodwork and textiles
"This site has provided evidence of things we didn't have evidence for before, like the Bronze Age people's amazing woodwork skills and knowledge of timber," says Duncan Garrow, an associate professor of archaeology at Reading University.
The finds include sophisticated woodworking joints and evidence of woodland management.
According to Mr Gosden they show the Bronze Age inhabitants were skilled carpenters able to construct really complex settlements in tricky environments.
"We know people in the past were incredibly skilled, but this gives us a sense of the range of skills these people had and in an environment we would find very difficult to work in, they are totally at home with. The thing about wood is you need to think ahead. If you're going to build a house you need to have planted the right trees and have the right material. In these dwellings, there's evidence of a whole managed landscape and people's ability to plan and think ahead."
The discovery of textiles made from plant fibres such as lime tree bark suggests those living in the Bronze Age were skilled in the use of a range of different materials.
"Making things with this fabric is more technological and complicated, and is something we didn't expect," says Ms Davenport.
From the Balkans to Britain
An earlier excavation at the Must Farm quarry uncovered these "exotic" glass beads that formed part of a necklace and, according to archaeologists, "hinted at a sophistication not usually associated with the Bronze Age".
Ms Davenport says the beads, which look similar to Roman beads, suggest trading between continents was further spread than initially proved.
"These beads confirm a few of our suspicions. Using the signatures within the glass, we can tell they came from the Balkans. We know there were some established trading routes coming from near continents to Britain at the time, but this is spreading that territory even further," says Ms Davenport.
Why did they leave?
The settlement discovered at Must Farm quarry is made up of circular wooden houses, built on stilts, and dates from about 1000-800 BC.
A fire destroyed the posts, causing the houses to fall into a river where silt helped preserve the contents. Archaeologists at the site think they have found five houses but are not yet certain.
"It's like a snapshot, a moment in time," says Mr Gosden.
"We've known for a while that in both the Bronze and Iron Age, people burned down and abandoned their houses for physical reasons. There doesn't seem to be any physical reason as to why they had to abandon this house and go somewhere else," he says.
"It was some other reason. The question is, what? The sorts of things that might be the case is the death of a significant person or a major trauma to the community - something social and cultural within the life of the community."
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At least five people are dead after a cargo train notorious for transporting Central American migrants hoping to reach the US derailed in southern Mexico, authorities have said. | Officials said at least 35 people were injured, 16 gravely. It is feared the death toll could rise.
An unknown number of people were also trapped, the Red Cross said.
Soldiers, marines and emergency workers were trying to access the remote crash site, which ambulances could not reach.
Officials were working to establish air or water access to the site.
Cesar Burelo Burelo, the head of civil protection for Mexico's Tabasco state, said the derailment occurred early on Sunday in a remote area with no mobile phone coverage.
Mr Burelo said dozens of people had been on the train, which was moving north from the border of Guatemala.
The train, sometimes called "the beast", often carries hundreds of people on the roof as they undertake the risky journey to the US.
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Residents were evacuated from their homes after an unexploded bomb, believed to be from World War Two, was found in a car park. | Police were called to the public car park on High Street in Eton, Berkshire, at about 18:25 BST on Sunday.
A 50m (164ft) cordon was put in place and about 50 residents were evacuated from their properties as a precaution, Thames Valley Police said.
It added Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) experts made the device safe.
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The BBC News School Report gives students aged 11 to 16 the chance to make their own news reports. Here Jack, a 15-year-old studying at a boarding school in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, explains why the old-fashioned art of writing letters is back in fashion. | My school, the Starehe Boys' Centre in Nairobi, Kenya, is known for academic excellence, especially in national examinations.
It is against school rules to have mobile phones.
We have ICT hubs, smart boards and internet access, but these are only for academic research.
We are not allowed to access social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
So that begs the question, how do we communicate with our friends in other schools - especially girls?
The answer is that we go back to the good old days and write letters, but not just ordinary letters.
They are artistic, calligraphic, hand-written letters we create during our free time.
In the school library I find some of my friends writing letters.
''Most of the time we send the letters to our friends in girls schools,'' says Charles.
''We put effort in writing them so that we can communicate our emotions well."
Some of the students believe that letter-writing allows them to be artistic.
''I love art so I take my time so that my friends get the best letters," says Moses, as he decorates his envelope with blue calligraphy.
''I am writing to a very close friend. She is a member of the orchestra club and I am too."
After the letters are finished, the postman drives his motorbike through the busy Nairobi traffic and delivers them to our friends at Loreto Msongari girl's school across the city. The girls gladly receive the letters.
Some of them tell me what they think about letter-writing.
''I am really excited to receive a letter from one of my friends in Starehe,'' says Tabitha.
"I think it's better to write letters in school than to have phones. It is a mode of communication that everyone can afford and it's what everyone looks forward to when you go to high school," she says.
One would imagine that letter-writing is ancient and backward but many students in Kenya actually enjoy this method and describe it as a real blast from the past.
''On a phone you can't express yourself the same way you can in a letter,'' says Danielle.
"My letter was really interesting, I like the handwriting, the calligraphy really pops - it makes me want to read it."
I asked Angel, one of the bubbly girls, to share the most interesting bit of her letter.
''Well, he said that I have long silky hair and a blinding smile!'' she says, giggling.
While other young people around the world are busy texting each other, we have had to re-invent ways of keeping in touch with our friends. It works for us!
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A hotel where Charlie Chaplin stayed during holidays in the Highlands has been put up for sale. | Chaplin, famous for his comic roles in black and white silent films, would book into the Newton Hotel in Nairn with his family later in his life.
The hotel has been put on the market with an asking price of about £4.5m plus VAT.
The former baronial mansion has 63 bedrooms and 21 acres (8ha) of grounds.
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Paul Epworth is behind some of the biggest pop records of the last 20 years, from Adele's Rolling in the Deep to Florence and the Machine's Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up). | By Mark SavageBBC music reporter
Along the way he's worked with Rihanna, Stormzy, Sir Paul McCartney, Coldplay and U2 - and he won an Oscar for co-writing the Bond theme Skyfall.
But now, after years behind the scenes, the producer is releasing his first solo album. Voyager, a journey into deep space, fuses influences from classic sci-fi movies with his love of musical explorers like David Bowie, George Clinton, Wendy Carlos and Jean-Michel Jarre.
"It's a sort of '70s space concept album, which is a bit of a cliché as a producer - to make something that ostentatious and overblown," he told BBC News.
"But I've tried to frame it in a modern way, so I've got some great singers and rappers on it."
The record sees guest vocals from the likes of Jay Electronica, Ty Dolla $ign, Vince Staples, Lianne La Havas and Kool Keith. But, more importantly, it allowed Epworth to indulge his passion for space travel and astrophysics - as well as a habit for collecting ancient, analogue synths at his studio in London's Crouch End.
He traces his interest in science back to his father's work in developing optical fibres. Yet he remains endlessly curious about life, the universe and everything.
To celebrate the record's release, Epworth hooked up with Professor Brian Cox - the prominent physicist and former keyboard player for '90s dance act D:Ream - to ask some of the questions that occurred to him while making the album.
Paul Epworth: When I began working on a record about space, little did I think I would be sitting here with you. Obviously you started in music as well, so what prompted you to make that shift into this love of the cosmos and astrophysics?
Brian Cox: To be honest, my first interest was astronomy. As far back as I can remember. I just liked looking at the stars.
I've thought about it a lot - what was it that made a seven-year-old become interested in stars? And I suppose it goes all the way back to looking forward to Christmas when you're six years old... and I think I began to associate it with the constellations. My dad once said to me 'There's Orion, it's the easiest constellation to see.' And I noticed that it was in the autumn and the winter when I'd start seeing Orion over our back garden.
But I also remember really vividly Star Wars and Star Trek in general. So I also liked science fiction for some reason and I conflated it all together. Space became this idea, which was part escapism, part Star Wars [and] part astronomy. Music was almost a distraction!
What is the connection for you between music and the cosmos? Is there a piece of music that brings the two together?
Vangelis's theme for Carl Sagan's Cosmos. To this day, when that music starts, it's a shiver. It takes me right back to being 11 years old and looking at the sky. It is really powerful.
I've actually been involved in the last few years with some attempts to match classical music to the ideas that are raised in astronomy and cosmology. We live in a potentially infinite universe which, to me, raises questions about our mortality about our fragility.
What does it mean to live these small, finite and in some sense insignificant lives in this potentially eternal and potentially infinite universe? Those are emotional questions, they're deeply human questions, and they're questions that have motivated a great deal of art and music.
I was reading a book recently by a guy called Itzhak Bentov called Stalking the Wild Pendulum, which is about the mechanics of consciousness. He talks about all matter vibrating - and of course vibration is the way every musical instrument generates noise. It got me thinking about how all these things fit together...
There's an interesting point there, which is that music is a product of consciousness and intelligence. And if you think about what we are - how it can be that some atoms that have been around since the Big Bang... essentially be able to start thinking and create music?
That's a remarkable thing. I think it was Richard Feynman who said "Human beings are atoms, that can contemplate atom." And part of those atoms' response to this remarkable phenomenon is to make music as part of the exploration of what that means. I find that remarkable.
There's a theory that the universe is actually shaped like a doughnut. What are your thoughts on that?
The point is we don't know. All we can observe about the universe is the bit we can see, which is undoubtedly a small patch of what exists. At the moment it's just over 90 billion light years across, so it's a big bit, [and] that bit is flat, as far as we can tell.
But that's probably like saying "I've explored the region around my house and it's flat." And it's flat, even if you live on a big hill, because the curvature of the world is much bigger than the region around your house. That's probably what the universe is like.
It's almost incomprehensible, the scale of some of this stuff.
The distances... I mean, even the closest big galaxy to us is Andromeda which we can see with the naked eye, if there's no moon and it's very dark. And the light that enters your eye took two million years to journey to Earth. It's a remarkable feeling when you know that. Just to think, when those photons set off on their journey, there were no humans on the earth. We hadn't evolved.
This is why music and art is helpful because I can say these sentences and trot out these words, but how a person reacts to that is... It's a complex, personal thing. How do you feel about the idea that we were in a sea of [stars] and we can see two trillion galaxies? How does that make you feel? I don't know how that makes me feel actually.
That's why it's so inspiring because there's infinite angles to it. As you've understood more about the cosmos, how has your relationship with music changed?
It's broadened, I think. When I first started getting into music I got Enola Gay by OMD and Hazel O'Connor's Eighth Day and I got into Kraftwerk. But over the last 10 to 15 years I've really got introduced to some of the great classical music from the turn of the 20th Century, and you find that increased harmonic complexity and richness.
I did a concert actually with the BBC, about Holst's The Planets, which everybody listens to at school. It's almost become a pop classic now, but actually at the time it was shocking harmonically and in the way that it's orchestrated. And if you strip away that familiarity, you realise that it's a tremendous achievement. So I like searching out that complexity.
It's interesting you say that, because it's something I [discovered] while making this record. Maybe it's humans trying to recreate the complexity of the night sky somehow within a musical form.
It's a good analogy actually, because Western music has got quite a limited scale. There's just the [notes on a] piano keyboard and that's it. But from those very simple rules, the complexity is almost limitless. And that's an analogy for, I think, the way that we see the the Universe.
So if you look at it now, 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, it's tremendously complex - but the laws of nature that that underpin that appear, as we look deeper and deeper, to be simple.
I read this amazing Neil deGrasse Tyson quote about how the particles in our bodies move at the speed of light, and obviously as you get closer to the speed of light time slows down. So are the particles in our bodies occupying the same place and time as they were in the Big Bang?
Yeah, that's true. If you take the path of a photon that was released shortly after the Big Bang, and has travelled across the universe at the speed of light for 13.8 billion years or so, from our perspective - and say you'd carried a clock with you - how much time would you have experienced as a photon? Then you're right, the answer is zero.
That's one of the radical things about physics and cosmology - it forces us into these seemingly extremely counterintuitive positions.
Do you think new developments like quantum computing are going to make it easier for us to crack some of these puzzles?
Yes! Quantum computing has been a thing for a long time - that just in principle we could build these computers that are far more powerful than anything that we can build out of silicon. And harnessing that power is something that we're just about able to do now. We are building the first quantum computers and they're really primitive - they're like an abacus almost. But it didn't take as long to go from the first computers in the '40s to an iPhone or a Samsung.
And there's a suggestion that these machines will be able to simulate nature, much more precisely than we can at the moment, because all nature behaves in a quantum mechanical way. So we'll be able to explore places we can't go and [find out things like] what happens beyond the event horizon of a black hole?
Do you identify with space as a spiritual construct?
I never know what that word means - but it's certainly true [space] generates profound emotions. You've got to be in awe about the existence of the universe as a whole, and our existence within it. You're really missing the point if you're not astonished by that.
So, to come back to the music side of it: Life on Mars [by David Bowie] or Moon Safari [by Air]?
I have to say Life on Mars, because Hunky Dory is my favourite album. I love Rick Wakeman's piano playing on Life on Mars. If you're a musician and you try to play Life on Mars you realise that, while some of it's quite a standard chord sequence - I think it's actually the same as My Way - some of it is incredibly unusual and just shows you what instinctive genius Bowie was. What a writer. I love the whole album - although I love Air too.
Which do think you'll do first, go to Mars or have a safari on the moon?
I think the average person will get the chance to have a safari on the moon before they get to go to Mars. But I think someone might go to Mars before we can all have a moon safari.
Would you go?
I get asked that a lot. I think you have to have the right stuff - and I'm not sure I have the right stuff.
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Three potential sites have been shortlisted for a new Monklands Hospital. | NHS Lanarkshire said the sites in Gartcosh, Glenmavis and Wester Moffat all met the necessary criteria.
Gartcosh and Glenmavis were already being considered while Wester Moffat is a new location- identified through a public site nominations process run by the health board.
The local community will have the chance to give feedback on the sites.
A site re-evaluation process will then take place through a formal scoring event in March which will involve a group of 100 people, made up of members of the public and NHS staff.
NHS Lanarkshire will publish detailed information on each of the shortlisted sites by the end of January. This will cover issues such as site history, site conditions, transport and travel information and the costs of site remediation, road infrastructure and construction.
Following the outcome of the scoring event there will be an opportunity for further public feedback, which will be collated and issued along with a recommendation for a preferred site location in the spring.
Graeme Reid, Monklands Replacement Project (MRP) director, said: "We're pleased that the public site nominations process proved very worthwhile, receiving 183 responses, and has identified the land at Wester Moffat as a new option.
"Eight specific sites, additional to those we had considered previously, were suggested and, following assessment against the five site selection criteria, Wester Moffat was the only viable option among them."
He added: "We also received a number of suggestions that were not about any specific site, mentioning general areas and particular communities or referring to the Gartcosh and Glenmavis sites that are already known to be viable."
Neena Mahal, chairwoman of NHS Lanarkshire, said: "NHS Lanarkshire will undertake further public engagement on these potential alternative sites for the hospital as we address the urgent need to provide a new University Hospital Monklands for the communities of Lanarkshire."
NHS Lanarkshire intends to create a "health and wellbeing village" on the current site of University Hospital Monklands to enable the local community to benefit from community-based healthcare.
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Love it or hate it, even the most hardened anti-Romeo will be hard pressed to avoid Valentine's Day this year. But as an exhibit at the British Library currently on show is testament to, there is a first for everything - even on Valentine's Day.
| By Anna BrowningBBC News
Right reverend and worshipful and my right well-beloved Valentine, I
recommend me unto you full heartily, desiring to hear of your welfare
which I beseech almighty God long for to preserve unto his pleasure and
your heart's desire and if it please you to hear of my welfare I am not
in good health of body nor of heart nor shall be till I hear from you,
for there knows no creature what pain that I endure and on pain of death
I dare not reveal. And my lady my mother has laboured the matter to my
father full diligently but she can no more get than ye know of for the
which God knows I am full sorry. But if that you love me as I trust
verily that you do, you will not leave me therefore. For if that you had
not half the livelihood that you have for to do the greatest labour that
any woman alive might I would not forsake you. And if you command me to
keep me true wherever I go, I advise I will do all my might you to love
and never no more. And if my friends say that I do amiss, they shall not
me hinder so for to do. My heart me bids ever more to love you truly
over all earthly thing and if they be never so angry I trust it shall be
better in time coming. No more to you at this time but the holy trinity
has you in keeping. And I beseech you that this bill be not seen of no
earthly creature except yourself and this letter was written at topcroft
with full heavy heart. By your own M[argery] B[rews].
It is a letter, written from a young woman to her love, and is the first Valentine in the English language. And, for the first time, the descendants of Margery Brews and her betrothed John Paston have been traced.
In 1477 Margery wrote a letter to her John pleading with him not to give her up, despite her parents' refusal to increase her dowry.
Addressing her "ryght welebeloued Voluntyne" (right well-beloved Valentine), she promised to be a good wife, adding: "Yf that ye loffe me as Itryste verely that ye do ye will not leffe me" (If you love me, I trust.. you will not leave me).
Her beloved might have had his mind on business, driving a hard bargain for her hand in marriage, but Margery still had her sights on romance, and so secured her place in English history.
"It might not necessarily be that nobody had used Valentine in any context before, but this is probably one of the first times it was written down," says British Library curator Julian Harrison.
And for Cambridge historian, Dr Helen Castor, the importance of Margery Brews' letter and the light it sheds on relationships at that time is hugely important.
"One of the wonderful things about this particular letter is that it is so private," she said.
"It gives a real sense of the relationship between a young man and young woman wanting to marry.
"Without this letter we wouldn't know that this was a love match," she said.
While romantics 534 years later might celebrate Valentine's Day with fine dining, chocolates and flowers, Margery is left pleading with her love not to leave her while pledging her heart over all "earthly things".
She promises her undying love: "Myne herte me bydds ever more to love yowe truly" (My heart me bids ever more to love you truly), and speaks of her ailing body and heart over her fiance's continuing silence.
However, modern-day lovers be reassured, like any self-respecting fairytale romance the heart did (finally) rule the head and, despite her father's stubbornness over her dowry, Margery did marry her knight.
The couple had a son, William, in 1479. Margery died in 1495, John in 1503.
Their 16th and 17th generation descendants - by way of a king's illegitimate offspring - were traced via the family history website MyHeritage.
Living in Shropshire and until then unaware of their genetic link to a Valentine milestone, Sir Charles Buckworth-Herne-Soame, his wife Lady Eileen, their son Richard, his sister Mary Edwards, husband Keith and son Rob recently saw the missive for the first time.
For historians, the Paston Letters have long been a fascinating insight into the soap opera lives of gentry in the Middle Ages.
Most documentation which survives from medieval times are legal and governmental records, financial accounts and property deeds. Few personal letters exist and even fewer are written by women.
The archive of more than 1,000 letters - most in the British Library - is written by three generations of the Norfolk landowning-family over a period of 70 years.
Family fall-outs, parents nagging, clashes with the aristocracy and parties while mother's away are all detailed.
But Margery's letter, as the first English Valentine, has added significance for scholars and is currently part of a British Library exhibition on the evolution of the English language.
Dr Castor says it sheds invaluable light on such relationships at the time.
"We tend to assume that marriages in this class at this time were arranged for dynastic reasons, but Margery's letters show that everything else was slotted in around the fact that this was a couple who really loved each other."
For archaeologist Rob Edwards, 38, and great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of the couple, the letter is a link to the past he relishes, particularly as he works in history.
"It really reminds you that the people you are studying are very much like ourselves. They have the same feelings and the fact that they are related really does add an extra dimension.
"You can imagine it, trying to get a bit more towards the wedding from your parents. This money is going to set you up."
Julian Harrison agrees.
"The letter shows they were no different to us. They had the same loves, desires and financial problems."
The medieval writer also had other things in common with their modern counterpart.
Don't think the advent of mobile phones and e-mails is the first time abbreviations have littered correspondence, they often abbreviated a word or two in the Middle Ages - Margery used wt for with, for example.
And while her letter is also written on paper, there is one key difference. She didn't write it herself. It would have been dictated to a man who would have written it for her.
However, says Julian Harrison: "The fact that she isn't writing the letter doesn't mean she can't write, it means she can afford someone to write for her.
"People have assumed that people in the past were illiterate, but actually levels of literacy may have been higher than we think."
Richard Buckworth-Herne-Soame, 40, recognises some but not all family traits in the letter, while his mother, Lady Eileen, notes time have changed. She admits she brought no dowry to her marriage.
"No he didn't drive a hard bargain," she says of Sir Charles.
But, Richard adds: "We still have the stubbornness."
Around the BBC
BBC History - Paston Letters
Related Internet Links
The British Library - Evolving English
MyHeritage - Love letters gallery
Helen Castor's website
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With the world's population likely to reach 11 billion by the end of this century, there will be increasing pressure on farmers to maximise their use of agricultural land, and also on scientists to contribute to ensuring we all get enough nutrition. | By Chris BaraniukTechnology reporter
The sci-fi food of the future could change the way we eat forever, and it is going to be up to food designers and marketers to convince us that it's not just an acquired taste.
In a lab in California, Josh Tetrick's team at Just has been growing chicken and foie gras. Maybe one day they'll have a steak blooming out of a petri dish too.
This is "cultured meat". Its very existence suggests a potential future in which meat is largely decoupled from livestock and agriculture. Instead, meat could be cultivated in laboratory-like environments; grown from progenitor cells like stem cells that produce muscle tissue, for example.
It seems as though in the future we'll need people to design food instead of grow or rear it.
"I want to do tuna, I want to do steak, chicken breasts, milk and butter," says Mr Tetrick.
"These are all things in our pipeline."
By the end of this year, he plans to have Just's first cultured meat product available in the food marketplace, perhaps the synthetic foie gras or sausages.
Mr Tetrick's hunch is that, for now, consumers will be interested only in synthetic meat that mirrors very closely the products that they're used to. If a synthetic chicken breast is essentially indistinguishable from a real one, it may well catch on.
But looking further into the future, once such products become established, it's possible that designers will bring even more adventurous concepts to our plates, suggests Erin Kim, of the future food research institute New Harvest.
You might start seeing elements of meat being incorporated into other types of foods - mixed with plant-based ingredients to produce a totally novel food products, she suggests.
All the flavour and protein of meat, but with less fat and a wider variety of nutrients. This is already being done in a simpler way with burgers that are a blend of beef and mushrooms.
There is also the possibility that synthesised foods won't be produced on the scale you might expect - with millions of cultured chicken nuggets rolling off a production line. Maybe the technology will become democratised, enabling small-scale designers to experiment with interesting new products for niche audiences.
Like the craft beer industry but for meat, says Ms Kim.
Mike Lee at research group The Future Market recently developed a mock-up of a future Chinese restaurant menu with plenty of synthetic meat on offer. One of the "chef's specials" at Jia Rou Canting in the year 2042 is Cultured Shark Fin Soup.
"No sharks harmed", says the menu.
An interesting idea, though in reality some may fear that a market for synthetic shark fins could encourage a black market in the genuine articles. Today's shark fin industry is regularly accused of over-fishing.
Either way, giving food designers the opportunity to experiment with "artisanal takes" on lab-grown produce has lots of potential, says Ms Kim.
But the challenge in developing any new food is in making something that consumers are comfortable with. There's little that people are more cautious about that what they eat, says Max Elder, a researcher at the Institute for the Future.
"People don't want to eat science, they want to eat natural foods," he believes.
Take vegan mayonnaise. This is mayonnaise made with natural ingredients, including beans, which can be blended into a familiarly product but without the need for eggs. One such product is called "Not Mayo", and has been developed by a firm in Chile.
There may well be an important niche market among vegans - but this branding suggests that something else, something clever and futuristic, is going on.
In contrast, traditional mayonnaise producer Hellmann's recently launched a nostalgia-driven re-design of its packaging to move away from "bright, synthetic branding".
So will consumers stick with what's homely and familiar, or go for the food of the future? Max Elder thinks the former may be a savvier bet.
But that said, he believes future food designers may have success if they can develop foodstuffs that are what he calls "hyper-individualised" - crafted to give a specific person the exact nutritional content they need. No more, no less.
Dutch company ByFlow has come up with a 3D printer that prints food. Their model starts at 3,300 euros (£2,940) and the firm has already sold more than 100 of them, including many to professional restaurant kitchens.
The printer is loaded with cartridges full of edible pastes than can be designed to set when extruded, says ByFlow's Milena Adamczewska. It will print a carrot by using beetroot paste, for example.
Future of Work
BBC News is looking at how technology is changing the way we work, and how it is creating new job opportunities.
But taking the concept forward a step or two, imagine people in the near future using a 3D printer to produce meals with exactly the right calorie, fat, protein and vitamin content right for them.
The concept of highly tailored food intake is already popular with some dieters, but a more automated way of preparing these dishes could help to interest a wider audience.
The role for a food designer here would be to create ways of tailoring consumables to each and every user - and finding ways of making extruded foodstuffs appetising once arranged together.
"Imagine that the cartridge is loaded with, let's say, all the nutritional elements that a single person needs," says Ms Adamczewska. It could even lead to a drop in food waste, she suggests, if people find it easier to purchase only the food they need to eat.
The possibilities are endless but just how many of us will embrace them remains to be seen, as food is one of a few things in our lives that we are notoriously reluctant to experiment with.
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China has unveiled its new generation of leaders. With President Xi Jinping cementing his already solid grip on power, the news was not lost on politically-aware online commentators in China and elsewhere, who gave it a somewhat different spin. | Chinese users reading the tea leaves
"This is as exciting as every time Apple unveils its latest iPhone. Wake me up when something actually happens," wrote Ju Wei from the capital, Beijing, in response to a post by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV News on Sina Weibo, the Chinese micro-blogging platform.
"Still the same faces. No changes there."
Oh well.
But it was a subject of interest for other Weibo commentators. Several threads about congress proceedings sprouted up on the site, where many Weibo users aired their views (and grievances) on their president's "predictability" and the apparent lack of a successor.
Mandy Zhu Lu offered some Weibo wit and insight with this prediction: "Chinese are pretty smart people. We can predict the future, especially when it comes to our politics. I'm sure we all foresaw who was going to be our next president. And I'm calling it here: Xi Jinping will be our leader for the next eternity - place your bets here if you think this will come true."
So where were all the women?
Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng are now the seven most powerful men in China.
But where were all the women? It was a subject of interest.
"Women hold up half the sky, just ask Mao Zedong. So why do I not see any Communist Party women among the guys," remarked Weibo user Chan JingFei.
"I think this line-up says a lot about China's view of women. Male chauvinism is sadly not out of place here," said another Weibo user.
But there was one woman in the long line-up, as pointed out by the BBC's China Editor Carrie Gracie. Sun Chunlan is the only woman in China's number two decision-making body, the Politburo.
'The Politburo boyband'
While the issue of women being under-represented in Chinese politics was hotly debated, so were the ages of President Xi and his comrades.
All in their 60s, they donned carefully-choreographed black suits and coloured ties. In fact their ages are all-important, because none of them is quite young enough to be a future leader -leaving many to speculate that President Xi plans to stay in power for some time beyond the expected decade.
That didn't stop the inevitable boy band jokes.
"Here to promote their new hit album, Socialist Beats," joked one Weibo post.
The sharing president?
So the absence of a next generation leader inevitably triggered commentary about just how long President Xi intends to rule.
"No one loves our country more than Xi Jinping. That's why he won't share," said one netizen.
"Pity the United States couldn't follow Xi's example and adopt this rule to their presidents," said another.
Over on Twitter, Beijing-based economist Christopher Balding posted a not-very-serious Twitter poll on Mr Xi's successor.
With 268 votes (and counting), the odds may just be in favour of Mark Zuckerberg's new daughter, August.
Do you need a lift?
Shortly after the reveal, social media users noted the surge in shares of a very fortunately-named lift company.
Huning Elevators, bearing the same name as the newly-promoted Wang Huning, immediately shot up following Wednesday's announcement.
And then there was this peculiar Reddit thread.
With an innovative use of facial recognition technology, Redditer everest4ever combined the faces of "1014 Chinese officials in central government and high-level local government" to create a new Chinese official, a man that represents "The Average Face of Chinese Bureaucracy".
What a time to be alive.
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Visitors to the Cotswold Water Park are being encouraged to report sightings of water voles as part of a conservation project in the area. | Drought conditions followed by the recent floods mean the voles are using ditches, ponds and lakes.
Ben Welbourn, Park Trust Field Officer said: "Water vole numbers are gradually stabilising thanks to a tremendous effort from landowners and volunteers.
"The next phase is to see them spreading in range."
In previous years the surveys have focused on rivers but this year people are being asked to widen the search area.
"Surveying for their whereabouts is key to their ongoing survival. We'd welcome any information from the public as to their whereabouts," said Mr Welbourn.
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Office rental firm Regus has swung to a pre-tax loss in the first half, after being hit by restructuring costs of £15.8m in the UK. | Regus made a loss of £6.1m in the six months to June, compared with a £69m profit in the same period a year ago.
But the company said that despite the "challenging" trading environment, it was continuing to open new centres.
Regus, which rents out ready-to-use offices for as little as half a day, said revenues fell 7.5% to £515.5m.
However, the company raised its interim divided to 0.85 pence per share from 0.8 pence per share a year earlier.
Shares in Regus clawed back earlier losses and closed almost 3% higher on Friday.
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Most of us change our minds all the time. | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
Maybe this morning you had planned to go for a run, then actually when push came to shove another ten minutes in bed seemed a better idea.
Maybe when you grew up you wanted to be an astronaut but then discovered that you weren't that good at physics and, developed vertigo as an adult in any case. Maybe you spent years doing one job but decided over time that it wasn't for you.
This is normal life, and perfectly rational behaviour. One of the most well-known 20th Century economists, John Maynard Keynes, summed up "when the facts change, I change my mind".
Although for the pedants among you (welcome along!), as with so many of the most quoted statements, it may actually have originally been said by someone else - a different august economist, Paul Samuelson - and might have been the slightly different phrase, "when my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do sir?"
Why then do politicians try to avoid a change of heart?
It's not just to try to escape occasional headlines about a "screaming U-turn", although that is part of the equation.
It's about judgement and authority too.
On an individual issue, doing the right thing because of a change of heart is better than pursuing a policy that will cause harm.
Beyond the subjective nature of the "right thing" there are also moments when the political momentum is pulling so strongly in one direction, it becomes inevitable.
Although ministers have for many days defended the decision not to pay for free school meals in England over the summer, highlighting other chunks of money given to councils to help; the involvement of a young, well-liked, articulate and high-profile figure Marcus Rashford made that defence less sustainable by the hour.
Tory MPs started telling their party handlers, the whips, in the last 24 hours they wouldn't vote for it.
And some senior figures in the party had started to question what the merits were of continuing a fight that would take a relatively small government cheque to fix, where the downside of sticking to the plan had terrible optics. Not giving in made it look, one MP feared, like the Tories have a "blind spot on poverty".
Another former minister said it was causing "widespread concern that Number 10 has bad political antennae".
So not that long after he sat down to chat to my excellent colleague Sally Nugent for BBC Breakfast, it was Marcus Rashford 1, Boris Johnson 0, and the government had rolled over.
Every now and then it can be important for governments to show they are listening.
And it's pretty clear that the political froth over "U-turns" causes much less fuss among the public. But the reality too is that frequent changes of heart can be damaging over time.
Each time there is a reversal, you can hear a little piece of a government's credibility being chipped away.
Every time something else is unpicked, that loyal backbencher, or loyal minister, loses a little of their own willingness to provide defence for the boss. And frequent concessions can give an impression to the wider public of a government that simply keeps getting things wrong.
When you put a cross in the box in the voting booth you are putting your faith in your favourite, or least worst option.
Politicians have to demonstrate to the public and their parties on a perpetual basis that they are heading in the right direction and broadly taking the correct path.
Too many U-turns and governments can end up going round and round in circles instead.
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A horse has been rescued from a muddy ditch by firefighters in Oxfordshire. | The owner said his animal was startled by something and ran into the ditch where it became trapped.
Fire crews in dry suits and a specialist rescue team managed to lift the distressed horse to safety at the farm in Nether Worton at Hempton, near Banbury, on Saturday.
The animal was checked over by a vet and had not suffered any serious injuries.
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A close ally of the prime minister is calling for the winding up of universal benefits to better off pensioners at the next election as he urges a shift to only policies which he believes will raise the productivity and competitiveness of the UK's workforce. | Allegra StrattonPolitical editor, BBC Newsnight@BBCAllegraon Twitter
Conservative MP Nick Boles is also urging a significant further scaling back of tax credits and housing benefit, and a re-examination of the "lazy sentimentalism" of the Sure Start programme of children's centres.
Mr Boles will appear on Newsnight on Monday to propose ways his party can best address the decline in living standards, faltering in the UK for the last decade.
Previewing ideas he will set out in full with a speech on Tuesday to the independent Resolution Foundation - whose work is devoted to diagnosing the problems affecting low to middle income earners - Mr Boles proposes a philosophical shift that should guide the next round of spending cuts due for 2013 or 2014.
He will say that only those tax and spending policies that can explicitly be seen to increase competitiveness of the UK workforce should be supported.
The ultra-modernising MP has worked alongside the current Conservative leadership since opposition.
He founded the think tank Policy Exchange - a petri dish of ideas for the Conservative leadership - and though the ideas in his speech to the Resolution Foundation are his own, he is close to many leading members of the government and suggests the next wave of Conservative ideas being contemplated as all parties consider further public spending cuts.
His proposal to re-evaluate the effectiveness of Sure Start will be uncomfortable for his Liberal Democrat coalition partners. Mr Boles is the parliamentary private secretary to Schools Minister Nick Gibb, in the education department which has oversight over Sure Start.
Mr Boles has devoted much energy to considering the issues affecting those on low to middle incomes as they struggle to keep their earning power up in the face of downward trends in earnings and living standards afflicting all developed economies.
In his speech Mr Boles will say: "It is my contention that politicians - of all parties - have barely begun to wrestle with the implications of the stagnation in living standards or confront the agonising choices that we will be forced to make in the decades to come."
He believes:
"If we are going to make any difference to the future productivity of working people and the competitiveness of our economy, we must abandon this soggy approach and demand that the programmes we invest in have a substantial and measurable impact. Otherwise, we should leave the money in the hands of taxpayers, from whence it came," Mr Boles will say.
"Productivity and competitiveness are my lodestars because I am convinced that the only way that we can restore sustained improvement in living standards is if most working people in Britain can command high and steadily increasing wages in the market place.
"It may be true that, for some, total household income has continued to grow because a previously unemployed partner has started work or one or both partners have increased the number of hours they work.
"It may also be true that increased financial transfers by government have helped many people on low pay enjoy rising incomes despite the stagnation in their wages. But it seems obvious to me that neither of these trends is sustainable - and, even if they were, we should not want them to be sustained.
"What will it do for our health and happiness (let alone that of our children) if the only way to achieve a growing income is to work longer hours? And which of us really believes that any government will be able to expand every year the amount of money it gives to those whose wages have stalled?" he goes on.
He will also challenge the Labour leadership to reveal which taxes they would raise to reconcile their public spending pledges with their declared commitment to deficit reduction.
Mr Boles becomes the most senior of modernisers around the prime minister to endorse the scrapping of benefits for the elderly, as well as proposing a delay in bringing in social care.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has said before that universal benefits for the elderly might have to go, but in a recent speech on welfare the prime minister ruled out ending them within this Parliament.
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NHS Highland has appointed a new chief executive. | Iain Stewart will take over the role from Elaine Mead, who was appointed the health board's chief executive in 2011 and left in December last year.
Originally from Stornoway in Lewis, Mr Stewart has worked in the public sector for more than 30 years including within the NHS in England and Wales.
His appointment comes amid an independent review into allegations of a "bullying culture" at NHS Highland.
The health board is also dealing with a projected deficit of £19.9m for 2018-19.
NHS Highland covers the Highlands and Argyll and Bute.
Dr Gregor Smith, the deputy chief medical officer for Scotland, will be NHS Highland's interim chief executive until Mr Stewart's arrival later this year.
'Critical leadership role'
Mr Stewart said he was looking forward to taking up his new role.
He said: "I have provided senior operational and transformational leadership to various NHS organisations, managing multiple acute hospitals, mental health, community and strategic commissioning throughout England and North Wales.
"It is now time for me to consolidate these experiences and, together, I believe we can continue to build a world class health and social care service for the north of Scotland."
Health Secretary Jeane Freeman has welcomed Mr Stewart's appointment.
She said: "He has important experience in the public sector, including the health service, and I wish him well in this critical leadership role.
"The priority, as always across NHS Scotland, is patient care, and I am confident that under Iain Stewart's leadership, people across the Highlands will receive the excellent level of service they deserve."
NHS Highland chairman David Alston said: "I am delighted that Iain has accepted this appointment. He brings a passion for the NHS and for improvement, and a personal commitment to the Highlands and its people."
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Imagine spending a few weeks at a chateau in France, six months at a beautiful beach house in the Caribbean, or a weekend at a townhouse in Scotland - and paying absolutely nothing. | By Maleen SaeedBusiness reporter, BBC News
This could be a reality by getting a lucky draw when house-sitting.
The cost of renting a home in England and Wales rose to near-record levels in June, with the average monthly rent totalling £718.
Moreover, the tough economic climate means that more and more people are trying to find unique ways to save money and house-sitting is becoming an increasingly popular one.
'Budget option'
Andy Peck runs Trustedhousesitters.com which matches homeowners and house-sitters all around the world.
He says he has seen a 30% increase every month in the number of people using his site, from pet owners wanting to get away for a holiday to people looking for a cheap way to live.
"For homeowners it is a cheaper option than sending your pet to the kennels when on you're holiday," he says.
"For those wanting to travel the world on a budget it is a good option. It is quite therapeutic looking after a pet sometimes."
Kristie West house-sits all over the UK. At present, she is living in a four-storey luxury home in west London. She estimates that she has saved around £12,000 a year thanks to her current lifestyle
"I do not pay any rent or any bills. They can be quite crippling as you can easily spend £1,000 a month so not having that expense is brilliant and I get to stay in some beautiful places," she says.
"I also have my own business and sometimes that is really busy, but sometimes it is quiet, so I get to focus on my business without worrying about stressing to pay the rent."
Insurance implications
Other than a yearly joining fee of £39, Mr Peck's website, and others like it, are free to use.
There are also agencies available that charge homeowners up to £50 a day for reference and diligence checks. They can also arrange for homeowners to pay their house-sitters a small fee of around £10 to £20 a day.
Personal finance commentator Jasmine Birtles says using an agency can have its advantages if something goes wrong.
"With an agency you have a central body. If you are a homeowner, you have someone to complain to," she says.
"If you are the house-sitter, you also have someone to complain to and they can adjudicate.
"If you have done it through a free website, it is ultimately up to you. I would recommend that both sides sign some form of contract."
She says there are also potential difficulties surrounding insurance, to cover any injury that a house-sitter might suffer in the house.
"It is a good idea to take out landlord's insurance, for example, as it is a public liability insurance," he says.
"It is also a good idea to mention to your insurance company that you have got someone staying in your home, but generally speaking the insurers are not too concerned about that because everybody has guests staying."
House-sitting is not for everyone. Looking after animals requires a lot of work, and not everyone has the flexibility to move around.
Kristie West says the unpredictable lifestyle suits her needs. But she says the only downside is saying goodbye to the pets she has been looking after.
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Anna came to London from Romania intending to study, but first she needed to earn some money. She took temporary jobs - waitressing, cleaning, maths tutoring. Then one day in March 2011 she was snatched off the street, flown to Ireland and put through nine months of hell. | By Sarah McDermottBBC World Service
Anna was nearly home. There was just enough time to nip inside and eat lunch before leaving for her next cleaning job. She was wearing headphones and listening to Beyoncé singing I Was Here as she walked down the street in Wood Green, north London. She was just a few doors away.
She reached into her bag to pull out her keys when suddenly someone grabbed her by the neck from behind, covered her mouth, and dragged into the back of a dark red car.
There were three of them, two men and a woman. They were slapping her, punching her, and screaming threats in Romanian. Her ears were ringing. The woman in the passenger seat grabbed her bag and pulled the glasses from her face. If she didn't do what they told her, they shouted, her family in Romania would be killed.
"I didn't know what was happening or where they were taking me," Anna says. "I was imagining everything - from organ harvesting or prostitution, to being killed, to God knows what."
The woman was going through her bag, looking in her wallet, scrolling through the recent calls and Facebook friends on her phone, looking at her papers. Her passport was there - she carried it everywhere after her previous one was stolen from her room.
Anna could see there was no point trying to escape from the car, but when they arrived at an airport and she was left alone with just one of the men, she began to wonder if this was her chance. Could she appeal to airport staff for help?
"It's hard to scream when you feel so threatened," she says.
"They had my papers, they knew where my mum was, they knew everything about me."
It was a risk she couldn't bring herself to take.
Watch Doing Money, a drama based on Anna's story, at 21:00 on BBC Two, on Monday 5 November
Viewers in the UK can catch up later online
Watch the trailers here
At the check-in desk, she was crying and her face was red, but the woman behind the counter didn't seem to notice. When the man presented their passports, she just smiled and handed them boarding cards.
Trying to pretend they were a couple, he rushed Anna through security to the boarding gates, and took seats right at the back of the plane. He told her not to move, not to scream and not to cry, or he would kill her.
Anna heard the captain announce that they were flying to an airport in Ireland - she'd never heard of it. Her face was wet with tears as she walked off the plane, but like the woman at the check-in desk the air stewardess simply smiled.
This time Anna had decided that once in the airport she would run, but it turned out to be no bigger than a bus station and two more Romanian men were waiting for them.
The fat one reached out for her hand, smiled and said, "At least this one looks better." It was then that she realised why she had been kidnapped.
"I knew, at that point, that I was going to be sold," she says.
The men drove her to a dirty flat, upstairs, not far from a bookies. The car broke down on the way.
Inside, the blinds were closed and the air smelled of alcohol, cigarettes and sweat.
Men smoked and looked at laptops in the living room. On the table more than a dozen mobile phones rang, buzzed and vibrated constantly, while girls wearing little or nothing came and went between rooms.
Anna's clothes were ripped from her body by a woman wearing a red robe and flip flops, assisted by some of the men. And from then on she was brutalised.
Pictures were taken of her in underwear in front of a red satin sheet pinned to the wall, so that she could be advertised on the internet. She was given more names than she can remember - she was Natalia, Lara, Rachel, Ruby. She was 18, 19, and 20, from Latvia, Poland, or Hungary.
She was then forced to have sex with thousands of men. She didn't see daylight for months. She was only allowed to sleep when there were no clients but they came round the clock - up to 20 of them per day. Some days there was no food, other days maybe a slice of bread or someone's leftovers.
Deprived of food and sleep, and constantly abused, she lost weight fast and her brain stopped working properly.
Customers paid 80-100 euros for half an hour, or 160-200 euros for an hour. Some left Anna bleeding, or unable to stand, or in so much pain that she thought she must be close to death.
Others would ask her if she knew where she was, if she'd been out to hear the traditional music in the pubs, if she'd visited the local beauty spots.
But she says they knew that she and the other girls were held against their will.
"They knew that we were kept there," she says. "They knew, but they didn't care."
It was obvious from the bruises which covered every inch of Anna's body - fresh ones appearing every day where older ones were beginning to fade away - and it didn't bother them.
She hated them all.
Find out more
Anna spoke to Jo Fidgen on Outlook on the BBC World Service
You can listen again here
In July, four months into Anna's captivity, the races were on and the phones were ringing more than ever. Then one day the police crashed into the flat and arrested all the girls. Mysteriously, the men and the woman who ran the show, had disappeared in advance with the laptops and most of the cash. Anna wondered how they had known the police were coming.
The police took pictures of the flat, of the used condoms and the underwear and told Anna and the other three trafficked women to get dressed. She told them that they didn't have any clothes and that they were being held there against their will.
"You could clearly see there were signs that we had no power over anything - no clothes, no identity papers," she says. "I tried to tell them, nobody listened."
She was glad to be arrested, though. She felt sure the police would eventually realise that they were victims. But still they didn't listen.
The four women spent the night in a cell and were taken to court the following morning. A solicitor explained there would be a brief hearing, they would be charged with running a brothel, fined, and freed a few hours later. It wasn't a big deal, he said. It was just part of the routine when the races were on - sex workers and sometimes pimps were arrested and released again.
When the women left the court Anna had an impulse to run, though she knew she had nowhere to go and no money. She was given no chance, anyway - her captors were waiting for them outside, holding the car doors open.
In Romania her mother read the headlines about the young women running a brothel in Ireland, her own daughter's name among them.
By that stage she'd already seen the photos the men had posted on Anna's Facebook account too - images of her naked or in ill-fitting lingerie, covered in bruises. Alongside them were comments in which Anna boasted about her new life and all the money she was making as a sex worker in Ireland. More lies, typed out by the men on their laptops.
Not only had her mother seen these photographs, the neighbours had seen them, Anna's friends had seen them. None knew that she had been trafficked and was being held against her will.
At first, her mother had tried to do something. But when she called her daughter there was never any answer.
"My mum went to the police in Romania," Anna says. "But they said, 'She's over the age of consent and she's out of the country, so she can do whatever she wants.'"
Eventually, Facebook deleted her account because of the indecent images and if anyone looked for her on social media it would have seemed that she no longer existed.
After the police raid, the four girls were moved around a lot, staying in different cities in different flats and hotels. But their lives remained as bad as ever - they continued to be abused at all times of day and night. Anna didn't think her situation could get any worse until she overheard her tormentors making plans to take her to the Middle East. She had to get away.
"I still didn't really know exactly where I was," she says. "But I knew that I had a better chance of escaping from Belfast, or Dublin, or wherever they had me, than escaping from somewhere in the Middle East."
She took the woman's flip flops and opened the door. She had to go very quickly and very quietly. She hadn't run or properly stretched the muscles in her legs for months, but now she had to move fast.
What saved her was the fact that men occasionally asked for one of the women to be taken to them, rather than visiting the flat where they were held.
Anna found these call-outs terrifying.
"You didn't know what crazy person was waiting for you or what they would do to you," she says.
"But any time I was out of that flat I would make mental maps of where I was. While they were transferring us from one point to another I would form maps in my mind - remembering the buildings, the street signs, and the things that we passed."
There was also one man - Andy, a convicted drug dealer on a tag - who never wanted to have sex, only to talk. A friend of his was trying to break into the brothel-keeping business and he wanted information.
"I had to gamble at that point," Anna says. "I didn't trust him, but he offered me a place where I could hide."
Relying on her incomplete mental map, Anna made it to Andy's address, only there was no answer. There was nothing to do but wait and hope that the pimps would not find her.
The gamble paid off. Andy had to return before midnight because of his tag. And he let her stay.
One of the first things Anna did was to call her mother.
The phone rang, and her mother's partner answered. As soon as he realised who was calling he began urging her never to call again, and never to visit. They'd received so many threats from the pimps and traffickers, her mother was now terrified, he said.
"So I said to him, 'OK, I'll make it easy for you. If anybody rings you and threatens you just tell them that I'm dead to you and to my mum,'" Anna says.
He hung up on her.
At this point, despite having no papers or passport, and despite her experience of the brothel raid - when she had been prosecuted instead of rescued - Anna decided to contact the police. And this time, fortunately, they listened to her.
It turned out that Anna was now in Northern Ireland, and she was told to attend a rendezvous with a senior policeman in a coffee shop.
"He took one of those white paper napkins and asked me to write down the names of the people who did this to me on it," she says.
When she pushed it back to him across the table she could see that he was shocked. He'd been looking for those people for years, he said.
A two-year investigation followed. Eventually Anna's former captors were arrested, but she was so worried for her own safety and her mother's that she decided she couldn't testify against them in court.
Another girl she'd known from the flat did give evidence, though, and the gang were convicted of human trafficking, controlling prostitution and money laundering in Northern Ireland.
Each of them was sentenced to two years. They served six months in custody before they were sentenced, then eight months in prison after being convicted, with the remainder spent on supervised licence.
They had already served two years in a Swedish prison on the same set of offences involving one of the same victims.
"I was happy that they were arrested but I wasn't happy about the sentences," she says.
"I guess nothing in this life is fair."
Where to get help
If you suspect someone is a victim of human trafficking, contact the police - call 999 if it's an emergency, or 101 if it's not urgent.
If you'd prefer to stay anonymous, call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
If you want confidential advice about trafficking before calling the police, there are a number of specialist organisations you can talk to:
The Modern Slavery helpline 0800 0121 700, is open 24 hours a day.
If you think a child is in danger of trafficking you can contact the the NSPCC's helpline 0808 8005 000.
Later, with other women, Anna gave testimony to the Unionist politician, Lord Morrow, who had become so concerned about the increasing number of stories he heard about children and adults forced to work in brothels, farms and factories that he put forward a new bill to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
The Human Trafficking and Exploitation Act, passed in 2015, made Northern Ireland the first and only place in the UK where the act of buying sex is a crime. The act of selling sex, by contrast, was decriminalised.
Anna takes satisfaction from her role in this process.
"This law helps the victim and it criminalises the buyer and the trafficker," she says. "So it destroys the ring."
If even a small percentage of the men who used to pay for sex are now discouraged from doing so, that's still a success, Anna argues.
And people like her who are trafficked can live without fear, she says, because instead of being criminalised for being involved in prostitution, they're now more likely to benefit from support.
In 2017, it also became illegal to buy sex in the Republic of Ireland, where Anna's horrific ordeal began.
Her nine months in sexual slavery have left her permanently injured. Men damaged her body in the places where they penetrated her. Her lower back and knees constantly ache, and there's a patch at the back of her head where her hair stopped growing because it was pulled out so many times.
She suffers from terrifying flashbacks. Sometimes she cannot sleep, and when she does sleep she has nightmares. And sometimes she still smells that smell, the alcohol, mixed with the cigarettes and the sweat, the semen, and the breath of her abusers.
But she's looking forward now. She shopped the people who sold her body, she's helped change the law, and after years of not even speaking, her relationship with her mother is good.
"Me and my mum had to go on a really long journey to get her to understand what happened to me," she says. "She had to learn from me and I had to learn from her, but now we are fine."
Anna started a degree course in the UK but had to drop out because she couldn't afford the fees and didn't qualify for any funding. She now has a job in hospitality and it's going well.
"I would love with all my heart to return to my studies at some point," she says. "But for now I have to work, work, work, and keep focused."
All names have been changed.
Illustrations by Katie Horwich.
Slave, published by Ebury Press, is out now.
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Pauline Dakin's childhood in Canada in the 1970s was full of secrets, disruption and unpleasant surprises. She wasn't allowed to talk about her family life with anyone - and it wasn't until she was 23 that she was told why.
Read: 'The story of a weird world I was warned never to tell'
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Three years after the brutal gang rape - and subsequent death - of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a bus in the Indian capital, one of her rapists - a minor at the time of the crime - is set to be freed. But with public outrage growing over his release, he will be handed over to a charity for his protection and rehabilitation, writes the BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi. | The crime caused global outrage and the young woman's attackers are among the most hated men in India.
As the victim - who can't be named under Indian laws - lay in hospital fighting for her life, the horrific details of the assault began to emerge, with some reports claiming that the juvenile had been the most brutal.
There were calls to try him as an adult, with many saying his punishment should be commensurate with his crime.
The teenager was convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to three years in a reform facility, the maximum term possible for a juvenile in India.
Case timeline
16 December 2012: A 23-year-old physiotherapy student is gang-raped by six men on a bus in Delhi, her male friend is beaten up and the pair are thrown out after the brutal assault
17 December: Key accused Ram Singh, the bus driver, is arrested. Over the next few days, his brother Mukesh Singh, gym instructor Vinay Sharma, fruit seller Pawan Gupta, a helper on the bus Akshay Thakur, and the 17-year-old juvenile, who cannot be named, are arrested.
29 December: The victim dies in hospital in Singapore from injuries sustained during the assault; body flown back to Delhi
30 December: Cremated in Delhi under tight police security
11 March 2013: Ram Singh dies in Tihar jail; police say he hanged himself, but defence lawyers and his family allege he was murdered
31 August: The juvenile is found guilty and sentenced to three years in a reform facility
13 September: The four adult defendants are convicted and given the death penalty by the trial court
13 March 2014: The Delhi high court confirms the death sentence
March - June: The convicts appeal in the Supreme Court and the death sentences are put on hold until the court takes a decision
During his trial, it was never proved that the teenager was any more brutal than the others, but this fact has been ignored by most people, stunned by the brutality heaped on the victim.
Now with the date for his release nearing, public resentment is running high - many people I spoke to in the past few days said they wanted to "hang him from the nearest pole" or "organise a public lynching" for him. The more lenient said they wanted to see him locked up in a jail forever and forgotten.
The victim's parents have petitioned the National Human Rights Commission to stop his release and a BJP politician has appealed to the Delhi high court to ensure that he is not freed until it is proved that "he has reformed and is not a menace to society".
The authorities are tight-lipped about their plans for him, but the BBC has learnt from reliable sources that arrangements have been made to hand him over to a non-governmental organisation for rehabilitation.
An official at the juvenile home in Delhi's Majnu Ka Tila area, where the young man - he's now 20 - has been lodged for the past three years, told the BBC he must be given another chance.
"The boy is alright. He has expressed remorse for his actions. He said he made a mistake. He was a mere child at the time of the crime. I asked him why he did what he did. He said he was staying with adults and wanted to prove to them that he could do what they could do," the official said.
When he was brought to the remand home on 18 December 2012 the teenager was suffering from trauma and underwent surgery to remove his appendix at a government hospital a week later, the official said.
During his stay at the home - parts of which were in solitary confinement - he was assigned tutors who taught him basic Hindi, English and Maths and the official said "he can now sign his name in English and Hindi".
He was also taught to cook, how to stitch clothes and given guitar lessons.
"He's a good cook, he can make really nice potato chops [patties], matar paneer [peas and cottage cheese curry] and rajma [kidney beans]. He's also developed as a tailor who can do a really good job stitching pants and shirts," the official said.
"Once he's free, he can set up a tea stall or work as a tailor. I think we have succeeded a fair bit in moulding him and he should be given a chance to start over," he added.
In the weeks and months after the crime, the teenager, who came from an impoverished family in rural Uttar Pradesh, told shelter officials that he worried about his family and wanted to return home once released.
"But he has access to television and he has been watching the news, he is aware of the negative sentiments against him and is fearful for his life," a child rights activist who met him recently told the BBC. "The media has turned him into a monster, a demon, they said he pulled out the victim's intestines."
In recent days, there have been media reports suggesting he may now be turning jihadi.
Officials and activists say all this hype, the vitriolic media coverage - mostly based on unsubstantiated leaks - has created a distorted image in the minds of most people, and they fear he will not be safe outside. So a plan is being worked out to ensure his identity remains a secret.
"Under the law, the identity of a juvenile offender has to be protected. An individual care plan has to be worked out for him and he has to be rehabilitated," child rights activist Bharti Ali told the BBC.
"His name can never be revealed, nor can his photograph be shown. And his records have to be destroyed after a maximum of seven years," Ms Ali added.
The biggest problem the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) is facing is that his identity is already partially revealed - in the weeks after the crime and again with his release becoming imminent - journalists have converged on his family home.
"But the board can issue an injunction, putting a ban on the media from carrying any report which could further reveal his identity," Ms Ali said.
In India, there's no precedent for "after care" for children in conflict with law - it's been used largely for children who have no families and need care. But countries around the world have used it successfully and activists say India will need to draw on their experience to deal with this case.
It may not be easy - the highly competitive and rapacious Indian media will go to any length to find him. But, Ms Ali says, it must be done.
"You can't tell him that he can't lead another life, that he can only be a criminal. As a society we must do every thing to rehabilitate him and give him another chance."
Other notorious child killers
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Next weekend, the World Cup Final takes place in Seoul in front of 60,000 spectators and a huge global TV audience. No, I'm not confused and this is not football. The contest in question pits Korea's Samsung White against China's Star Horn Royal Club and what they are playing is a video game called League of Legends. | Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter
E-sports, where game play is watched by audiences in stadiums and on TV, have been big business in the Far East for more than a decade. But now, as I found out in a report for Friday's World at One on Radio 4, the phenomenon is really taking off in Britain.
If UK e-sports have an Alex Ferguson equivalent then it's Michael O'Dell - but then as the owner and manager of Team Dignitas he's also the sport's Roman Abramovich. O'Dell was once a semi-professional games player himself, then built a team of 58 professional players based around the world. "It's gone from playing in our bedrooms, earning twenty quid in a tournament - and we were happy - to now where we could be earning a million dollars in a tournament, and that's not just one a year, there are a lot of tournaments with a lot of prize money." On top of that, the team has lucrative sponsorship and merchandise deals.
He still lives in a modest home in Surrey with an office in the back garden from where he keeps tabs on his players. We watched as his star player Michael Santana - a gaming celebrity who goes by the name "Imaqtpie" - talked his fans through a session of League of Legends from the Team Dignitas Los Angeles base.
Streaming on Twitch TV he had attracted an audience of more than 14,000 fans just to watch him practice. Even between tournaments, that earns Imaqtpie a lot of money, upwards of ten thousand pounds a month just from the adverts that appear on his Twitch channel.
It is the huge popularity of San Francisco based Twitch, recently acquired by the online retailer Amazon, that has helped fuel the growth of esports around the world. The service allows anyone, amateur or professional, to become a broadcaster, talking to their friends or a global audience as they play games.
Jon "Carnage" - his streaming name on Twitch - started as just one performer on the channel and is now director of content. He says it is changing television:"For so many years TV has just been one-sided where you view a show as opposed to being a part of a show. Twitch bridges that gap between you and the host - you can talk directly to them."
I caught up with Mr Carnage at London's EGX games show, where Twitch had a sizeable operation. In another corner of the Earl's Court exhibition centre I came across a rather smaller business which hopes to be Britain's biggest e-sports promoter.
Gfinity had put on a more modest League of Legends contest than the one taking place in Seoul, with amateur teams and a couple of commentators trying to whip up some excitement amongst the small crowd of onlookers. But Neville Upton, who runs Gfinity, says the potential in the UK is massive: "You've got 16 million people playing games. What's interesting is that they're not just playing, they like watching as well. We had over eight million watching online during our recent tournament at the Copper Box on the Olympic Park."
And for the first time teenage gamers in the UK are wondering whether they might make careers as professional gamers. The latest signing at Team Dignitas is 17-year-old James "Greensheep" Luo from Blackpool. Michael O'Dell spotted him playing a relatively new game called Hearthstone and winning a tournament in Europe.
As I watch James playing on his Twitch channel (in front of a tiny crowd compared to those watching Imaqtpie) a sign pops up saying $100 (£62) has been donated. Michael O'Dell explains that well-wishers often donate money to favourite gamers just to show their appreciation of their talent.
James isn't making a living from games yet - in fact he's still at school and puts in hours of practice after finishing his homework. "I just practice, practice practice, learn more about the game and try to get better," he tells me. "I think every gamer's ambition is to make this their full time job. I guess that's my dream as well."
British players are yet to join the e-sports elite who can earn millions. But who knows - maybe in a few years time someone like James Luo will be competing in an e-sports World Cup final in front of a huge global audience. That may be far-fetched - then again it might be more likely than seeing our footballers make it to a final.
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Six young Russians became so angry about police brutality in their area that they took up arms to fight back. Lucy Ash asks what motivated the group and why so many ordinary Russians supported their extreme actions. | By Lucy AshBBC News, Vladivostok, Russia
Vladimir Savchenko takes me into his son Roman's bedroom to show me his school photographs and collection of toys neatly arranged on a shelf.
"He won lots of prizes in athletics," says Mr Savchenko, fingering a clutch of medals hanging on the wall.
"But he liked kick-boxing best."
The 17-year-old is now behind bars awaiting trial. He is the youngest of the six men who declared war against law enforcement officials this year. The group, which called itself the "Primorsky Partisans", became notorious across Russia.
In a video, made while they were hiding in the forest, the young men wear army fatigues and hold guns. Stripped to the waist, Alexander Kovtun, the group's leader, directly addresses the police:
"This is not some spontaneous act," he says. "No. We planned it and did it on purpose, to kill you gangsters, because you are the real criminals. You provide cover for drug-trafficking, prostitution and the theft of wood from our forests."
The young men come from the remote village of Kirovsky in Russia's Primorye, or Maritime, region near the Chinese border. It is seven time zones east of Moscow.
I went there to meet their families and to try to discover why the youths took the law into their own hands.
Police brutality
The Savchenko family live in a decrepit block of flats with rusting balconies and rubbish-choked stairways. Over coffee, Roman's father, a truck driver, complains about the large bribes he has to pay to stop officers from confiscating his driving licence.
Nine years ago, his elder son Valentin died in a police station after getting involved in a street fight.
Then, earlier this year, Roman was arrested and accused of stealing a lawn-mower. Mr Savchenko denies his son was involved but claims the police tried to beat him into confessing the crime.
"They roughed him up so badly that he joined the group of other young guys seeking revenge on the police."
One of them was Roman's school friend Andrei Sukhorada. From the age of 13, the police would arrest the boys every time there was trouble in the village, according to Andrei's sister Natasha.
"They would charge them with all sorts of crimes," she says. "They tortured them by putting black plastic bags over their heads and blowing cigarette smoke into them."
The breaking point came in 2008 when a fight broke out at a disco. Natasha says Andrei was hurt and taken to hospital but when he came out he was abducted by local police, driven into the forest and beaten.
She says he was stripped of his clothes and left to die in sub-zero temperatures 10km (six miles) from the village. Andrei survived, but the family claims its complaint to the prosecutor was ignored.
In a building made of white breeze-blocks, I meet the acting head of the police station, Major Vasily Skiba. He denies all the allegations made by the families of the group about beatings by his officers and says all complaints from the public get investigated.
Then he switches on his computer, asks for my USB memory stick and transfers some video clips. They seem to show the young men driving round the town throwing snowballs and shouting abuse. They also yell "Allahu Akbar!" - Arabic for "God is great!"
'Dirty acts'
But if Andrei and his friends really were nationalistic skinheads, as some suggest, why were they saluting Islamist fighters? Could it be a sign that they were angry enough about police abuse to side with anyone who opposes the Russian state?
The group struck for the first time in February in the regional capital, Vladivostok, when the members killed a traffic policeman.
Three months later, they stabbed another policeman to death, and attacked police cars, injuring more officers.
The authorities launched a manhunt with tanks and helicopters. They tracked the groups down to a flat on the Chinese border.
Andrei Sukhorada and his friend Aleksandr Sladkikh died in a shootout with police. The remaining two were captured and are facing life in prison.
In the prosecutor's office in Vladivostok, spokeswoman Avrora Rimskaya condemns the group.
"We cannot justify the acts of people which go against society," she says. "No matter how loud their slogans are. They say loud words but commit dirty acts."
Public support
But to the authorities' disgust, many ordinary Russians back the "Primorsky Partisans". Graffiti across the city reads "Glory to the Partisans" and "Partisans your courage will not be forgotten".
On the seafront, a young sailor tells me the police deserved the treatment they got and added that it "was a brave thing for six guys to do".
At the car market, another young man is blunter. "They did the right thing - the police are just legalised bandits," he says. In Moscow, 71% of callers to a popular radio station supported the description of the youngsters as "Robin Hoods".
Two-thirds of Russians fear the police, according to the country's leading opinion pollster, the Levada Centre. Brutality is commonplace and corruption endemic.
President Dmitry Medvedev has promised to clean up the force with a police reform bill now going through parliament. Critics say it is more about preventing whistle-blowing than genuine change.
Mikhail Grishankov, chairman of the parliamentary security committee, sighs noisily when asked about the group.
"They are bandits and my opinion is, of course, negative, but you have to ask why it happened," he says.
Even this former KGB officer who is loyal to the Kremlin admits that the public distrusts the people who are supposed to protect them.
"The support they got shows society has lost trust in the police."
You can listen to Lucy Ash's full report inCrossing Continentson BBC Radio 4 at 1100 GMT on Thursday 25 November and 2030 GMT on Monday 29 November. You can also listen via theBBC iPlayeror download thepodcast.
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Lee Kuan Yew has died at the age of 91. Singapore's elder statesman, he is widely viewed as the man who brought the city-state into the modern era and turned it into a wealthy business hub. The BBC looks at how the news of his death unfolded.
| Lee Kuan Yew was admitted to hospital in early February with pneumonia and was later placed on life support. In the early hours of Monday, a statement from the prime minister's office confirmed his death.
The announcement was not unexpected. Mr Lee's condition had deteriorated in recent days. People had begun leaving tributes and messages of support outside the Singapore General Hospital, where he was being treated, and at a community centre in his local constituency.
One of the first to offer his condolences was UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. In a statement, he described Mr Lee as a "legendary figure in Asia, widely respected for his strong leadership and statesmanship".
Within hours, the Facebook page of Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong - who is Lee Kuan Yew's son - was flooded with messages of condolence. "Thank you Mr Lee Kuan Yew for the Singapore we now have," wrote one man. "Don't worry. Singapore will continue to do well, in the way you have worked hard all your life ensuring that," wrote another. At the hospital, meanwhile, Lawrence Hee, 68, said: "I'm very sad. He created Singapore."
Sayeed Hussain, 59, with his wife Sharmin, 44, son Sanerm, 13, and daughter Samira, 16, came to the hospital as a family before the children went to school. "He was a great leader and role model. He did a lot for us, helped to shape a multi-racial and multi-cultural Singapore. We wanted to start our day with no regrets so we came here to pay our respects," Mr Sayeed said.
In Washington, US President Barack Obama spoke of a "true giant of history who will be remembered for generations to come as the father of modern Singapore and as one the great strategists of Asian affairs". The two men met in Washington DC in 2009. Other leaders, past and present, also paid tribute, including former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
As the sun rose, flags were lowered to half mast at government buildings, including this one here at parliament. A state funeral is to be held on 29 March, the government said.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak - leader of the nation from which Singapore was expelled 50 years ago - tweeted his condolences to Mr Lee's son.
British Prime Minister David Cameron also released a statement, saying: "[Former British PM] Lady [Margaret] Thatcher once said that there was no prime minister she admired more than Mr Lee for 'the strength of his convictions, the clarity of his views, the directness of his speech and his vision of the way ahead'."
Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch said Mr Lee's role in Singapore's economic development was undeniable but came with a "significant cost to human rights".
In a statement on Facebook, the party Mr Lee founded - the People's Action Party - praised his "incalculable contributions to Singapore". President Tony Tan described Mr Lee as "the architect of our modern republic". And in an emotional televised address, Lee Hsien Loong - his son and the current prime minister - said: "We won't see another man like him. To many Singaporeans, and indeed others too, Lee Kuan Yew was Singapore."
Ong Choo Bee, 71, a clerk, visited a tribute area at Singapore General Hospital. "I think we'll have to wait a few hundred years before Singapore can have another leader like Lee Kuan Yew. But he's left a good legacy and a strong government."
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was an ally of Lee Kuan Yew. "He was not at all a charmer - he was not a flatterer. He had developed his point of view. He would present it with great intelligence," he told the BBC.
Lee Kuan Yew forged strong ties with China, including a friendship with leader Deng Xiaoping, and met successive presidents including Hu Jintao (below). A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman called him "a uniquely influential statesman in Asia and a strategist boasting oriental values and international vision".
At the Istana, the prime minister's office, a steady stream of people arrived bringing bouquets and condolence cards, reported the BBC's Tessa Wong. A tented area has been set up for people to write messages and post them on boards. Some of the well-wishers were in tears, others wore grim expressions.
"Dearest Mr Lee, you are our Superman. Superman never dies. Forever in your debt," read one message. Another simply says: "Thank you for your contributions to Singapore."
After midday, a hearse carrying Mr Lee's body arrived at the Istana. A period of national mourning has been declared from 23-29 March and for several of those days Mr Lee's body will lie in state at parliament house so the public can pay their respects.
Singapore's main opposition Workers' Party turned its Facebook cover page black. It was founded by JB Jeyaretnam, the city-state's first opposition MP who ended up financially ruined because of court cases brought by the PAP. Its leader, Low Thia Khiang, said in a condolence letter that Mr Lee's death marked the end of an era in Singapore's history.
Papers and broadcast media were dominated by his death. The Straits Times, Singapore's leading daily, called Lee Kuan Yew the "man most instrumental in shaping Singapore".
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A woman's body is found in London. DNA turns up a hit, yet the suspect apparently died weeks before the alleged victim. Here, forensic scientist Dr Mike Silverman tells the story of one of the strangest cases of his career. | It was a real-life mystery that could have come straight from the pages of a modern-day detective novel.
A woman had been brutally murdered in London and biological material had been found under her fingernails, possibly indicating that she might have scratched her attacker just before she died.
A sample of the material was analysed and results compared with the National DNA database and quickly came back with a positive match.
The problem was, the "hit" identified a woman who had herself been murdered - a full three weeks before the death of her alleged "victim".
The killings had taken place in different areas of the capital and were being investigated by separate teams of detectives.
With no sign of a connection between the two women and nothing to suggest they had ever met, the most "likely" scenario was that the samples had been mixed-up or contaminated at the one obvious place that they had come together - the forensic laboratory. A complaint was made by the senior investigating officer.
It was 1997 and I was the national account manager for the Forensic Science Service at the time, so it was my responsibility to find out if a mistake had been made at the laboratory.
My first thought was that perhaps the second victim's fingernail clipping had been mislabelled and had actually come from the first victim all along. As soon as I started to look at the samples, I could see this wasn't the case.
The victim had painted her nails with a distinctive leopard skin pattern and the cuttings that had been taken bore the exact same pattern. There was no doubt that they were the correct ones.
I then checked through the laboratory records to see if there was any way the samples could have been accidentally mixed-up.
This too turned out to be a non-starter as the two sets of samples had never been out of the lab's exhibit store at the same time. In any event, several weeks had passed between the analysis of the first and second clippings and different members of staff had been involved.
Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, I decided to look more closely at how the clippings themselves had come to be collected and discovered that both bodies had undergone an autopsy at the same mortuary, though they had arrived there several weeks apart.
Forensic autopsies - those carried out in the case of murder or suspicious death - are far more detailed and involved than standard, non-criminal autopsies. Among other examinations, blood and organ samples are collected for toxicological testing, stomach contents are collected and analysed and fingernails are scraped and clipped.
It was while I was examining the mortuary records that I came across a possible answer. It transpired that the body of the first murder victim had been kept in the freezer for several weeks while the police carried out their initial investigation.
It had been removed from the freezer to allow the pathologist to take additional nail clippings the day before the body of the second murder victim had arrived at the mortuary.
The following day, the same pair of scissors had been used to cut the nails of the second murder victim. Although the scissors had been cleaned between uses, I couldn't help but wonder whether sufficient genetic material had survived the cleaning process to transfer onto the second victim's nails and then produce a DNA profile in the subsequent analysis.
I had started my career in forensic science during the late 1970s and back then, the idea of being able to identify someone from a few tiny drops of blood seemed like something out of science fiction.
In those early days, we rarely wore protective clothing at crime scenes or worried about potential contamination because there was no method to analyse any biological material that was as small as the eye could see.
Today, everyone entering a crime scene has to don a new, clean paper over-suit and overshoes as well as gloves since DNA retrieval techniques are now so sensitive that simply lightly touching an object - such as a door knob or knife handle - can leave enough of a trace to carry out a successful DNA analysis.
In 1997, the time of the mystery murder, DNA profiling was only a few years old and, as I was about to discover, the technology was improving so quickly that previously unforeseen problems were beginning to occur.
I arranged for the nail scissors from the mortuary to be analysed and discovered not two but three separate DNA profiles were present. Further examination found DNA contamination on several other mortuary instruments but it was only ever going to present a problem when it came to fingernail scissors.
The autopsy knives, for example, were found to have traces of DNA of several different people on them, but because incisions were never sampled for DNA, cross contamination was not an issue.
I immediately sent out an urgent memo to all coroners, mortuaries and forensic pathologists in the country, highlighting the problem and suggesting that, in the future, all nail clippings should be taken with disposable scissors and that the scissors should then be placed in the evidence bag with the nail clippings to confirm they had only been used once. It's a system that remains in place to this day.
Modern DNA analysis is now so sensitive that contamination is a major issue, with the potential to send criminal investigations spiralling off in the wrong direction.
In Germany in 2007, traces of DNA belonging to an unknown female were found at the scene of the murder of a police officer.
When run through the German database, identical DNA was found to have been present at the scene of five other murders in Germany and France, along with several burglaries and car thefts. In total, the woman's DNA was found at 40 separate crime scenes.
The German authorities spent two years and thousands of hours searching for the culprit, only to discover that the DNA had in fact been present on the swabs the crime scene investigators had been using to collect their samples. The swabs had been accidentally contaminated by a woman working at the factory that produced them.
For years DNA has been seen as the ultimate crime-fighting weapon with successful convictions arising from ever smaller traces, but in many ways DNA analysis has become a victim of its own success.
Now that we have the ability to create a DNA profile from just a few human cells, traces can be found almost everywhere.
But as we are all depositing DNA everywhere we go, the significance of finding and analysing these traces will become increasingly open to interpretation unless there is sufficient DNA material present to eliminate the possibility of secondary contact or cross-contamination, or additional evidence supporting direct involvement in the crime.
Dr Mike Silverman is the author of Written In Blood, a history of forensic science.
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Aberdeen Airport is rebranding itself as Aberdeen International. | The change comes after the terminal's parent company dropped the name BAA and allowed its individual airports to operate more independently.
It is hoped the new title will help the airport's drive to expand its roster of destinations - particularly for holidaymakers.
Airport managing director Derek Provan said: "This is an exciting time for the airport and for our customers."
He added: "We have been successful in recent years in introducing new international routes to Aberdeen, and will continue to strive to do so."
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From revelations of the prime minister's "LOL" text messages to Rebekah Brooks, to the disruption caused by an anti-war protester, the Leveson Inquiry has set the stage for some dramatic scenes.
Here are 10 of the key moments of the media ethics inquiry. | 'She's picked up her voicemail'
Sally and Bob Dowler, the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, were the first people to give evidence in person. Taking to the witness stand on 21 November last year, they explained how the hacking of their daughter's phone had given them false hope that she was still alive.
Mrs Dowler said they had called the 13-year-old's phone repeatedly in the weeks after she went missing in Surrey in 2002, but the voicemail had become full. However, Mrs Dowler was able to access it again after some of the messages were deleted and recalled telling friends: "She's picked up her voicemail, she's picked up her voicemail."
The revelation that the News of the World (NoW) had hacked Milly's phone after she vanished led to a public outcry, the newspaper's closure and the establishment of the inquiry itself.
But the Metropolitan Police later fell under the inquiry's spotlight as witnesses tried to determine whether the messages had been deleted automatically or deliberately.
LOL texts from PM
The appearance of Rebekah Brooks was among the inquiry's most hotly anticipated.
The former News International (NI) chief executive said David Cameron had ended some text messages to her with the letters "LOL" in the belief that the acronym stood for "lots of love" not "laugh out loud". The revelation became an instant topic of discussion on micro-blogging site Twitter.
Asked about the frequency of their text contacts when she was head of NI, the former Sun and NoW editor said they had exchanged messages about once a week, rising to about two a week in the run-up to the 2010 general election.
It emerged that Mr Cameron had sent Mrs Brooks a "keep your head up" text message when she quit NI.
Mrs Brooks also said she had had the express permission of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah to run a story in 2006 about their son Fraser being diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. But he Browns later issued a statement saying that "at no stage" had their permission been sought.
News Corp's 'cheerleader'
The appearance of Rupert Murdoch's son James at the inquiry created shockwaves across Westminster and left a cabinet minister fighting for his career.
Questioned over the phone-hacking scandal that had shut down the NoW, the News Corporation boss maintained his position that he had not been aware of earlier suggestions that phone-hacking went beyond a single reporter - the then royal editor Clive Goodman jailed for phone hacking in 2007.
But it was evidence related to the News Corporation takeover bid for BSkyB, another casualty of the phone-hacking scandal, that proved most explosive. News Corp released to the inquiry a 163-page dossier of emails that appeared to show Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt's support for the bid, which he had been chosen to oversee in an impartial, quasi-judicial role.
Before the day was out, Labour was calling for Mr Hunt's resignation and the culture secretary's special adviser, Adam Smith, resigned the next day over his excessive contact with News Corp.
Mr Hunt insisted he had acted with "scrupulous fairness", and asked for his own appearance before the inquiry to be brought forward but his request was declined.
'A plea for journalism... it isn't always pretty'
Ian Hislop, the editor of satirical magazine Private Eye, told the inquiry that new laws were not needed to govern the press.
Practices such as phone hacking, paying police officers and being in contempt of court contravened existing laws, he said, and the inquiry should examine why the laws were not rigorously enforced.
Mr Hislop, a panellist on BBC quiz Have I Got News For You, criticised close relationships between the press and both police and politicians.
However, he defended the practice of blagging - obtaining information by deception - saying it had been "very effective" in some investigations.
"I wanted to put in a plea for journalism and the concept of a free press, that it is important; it isn't always pretty… and I hope this inquiry doesn't throw out the baby with the bath water," he said.
'It would compromise a source'
Former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan gave evidence to the inquiry via video link from the US.
Questioned in some detail about claims made by Sir Paul McCartney's former wife Heather Mills that her voicemail had been hacked into, Mr Morgan admitted hearing a recording of a message.
But he insisted: "I can't discuss where that tape was played or who made it - it would compromise a source."
Ms Mills later issued a statement saying that she had never disclosed private voicemail messages to Mr Morgan.
Mr Morgan said he was "not aware" of any phone hacking at the Daily Mirror while he was in charge. But he said the "Fleet Street rumour mill" had been buzzing with rumours that the practice went a lot further than Clive Goodman.
'No hidden agenda'
Lord Justice Leveson decided to make a statement before proceedings on 25 June after the Mail on Sunday claimed he had threatened to quit the inquiry.
Its story was said to have followed comments made by Education Secretary Michael Gove at a press lunch that the inquiry was having a "chilling" effect on freedom of speech.
But Lord Justice Leveson said he had only contacted the cabinet secretary at Number 10 because he was concerned about "the perception" his inquiry into press standards was "being undermined".
He told the inquiry he had no "hidden agenda" to stifle a free press.
'Mendacious smears driven by hatred'
The Leveson Inquiry got a sprinkling of Hollywood on one of its first days with the appearance of Hugh Grant.
The actor claimed during his evidence that he had been a victim of phone hacking by the Mail on Sunday (MoS), which had published a story about his relationship with Jemima Khan.
In February, Paul Dacre, editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers had denied hacking had been the source of the story and accused Mr Grant of making "mendacious smears driven by his hatred of the media".
Lord Justice Leveson decided that Mr Dacre should return for a second time to resolve the row.
Mr Dacre again denied phone hacking had been the source of the 2007 story, saying that he would withdraw the "mendacious smears" comment only if Mr Grant withdrew his suggestion that Mail newspapers had been involved in phone hacking.
Mr Grant later said he stood by his claim.
'I never asked a PM for anything'
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch declared his session was an opportunity "to put certain myths to bed".
High on his list was the idea that he used his papers and contact with politicians to further his commercial ambitions. Hitting the desk at one point, he said he did not know many politicians and had "never asked a prime minister for anything".
He also claimed former Prime Minister Gordon Brown had phoned him in 2009 after the Sun had switched allegiance to the Conservatives.
Mr Murdoch quoted Mr Brown as saying: "Well, your company has declared war on my government and we have no alternative but to make war on your company."
But Mr Brown later denied this, saying the claim was "wholly wrong", and in June he said phone records released by the Cabinet Office cast further doubt on Mr Murdoch's claim.
'We're in this together'
With Prime Minister David Cameron's appearance at the inquiry came more revelations of embarrassing text messages.
The inquiry heard that Rebekah Brooks had sent a text to the then opposition leader saying "professionally we're definitely in this together", after the Sun paper had switched loyalty to his party ahead of the general election.
Mrs Brooks signed off the text to Mr Cameron, on the eve of his speech to the 2009 Conservative Party conference, by writing: "Speech of your life? Yes he Cam!"
Mr Cameron said the text had referred to the fact his party and Mrs Brooks's newspapers would be "pushing the same agenda".
BBC political editor Nick Robinson said that when questioned about the Murdochs, Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and Jeremy Hunt, the PM looked "tense, edgy, uncomfortable and again and again said he couldn't recall events".
The intruder
In a dramatic intervention during the Leveson Inquiry, a protester disrupted former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair's evidence.
The man, who said he was David Lawley-Wakelin from the "Alternative Iraq Enquiry", burst in and called Mr Blair a "war criminal" before being removed. Police arrested Mr Lawley Wakelin on suspicion of breach of the peace but later released him without charge.
Lord Justice Leveson apologised to Mr Blair and questioned how the man had been able to enter the court.
During his evidence, Mr Blair defended his friendship with Rupert Murdoch, saying it had been "a working relationship" until he had left Number 10.
He said he had not changed any policies to please the newspapers owned by Mr Murdoch.
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Bidders are expected to spend more than just a penny as disused public toilets in Merthyr Tydfil go under the hammer on Thursday. | The former public convenience in North Street, Dowlais, owned by the council, will be auctioned with a guide price of £6,000.
Auctioneers Paul Fosh said the usual building could be turned into a cafe, shop or even a new home.
A second council-owned block, in Newport was withdrawn from the auction.
The Victorian Grade II-listed former men's loos in the Pill area of the city had been scheduled to be auctioned with a guide price of £4,000.
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Royal Bank of Scotland is in the last delicate phase of negotiations with regulators in the UK and US on the fines to be paid for its Libor transgressions and other necessary remediation, including a possible senior resignation. | Robert PestonEconomics editor
What is clear is that UK and US fines will run to several hundred million pounds, or more than the £290m extracted from Barclays.
What is as yet undecided is whether RBS will be punished on a similar scale to UBS, which was spanked to the tune of £940m. My understanding is that RBS believes its fines will be less than UBS's.
RBS is braced for substantial humiliation as and when the announcement is finally made.
Emails from traders cited as evidence for the Libor rigging are particularly lurid, according to sources.
Also, the market manipulation continued well into 2010, or long after RBS's management was replaced at the end of 2008 following the collapse of the bank and its partial nationalisation. RBS's board did not become aware of the wrongdoing until notified about it by regulators in 2011.
That said, I have learned that the bank's board does not believe the chief executive Stephen Hester needs to resign: no evidence has been found indicating that he knew about the attempt to make unfair profits by fixing the Libor rates; and he was fully occupied at the time trying to rebuild the bank's shattered finances.
However I understand the FSA is looking for personal responsibility to be taken.
RBS's board will not wait for an instruction from the FSA to change personnel. I have learned that it is considering asking the head of the investment bank, John Hourican, and the head of markets, Peter Nielsen, to quit.
That said, there is no evidence that either of them were aware of the Libor malpractices or in any way encouraged them. But after the financial crisis they were brought in to fix RBS's investment bank, and the concern is that they did not get to grips with the market rigging that continued on their watch.
"There is an issue about why the rotten culture wasn't cut out earlier", said a source.
Also, the FSA is arguing that bonuses earned by executives and investment bankers in the period should be repaid or clawed back. This can only happen in relation to bonuses that were deferred. So at risk are those who were promised bonuses in 2009 and 2010, but haven't yet received all their entitlement.
"The likelihood is that there will be a claw back from the 2009 and 2010 bonus pools" said a source.
As for the fines and penalties, they are set according to a formula based on the magnitude of the wrongdoing in each of Libor's myriad currency categories.
RBS traders tried to manipulate the Libor interest-rate benchmarks for dollars, Swiss francs and yen, inter alia, according to a source. But whether the cumulative impact of its market rigging was more or less great than UBS's is - I am told - still undetermined.
As I understand it, the UK's Financial Services Authority is trying to persuade US regulatory authorities, led by the Department of Justice in Washington, to go for a big bang announcement of punishments for RBS in the week after next.
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On a warm summer evening, friends and families gathered in Reading's Forbury Gardens to enjoy the easing of lockdown restrictions, unaware it would soon be the scene of a terrifying stabbing spree. | By Andre Rhoden-PaulBBC News
As they relaxed in the park on 20 June 2020, Khairi Saadallah launched an attack that lasted less than 30 seconds.
He has been jailed for the rest of his life for the murder of friends James Furlong, 36, David Wails, 49, and 39-year-old Joe Ritchie-Bennett, as well as the attempted murder of three others.
Seven months after the town was left reeling, the BBC speaks to witnesses about their memories of the attack, and those who tried to help people affected in the aftermath.
'He could have killed me'
"Initially we just thought it was one of their mates trying to play water fights, but unfortunately it wasn't the case," said Andrew Cafe.
The analyst was sat down enjoying drinks with a friend in the park, before the attack he described as "a bloodbath".
"He was so quick. After he managed to stab the third person, he started charging towards me and my mate. He shouted 'Allahu Akbar [God is the greatest]' - which I don't know why he shouted because I'm pretty sure Allah would not be proud of what he did."
Mr Furlong, Mr Ritchie-Bennett, Mr Wails - who Mr Cafe knew as acquaintances - and their friend Stephen Young had been stabbed by the attacker.
"In a split-second I decided I had to run for my life. He started chasing me, before he started chasing my mate," he said.
"As I was running I shouted, but I guess nobody paid attention because it was a Saturday and people were having drinks, and enjoying their time at the park. Unfortunately there was a second group close to us and they became his next target."
In that group was Nishit Nisudan and Patrick Edwards, who were stabbed by Saadallah before he fled.
Reflecting on the incident, the former nurse said: "The thought in my head keeps playing that this person could have killed me - I have to live with that all my life. I may not be physically hurt, but I'm mentally scarred."
He credits his "good support system", consisting of friends, family, his employer and Thames Valley Police, for helping him recover from the experience.
"The last thing we want is for this person to take away our happiness," he said. "I don't want to live in fear, I don't want to live with negativity.
"He's been sentenced and it's the light at the end of the tunnel, but nothing will ever bring the life back of the three people he killed."
'We did everything we could to save them'
"I couldn't quite figure out what was going on at first, and then I saw some people running and could see some people lying on the ground," said James Antell, from south-west London.
The 26-year-old had been enjoying a socially-distanced picnic with a friend in Forbury Gardens when he noticed a commotion about 60m (200ft) away.
"There were also people shouting for help, so that's when I realised something was not quite right," he continued.
"I ran over to where the people were lying on the ground, the three casualties were all in quite a bad way."
Mr Ritchie-Bennett and Mr Furlong each suffered single stab wounds to the neck, while Mr Wails was stabbed once in the back.
Mr Antell and other bystanders did what they could to help the victims.
The parliamentary assistant used his shirt to to apply pressure and stem the bleeding of one victim, and continued resuscitation on a second victim until paramedics arrived.
Despite the best efforts of paramedics and air ambulance doctors the three friends could not be saved.
While Mr Young, Mr Edwards and Mr Nisudan survived the attack.
"I did what I could to help," he said.
"It absolutely showed the spirit of the public and the Reading community, and in the hours after the attack, cafes and churches were doing all they could to support those that had been in the park... and make sense of what had happened."
He added: "I saw something that day I'm sure will stay with me for the rest of my life, but my overriding thoughts are with the victims, and their friends and families.
"It's a very odd thing to go through. You read about these things on the news, but you never think its going to happen to you."
'It felt like you lost your own'
"Joe was just one of these people, if you were in the room and he was in the room, you knew him - big personality," said Jamie Wake, who was friends with Mr Ritchie-Bennett, and also knew Mr Furlong and Mr Wails.
The men, who were gay, were often at the Blagrave Arms pub in Reading - a mixed venue which has been adopted as a "home" for LGBT people.
Mr Wake, who runs Club FOD at the pub, said: "It doesn't matter where in the world you were, because of the way the LGBT community is, it felt like people you knew... you lost your own at that point."
In the days after the killings, the 43-year-old organised a minute's silence outside the venue.
"You knew at that moment you were part of a community," he said.
"For me it's a moment I will remember because you just had to be there to feel the emotion in the air."
The LGBT campaigner added: "In the reporting we're hearing now about the perpetrator who committed this horrendous act and his sentencing, but we've got to be mindful there were three people who were very much loved in this town behind this story, and that's what we must not forget."
'The number of calls for help doubled'
"We tried to make sure we could be supportive of their needs and make sure they had someone to talk to about what was going on," said Lorna McArdle of Reading-based charity SupportU, which provided counselling to those affected in the LGBT community.
The charity, which specialises in helping people who need support with LGBT issues, had a 44% increase in inquiries following the attack.
"It was a massive shock especially when news got round that a lot of people within our community knew those who were affected by it," Ms McArdle said.
She added: "We were able to support them in making sure they knew it was a one-off event."
'Talk to people who can help support you'
"We are aware that there is a risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological upsetting symptoms," said Dr Deborah Lee who heads up Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust's Traumatic Stress Service.
The trust works with Victims First, run by the Thames Valley Police and Crime Commissioner's (PCC) office, to manage the official support service to help those affected by the Forbury Gardens attack.
It has been reaching out to survivors, witnesses, bereaved families and emergency service workers who responded to the incident.
Dr Lee is a consultant clinical psychologist and said an unexpected event like the attack can traumatise the mind and lead to people being worried about future threats.
She said: "You might see people developing anxiety, fear of going out in the street, and of course this is compounded by Covid at the moment because we are not going out.
"So people might not even be aware that they are going to be anxious when they re-engage in their worlds [post-Covid].
"But we would certainly see anxiety around physical danger, and we also see this very characteristic symptom, which is re-experiencing of the traumatic event.
"And this is the one people find really frightening. So they go over the events in their minds. They might have flashbacks. They might have nightmares or intrusive thoughts but it feels real. And it feels like it's happening again."
Deputy PCC Matthew Barber said: "If you were involved in that incident [the sentencing] brings all of those memories flooding back.
"So of course the support of Victims First is there for anybody who's been affected by this or any other crime."
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Here is the full text of Theresa May's letter to European Council president Donald Tusk, beginning the start of Brexit negotiations. | Dear President Tusk
On 23 June last year, the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. As I have said before, that decision was no rejection of the values we share as fellow Europeans. Nor was it an attempt to do harm to the European Union or any of the remaining member states. On the contrary, the United Kingdom wants the European Union to succeed and prosper. Instead, the referendum was a vote to restore, as we see it, our national self-determination. We are leaving the European Union, but we are not leaving Europe - and we want to remain committed partners and allies to our friends across the continent.
Earlier this month, the United Kingdom Parliament confirmed the result of the referendum by voting with clear and convincing majorities in both of its Houses for the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill. The Bill was passed by Parliament on 13 March and it received Royal Assent from Her Majesty The Queen and became an Act of Parliament on 16 March.
Today, therefore, I am writing to give effect to the democratic decision of the people of the United Kingdom. I hereby notify the European Council in accordance with Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union of the United Kingdom's intention to withdraw from the European Union. In addition, in accordance with the same Article 50(2) as applied by Article 106a of the Treaty Establishing the European Atomic Energy Community, I hereby notify the European Council of the United Kingdom's intention to withdraw from the European Atomic Energy Community. References in this letter to the European Union should therefore be taken to include a reference to the European Atomic Energy Community.
See the letter as published by Downing Street (PDF)
This letter sets out the approach of Her Majesty's Government to the discussions we will have about the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union and about the deep and special partnership we hope to enjoy - as your closest friend and neighbour - with the European Union once we leave. We believe that these objectives are in the interests not only of the United Kingdom but of the European Union and the wider world too.
It is in the best interests of both the United Kingdom and the European Union that we should use the forthcoming process to deliver these objectives in a fair and orderly manner, and with as little disruption as possible on each side. We want to make sure that Europe remains strong and prosperous and is capable of projecting its values, leading in the world, and defending itself from security threats. We want the United Kingdom, through a new deep and special partnership with a strong European Union, to play its full part in achieving these goals. We therefore believe it is necessary to agree the terms of our future partnership alongside those of our withdrawal from the European Union.
The Government wants to approach our discussions with ambition, giving citizens and businesses in the United Kingdom and the European Union - and indeed from third countries around the world - as much certainty as possible, as early as possible.
I would like to propose some principles that may help to shape our coming discussions, but before I do so, I should update you on the process we will be undertaking at home, in the United Kingdom.
The process in the United Kingdom
As I have announced already, the Government will bring forward legislation that will repeal the Act of Parliament - the European Communities Act 1972 - that gives effect to EU law in our country. This legislation will, wherever practical and appropriate, in effect convert the body of existing European Union law (the "acquis") into UK law. This means there will be certainty for UK citizens and for anybody from the European Union who does business in the United Kingdom. The Government will consult on how we design and implement this legislation, and we will publish a White Paper tomorrow. We also intend to bring forward several other pieces of legislation that address specific issues relating to our departure from the European Union, also with a view to ensuring continuity and certainty, in particular for businesses. We will of course continue to fulfil our responsibilities as a member state while we remain a member of the European Union, and the legislation we propose will not come into effect until we leave.
From the start and throughout the discussions, we will negotiate as one United Kingdom, taking due account of the specific interests of every nation and region of the UK as we do so. When it comes to the return of powers back to the United Kingdom, we will consult fully on which powers should reside in Westminster and which should be devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But it is the expectation of the Government that the outcome of this process will be a significant increase in the decision-making power of each devolved administration.
Negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union
The United Kingdom wants to agree with the European Union a deep and special partnership that takes in both economic and security cooperation. To achieve this, we believe it is necessary to agree the terms of our future partnership alongside those of our withdrawal from the EU.
If, however, we leave the European Union without an agreement the default position is that we would have to trade on World Trade Organisation terms. In security terms a failure to reach agreement would mean our cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened. In this kind of scenario, both the United Kingdom and the European Union would of course cope with the change, but it is not the outcome that either side should seek. We must therefore work hard to avoid that outcome.
It is for these reasons that we want to be able to agree a deep and special partnership, taking in both economic and security cooperation, but it is also because we want to play our part in making sure that Europe remains strong and prosperous and able to lead in the world, projecting its values and defending itself from security threats. And we want the United Kingdom to play its full part in realising that vision for our continent.
Proposed principles for our discussions
Looking ahead to the discussions which we will soon begin, I would like to suggest some principles that we might agree to help make sure that the process is as smooth and successful as possible.
i. We should engage with one another constructively and respectfully, in a spirit of sincere cooperation. Since I became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom I have listened carefully to you, to my fellow EU Heads of Government and the Presidents of the European Commission and Parliament. That is why the United Kingdom does not seek membership of the single market: we understand and respect your position that the four freedoms of the single market are indivisible and there can be no "cherry picking". We also understand that there will be consequences for the UK of leaving the EU: we know that we will lose influence over the rules that affect the European economy. We also know that UK companies will, as they trade within the EU, have to align with rules agreed by institutions of which we are no longer a part - just as UK companies do in other overseas markets.
ii. We should always put our citizens first. There is obvious complexity in the discussions we are about to undertake, but we should remember that at the heart of our talks are the interests of all our citizens. There are, for example, many citizens of the remaining member states living in the United Kingdom, and UK citizens living elsewhere in the European Union, and we should aim to strike an early agreement about their rights.
iii. We should work towards securing a comprehensive agreement. We want to agree a deep and special partnership between the UK and the EU, taking in both economic and security cooperation. We will need to discuss how we determine a fair settlement of the UK's rights and obligations as a departing member state, in accordance with the law and in the spirit of the United Kingdom's continuing partnership with the EU. But we believe it is necessary to agree the terms of our future partnership alongside those of our withdrawal from the EU.
iv. We should work together to minimise disruption and give as much certainty as possible. Investors, businesses and citizens in both the UK and across the remaining 27 member states - and those from third countries around the world - want to be able to plan. In order to avoid any cliff-edge as we move from our current relationship to our future partnership, people and businesses in both the UK and the EU would benefit from implementation periods to adjust in a smooth and orderly way to new arrangements. It would help both sides to minimise unnecessary disruption if we agree this principle early in the process.
v. In particular, we must pay attention to the UK's unique relationship with the Republic of Ireland and the importance of the peace process in Northern Ireland. The Republic of Ireland is the only EU member state with a land border with the United Kingdom. We want to avoid a return to a hard border between our two countries, to be able to maintain the Common Travel Area between us, and to make sure that the UK's withdrawal from the EU does not harm the Republic of Ireland. We also have an important responsibility to make sure that nothing is done to jeopardise the peace process in Northern Ireland, and to continue to uphold the Belfast Agreement.
vi. We should begin technical talks on detailed policy areas as soon as possible, but we should prioritise the biggest challenges. Agreeing a high-level approach to the issues arising from our withdrawal will of course be an early priority. But we also propose a bold and ambitious Free Trade Agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union. This should be of greater scope and ambition than any such agreement before it so that it covers sectors crucial to our linked economies such as financial services and network industries. This will require detailed technical talks, but as the UK is an existing EU member state, both sides have regulatory frameworks and standards that already match. We should therefore prioritise how we manage the evolution of our regulatory frameworks to maintain a fair and open trading environment, and how we resolve disputes. On the scope of the partnership between us - on both economic and security matters - my officials will put forward detailed proposals for deep, broad and dynamic cooperation.
vii. We should continue to work together to advance and protect our shared European values. Perhaps now more than ever, the world needs the liberal, democratic values of Europe. We want to play our part to ensure that Europe remains strong and prosperous and able to lead in the world, projecting its values and defending itself from security threats.
The task before us
As I have said, the Government of the United Kingdom wants to agree a deep and special partnership between the UK and the EU, taking in both economic and security cooperation. At a time when the growth of global trade is slowing and there are signs that protectionist instincts are on the rise in many parts of the world, Europe has a responsibility to stand up for free trade in the interest of all our citizens. Likewise, Europe's security is more fragile today than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Weakening our cooperation for the prosperity and protection of our citizens would be a costly mistake. The United Kingdom's objectives for our future partnership remain those set out in my Lancaster House speech of 17 January and the subsequent White Paper published on 2 February.
We recognise that it will be a challenge to reach such a comprehensive agreement within the two-year period set out for withdrawal discussions in the Treaty. But we believe it is necessary to agree the terms of our future partnership alongside those of our withdrawal from the EU. We start from a unique position in these discussions - close regulatory alignment, trust in one another's institutions, and a spirit of cooperation stretching back decades. It is for these reasons, and because the future partnership between the UK and the EU is of such importance to both sides, that I am sure it can be agreed in the time period set out by the Treaty.
The task before us is momentous but it should not be beyond us. After all, the institutions and the leaders of the European Union have succeeded in bringing together a continent blighted by war into a union of peaceful nations, and supported the transition of dictatorships to democracy. Together, I know we are capable of reaching an agreement about the UK's rights and obligations as a departing member state, while establishing a deep and special partnership that contributes towards the prosperity, security and global power of our continent.
Yours sincerely
Theresa May
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Schools have reopened after an extended half-term break. | They closed on 19 October as part of tighter Covid-19 restrictions imposed by the Northern Ireland Executive.
As coronavirus cases continue to rise, extra safety measures will be in place, including the mandatory wearing of face coverings for post-primary pupils on school transport.
The education minister said on Monday he is "not envisaging exams being cancelled".
"It is particularly important that we have compatibility and portability with the rest of the United Kingdom," he said during a visit to Glenlola Collegiate in Bangor, County Down.
"This is not something we can go on a solo run because particularly when it comes to universities and jobs, our students are going to be competing with those from different parts of the UK and the Republic of Ireland and elsewhere."
He said his department had asked CCEA to look at "contingency arrangements" and said it was likely there would be "a range of mitigations, some of which have been announced already."
Exams have been scheduled for one week later than normal in 2021.
Mr Weir again stressed that keeping schools open remained his key priority and urged people not to congregate at school gates when dropping off pupils.
But he said parents and carers "are at the heart of fighting the virus and minimising any disruption to education".
He asked parents and carers to practise social distancing, wear a mask and try to avoid going beyond the school gate unless an appointment has been made.
As for pupils, he asked them to have face coverings with them at all times, practise good hand hygiene and not to eat or share food on transport.
"I know from speaking to parents, carers and teachers that they want their children to be in school," the education minister said.
"Face to face teaching is the best form of educational provision."
Mr Weir said he understood there may be concerns over children's wellbeing during the pandemic.
"Children and young people have missed so much this year already, not just in terms of learning but in socialising with their friends, taking part in sports and other activities," he said.
"I know that the overwhelming desire of parents and carers is to maintain a full return to school and I thank them for all the sacrifices they are making in very difficult circumstances."
Caroline McCarthy, from the Irish National Teachers' Organisation, said teachers are feeling anxious and concerned about the return to school.
"Protecting children's education actually goes hand in hand with protecting the staff in schools," she told BBC News NI's Good Morning Ulster.
"When we closed for the extended Halloween break for the children, some some schools were suffering serious staff shortages and I think the anxiety of staff within schools has to be acknowledged as well."
Ms McCarthy also called for the wearing of masks to be extended to the school environment in post-primary schools.
First Minister Arlene Foster said she agreed with her party colleague Peter Weir that school was "the best place for our young people to be".
"We said they would be back at school by the 2nd of November and they are," she told Good Morning Ulster.
"I, of course, understand the concerns that I hear from some of the teachers unions, however, it is very important for our young people that they are back at school."
2,030Positive Covid cases in schools
519Schools with at least one positive Covid case out of 1,035 total schools
302Schools with a single positive case
237Schools with a cluster of two to five cases
69Schools with a cluster of more than five cases
There have been confirmed Covid-19 cases in half of Northern Ireland's schools since the start of term, according to the Public Health Agency.
According to Department of Education (DE) attendance guidance issued to schools, pupils are to be marked absent using code eight if they are "advised not to attend school following advice from PHA Contact Tracing Service".
Code eight can also be used if "a pupil chooses not to attend school or parent chooses not to send their child to school on the advice of a medical professional as the child is self-isolating due to a significant underlying medical condition".
Using code eight is "important to identify the number of pupils choosing to self-isolate due to Covid-19", the DE guidance to schools said.
Pupils self-isolating at home are still expected to complete work provided by their school or be taught remotely.
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Slovakia's bears are a rare conservation triumph, but their growing number has forced some of them to swap forest life for a more urban setting. Now a radical plan is under way to try to understand these "problem bears". | By Rebecca MorelleScience reporter, BBC News, High Tatras, Slovakia
I get the call at 5am.
"Wake-up! We've got a bear - you best get ready," booms the voice from the other end of the line, shaking me out of my sleepy blur.
Overnight, an inquisitive bear has wandered into a cage, unable to resist the temptation to snack on some oats and fruit that have been left inside.
We arrive, and inside the small enclosure is a young female, standing about 1m tall.
For the last few weeks, she has been raiding the bins in a nearby village, totally unafraid of any humans living there.
But today, looking a bit bewildered at her predicament and emitting the odd low groan, she is going to give conservationists the first look into the private life of one of Slovakia's so-called problem bears.
Unwelcome visitors
Until recently, getting a glimpse of a European brown bear (Ursus arctos arctos) would mean venturing deep into Slovakia's mountainous forests.
But now close encounters with these animals increasingly are happening much closer to home.
After these animals were hunted almost to extinction in the 1930s, the bears have made a big comeback. However, the boost in numbers has meant that some curious bears have started to take an interest in village life.
Pavol Majko, director of the High Tatras National Park - a stronghold for brown bears - says: "The majority of bears in this area stay in the mountains, but a small number have lost their fear of humans.
"They are coming to the villages, attracted by waste in unsecured bins."
But for the people living in this area, these new visitors are not welcome.
Jan Mokos, Mayor of the High Tatras village, explains: "The people are scared and they're coming here to complain almost every day. But it's not only the people who live here - it's tourists, too."
He proposes drastic action.
"Of course, we can do something about this problem by making sure our bins are secure, but I think some controlled shooting is also necessary."
Bear necessity
But conservationists say killing problem bears is not the answer. Instead they want to study them.
And the animal that has been captured will provide them with that chance. They are going to fit her with a GPS collar that will track her every move.
Graham Bishop is working on Project Bear, which is part-funded through an eco-tourism company and is a collaboration with scientists from the High Tatras National Park.
He says: "At the moment, we have very little knowledge about these problem bears. All of the information is from physical sightings.
"With the collar, we can find out what she is doing every hour of every day."
First the bear is tranquilised, and then - only once she is sound asleep - the team tentatively approaches. They get to work fitting the collar; the bear, oblivious to the hubbub around her, gently snores.
The conservationists have to work quickly - if the bear wakes up early, the consequences could be terrible. But soon her new accessory is fixed and activated.
It works using global-positioning technology to record her position at regular intervals. Then, every few hours, it sends the team a text message containing this data.
It means the researchers can monitor the bear from the comfort of their office, plotting her positions on a map to find out more about her behaviour.
With a battery life of four years, the collar should provide the team with a wealth of data over this period. After this, it will automatically drop off.
Mr Bishop says: "Once we can see what the bear is doing, we can start to work out what is attracting her to the villages, and also what is repelling her away. We can then look at these factors and try and replicate them."
In addition to making sure villagers secure all their waste, another idea, he suggests, could be to set up strategically placed feeding stations outside villages.
Speedy solution
But conservationists in Slovakia stress that a solution is needed soon.
With a growing bear population and increasing numbers of people coming to the country through tourism, the issue of problem bears is here to stay.
For now, though, some of these answers could be found with the help of the bear, called Galina by the team.
She begins to wake up from the anaesthetic - very sleepy and confused, nodding her head and licking the air, as the life begins to return to her limbs.
Eventually, a little unsteady on her feet, she gets up, and slowly wanders back into the forest.
She does not know it, but the data she provides could hold the key to finding a way for bears and humans to live together.
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A man has died more than a week after his car crashed on the B729 in Dumfries and Galloway. | Patrick Lennon was the only person in his Nissan Navara when it crashed near Dunscore, between Dumfries and Carsphairn, on Monday 25 May.
The 42-year-old, from Galston in East Ayrshire, was airlifted to hospital but died from his injuries on Wednesday.
A police spokesman said inquiries to establish the full circumstances of the crash were continuing.
Related Internet Links
Non Emergencies - Police Scotland
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The family of an eight-year-old girl who died after being hit by a car has said she was "the kindest person we ever knew". | Emily Connor, from Chesterfield in Derbyshire, was struck by a Vauxhall in Monton Road, Salford, shortly before 10:40 GMT on Saturday.
Paramedics attended but she was pronounced dead at the scene.
A 24-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving.
He remains in custody for questioning and police are appealing for witnesses or anyone with dashcam footage to get in touch.
In a tribute, Emily's family said she was a "beautiful girl".
"To our Emily, the kindest person we ever knew. You will always be in our thoughts.
"We will talk about you every day."
Related Internet Links
Greater Manchester Police
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A Scottish trunk road will be an unlikely feature of a world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday. But Under the Skin, the movie starring the A82, is the latest on a long and winding list of Scottish movie road trips. | By Steven McKenzieBBC Scotland Highlands and Islands reporter
This journey starts in Achiltibuie, near Ullapool, where scenes for one of the more unusual "trips" were shot.
In the hills around the small community, filming was done for 2011's The Eagle.
It sees Channing Tatum's Roman soldier trek deep into Scotland in search of his father's lost standard, guided by a slave played by Jamie Bell.
Following the single track road from Achiltibuie to the A837 then south on to the A835 before taking a right on to the A832 leads to Dundonnel.
Just north of Dundonnell, writer-director Scott Graham and his production team built a replica petrol station for his debut feature, Shell.
While writing the script, Graham drew on memories of his childhood caravan holidays that started from his home in Fraserburgh to headed into the Highlands.
The film's filling replica station was so convincing that motorists pulled and tried to buy fuel.
Returning to the A835 and heading south towards Inverness leads to the A9, a road which two years ago was linked to the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises.
Newspapers reported that a section of the trunk route near Inverness would be shut to allow a Hercules C130 aircraft to land on it.
Police said they had not been approached about closing the trunk road.
However, while not naming the film involved, Northern Constabulary did say it had been asked to assist a crew with filming in Badenoch and Strathspey.
Scottish government agency, Transport Scotland, said it had been approached by the Batman movie's production company about using roads at locations across Scotland.
Journeying south on the A9 then turning off on to the A86 at Kingussie eventually leads to the A82 and Glencoe where Scarlett Johansson was filmed for scenes in Under the Skin.
Transport Scotland granted permission for filming south of Loch Ba on the trunk road.
The section of A82 was closed for 10 minute periods to allow queuing traffic to clear before the next closure was made.
Johansson plays an alien who prowls the highway, preying on humans.
The film is loosely based on a novel by Michel Faber, who used the A9 in his story.
Further along the A82 is a minor road leading to the White Corries where a car chase for last year's Bond movie Skyfall starring Daniel Craig were shot.
Returning along that single track road and back on to the A82 eventually leads to a turn off for the A85 and Oban Airport.
Here scenes for Scottish film The Last Great Wilderness were shot.
Starring Alastair Mackenzie of Monarch of the Glen fame, it features a road trip which, like the other films that have followed since, leads to trouble and strife.
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Presidential elections will be in held in Belarus this Sunday. But few doubt that the incumbent Alexander Lukashenko will be returned to power, having won every other contest in a process that was widely accused of being unfair and undemocratic. | By Paul MossThe World Tonight, Minsk
When you are short of any other means of attracting attention, then you sing. That at least was the approach taken at a rally by the Belarusian opposition party "Speak the Truth." Many of its applications to hold public meetings were turned down, a spokesman told me, so when they had the chance to meet in one of the smallest squares in the city of Minsk, the Party was determined to drum up an audience.
A guitar and violin duet belted out songs of protest, a warm-up man invited people to come and hear their Presidential candidate, Tatsiana Karetkevich, make a speech. But in the end, there were fewer than a dozen in the audience.
As far as the party Chairman Andrey Dimitriev is concerned, the fault lies with the Belarusian authorities.
They and their leader, the current President Alexander Lukashenko, stand accused of preventing opposition parties from building any public profile: "If you go to state businesses or to universities, you will find great big posters for Lukashenko," he complains, "there are no posters for other candidates."
Opposition parties have also been granted far less access to the all-powerful state-owned media, Dimitriev says.
That suggestion is certainly backed up by the many human rights campaigners and other international organisations that have investigated the state of Belarusian democracy.
Journalists and critics of the government are regularly locked up, according to Amnesty International. And the United Nations special rapporteur on Belarus found there were "serious limits on the media, and on free association."
Belarus profile
Belarus, with its seven million voters, is holding its fifth presidential election in 21 years, but so far has had only one president - Alexander Lukashenko.
Lukashenko, who has not polled less than 75% in any of the previous votes, is likely to be declared the winner again.
Among the three challengers to the incumbent, two are regarded as "technical" pro-Lukashenko candidates.
The only woman in the quartet, Tatsiana Karatkevich, is an opposition activist now disowned by almost all opposition parties except her own 'Tell the Truth' movement.
The opposition fears that Karatkevich's bid will be used to create a semblance of plurality and to legitimize Lukashenko's re-election in the eyes of the West.
The opposition has failed to agree a single candidate and is now "ignoring" the vote, which it says will be neither free nor fair. Calling a boycott would be illegal under Belarusian law.
No plans for any post-election demonstrations, similar to the "Square" in December 2010, have been announced, so any large-scale protests are unlikely.
Belarus country profile
Last time they held a presidential contest in Belarus, in 2010, seven of the nine presidential candidates were arrested; one of them was only released this year following widespread international pressure. The candidates were accused of various offences, including the encouragement of violent protest and attempting to overthrow the state.
This punishment is normal, I was told by Sergei Kizman, a professor of politics in Minsk, and a supporter of the government position.
"If anyone in Great Britain declared they were the real government and attacked public buildings, they would go to prison."
He told me that Belarus is only criticised because it has no oil.
"Saudi Arabia has no elections at all, but their King is welcomed in London and Berlin," he complained.
Even some of President Lukashenko's most staunch critics will admit the man is popular, if not as popular as voting figures might suggest.
"Unemployment is low, health care is free - it's a functional country," says Alexei Pikulik, Director of a think-tank, the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies.
Pikulik has himself suffered at the hands of Lukashenko's regime, arrested for his work and at one point driven into exile. But he believes that in the wake of Russia's intervention in Ukraine, most people in Belarus just want a quiet life, with no risk of conflict.
"The main platform on which Lukashenko is standing is 'with me, Belarus will be a stable, independent country,'" he says.
Belarus has been accused of faking election results, failing to allow proper scrutiny of the vote counting process. But whether or not there is ballot box skulduggery, no one believes there will be any result other than an Alexander Lukashenko victory this time. The man once dubbed "Europe's last dictator" seems determined to stick around for some time yet.
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Rapper Megan Thee Stallion claims that her record label is preventing her from releasing new music. | By Mark SavageBBC music reporter
The star, who released the platinum-selling single Hot Girl Summer last year, says she's been frozen out since asking to renegotiate her contract.
"I didn't really know what was in my contract," she explained on Instagram Live. "I was young. I was, like, 20."
"So now they telling [me] that [I] can't drop no music. It's really just a greedy game," she added.
The musician, whose real name is Megan Pete, signed her deal with 1501 Entertainment in 2018. She only became aware of problems with the contract last year when she hired a new management team.
"It's not that I literally didn't read [the contract]," she said, "it's that I didn't understand some of the the verbiage at the time. Now that I do, I just wanted it corrected."
She has since filed court papers seeking the termination of her contract.
After the rapper issued her statement, the hashtags #FreeMeg and #FreeTheStallion started trending on social media, and other artists shared similar experiences.
"I'm not gonna put it solely down to my label situation 'cause I had other things going on," wrote British rapper Nadia Rose. "But not being able to release my music was one of the most heart wrenching feelings I've ever experienced. I had severe depression, suicidal thoughts... God, family [and] therapy saved me."
Separately, US star Juicy J spent the weekend arguing with his record label, fuming in one tweet: "I gave Columbia Records 20+ years of my life & they treat me like back wash. I'm gonna leak my whole album, stay tuned."
Minutes later, the star released a short, venomous track (the title of which is unprintable here) saying he was being treated like a "slave".
"If I waited on Columbia, then I'd be out here broke," he rapped. "I sold albums, sold out tours but I never sold my soul."
The track ended with a sample of Prince's acceptance speech for Artist Of The Decade at the 2000 Soul Train Awards, where he spoke about his own battle against Warner Bros Records.
"As long as you're signed to a contract, you will take a minority share of the winnings," he warned his fellow musicians.
Juicy J's song had an almost immediate impact. By the end of the day, the rapper had removed his song from streaming services and posted a conciliatory message on Twitter: "Spoke to @ColumbiaRecords. We are all good!"
Megan, Nadia and Juicy J are not alone. The record industry has a long and reprehensible history of treating artists badly, from skimping on royalty payments to binding them to unfair contracts.
In the UK, the Musicians Union now offers a standard contract to help bands avoid being exploited. But if it's too late for that, here are some of the creative ways artists have extricated themselves from bad deals.
1) Van Morrison's contractual obligation album
One day in 1967, Van Morrison walked into a recording studio in New York and recorded 31 songs. All of them were awful - but that was precisely the point.
The star had become frustrated by his label, Bang Records, who wanted more pop hits in the vein of Brown Eyed Girl; while he was being drawn towards the more mystical, jazz-inspired sounds that inspired his 1968 album Astral Weeks.
Morrison's contract stipulated that he owed Bang Records exactly 36 songs; so the famously truculent star decided to record them all in one go. The results are short, improvised and angry, with Morrison's guitar slowly going out of tune as the sessions progress.
The lyrics are bizarre. "I can see by the look on your face / That you've got ring worm," he sings on Ring Worm. "Do you want a Danish?" he inquires on Want A Danish. "No thanks, I just ate".
The tactic didn't quite work, however. Morrison's songs went unreleased until 2017. He finally got out of the Bang Record contract when the owner, Bert Berns, died of a heart attack.
There's a superbly detailed article about the sessions on longreads.com.
2) TLC take their record label boss hostage
Until the Spice Girls came along, TLC were the biggest-selling girl band of all time. But despite selling 65 million records, they were only making $75,000 apiece.
This was mainly due to a contract the band members signed with manager Perri "Pebbles" Reid, which gave her ownership of the name, a percentage of their publishing, and a share of every dollar the band ever made.
Frustrated, the band decided to take action - storming the offices of their record label, Arista, and holding president Clive Davis hostage at gunpoint.
"We were hot, because we didn't understand how we were selling all these records with nothing to show for it. So it was like, 'Alright, let's just go to the source,'" singer Rozanda "Chilli" Thomas told the BBC last year.
For back-up, they brought along a gang of women that rapper Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes had met in rehab.
"These were big girls, huge and scary," recalled Thomas. "And unless we gave them the nod, no-one could come in or out, no matter who it was."
The stand-off was eventually resolved peacefully and the group re-negotiated their contracts.
"We were some little gangsters," laughed Chilli as she recalled the incident. "TLC is as close as you get to rock and roll".
3) Frank Ocean plays a seven year chess game
After Frank Ocean signed to Def Jam Records in 2009, he found himself in limbo. The label wouldn't release his music because he didn't have a big enough profile - but he couldn't build a profile when no-one could hear him.
Eventually, he took matters into his own hands, self-financing and self-releasing the mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra. The buzz around that record prompted Def Jam to get behind the star's debut, Channel Orange, which was nominated for best album at the 2013 Grammys.
Instead of celebrating, Ocean put a cunning plan into action - severing ties with his management, his legal team and his publicist, and using his new wealth to purchase all of his master recordings and buy himself out of his contract.
As a condition of the arrangement, Def Jam were given distribution rights to his next album, Endless. But Ocean insisted it could only be released as a streaming video on Apple Music, denting the label's ability to profit from the record.
Then, the day after it came out, Frank put out Blonde - Channel Orange's official follow-up - a superior record, whose existence was completely hidden from his former label.
Speaking to the New York Times, Ocean described the release as the final move in "a seven-year chess game".
4) Stone Roses "redecorate" their record label
When the Stone Roses released their debut album in May 1989, it almost instantly became a classic. But as their star rose and fans clamoured for more music, the band's earlier recordings began to surface.
Among them was Sally Cinnamon, a chiming, neo-psychedelic single they'd recorded for Wolverhampton's FM Revolver Records in 1987.
Seeking to cash in on the Roses' new-found fame, Revolver re-issued the song with a crudely cobbled-together video featuring slow-motion shots of pigeons and people getting their hair cut.
In the absence of the band, who hadn't consented to the video, the director instead filmed people reading an edition of The Face magazine where singer Ian Brown was the cover star.
Incensed, the Stone Roses showed up at Revolver's offices in January 1990, burst through the front door and threw five litres of blue and white paint over the label's managing director Paul Birch and his girlfriend Olivia Darling.
Not satisfied, the group then went outside and spread more paint over Birch's Mercedes, as well as two other cars. It was, as the NME reported at the time, "a right Pollocking".
The quartet received a court summons for their troubles, and were handed a hefty fine for criminal damage. But they remained unrepentant.
"I'd do it again," said Ian Brown. "I thought we were right and still do."
5) Joss Stone buys herself out of her contract
"Free me, free me, EMI," sang Joss Stone on her 2009 single, Free Me, a song released by her then-record label (yes, you guessed it) EMI.
The star had grown disillusioned with her label after it was taken over by a private equity firm in 2007, saying she had "no working relationship" with the new owners.
When her fourth album flopped, she decided to cut ties with EMI. The catch? She had to pay back the advance she'd been given when she signed her contract.
"I realised, 'You two want completely different things. So just give it to each other.' They gave me my musical freedom and I gave them their money," she later told ABC News.
Although Stone has never confirmed the figure she paid, it's been put at anywhere between £2m and £7m. Whatever the amount, the singer reasoned it was a fair price to pay for her happiness.
"It is expensive, making an album with orchestras and wonderful musicians on it," she said. "But it's not millions and millions of pounds [so] this is my way of being happy."
6) Taylor Swift re-records her old songs
When Taylor Swift's old record label, Big Machine, was bought by Ariana Grande's manager Scooter Braun last June, she made no secret of her dismay.
One of Braun's on-and-off clients is Kanye West, who has tormented Swift for more than a decade, interrupting her at award shows, disparaging her in his songs and inserting a waxwork of her naked body into a music video.
Swift believes Braun encouraged and endorsed some of those actions, which is why she felt "sad and grossed out" by Braun taking control of her first six albums.
She called the deal "my worst case scenario" that "stripped me of my life's work". But then she came up with a plan: Later this year, Swift will re-record all of her old music, undercutting the value of the master tapes held by Braun and his investment company Ithaca Holdings.
In the future, if anyone wants to licence Shake It Off or Love Story for a film or advert, they'll be using the new version - owned and controlled by Swift.
She's not the first artist to airbrush their old recordings from existence. In 2005, the Sugababes re-released their album Taller In More Ways, digitally erasing Mutya Buena's vocals and adding her replacement, Amelle Berrabah.
In 2012, Jeff Lynne reconstructed 11 classic ELO tracks for a new Best Of album; claiming the originals didn't sound "the way I had always heard them in my head"; while U2 have incessantly fiddled with their undercooked 1997 album Pop, remixing and re-recording tracks from the record Bono once called "the most expensive demo session in the history of music".
"To re-record our back catalogue is a way of empowering ourselves," explained Nick Feldman of Wang Chung, who made copycat versions of their 1980s hits Everybody Have Fun Tonight and Dancehall Days.
"We can be much more selective about where these songs end up and how much we charge for them."
7) Prince swaps his name for a symbol
When Prince signed a $100m, six-album deal with Warner Bros in 1992, it was biggest contract ever signed by a solo artist. But it came with a heavy price - Warner Bros received ownership of Prince's entire body of work.
Why did he allow this to happen? His tour manager, Alan Leeds, believed it was because Prince was eager to trump the multi million-dollar deals Janet Jackson and Madonna had recently signed.
"He was so desperate to get that headline that he was allowing his team to negotiate away certain royalties, certain publishing rights and all kinds of things to get bigger guarantees," he told the star's biographer, Matt Thorne.
As the reality of the deal dawned upon him, Warner Bros. demanded that Prince should leave more time between his album releases, fearful that the public would grow weary of his prolific output. This was like a red rag to an already irate bull.
On his 35th birthday, the star announced he would no longer go by the name Prince, but rather by a "Love Symbol" which was a mash-up of the gender symbols for man and woman.
"Warner Bros took [my] name, trademarked it, and used it as the main marketing took to promote all of the music I wrote," he said in a press release. "The company owns the name Prince and all related music marketed under Prince. I became merely a pawn used to produce more money for Warner Bros."
Of course, changing his name didn't void the contract (otherwise we'd all be doing that every time we bought a new car) but Prince's feud ran for seven years, during which time he took to writing the word "slave" on his face in eyeliner.
In the end, he fulfilled his obligations by delivering a series of throwaway albums packed with off-cuts and unfinished ideas.
Prince being Prince, of course, there are still gems to be found on those records - Papa, Dinner With Delores, Extraordinary, Gold - but ultimately he proved Warner Bros. right: Releasing so much material in such a short space of time, while removing the quality control filter, damaged his commercial prospects for years.
But Prince's fight to protect his creative rights still has repercussions today. Artists are now more likely to demand ownership of their master tapes, or to pursue alternative distribution deals - like Prince's decision to release music online or to bundle CDs with concert tickets.
No wonder Juicy J sampled him as he crossed swords with Columbia.
Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected].
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Militant leader Burhan Wani's death in a gun battle with government forces in Indian-administered Kashmir has sparked a spiral of deadly violence in the Muslim-majority valley. The region has seen an armed insurgency against Indian rule since 1989. Sushil Pandit writes on the reasons behind the fresh upsurge of violence. | Kashmir Valley has erupted yet again.
This time, everyone blames it on the death of militant leader Burhan Wani in a gun battle with security forces in July.
Last time violence of similar scale erupted in Kashmir was in 2010, when more than 100 people died in clashes between protesters and security forces. Then the violence had begun after a Srinagar teenager, Tufail Ahmed Mattoo, was killed by a teargas shell.
'Healing touch'
Between these two incidents, in 2013, Afzal Guru, was hanged for the 2001 attack on India's parliament and buried in the Delhi prison where he was executed.
He had a profile several times bigger than both Wani and Mattoo put together. Yet, Guru's execution did not lead to any major violence in the valley.
Living in the shadow of curfew in Kashmir
Why the Kashmir killings could have been avoided
Firing at stone-throwers in Indian-administered Kashmir
Concern in Kashmir over police pellet guns
Why Kashmiri youth supported militant Burhan Wani
Kashmiri Hindus: Driven out and insignificant
Kashmir territories profile
In the name of providing a "healing touch" and "reaching out" to the separatists, governments led by mainstream parties in Kashmir have routinely released rebels from jails and allowed public funerals for slain militants. Wani's was only the latest, and indeed the largest, of the mobilisations for a frenzied funeral.
Days before his killing, the Kashmir government freed more than 600 stone-pelters from prisons and pardoned them as a "confidence building measure" even as mobs were attacking security forces with stones during operations.
Besides, for the past two years in Kashmir, bodies of even Pakistani terrorists killed in operations have been handed over to local mosques for public funerals, which have been attended by thousands.
The Kashmir government alone cannot be blamed for this. Last July, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP government in Maharashtra allowed a huge public funeral of Yaqub Memon, after he was executed for his role in the 1993 Mumbai serial bombings that killed 257 people and wounded 1,400 others.
Such mass funerals achieve two objectives for the separatists.
Halo of martyrdom
For one, they help whip up secessionist passions.
Two, they create a halo of martyrdom around the dead militants, which, in turn, helps recruit several eager replacements from school dropouts looking for some glory.
Kashmir's two mainstream political parties have not been helpful.
Though they declare their allegiance to India and its secular democracy, their politics is something else.
Between them they demand self rule, autonomy, open borders and shared sovereignty with neighbouring Pakistan, sharia-compliant banking, and reducing the role of the Supreme Court, federal auditors and the Indian election panel, among other things.
To the hundreds of thousands of persecuted and exiled Kashmiri Hindus, the parties have paid only lip-service to their demands of justice.
When it comes to the issues of their return to the valley and resettlement, these parties prevaricate exactly as the separatists do.
Rationalising secession
Jihad - as the terror groups in Kashmir and their promoters in neighbouring Pakistan call their campaign in Kashmir - has two faces.
First are the rebels and their armed insurgency, aided and abetted directly by the terror groups across the border. They operate in independent cells spread out across the valley, with their command and control structures based in Pakistan.
And then there is the separatist leadership - Hurriyat Conference, the political umbrella of separatist groups - who provide intellectual legitimacy to rebels by articulating their positions and rationalising secession.
Perpetuating it or unwittingly helping them are the so-called "mainstream" political parties in the valley which contest elections and operate under the oath of the Indian constitution, but are seen to coordinate very closely with the separatists.
Then there is a tiny elite, comprising politicians, journalists, lawyers, bureaucrats, think-tanks, and public intellectuals, who wield a disproportionately high say in how the Indian state must respond to the crisis in the region.
An enormous amount of "insight" and "scholarship" has been invested in trying to placate the separatists in the hope that they will give up their demand.
This includes exploring all that can be offered to resolve the dispute, including "creative" interpretation of the constitution or even amendments that sometimes amount to almost secession from India. Nothing has worked.
Meanwhile, separatism in Kashmir becomes a lucrative economy and a hive of vested interests. And India continues to suffer.
Sushil Pandit is a Kashmiri Hindu in exile, living in Delhi
A brief history of Kashmir
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The recent abduction of dozens of Assyrian Christians and the mass beheading of Egyptian Copts at the hands of the Islamic State (IS) militant group raises questions about its stance on Christians, both in the Middle East and worldwide. | While there is a general consensus among Islamic scholars that both Christians and Jews enjoy special status under an Islamic state which guarantees them safety in exchange for paying a special tax and other conditions, IS has recently signalled that this status would be an exception rather than the rule.
When the group announced the beheading of the Copts earlier this month, it said it had acted in revenge for the alleged mistreatment of Coptic women converts to Islam by the Egyptian Coptic Church.
But it also indicated that they had been targeted because they were part of the "nation of the Cross" - an apparent reference to Christians worldwide - which was waging a "Crusader" war against Islam.
This appeared to suggest that all Christians, regardless of their sectarian affiliations, were legitimate targets for IS.
Nevertheless, there is also evidence that the group is willing to tolerate Christian minorities in areas under its control.
'Protected status'
The news was reminiscent of the abduction of the Egyptian Copts in Libya who were subsequently beheaded by IS militants there.
The fact that IS has taken the Assyrians prisoner would suggest they are not accorded protected status.
It has already signalled its hostility towards the Assyrian Christian prisoners by describing them as "Crusaders".
Unlike other religious minorities - such as the Yazidis - Christians and Jews are generally considered to have protected ("Dhimmi") status because they belong to monotheistic religions like Islam.
But IS appears to view Christians primarily as enemies that must be fought and subdued.
Contrary to the prevailing view in Muslim countries, IS regards Christians as being afforded the protected status of Dhimmis only if they pay a special tax called jizya and fulfil other stringent obligations. Those obligations are subject to IS's own interpretation.
When Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), as it was known at the time, targeted a Catholic church in Baghdad in 2010 it linked the attack with the alleged persecution of Muslim women converts by the Coptic Church in Egypt.
ISI held Iraq's Christians responsible for the Coptic Church's actions by failing to denounce its alleged crimes committed against Muslims.
Shortly afterwards, ISI issued a statement announcing that Iraq's Christians were legitimate targets. A wave of attacks followed in areas with a Christian majority in Iraq.
Nevertheless, Christians have not always been seen as enemies by the group.
A few years earlier, Christian minorities in areas of Iraq that had been under ISI control did enjoy the group's protection. A statement issued by the group's Mosul branch in 2008 referred to a pact concluded with Christian community leaders and ISI.
More recently, in 2014, IS offered similar protection to Christians in its stronghold of Raqqa in Syria and possibly in other areas under the group's control in both Syria and Iraq.
IS gave Christians three options: to convert to Islam; to remain Christian but pay taxes and conform to strict Islamic rules; or to reject the first two options and face war from the group.
But in the latest edition of its English-language magazine Dabiq, the group listed Christians among IS's main enemies.
It said IS advocated jihad against "the Jews, the Christians, the Rafida [Shia] and the proponents of democracy".
BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook.
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Kent's police and crime commissioner (PCC) has announced plans to recruit nearly 100 more police officers and support staff. | Ann Barnes said the proposal equates to an additional £2.79 in the police precept on the average household council tax bill
The figure includes 20 constables, 60 community support officers and 18 custody attendants.
Kent will lose 440 serving officers and 750 civilian staff by 2016.
Ms Barnes said: "People want and they demand visible policing and that's not a simplistic reaction in times of tension and uncertainty."
She added that most of the planned posts could be introduced countywide by the end of June.
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A fearless Russian drama company has risen from the dead after being evicted from its premises in Moscow this winter. The eviction seemed at first to be a political death sentence, but does a theatre with barely 100 seats really present a threat to the Kremlin? | By Lucy AshBBC News
Just down the street from Moscow's pale blue Yelokhovskaya Cathedral, there is a small, one-storey building behind a gate. Attached the the railings, I read a hastily written cardboard sign with an arrow pointing to the courtyard.
This is the new home of the embattled Moscow drama company Teatr Doc. Inside is a hive of activity in preparation for the re-opening - one man on a stepladder is attaching some lights to a beam as people below him stack chairs and mop the floor.
It still looks a bit like a building site, and plaster dust hangs in the air as I walk into a little side room where a young bearded man is awkwardly holding a hammer.
Aleksey Krizhevsky, whose day job is writing for a news website, is doing his best to put up coat pegs. He is one of an army of volunteers who have come to clear rubble, lay bricks, sand and paint over the past six weeks.
Actors, directors, students and members of the audience have all lent a hand, he says.
"We never went hungry because people kept bringing in sandwiches and home cooked food. It was a great atmosphere."
When the Moscow government threw Teatr Doc out of a basement in the city centre where it had worked for 12 years, the homeless company appealed to its audience for help.
Oleg Karlsson, an architect, was one of hundreds who responded to SOS messages on Facebook. He donated his time and expertise to turn a semi-derelict structure - once part of an 18th Century nobleman's estate, and later a fish shop - into Doc's new base.
"I've done what I can to turn these ruins into a useable space," he says, "but we need three or four times the funds to do it properly."
The old premises of Teatr Doc were located close to the fashionable Pushkin Square, but the doors and windows are now welded shut with sheets of metal.
The company rented the venue from the Moscow city government but had its lease revoked last autumn, supposedly for violating planning regulations by installing an extra emergency exit - work it undertook on the orders of the fire brigade.
Tax inspectors, firemen and police are often used to close down businesses and get rid of undesirable tenants. Teatr Doc was was able to remain in situ, however, while it appealed against the eviction.
Then, one evening in December, as it started screening clips from a documentary on the political turmoil and bloodshed in Ukraine, police from a special anti-extremism division burst in and marched everyone out into the courtyard.
At first they said they had received a bomb threat.
"They spent ages checking our IDs outside and we were asking if there really is a bomb why do you keep us here? All of us could die if it explodes! " says Aleksey Krizhevsky, who had been one of two dozen people in the audience.
"It was strange because an official from the Ministry of Culture and a policeman just sat in the theatre for hours watching the whole film as we stood shivering outside in -15C!"
Yelena Gremina, a renowned playwright and the director of Teatr Doc, was out of town at the time but got a call to say that three people from the theatre had been arrested and that laptops and other material were being taken out of the office.
Find out more:
Listen to Lucy Ash's radio documentary for Crossing Continents on BBC Radio 4 on the BBC iPlayer
"The place had been ransacked," she says. "They'd kicked a door in, you could see their bootmarks all over it - they trashed the office and dressing room, scattered make up on the floor, smashed up our scenery - it was awful."
An inquiry dragged on for two weeks before a case of extremism opened against the theatre, and against her personally, was dropped.
"Of course, there was nothing extremist about any of the stuff we do - we just believe in freedom of expression," she says. "But the next day people from the Ministry of Culture called me in to warn that next time we'd be punished more severely."
Gremina, a woman with a mop of curly hair and fierce black eyes, refuses to be intimidated.
"Whoever cooked up this idiotic scenario had clearly bitten off more than he could chew," she says.
Teatr Doc has made its mark by reflecting the unvarnished reality of everyday life in Russia.
It was founded in 2002 by a group of writers who couldn't find a theatre willing to stage their documentary-style writing. Practically all its plays are verbatim, created on the basis of long interviews with actual people.
Anna Kotova, a young actress who has appeared in a number of its productions, says Teatr Doc calls itself "the theatre where nobody acts"- though preserving the exact speech of interviewees can be more challenging than reciting the dialogue of classical Russian theatre or TV comedy, she says.
At the packed-out opening show in the new building, one of the first on stage is Marina Kleshova, who has spent most of her life behind bars.
"I'm not afraid of Teatr Doc and it is not afraid of me," she says, walking on with her guitar.
She performs a Soviet-era lament about New Year's Eve in a penal colony which, much to the audience's delight, contains a number of powerful swear words. The song defiantly puts two fingers up to a recent law which bans obscene language from stage and screen. There are cheers and whistles as she sings in a throaty voice and strums her guitar.
At first, Teatr Doc's playwrights and directors focused mainly on social issues such as the plight of prisoners, migrant workers, drug addicts and people treated like outcasts after being infected with HIV.
But from 2010 onwards, the plays became more critical of the government, says John Freedman, a Moscow-based translator, writer and specialist on Russian theatre.
"Everybody started to sense that there was a clamping down, a growing conservatism, and in response they started doing more political shows," he says.
One play which may have irritated the authorities was about the whistle-blowing lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who accused tax officials and police officers of embezzling $230m. Shortly afterwards, he was arrested and died an agonising death in custody. Based on interviews and court transcripts, the title of the play One Hour and 18 Minutes refers to the period of time that medical treatment was denied to Magnitsky in his cell.
"The play showed how incredibly callous all of the policemen were, as well as the guards, the judges and the medical staff," says Freedman. "It was the story of a man simply hounded to death because he had information about government corruption."
Russia's president is savagely lampooned in another even edgier Teatr Doc production, BerlusPutin, a farce adapted from a play by the Italian satirist Dario Fo, called the Two-headed Anomaly. In Doc's version, Silvio Berlusconi's brain is transplanted into the head of Vladimir Putin with disastrous results.
The actor playing Putin wears a rubber chest - mimicking the naked torso which the real President regularly flaunts on Russian TV. He later dons a mask of Dobby the house elf, a character from the Harry Potter movies. It seems the botox treatment to get rid of the president's wrinkles has gone badly wrong. But slapstick aside, the play contains some altogether blacker humour.
The play revolves around the relationship between Vladimir Putin and his former wife Lyudmila, who has been dumped in a monastery. When he suggests they have sex, she yells: "You can't rape me, I'm not Russia!"
How much can Teatr Doc get away with?
Russia has a constitution, which officially protects artistic freedom. But with war in Ukraine, and a plunging rouble, these are uncertain and increasingly intolerant times. Nationalism is on the rise, as is the influence of the Russian Orthodox church.
Just after the re-opening in February, I met Sergei Kapkov, the man in charge of culture in the Moscow city government, who brought wi-fi and rental bikes to Gorky Park, renovated theatres and, unusually, earned the support of the liberal opposition.
He told me the Russian capital was a "thriving metropolis filled with creative people who have many different points of view" and that he would not interfere with Teatr Doc "so long as it stays within the law".
So, I insisted, can a theatre which is critical of the government and even of the president himself survive in today's climate?
"I'm not Nostrodamus," he snapped. "I can't see into the future."
A few weeks later, Kapkov stepped down.
The reasons for this unclear, but many saw his resignation as a bad omen. He certainly seemed to have a far more liberal vision than Vladimir Medinsky - Russia's hardline Minister of Culture.
The Russian movie Leviathan won prizes at Cannes and the Golden Globes but the film - about a corrupt local mayor who forces a family off their land - was not to Medinsky's taste.
Such "negative" films, he said, would never again receive official funding.
Since then Medinsky has waded into a row over the staging of Wagner's opera, Tannhauser, in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk - sacking the manager of the opera house after Orthodox clerics objected to scantily clad Biblical characters. The production was "humiliating" to believers, the clerics said - the same argument used to jail members of Pussy Riot after their punk performance in a Moscow cathedral.
But Teatr Doc still revels in pushing the boundaries - it has just hosted a one-man show from Kiev based on the diary of a military psychologist who counsels Ukraine's frontline troops. The evening wasn't advertised for fear of another visit from the police.
Next month it will premiere a play about the Bolotnaya Square demonstration of 2011, when tens of thousands protested against Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency for a third term. The work is based on interviews with the families of demonstrators who ended up in jail.
Teatr Doc may be small, its productions are not televised and you can only watch fragments online. But it has an impressive reach both outside and inside the country.
And even a small independent theatre is important, says director Elena Gremina. People across Russia have been watching carefully over the last few months, she says, wondering whether Teatr Doc will surrender or not.
"When we were gathering money for our new building online," she says, "we received small donations of 200 or 300 roubles (less than $5) from people living in Blagoveshchensk, Nizhniy Novgorod and Novosibirsk - thousands of miles away. They might have never visited our theatre but it's important for them to know that we exist."
Listen to Lucy Ash's radio documentary for Crossing Continents on BBC Radio 4 on the BBC iPlayer
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Home schooling is causing stress in millions of homes across the UK. BBC newsreader Kate Silverton, who is also a trainee child psychotherapist and a mother-of-two, has like most parents found lockdown a very challenging time.
After speaking to other parents about their own stresses and fears, she warns about the damage the pandemic could do to children's mental health. | Home schooling may have been a success for some but in my overall experience - and that of the parents I have spoken to - those successes have been few and far between.
Whether at the school gates, or in the counselling arena, mums and dads tell me they cannot cope. I would go so far to say that anyone who thinks working and schooling young children from home has been a success is sadly ill-informed.
My husband and I have tried to make the memories of this time more joyful and positive. So we camped in our (courtyard) garden and have had more late nights, cuddled up watching movies than we would have done previously. However, it has inevitably been a very demanding time for everyone.
When people ask how I am doing, I often joke that I am "surviving not thriving". When the work calls start, it is very hard to be there for our children.
Running feral
So many working parents have shared with me stories of having to work on constant Zoom calls while their children "run feral". One single mum called time on her employer after being on yet another conference call when she heard a gushing sound next door. Her three children - aged 10, 7 and 3 - had run a bath and left the water running. The entire kitchen was flooded.
Another told me how her four-year-old had left a note to his dad: "This is a storee about a daddy called Androoo, he werced all the time."
Parents have spoken of their fears around their children being constantly online. One teacher was in tears to me about the guilt she felt when she was upstairs "looking after other people's children", while her own were downstairs alone, playing video games.
To be physically present for our children but not emotionally available - shooing them away while on work calls, sending them downstairs to play while we work upstairs - sends them a very definite message: you're in the way.
They feel a deep sense of rejection from what is, to them, a very visible representation that work comes before them.
"I can't go on," one mum told me. "It's horrific," said another, for whom the fear of losing her job means she cannot put her children first. Others tell me how inadequate they feel. Some say they are drinking more and shouting too much.
Fathers say the pressure of an uncertain future and trying to home-school young children has pushed them to the brink. One dad told me he had never smacked his children but said he had come close during lockdown.
A mother admitted that her 10-year-old daughter woke her up to say goodbye to her as she left for school. Frazzled, exhausted and fearful after the loss of her husband's job, and with her own in the balance, she had fallen asleep at the kitchen table over breakfast.
Even teachers are struggling. Ed Vainker, executive principal at Reach Academy, Feltham, in west London, shared with me the difficulty he has had. "I don't want to have to be headteacher to my child. Home schooling can challenge the parent-child relationship."
We can repair this damage - but only if we collectively acknowledge that the combination of home schooling and working from home is, quite frankly, not working.
"We need to think about how to support parents and teachers, with their own feelings of vulnerability, so they feel equipped to manage what often feels so very unmanageable," Dame Benita Refson, founder and president of children's mental health charity Place2Be, says.
"As parents and teachers, our own behaviour speaks volumes to children, often leaving a lasting impression on the way the child views their world."
Dame Benny says many children are fearful of returning to school. The lack of routine means returning to class is going to be difficult for them. Children from black and Asian communities may be particularly anxious, given the news reports of disproportionate impacts of coronavirus on their communities.
Kate's tips to deal with stress at home
What helps me is to ensure I have had time to connect with my children each day, to create "magic moments" as I call them. Yesterday, it was a game of skipping where my tripping up was the highlight. The day before we baked. The day before that we made playdough and just sat and created "food".
My children are young, but for all our children having our physical presence - watching a movie, or during a meal - is often what they crave the most, even though they might not always articulate it.
These are the moments our children will remember of this period - the quality time, without phones, without being hurried, just "being" and laughing.
When we carve out that time for our children, to be with them exclusively, it's the equivalent of a big, long hug. It makes them feel safe. And I cannot stress enough how much it helps us as parents too.
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Work to upgrade a manufacturing yard on Lewis in the Western Isles has been completed.
| A huge fabrication building at Arnish Point, Stornoway, was re-clad at a cost of £3m.
Highlands and Islands Enterprise awarded the work to Rok but the firm later collapsed. Hertfordshire-based Willmot Dixon completed the project.
Fife-based company BiFab has been building a full-scale prototype of a tidal turbine at Arnish.
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The western-most concentration camp in the Third Reich, Lager Sylt, was located on British soil - only about 70 miles south of Bournemouth on the island of Alderney. Should this camp and other relics of the Channel Islands' occupation by Nazi Germany be developed into tourist attractions? | Arrive in Alderney at its small and ageing airport and you will see an island map, pointing out Victorian forts, a Roman nunnery and World War Two coastal defences.
There is, however, no mention of the four wartime camps that housed thousands of slave labourers, many of whom died as part of Nazi Germany's attempts to turn Alderney into a fortress island.
It is these locations that Marcus Roberts, director of the National Anglo-Jewish Heritage Trail, believes should be developed as "sites of memory", in part to boost the island's flagging tourism industry.
"Alderney is perhaps the best place to go to understand the realities of the Nazi slave labour system," he said.
"People could go and understand what the consequences of tyranny are and the mistreatment of other people.
"I think there's a role for respectable tourism, which would be part of the overall tourism strategy for the island."
Alderney occupation
Mr Roberts believes there were significantly more forced labourers on Alderney than post-war reports stated, including about 10,000 predominantly French Jews.
Albert Eblagon survived Norderney and described to Israeli journalist Solomon Steckoll in an account published in 1982 how fellow prisoners were beaten and starved to death.
Some aged over 70, they worked up to 14 hours each day building the island's fortifications.
"Every day there were beatings, and people's bones were broken, their arms or their legs," he recalled.
"People died from overwork. We were starved and worked to death; so many died from total exhaustion."
The number of his fellow prisoners and forced labourers who did not survive has been contested, ranging from an official post-war report that stated 389 deaths, to as many as 70,000.
Focusing on this traumatic past led to Mr Roberts being accused of promoting Alderney as a "bone-yard" and making it less attractive to visitors.
In response, he wrote a letter to the Alderney Journal in June defending his research and pointing to nearby northern France where military cemeteries are popular tourist attractions.
The number of people travelling to and from the island by air has fallen by more than a quarter in the 10 years to 2016, although there was a slight rise in summer 2017 compared to the year before.
But developing the island's former Nazi sites for visitors is something States of Alderney Vice President Ian Tugby is against.
"We're supposed to be a lovely island, going forward," he said.
"I'm more interested in the future, basically, than what's gone on in the past, because the past is gone.
"We can't change it, and do we want to continue to drag up the downside of what went on in Alderney all those years ago?"
Alderney's camps
The four major camps were run by the Todt Organisation, responsible for Nazi Germany's military and civic engineering.
Sylt, the only concentration camp, was taken over by the SS Baubrigade in 1943, part of the so-called death's head formation, which ran concentration camps.
More than 40,000 camps and incarceration sites were established by the Nazis across Europe for forced labour, detention - and mass murder.
Alderney inmates were predominantly Russian, and comprised of prisoners of war, forced labourers, "volunteers" from Germany and occupied countries, Jews, and political prisoners.
Helgoland and Norderney, today a campsite, both had the capacity for 1,500 forced labourers.
Borkum housed specialist craftsmen, many ordered there from either Germany or occupied countries, with between 500 and 1,000 prisoners at the site.
Mr Tugby's voting record in the island's parliament suggests he is serious.
In 2015, he and fellow Alderney-born politician Louis Jean were the only two politicians to vote against designating Lager Sylt a conservation area.
Economic independence for the island, reliant on its larger neighbour Guernsey, lies in approving a £500m electricity cable project linking France and Britain through the island, not in promoting its wartime occupation, Mr Tugby said.
However, fellow politician Graham McKinley, who voted in favour of Sylt being protected, would like to see a similar memorial to the one at Sylt (pictured above) at the three other forced labour sites, including Lager Norderney, the largest, which is today home to Alderney's campsite.
"There should be some sort of memorial put up there, and some sort of indication that that was happening."
People would visit sites like these, he said, if they were more aware of the island's "unique wartime interest".
"Look at the prisoner-of-war camps in Poland and in Germany which attract an enormous amount of visitors every year and bring in much-needed revenue," he said.
"We need that sort of thing."
Unlike with the island's plentiful occupation-era coastal defences, there is little remaining of the forced labour sites, except for entrance gates and the odd structure.
Sylt is protected after Alderney's government designated it a conservation area in 2015, while the other three sites could yet be afforded similar protection under a plan awaiting government approval.
The 2017 Land Use Plan would see the sites where the forced labour camps stood, and other locations of wartime significance, registered as heritage assets.
Only development that is "sensitive to the former use and history of these assets" would be permitted at the wartime sites, under the plan.
Such protection is long overdue, according to Trevor Davenport, author of Festung Alderney, a book on German defences on the island.
Despite a long association with protecting World War Two sites, Mr Davenport does not, however, want to see former forced labour sites developed for visitors.
"I have no objection to people being made aware of the labour camps," he said.
"But it is not, unless you are a ghoul, a heritage issue that needs promoting, except as part of the overall occupation story."
Certainly, the island's tourism body Visit Alderney is reluctant to promote this part of the island's history above any other.
"Our tourism focus remains on the historical importance and education of all our heritage periods," a spokeswoman said.
"The local population are respectful of our past whatever the historical period.
"Promoting tourism and respectful memoriam should not be confused."
But for Marcus Roberts, encouraging people to come to Alderney to consider what happened there during the Nazi occupation makes sense both financially and morally.
Not only was this important for the descendents of Nazi Germany's victims, he said, but also for the historical record.
"It's not just an island matter; it does affect people literally from around the world.
"Each person who died was someone's family, someone's son, and all lives are valuable."
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Authorities in Sri Lanka have briefly detained Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickramatunga at the Katunayake international airport before boarding a Geneva bound flight. | The journalist was to leave for Switzerland to cover the talks between the government and the Tamil Tigers.
Airport authorities have informed Wickramatunga that he was not allowed to leave Sri Lanka without special permission.
Speaking from Abu Dhabi, UAE, Wickramatunga told BBC Sandeshaya that he was not informed of any such decision before he came to the airport.
The editor was later allowed to leave after he announced the harassment live on Sirasa radio.
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Defence group BAE Systems and engine supplier Rolls-Royce have signed a £700m deal to supply India's Hindustan Aeronautics with 57 Hawk training jets. | Over £500m will go to BAE and £200m to Rolls-Royce in the deal that should create about 200 jobs in the UK.
The jets will be used to train pilots in the Indian air force.
The deal was announced to coincide with British Prime Minister David Cameron's visit to India, designed to strengthen relations and boost trade.
'Government support'
Mr Cameron said: "This is an outstanding example of India-UK defence and industrial partnership, and this agreement will bring significant economic benefits to both our countries."
The deal follows an order for 66 Hawk jets by India's air force in 2004.
"BAE Systems is extremely pleased to have secured this follow-on order for Hawk," said BAE's chairman Dick Olver.
"It reflects the long-standing successful relationship between BAE Systems and Hindustan Aeronautics and the importance of solid government support."
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This will not have been an easy decision for Prince William to make. | Peter HuntDiplomatic and royal correspondent@BBCPeterHunton Twitter
For a second time, he's giving up a role he didn't inherit, but gained on merit.
After stints in the RAF and the air ambulance, his days as a pilot are coming to an end.
He will miss them. He's spoken of how he's loved working in a team. Something, he said, "his other job" didn't necessarily offer.
The prince is the only senior royal to have a deep understanding of the National Health Service the majority of the population experience.
With his family moving from Norfolk to London, Prince George will go to a private school from September.
And Prince William and his wife will be available to do more royal work. The demands will increase now the Queen has turned 90.
The future king's exclusive focus will very soon be on his role as a Windsor and a destiny he'll one day embrace.
Read full article
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A car towing a caravan and driving the wrong way on the M40 has been involved in a crash with another vehicle. | It was travelling south on the northbound carriageway when it crashed at about 16:00 BST on Monday.
The road was closed between junction 6 for Watlington and junction 8A for Oxford, and reopened at about 07:00.
The air ambulance was dispatched by South Central Ambulance Service, but no details of any injuries have been released.
Thames Valley Police is now appealing for motorists with dashcam footage to come forward.
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A virus known to cause vomiting and diarrhoea has prompted the closure of hospital wards in Arbroath, Dundee and Perth. | NHS Tayside has closed ward 5 at Ninewells Hospital, Ward 6 at Perth Royal Infirmary and the medical unit at Arbroath Infirmary to new admissions.
It follows several cases of suspected norovirus, more commonly known as the winter vomiting bug.
The wards have been closed to new patients as a precautionary measure.
The health board said all appropriate infection control measures had been put in place.
NHS Tayside is urging people who may be feeling unwell or experiencing vomiting and diarrhoea not to visit their friends and family members who are in hospital.
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Lagan Construction, the company carrying out a £55m refurbishment of Guernsey Airport, said its complaints hotline had received 54 calls.
| Of those, 12 people have registered concerns about night-time working, while other complaints have related to traffic and dust on the island's roads.
Gerry Prickett, the project manager, welcomed the fact that islanders were making use of the service.
"If we're not aware of the issues, then we won't be fixing them," he said.
"But if we are aware of the issues then we can establish whether we can fix them."
The calls were received over a four-month period, after the telephone hotline was set up in May.
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Experts have warned of a post-coronavirus illegal drugs binge as people get back into the habit. We spoke to users, police and policy figures to get an insight on the trade as it emerges from lockdown. | By Adam ClarksonReporter, BBC Tees
Tom smokes cannabis on a regular basis, and normally he would use Class A drugs with friends on a weekend.
But the pandemic has changed that.
He has been furloughed, and the 28-year-old from Middlesbrough's drug use has become much more frequent.
"Obviously I have a lot more time on my hands. I suppose the weekend is basically all the time now so I'm using more cocaine and ecstasy," he said.
Tom spoke to the BBC Sounds podcast Unusual Times as part of an investigation into the effect of coronavirus on UK drug culture.
Breaking lockdown rules, and being at an extra risk of catching and spreading Covid-19, has not been a concern for him.
"There are people that are breaking the lockdown a lot more that people should be worried about, instead of the odd person picking up a bit of drugs here and there," he said.
"I'm probably more likely to die from what's in the bag than what's contaminated on the outside of the bag."
According to the latest figures from the Home Office, one in 11 adults in the UK, which would equate to about 3.2 million people, admitted to using illegal drugs in the last year.
Liz McCulloch, director of policy at think tank Volteface, said as the government continued to ease the restrictions, there could well be a "post-lockdown drugs binge".
She said changes in people's drug use depended largely on personal circumstance, and while it was difficult to establish a national trend, surveys conducted at the start of lockdown suggested the black market had remained largely the same.
"There was an example of a dealer pretending to be a Deliveroo driver to evade notice," she said.
"We've also heard of dealers being very conscious of hygiene, disinfecting notes, or using online transactions, and trying to keep a hygienic work environment, but this is an illegal and unregulated market, and there will be many others who are not doing this."
Despite saying drugs have been accessible throughout lockdown, 25-year-old Harry said he had cut down.
He moved back home with his mum in Durham, who did not know about his drug use, and cited this as one of the reasons his use of Class A and B drugs had decreased.
"The social scene is dead now. I'd normally do it with the lads on a night out but obviously that's gone," he said.
"It's a bit pointless doing it on my own in my room."
Despite this, he admitted "the temptation is always there" and, talking about the risk of contracting coronavirus, claimed "it's probably safer picking up a bag of coke, or a bag of weed, than it is going to the supermarket".
George Charlton, a drugs and harm prevention campaigner, said: "As the lockdown begins to ease, people will be more inclined to go out and party - but you've got to be careful.
"The safest way to use drugs is not to use them at all, but we know people will use drugs. Make sure you you always test your drugs, and never make the assumption that the drugs you're taking are the drugs you've been told you're getting."
The return of the night-time economy would be likely to see an influx of drug use and strain the emergency services, according to Lincolnshire Police Deputy Chief Constable Jason Harwin, who is also the National Police Chiefs Council lead on drugs.
"There's a real risk as we move into the next phase, as we know the influence that drugs can have on people's behaviour. The levels of violence and aggression can increase.
"If people have not been able to access drugs, there's a risk that use goes up. There's a real risk that people overdose.
"It's the old bit of 'I've not had anything for a bit, so I'm going to make the most of it' and they take too much, and their bodies can't handle it."
The government said it was "closely monitoring the impact of the pandemic and working closely with the police to respond to any changes in the illegal drug supply".
There are resources for anyone affected by the issues in this article here.
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A 78-year-old woman who drove her car into two women at a supermarket cashpoint, killing one of them, may have put her foot on the wrong pedal or fainted, a court has heard. | Pauline Cove, from Totton, was leaving a Morrisons car park in the town in 2018 when her car mounted the pavement.
Doris Lush, 86, died later in hospital and her granddaughter Rebecca Lush, 22, suffered serious leg injuries.
Mrs Cove denies causing death and serious injury by dangerous driving.
The jury at Southampton Crown Court was shown CCTV footage, with prosecutor Rose Burns warning: "It's shocking, it's horrid. Stay steady, watch it dispassionately, clinically."
Ms Burns said witnesses described hearing loud and hard engine revving, and one thought it was a "boy racer".
She added Mrs Cove did not recall what happened and the court would hear expert evidence about the possibility she used the wrong pedal or fainted.
The trial continues.
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A prison worker at a young offenders centre in Kent has been sentenced after a BBC Panorama programme uncovered a series of irregularities. | Peter Scott, 29, admitted taking photos and making recordings inside the Medway Secure Training Centre in Rochester.
Police began an investigation after Panorama broadcast behind-the-scenes footage from the centre in January.
Medway magistrates ordered Scott, of Goodwood Crescent, Gravesend, to carry out 100 hours of unpaid work.
He was also told to pay £85 costs after pleading guilty at an earlier hearing.
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People here waited anxiously for weeks and months, first, as the trial unfolded, and then during the final, nerve-wracking hours, while the jury deliberated. The stakes of the trial were extraordinarily high, and people are relieved, and also trying to process the tumultuous events. | By Tara McKelveyBBC News, Minneapolis
It is a landmark case for police violence against black people, and the verdict marks a significant victory for the activists who have pushed for policing reform: Derek Chauvin was convicted of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd.
The jury's decision means police will now be under increased scrutiny, say legal experts, and are more likely to be prosecuted, and convicted, for wrongdoing. The verdict could usher in a kind of policing, say analysts, with more accountability for officers, as well as new policies for the use of force. And for many, the trial was a sign that the system works.
"It shows that police officers are not above the law," says Jack Rice, a lawyer in the twin cities, Minneapolis and St Paul. "It will impact future cases that come before the court. What is even more important, however, is that it will impact the behaviour of officers when they are performing on the street. It's beyond the criminal case - it's about what the officers do on a daily basis."
News of the monumental verdict travelled fast. Activist Rosa Gomez, 19, was in her college dorm, and Erika Atson, 20, also an activist, was at home, when it was announced.
Says Atson: "I'm happy. Just super happy."
Gomez agrees: "A huge relief."
The reaction of Rich Stanek, a former sheriff of Hennepin County, the place where the trial was convened, and his colleagues was different.
He was at a conference of law enforcement officials in Idaho, and was not surprised by the verdict. Among he and his friends, though, there was no celebrating: "People were sombre."
Activists were elated, others reserved. But for all, it was the end of a journey, the conclusion of a trial that had riveted them, and people around the world, and held them in its grip.
Floyd's death outside of a store, Cup Foods, in May 2020 had set off massive protests and looting. Then, the sensational trial convened, and became the most closely watched one in decades.
Of the dozens of people whom I spoke with here in town, during the weeks the trial unfolded, nearly all agreed that their city had been transformed by the experience. They differed greatly, though, in their views of what the change meant, and whether it was good or bad.
The police chief of Minneapolis and other officers testified against Chauvin. Yet many people who have worked in law enforcement sympathised with him. Ordinary people cannot understand what it is like to make an arrest, they told me, when things can spin out of control.
Others saw Chauvin, and the issues surrounding policing, in a different light. They told me that officers here are rarely held accountable. When these activists and their friends heard the verdict, they were stunned.
"He's going to jail," called out one woman in a black sweatshirt, in a sing-song voice, as she jumped up and down outside the building where the verdict was read.
It was a moment of jubilation, as people slammed on horns, jumped on roofs of their cars, and waved hats in the air, a "celebratory protest", says one.
The activists were happy about the verdict, but also demanded justice in other cases. "You know, we don't stop here. We have to do the same for all the cops who are murdering people," says activist Erika Atson. "This is a good win, but we're not done winning."
She and other protesters felt vindicated. Ordinary people were just relieved the trial was over. Yet they all wondered what would happen next.
The city was like a village in a snow globe that had been shaken, with snow swirling, and then, finally, it looks peaceful. On Tuesday, the snow settled, for the moment.
Rich Stanek walked the streets of Minneapolis as an officer, and as county sheriff. Yet after Floyd's death, and the protests that followed, Stanek did not recognise his city. He recalls driving down Lake Street, and seeing rubble. Hundreds of buildings around town had been wrecked, $350m (£250m) in losses, according to officials.
Protesters such as Erika Atson and Rosa Gomez also felt disoriented. The place they, too, had known their whole lives was suddenly a battle zone, with activists and police facing off.
I first saw Gomez, with a 35mm camera slung around her neck, outside the building where the trial was taking place. Later, she told me about her hometown, Minneapolis, a city known for its liberalism, lakes and northern climate. A place with chilly weather and personal warmth, a study in contrasts.
People associate racism with southern US cities, says Gomez, and their history of slavery, not northern cities such as Minneapolis. The trial laid bare the bigotry here, she says, some of which she has experienced.
Her father, a custodian, immigrated from Honduras, and she describes herself as a person of colour, as well as queer and non-binary.
She followed the trial and listened sceptically as defence lawyer Eric Nelson described Chauvin's actions, arguing they were justified.
On that day of the trial, Jerry Obieglo, who works in veterans' services, was also watching, picking up bits at the office, and catching up at home. As it happened, he had been Chauvin's boss back in the 1990s in the military.
"A quiet guy," he remembers. Obieglo was shocked to recognise him in the video, pinning Floyd to the ground.
Obieglo followed the trial on YouTube, and tried to avoid cable news, saying they were biased. Fox focused on the defence, while CNN gave air time to the prosecutors. Obieglo says Fox's coverage of the trial was better than the liberal-leaning outlets, explaining: "Fox wasn't blowing Floyd up to be an angel."
Obieglo says Chauvin used poor judgement. Still, Obieglo thinks the jurors went too far, finding him guilty on all three counts, rather than just on manslaughter. He blames the sensationalised coverage, and the protests, for the decision. He believes the jurors felt pressured, and acted out of fear: "I guess they want to make sure their houses don't get burned down tonight."
'We have to destroy'
The building where the trial convened was turned into a fortress, with military Humvees outside, another sign of the way the trial changed the city. By Monday, the day the jury began their deliberations, 3,000 National Guard troops were on duty. "It looks like a forward operating base in a foreign country," says Rich Stanek, the former sheriff.
But for all the physical changes in the city, some aspects remained, distressingly, unchanged. During the trial a black man, Daunte Wright, was killed in a suburb. A white officer, Kimberly Potter, had apparently mistaken her Taser for a handgun, and was charged with manslaughter. It was a reminder of the violence. More than 50 black people have died in the state during interactions with police officers since 2000, according to the Star Tribune.
In the midst of the trial, Erika Atson was sitting at a cafe, a place where she used to go with her Sunday school friends, and watched a live stream of testimony.
Atson was raised by her mother, a hotel maid, in south Minneapolis, and hung out at Cup Foods, snacking on Takis, a spicy chip. After Floyd's death outside the store, she went to protests and watched flames pour from buildings. The air, she says, smelled of burning tires: "I remember seeing ATMs being pushed back and forth, and people hitting them with sticks, like they were hitting a piñata." She was frightened. But, she says, she felt the violence was justified.
"I've always known that violence is not the answer, but how much longer do we have to be peaceful?" she says.
"Here I am, now, thinking we have to use violence. We have to destroy government buildings. I felt bad when I was there, but I was also like - it has to be done."
During the trial, Maren Beard, 35, watched from her farm hundreds of miles away in the US state of Iowa. She was disturbed by the notorious video, and frustrated by her lack of awareness about police brutality.
She says: "These things happen all the time. I hadn't thought about it as much as I should, so I think it was kind of a wake-up call."
A wake-up call for some. For others, a chance to upend the city.
Student Rosa Gomez says the protests last year were electrifying, "an overwhelming sense of support".
At one, demonstrators gave out sparklers, and she began choking on all the smoke.
Still, she loved seeing the popping lights: "It was just kind of fun."
That day, she recalls walking past a billboard that said: "We're not trying to start a race war. We're trying to end one."
For her and many other protesters, the verdict on Tuesday was a step in that direction.
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At precisely 02:00 GMT on Sunday, a maligned train operator stopped running the West Midlands rail franchise covering a swathe of the nation. Since 2007, London Midland had offered more than 1,000 services a day. Or according to its timetable it did. The reality was somewhat different. What follows are the moments that left customers bemused, peeved or just plain chilly on a platform, wishing their phone had more charge. | Cattle class
From London, through southern counties and central England, to the North West, services London Midland had offered are going Dutch. Or at least being operated by new franchisee West Midlands Trains Ltd, a joint venture between Dutch firm Abellio and Japanese partners.
Among the pledges, when it won the contract in August, was space for an extra 85,000 passengers on rush-hour services in Birmingham and London. Here's why...
At one point during London Midland's tenure, there were more people standing up than sitting down on the 16:46 from London Euston to Crewe - then the most overcrowded rail service in England and Wales, according to Department for Transport figures.
The service was said to be 111% over capacity at its busiest, meaning there were 206 people able to read newspapers, watch Game of Thrones and not make eye contact with the strangers opposite, while 229 had tired feet, sighed a bit and, it turns out, felt like cattle.
Among passengers' testimony by 2016 was that they were commuting with faces pressed against the windows - not in the sweet shop way, the good way, but the squashed way. One observed that he travelled "cattle class". Watch him talk about "going to market" here:
We don't like Sundays
Winding back the clock to a weekend in September 2009, there was a to-do when passengers were warned to expect delays. But not just any old delays; the kind that were more like non-starters. Behind it was the cancellation of all of London Midland's Sunday services across England.
Working on Sundays was voluntary for most London Midland staff and the firm said a large number had not signed up. The bittersweet news - the travel equivalent of losing a fiver and finding a pound - was that replacement bus services were available.
Into the next decade and drivers were thin on the ground, or tracks. On one day in December 2012, a shortage of drivers meant 39 services were cancelled or disrupted - with more than 800 services subjected to the same fate, for the same reason, across that year. There were similar difficulties in 2013, but London Midland's contract was extended despite the record delays that had landed it with a £7m compensation bill.
Wrong kind of leaves
Snow, shmo - the wrong kind of falling flake is so 90s. Here in the 21st Century, it is leaves that will not do as they are told.
In October, a train overshot a station in Bedworth because of "decomposing, damp leaves", London Midland said. It amounted to a "slippery residue" that was "similar to motorists driving on ice".
But can anything more be done when a resistible force meets a moveable object? There is always this gadget here...
Fallen key, dropped clanger
In June, a morning train travelling between Tring and London was delayed by a few minutes when the driver dropped the key on to the track.
He apologised over the on-board speaker system as the service pulled into Euston.
He explained what happened and said the delay was caused by his going to the office to collect a spare.
Christmas sprouts... and The Turnip
But was it really all doom and gloom? Well, there was the time peace broke out at Christmas, like when that football was kicked between trenches.
By December 2016, people who met during their daily commute from Shropshire to Birmingham had become "train buddies", marking their friendship with a touch of tinsel and trimmings. Yes, that's right, a Christmas party on the way to work.
Anything else touchy-feely? Let us return to football and recall when former England boss Graham Taylor - once given a turnip head for daring to do his job - was awarded a nicer legacy following his death. Think less carriage clock and more, well, carriage.
In June, a London Midland Class 350 model was named after him on a service calling at Watford Junction, Aston, Wolverhampton and Wembley Central stations, reflecting the clubs and nation he had overseen.
The firm said it was in "recognition of a man who made such a lasting mark on the sport across the country".
London Midland also won awards for its use of Twitter, gaining accolades for its interactions with passengers on the social media platform. At one point it claimed to have sent more tweets than any other train company in the world.
Getting goodbye wrong
In December, as the buffers were in sight for London Midland, commuters at Birmingham New Street were given a farewell cake. But the box carried a best before date of April 2017.
Those who feared an upset stomach, though, were apparently mistaken about the mistake.
"The printing on the box is wrong," a spokesperson said. "If you inspect the inside wrapper, you will see it says 'best before April 2018'." Does this count as London Midland running early?
And that was not all the box said. Here is how London Midland signed off: "A different rail company takes over on 10 December. It's been a pleasure."
And here was how one customer took it:
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A woman has appeared in court charged with embezzlement relating to Crown Office premises in Aberdeen. | It had been revealed in October than an investigation was under way concerning the procurator fiscal's office.
Katherine Vaughan, 33, from Aberdeen, appeared at the city's sheriff court on petition to face the embezzlement charge on Tuesday.
She made no plea, the case was continued for further examination, and she was released on bail.
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On 4 March 2018 emergency services received a phone call from members of the public in Salisbury who had seen an old man and a young woman ill on a bench. It was a call that would set in motion a chain of events leading to a major crisis with Russia. | By Gordon CoreraSecurity correspondent
After the pair were taken to hospital, local police did an online search on the name of the man taken ill.
The result set off alarm bells. He was a former Russian spy.
A call came into the duty officer at MI6 headquarters that Sunday evening.
The realisation that Sergei Skripal - a man who had provided MI6 with secrets from his time in Russian military intelligence - had been targeted sent shock waves through the building, challenging the very core of its work in recruiting agents to work with the organisation.
A few hours later, the next call went to Porton Down, home to Britain's biological and chemical research establishment.
A rapid-response team was quickly deployed. Samples analysed in labs on-site identified A234, a military-grade nerve agent from the Novichok family developed by the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
The revelation caused shock. Detective work by police would identify two officers from Russian military intelligence as the main suspects and a perfume bottle as the means of delivery of the nerve agent onto Mr Skripal's front door handle.
A local woman, Dawn Sturgess would die months later when she came into contact with the Novichok after it had apparently been discarded.
Russia denied any role - even putting the two accused men on TV to say they had visited Salisbury simply to see the cathedral spire - but London was convinced it knew who was behind the attack.
When another former Russian intelligence officer, Alexander Litvinenko, was killed in 2006 (that time by radioactive polonium) the response was delayed and perceived as weak.
London was determined to learn its lesson.
An uncertain legacy
Every known Russian intelligence officer operating under diplomatic cover in the UK (apart from the declared liaison officer for each Russian intelligence service) was quickly expelled - 23 in total.
Many other countries then followed suit, with 60 expulsions in the US. It seemed as if the Kremlin was taken by surprise by the strength of the reaction.
But two years on, the legacy of those events looks more uncertain.
British officials believe they did real damage to Russian intelligence operations in the country but that damage is likely to have been short term as new spies were dispatched to replace them and as Russia continues a shift to rely on alternative means of espionage.
In the Cold War, spies under diplomatic cover and illegals were the primary way the Russians could recruit and run agents and steal secrets.
Now there is cyber-espionage and the use of people travelling under different cover, as say businessmen, to operate.
In the wake of the attack, there was also considerable talk of a tougher line over Russian money and influence in London. But there has been relatively little public sign of action.
The failure to publish the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee's "Russia Report" about influence and subversion in British life before the election has only added to questions as to whether the appetite to deal with this broader issue remains strong.
There are also cracks in Western unity over a tough line on Russia, with President Emmanuel Macron of France pushing for trying to improve relations with the Kremlin and uncertainty over the position of the Trump administration in Washington.
Mr Skripal himself has not appeared in public since the poisoning.
MI5 and the Home Office carried out a "refresh" to check on the level of protection for defectors like Mr Skirpal - something officials acknowledge was overdue.
The poisoning itself was a failure, several senior officials who served in British intelligence concede.
A risk assessment was carried out when Mr Skripal was swapped out of a Russian prison in 2010 but the Russia of 2018 was very different from Russia then.
Russia appears to have stepped up a long-standing campaign to track defectors from 2014, including in the US as well as UK.
That was also the point at which relations began to deteriorate rapidly over the crisis in Ukraine and Crimea and in which other alleged operations, like the deployment of online trolls to interfere in US politics increased.
One question western intelligence officials have been asking is whether Russia has been deterred from taking such action again by the Western response.
No one seems sure.
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A number of arrests for immigration offences have been made after a group was seen leaving a boat in Southwold Harbour. | The groups disembarked and was spotted getting into vehicles at about 18:00 GMT on Wednesday, Suffolk Police said.
The Border Force said 14 Albanian men had been taken into custody on suspicion of entering the UK illegally.
The drivers of two vehicles were also been arrested on suspicion of assisting illegal migration.
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Guernsey's Chief Minister Lyndon Trott has been meeting with members of the UK's Conservative Party at their conference in Birmingham this week. | Deputy Lyndon Trott said he had spoken to ministers, secretaries of state and MPs to ensure Guernsey's position in relation to the UK was understood.
He said: "It has been an extremely successful trip to the conference.
"Guernsey's voice continues to be heard on issues that are important to us."
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The good news is that most of us are living longer. | Patrick BurnsPolitical editor, Midlands
The not-so-good news is the longer we live, the further we seem to be from meeting the challenges of caring for an ageing population. First came the pensions crisis, and now it's the dementia time bomb; the long-term residential and nursing care of elderly dementia patients and how we are to pay for it.
The caring services are clearly at risk of becoming victims of their own success. Having extended the length of average life-spans, they now have to meet the growing demands on their resources and expertise.
NHS projections make disturbing reading. Last year, the number of dementia patients, (diagnosed and estimated undiagnosed) in the West Midlands stood at 70,739. By 2021 this number is forecast to reach 90,038.
Top-level recognition
NHS figures also show Herefordshire and Worcestershire have some of the highest incidences of dementia in the UK, due partly to their relatively high number of residential and nursing homes and to towns like Malvern and Ross-on-Wye which have obvious attractions for people contemplating their retirement.
The work of the University of Worcester's Dementia Leadership programme is highlighted in the annual report of the prime minister's 'Challenge on Dementia', which Mr Cameron says must deliver improvements including better education and training for nurses specialising in dementia by 2015.
The university's director of dementia studies Professor Dawn Brooker is "delighted' that Worcester's Dementia Education Programme, developed with local hospitals, has had such top-level recognition.
She says: "It is planned to make this course more widely available across the UK. The programme, which uses a person-centred approach in caring for people with dementia, gives nurses an in-depth understanding of the needs of both the patients and their families along with the skills to provide expert care."
But Professor Brooker has this firm warning for the health service: "People with dementia occupy about a quarter of hospital beds because they need treatment for serious physical health problems.
"They are a very vulnerable and highly dependent group of patients. If hospital staff do not understand the additional needs that having dementia means then these patients do not receive adequate care."
Homes sold
But behind the headlines and the number-crunching lie thousands of personal stories, each of which indicates what lies ahead for no fewer than one-in-three of us.
Eighty-nine-year-old Barbara Wyatt is a dementia sufferer who lives in a care home at Stourport-on-Severn in Worcestershire.
The cost of her care adds up to £2,226 per month.
The Department of Work and Pensions contributes £243 per month through her Attendance Allowance.
Which leaves £1,983 per month to be funded from the proceeds of the sale of her former home.
We will meet Barbara and her family on this weekend's edition of Sunday Politics Midlands.
These are challenges which give us plenty to talk about with our guests Darren Cooper, Labour Leader of Sandwell Council, and Paul Tilsley, Leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Birmingham City Council. Paul is the vice-chairman of the Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Trust.
We will also be talking to Karen Harrison Dening from Dementia UK, who has long experience of nursing dementia sufferers.
And I hope you will join me too, from 11:00 BST on BBC One Midlands this Sunday, 16 June 2013.
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A man has pleaded not guilty to the murder of a doctor and her daughter who were found dead after a house fire. | Shabaz Khan, 51, was charged with killing Dr Saman Sacharvi, 49, and 14-year-old Vian Mangrio.
The mother and daughter were found dead in their fire-damaged house in Reedley, near Burnley, on 1 October.
Mr Khan, of Ribble Avenue, Burnley, also denied a charge of arson at Preston Crown Court and is due to face trial on 9 June.
Why not follow BBC North West on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? You can also send story ideas to [email protected]
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Ryanair will run flights from Exeter Airport to three European destinations starting next year, the budget airline has announced. | New routes to Malaga, Naples and Malta are expected to attract 80,000 customers per year, Ryanair said.
The announcement makes the airport Ryanair's 21st base in the UK.
Exeter Airport's managing director Matt Roach described the announcement on Tuesday as a "significant vote of confidence".
More news from Devon
Passenger numbers at the airport have increased by 22% to more than 900,000 in the past five years.
Mr Roach said: "These routes are popular destinations and offer customers even more choice and greater connectivity from their local airport."
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The footage is still shocking, even to this day. | By Giancarlo RinaldiSouth Scotland reporter, BBC Scotland news website
The car of one of the finest racing drivers ever to have lived reduced to bits of wreckage strewn among the trees next to the track at Hockenheim.
In one fatal moment 50 years ago, on 7 April 1968, a sporting legend was gone.
Jim Clark, a double Formula One world champion, was just 32.
"The world mourns the loss of a likeable man who was also one of the greatest grand prix drivers of all time," said the British Pathe news announcer.
Clark's cousin, Doug Niven, a family trustee of the Jim Clark Trust, is not surprised his relative is still revered to this day.
"He was a very modest man, he was almost a reluctant driver in the early days," he said.
"He was a fair, unassuming man and a great driver with no airs or graces.
"His legacy has grown and grown and still seems to be growing."
A plaque on a memorial to him in Chirnside in the Scottish Borders and his gravestone in the village give another indication of the modesty of the man born in Kilmany in Fife on 4 March 1936.
His description as a farmer at Edington Mains comes before any mention of his motor racing achievements.
But what achievements those were, from humble beginnings in amateur races across the south of Scotland and northern England he rose rapidly to the top of his sport.
Capturing the eye of the Lotus team he took a string of honours which made him the man to beat of that racing generation.
A world champion by 1963 - and then came his "magical year" of 1965 when he was crowned world champion again and won the Indianapolis 500.
In total, he would win 25 grand prix putting him top of the all-time table at the time.
A few years ago, even long after his death, it was enough to see him rated number three in a BBC list of the top Formula One drivers of all time.
It described how Clark "towered over his era".
"Alongside his speed, Clark also had a rare ability to drive around problems," wrote chief F1 writer Andrew Benson.
"His smooth style took so little out of the car, a crucial skill with machinery as fragile as his."
That was echoed by Sir Jackie Stewart in the documentary Jim Clark: The Quiet Champion.
"He was so smooth, he was so clean - he drove with such finesse," he said.
"He never bullied a racing car, he sort of caressed it into doing the things he wanted it to do."
"I don't drive any faster, I just concentrate harder which makes me go faster," Clark himself once said.
It brought him recognition around the world for his achievements - receiving an OBE and featuring on the cover of Time magazine as "the quickest man on wheels".
He was still at the peak of his powers in 1968 when he took part in the Formula 2 race which would turn out to be his last.
Clark's car failed to appear at the end of a lap and was subsequently found to have crashed at high speed into trees.
He was put in an ambulance but pronounced dead before he could reach a hospital.
'Special man'
"Nobody really has come up with a definitive answer to what happened," recalled Mr Niven.
"It was a wet day and the car wasn't going very well."
Even in a sport used to tragedy it was a shocking event - if this could happen to the very best, drivers realised, it could happen to any of them.
"I think Jim Clark's loss was the one that hit everybody most," said Sir Jackie.
"He was a special man - one of a kind, the like we have never seen since."
The reaction back in Berwickshire - where huge crowds had turned out to welcome him after his world title victories - was one of disbelief.
"When the news came through it was such a shock - there was stunned silence," said Mr Niven.
"We couldn't really believe that it could have happened to Jim, he seemed indestructible."
The accident would also have a wider effect on the sport and Jim's racing colleagues.
'Improve safety'
"His death in a minor race made them all feel vulnerable," explained Andrew Tulloch, assistant curator of the Jim Clark Memorial Room.
"If Jim Clark could be killed, then they could too.
"This provided a great spur for Jackie Stewart's effort to improve safety in the sport - this and a number of other high-profile accidents over the next few years."
As the reality sank in, arrangements were hastily made for Jim's funeral back in a quiet little corner of the Borders.
"I remember seeing all these Formula One stars coming to Chirnside," said Mr Niven.
"I can just remember rows and rows of flowers from the church up to the grave.
"It was a terrible black cloud."
The village was at the epicentre of those emotions and that is why they are remembering him in the area with a series of special events in his honour.
However, the shockwaves were felt much further afield and many people around the world still recall the quietly spoken Scottish sheep farmer who became a sporting superstar.
"You remember him as a young man at his peak, there were still a few world championships in him," said his cousin.
What might have been will never be known, of course, but what Jim Clark achieved before his untimely death - and the manner in which he did so - explains why he is still held in such high regard despite the passing decades.
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The Royal Welsh winter fair has opened for its 25th anniversary year. | The event at Llanelwedd near Builth Wells in Powys runs for two days and will receive a visit from Princess Anne on Tuesday.
Nearly 30,000 visitors are expected to attend the event.
As well as the stock competitions and displays, a special fireworks display on Monday and a late-night Christmas shopping market will mark the anniversary.
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There is a word in Japanese for people who are obsessed with video games and anime - otaku . An increasing number of otaku now say they have fallen in love with anime characters and given up on the idea of real-world romance, reports the BBC's Stephanie Hegarty. | Akihiko Kondo wakes up every day to the sound of his wife's voice. She calls him from across the room in her high-pitched, girlish, sing-song voice. She dances and swirls around, urging him to get out of bed.
At the same time, he's holding her in his arms on the bottom tier of their metal-framed bunk bed - and if he was more awake he could be watching an illustrated cartoon of her singing on YouTube.
This is because Akihiko's "wife" is an idea - an anime character called Miku.
She's the hologram that lives in a glass capsule on a shelf in the corner of the room, and the cuddly toy with its big soft head and small body that he holds close at night. But she can take innumerable other forms.
Each representation includes some essential characteristics, Akihiko says - including bright turquoise-coloured hair tied up in two long bunches, with a thick fringe framing her face.
Beyond that, Miku varies. She may be a childish, cartoon-like creature, or she may be more human, and sexier - with a low neckline and big boobs, schoolgirl blouse and short skirt. Akihiko considers all of these Mikus to be his wife.
The couple had a ceremony that Akihiko regards as a wedding in November last year. It wasn't official, but it was a pretty big bash with 39 guests. The number spells her name in Japanese - three for "mi" and nine for "ku".
Miku was present in the form of a cuddly toy, wearing a white, lace dress and a long veil, her outfit hand-made by a designer, who contacted Akihiko after he announced his engagement.
Akihiko himself wore a pure white coat and tails with white flowers in his lapel, his usual square-framed glasses and a big grin. He held her and her bouquet - one of her trademarks, a bunch of leeks tied with a big pink bow.
He said their vows and walked down the aisle holding her by his side, as guests smiled and clapped. Later they sat at the top table for dinner. Akihiko in one white chair and Miku in another, propped up in an empty flower vase.
Watching a video of the occasion, Akihiko smiles.
"There are two reasons why I had a wedding publicly," he says.
"The first one is to prove my love to Miku. The second one is there are many young otaku people like me falling in love with anime characters. I want to show the world that I support them."
Otaku is a Japanese word for a nerd or a geek, usually someone that's obsessed with video games and anime. A lot of gaming and anime obsessives wear the name with pride but it can also be used as a derogatory term for people who are socially awkward.
Some, like Akihiko, take their obsession to what some may consider an extreme level, turning away from real-life relationships. And it appears that their numbers are increasing.
Last year Gatebox, the company that made Akihiko's hologram of Miku, started issuing unofficial "marriage certificates" to customers; they say 3,700 people took them up on the offer.
That alone may not prove very much, but they are not the only ones reporting a rise in pseudo-relationships.
Prof Masahiro Yamada, a sociologist who also runs an agony aunt column answering questions on family and relationships for the Yomiuri newspaper, has for years carried out regular surveys asking young people what they feel affection for.
The list includes pets, pop stars, sports stars, anime characters, and virtual idols (digitally animated, anime-inspired YouTube stars). He also asks if people visit cafes where they are waited on by young women dressed up as maids, or use prostitution services that offer companionship as well as sex.
All of these pseudo-relationships are growing, he says. In this year's survey, about 12% of young people reported sometimes or often falling in love with an anime or video game character. But what could be driving this trend?
It has a lot to do with economics and tradition, Yamada says, primarily the fact that many Japanese women won't consider a boyfriend unless he makes a lot of money. In 2016, 47% of women aged between 20 and 29 agreed with the statement that husbands should work for money and wives should do housework, he points out - a higher proportion than in any other age group, including the over-70s.
"In Asia, Japan and South Korea, people are quite obsessed about this high salary and this tendency is not getting any weaker, it's getting stronger," he says.
"Japanese women tend not to believe in eternal love, but they can trust money."
This sounds like a sweeping statement - one that comes close to blaming a generation of women for the problem - but Yamada says it's a conclusion he has drawn after extensive surveys.
"In Japan working life is very, very hard and there is still a lot of sexual discrimination. Working hours are very long and there's lots of stress," he says.
Also, the burden of childcare is still firmly on the mother. Long hours, high-stress workplaces and long commutes make life difficult for working mothers. The easier option is to quit - but that's not possible unless your partner earns a certain amount of money.
At the same time there's a dwindling pool of well-paid men: as Japan's economy stagnates, wages are falling.
The result, he says, is an increasing number of young women who choose not to date and an increasing number of young men who know enough not to bother trying.
Akihiko never really entertained the idea of having a real-life girlfriend.
"I've never felt attracted to real women," he says. Why not, I ask? "Because I'm not popular among women," he replies.
In school he was bullied for being an otaku. And bullying followed him into the world of work. He was working as an administrator in a primary school about 12 years ago when he was picked upon incessantly by two women - one was close to his age, one was a lot older.
When he greeted them in the morning they would ignore him. They would stand in the kitchen where he could hear them and call him names. And if he made a small mistake they would shout at him, sometimes in front of the young students which he found humiliating.
The bullying got so intolerable that he left work. For almost two years he locked himself in his room and refused to leave.
"I was hikikomori," he says. This is a well-known phenomenon in Japan and South Korea where young people, mostly men, become hermits in their own parental homes, refusing to go outside or even to speak to their families. There are estimated to be about one million of them and it can go on for many years.
But then he met Miku.
"I was watching her video on YouTube and Niconico (a Japanese version of YouTube), looking at her images, listening to her songs, and I was healed by her," he says.
The constant bullying, he felt, had forced him to shut down, to retreat into a state where he was emotionally void. He was deeply and darkly depressed.
"Listening to her songs sometimes makes me very emotional. How she dances, moves and talks makes me feel. My heart starts moving again," he says.
"That's why I love her and why she's so important to me."
He started to feel like he was in a relationship with her, and with the support of that relationship he was able to go back to work.
"The emotion was no different from a real relationship," he says. "After I fell for her. You feel the pressure in your chest. I experienced this feeling, just like falling in love with a real person."
He says he dated her for 10 years before he decided to marry her.
For much of those 10 years Akihiko was only able to talk to Miku in his mind. Now he can have basic but significant conversations with his Gatebox hologram. He can tell her he loves her and she can respond.
But they can't do much else.
"I have to use some imagination in between," he says.
"Of course, if I could touch her that would be fantastic. Now we can't do that. But in the future, the technology will develop. In the future, maybe I can hold her hands or hug her."
Akihiko is well aware that many people think his marriage is strange. The one disappointment about his wedding was that his mother and sister refused to attend.
And he gets a lot of abuse from people online, especially after going public with his marriage in several interviews. But he has also received a huge number of messages of support from strangers.
"A number of people kind of 'came out'," he says. They wrote to him to tell him about their own affection for an anime character. "I received so many messages like that. So, I thought it was worthwhile."
Now he works in a secondary school where he's open about his relationship status. Some of the staff find it weird but he says the students tend to be more accepting.
He's working and socialising again and he has his own apartment - two tidy rooms in a quiet suburb, with his name and Miku's written above the doorbell.
And most importantly he's happy.
"In this society there's a template of what makes one happy - get married, have children, form a family. But that shouldn't be the only way. I don't fall into that template.
"We have to consider all kinds of love and all kinds of happiness."
You may also be interested in:
Megumi was a baby when her parents separated and her father disappeared from her life. But years later her mother told her he wanted to reconnect. Megumi began to see Yamada regularly. She thinks he is her father, and that Yamada is his real name - but this is a lie.
Read: 'I hire a man to pretend to be my daughter's dad - and she doesn't know'
|
A chronology of major air disasters since 1998:
| 2020
22 May An Airbus A320 carrying 91 passengers and eight members of crew crashes in a residential area of the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, killing more than 90 people. At least two passengers survive the crash.
8 January Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 crashes shortly after taking off from the Iranian capital Tehran, killing all 176 passengers and crew members on board. The incident took place amid escalating tensions between the US and Iran, and the Iranian government eventually admitted it had downed the plane "unintentionally".
2019
10 March An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max crashes six minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa. All 157 people onboard are killed. The victims come from more than 30 countries.
2018
29 October A Boeing 737 Max, operated by Lion Air, crashes into the Java Sea shortly after taking off from Jakarta, Indonesia. All 189 passengers and crew are killed, and a volunteer diver dies in the subsequent recovery operation. Investigators said the plane - which had had technical problems on previous flights - should have been grounded.
18 May A Boeing 737 passenger plane crashes shortly after take-off from Jose Marti International Airport in Havana, killing 112 people. One passenger survives.
11 April A military plane crashes shortly after take-off near the Algerian capital Algiers, killing all 257 people on board, including 10 crew members. Most of the dead are soldiers and their families.
12 March A plane carrying 71 passengers and crew crashes on landing at Kathmandu airport. More than 50 people are killed when the Bombardier Dash 8 turboprop comes down.
18 February A passenger plane crashes into the Zagros mountains in Iran killing all 66 people on board. The Aseman Airlines ATR turboprop crashes about an hour after taking off in the capital, Tehran, heading for the south-western city of Yasuj.
11 February A Russian passenger plane crashes minutes after leaving Moscow's Domodedovo airport with 71 people on board. The Antonov An-148 belonging to Saratov Airlines was en route to the city of Orsk in the Ural mountains when it crashed near the village of Argunovo, about 80km (50 miles) south-east of Moscow.
2017
There were no passenger jet crashes in 2017 - the safest year in the history of commercial airlines.
2016
25 December A Russian military Tu-154 jet airliner crashes in the Black Sea, with the loss of all 92 passengers and crew. The plane came down soon after take-off from an airport near the city of Sochi. It was carrying artistes due to give a concert for Russian troops in Syria, along with journalists and military.
7 December All 48 people on board a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane were killed when it crashed in the north of the country. The national airline - accused of safety failures in the past - insisted this time that strict checks on Flight PK-661 from Chitral to Islamabad left "no room for any technical error".
28 November The plane carrying the football team of the Brazilian club Chapecoense runs out of fuel and crashes near Medellin, Colombia, killing 71 people, including most of the players and management. Three players were among the six survivors, while nine did not travel.
19 May French President Francois Hollande confirms that an EgyptAir flight reported missing between Paris and Cairo has crashed, with 66 people on board.
19 March A FlyDubai Boeing 737-800 crashes in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, killing all 62 people on board.
2015
31 October An Airbus A321, operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia, crashes over central Sinai some 22 minutes after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board. The Islamic State group's local affiliate later says it brought down the plane in response to Russian intervention in Syria.
30 June Indonesian Hercules C-130 military transport plane crashes into a residential area of Medan. The army says all 122 people on board died, along with at least 19 on the ground.
24 March: Germanwings Airbus A320 airliner crashes in the French Alps near Digne, on a flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf. All 148 people on board were feared dead.
2014
28 December: AirAsia QZ8501 flying from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore goes missing over the Java sea. The pilot radioed for permission to divert around bad weather but no mayday alert was issued. There were 162 passengers and crew on board.
24 July: Air Algerie AH5017 disappears over Mali amid poor weather near the border with Burkina Faso. The McDonnell Douglas MD-83 was operated by Spain's Swiftair, and was heading from Ouagadougou to Algiers carrying 116 passengers - 51 of them French. All are thought to have died.
23 July: Forty-eight people die when a Taiwanese ATR-72 plane crashes into stormy seas during a short flight. TransAsia Airways GE222 was carrying 54 passengers and four crew to the island of Penghu. It made an abortive attempt to land before crashing on a second attempt.
17 July: Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashes near Grabove in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board, 193 of them Dutch. Pro-Russian rebels are widely accused of shooting the plane down using a surface-to-air missile - they deny responsibility.
8 March: The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines MH370 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing leads to the largest and most expensive search in aviation history. Despite vast effort, notably in the hostile South Indian Ocean, nothing was found until July 2015, when an aircraft wing part washed up on Reunion Island. French officials confirmed the debris was from MH370.
11 February: A military transport plane - a Hercules C-130 - carrying 78 people crashes in a mountainous part of north-eastern Algeria. Reports suggest there is one survivor from among the military personnel, family members and crew.
2013
17 November: Tatarstan Airlines Boeing 737 crashes on landing in Kazan, Russia, killing all 50 people on board.
16 October: Forty-nine people, including foreigners from some 10 countries as well as Laotian nationals, die when a Lao Airlines ATR 72-600 plunges into the Mekong River as it came in to land.
2012
3 June: A Dana Air passenger plane with about 150 people on board crashes in a densely populated area of Nigeria's largest city, Lagos.
20 April: A Bhoja Air Boeing 737 crashes on its approach to the main airport in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, killing all 121 passengers and six crew.
2011
26 July: Some 78 people are killed when a Moroccan military C-130 Hercules crashes into a mountain near Guelmim in Morocco. Officials blamed bad weather.
8 July: A Hewa Bora Airways plane crash-lands in bad weather in Democratic Republic of Congo, killing 74 of the 118 people on board.
9 January: An IranAir Boeing 727 breaks into pieces near the city of Orumiyeh, killing 77 of the 100 people on board. The pilots had reported a technical failure before trying to land.
2010
5 November: An Aerocaribbean passenger turboprop crashes in mountains in central Cuba, killing all 68 people on board.
28 July: A Pakistani plane on an Airblue domestic flight from Karachi crashes into a hillside while trying to land at Islamabad airport, killing all 152 people on board.
22 May: An Air India Express Boeing 737 overshot a hilltop airport in Mangalore, southern India, and crashed into a valley, bursting into flames and killing 158.
12 May: An Afriqiyah Airways Airbus 330 crashes while trying to land near Tripoli airport in Libya, killing more than 100 people.
10 April: A Tupolev 154 plane carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski crashes near the Russian airport of Smolensk, killing more than 90 people on board.
25 January: Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet crashes into the sea with 89 people on board shortly after take-off from Beirut.
2009
15 July: A Caspian Airlines Tupolev plane crashes in the north of Iran en route to Armenia. All 168 passengers and crew are reported dead.
30 June: A Yemeni passenger plane, an Airbus 310, crashes in the Indian Ocean near the Comoros archipelago. Only one of the 153 people on board survives.
1 June: An Air France Airbus 330 travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashes into the Atlantic with 228 people on board. Search teams later recover some 50 bodies in the ocean.
20 May: An Indonesian army C-130 Hercules transport plane crashes into a village on eastern Java, killing at least 97 people.
12 February: A passenger plane crashes into a house in Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 people on board and one person on the ground.
2008
14 September: A Boeing-737 crashes on landing near the central Russian city of Perm, killing all 88 passengers and crew members on board.
24 August: A passenger plane crashes shortly after take-off from Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek, killing 68 people.
20 August: A Spanair plane veers off the runway on take-off at Madrid's Barajas airport, killing 154 people and injuring 18.
2007
30 November: All 56 people on board an Atlasjet flight are killed when it crashes near the town of Keciborlu in the mountainous Isparta province, about 12km (7.5 miles) from Isparta airport.
16 September: At least 87 people are killed after a One-Two-Go plane crashed on landing in bad weather at the Thai resort of Phuket.
17 July: A TAM Airlines jet crashes on landing at Congonhas airport in Sao Paulo, in Brazil's worst-ever air disaster. A total of 199 people are killed - all 186 on board and 13 on the ground.
5 May: A Kenya Airways Boeing 737-800 crashes in swampland in southern Cameroon, killing all 114 on board. The official inquiry is yet to report on the cause of the disaster.
1 January: An Adam Air Boeing 737-400 carrying 102 passengers and crew comes down in mountains on Sulawesi Island on a domestic Indonesian flight. All on board are presumed dead.
2006
29 September: A Boeing 737 carrying 154 passengers and crew crashed into the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, killing all on board, after colliding with a private jet in mid-air.
22 August: A Russian Tupolev-154 passenger plane with 170 people on board crashes north of Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine.
9 July: A Russian S7 Airbus A-310 skids off the runway during landing at Irkutsk airport in Siberia. A total of 124 people on board die, but more than 50 survive the crash.
3 May: An Armavia Airbus A-320 crashes into the Black Sea near Sochi, killing all 113 people on board.
2005
10 December: A Sosoliso Airlines DC-9 crashes in the southern Nigerian city of Port Harcourt, killing 103 people on board.
6 December: A C-130 military transport plane crashes on the outskirts of the Iranian capital Tehran, killing 110 people, including some on the ground.
22 October: A Bellview airlines Boeing 737 carrying 117 people on board crashes soon after take-off from the Nigerian city of Lagos, killing everyone on board.
5 September: A Mandala Airlines plane with 112 passengers and five crew on board crashes after take-off in the Indonesian city of Medan, killing almost all on board and dozens on the ground.
16 August: A Colombian plane operated by West Caribbean Airways crashes in a remote region of Venezuela, killing all 160 people on board. The airliner, heading from Panama to Martinique, was packed with residents of the Caribbean island.
14 August: A Helios Airways flight from Cyprus to Athens with 121 people on board crashes north of the Greek capital Athens, apparently after a drop in cabin pressure.
16 July: An Equatair plane crashes soon after take-off from Equatorial Guinea's island capital, Malabo, west of the mainland, killing all 60 people on board.
3 February: The wreckage of Kam Air Boeing 737 flight is located in high mountains near the Afghan capital Kabul, two days after the plane vanished from radar screens in heavy snowstorms. All 104 people on board are feared dead.
2004
21 November: A passenger plane crashes into a frozen lake near the city of Baotou in the Inner Mongolia region of northern China, killing all 53 on board and two on the ground, officials say.
3 January: An Egyptian charter plane belonging to Flash Airlines crashes into the Red Sea, killing all 141 people on board. Most of the passengers are thought to be French tourists.
2003
25 December: A Boeing 727 crashes soon after take-off from the West African state of Benin, killing at least 135 people en route to Lebanon.
8 July: A Boeing 737 crashes in Sudan shortly after take-off, killing 115 people on board. Only one passenger, a small child survived.
26 May: A Ukrainian Yak-42 crashes near the Black Sea resort of Trabzon in north-west Turkey, killing all 74 people on board - most of them Spanish peacekeepers returning home from Afghanistan.
8 May: As many as 170 people are reported dead in DR Congo after the rear ramp of an old Soviet plane, an Ilyushin 76 cargo plane, apparently falls off, sucking them out.
6 March: An Algerian Boeing 737 crashes after taking off from the remote Tamanrasset airport, leaving up to 102 people dead.
19 February: An Iranian military transport aircraft carrying 276 people crashes in the south of the country, killing all on board.
8 January: A Turkish Airlines plane with 76 passengers and crew on board crashes while coming in to land at Diyarbakir.
2002
23 December: An Antonov 140 commuter plane carrying aerospace experts crashes in central Iran, killing all 46 people aboard. The delegation had been due to review an Iranian version of the same plane built under licence.
27 July: A fighter jet crashes into a crowd of spectators in the west Ukrainian town of Lviv, killing 77 people, in what is the world's worst air show disaster.
1 July: Seventy-one people, many of them children die when a Russian Tupolev 154 aircraft on a school trip to Spain collides with a Boeing 757 transport plane over southern Germany.
25 May: A Boeing 747 belonging to Taiwan's national carrier - China Airlines - crashes into the sea near the Taiwanese island of Penghu, with 225 passengers and crew on board.
7 May: China Northern Airlines plane carrying 112 people crashes into the sea near Dalian in north-east China.
7 May: On the same day, an EgyptAir Boeing 735 crash lands near Tunis with 55 passengers and up to 10 crew on board. Most people survive.
4 May: A BAC1-11-500 plane operated by EAS Airlines crashes in the Nigerian city of Kano, killing 148 people - half of them on the ground.
15 April: Air China flight 129 crashes on its approach to Pusan, South Korea, with over 160 passengers and crew on board.
12 February: A Tupolev 154 operated by Iran Air crashes in mountains in the west of Iran, killing all 117 on board.
29 January: A Boeing 727 from the Ecuadorean TAME airline crashes in mountains in Colombia, killing 92 people.
2001
12 November: An American Airlines A-300 bound for the Dominican Republic crashes after takeoff in a residential area of the borough of Queens, New York, killing all 260 people on board and at least five people on the ground.
8 October: A Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) airliner collides with a small plane in heavy fog on the runway at Milan's Linate airport, killing 118 people.
4 October: A Russian Sibir Airlines Tupolev 154,en route from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk in Siberia, explodes in mid-air and crashes into the Black Sea, killing 78 passengers and crew.
3 July: A Russian Tupolev 154,en route from Yekaterinburg in the Ural mountains to the Russian port of Vladivostok, crashes near the Siberian city of Irkutsk, killing 133 passengers and 10 crew.
2000
30 October: A Singapore Airlines Boeing 747 bound for Los Angeles crashes after take-off from Taipei airport in Taiwan, killing 78 of the 179 people on board.
23 August: A Gulf Air Airbus crashes into the sea as it comes in to land in Bahrain, killing all 143 people on board.
25 July: Air France Concorde en route for New York crashes into a hotel outside Paris shortly after takeoff, killing 113 people, including four on the ground.
17 July: Alliance Air Boeing 737-200 crashes into houses attempting to land at Patna, India, killing 51 people on board and four on the ground.
19 April: Air Philippines Boeing 737-200 from Manila to Davao crashes on approach to landing, killing all 131 people on board.
31 January: Alaska Airlines MD-83 from Mexico to San Francisco plunges into ocean off southern California, killing all 88 people on board.
30 January: Kenya Airways A-310 crashes into Atlantic Ocean shortly after takeoff from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, en route for Lagos, Nigeria. All but 10 of the 179 people on board die.
1999
31 October: EgyptAir Boeing 767 crashes into Atlantic Ocean after taking off from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York on flight to Cairo, Egypt, killing all 217 on board.
24 February: China Southwest Airlines plane crashes in a field in China's coastal Zhejiang province after a mid-air explosion. All 61 people on board the Russian-built TU-154 flying from Chongqing to the south-eastern city of Wenzhou are killed.
1998
11 December: Thai Airways International A-310 crashes on a domestic flight during its third attempt to land at Surat Thani, Thailand, killing 101 people.
2 September: Swissair MD-11 from New York to Geneva crashes in the Atlantic Ocean off Canada killing all 229 people on board.
16 February: Airbus A-300 owned by Taiwan's China Airlines crashes near Taipei's Chiang Kai-shek airport while trying to land in fog and rain after a flight from Bali, Indonesia. All 196 on board and seven people on ground are killed.
2 February: Cebu Pacific Air DC-9 crashes into mountain in southern Philippines, killing all 104 people aboard.
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India has entered full election mode: voting is due to begin on 11 April, with the final ballot cast more than five weeks later on 19 May. Every day, the BBC will be bringing you all the latest updates on the twists and turns of the world's largest democracy. | The latest from the campaign trail
A winning alliance?
What happened?
The main opposition Congress party have just announced an alliance with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), a political party based in the northern state of Bihar.
Following negotiations, the two parties made the announcement on Friday. The RJD will contest on 20 seats while the Congress gets nine seats. Bihar has 40 constituencies in total.
Why does this matter?
This election has been characterised by a strong resurgence of regional political parties across India.
The Congress has certainly taken notice, and hopes to win the election as part of what has been termed the Mahagathbandhan (which means the Grand Alliance).
The announcement was not fully unexpected as hints have been dropping for weeks now, but it is a significant move as there are a lot of seats to be won in Bihar.
In Bihar's last state assembly elections held in 2015, the Grand Alliance - which included the RJD - emerged victorious.
Will Gautam Gambhir score a six for the BJP?
What happened?
Former India batsman and World Cup winner Gautam Gambhir has just joined the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the general election.
He made the announcement at a press conference in Delhi, alongside finance minister Arun Jaitley. "I have been influenced by the prime minister and his vision for the country," he said.
"This is a fabulous platform for me to do something for India."
Mr Gambhir was recently conferred with the Padma Shri award, India's fourth highest civilian award, and had received a congratulatory letter from PM Modi.
Why does this matter?
Mr Gambhir, known for his aggressive batting skills, is a regular on social media where he often tweets about politics.
He is known for openly talking about nationalistic issues, leading to speculation that he may join politics.
His decision to align with the ruling party, months before the general election, may help the BJP draw in more voters as, with nearly nine million followers on Twitter, Mr Gambhir brings with him some considerable star power.
PM Modi attacks opposition over 'terror'
What happened?
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched a Twitter offensive against opposition leaders and those associated with these parties, accusing them of "insulting" the armed forces.
He appears to have picked up several videos and some speeches made by various leaders, including Sam Pitroda, who is very close to the Congress party.
Mr Pitroda, who is credited with being the father of the Indian telecom revolution, had objected to "vilifying all Pakistanis" over the Kashmir suicide attack that saw a fresh heightening of tensions between India and Pakistan.
Why does this matter?
This is quite a series of statements from the prime minister and he has really come into this attack no holds barred.
Those who follow US President Donald Trump will recognise the style: Mr Modi seems to have followed a very similar formula, with an attacking statement, followed by a one word conclusion, like "shame!" or "sad!".
In essence, he is saying that to question the official version of what happened in Pakistan - which has been queried by several leading media organisations - is an "affront" to the army itself. He is also saying that to express anything less than severe reprobation against Pakistan is a slight on the army and makes the opposition a supporter of nothing less than terrorism.
This is another clear attempt to refocus the debate around the polls on anti-Pakistan sentiment, which has served the party well ever since a suicide attack in Indian-administered Kashmir killed 40 troops.
Mr Modi and his government had been battling real discontent over issues like rising unemployment, increasing farmer suicides and a slowing economy.
But after the attack in Pulwama, all this was laid aside in the interest of heightened patriotism and national fervour. When Mr Modi confirmed that India had carried out air strikes against militant camps inside Pakistan, his approval ratings soared. Even at that point, as he addressed a campaign rally in the northern state of Rajasthan, his message was clear: the nation is in safe hands.
Since then - and in spite of a crackdown on the use of the military in campaign materials - Mr Modi and his party have ensured it is anti-Pakistan feeling, and not the other issues, which are firing up voters.
This is not the first time Mr Modi has used Pakistan as a poll issue.
He alleged during the 2017 Gujarat election campaign that former prime minister Manmohan Singh had colluded with Pakistan to influence election results. The Congress demanded an apology, which quietly came many months later in a statement made in the upper house of parliament.
BJP releases list of candidates
What happened?
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has released an initial list of 180 candidates who will be contesting elections from the party ticket. The list of names covers more than 20 states.
The names include Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will once again contest from the north Indian city of Varanasi, and party president Amit Shah, who will contest from Gandhinagar in Gujarat state, replacing party stalwart LK Advani.
Why does this matter?
There has been a lot of anticipation ahead of the release of this candidate list, because it is the clearest indication of the ruling party's strategy for polls.
And there are several very interesting factors in it.
Arguably the most interesting is the decision to field Mr Shah in place of Mr Advani. Although Mr Shah has played a key role in party strategy for polls, he is not formally a part of the federal government. This means that he is likely to play a much bigger formal role in the government if the BJP comes back to power.
The decision to sideline Mr Advani, a 91-year-old stalwart who is widely credited with transforming the BJP into a political force, also marks a formal shifting of the guard. Indian media reports speculate that this has paved the way for the party to also sideline other older members.
Other things to note in the list:
On Thursday.. it was all about playing nice
What happened?
It's Holi - the festival of colours that marks the beginning of spring - in India today. That means that people are casually walking around with bright orange, pink and green skin, roads are stained with coloured powder... and politicians are taking a break to play nice - for once.
As a result, Twitter handles are being used to deliver greetings instead of attacks on political rivals.
Why does it matter?
It doesn't really, but we thought it was a nice change.
On Wednesday.... Mayawati delivered a poll shock
Mayawati, the Dalit icon and leader of the powerful regional Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), based in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, announced she is not contesting the general election.
Her party has tied up with regional rival Samajwadi Party (SP) in a bid to counter the influence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP.
Uttar Pradesh sends 80 MPs to parliament.
Why does it matter?
We still don't have too much detail about what is behind her decision.
All we know for now is that she addressed a press conference in the state capital, Lucknow, where she said she would concentrate on the "alliance".
Ms Mayawati is an extremely important figure in the politics of the country. She speaks for millions of people from the Dalit (formerly known as untouchables) community, and has been the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh four times. It was widely anticipated that she would be a key figure in any coalition alliance, so it is unclear how her decision to not run will impact this.
She was also an MP in the upper house of parliament before resigning in July 2017 in protest, complaining that her voice was being "muzzled" after not being allowed to complete an impromptu speech about the treatment of Dalits.
Also on Wednesday.... Watching the watchmen
What happened?
The newest buzzword on the campaign trail is "chowkidar" or "watchman".
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has used the term for a while now, telling the people that he is their "watchman" - someone who looks out for them and serves them.
However in recent weeks, he has really upped the ante, even changing his Twitter handle to "Chowkidar Narendra Modi" - prompting other senior members of his cabinet to do the same.
He is also going to address a crowd of 250,000 watchmen across the country through an audio link on Wednesday.
Why does it matter?
This is important for two reasons.
Firstly, it is a clever use of the term to address the issue of national security.
The second reason this is important is the fact that Mr Modi is once again demonstrating he is utterly in control of the narrative - forcing opposition parties to counter him on his own terms.
So even when a leader like Rahul Gandhi says "Chowkidar Chor Hain" (The watchman is a thief), he is still essentially playing by Mr Modi's rules.
In the meantime, the "Chowkidar" theme has proverbially broken the internet in India with memes, tweets and posts galore. There's even a ring tone. Apart from leaders, supporters of the BJP have started changing their social media handles and pictures to include the word.
Being a watchman in India has never quite been so glamorous.
New kid on the block
What happened on Tuesday?
Pramod Sawant, a lawmaker from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is Goa's new chief minister. The former CM, Manohar Parikkar, died on Sunday.
Mr Sawant, 46, was sworn in around 02:00 local time (20:30 GMT) on Tuesday, only fitting in a state famous for its nightlife.
Why does this matter?
Parrikar's death sparked some late-night political wrangling as the BJP rushed to retain its hold over the coalition government.
The Congress tried to woo some of the lawmakers to challenge the BJP's majority, but their hopes were dashed when the ruling party scraped together enough seats by partnering with two regional allies.
It's a crucial win for the BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha polls as it proves that regional allies are willing to bet on them.
But it's a blow for the Congress, which has been struggling to forge alliances in other key states. To add insult to injury, their rushed attempts to wrest power - before Parrikar's funeral had even been held - earned them flak on Twitter from BJP supporters.
And soon, the hashtag #VampireCongress was trending.
Highlights from the last week:
You can read a full recap of everything political from the last week here.
But here are some of the stand-out moments:
Read all our latest election coverage
Other highlights included Narendra Modi bombarding Bollywood with democracy-loving tweets, Priyanka Gandhi's very first tweet and controversy over the alleged withholding of yet another jobs report by the government.
What about the week before?
The election hadn't even been announced, but no one could have been unaware that it was coming: the BJP had placed adverts in 150 newspapers across the country extolling its successes over the last five years - all of which had to come to a stop on Monday, due to election rules.
How do the Lok Sabha elections work?
India's lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, has 543 elected seats. Any party or coalition needs a minimum of 272 MPs to form a majority government.
Some 900 million voters - 86 million more than the last elections in 2014 - are eligible to vote at 930,000 polling stations.
Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) will be used at all polling stations. The entire process will be overseen by the Election Commission of India.
Who are the main players?
Prime Minister Narendra Modi who won a landslide victory in 2014 is seeking a second term for both himself and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
His main challengers are the main opposition Congress party led by Rahul Gandhi, and a consortium of regional parties called the Mahagathbandhan (which translates from the Hindi into massive alliance).
The Mahagathbandhan has seen some of India's strongest regional parties, including fierce rivals, come together.
This includes the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Dalit icon Mayawati, normally fierce rivals in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, which sends the most number of MPs to parliament.
The alliance also includes the Trinamool Congress which is in power in the state of West Bengal and Arvind Kejriwal whose Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) rules Delhi.
The aim of the alliance is to consolidate regional and anti-BJP votes, in order to oust Mr Modi from power.
Other regional players including Tamil Nadu's DMK and AIADMK and Telangana's TRS in the south are not part of the alliance, but are expected to perform well in their own states, which is likely to make them key to any coalition government.
When do I vote? The dates at a glance
11 April: Andhra Pradesh (25), Arunachal Pradesh (2), Assam (5), Bihar (4), Chhattisgarh (1), J&K (2), Maharashtra (7), Manipur (1), Meghalaya (2), Mizoram (1), Nagaland (1), Odisha (4), Sikkim (1), Telangana (17), Tripura (1), Uttar Pradesh (UP) (8), Uttarakhand (5), West Bengal (2), Andaman & Nicobar (1), Lakshadweep (1)
18 April: Assam (5), Bihar (5), Chhattisgarh (3), Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) (2), Karnataka (14), Maharashtra (10), Manipur (1), Odisha (5), Tamil Nadu (39), Tripura (1), UP (8), West Bengal (3), Puducherry (1)
23 April: Assam (4), Bihar (5), Chhattisgarh (7), Gujarat (26), Goa (2), J&K (1), Karnataka (14), Kerala (20), Maharashtra (14), Odisha (6), UP (10), West Bengal (5), Dadar and Nagar Haveli (1), Daman and Diu (1)
29 April: Bihar (5), J&K (1), Jharkhand (3), MP (6), Maharashtra (17), Odisha (6), Rajasthan (13), UP (13), Bengal (8)
6 May: Bihar (1), J&K (2), Jharkhand (4), Madhya Pradesh (MP) (7), Rajasthan (12), UP (14), Bengal (7)
12 May: Bihar (8), Haryana (10), Jharkhand (4), MP (8), UP (14), Bengal (8), Delhi (7)
19 May: Bihar (8), Jharkhand (3), MP (8), Punjab (13), Bengal (9), Chandigarh (1), UP (13), Himachal Pradesh (4)
23 May: Votes counted
Key: Date: State (number of seats being contested))
Find out exactly when you are voting by visiting the Election Commission of India's website
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Children as young as seven are travelling thousands of miles alone, across land and sea - some are sent by their parents who don't want them to grow up in repressive countries such as Eritrea. Others end up being turned into inexperienced captains of rickety boats crossing the Mediterranean. | By Paul KenyonBBC, Sudan
We are following criss-cross tyre marks across a dust plain. An abandoned shepherd's hut slides by, bleached cow carcasses, plastic bags snagged on stones, the rest is desert and sun and choking hot air.
I'm told that in the summer these borderlands between Eritrea and Sudan are fertile green, but right now the dust spins up behind our car and hangs in high grey plumes, before floating back to earth as powder rain.
This barren landscape is, for some, the start of a journey that will take them 4,000 miles, across desert and sea, along the world's most dangerous migration route.
To call it "a route", though, is somewhat misleading, it's really a tapestry of routes across sub-Saharan Africa, threading out of every country in the region, northwards towards the Mediterranean Sea. There are as many starting points to the journey as there are reasons to join it. But the one we're travelling is becoming one of the busiest. It's the route out of Eritrea, Africa's most secretive state.
Migrants cross the border into Sudan, sometimes travelling in cars and trucks, but often simply walking, usually at night when the air is cool and they can hide from the police patrols.
The place they're heading for is Shagarab, a vast refugee camp in the middle of this desolate place. It holds 35,000 people, nearly all of them Eritrean, and nearly all of them using this as a staging post before heading north towards Europe.
And it's in Shagarab Camp that I come across something remarkable.
Behind a metal gate, where security guards are checking people in, is a group of around 70 children sitting on benches in the shade. What's remarkable is that these children have travelled to Shagarab Camp alone. No parents, no family. And some are as young as seven years old.
They sit and listen as a UNHCR official, Sarah Elliot, explains the dangers of the route they're travelling.
"How many of you walked here?" she asks.
One hand goes up, then another, there's some giggling, then everyone raises a hand.
"OK, where are you trying to get to?"
The children look at each other. Some of the girls are wearing colourful headscarves which they've wrapped across their mouths against the dust.
"Go on, where? Don't be shy," smiles Elliot. She's asked the same question many times before, and already knows the answer.
"Europe," a little boy finally shouts out.
"England," shouts another.
Elliot nods and smiles some more. "OK, I understand, but do you know how long it will take?"
None of the children respond, they just fidget and wait for an answer.
"It can take many months," says Elliot, "and do you know how dangerous it is?"
Some of the children stare at the floor, others whisper to each other.
"Because that's what I'm going to explain to you today," continues Elliot, "just how dangerous this route is."
And on she goes, telling boys and girls, many of whom have barely reached their teens, about the dead bodies in the Libyan desert, about the people traffickers who might steal their money, about the men who kidnap children, about how many migrants drown attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea - 4,000 last year, and already this year, the numbers are on a scale never seen before.
The flight of children from Eritrea is an indication of just how oppressive the regime there has become. Older boys and men in the camp describe compulsory open-ended military service lasting from 10 to 30 years, including year after a year of forced labour on farms or in factories.
Parents are so desperate to spare their children this fate that they are taking the agonising decision to tell them to flee - despite reports of people being shot on sight as they attempt to cross the border.
"Do the children listen to your warnings?" I ask Elliot later. "Does it put any of them off?"
She screws her face and looks off across the desert. "Not as much as I'd like. I mean, maybe some. But by the time they arrive here, most of them already have a plan, and the plan is to get to Europe."
Why are Eritreans leaving home?
It's winter in Sicily and a cone of snow has settled over the tip of Mount Etna. Below, on a blowy beach, is a boy called Rudi. He's wearing shades with indigo lenses and Elvis rims, and his hair is knotted in junior Rasta twists. Rudi fiddles with his headphones.
"What are you listening to?" I ask. He stares at me, a little confused, "Nothing," he says, and then shows me that his headphones aren't plugged into any device.
"It's just for the look," he says, and saunters off in his oversize trainers and his hang-low jeans.
Rudi is eager to look and behave like other Italian teenagers - he just wants to fit in but his starting point couldn't be further from theirs. Rudi is a teenage people-smuggler, one of the youngest ever caught by the Italian authorities, and he started his life in a small village in West Africa.
What propelled 15-year-old Rudi out of his family home in Guinea, to embark on the world's most dangerous migration route is unclear, but what we do know is that he never set out to be a people smuggler.
His journey across the Sahara was relatively uneventful, but it was when he arrived in Libya that things took a turn.
Libya is still the most popular departure point for Europe, despite the conflict.
In fact the lawlessness has increased the migrant traffic through the country because the people smugglers can now operate with impunity. There are more of them, with more routes on offer.
When Rudi arrived on the Libyan coast, he'd run out of money. He describes fighting, and the sound of gunfire, and being terrified, as anyone of his age would be.
In the past, migrants would find work in the warehouses and meat factories of Tripoli to help pay their passage, but now there's none of that. Rudi pleaded with the people smugglers to take him for free, but they wouldn't. The only way he could get across, they told him, was if he captained the boat himself.
Over the following days, the smugglers taught Rudi how to steer a wooden boat, how to operate its engine and how to navigate. He practised up and down the coast of Libya, and after a week, they said he was ready.
Nearly 200 migrants were loaded on to his boat, having paid up to $2,000 (£1,300) each for the crossing. Their lives were in the hands of a 15-year-old boy.
Rudi tells me that if he hadn't agreed to sail the boat, he would have been stranded in Libya and could have been kidnapped or killed.
The arrangement suited the people smugglers well. They took nearly $500,000 (£325,000) from the migrants, and stayed in Libya, so they didn't run the risk of being caught by the Italian authorities. All the risk was with Rudi, and his passengers, of course
"They told me that if all the passengers survived, then there'd be no trouble but if anyone died, then I would be arrested," he says.
And so, when he arrived off the Italian coast, and was intercepted by the coastguard, Rudi punched the air like he'd scored a goal. He was surprised when the police took him away.
Now, Rudi is looked after by a charity in a picturesque Sicilian town, where he plays football and wears headphones that aren't plugged in. The Italians didn't prosecute him because of his age, and now they have an obligation to protect him and to integrate him into Italian society - he's a child of course, as well as being a one-time people smuggler.
Paul Kenyon is a correspondent with BBC Panorama, and has written a book about the world's most dangerous migration route - I am Justice.
You can watch Panorama: Children of the Great Migration tonight on BBC One at 20:30 GMT. It will be shown on BBC World on 28th February.
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.
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A former member of a government advisory panel on historical records says he has "never experienced such a concerted effort to withhold papers" as happened with the still secret files of the Denning inquiry into the Profumo scandal. | Martin RosenbaumFreedom of information specialist@rosenbaum6on Twitter
The art historian and TV presenter Bendor Grosvenor, who served for seven years on the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives (ACNRA), says: "It was hard to escape the conclusion there was something of a cover-up going on."
The recent BBC drama about the events surrounding Christine Keeler has drawn new attention to the continuing official secrecy regarding the Profumo affair of the early 1960s, which gripped the nation and shook the government.
The files from the official judicial inquiry by Master of the Rolls Lord Denning have not yet been publicly released.
The Cabinet Office spent two years in discussion with the ACNRA, which gives advice on which historical papers should be released or stay secret, resulting in a decision to keep the files confidential until 2048.
According to ACNRA documents obtained by the BBC under freedom of information (FOI), the identity of some who gave evidence to Lord Denning has "never been known to the public". Some of these unnamed people were still alive in 2014 and possibly still are.
It raises questions as to how far the reaches of the scandal stretched into the British establishment.
John Profumo was forced to resign as Secretary of State for War in 1963 after he admitted lying to the Commons when he denied any "impropriety" with a young model, Christine Keeler. It turned out he was having an affair with her, while she also had a relationship with the Soviet naval attaché in London, a presumed spy.
While this presented an obvious security issue, tabloid newspapers at the time also featured sensational rumours that it was just one aspect of mysterious sexual scandals in high-class circles.
Appointed to conduct a judicial inquiry, Lord Denning concluded there had been no security breach and there was no evidence to link ministers to certain stories of "vile and revolting" sexual activities. His report has since been widely criticised as complacent.
The judge omitted from his published report testimony from a prostitute who said transport minister Ernest Marples - who died in 1978 - had paid her to beat him while he wore women's clothes.
In 2015 the Cabinet Office reluctantly agreed with the ACNRA to transfer 25 boxes of Denning inquiry files for safekeeping to the National Archives. Of these, 23 were to be kept closed to the public until 2048 (the other two contained material already in the public domain, such as press cuttings).
According to minutes of advisory council meetings obtained by the BBC under FOI, the Cabinet Office initially asserted the papers were too sensitive to be taken away from its own direct control. It maintained some of the material affected national security.
In later discussions the Cabinet Office argued it was necessary to preserve the confidentiality of the judicial inquiry and protect personal information.
Dr Grosvenor says: "I was suspicious as the arguments to protect the papers kept changing."
"The papers should absolutely be made available to the public," he adds. "We fought off some rather spurious arguments. But by the end of it everyone felt rather worn down by the Cabinet Office."
The suggestion of releasing redacted records was dismissed on the basis, according to the minutes, that the amount of editing needed "would have left an unintelligible mess, and the release of snippets of information could cause an adverse public reaction".
Lord Denning had assured inquiry witnesses that their evidence would be confidential and only used for the purpose of his report. He also wanted all the transcripts and statements to be destroyed afterwards, but this wish was not carried out by civil servants.
Reviewing the papers 30 years later in 1993, Cabinet Secretary Sir Robin Butler said it would be wrong to destroy them, as "they reflect an extraordinary episode and evoke the character of the 1960s in a very powerful way" and "historians would judge us harshly for such destruction". But he argued they should still be kept secret for several decades.
Another official then wrote to the then Prime Minister John Major: "It is very tempting to suggest that you could not take such a decision with (sic) studying the evidence personally."
Whether or not he took advantage of this opportunity, it will not be available to historians or members of the general public for many years to come.
The National Archives has dismissed a recent BBC FOI request for Denning inquiry evidence on the grounds that even if witnesses themselves are now dead, "the highly personal nature of the information" could "cause damage and distress to their families". The FOI refusal was upheld by the Information Commissioner.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: "The National Archives' Advisory Council recommended that the Denning inquiry records continue to remain closed until 1 January 2048. As with any historical records we follow procedures and guidance from the National Archives."
An Advisory Council spokesperson said: "The Advisory Council discussed the status of papers relating to Lord Denning's inquiry into the Profumo affair with the Cabinet Office over a period of time from 2014 to 2016. The papers were subsequently transferred to the National Archives closed under exemptions of the Freedom of Information Act."
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UKIP's Nigel Farage got a tumultuous reception in Paris on Sunday from a fellow Eurosceptic party, whose great advantage - as far as he is concerned - is that it is NOT the far-right National Front (FN). | By Hugh SchofieldBBC News, Paris
Debout la Republique (DLR: Stand up, the Republic!) is the political vehicle of Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, a 52-year-old dissident Gaullist who feels the mainstream centre-right UMP party has sold out to Brussels. It is not a big party (he got less than 2% at the last presidentials), but it does have a niche - among respectable middle-class types who believe in the nation state.
Several hundred of Mr Dupont-Aignan's supporters crammed into the Alhambra Theatre near Place de la Republique for the launch of his Euro 2014 campaign. After a series of less-than-thrilling speeches from various DLR hopefuls, they got what they came for: a taste of the famous English firebrand.
Clearly Nigel Farage's name carries weight in these French circles. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan was almost pathetically keen to be seen at the UK Independence Party leader's side, insisting he come back to the stage for a triumphant hand-in-upraised-hand pose for the cameras. At the climax, the crowds were ecstatically chanting "Nigel! Nigel! Nigel!"
Avoiding 'baggage'
In his address, Mr Farage explained why he had chosen DLR as a partner in France, and not Marine Le Pen's FN (boos, hisses). Eurosceptics had to show the world that they were not extremists, that national sovereignty and national currency were normal aspirations. But the FN, he said, had too much political baggage. It could never entirely kick off its anti-Semitic past.
Interestingly I spoke to Mr Farage afterwards, and he was more nuanced in his critique of the FN. Marine Le Pen had "taken the party to new highs, and is achieving remarkable things in this country. I make no bones about it, she's got some good qualities," he said.
He said he could foresee a European Parliament in which UKIP and the FN vote together on any number of different subjects - along with the "British Conservatives on a good day and some hard left characters from the Mediterranean". But as for being in the same political family as the FN - that was not on the cards.
This is no doubt intelligent politics. For all Marine Le Pen has done in detoxifying the brand, the FN is still too hot to handle. Its kiss for UKIP would be the kiss of death. But it is worth bearing in mind that in terms of popular support, the French Eurosceptic equivalent of UKIP is certainly not Dupont-Aignan's minuscule DLR. It IS the National Front.
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Measures to improve journey times and reduce congestion at the Dartford Crossing have been agreed by Highways England and Kent County Council. | Drivers heading northbound towards Essex have faced extensive queues and delays despite the introduction of the Dart Charge payment system in 2014.
The improvements include new lane markings, vehicle activated signs and upgraded traffic lights.
Highways England said the improvements would be in place as soon as possible.
Spokesman Tommy Whittingham said: "We need to do everything we can to keep this vital transport gateway flowing."
Related Internet Links
Dart Charge
Department for Transport
Highways England
Sanef
Kent County Council
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A man has appeared in court charged with murder after another man was stabbed to death outside a train station in east London. | Ché Morrison, 20, was attacked on Cranbrook Road, outside Ilford station, on 26 February.
Florent Okende, of Eastern Avenue, Redbridge, appeared at Croydon Magistrates' Court earlier.
Mr Okende, 20, was remanded in custody to appear at the Old Bailey on Wednesday.
He has been charged with murder, possession of a pointed or bladed article and possession of cannabis.
Mr Morrison's family described him as a "very ambitious young man" who had "many aspirations for his future".
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Harry Dunn's grieving family is desperate to know what happened in their son's final moments. The person who can provide those details and give them some degree of closure, is Anne Sacoolas, the American woman suspected of driving the car involved in the fatal crash. | By Clive ColemanLegal correspondent, BBC News
Mrs Sacoolas, 42, returned to the United States days after the crash which killed 19-year-old Harry. At the time, she had diplomatic immunity, but both the British and US governments agree she no longer has.
Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn travelled to Washington this week to meet Donald Trump but rejected a meeting at the White House with Mrs Sacoolas, saying they felt "a little ambushed" when the president revealed she was in the next room.
They want to meet her in the UK with professional mediators and counsellors in attendance, but so far, Mrs Sacoolas has refused to leave the US. So, what are the legal options that might provide Harry's parents with the meeting and the details of their son's death?
Can Anne Sacoolas be extradited?
In order for Mrs Sacoolas to be extradited from the US, she firstly would need to be charged by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) with a criminal offence which is serious enough to warrant it.
Prosecutors will make a decision once they have been passed the case file by the police who have investigated and gathered all the available relevant evidence.
The decision to charge is made if - based on that evidence - there is a realistic prospect of conviction (sometimes referred to as "a better than 50% chance") and it is in the public interest to charge.
What could she be charged with?
The most likely charge Mrs Sacoolas could face over the crash near RAF Croughton would be one of four which cover causing death by driving. These are:
There has been no suggestion that Mrs Sacoolas was driving under the influence of drink or drugs, or driving while unlicensed, disqualified or uninsured. So, the possible offences would appear to be causing death by dangerous, or careless or inconsiderate driving.
For dangerous driving the standard of the offender's driving will have been so bad as to have created an obvious risk of danger.
In cases of careless driving, the level of blame can vary enormously from being on the borderline of dangerous driving to as little as misjudging the speed of another vehicle or momentary inattention while tuning a car radio.
Both offences would qualify as extraditable offences as both carry maximum sentences in excess of 12 months. The maximum prison sentence the court can impose for causing death by dangerous driving is 14 years. For causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving it is 5 years. The maximum sentence is rarely imposed and reserved for rare cases where blame is exceptionally high.
How does the extradition process work?
Extradition to and from the United States is governed by the Extradition Act 2003.
Once charged, a CPS prosecutor would go before a magistrates' court and give an overview of the case, outlining the offence or offences charged and any relevant legal provisions, and set out the evidence supporting the charge(s).
This would include sworn statements from witnesses, CCTV, expert crash examination reports, etc. The witnesses would have to attend to swear on oath that their statements (called depositions) are true. A crown prosecutor would then swear a statement which explains the offence in English and Welsh law.
All the case papers will be sent to the Home Office which will make a diplomatic request via the Foreign Office to the US Department of Justice to arrest Mrs Sacoolas, pending extradition.
If the extradition request is executed by the US Department of Justice, it will go before a US court. A judge will need to be satisfied that there is "probable cause" to suspect Mrs Sacoolas is guilty of the offence charged. That is commonly defined as "a reasonable amount of suspicion, supported by circumstances sufficiently strong to justify a prudent and cautious person's belief that certain facts are true".
What problems could arise?
Suspects are extradited from the US to the UK under the 2003 Extradition Act on a regular basis, but there can be problems.
Daniel Sternberg, a barrister specialising in extradition law at Temple Garden Chambers in London said the UK government's options for obtaining Mrs Sacoolas's extradition are fairly limited.
"It would be up to the US authorities whether they give effect to an extradition request from the UK. There could be any number of reasons why they would choose not to do so. Were the request to be executed and Mrs Sacoolas brought before a US court, she would then have the opportunity to raise objections to her extradition.
"She might argue that she was covered by diplomatic immunity when the alleged offence occurred."
There is no defined time limit for extradition, unlike the prescribed 60 days proscribed under the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) scheme, which fast tracks the extradition of suspects between EU member states. The US process could be dragged out for years, especially if Mrs Sacoolas seeks to argue that she was, and remains, protected by diplomatic immunity.
What other options are available?
If the UK authorities wanted to put pressure on, they could put together a request and arrest warrant and seek an Interpol "red notice".
It is not an international arrest warrant, rather a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action. It means that the person suspected of a crime faces arrest if they travel abroad.
It contains two main types of information:
Red notices are published by Interpol at the request of a member country and must comply with its constitution and rules. However, the British government pursuing a red notice could be construed by the US as a hostile act.
"While a red notice theoretically could be used to put pressure on Mrs Sacoolas, they are supposed to be used to locate and provisionally arrest a person," said Mr Sternberg.
"In this case, Mrs Sacoolas's whereabouts are known. The effect of a red notice would be to make foreign travel difficult for her as she would be liable to arrest were she to travel outside of the US."
Whether or not Mrs Sacoolas is extradited back to the UK to face charges and explain in court precisely what happened in the fatal accident will depend on the quality of the evidence gathered by the police, the CPS decision to charge, the US accepting the UK's request to extradite, and the US courts being persuaded that extradition is warranted.
It is far from straightforward.
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Barely 500 people live in the French village of Berjou, but as international leaders marked the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings amid great pomp and ceremony, a smaller, more intimate reunion has been taking place to remember a significant battle to restore liberty to a sleepy but strategic corner of Normandy, 80km (50 miles) away. | By Jackie StorerBBC News
Outside Berjou's 19th Century Catholic church, an elderly bowler-hatted Englishman holds court.
"The last time I came into Berjou was in a tank," he told the gathering of about 100 villagers, local children, World War Two veterans and their families. "But we didn't come as conquerors; we came as your friends."
Unsteady on his feet, yet with his back ramrod straight, 89-year-old Captain David Render was there to commemorate 26 comrades from the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry killed or wounded almost 70 years earlier helping to liberate Berjou, and to unveil a plaque in their memory.
The Rangers were part of the 8th Armoured Brigade and among thousands of soldiers who landed on Gold Beach on D-Day.
They were the first British unit to enter Bayeux - the first French town to be liberated from Nazi occupation on 7 June.
More than two months later, on 15 August 1944, they were involved in a Herculean attempt to navigate their Sherman tanks across the Noireau river and through steep, wooded hills to capture the Berjou Ridge.
It was part of the closing episode of the Battle of Falaise Pocket, when Allied troops encircled German occupiers, before driving them out of Normandy, paving the way for the liberation of Paris.
Hope of returning
Capt Render, then a 19-year-old commander of three Sherman tanks, said just getting the vehicles off the landing craft on 7 June, 24 hours after D-Day, had been challenging enough.
"The first one went into a hole in the sand and turned upside down with the men in it and disappeared," he said. "At the same time we were being attacked by heavy machine gun fire and Messerschmitt 109s flying above."
Looking around the sunny Norman village, with its boulangerie, brick and stone built Church of St Michael and World War One memorial to Le Poilu, the archetypal French infantryman, Capt Render recalled: "When I came through here all the houses were damaged.
"It's hard to believe the lanes are so peaceful now; in those days we were moving from one tree to the next, constantly under fear of attack."
Sherwood Rangers regiment timeline:
Watching the service from his wheelchair, Gunner Stan Cox, 89, described being in the first tank into Bayeux on 7 June. "We more or less walked in - there was no opposition at all. The people were running about the town with German underclothes after they had raided one of their stores.
"We then headed off for Tilly-sur-Seulles, but a shell hit our tank, which started a fire going. The other four got away, but as I jumped off, I was hit by shrapnel and landed behind the tank, which I thought would roll on top of me.
"I was pulled out of the way and five minutes later the tank blew up. A few moments longer and I would've been roasted alive."
His friend, Graham Stevenson, 89, from Walsall, missed the D-Day landings after he was put in the guard house for seven days for rudeness to a superior officer.
When he finally rejoined his unit a couple of weeks later, his Sherman tank was shelled and he was hit by machine gun fire, almost costing him his arm and forcing his exit from the war.
Private Stevenson was only 16 when he served at El Alamein and the push through North Africa, having lied about his age. "This had been quite an emotional trip. I'm here for all the men who can't be, but I hope to return again one day."
Villagers' gratitude
Annette Conway, from Banbury in Oxfordshire, attended the Berjou ceremony on behalf of her late father, Leslie Skinner, the regimental padre, who insisted on recovering the dead and writing to the families of each one killed.
"To be trapped in a tank was a horrible way to die, so he used to clear all bodies from the tanks himself," she said. "He wouldn't let anybody else into them.
"He accounted for every single casualty - nobody in that regiment was posted missing apart from when he was injured himself. He was shot in the head by a sniper, but the bullet was deflected by his cap badge and his Bible absorbed the blast."
Mrs Conway added: "I think the men took a lot of comfort from the way he dealt with the dead, and some of them still say to me: 'We all loved your father.'"
While peace has returned to the quiet village of Berjou, the scars of that fierce battle remain.
Just a two-minute walk from the Sherwood Rangers' newly-laid plaque, villager Robert Guillain, 89, shows the bullet holes left in his kitchen door by British troops who "cleared" the house with a Bren light machine gun, killing two Germans hiding on the other side.
Like many others in the village, Mr Guillain's home is full of reminders of the conflict. Only a week ago, he dusted off a British rifle he had kept on top of a bedroom cupboard since 1944 to be put on display in Berjou's recently opened museum dedicated to the battle.
But as the Sherwood Rangers' veterans left the service of commemoration in Berjou, local MP Philippe Senaux summed up a sentiment shared by the whole village: "We're just pleased we've had the opportunity to thank them so much for what they have done."
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As students go back to university this month, some of Scotland's universities have launched new initiatives to combat sexual assault on campus . Experts say that sexual violence is a growing, but largely hidden, problem, which is particularly prominent among young people between the ages of 17 and 25.
BBC Scotland News spoke to a woman who was raped when she was a student about her experience. The case went to trial but the accused was found not guilty. She says the attack has had a devastating effect on her life. The woman asked to remain anonymous. | By Claire DiamondBBC Scotland news website
"I went on a night out with my friends and their flatmates. The more I think about it now, I think I might have had my drink spiked or something similar. I'm not sure.
"I went home with someone, and I don't remember really agreeing to it... I remember not really knowing who he was. My mind kept jumping to being in a taxi with him then being at his house. There's no in-between in my memory.
"And then I found myself being strangled and raped, basically. It was a very, very, scary experience. I thought I couldn't breathe.
"I remember running out of the place. I ran into some workers who helped me get back to the friends who I was out with.
'I'd been raped'
"I didn't even want to phone the police. I didn't realise what had happened to me. It was my best friend at the time who really pushed me to report it. He was the one who dialled the number and calmed me down.
"He told me I'd been raped. I didn't want to believe it at first - I didn't want it to be real. From then on, it was just a blur of police officers getting statements and rape kits and stuff like that.
"It was around four in the morning by this point. The officers that were in charge of these kinds of things weren't on duty yet, so it was police officers that took care of me.
"It was quite scary just being in the police station. Then we had to go to the guy's flat that it happened at to confirm that's where I was raped. I stayed in the police car - it was very traumatic.
"So was the rape kit. I remember lying there, shaking and crying. I hadn't had much sleep. I got to go and have a shower before going back in to the police station for more questioning and to make a witness statement.
'So unjust'
"I was up for nearly two days by the time everything had blown over and I was able to go home and understand what had happened to me. I understand now that there's nothing I can do to change it. I went through a long period of being very, very angry.
"I'm not at peace with it, now all I can do is use my experiences to help other people and prevent it from happening in the future if I can.
"I decided to go through with it because the thought of him getting away with it sparked so much anger.
"Once I realised what had happened I did not want to let it go. It was so unjust. I didn't want to wonder down the line, what if I had reported it? It was something that I couldn't really live with if I hadn't reported it. I felt like I had to at least try, otherwise I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about it.
"It took nearly two years before anything came of it. I found the trial terrifying - extremely intimidating. I felt like I was on trial, like I was being judged by the jury.
'Felt alone'
"I was made to feel like I deserved this in some way or let it happen, or I was just making it up. That was something the defence lawyer said to me right off the bat - he accused me of making it all up. That was really hard to take.
"I remember bursting into tears, but I kept going because I just wanted it to be over. It was really difficult.
"I later understood that everyone in the courtroom that wasn't the jury and the defence lawyers believed me, in a sense, because the case doesn't make it through to that late a stage unless they think it can result in a conviction.
"Being made out to be a liar was awful. It took me a long time to get over that - it's up there with the night I was raped.
"Although I received plenty of support when I was at university, I didn't see anybody in a similar circumstance - I felt quite alone. I want people to understand the impact it has on survivors. I want people to see that it's not just a one night thing or whatever - it has a lasting effect on the person for the rest of their life and affects all aspects of life.
"I also want people who are survivors of rape - men and women - to understand that they are not alone and it happens quite a lot, unfortunately, and that there is support out there."
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"There's a fire inside of our generation that is so willing to change everything and it's motivating us to become more politically active than any other teenage group this past century," says Lisandr Qose, an 18-year-old from east London who has been taking political literacy lessons at school. | By Jack FenwickWestminster Hour
And it's true that in many ways it feels like young people are more engaged in politics than ever.
Issues like Black Lives Matter, the climate crisis and LGBT rights have captured the attention of Generation Z.
But when it comes to the ballot box, the UK youth vote still lags behind.
The 2017 election's so-called "youthquake" turned out to be little more than a tremor, and polling by Ipsos Mori suggests turnout among the 18-24 age group was just 47% in 2019.
A new group of MPs and peers, the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Political Literacy, held its inaugural meeting this month and says that change should begin in the classroom.
Politics a 'big mystery'
"We've got a real problem in the UK about engaging young people in voting and more broadly in the democratic process," says Cat Smith, Labour's shadow minister for young people and a co-vice chair of the new parliamentary group.
"I know from speaking to pupils in local schools that quite often one of the barriers is they feel that they do not know enough about politics, it's a great big mystery.
"However, there are some schools which do teach political literacy really well and I can see the difference between those pupils and other pupils.
"The engagement with me as an elected representative is so much more meaningful and I am convinced that therefore they're more likely to want to engage in the process, to partake in democracy."
Citizenship education has been on the national curriculum in England since 2002, pupils in Scotland are expected to learn about politics through Modern Studies classes and similar teaching also takes place in Wales and Northern Ireland.
But Dr James Weinberg, an academic at the University of Sheffield and one of the new group's co-founders, says in reality most schools are not able to teach political literacy adequately.
"Research that I did last year and other research projects similar to it, have found that it's only taught discretely in a fifth of schools."
He says that research carried out by the Department for Education in 2019 "suggested that just one in seven schools have a single trained citizenship teacher and, where the subject is taught or reported to be taught, it accounts for just 1.5% of learning hours".
The APPG will be working with Shout Out UK, an organisation that already runs classes in schools across the country, focusing on topics including how to form and debate opinions and where to source accurate information.
"When we were getting to Year 12, registering to vote, it would have really been nice to have that background knowledge already," says Zeynep Celik Kocak, a Year 13 pupil enrolled on one of Shout Out UK's classes at Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney, East London.
The pupils here all say that one of the biggest things they've learned is how to spot when a news story might be fake.
"I remember during the first lockdown, a specific 5G video, it went viral all over social media," says Lisandr Qose. "I remember people from different schools posting about it, people from my school posting about it."
Spotting fake news
Goldinne Opoku-Agyemann agrees: "Some of my peers, even though they would seem rational people, they also tend to fall for these kind of things as well because they don't go out of their way to research."
But she says the political literacy lessons meant she didn't fall for the conspiracy theory.
"They taught us how fake news and all of the phenomena around that is really misleading. I honestly didn't fall for it because they taught us how to identify and rather than spreading the fake news, you go and search for it for yourself."
The APPG wants all pupils across the UK to receive a similar level of political literacy teaching as those at Mossbourne Community Academy. It will also campaign for a new politics qualification - likely to be a BTEC or GCSE - and conduct further research into the links between civic teaching and engagement.
The group is made up of parliamentarians from across the political divide - Conservative MP Simon Fell and Labour peer Iain McNicol will act as chairs - but how can it reassure parents that lessons about issues such as Brexit and coronavirus will be impartial?
James Weinberg says: "That is already written into law. The 1996 Education Act makes it very clear that teachers and teaching staff can't be imposing or advocating partisan opinions in the classroom. We have to trust our teachers to be able to teach civic competencies, to teach political literacy."
'Difficult topics'
But he acknowledges that for this to happen effectively, teachers will need to be given the right tools.
"Provide them with initial teacher training schemes and continuing professional development that make them feel comfortable addressing what are sometimes controversial and difficult topics," he says.
A lack of engagement and understanding in politics is not unique to younger generations.
The pupils at Mossbourne Community Academy all said they would have liked to understand Brexit more, but during the Brexit drama of 2019, YouGov found only 13% of British adults knew exactly what "backstop" meant, while only three in 10 understood the details of a "no-deal Brexit".
"I do think that in terms of political literacy there is a problem not just amongst young people, there are plenty of people that I speak to that feel they don't understand how politics works," says Cat Smith.
But she says it's right that the group is focusing solely on young people.
"This APPG is focused on young people and I guess in some ways that's probably the best place to start.
"If we invest in young people now and they engage in the democratic process, hopefully that is creating the habit of a lifetime and will solve the problem in the longer term."
Listen to Jack's report on BBC Radio 4's The Westminster Hour at 10pm on Sunday.
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GCSE PSHE and Citizenship - BBC Bitesize
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Two men have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a stabbing left a man with life-threatening injuries. | The 19-year-old victim was attacked at Bicclescombe Park in Ilfracombe, Devon on Saturday evening.
He remains in hospital after police were called at about 22:50 GMT.
Police said a 21-year-old man from Bideford and a 29-year-old man from Barnstaple had been arrested and were in police custody.
Officers are appealing for anyone with information to come forward.
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The romanticised view of US presidential elections is that they present quadrennial opportunities for national renewal; that they are expressions of hope and optimism that reflect this country's founding belief in its inexorable advancement and improvement. | Nick BryantNew York correspondent
Peered at through rose-coloured spectacles, they become the democratic flowering of American exceptionalism.
Some post-war examples might include John F Kennedy's victory in 1960, which was interpreted as bringing the somnolence of the Eisenhower years to an end and unbridling the frenetic energy of the Sixties.
At the 1980 election, Ronald Reagan is credited with bringing closure to America's long national nightmare of Vietnam and Watergate.
In 2008, Barack Obama seemed to personify how America could renew itself after the destruction of the Twin Towers and the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
On closer examination, however, those elections don't just look like expressions of hope but also outpourings of fear.
Jack Kennedy exploited Cold War anxieties that America was falling behind the Soviet Union, even inventing a "missile gap" that gave Moscow the supposed nuclear edge.
Ronald Reagan kicked off his election campaign by championing "states' rights" in Philadelphia, Mississippi - the site of the "Mississippi Burning" murders in the 1960s - using language that articulated southern white fears about the encroachment of the federal government and advancement of African-Americans in a setting loaded with shadowy symbolism.
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, Barack Obama profited from anxieties that the American economy was in meltdown.
Deep pool of resentment
All three benefited from what the political theorist Richard Hofstadter memorably described in the mid-1960s as "the paranoid style in American politics".
"American politics has often been an arena for angry minds," wrote Hofstadter, a line penned in 1964 that resonates just as strongly today. Now, as then, American elections commonly witness the triumph of fear over hope.
As we enter election year, there is a deep pool of nervousness and resentment from which to draw.
On the economic front, there is the shrinkage of the American middle class. New figures from Pew Research suggest that for the first time in more than four decades, the middle class is no longer in the majority.
People becoming wealthy enough to be defined as "better off" explain some of this shrinkage. But 20% of Americans are now in the lowest income tier, compared with 16% in the early 1970s.
The median wealth of middle-class households has also seen a dramatic fall over the course of this century, decreasing by 28% from 2001 to 2013. Pew found also that median incomes in all wealth brackets were lower in 2014 than in 2000. The "American dream" is not such an animating force.
What's often called the Uberisation of the economy - the move towards freelancing and flexible working arrangements - is eroding the traditional compact between employer and employee.
Terror fears
Fears about economic security overlap with fears about national security.
In the aftermath of the San Bernardino and Paris attacks, Americans are more fearful about the prospect of terrorist attacks than at any time since 9/11, according to a poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS News.
Some 44% of the public thought an attack was "very" likely in the next few months. A poll this month from Gallup suggested that Americans regard terrorism as the country's number one problem.
Confidence in American institutions has also been on the wane, as seen in another Gallup poll. Here are the results for how many people said they had a "great deal of confidence" in the following:
These are not good days for the American establishment, whose pillars look increasingly wobbly.
Gun control debate
Beyond these statistics lies further evidence of national anxiety.
The spate of mass shootings - almost one a day in 2015 - has not just spread fears about public safety, but seemingly heightened concerns among gun owners that the federal government will some day restrict the availability of firearms (not that gun control is going anywhere in Congress).
That offers one explanation for the spike in gun sales on Black Friday in November, when the FBI ran a record-breaking 185,345 background checks, about two per second.
US gun crime in 2015
Figures up to 3 December
353
Mass shootings
62 shootings at schools
12,223 people killed in gun incidents
24,722 people injured in gun incidents
The Black Lives Matter campaign continues to highlight the brutal excesses of certain police officers. In recent months, a number of leading American university campuses, including Yale, have been restless. Even American football, the national winter sport, seems to be in a perpetual state of scandal.
Populism flourishing
Add to that the unchecked rise of China, the difficulty in combating the group calling itself Islamic State, the inability to humble Vladimir Putin, the failure to defeat the Taliban and a nagging sense of the waning of American international influence and that pool of resentment increasingly resembles a toxic swamp.
The state of the union is perturbed and anxious. America is beset by a climate of uncertainty and fear in which populist campaigns, like those mounted by Donald Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left, can flourish.
Worryingly for Hillary Clinton, periods of national anxiety also have a tendency of producing party change in the White House. One thinks of Jack Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968, Jimmy Carter in 1976, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Bill Clinton in 1992.
Back then, Bill Clinton cast himself as the candidate who still believed "in a place called Hope", his birthplace, but his success stemmed from enunciating the economic apprehensions of "the forgotten middle class".
For all the demographic and electoral map advantages that the Democrats have come to enjoy in presidential politics, Hillary Clinton will also need to give voice to middle class anxieties about stagnant incomes, wealth inequality and dwindling opportunity. It explains the tweet that launched her campaign back in April: "Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion."
Whoever ends up on top, the campaign will provide yet more evidence of the paranoid style in American politics. It will not be marked by a sense of national renewal or sunniness.
Rather, 2016 looks set to be a year of fear.
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The UN secretary-general’s condemnation of the killing of a top Tamil Tiger and four others on Monday shows that the international community has understood the Tamil struggle, the movement’s political wing leader said at the funeral of E.Kousalyan. | SP Thamilchelvan said that the liberation struggle has emerged victorious, but the enemy has failed to recognise this victory.
He spoke at a meeting held before last rites of Kousalyan and four others were performed at Thandiyadi Marty’s Memorial in Batticaloa.
The Sri Lankan government and other forces that condemn the Tamil struggle will recognise the future, stability, strength and truthfulness of the movement soon, said Thamilchelvan.
Top LTTE leaders including S Karikalan, E Pararajasingham, head of Tamil Eelam Judiciary and Thamilenthi, head of LTTE’s finance division attended the funeral. They were escorted by ceasefire monitors and Sri Lanka army personnel on their trip from Kilinochchi.
The corteges of the deceased LTTE members were taken to several locations for the public to pay their last respects.
A large number of people including political readers, religious leaders and Muslim leaders paid their last respects to the deceased LTTE members.
Meanwhile, the cortege of Chandraneru Ariyanayagam, former Parliamentarian of the Tamil National Alliance, was brought to Batticaloa from Colombo and placed with the bodies of the other deceased LTTE members for public respect at the Devanayagam Hall in Batticaloa.
All coffins were draped in the LTTE flag and Ariyanayagam was posthumously declared a national hero by the LTTE leadership.
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A nun told a boy he was "garbage" and was being sent to Australia from Scotland because "your family doesn't want you, your country doesn't want you", an inquiry has heard. | A witness told the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry he was 11 when he was forced to emigrate in the 1950s.
He was then sexually abused by priests at a care home in Tasmania.
The man accused the British government at the time of robbing him of a family, a country and an education.
The evidence was heard as the inquiry in Edinburgh continues examining children's homes, no longer operating, which were run by the Catholic order the Sisters of Nazareth in Scotland.
Christopher Booth, 77, who waived his right to anonymity, said he was admitted to Nazareth House in Aberdeen at the age of 10 in 1951 - a place where he described the regime as "brutal".
'Constant abuse'
He said he was there for about seven months before he was sent to Australia as a child migrant in 1952.
Mr Booth told how a nun informed him of the move, telling him: "Your family doesn't want you, your country doesn't want you, you're just garbage".
He said he was given a "thrashing" after a relative went to the home to complain about him being moved overseas and said his mother later told him she had "not agreed to send me to Australia".
Mr Booth described how he was sent with a group of children from elsewhere in the UK to Australia and he was then taken out to Tasmania. Nobody showed him where Australia was on a map, he said.
The witness said he was sexually abused by priests in Australia, saying the abuse was "constant" and made him feel ashamed.
Mr Booth also told of receiving a "thrashing" from a priest, saying they "all had their choice of weapon" such as a cane or leather strap.
He said of the British authorities at the time: "I was born a Scotsman. When I was sent to Australia I was robbed of a family, I was robbed of a country, I was robbed of an education."
Asked about his earlier time at Nazareth House in Aberdeen, Mr Booth told of regular thrashings at the hands of nuns using canes.
Children would be hit "until you cried", he said.
"They were very happy to see if they could break you," he told the inquiry.
Asked why the thrashings were dished out, he replied: "Looking back with hindsight now, I think they enjoyed it. I think they looked forward to some of the boys breaking the rules."
Mr Booth told inquiry chairwoman Lady Smith "there was no affection shown to any of the boys" at Nazareth House.
Another witness, who cannot be named, told how he was at Nazareth House in Aberdeen for a few weeks in the 1960s.
'No support'
Asked about the regime there, he said: "The word that comes to mind was cold, brutal.
"It was like the regime was designed for the convenience of the staff rather than considering the needs of the children.
"You were tolerated as long as you did what you were told and if you weren't, you were punished.
"It was on an industrial scale, it was almost warehousing people. They were doing the minimal to get you through but not really enough to see people as individuals and to support them."
The inquiry continues.
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In many ways the Angolan capital, Luanda, feels like Africa's best kept secret. Fifteen years after emerging from a bitter civil war in which Cold War rivalries were counted in lives lost, parts of the city look like Dubai. | By Karen AllenBBC News, Luanda
Smart glass-fronted buildings reach up to the sky and virtually every vehicle downtown is a large shimmering 4x4. This is what oil money looks like.
It has paid for Angola's impressive infrastructural development, five ports and an expansive road network, a welfare state that many other African nations could only dream of, with hospitals populated by top-class Cuban doctors and schools where the textbooks are free.
Yet when global oil prices plummeted, the cracks began to show. Angola found itself in fiscal crisis, unable to pay the bills, restock its hospitals, pay the doctors or collect the rubbish.
A yellow fever outbreak helped to expose the shortcomings of what some consider to have been skewed priorities and a sense of complacency in a country that imports most of what it needs and depends almost exclusively on oil.
The slump in prices appears to have encouraged Angola's leaders to open up to the rest of the world and expand ties beyond the established links with Cuba, Brazil, China and Portugal.
It is an "opportunity rather than a crisis", says Antonio da Silva, who heads APIX - the Agency for Investments and Exports Promotion - a body set up to encourage more foreign investment and trade.
He admits the time is long overdue for Angola to diversify and the oil shock could help to accelerate that long promised change and recalibrate Angola's relationship with the world.
He points to fast-food chains, agribusiness and environmental companies eager to do business here - but when I ask him about corruption, he plays it down.
Angola is the 12th most corrupt country in the world, according to Transparency International.
The rankings measure perceptions, but a poor rating does little for business confidence surely, especially with potential "suitors" such as Britain, which now has legislation targeting companies that pay overseas bribes.
New systems have been put in place for foreign businesses "cutting out the middle-man", Mr Da Silva offers by way of assurance.
But what if the middle-men and women are at the top, as many commentators would seem to suggest?
At the helm of this African oil giant, is President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. A man who has led Angola for the past 37 years and made his country a beacon of hope for others held back by poor infrastructural development.
He has declared his intention to stand down from office after elections next year. Stepping down would seem to indicate a loosening of his grip on power and a change of direction, but the appointment of his daughter to a top job, suggests otherwise.
Isabel dos Santos, the richest woman in Africa, has just been named president of the state oil giant Sonangol. She has a reputation as a slick operator, has interests that range from telecoms, real estate and diamonds and is considered as an accomplished businesswoman in in her own right.
She has, in the words of journalist Simon Allison, "shattered the glass ceiling of Africa's male-dominated business world" - but it is hard to separate the woman from the name.
When the news hit the streets that "Isabel" was to head up Sonangol, some people grumbled.
While Mr Da Silva reminded us of her track record in business, others view her appointment as part of an elaborate plan to shore up the Dos Santos dynasty and the powerful elite who have benefited from the oil giant's funds.
Sonangol is responsible for half of Angola's gross domestic product (GDP), but critics accuse it of being unproductive and opaque - a vast omnipresent entity whose coffers have been plundered by powerful oligarchs.
Isabel dos Santos:
Plans to privatise the oil giant to make it more productive and transparent do little to appease sceptics such as Rafael Marques, a human rights campaigner and journalist.
He questions how much Angola is really transforming.
"The oil crisis has exposed problems in the way our country is run," he says, and until that is addressed and Angola gets a properly functioning democracy, little will have changed.
"This skewed economy, which protects the wealth of a privileged few", he states bluntly, will continue to be vulnerable to external shocks and "foreign investors risk perpetrating that system of patronage".
Meanwhile, President Dos Santos's son Jose Filomeno de Sousa dos Santos, in charge of the Sovereign Wealth Fund, has also found himself in the spotlight.
The fund, designed to promote development for the poor through the use of oil revenues, is estimated to be worth some $5bn.
But it has been been dismissed by some as a device to launder money out of Angola.
The shadowy body has recently found itself the subject of documents leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, with links to Swiss bankers again raising questions about transparency.
It is easy to be seduced by a city such as Luanda, but not far from the shimmering buildings are the shantytowns, where support for Dos Santos in next year's election cannot be guaranteed.
Here, the effects of the oil crisis are being felt hardest as food prices soar and access to dollars is limited.
People now speak openly about their irritation at what they consider a nepotistic clique that looks after its own.
It is where young people yearning for a change at the top vent their frustrations on social media.
Their parents may be tired of fighting, after 30 years of civil war, but the fact that there is access to social media gives them hope and a powerful platform.
Hope that future investors in a country oozing potential such as Angola will help lobby for a change of direction before it is too late.
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A five-year-old boy with terminal cancer has appeared as a mascot at the Sunderland v Chelsea game. | Bradley Lowery, from Blackhall Colliery near Hartlepool, was diagnosed with neuroblastoma in 2013.
More than £700,000 was raised to pay for treatment in the USA, including a donation of £200,000 from Everton.
However, last week his mother Gemma revealed his cancer had grown and treatment would only give him more time.
On Tuesday it was revealed that Bradley had been sent more than 11,000 Christmas cards from well-wishers.
A campaign to encourage people to send him the cards had been organised by an Everton fan.
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It may be old age but I'm starting to get flashbacks to the John Major years. It was a time when, aside from the normal ups and downs of political life, the government's luck ran out and it began to be blamed for things that weren't its fault. | David CornockParliamentary correspondent, Wales
The then Labour leader John Smith was able to joke about the then prime minister's struggles. "The man with the non-Midas touch is in charge," he said. "It is no wonder that we live in a country where the Grand National does not start and hotels fall into the sea."
I recalled that line when the slogan behind the prime minister started to disintegrate as she croaked her way through a speech that was interrupted by a serial prankster. None of the above was her fault, any more than what Michael Fallon did with his hand 15 years ago, but politics is a brutal business. Sex scandals without any sex can cost a cabinet career.
No political party at Westminster, so far as I know, has claimed it is immune from inappropriate behaviour by its politicians but the spotlight will shine most brightly on the Conservatives as they are in power.
The prime minister will meet other party leaders on Monday to discuss ways to protect staff who work here. Mrs May has talked of a need to set up an independent, transparent grievance procedure for MPs' staff.
Protecting journalists such as my colleague Elliw Gwawr from unwanted advances by MPs will be more of a challenge and probably require a change of culture at Westminster. Elliw had bad experiences covering the National Assembly too. Presiding officer Elin Jones says the assembly has comprehensive safeguards in place but she has convened a meeting of party leaders on Tuesday to review the current arrangements.
'Endemic'
At Westminster, Swansea West Labour MP Geraint Davies told BBC Radio Wales: "The problem we have got is a sort of endemic cultural problem that has built up over many years, it's parliament's fault to a certain extent.
"When I arrived 1997 the background was public school boys who arriving with a hierarchical view of the world alongside a system where there was no career structure, no human resources no appraisals no support for staff or even MPs.
"There needs to be a more professional approach to people's progress and a more transparent appraisals and a clarity over what is reasonable. Some of these things are clearly unreasonable. There have been advice notes sent out about behaviour and this sort of stuff, but it should be self-evident in terns of common sense. There are institutional cultural problems which need to be shaken up professionally."
Shaking up the institutional problems is a job for all political parties, despite the current focus on the Conservatives, and the outcome should be one that should last longer than any parliament or government.
In the Major years, ministers lost their jobs once they were revealed to have had extra-marital affairs after a "back to basics" briefing was misinterpreted. In the May years, an affair might get you on a "dossier" of Westminster gossip but wouldn't necessarily cost you your job. At least not yet. (The "dossier", by the way, includes some names that, as far as I know, shouldn't be on it and at least one case of mistaken ministerial identity).
John Major's days in Downing Street were made miserable by Tory splits over Europe. You don't need me to draw the parallel but delivering a successful Brexit will be a walk in the party compared to the rows over the Maastricht Treaty.
At least the Grand National ran on time this year but the parallels continue. Politicshome editor Kevin Schofield tweeted that a Tory MP had told him: "We are being led by John Major in a skirt".
Things didn't end well for Mr Major. So how does the prime minister get herself out of her current difficulties?
A cones hotline, anyone?
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Finland may frequently top lists for gender equality. | But Prime Minister Sanna Marin has taken the fight to end the gender gap one step further and let a 16-year-old girl fill her seat for the day.
Aava Murto may not be making any new laws on Wednesday, but she is meeting politicians throughout the day to highlight women's rights in technology.
The swap comes ahead of the UN's Day of the Girl, and is part of a global campaign by a children's charity.
It is the fourth year Finland has taken part in Plan International's "Girls Takeover", which allows teenagers from countries from across the globe to step into the shoes of leaders in politics and other sectors for a day.
This year's focus is on promoting digital skills and technological opportunities for girls, with Kenya, Peru, Sudan and Vietnam among the countries holding their own swaps.
"It is a pleasure to be speaking here before you today - although, in a way, I wish that I did not have to stand here, that campaigns like the Girls' Takeover were no longer necessary," Miss Murto said in a speech on Wednesday.
"However, the truth is that we have not yet achieved gender equality - not anywhere on earth. Although we have accomplished a great lot of good in this area, there is still much work that needs to be done. "
The teenager, who actively campaigns on climate and human rights issues, applied to take part in the scheme. She will round off the day by meeting the prime minister to discuss gender equality in technology on Wednesday evening.
Speaking ahead of the event, Finland's Prime Minister Marin stressed the importance of ensuring technologies are made "accessible to everyone", adding: "They must not deepen the digital divide between countries or within societies."
Last year, Finland came third in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report. However, women remain under-represented in the technology sector.
Ms Marin became the world's youngest prime minister when she was sworn in last year at the age of 34.
She is the Finland's third female prime minister and leads a centre-left coalition with four other parties - all headed by women, three of whom are under 35.
You may also be interested in:
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Nominations for May's local elections in Wales have closed. | More than 1,200 seats will be available across 22 local authorities in Wales on Thursday 4 May.
With 580 councillors, Labour is defending the most seats. Plaid Cymru has 170, the Conservatives 104 and the Liberal Democrats 75.
The results are due from the early hours of Friday morning. There are 13 overnight counts and nine the next day.
In terms of councils, Labour has a majority on 10 local authorities and leads two others as the largest group.
Plaid Cymru has a majority on one local authority and leads two others as a minority administration.
The Conservatives run one council with Liberal Democrat help.
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