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The ninth Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival is under way near Beauly in the Highlands. | Finishing on Saturday night, the event features music and a fashion show called Ciao Bella.
Acts appearing include Travis, The Wombats, Frightened Rabbit and Beverley Knight. Also, the Ballachuilish Hellhounds and Buzzcocks.
Last month, the tickets for the festival sold out for the fourth year running.
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While thousands of students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will be celebrating good grades on A-level results day, others will be facing difficult decisions. Teenagers in Scotland received the results of their equivalent, Highers, earlier this month. | The BBC News website offers some pointers for those who did not get the grades they needed or were hoping for.
What should I do on A-level results day?
You may get your results by text, online, email or in the post, but it is still a good idea to go to your school or college on results day. By doing this, you can get help and advice from your teachers. Universities will have already got your results, and schools can use the Ucas Track system to trace the progress of students' application.
What should I do if I do not get the grades I need?
Try not to panic, because there are options open to you. If you do not have the grades for your first-choice university or course, you may get offered a place with your second option.
If you miss out on both your firm and insurance choice and still want to go to university, you can try to get a place through Clearing. However, most spare places are filled within a few days, so you will need to act decisively and fast.
Nick Davy from the Association of Colleges will answer your questions and concerns on the BBC News Facebook page from 1530 BST. Send us your questions.
How do I get a university place through Clearing?
Clearing is a system offered by the university admissions service, Ucas, that finds suitable vacancies on degree courses. If you are flexible and have reasonably good exam results, there is a good chance of finding a course.
You can approach as many universities as you wish during Clearing, so do not feel that you have to accept the first offer.
How do I find out what courses are available and choose the best one for me?
Official vacancy lists are published on results day on the Ucas website from 00:01 BST on Thursday, 14 August, and in the Telegraph newspaper. You do not have to stick to the subject choices that you made originally. There may be other areas that might suit you better on the basis of the grades you have.
How do I give myself the best chance of getting a place through Clearing?
You can prepare in advance by researching courses and universities that are of interest to you.
Plan to get your results as early in the day as you can to give yourself a head start. Universities and colleges will want to speak to you directly, not to your parents. Be prepared to explain why you want to study on that course.
How do I challenge my results?
If you feel strongly that your grades are wrong and do not reflect your ability, you can ask for a re-mark of your papers. Requests for re-marking can only be done through your school or college.
Priority re-marks can be requested for those students with university places at stake. There is a fee for this service, which is reimbursed only if there is a grade change. The Joint Council for Qualifications has guidelines on the post-results service available to schools.
What if I get better grades than expected?
Ucas operates a system called Adjustment for those candidates who get better results than expected and want to try for a more competitive university. Candidates have a five-day window in which to showcase their application to universities.
If you do not find a suitable place somewhere else through Adjustment, you will remain accepted at your original choice.
Would it be better to wait until next year and try again?
There is always the possibility of taking a gap year - and perhaps doing some volunteer work, travelling or getting a job - and reapplying for degree courses this autumn for 2015.
It may be better to wait a year and go somewhere that is right for you rather than make a hasty decision you will regret later.
You could also ask your local further education college for information about other routes to degree-level qualifications, such as foundation degrees and diplomas.
Could I do something else altogether?
Not everyone goes to university and many who do not go carve out highly successful careers - take Sir Richard Branson, Lord Alan Sugar, Kirstie Allsopp and Karren Brady. Some careers such as accountancy can be pursued with qualifications you study for while working. Apprenticeships are also an option - vacancies are listed on the National Apprenticeships Service website. Sites such as Not Going to Uni might give you a few ideas.
But remember, many professions such as teaching and law do require a degree and you could find that some doors are closed to you later in life (or are much harder to open) if you do not have one.
Where can I go for advice?
The Ucas website has lots of advice about navigating Clearing and Adjustment. You can follow Ucas on Twitter @ucas_online or on Facebook.com/ucasonline for up-to-date information.
For information on your own progress you can also call the Ucas customer support centre on 0371 468 0468. Lines will be open from 0730-2000 on results day, 08:00-19:00 on Friday, 15 August , 09:00-17:00 on Saturday 16 and 10:00-16:00 on Sunday 17.
For more general careers advice you can also call the national Exam Results Helpline on 0808 100 8000, which is run by Ucas on behalf of the Department for Education. It is staffed by careers advisers, is already open and will run for 10 days after results day. Calls are free from most landlines and selected mobile networks.
The government website Gov.uk might also help you make decisions.
If you need help with career choices, you can also call an adviser at the National Careers Service on 0800 100 900.
I am Scottish and did not do well in my Highers. What can I do?
The government-funded agency, Skills Development Scotland, has a helpline on 0800 917 8000 (open 09:00 to 17:30, seven days a week) that offers advice. Scottish students can still use Ucas and its services to find a university place.
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An estimated 2,000 jobs are to go at the Dounreay nuclear power complex over the next 15 years, the Caithness site's operator has said.
| Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL), which has the largest single workforce at the plant, has shed about 300 staff over the last five years.
A £2.2m programme has been launched to help DSRL employees and those of its contractors to find new work.
The project is being led by Caithness Chamber of Commerce.
About 50 companies are involved in demolishing and cleaning up Dounreay. DSRL employs about 900 people.
The site's operator has previously said jobs at the plant would be reduced as more of the facilities were flattened and less work was available.
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She is not, we are told, measuring the curtains at Bute House just yet. Ruth Davidson, that is. The Scottish Conservative leader told her party's conference at Murrayfield that, much as she would like to occupy the First Minister's official residence, she thought it unlikely. | Brian TaylorPolitical editor, Scotland
But she hopes to be a fairly frequent guest as the principal Opposition leader at Holyrood.
Consider the strategy here, born of a combination of external circumstance and internal calculation, of both facing reality and seeking to reshape it.
Ruth Davidson's pitch to be the second party at Holyrood is, of course, predicated upon a presumption of who will be first. She is positing the return of Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister. Given the SNP's apparent lead in the polls, that would seem to be at the very least a working proposition.
So how to gain ground for the Tories? The strategy here is to position the Conservatives as the bulwark standing in the way of the SNP.
The Tories calculate that there is a significant section of the electorate who either dislike or distrust the SNP - or, perhaps, simply wish their power to be constrained. Who are seeking balance. The Tories believe there is a mood there to be tapped.
'Tory legacy'
So, in that sense, their pitch derives from the referendum result, however much they may state that they wish Scotland to move on from the referendum period. I believe that desire to be genuine but, nevertheless, the Tories hope to derive a legacy.
The SNP have contrived to corral the 45, the Yes voters, to remain in their camp for the UK General Election and quite possibly the Holyrood contest.
In similar fashion, the Tories hope that a substantial section of the 55, the No voters, can now be recruited to pitch the Conservatives into the role of guarding against untrammelled SNP power.
To do so, the Tories, of course, need to overtake Labour. Rather a big ask - but that is their objective. They pursue this in a range of ways.
Firstly, they suggest that Labour - and the Liberal Democrats - are no longer true, unalloyed Unionists. They make this point by noting that both parties have signalled that members would be free to campaign for independence, should they choose, in a future referendum.
I would suggest that this argument in its pure form is relatively weak. Firstly, Kezia Dugdale and Willie Rennie are not actively encouraging Yes campaigners in their ranks. They are simply acknowledging their potential presence.
Secondly, the Conservatives are pursuing just such an open policy with regard to the referendum on the EU - to the extent that Cabinet members in the UK Government are openly on competing sides.
However, the Scottish Tory pitch may work in another way. If there is a constituency which distrusts the SNP, if that same constituency dislikes the concept of a second referendum, then the Tories may well be able to depict themselves as the most stalwart in standing against that notion.
Then there is the tax question. Ruth Davidson was hugely, hugely tempted to offer an eye-catching tax cut in her manifesto for May's elections. And she insists she remains an advocate of small government and low tax.
But she ruled out the prospect for a series of reasons, having tested the water on the doorsteps. She found that a tax cut was not trusted, not believed. Further, it risked prompting questions about possible cuts in service provision - tricky territory for the Tories.
Thirdly, the ground shifted when Labour and the LibDems proposed a penny increase in income tax for Scotland. The Tories could undercut them without changing the tax rates. They could depict their MSPs as a phalanx against higher tax.
Incidentally, the Scottish Tories will suggest that Scotland should match the plans by the Chancellor for an increase in the threshold at which folk enter the upper rate. That, they suggest, would amount to a tax cut in Scotland - but without altering the parity with the UK upon which they lay stress.
'Reputation for diligence'
In essence, the offer to the voters from the Tories is transactional. It is a deal, a bargain. They are saying: vote for us and we will stand firm against a second independence referendum and against tax rises. We will be a bulwark against these plans.
There is a further factor underlying the Tory offer. And that is Ruth Davidson herself. It was intriguing to notice how often she talked of electing "me and my team". Once an ingénue, she has now gained experience and - the party believes - a reputation for determination and diligence.
It is still a tough sell pitching for the Tories in Scotland. Nobody denies that. But the party strategists believe that she wins respect and, perhaps, can win votes.
The electors will decide whether the strategy is successful. But will it all be subsumed by the European debate? That topic was everywhere at conference. On the floor, on the fringe, in gossipy groups.
The divisions may be honourable within the Tories. But they are stark and they are real. There was, though, some evidence of anger at any who attempted to be over-partisan on this topic at a conference where the immediate objective was to focus upon the Holyrood elections.
The party leadership in Scotland must simply hope that they - and the voters - can operate in silos; can keep the European choice in reserve, pending the Scottish elections on May 5.
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Three suspects arrested in connection with the murder of a man who's body was found in woodland near his home have been bailed. | Gary Dean, 48, was found with severe injuries in Silkstone Common, near Barnsley, on 6 September.
South Yorkshire Police said he died as a result of injuries sustained from a significant assault.
A man and a woman, aged 40 and 76, arrested on suspicion of murder have been bailed pending further enquiries.
The force said a 49-year-old woman arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender has also been released on bail.
Mr Dean's body was discovered in a wooded area behind Moorend Lane, close to the Trans Pennine Trail cycle and footpath.
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A horse which was trapped in mud on a riverbank had to be rescued by firefighters. | The horse got stuck in the mud near the River Windrush, close to Willow Farm in Witney, Oxfordshire, at about 08:47 BST on Saturday.
Up to 10 firefighters helped with the rescue operation using specialist animal rescue equipment.
Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue said the horse was freed without injury with the assistance of a vet and the owner.
For more stories of pets and animals being rescued follow us on Pinterest
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Three men are in hospital with serious leg injuries after being hit by a truck driving the wrong way down a road. | West Mercia Police said they were struck at 22:45 on Friday on the A449 at Crossway Green in Worcestershire.
The lorry then drove off and was later found abandoned nearby.
The force said it wants to talk to a passing motorist who stopped to help and the occupants of a silver vehicle which was also believed to be involved in the incident.
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The main route along St Peter Port's sea front is to be dug up by Guernsey Electricity as it repairs a fault.
| The landward side of the Town Quay will be closed on Monday and the two lanes normally used for southbound traffic will become a contra-flow.
To allow for this, a central island will be removed, which will mean the Quay becomes one way southbound for 12 hours from 18:00 BST on Sunday.
Guernsey Electricity has estimated the cable repairs will take one week.
Northbound traffic will be diverted via La Charroterie and The Grange.
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Surgeons treating Gabrielle Giffords, the US congresswoman who survived a gunshot wound to the head, have had to remove half her skull in a bid to save her damaged brain.
But why is such an extreme step necessary? | By Michelle RobertsHealth reporter, BBC News
Ms Giffords' doctors say she is incredibly lucky.
Despite a close-range bullet travelling through the left half of her brain, she has survived and is already responding to simple commands like squeezing of the hand.
Very few people with gunshot wounds like hers live through the ordeal.
But to save her life surgeons have had to use extreme measures - cutting away half of her skull and putting it on ice.
The technique, called a hemicraniectomy, may sound crude and barbaric to the untrained, but it could mean the difference between life and death for Ms Gifford.
Although she may have beaten the bullet, it is the damage it has left in its wake that her doctors now need to worry about.
Like any other part of the body, when the brain is injured it will swell.
But because it is housed in a bony box - the skull - the swelling has nowhere to go.
Left untreated, the pressure would mount and cause further damage to the jelly-like substance that is the brain.
Hole in the head
Excessive intracranial pressure can cause damage to delicate brain tissues leading to lasting disability. Even higher pressure can cause death.
Faced with this, doctors have few options other than to find a way to let the pressure out.
They can try drugs to take down the swelling or drain off some of the fluid that bathes the brain, but in extreme cases, surgery may be the only answer.
For the procedure, the surgeon removes a section of the skull - a "bone flap" - to give the swelling brain room to expand.
The bone flap removed is preserved in a fridge until it can replaced once doctors have the swelling under control.
Eventually it can be screwed back on using metal plates, which can be removed once the bone has knitted together.
Making a hole in the head is not a new idea. Surgeons have been doing it for centuries.
Evidence of trepanation, or making burr holes, has been found in prehistoric human remains from Neolithic times onward, using sharp objects like teeth as tools rather than the precision surgical saws and drills used today.
Historians believe the procedures were used to treat a range of ailments, possibly including mental illness as well as epilepsy and migraines.
While this sounds like something too dangerous to try in the days before modern medicine and the discovery of antibiotics, human remains show some patients did survive the operation.
Resting brain
Today, craniectomies are frequently used by military surgeons in Afghanistan to treat soldiers with severe traumatic brain injury due to bomb blast and high velocity penetrating missile injuries.
Indeed, Ms Giffords' trauma surgeon Dr Peter Rhee is a former military doctor who served in Afghanistan.
He told reporters that Ms Giffords was fortunate that the bullet had stayed on one side and had not hit areas of the brain that are almost always fatal.
Surgeons also did not have to remove much dead brain tissue, another positive sign.
But only time will tell how she will fare.
Swelling can take several days to peak, and may take more than a week to go down.
Ms Giffords is currently heavily sedated in a coma-like state that helps rest her brain.
An update from the doctors on her condition is expected later on Monday.
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Firefighters have attended a third blaze at a Wrexham wood products factory in recent weeks. | Three engines were called to the scene at Kronospan in Chirk, on Sunday at about 10:00 BST.
The fire was contained in a production area at the factory, which manufactures wood panel products and laminate flooring.
There was a fire at the factory last Wednesday, which was contained before crews arrived, and another on 12 June.
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A man has appeared before the Old Bailey accused of sharing Islamic State group videos. | German national Florian Flegel, 22, was arrested at Stansted Airport in Essex on 22 October when he was about to board a flight to Germany.
He is charged with five counts of disseminating terrorist publications, including Islamic State group propaganda videos.
Mr Flegel, from Dusseldorf, appeared by video link from HMP Wandsworth.
Mr Justice Sweeney set a trial for 28 June next year at Woolwich Crown Court.
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In London in 1984, a team of Nigerians and Israelis attempted to kidnap and repatriate the exiled former Nigerian minister Umaru Dikko. Mr Dikko, who had fled Nigeria after a military coup, was accused of stealing $1bn (£625m) of government money. | By Alex LastBBC World Service
The plot was foiled by a young British customs officer, Charles David Morrow, who has now told the BBC World Service Witness programme what happened.
On a summer's day, Mr Dikko walked out of his front door in an upmarket neighbourhood of Bayswater in London. Within seconds he had been grabbed by two men and bundled into the back of a transit van.
"I remember the very violent way in which I was grabbed and hurled into a van, with a huge fellow sitting on my head - and the way in which they immediately put on me handcuffs and chains on my legs," he told the BBC a year later.
Mr Dikko had been minister for transport in the government of Shehu Shagari until it was overthrown by the military at the end of 1983. He fled to London accused by Nigeria's new rulers of embezzlement - a charge he has always denied.
Labelled "Nigeria's most wanted man", a plot was hatched to get both him and the money back.
The extraordinary plan was to kidnap Mr Dikko, drug him, stick him into a specially made crate and put him on a plane back to Nigeria - alive.
Israeli anaesthetist
An Israeli alleged former Mossad agent, Alexander Barak, was recruited to lead the kidnap team. It included a Nigerian intelligence officer, Maj Mohammed Yusufu, and Israeli nationals Felix Abitbol and Dr Lev-Arie Shapiro, who was to inject Mr Dikko with an anaesthetic.
The kidnappers switched vehicles in a car park by London Zoo and headed towards Stansted airport where a Nigerian Airways plane was waiting. They injected Mr Dikko and laid him, unconscious, in a crate.
The Israeli anaesthetist climbed into the crate as well, carrying medical equipment to make sure Mr Dikko didn't die en route. Barak and Abitbol got into a second crate. Both boxes were then sealed.
At the cargo terminal of Stansted Airport, 40 miles (64km) north of London, a Nigerian diplomat was anxiously waiting for the crates to arrive. Also on duty that day was a young customs officer, Charles David Morrow.
Diplomatic bag
"The day had gone fairly normally until about 3pm. Then we had the handling agents come through and say that there was a cargo due to go on a Nigerian Airways 707, but the people delivering it didn't want it manifested," Mr Morrow said.
"I went downstairs to see who they were and what was happening. I met a guy who turned out to be a Nigerian diplomat called Mr Edet. He showed me his passport and he said it was diplomatic cargo. Being ignorant of such matters, I asked him what it was, and he told me it was just documents and things."
No-one on duty at Stansted had dealt with a diplomatic bag before and Mr Morrow went to check the procedure.
Just then a colleague returned from the passenger terminal with some startling news. There was an All Ports Bulletin from Scotland Yard saying that a Nigerian had been kidnapped and it was suspected he would be smuggled out of the country.
The police had been alerted by Mr Dikko's secretary who had witnessed his abduction from a window in the house.
Hearing the news, Mr Morrow realised he had a problem on his hands.
"I just put two and two together. The classic customs approach is not to look for the goods, you look for the space," he said.
"So I am looking out of the window and I can see the space which is these two crates, clearly big enough to get a man inside. We've got a Nigerian Airways 707, which we don't normally see. They don't want the crates manifested, so there would be no record of them having gone through. And there was very little other cargo going on board the aircraft.
"If you want to hide a tree, you hide it in the forest. You don't stick it out in the middle of Essex."
By the book
But any cargo designated as a diplomatic bag is protected by the Vienna Convention from being opened by customs officers. So Mr Morrow got on the phone to the British Foreign Office.
"To qualify as a 'diplomatic bag' they clearly had to be marked with the words 'Diplomatic Bag' and they had to be accompanied by an accredited courier with the appropriate documentation. It was fair to say they had a Nigerian diplomat - I'd seen his passport - but they didn't have the right paperwork and they weren't marked 'Diplomatic Bag'," he said.
The decision was taken that the crates could be opened - but it would be done by the book. That required the presence of a Nigerian diplomat, but as Mr Morrow pointed out, one was already on hand. By now, the crates were up on special trolleys ready to be loaded on to the plane.
"Peter, the cargo manager, hit the lid on the bottom and lifted it. And as he lifted it, the Nigerian diplomat, who was standing next to me, took off like a startled rabbit across the tarmac," Mr Morrow said.
"You have to remember we are on an airfield which is square miles of nothing. He ran about five yards (4.5m), realised no-one was chasing him and then stopped.
"Peter looked into the crate and said: 'There's bodies inside!'
He parked a forklift truck so its tines lay across the top of the crate so it couldn't be opened. Mr Morrow dialled the emergency number 999.
"My name's Morrow, from Customs at Stansted. We've got some bodies in a crate. Do you think you can send someone over," he recalls saying.
"They said: 'Alive or Dead?'
"I said: 'That's a very good point. I don't know.'
"They said: 'We'll send an ambulance as well.'"
After half an hour, police started to arrive, and they opened the second crate. Inside they found an unconscious Mr Dikko, and a very much awake Israeli anaesthetist. Mr Dikko was lying on his back in the corner of the crate.
"He had no shirt on, he had a heart monitor on him, and he had a tube in his throat to keep his airway open. No shoes and socks and handcuffs around his ankles. The Israeli anaesthetist was in there, clearly to keep him alive," recalls Mr Morrow.
The kidnappers in the other crate were unrepentant. They said Mr Dikko was the biggest crook in the world.
The Nigerian intelligence officer and the three Israelis all received prison sentences in the UK.
Diplomatic relations between the UK and Nigeria broke down and were only fully restored two years later. The Nigerian and Israeli governments have always denied involvement in the kidnapping.
Mr Dikko returned to Nigeria the following decade and still lives there.
Mr Morrow was commended for actions that day by the head of UK Customs, who described the incident as a "very tricky situation".
Alex Last's report was broadcast on the BBC World Service's Witness programme. You can download a podcast of the programme or browse the archive.
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In 1985, pop star Simon Le Bon "looked into the eyes of death" when the yacht he was racing capsized. Thirty-one years later, he watched footage of the dramatic sea rescue for the first time. | By Sian DaviesBBC News
"It's the most dangerous situation I've ever been in," said the Duran Duran front man.
During the Fastnet race, which Le Bon was using in preparation for an attempt to sail around the world, his 71ft craft Drum ran into difficulty off the Cornish coast.
The keel broke and the boat capsized, trapping the crew underneath.
Just three years earlier, keen yachtsman Le Bon and his bandmates had been sailing around the Caribbean filming the video for their Top 10 hit Rio - one of the 80s' most memorable pop promos.
'Rock star in his pants'
But now he found himself stuck underneath an upturned vessel, a mixture of diesel fumes and battery acid filling his lungs.
"That was when I looked into the eyes of death," he said.
As the crew lay trapped inside the yacht, they heard the beating sound of a helicopter overhead, as the 771 Royal Naval Air Squadron began its rescue mission.
Le Bon was trapped inside for 40 minutes, with water around his legs before help came, along with five crew members. The rest of the men on board scrambled on top of the upturned boat, managing to communicate with their colleagues through the hull.
"It wasn't completely black because we had the refracted daylight coming through the sea. It was wet, and everything was upside down because you're walking on the ceiling," Le Bon said.
The singer's own rescue began when diver Larry Slater from 771 "popped up" inside the boat and began to lead him to safety.
"I had to go down to come up. I dived in and started going up - as I came up the waistband of my long johns got caught and pulled down.
"As I came up to the surface I stopped about 2ft away. I wanted to breathe but if I did I knew that would be the end of me.
"I managed to get them off my feet and came up with a big smile on my face.
"I got winched off into the helicopter and one of the guys called 'Hey Simon, where's your pants?' because I was just stood there in my knickers.
As he watches the footage, a wry smile spreads across the singer's face as he sees himself back on dry land, clad in a white jacket with his bare legs on show.
"There's me, there's a rock star in his underpants."
Le Bon watched the film of the rescue for the first time while taking part in a BBC One documentary about the helicopter crew that saved him.
He said it was "heartening" and "amazing" to see himself and his fellow crew members being plucked to safety.
"I [thought about] it a week afterwards and it made me shake. It was very frightening," he said.
The squadron which rescued Le Bon and 26 crew members will be decommissioned this week after 41 years based at Culdrose, Cornwall.
It is thought to have rescued about 15,000 people in that time.
Major rescues include the 1979 Fastnet race disaster, when more than 70 boats capsized and 19 sailors died, and the Boscastle floods in 2004 when dozens of residents were winched to safety.
Now, its responsibilities have been handed over to a commercial operator handled by the Coastguard.
771 Royal Naval Air Squadron
- Royal Navy search and rescue started in 1953
- 771 Naval Air Squadron moved to Culdrose in 1971
- It has six Sea King helicopters
- 771 is believed to have rescued 15,000 people
- Five George Medals have been awarded to 771 aircrew, along with 15 Queens Gallantry Medals and dozens of others
- The squadron will cease to exist on 22 March, 2016
Le Bon pays an emotional tribute to his rescuers in the BBC One programme, Rescue 193.
"I am grateful to 771 Squadron for saving my life, for saving the lives of the other guys on Drum," he said.
"These are guys who face extraordinary danger on a daily basis."
He has met diver Mr Slater twice since his ordeal inside Drum. Slater was awarded the George Medal for the rescue, given for acts of great bravery.
"He knows how much I owe to him, and I know how much I owe and what these people do with their lives - the bravery and devotion," Le Bon said.
"I know they have to look at it as just a job because maybe it would become something they couldn't face. But it's a hell of a job."
Rescue 193 is on BBC One South West on Monday 21 March at 7:30pm and on the BBC iPlayer.
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A 92-year-old man has died in a fire in the ground floor of a house in Cumbria.
| Three fire engines were called to the semi-detached home in Rydal Close, Wigton, at around 16:00 GMT on Thursday and crews spent three hours tackling the blaze.
Cumbria Police said the death was not believed to be suspicious.
Police are working with Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service to establish the cause of the fire. The man's next of kin have been informed.
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In our series of letters from African journalists, Joseph Warungu, a former high-school teacher, examines the measures the Kenyan government has put in place to tackle cheating in national exams, which begin in early November. | Shipping containers are a common feature of the Kenyan landscape.
You'll find these steel boxes converted into comfortable homes, clinics and offices.
Others are turned into shops and granaries to store farm products.
But now shipping containers have entered the sphere of learning.
Starting this year, national examinations materials will be stored in secure shipping containers and placed under 24-hour armed police surveillance.
This is just one of the many new tough measures that the government is introducing to curb cheating in national exams.
In a country where people often rely on well-connected relatives and friends to succeed, education is everything.
Such is the thirst for personal development that around 20:00 on weekday evenings, you'll find the streets of Nairobi and other urban centres teeming with people of all ages going home from class.
Evening classes are a popular way for Kenyans to acquire a second or third degree with the hope of rising higher in life.
Competition for promotion or for the few job opportunities that become available is intense, leading to a desperate desire for more and better academic qualifications.
Joseph Warungu:
"There is a crisis of trust in Kenyan society."
This pressure to succeed starts at primary school.
As a result, cartels have emerged to take advantage.
Working with some of the former national examinations council officials, police officers and teachers, these cartels have found a way to get hold of exam papers and sell them to desperate students and parents.
But last year things got out of hand as the cheating reached industrial proportions.
More than 5,000 primary and secondary school students had their exam results cancelled; the national examinations board was disbanded and some senior managers fired.
Nearly 200 people including police officers were arrested and charged over exam malpractices.
There is a crisis of trust in Kenyan society.
The government cannot trust the teacher to prepare the students for exams without cheating.
The teacher cannot trust the government to oversee the exams without cheating.
The student cannot trust himself to pass the exam without cheating.
And so in comes the tough steel containers to try and safeguard trust.
This year the government is not taking any chances.
By the time national exams begin in November, invigilators will have been vetted afresh.
Head teachers will now be held personally liable for any incidents of cheating that occur in their schools because they will have the sole responsibility of collecting from, and returning, the exam materials to the containers at central distribution points.
The government is so confident of the measures it has taken that the cabinet secretary for education gave this warning:
"I want to tell all children in candidate classes, that they better prepare for the exams. The monkey business that has been going on shall never happen again".
But education is not the only sector suffering from the trust deficit.
Governance is badly hit.
Recently, a group of more than 30 elected County Assembly members, who were planning to impeach their Nyeri county governor in central Kenya, decided to spend the night inside the County Assembly under police guard, fearing that their opponents would kidnap them to frustrate the motion.
And in the last few days news has emerged of an invention to help curb drink driving.
The device, developed by a young university student, has an inbuilt breathalyser that detects the driver's alcohol level.
If it's too high, the device transmits a signal and prevents the engine from starting.
So why the need for such a device?
Road accidents kill an average of 3,000 people a year in Kenya and many of the accidents are caused by speeding and drink driving.
The government doesn't trust drivers not to get behind the wheel while drunk, and so it introduced alcohol breathalysers operated by traffic police.
But the public does not trust the police, because they can be easily bribed.
And the drunk driver does not trust anyone else to drive him home safely, except himself.
And so enter the Alcohol and Sound Detection System being developed by a young Kenyan.
It would be far cheaper and more effective to transform the Kenyan mind from within.
Instead the focus is on the symptoms of the epidemic:
If they cheat in exams, lock up exam materials in steel containers.
If democracy is in danger, hide it in locked chambers.
If the driver is too drunk to drive, let the car talk to him.
I think I'll now just retire to my shipping container house and trust that society will sort itself out.
More from Joseph Warungu:
Should the UK join the African Union?
Kenyans beg for mercy
Doctors take on traditional healers
Why Kenya has banned on-air sex
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The rules of the Official Singles Chart are changing. | It's after streams on sites like Spotify meant Ed Sheeran managed to get 16 tracks from one album into the top 20 earlier this year.
From now on acts will be limited to having three songs on the chart at any one time. There are also new rules about streaming.
The people behind the changes argue they will make it easier for new bands to get noticed.
At the moment, the chart is calculated through a combination of physical sales, digital sales and streams - with 150 streams counting as one sale.
But the number of songs being streamed worldwide per week has doubled to 1.2 billion since January 2016.
In March, Ed Sheeran's ÷ became the first major album to exploit a flaw in the system - brought about by this growth in popularity.
Millions of people used services like Spotify and Apple Music to listen to the record from beginning to end. This meant every track on it made a significant dent in the singles chart.
The new rules, which come into effect on 7 July, are designed to keep the Official Singles Chart about singles - not album tracks.
From then, only an artist's most popular three songs will be allowed in the top 100.
There will also be a new ratio of streams to sales, 300:1, which will apply when a song's been in the chart for a number of weeks and is dropping in popularity.
This is designed to help new tracks work their way up the chart, without being inhibited by old album tracks which are past their peak.
If you've not quite got your head around it, don't worry - these rules are pretty complicated.
But it says they should help the chart "reflect how fans are engaging with music in an increasingly streaming led world".
Tests suggest the changes should increase the number of chart artists by 20% and chart hits by 11%.
Find us on Instagram at BBCNewsbeat and follow us on Snapchat, search for bbc_newsbeat
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Former Australian Olympian swimmer Scott Miller has been arrested in a police raid, following an investigation into a A$2m (£1.1m; $1.6m) drugs haul. | Mr Miller, now aged 45, was held at his home in the Sydney suburb of Rozelle. Another man, 47, was detained in the nearby Balmain area.
New South Wales police allege the pair have concealed methylamphetamine, known as ice, inside candles.
Mr Miller won a silver and a bronze medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
The two arrested men were taken to a police station after the police raid on Tuesday morning, and are expected to be charged shortly.
They have so far made no public comments on the latest developments.
Earlier this year, New South Wales detectives launched an investigation into a suspected criminal syndicate involved in drug supplies across the Australian state, the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reports.
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The restoration of the Grade II-listed timber structure on the River Tyne is due to begin in April. Dunston Staithes received a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of almost £420,000 in December. It is also hoped that it will be open to the public for the first time.
| The timber pier-like structure was constructed in 1890 by the North Eastern Railway Company and was used to carry coal onto ships for transport to London and the continent.
Coal from mines around the North East was transported to the staithes by rail, placed onto ships and transported to London and other ports.
In one year alone 5.5m tonnes of coal was shipped from Gateshead.
The staithes was closed in 1980 and abandoned with the demise of the coal industry and has since fallen victim to vandalism and two fires.
An "intense" blaze broke out on the 1,700-feet-long Gateshead landmark in the early hours on Thursday, 20 November, 2003. At the height of the fire, 17 appliances and 67 firefighters, some wearing life jackets, were at the scene along with the fire boat.
Martin Hulse, from Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust, has been campaigning for the money to restore the staithes for about 10 years.
He said: "When the phone call came through, I was numb, there was weeks of nervous energy just built up.
"For me the staithes is one of the icons of Gateshead and sits alongside the Angel, Millennium Bridge and Sage. Importantly it is the one that reminds us where the region came from, its history and underlines the importance of coal, railways and the River Tyne itself."
"We want to get people on top," said Mr Hulse, who said he was hoping to make that possible by mid-2015.
He continued: "We're going to bring purpose and use back to the structure, I have crazy ideas, you could hold markets on it, you could install big solar panels on it and make money but we are open to ideas."
The project will also focus on; reconnection of the staithes with the surrounding salt marsh and wider natural heritage, interpretation of the site's rich history, telling the story of the staithes fully for the first time and enhanced safety features to promote public access.
It is hoped artwork created by local students will feature as part of the restoration which will be open to view during the summer of 2015.
See the full story and more archive footage on BBC One's Inside Out in the North East on Monday 10 February at 19:30 GMT.
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It's the radio coup of the lockdown. | When the presenter of a Dublin breakfast programme learned Hollywood actor Matt Damon was in quarantine in the affluent suburb of Dalkey, he spent six weeks tirelessly campaigning for an interview.
It was never a serious request though, admitted Nathan O'Reilly.
So he and co-host Graham O'Toole were stunned when Damon's assistant called this week to ask when he could go on air.
'I'm about to throw up'
Mr O'Reilly told the BBC's Good Morning Ulster programme he and his co-host initially thought it was a prank.
"He said: 'Guys, Matt has been listening to the show. He wants to come on.'
"I looked at Graham and said: 'Are you pranking me?' And then Graham thought I was pranking him."
But when the A-listener did indeed call in to SPIN 1038 via video-link on Wednesday morning, Mr O'Reilly realised it was no prank, and told the actor: "I feel like I'm about to throw up."
"I was just flinging words at Matt," he said of his interviewing technique.
"I knew Matt Damon was in Dalkey, but I never expected we would get him on the show."
He described the interview as "the classic tale of the tall man with the dream".
Mr O'Reilly explained that he first heard Damon had flown into Dublin with his wife, Luciana Barrosa, and their children in early March to film Ridley Scott's new film The Last Duel.
Almost immediately, production was shut down under Covid-19 restrictions and the actor and his family have been living in Formula 1 star Eddie Irvine's house ever since.
'Not going to happen'
Mr O'Reilly heard of members of the public who had spotted or met Damon and invited them on his show.
"I started getting people on the show who had met Matt Damon either jogging, in a park, or seeing him swim, but all the stories were not leading us any closer, they were just interesting tales," he said.
"We did it for nearly six weeks and then I accepted defeat. I said: 'It's not going to happen.'"
When he did finally call in, Damon told the presenters he had heard the appeal while driving in Dublin a month ago.
"I was in the car with my kids and I heard you talking about all this stuff, and you guys gave the number to call in," he said.
"And I was trying to memorise the number, and then I walked into the house and my wife started talking about something and I totally forgot your number."
Since then, every time the Bourne Identity star had been listening to the station in the car he had listened out for the number.
Then his wife advised him to look SPIN 1038 up online.
"She's like: 'You're such an idiot, just like look up their number, you don't have to wait for them to say it!'"
He also told the radio hosts that U2 frontman Bono - who lives nearby - mentioned the appeal to him.
"He said to me last week: 'You know there's a radio station that's looking for you.'"
"I was like: 'I really gotta track those guys down, I gotta call into that show. It's gone on too long.'"
Mr O'Reilly joked that he had previously been kicked out of a Dalkey residents' Facebook group after sharing his appeal with the locals.
Sightings of the actor had been creating a stir in the area for weeks. Dublin mum Siobhan Berry spotted him after a family swim with her children and asked for a picture.
The photo of Damon holding bags from a well-known Irish supermarket chain was widely shared on social media.
She and her husband initially agreed not to share the photo publicly, but after hearing the interview, she changed her mind.
"You may have seen this photo doing the rounds of late," she tweeted.
Damon confirmed to the SPIN 1038 presenters that the plastic bags he was carrying contained towels, not cans of beer, as some had suggested.
In the 15-minute interview, the Contagion star said his eldest daughter Alexia - who had remained in New York where she was attending college - contracted coronavirus at an early stage of the pandemic, but "got through it fine".
"We've got the three younger ones and our oldest one, we'll reunite with her at the end of the month... but everybody's okay," he said.
He also described the experience of being in lockdown in Dalkey as being "like a fairy tale".
"I can see why all these [Dalkey residents], you know when we came in they were like well Bono lives over there and Enya lives over there..."
He said he felt guilty that his family, who had brought teachers with them to Ireland so their children could be educated during filming, were having such a stress-free experience of lockdown.
"Yes, you have to stay within two kilometres of your house, but in two kilometres of here, there's trees and woods, there's ocean... I can't think of any place you'd rather be in a two kilometres radius. I thought it was incredible two months ago, but now it's blooming... it's ridiculous."
He said that when "the world rights itself", he will go back to filming.
"I have at least a few months more here. Who knows what the world is going to look like [at that stage]."
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One of Britain's most wanted fugitives, who was extradited to the UK from Switzerland after years on the run, has appeared in court. | Mark Acklom allegedly posed as an MI6 agent to con a Gloucestershire woman out of her £850,000 life savings.
The 45-year-old, of no fixed abode, faces 20 fraud offences, including eight of fraud by false representation.
Mr Acklom was remanded in custody and will next appear before Bristol Crown Court on 25 March.
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If Jean-Claude Trichet had ever declared that the European Central Bank (ECB) was willing to provide a "fully effective backstop" against the break-up of the euro, it's quite possible that the crisis in the eurozone would be over by now. | Stephanie FlandersFormer economics editor
Of course countries like Spain would still be having a tough time, but we might well not be talking about them as much - and we might not be paying so much attention to ECB press conferences.
Needless to say, Mario Draghi's predecessor at the top of the ECB never said anything nearly as supportive. And the bond purchases he reluctantly sanctioned in 2010 and 2011 were a lot more half-hearted than the programme of "outright monetary transactions" described, at some length, by Mr Draghi, today.
Is talk of an ECB "backstop" enough to resolve the crisis in the autumn of 2012, under President Draghi? Initially, some in the financial markets seemed to have their doubts. The immediate reaction to Mr Draghi was that people sold euros, and the value of the currency fell. But stock markets have leaped since the end of the press conference, suggesting that - for once -the ECB has not disappointed.
The ECB president talked, again and again, about conditionality - about the strings that would be attached to the new bond purchases. And, for good measure, he revealed that the ECB would seek IMF involvement in crafting the terms of that conditionality.
That makes it sound like the Outright Monetary Transactions, or OMT - one twitter wag suggested it should stand for "On My Tab"- will be hard for countries to get, and easy to lose.
Perhaps. But we should remember that "IMF involvement" doesn't mean quite what it used to mean. In devising the European bailout programmes, it has been the European Commission and the governments that have been insisting on the toughest terms. By comparison, the IMF staff have usually been the doves, asking for slower timetables when it comes to cutting the budget deficits, and calling for a greater focus on growth. Prime Minister Rajoy will note that they have especially pushed for a slower path of deficit reduction in Spain.
We should also remember what Mario Draghi did not say. He did not say there would be any limits on the purchases. And he did not say the vote was unanimous. The ECB's governing council went ahead with this programme, despite German opposition. And it did so, despite the evident discomfort within the institution about being even "one leg" of a programme which to many of them feels like the central bank letting profligate governments and unwise private investors off the hook.
If you were Mario Draghi you would talk a lot about conditionality as well. You would also want to assert, again and again, that the central bank had not and would not compromise on its independence. Even to the point, some will say, of protesting too much.
Some in the financial markets will be disappointed by his performance. They - and many governments - will certainly be disappointed that it has taken so long for the ECB to step up to the plate. We should not forget that many hardliners - inside and outside the ECB - will be deeply disappointed too.
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Another year, another knockout thanks to The King. | The Toronto Raptors have been eliminated from the NBA play-offs by LeBron James' Cleveland Cavaliers for the third year running. It's all getting a little bit deja vu.
The Cavaliers won four straight matches in a best-of-seven play-off semi-final against the Canadian team, who beat their record number of wins this season.
But the Raptors were no match for Cleveland's 33-year-old talisman, whose final-second basket confirmed the Cavs' place in the NBA Eastern Conference finals.
"There's no hiding it - LeBron James is a beast," says Matt Shearer, who runs the Toronto Raptors UK fan page.
Matt's had some late nights over the bank holiday weekend to catch the matches - so was understandably disappointed come Tuesday morning.
"For the third year, the Cleveland Cavaliers have knocked us out in four games," he tells Newsbeat.
"This year it was a big disappointment because we did so well in the regular season.
"The fans all thought there'd be big things this year."
But one man had different ideas.
LeBron proved why he's called The King throughout the four matches - but his best shot came in the final few seconds of game three.
With eight seconds to go, Toronto's British rookie OG Anunoby scored a three-pointer to take it to 103-103.
"I was on the edge of my seat for that one," says Matt.
"It came down to: 'Right, we have to stop them from scoring'."
Then LeBron took the ball.
"Unfortunately the rest is history," Matt says.
He dribbled the length of the court, netting from the left as the buzzer went.
It showed the only difference between the two teams in that match was LeBron.
What's also disappointing for Matt is that the Raptors beat the Cavaliers in the regular season by about 30 points.
"They've suddenly stepped up. Whether that's the LeBron factor, who knows - I think a lot of it is psychological."
Matt thinks the Raptors' tactics were to try and take LeBron out of the game.
"But the other guys in the Cavaliers stepped it up as well."
Meanwhile, it sounds like the Cavaliers' tactics were simple - their coach Tyronn Lue said on Sunday: "You just get the ball to Bron at the end of the game."
Surprisingly, Matt hopes to draw the Cavaliers again next year - so they can get their own back after being eliminated by the Ohio team for three years running.
But can the Toronto Raptors avoid being knocked out for a fourth straight year?
"It all depends if LeBron stays."
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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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Three men have been charged in connection with attempted thefts from six cash machines in Bristol.
| Police made 22 arrests at about 04:15 BST on Monday after CCTV operators saw people acting suspiciously at six cash machines in the city centre.
Three men were charged with going equipped for theft and are due to appear at Bristol Magistrates' Court.
Police released 19 others on bail and served four of those with extradition papers over immigration issues.
Anyone with information has been urged to contact the police.
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Jamie Adam was one of the first people to gain aerial access to the site of the Srebrenica massacre, as part of the UN's de-mining programme in Bosnia in 1996. Here he gives a compelling account of his experiences. | I was brought in by the UN in early 1996 to help set up the de-mining programme in Bosnia-Hercegovina, as deputy head of the overall programme and head of the Mine Action Centre Sarajevo Region.
At this stage, most of the utilities were cut off or intermittent around the country because everything was heavily mined and booby-trapped.
Initially, we had to go through several minefields just to get into our temporary offices in a bombed-out factory near the airport.
One of the most abiding memories of my tour, though, was having to go out one day to survey all the mass atrocity sites in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
We were trying to work out a safe way of getting investigators for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in without being blown up, as many of the sites were camouflaged and heavily booby-trapped.
Flattened houses
A representative of the ICTY and I took a US helicopter to look at each site and discuss recommendations, plus several combat cameramen to record evidence. A second helicopter full of assorted personnel came along "for the ride".
Flying over villages at low level, you could see where certain individual houses had been selectively flattened - reportedly often by herding the family inside with the gas on, and then throwing a grenade in.
I'd never seen houses reduced to a mere plinth before.
It varied from village to village as to which ethnic grouping had suffered - they were all as bad as each other. In some places, you could see where large numbers of people had been lined up against a wall and shot.
Srebrenica was by far the worst.
For several kilometres, you could see evidence of where huge numbers had been herded up a dead-end valley (after reportedly being told it was a safe route out of the area) and then machine-gunned.
The whole valley was scattered with personal belongings and remains of clothing.
There were no bodies - carrion would have removed any remains left by then - but there were many mass graves.
These had been camouflaged quite carefully with piles of logs so they would have been hard to spot from the ground. It was only from the air that the signs of recent digging were clearly visible underneath.
It was clear that some really, really bad stuff had happened here.
The people in the second helicopter, who had been very gung ho at the start of the day, were absolutely silent later on. I suspect that they, like me, still remember that view of Srebrenica even now.
I still, somewhere, have some of the photos I took of Srebrenica from the air, and for me it remains the nadir of humanity in the Balkans.
Jamie Adam was the deputy head of the UN Mine Action Centre for Bosnia-Hercegovina in Sarajevo in 1996, and went on to work for Nato as a Balkans specialist
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Earlier this month, a man who did not want to live with a stoma died after a judge ruled life-support treatment could end. His story caused an outpouring of shock amongst the stoma community and prompted the question - is there enough mental health support for those facing surgery? | By Bryony HopkinsBBC Ouch
Having lived with a stoma for four years as a teenager, the complex emotions this patient must have felt weighed heavy on my heart.
The man, referred to as MSP, from South Yorkshire, was in his 30s and had given judge Mr Justice Hayden an "advanced decision" to indicate he did not want to live with a permanent stoma, after a decade of "painful and complex abdominal problems".
A stoma is an opening on the abdomen which connects to your digestive or urinary system and allows waste to be diverted out of your body and into an ostomy bag.
MSP had previously lived with a temporary stoma and had been advised it needed to be made permanent. The judge noted he had "utterly loathed life with a stoma."
He said: "His confidence and self-esteem has been adversely impacted. His capacity to forge and maintain interpersonal relationships has been significantly eroded."
I too experienced a decade of excruciating ill health at the hands of Crohn's Disease, a bowel disease which causes severe inflammation of the digestive system. Symptoms include pain, loss of blood, weight loss, diarrhoea and fatigue.
Aged 12 I was told I must have 90% of my large intestine removed and a temporary ileostomy formed.
I felt a crushing sense of anxiety but I also hoped that however hard it would be, it would give me my life back.
And it did. Once I had my ileostomy, I was able to go back to school, go on trips and see friends. These had been impossible whilst Crohn's obliterated my colon. My ileostomy made my life mine again.
Adjusting to it took time and extra support for my mental health was absolutely essential to my recovery.
MSP's decision has prompted many people to share their own ostomy stories and query whether there is enough support for people facing this life-changing procedure.
"Stomas save a lot of our lives"
Moeed Majeed, 29, from London, was diagnosed with Crohn's while at university and describes the period as a "really, really bad time".
But when the prospect of surgery arose he thought, "no way". He was given a year to decide.
He says at the time he wasn't enjoying life, felt terrible and didn't look the way he wanted so concluded: "I may as well try it and see what happens."
In some cases, stomas are formed on a temporary basis, to let the bowel heal or to help resolve an intestinal narrowing.
Some patients may have their stoma reversed, or it might have to be made permanent further down the line, like MSP's.
Moeed had his temporary stoma formed in 2015 and says adapting to it was challenging.
"It took me four to five months to get back on my feet and to a point where I felt confident and healthy enough to go back to work and go to the gym. Things I actually hadn't been able to do for a long, long time.
"I am really comfortable and happy with my stoma. I don't care what anyone thinks. Stomas save a lot of our lives."
Moeed says mental health support and talking to others throughout the procedure was crucial.
He was offered support, first through his university then later by his hospital, but acknowledges this is not always available.
"Having an outlet to talk about what's on your mind and what you're going through is beneficial.
"It empowers you," he says. "It's a bit upsetting it's difficult to get mental health support, because [I think] 65% of this whole thing is about your mental state."
"I wouldn't have been able to have children"
Mr Phil Tozer, a colorectal surgeon at St Mark's Hospital in London, performs stoma surgery for patients with inflammatory bowel disease and other conditions including bowel cancer.
He agrees mental health support for those facing stoma surgery is "relatively poorly dealt with, in the sense that there isn't enough resource for it".
He says: "Stomas are sometimes seen by patients as the price they pay to stay alive.
"For others, it isn't a price but a gift, which restores to them a quality of life which had been taken away from them by their disease".
Yvonne, 30, from Somerset was diagnosed with Crohn's aged 11. After years of battling a severe abscess she had stoma surgery aged 20.
"When I was told I needed a stoma I was very, very poorly and weighed about five stone. I had just had enough. I was just like 'please give me a stoma'."
A year after Yvonne had her stoma formed, she got married and says it was a "blessing" compared to the discomfort she faced before.
When she became pregnant, despite a few fears she says "as my belly grew, my stoma grew with it".
Her baby girl was born with no complications, and a couple of years later Yvonne had a second child.
"My stoma, my bowels and my body adapted to a new way of life," she says.
Yvonne's stoma was made permanent after her second child and says she's never encountered any issues with her mental health.
"If it wasn't for my bag, I wouldn't have been able to have children. If it wasn't for my bag, I never would have got married and had a family. If it wasn't for my bag, I would not be here today."
An NHS England spokesperson said funding was "growing" for mental health services "so more people than ever before are able to access high quality services whether that is following stoma surgery or in any other circumstance".
It said those "concerned" about their mental wellbeing should seek "early advice" from friends and family or self-help websites such as Every Mind Matters "and if your symptoms worsen then NHS is here for you".
Lisa Younge, the Crohn's and Colitis UK Nursing Programme Manager says more mental health support is needed.
She speaks to patients living with a stoma, or facing the decision about surgery, every day and says taboos around talking about bowels make people worry others won't accept their ostomy.
"So many people say to me at the beginning, 'there is no way I'm having that stoma' and I think allowing those feelings to come out and recognising why they feel like that is so important."
She says it's essential people gather as much information prior to surgery as possible and talk to others who have a stoma.
Often she speaks with these patients after surgery and finds the stoma has "changed their lives for the better".
You can follow Bryony on Twitter.For more Disability News, follow BBC Ouch on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to the podcast.
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Last December, Christine Lagarde was in a more positive mood. | Kamal AhmedFormer economics editor@bbckamalon Twitter
Globally, economies were growing at a "reasonable" pace.
Recent progress on the Brexit negotiations between the UK and the rest of the European Union were "welcome".
Both sides had just agreed the outline of the withdrawal agreement and divorce bill.
Nine months on and today a much bleaker assessment from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its managing director.
The challenges on Brexit were "daunting", the IMF said.
A "no deal" would have a significant and negative shock effect on the UK economy.
And any Brexit deal, Chequers or otherwise, was also likely to mean a smaller economy in the future.
There was still no solution to the Ireland border question.
An economic "Brexit dividend' - relied on by Theresa May to pay for at least some of the extra funding promised for the NHS - was unlikely to arrive quickly enough.
Yes, exports had been boosted by the fall in the value of sterling after the referendum, but not by enough to offset other negative effects.
And such was the level of uncertainty around the Brexit process there was even a warning for the Bank of England on interest rates.
"Further withdrawal of monetary stimulus should await clear confirmation of a durable rise in domestic cost pressures," the IMF said.
Which, in plainer language, means don't increase interest rates until it is crystal clear that inflation - prices - are going up too strongly for the economy to cope.
Before Ms Lagarde made her speech this morning, Philip Hammond made a short statement.
"We must heed the warnings of the IMF about not reaching a deal," he said.
The chancellor is clear.
His political colleagues, he believes, need to focus on the economic effects of a "no deal" as outlined today by the IMF.
And not flirt with the idea that, somehow, it might not have the negative economic effects outlined today.
"No-one voted to be poorer," he said last year.
The Treasury believes the IMF's analysis is correct.
A "no deal" would carry significant economic costs.
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Cardiff council leader Phil Bale has survived a leadership challenge at the annual general meeting of the city's Labour group. | Mr Bale failed to get re-elected as Labour leader - and thereby council leader - a week ago with the vote tied.
But on Monday he was re-elected despite a challenge by councillor Lynda Thorne.
Mr Bale told BBC Wales he was "happy with the result" and "excited about the city's future".
Opposition councillors have previously called for him to resign and several people within his own party felt he should have stepped down.
The Llanishen councillor survived a vote of no confidence in March after he struggled to pass his budget.
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Edinburgh tram firm Tie's former chief executive said it was bizarre Transport Scotland did not have anyone on the board as it was giving 80% funding. | Richard Jeffrey who took on the role in 2009 said it was unhelpful to have them disengaged from the scheme.
The Scottish government removed Transport Scotland from the bodies overseeing the trams after failing to get the project scrapped.
The inquiry is examining why the tram system was delivered years late.
It is also looking at why the project was £400m over budget and mired in legal dispute.
Mr Jeffrey also said the contract was laughably complex and confusing.
He said when he started in the role there was no completed design, no idea of final cost and no clear way forward.
He said the consortium building the tram infrastructure were holding them to ransom.
The inquiry, before Lord Hardie, continues.
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A third man has been charged with the murder of a man who died after being found with stab wounds in a street. | Lewis Bagshaw, 21, died in hospital after being discovered on Piper Crescent, Sheffield, on 21 July.
Callum Ramsey, 18, of Batworth Drive in Sheffield will appear before Sheffield Magistrates' Court later, police said.
Jervaise Bennett, 20, and a 16-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have previously been charged with Mr Bagshaw's murder.
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Scientists researching future water supplies in the Andes are increasingly worried that high-altitude cities like Quito and Bogota could be adversely affected by warmer temperatures drying out grassland areas known as "paramos", as James Painter reports. | The paramos are cold and moist grasslands and shrublands that cover the mountainsides of the northern Andes from Venezuela to Peru, at elevations of between 3,000m and 5,000m (10,000-16,400ft).
Scientists say the way the paramos react to climate change could have a much bigger impact on water supplies for some cities than melting glaciers.
"Like glaciers, paramos act like vast sponges, storing and releasing water," says Quito-based Bert De Bievre, the co-ordinator of the region-wide Consortium for Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion (CONDESAN).
"But overall, the paramos store a lot more water in their soil than glaciers."
Growing threat
A major problem facing the paramos is that higher global temperatures could dry out the soil and vegetation, thus reducing their capacity to trap surplus water in the rainy season and releasing it in the dry season.
Mr De Bievre was one of the authors of a recent study that used computer modelling to suggest significant losses to paramo areas this century when temperatures increase.
The reduction in the size of the paramos would add another layer of stress to water supplies already under threat from population growth, melting glaciers and changes to agriculture.
"Cities throughout the Andes are facing huge water pressures in the future," says Wouter Buytaert, an Andean water specialist at Imperial College London.
"Population growth will probably be the biggest driver of declines in per capita water availability. But some cities are also particularly vulnerable to changes to the paramos."
Mr Buytaert points out that the cities of Quito and Cuenca in Ecuador, and the Colombian capital, Bogota, get most of their water from the paramos.
Patricio Falconi Moncayo, a senior engineer at Quito's water company EPMAPS, is very aware of the crucial role the paramos play in regulating the water supply to the Ecuadorean capital.
"We recently bought a large hacienda under the Antizana volcano to help us protect the paramo," he explains.
"Along with other measures, this will help the supply of water to the Mica reservoir, which feeds 600,000 inhabitants in the southern part of Quito."
Quito residents also pay a small percentage of their water bill into a fund to help conserve the paramo.
It is thought to be the only such initiative in Latin America.
Thirsty population
Another problem Mr Falconi identifies is the high personal consumption of water by Quito's population. It is estimated to be 250 litres (55 gallons) per person per day, compared to 100 litres in the United Kingdom.
But Mr Falconi says they have achieved a significant reduction due to educational campaigns.
Scientists are at pains to point out that there are a lot of uncertainties affecting Andean water supplies in the future.
In particular, it is not known with much accuracy what will happen to regional rainfall patterns as temperatures rise.
For example, Mr Buytaert has carried out studies showing that water depletion as a result of climate change can rise by as much as 10% or fall by up to 10%, depending on rainfall patterns and other factors like evaporation.
Quito is not the only Andean city to be at risk. La Paz in Bolivia is estimated to rely on surrounding glaciers for between 15% and 27% of its water depending on the season.
Managing expectations
Along with rain and snowfall, glacial water feeds into high altitude wetlands known as bofedales, which also play a significant role in water regulation.
But not much is known about how bofedales will be affected by climate change.
Scientists say there is an urgent need for more research on both wetland and dryland areas in the Andes to get a better sense of what will affect water supplies in a warming world.
"We need to know much more about water storage and regulation mechanisms in high altitude organic soils, and how those would change under warmer conditions," warns Mr De Bievre.
"This would allow water officials in Andean cities to know better what to expect."
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Tim Minchin is worried. He may be a successful comedian, actor and composer, but he says he "just feels sick all the time" ahead of the world premiere of his new musical Groundhog Day. It opens at The Old Vic in London in August. | By Rebecca JonesArts correspondent, BBC News
Minchin has written the score and the lyrics for the show, which reunites the creative team behind the musical Matilda and has been a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic.
And although he insists he likes Groundhog Day "as much as Matilda", he is nervous about how the show will be received.
"I have not been sleeping and my guts are in a knot. It's hard," he says.
He has spent four years working on the stage version which is based on the film, starring Bill Murray, about a man who has to relive the same day over and over again.
Although Minchin thinks the film is "brilliant", he says he tries not to think about it and hasn't watched it since he embarked on the project.
He also believes the story of a man stuck in a time loop is actually more suited to the stage than the screen.
"The concept of a person trapped in a day, trapped in a world, the parameters of which they don't understand, it screams theatre," he says.
"It's like Waiting for Godot or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. These characters, who have to find their way philosophically through a life that they don't comprehend.
"So I think Groundhog Day should be a piece of theatre. And then the question is, can you make it sing?"
It certainly posed a musical challenge, but not necessarily the one you might think.
Minchin says he has lost count of the number of people who have approached him and asked: "Groundhog Day, it's just the same song over and over again right?" He laughs weakly, but however flippant, the comment clearly frustrates him.
"Songs in a musical illuminate the state of mind of the person singing. The music can't repeat all the time because the state of mind of the character isn't the same.
"Even though there is repetition in the world that he is in, his state of mind alters dramatically and so what he sings is going to change. The idea that you are singing the same song is absurd."
The concept of Groundhog Day as a musical had been floated since the film was released in 1993. There had been rumours of various projects, with Stephen Sondheim working on one for a while. However none of them came to anything.
But Danny Rubin, who wrote the film - and now the script for the stage show - says he thought it would make a good musical "from the very beginning".
"I love musicals, I play instruments and write songs and I thought this was something that would be fantastic at some point," he says.
But he was in no rush because, he says: "I didn't want Groundhog Day to be the only thing I was doing in my life." Nonetheless he worked on a draft stage version on and off for 20 years.
He had more or less finished it when the director Matthew Warchus rang him to discuss the idea, so the timing could not have been better.
Bill Murray's performance was central to the film's success. But Rubin never doubted the musical could work without him.
"Bill was fantastic. He really defined the character and defined the movie," Rubin says.
However I always felt the story would withstand any number of ways of telling it. And the character didn't need to be Bill Murray.
"We've found ways to let the character be somebody else. There is a lot of Tim Minchin that comes through and may be some other aspects of me that come through as well. I think Bill will be pleased.
Producers say they "would love Bill Murray to come and see the show when it is ready and open".
"He will find a rich musical that builds hilariously and movingly on the film. We hope he likes it."
Rubin says he hopes the audience will like it too - and enjoy an experience that is even more fulfilling than watching the film.
Minchin, meanwhile, is asking people who come to see the show, to turn off their mobile phones and "turn your mind on".
"You can't have your phone on in a theatre. It's a horrible, disrespectful thing to do to be honest," he says.
"It's very hard for actors if people have got their phones on. I have been on stage and looked out and seen glowing faces.
"People are really thick about phones. I just wish audiences would engage."
Groundhog Day will run for 10 weeks at the Old Vic before, Minchin hopes, moving to Broadway.
"It will go if it's good," he says. "Work like this will live or die on its merits."
Follow us on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, on Instagram, or email [email protected].
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Plan B has confirmed details of a new UK tour. | The 8-date jaunt begins on 8 April in Bristol before concluding in London later in the month.
The London singer/rapper has also confirmed his forthcoming second album The Deformation Of Strickland Banks will be released on 5 April.
Tickets for the gigs go on sale Friday 22 January.
The full dates are:
Bristol Anson Rooms - 8 April
Oxford Academy - 9
Birmingham Academy 2 - 10
Brighton Concorde 2 - 11
Classic Grand, Glasgow - 13
Cockpit, Leeds - 14
Manchester Academy 2 - 15
London Shepherds Bush Empire - 16
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There is no word in the English language for a parent whose child has died, as if the subject were too painful for society to confront. Elle Wright lost her son Teddy soon after he was born and wants to challenge the idea that a person can only be considered a parent if they have a living child. | My son Teddy would have been three next spring, but he never made it home from hospital - he died at three days old. When it happened I found myself catapulted into a kind of motherhood I had never expected.
I found out I was pregnant in September 2015, after about 10 months of trying. I remember waiting for my husband Nico to get home to tell him the news. I placed the positive pregnancy test in his hands and when he opened his eyes I saw the expression change on his face as the penny dropped. He beamed, and I cried. I never thought anything could have topped our wedding day for that feeling of elation.
We waited until our first scan at 12 weeks to tell people the news. I couldn't quite believe it myself until I saw our baby floating on the sonographer's screen - kicking and wriggling, so full of life. I dropped my husband off at work after and he sent me a text a little later. "This is the greatest Monday morning ever. I wish all Mondays could feel this good."
Fast forward six months and for a few brief moments I held my new baby boy in my arms.
He was silent - and he felt so tiny.
Immediately a midwife whisked him away. I was left to deliver the placenta, my anxiety mounting. But before long Nico re-emerged, followed by a smiling consultant holding our son. He was bundled up in hospital towels and wearing what can only be described as a blue fisherman's hat.
The consultant explained to us that our baby had had a little trouble "getting going" but was now breathing and stable. In his knitted hat he looked like he was about to head off on a deep-sea excursion. Little did we know he would soon be off on another journey, after spending just 74 hours on this Earth.
We decided to call him Teddy. His full name would be Edward Constantine - the middle name Constantine sprung from our love of the Constantine Bay on the North Cornish coastline. I dreamt of watching Teddy taking toddler steps towards the surf on our favourite beach there.
Teddy and I went to sleep that night in a ward with other parents whose babies had needed extra care at birth. But about two-and-a-half hours later I was woken up by a midwife urgently shaking my shoulder. Her words were: "I've got to take him, he's really cold." I saw his little arms just flop down by his side as she lifted him out of his crib. He had stopped breathing and nobody knew for how long. It took 18 minutes for him to be resuscitated and we later found out that the damage that had been done to his brain was irreversible.
Teddy was transferred to a specialist intensive care unit at another hospital and a professor from Great Ormond Street got involved. All the while my body was still behaving like a new mum. The day we found out Teddy's life support was going to be switched off was the day my milk properly came in. Mother nature at its cruellest.
I don't think I could ever describe how it felt to find out there was nothing anybody could do for Teddy and that he would die that day. I felt as though every last breath had been kicked out of my chest - as if a wave had pulled me under and no matter how hard I kicked, screamed or struggled, I was never coming up for air.
Teddy was born on 16 May 2016 and he died on 19 May, from a very rare metabolic condition called 3 methylglutaric aciduria (3MGA). It meant that everything was poisonous to him, even the air he was breathing as soon as he was born. My body had been keeping him alive which is why for a short time I got to meet Teddy, to hold him and smell him and feel the warmth of his skin on mine.
The hours leading up to our final goodbye with Teddy felt as though they moved in slow motion. We finally got to take him out of the tank he'd been in and cuddle him skin on skin. His grandparents held him close for the first time and we took our only photos as a family of three, Teddy, Nico and I. When it was time I sat on a sofa in a private room flanked by Nico and my mum. The nurse stopped pumping air into Teddy's lungs and removed the final pieces of tape from around his mouth and handed him to us.
Finally, he was free from all those wires, all those beeping and buzzing machines. As he took his last gasping breaths we read him a story, Guess How Much I Love You? I got lost in the words as I tried to memorise every last detail of his perfect little heart-shaped face, and the weight of him in my arms. As his tiny breaths stopped I didn't feel scared; I wanted him to feel safe and to know we loved him. That's what a mother does, isn't it? Forgets her own feelings to protect those of her children. But I think I felt my heart physically breaking in that moment; at least, that is the only way I can describe that feeling.
After this sudden loss, I felt numb both physically and emotionally. "Things like this happen to other people," I remember thinking. I sent a few messages to a few friends and explained we had had to say goodbye to Teddy. I couldn't manage to say "he died," or "he's dead." It took a few months before I could say or write those two words together: "'Teddy died."
We arrived home to a pram in the hallway and a Moses basket set up in our bedroom. Nico hid them behind the old oak door of the nursery. I couldn't step foot in its direction down the hallway. I could see the cracks of bright light shining through the nursery door, showing me what was missing from my life on the other side of it. A life I had spent nine months preparing for but was now shut out of.
The phone in the house and our mobile phones felt as if they were ringing off the hook. The best messages I got in that time were the ones from friends which simply said: "I'm here for you when you need me and I want you to know I love you." They didn't demand a response and I knew they'd be there when I was ready to face the world.
Help and support
Six days after Teddy died we had a visit from a bereavement midwife. Before she arrived I forced myself to have a shower, put on some clothes and do my make-up. I greeted her with a smile at the door and brightly asked her if she'd like a cup of tea.
I think she thought I'd totally lost it. I quickly realised that speaking to her about Teddy wasn't going to be very useful for me. She hadn't even bothered to learn his name. He was just another baby who had never made it home. I went out of my way to show her photographs of him, to show her who he was. She seemed to just want me to sit and sob instead, but I had done that for six days straight and I was exhausted. She wanted us to conform to a text-book way of grieving. I politely declined to see her again.
This was compounded by a phone call I received from my obstetrician's secretary asking me if I wanted to make an appointment to discuss the delivery of my baby. "I had my baby, last week, and he... he died," I managed to stutter. There was silence on the end of the line and a garbled apology. A follow-up letter arrived a few days later which read: "I am very sorry to hear about the unfortunate outcome of your pregnancy." Teddy had apparently become an "unfortunate outcome", rather than a person, my son.
The thought of seeing people or telling people what had happened made me feel sick and I went into hiding for a good six weeks, seeing only family and a few very close friends. One person I did choose to meet, however, was a fellow expectant mother I had met at a yoga class and whose baby had been born in the same hospital as Teddy a day later.
We went for a coffee and I met her sweet, beautiful newborn. I felt a lurch of jealousy but I told it to shut up; I didn't want to be that person. She was kind and patient as we chatted about our experiences over those first weeks - both very different stories of being a new mum. I cried a lot, but tried my best not to be an utter raincloud of emotion.
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Stand-up comedian Lou Conran had to end her pregnancy at 22 weeks - five-and-a-half months. She did a show about the experience for the Edinburgh festival, hoping this would encourage people to talk about a subject that is often covered in a blanket of silence.
Why I had to terminate my baby's life
"When are you going back to work then?" she suddenly asked. And just like that, when I thought I was talking to someone who might get it, I realised I wasn't. A bit more chit-chat and we went our separate ways. We didn't meet up again, although I did see her about six weeks later on a hot August day when I was walking my pug Boris through the park.
She was bouncing her baby on her hip in the middle of a group of happy mums with their new babies. I took a deep breath and steeled myself to go over and say hello, to face my worst nightmare of a mum and baby get-together. But in the moment she saw me, she turned her back away so that she was facing the group. "That's Elle, who I was telling you about," I heard her say when she thought I was out of earshot.
I could feel their eyes burning into the back of my head. I felt as though I had been well and truly, unceremoniously kicked out of the Mummy Club. You can't sit with us, because your baby died. I cried all the way home.
Then I found the friends I never knew I needed. By chance I saw an Instagram post by a bereaved mother, Michelle. Michelle had a daughter, Orla, who had been stillborn in May. As I read her words I realised she too was planning new routes to places, avoiding places with prams and pregnant women and wearing sunglasses at all times to mask the tears, I thought, "Thank God, I am not alone."
We exchanged messages of solidarity and she told me that her and a few other "loss mums" were starting a WhatsApp group for support - all had lost babies in recent months.
It was like blind dating for the ultimate anti-NCT group, and it felt so good. Michelle told me the names of the other mums in the group and I made sure I was following them all on Instagram too.
I wanted to put faces to names, to understand their stories and know their babies' names. The group was called Warrior Women, and these mums saved me in my darkest hour. There was Jess - she and her wife, Natalie, had their firstborn son Leo in January that year; Leo had been stillborn. There was Aimee, whose daughter Phoebe had died during labour in the same month. Emma had a daughter, Florence, who had died during labour in January too. And Sam, whose son, Guy, had been stillborn in November the year before.
Jess, Nat, Michelle, Aimee, Emma, Sam and Elle. The Warrior Women. I had found my tribe.
The group has been running for more than two years now. We call the babies "The Gang", we acknowledge their birthdays, and take it in turns to write all of their names together in the sand whenever any of us find ourselves on a beach.
I find it cathartic to write Teddy's name. At first it was in letters to him in my notebook, but then it became anywhere I could - in the condensation of windows, in the sand of our favourite beaches, anywhere that made him feel that little bit closer. When Teddy died I became a mum who had to survive knowing that my days will never be filled with his laughter, or his "firsts".
I used to write it down in different ways in my notebook, lines and lines of just "Teddy". I would find myself wondering how he would have written it when he got old enough to write. Would he have big swirly writing like mine, or my husband's spidery writing?
As the first Christmas after Teddy died drew close, I began to deliberate over how to sign Christmas cards. I knew I needed to include our son. I settled on a little T inside a hand-drawn star, just to the top right corner of our names and I continue doing that today. Every time I write a card and put that little T in it, it makes me feel proud that we are continuing to include Teddy in our family story. I never want that T to disappear.
Some of my WhatsApp group women have been blessed with more babies. They fill all of our lives with the hope of better days to come. But those pregnancies have come with a new set of worries and anxieties to manage for each of them. Losing a baby will do that to you.
The Warrior Women understand that. They don't immediately shriek congratulations at the first talk of pregnancy. And, of course, we never congratulate them on being a "first-time mum", because we understand that they aren't.
There is something so unspeakably horrific about losing a child that society doesn't even have a name for it. If a spouse dies, you are a widow - if your parents die, you are an orphan. Losing a child defies the natural order of what we expect and it is just too painful a prospect to allow our minds to consider.
But where does that leave parents like Nico and me, who are mum and dad to a child that isn't alive? Where does that leave the women on my WhatsApp group and their partners? There are thousands of grieving parents walking around without much recognition or understanding from the world around them.
When people ask me if I have children I have to make a call on whether or not to tell them that Teddy died. I worry about telling them because I know it will make them feel uncomfortable. Sometimes people say things like, "Don't worry, you'll make a great mum one day." I know they have good intentions, but it's so insensitive. Just imagine if I told them my husband had died and their reaction had been to say, "Don't worry, you'll get married again and you'll make a great wife."
More often than not people just quickly change the subject to something like the weather. But nothing is worse than that silence. When I tell someone I have a son but he didn't get to come home it makes such an enormous difference to my day if the person says, "I'm so sorry, what was his name?" It makes me feel like my narrative of parenthood is valid and that Teddy was a person, who mattered then and still matters now.
After Teddy died I heard the phrase: you will learn to feel the love more than the loss. For me, that's exactly what saying his name aloud enables us to do. By hearing it, normalising it and acknowledging his existence, we are filling that cavernous space of loss with love.
Elle Wright is the author of Ask Me His Name: Learning to Live and Laugh Again After the Loss of My Baby
As told to Kirstie Brewer. Kirstie is on Twitter: @kirstiejbrewer
Photographs owned by Elle and Nico Wright.
Listen to Elle's interview on Woman's Hour
Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter.
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One of the wettest winters in memory has flooded England's orchards and left its cider industry facing an uncertain future. Now the Chancellor has decided to freeze duty on ordinary cider to help producers. But what damage has the weather done? | By Jerry ChesterBBC News
Thousands of acres of farmland vanished under water during the recent floods. Among them were about half of England's prime cider apple-producing orchards in Herefordshire and Somerset.
Cider apple trees and floodwater do not mix, as Julian Temperley, who has 170 acres of orchards at Kingsbury Episcopi, near Martock in Somerset, knows to his cost.
He said the flooding had been "a severe problem" and growers would not know until the spring whether their orchards had been destroyed by the winter storms.
"We've had an appalling late December, January and February - trees over the whole of the South West have taken a hammering," he said.
"There's certainly a big worry about waterlogged trees - there will be a considerable number dying.
"We have one orchard that's been under a foot of water... I'm not certain if the trees will survive."
Walking around the Herefordshire orchards owned by Kier Rogers it is easy to see the effects of the recent flooding.
Farm tracks are pitted with suspension-threatening ruts and potholes and the earth around the trees still has a greenish tinge from the standing water.
Mr Rogers' orchards are protected from the nearby River Wye by flood defences, but the recent heavy rain has brought a fresh problem.
His farm lies in a loop of the river and the 10in (25cm) of rain that fell on the Midlands in January and February, according to Met Office figures, have raised the water table, saturating the soil so rainwater cannot drain away.
"We've had surface water here since the end of December when it started raining - and that causes me great concern - I don't know what the long-term effects on the trees, and the damage we will see this year," he said.
Taking me around his orchards, he anxiously looks at the emerging buds on the trees that have been flooded.
Last year he lost hundreds of trees and he must now wait to see what damage this year's deluge has done.
"They took 15 years to grow and now they get lost to saturated soils," he said.
Rob Collins, an apple grower and horticultural contractor who helps run an apprenticeship scheme in cider growing at Herefordshire and Ludlow College's Holme Lacy Campus, explained that if the trees stand in waterlogged soil or standing water for more than 14 days it kills off the roots.
"It is the fibrous roots that can't be seen by the naked eye that are affected the worst," he said.
"These are the roots that do all the work and are the most vulnerable to being killed off [by water] - they need to breathe."
The time when the tree is flowering is the most "energy sapping", he said, and if the roots have died it "gets so far and then can't survive".
The problem is made worse, he said, by a bacteria which thrives in standing water and is attracted to tree roots "speeding up the dying process".
"The thing is you don't realise it's happened until half way through the season, and with flood damage the tree will die very quickly," he added.
This means growers whose orchards have been flooded or waterlogged face a ticking time bomb.
They will not know the extent of damage until May or June, when their trees could either produce apples as normal or die virtually overnight.
The National Association of Cider Makers is preparing for the worst but hoping for good news.
"Many [producers] will lose trees that will need to be replanted," said Paul Bartlett, its chairman.
"We hope for the best, though recognise that the potential impact could seriously affect the income of growers this season and for several years to come."
Bill Wiggin, MP for North Herefordshire, knows the importance of apple growing and cider production to his rural constituency.
Herefordshire manufacturer Bulmers have 10,000 acres of orchards and 180 farmers growing apples for them on contract - 30% of the apples grown in the UK go into their cider, the company said.
Mr Wiggin's call for the cider duty escalator, which automatically raises the amount of tax on the drink in the budget, to be scrapped was heeded by the Chancellor in his budget.
"With some cider makers in the West Country hit hard by the recent weather, I am going to help them by freezing the duty on ordinary cider," George Osborne announced.
Mr Bartlett said it was "great news" the chancellor has recognised the impact on growers and cider makers of the winter storms and rain.
"It protects the investment [growers] have made over many years to grow the industry and support the rural community, as well as supporting thousands of jobs."
Meanwhile, as the waters recede on the Somerset levels, Mr Temperley, said cider producers had another worry - the impact of the floods on tourism.
"The cider culture of our part of England has a considerable number of small farms making cider," he said.
"We are affected not just by the trees dying but by people not coming to the area.
"People have to be persuaded to come back to Somerset, which they're not doing at the moment."
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The government's roadmap to life out of lockdown has dangled the carrot of a return to normal life - at least in England - by mid-summer. But with Easter breaks now not possible, how are businesses in one of the UK's tourism centres feeling about the future? | When the pandemic began, Great Yarmouth Hippodrome already had its set built for its Easter holiday show.
But when the first national restrictions were imposed on 24 March, 15 box office, technical and ancillary staff at the Norfolk venue were furloughed, as fears built that arts venues would struggle to emerge from lockdown at all.
"June is a long way off, but psychologically it helps so much," said the hippodrome's ringmaster, producer and impresario Jack Jay.
"Our town is so heavily dependent on tourism, but there is a real sense that this could be a summer of rediscovery for British tourism."
Mr Jay took the baton from his father Peter, who bought the historic venue in 1979 and is now its artistic curator.
He said he was "naturally disappointed" that restrictions would not ease in time for Easter, but said it had not been unexpected.
"Coming out of this is like a deep-sea dive - you need time for decompression at every stage.
"We want to do it right and for this to be the last time [we face these restrictions]," he said.
The grand art nouveau venue, built in 1903 and tucked away behind an amusement arcade, remains one of only three purpose-built circuses in the world where the stage sinks to reveal a full swimming pool.
It resumed socially-distanced shows briefly last summer while permitted by lockdown laws, but with its capacity reduced from 900 to 300 spectators.
Mr Jay said: "The final piece of the puzzle for us is what happens with furlough - will it be extended to support businesses through to the end of the lifting of restrictions?
"That support, the final furlong of furlough, could be the final piece of the puzzle. It could even be our best ever year, and my God we need it."
One of Great Yarmouth's biggest attractions is its Pleasure Beach, which regularly drew in almost a million visitors a year pre-Covid.
"Obviously we're delighted that we're able to open from the 12 April although some indoor attractions won't be able to," said its managing director Albert Jones.
"We did have a lot of help from the government with VAT, the rates, with furlough. Without that, we probably wouldn't be talking now."
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Asa Morrison from Great Yarmouth's Tourism Business Improvement District shares the same optimistic vision building in the resort.
"Having visitors is the lifeblood of the town," he said.
"If people can't have holidays abroad, we'd like to think they will have one in the UK. That gives us an opportunity for expansion and for growth."
If the timetable set out by Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets best-case scenario targets, domestic overnight stays will be allowed from 12 April, which Mr Morrison said would mean the "ball can quietly get moving" as the summer months approach.
"One of the biggest challenges in Great Yarmouth is that our tourism economy is worth £650m," he said. "It supports 13,000 jobs, 36% of the workforce... and we lost half of that in 2020.
"We need to build it up to protect businesses and jobs, so we welcome the opportunity through this plan. Let's hope we can deliver together."
The town also plans to introduce a 50m-tall (164ft) London Eye-style observation wheel to add to its post-pandemic appeal.
In light of the PM's plan, some tour operators have already reported record demand for summer holiday bookings.
James Knight from Norfolk Broads Direct said its lodgings were no exception.
"Our phone lines are already red-hot and our email inbox is crammed.
"It's a blow to miss out on the Easter holidays and we are working with those who had earlier holidays booked, but this is our light at the end of the tunnel.
"The government are being realistic in their targets so we're certainly hopeful for 12 April.
"The last year has been one foot in front of the other. At the moment it does look like we should have a good year or two in domestic tourism."
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Related Internet Links
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It confounds nations every year when their hopes for Eurovision Song Contest victory are dashed, but a British professor of musicology thinks he has cracked the winning formula needed to gain 12 points from the judges and Europe's voters, to claim the title.
| By Anna-Louise TaylorBBC News
"We know how well the Balkans have always done in Eurovision, and they seem to like moustaches.
"(The 2011 UK entry) Blue have not capitalised on what a moustache can do. If you want votes from Montenegro or Turkey you need a moustache," said long-haired, moustachioed Derek Scott, professor of critical musicology at the University of Leeds' School of Music.
Prof Scott has researched Eurovision entries from the past 50 years to come up with the qualities a successful entry needs - and although he accepted moustaches perhaps did not add to musicality, he said any kind of "retro" visual element could help sell a song to the audience and gain all-important telephone votes.
This year Eurovision is being held in Dusseldorf, Germany. Prof Scott has been watching the heats to see how the songs compare to those he has been analysing.
Prof Scott examined songs from around the continent including Cliff Richard's Congratulations (1968), Lulu's Boom Bang a Bang (1969) and Belgium's 1986 entry, J'aime la vie.
"I've been interested in the Eurovision Song Contest for a long time, and I've become more interested the more we seem to get dismal results in the UK.
"One mistake is to think Eurovision songs are 'national' songs - it was set up to be a showcase for national music, but these are entertainment songs. That's the crucial thing to bear in mind."
Leaving aside political voting motivations, the media circus and the overall stage show each act puts on, Professor Scott's research focused on the musical devices a successful song employed.
He found there were several musical themes that could be used to guarantee success - an "enjoy life" theme, as used in Congratulations and J'aime La Vie, a "leisure time" theme, as found in Sandy Shaw's Puppet on a String, an "anthemic or aspirational" theme like "Love Shine a Light" by Katrina and the Waves, or a "parody" theme, a la Boom Bang a Bang.
"These themes are tried and tested. If you go for one, you run in to fewer problems.
"Love is another - but love interest songs are a problem, as it's such a wide audience, where do you pitch it? Some people are married, others not. A broader approach gets more votes."
He found that including gestures in songs also helped with memorability.
"Everyone remembers Bucks Fizz having their dresses ripped off - it's good to incorporate gestures that will appeal. Strangely, this year a lot of countries have gone for fake trumpeters."
Prof Scott also believes the tempo of a song must be upbeat, but not too fast, so as not to alienate people listening to the songs for the first time.
He said most successful songs had a specific rhythm and also stuck to a tried and trusted 16-bar verse and chorus formula.
"This year more than half of the semi-finalists from across Europe have a two-beat rhythm."
He said it was easy to find common denominators that successful songs had, but what was harder was looking at Eurovision disasters to find what acts should avoid.
"Certainly there are things that rarely work, such as a three-beat rhythm, but then it did work for Dana's All Kinds of Everything (winning for Ireland, 1970)."
A successful song also has a key change "to crank it up" towards the end of the piece, something he said the Swedish entries were good at doing.
So has British band Blue employed enough of these devices to garner affection from across Europe and storm to the voting charts?
"Blue are one one of the strongest entries we've had from the UK in a number of years. They have a strong reputation throughout Europe and the Germans are very fond of them.
"Their song has got many of the features that make for success, the two-beat rhythm, a major key, it's got a retro quality because Blue are associated with a previous decade, it's got the aspirational words, I can, I will, I know... most people in foreign countries will know those verbs.
"What it doesn't have, is the rise at the end - perhaps they thought that it was overdone, and it has an usual 24-bar structure. Normally people go for 16 as it makes it more memorable.
"But the danger in that song is the awkward beginning - it is very difficult to work out exactly where to come in, and in a live concert this could be catastrophic.
"I remember the catastrophe that was Jemini - they tripped up at the beginning and the whole song fell apart."
Comedy or parody is a Eurovision stalwart, and Prof Scott said Finland's winning entry, monster-metallers Lordi (2006) fitted the bill. "Heavy metal has this moral concern, so to introduce comedy defies expectations."
Based on his findings, Professor Scott has written his own song, called Be Nice to Nice People, and it contains nearly all the elements he has identified - ideally to avoid the dreaded "nul points" scenario.
He said it was "a serious political and moral message guaranteed not to offend anyone" - a classic Eurovision tactic to win votes.
So will he put himself forward to compete in Eurovision 2012?
"Given I have long hair perhaps I could roar on to stage on a Triumph Bonneville," he said.
"But already my colleagues in the music school have started a collection to stop me releasing my song.
"I for one am totally sick of it."
Hear more on the Today programme on Saturday May 14 between 0700 and 0900 BST.
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South Africa's education and finance ministers are being taken to court over poor standards at state schools. The BBC's Karen Allen investigates the education crisis and why some parents in Eastern Cape province are opting to send their children to private schools despite the cost. | "We are not a flashy family - I'm just an ordinary kid," says Simanye Zondani, 17, as he pores over his maths homework in the subdued light of his home.
Since his parents died, his aunt has given up her smart "bachelorette" flat in Queenstown and opted instead for a house in the township.
It means she can now just about afford the £700 ($1,100) to send her nephew to private school.
Five thousand children, most of them from black families on modest incomes, are switching to independent schools annually.
The quality varies, but in Gauteng province alone, South Africa's economic hub, more than 100 new schools have applied for registration in the past year.
It is a response to a sense of failure in the state sector, argues Peter Bosman, the principal of Getahead High School, the low-cost private school which Simanye attends.
"Parents want consistency and quality," he says - not with a sense of schadenfreude but resignation.
Vacant posts and pit latrines
The irony is that significant numbers of parents who send their children to private schools are themselves teachers in the state sector.
For the past few years, the school has achieved pass rates of 83%-100% for the secondary school-leaving certificate known as matric.
It is an impressive figure and is replicated among other low-cost private schools in deprived areas.
Nationally, fewer than half of all school leavers pass that exam - an indictment of an education system that is dysfunctional, critics say.
Far from being well-endowed with land and smart buildings, Getahead High is situated in a disused warehouse.
It offers computers and sports facilities, which the vast majority of children who attend state schools can only dream of. But the principal insists it is not about bricks and mortar, but the quality of teachers.
Many of the staff have returned from retirement to teach at the school and earn 10% less than their counterparts in the state sector.
About 30km (18 miles) down the road, a rural state school, Nonkqubela Secondary, is struggling with outdoor pit latrines which have fallen into disrepair, while a third of all teaching posts remain vacant.
"We used to have good results, but we are short of maths teachers, science teachers and when staff look at our facilities they decide not to come here," head teacher Khumzi Madikane laments.
He says he cannot blame parents who can afford it, migrating to the private sector. But most of his pupils are dirt poor.
Education in the Eastern Cape is in crisis, and the central government has taken over the running of the department after allegations of corruption and mismanagement.
It is a sad indictment of a rural slice of South Africa which in the past century gave birth to some of the greatest minds in history, including Nelson Mandela and the late freedom fighter Walter Sisulu.
Strikes
But the Eastern Cape is not alone. The growth of low-cost primary schools, in response to a lack of faith in the state sector, is a trend that is spreading across the country. The independent sector has grown by 75% in the past decade.
"It's been driven by parent demand," argues Ann Bernstein from the Johannesburg-based think tank, Centre for Development and Enterprise.
The crisis no longer a dirty little secret, with the government itself admitting that 80% of state schools are failing.
In a recent speech, Basic Education Minister Angie Motsheka revealed that 1,700 schools are still without a water supply and 15,000 schools are without libraries.
Last week, campaign group Equal Education launched a court case to force the government to provide equal infrastructure at all schools.
Ms Motsheka has already promised reforms and investment in infrastructure, but it is a Herculean task.
It also requires political courage, argues Ms Bernstein.
"We have research from various communities, and increasingly from government, saying that in many places, teachers are not in school on Mondays or Fridays, that many teachers have other jobs simultaneously and the actual amount of teaching going on in the classrooms is a fraction of what it should be," she says.
Political courage, it would seem, means tackling the unions.
Yet education in South Africa still suffers from the legacy of apartheid, where black children suffered inferior education to their white counterparts and were banned from certain subjects and deprived of good facilities.
But more than 17 years after the end of white minority rule, observers argue that South Africa is struggling with more recent phenomena: Poor teacher training, corruption and maladministration, a highly unionised teaching profession and low morale.
Back in the township, opting for a private school has come with huge sacrifices for Simanye's aunt, Nokwezi.
"I've really had to squeeze myself but it is worth it - in state schools, if they have a disagreement the teachers go on strike," she says.
The surge of low-cost private schools shows no sign of slowing down. Thousands of other grandmothers, brothers and sisters are scraping together the funds to send a child to school.
Yet the vast majority of South African children have little choice but to opt for the local state school.
Despite the best efforts of some committed staff, the exodus from state schools could see a generation of underachievers left behind.
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After seven devastating years of civil war in Syria, which have left more than 350,000 people dead, President Bashar al-Assad appears close to victory against the forces trying to overthrow him. | By Nawal al-MaghafiBBC Panorama
So how has Mr Assad got so close to winning this bloody, brutal war?
A joint investigation by BBC Panorama and BBC Arabic shows for the first time the extent to which chemical weapons have been crucial to his war-winning strategy.
Sites of the 106 chemical attacks in Syria, 2014-2018
Source: BBC Panorama and BBC Arabic research. Map built with Carto.
1. The use of chemical weapons has been widespread
The BBC has determined there is enough evidence to be confident that at least 106 chemical attacks have taken place in Syria since September 2013, when the president signed the international Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and agreed to destroy the country's chemical weapons stockpile.
Syria ratified the CWC a month after a chemical weapons attack on several suburbs of the capital, Damascus, that involved the nerve agent Sarin and left hundreds of people dead. The horrific pictures of victims convulsing in agony shocked the world. Western powers said the attack could only have been carried out by the government, but Mr Assad blamed the opposition.
The US threatened military action in retaliation but relented when Mr Assad's key ally, Russia, persuaded him to agree to the elimination of Syria's chemical arsenal. Despite the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the United Nations destroying all 1,300 tonnes of chemicals that the Syrian government declared, chemical weapons attacks in the country have continued.
"Chemical attacks are terrifying," said Abu Jaafar, who lived in an opposition-held part of the city of Aleppo until it fell to government forces in 2016. "A barrel bomb or a rocket kills people instantly without them feeling it... but the chemicals suffocate. It's a slow death, like drowning someone, depriving them of oxygen. It's horrifying."
But Mr Assad has continued to deny his forces have ever used chemical weapons.
"We don't have a chemical arsenal since we gave it up in 2013," he said earlier this year. "The [OPCW] made investigations about this, and it's clear that we don't have them."
What are chemical weapons?
The OPCW, the global watchdog that oversees implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, says a chemical weapon is a chemical used to cause intentional death or harm through its toxic properties.
The use of chemical weapons is prohibited under international humanitarian law regardless of the presence of a valid military target, as the effects of such weapons are indiscriminate by nature and designed to cause superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering.
Since 2014, the OPCW's Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) in Syria and the now-disbanded OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) have investigated allegations of the use of toxic chemicals for hostile purposes in Syria.
They have determined that 37 incidents have involved or are likely to have involved the use of chemicals as weapons between September 2013 and April 2018.
The UN Human Rights Council's Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Syria and other UN-affiliated bodies have meanwhile concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that chemical weapons have been used in 18 other cases.
Panorama and BBC Arabic examined 164 reports of chemical attacks alleged to have happened since Syria signed up to the CWC just over five years ago.
The BBC team determined that there was credible evidence to be confident a chemical weapon was used in 106 of those 164 incidents.
While only a few of these attacks have made headlines, the data suggests a pattern of repeated and sustained use of chemical weapons.
"The use of chemical weapons has delivered some outcomes for [government forces] that they believe are worth the risk, and [chemical weapons] have subsequently been shown to be worth the risk because they keep using them, repeatedly," said Julian Tangaere, former head of the OPCW mission to Syria.
Karen Pierce, the United Kingdom's permanent representative to the UN in New York, described the use of chemical weapons in Syria as "vile".
"Not just because of the truly awful effects but also because they are a banned weapon, prohibited from use for nearly 100 years," she said.
About the data
The BBC team considered 164 reports of chemical attacks from September 2013 onwards.
The reports were from a variety of sources considered broadly impartial and not involved in the fighting. They included international bodies, human rights groups, medical organisations and think tanks.
In line with investigations carried out by the UN and the OPCW, BBC researchers, with the help of several independent analysts, reviewed the open source data available for each of the reported attacks, including victim and witness testimonies, photographs and videos.
The BBC team had their methodology checked by specialist researchers and experts.
The BBC researchers discounted all incidents where there was only one source, or where they concluded there was not sufficient evidence. In all, they determined there was enough credible evidence to be confident a chemical weapon was used in 106 incidents.
The BBC team were not allowed access to film on the ground in Syria and could not visit the scenes of reported incidents, and therefore were not able to categorically verify the evidence.
However, they did weigh up the strength of the available evidence in each case, including the video footage and pictures from each incident, as well as the details of location and timing.
The highest number of reported attacks took place in the north-western province of Idlib. There were also many incidents in the neighbouring provinces of Hama and Aleppo, and in the Eastern Ghouta region near Damascus, according to the BBC's data.
All of these areas have been opposition strongholds at various times during the war.
The locations where the most casualties were reported as a result of alleged chemical attacks were Kafr Zita, in Hama province, and Douma, in the Eastern Ghouta.
Both towns have seen battles between opposition fighters and government forces.
According to the reports, the deadliest single incident took place in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in Idlib province, on 4 April 2017. Opposition health authorities say more than 80 people died that day.
Although chemical weapons are deadly, UN human rights experts have noted that most incidents in which civilians are killed and maimed have involved the unlawful use of conventional weapons, such as cluster munitions and explosive weapons in civilian populated areas.
2. The evidence points to the Syrian government in many cases
Inspectors from an OPCW-UN joint mission announced in June 2014 that they had completed the removal or destruction of all of Syria's declared chemical weapons material, in line with the agreement brokered by the US and Russia after the 2013 Sarin attack.
"Everything that we knew to be there was either removed or destroyed," said Mr Tangaere, one of the OPCW inspectors.
But, he explained, the inspectors only had the information they were given.
"All we could do was to verify what we'd been told was there," he said. "The thing about the Chemical Weapons Convention is it's all based on trust."
The OPCW did, however, identify what it called "gaps, inconsistencies and discrepancies" in Syria's declaration that a team from the watchdog is still trying to resolve.
In July 2018, the OPCW's then-director general, Ahmet Üzümcü, told the UN Security Council that the team was "continuing its efforts to clarify all outstanding issues".
Despite the June 2014 announcement that Syria's declared chemical weapons material had been removed or destroyed, reports of continued chemical attacks continued to emerge.
Abdul Hamid Youssef lost his wife, his 11-month-old twins, two brothers, his cousin and many of his neighbours in the 4 April 2017 attack on Khan Sheikhoun.
He described the scene outside his home, seeing neighbours and family members suddenly drop to the ground.
"They were shivering, and foam was coming out of their mouths," he said. "It was terrifying. That's when I knew it was a chemical attack."
After falling unconscious and being taken to hospital, he woke, asking about his wife and children.
"After about 15 minutes, they brought them all to me - dead. I lost the most precious people in my life."
The OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mission concluded that a large number of people had been exposed to Sarin that day.
Sarin is considered 20 times as deadly as cyanide. As with all nerve agents, it inhibits the action of an enzyme which deactivates signals that cause human nerve cells to fire. The heart and other muscles - including those involved in breathing - spasm. Sufficient exposure can lead to death by asphyxiation within minutes.
The JIM also said it was confident that the Syrian government was responsible for the release of the Sarin in Khan Sheikhoun, with an aircraft alleged to have dropped a bomb on the town.
The images from Khan Sheikhoun prompted US President Donald Trump to order a missile strike on the Syrian Air Force base from where Western powers believed the aircraft that attacked the town took off.
President Assad said the incident in Khan Sheikhoun was fabricated, while Russia said the Syrian Air Force bombed a "terrorist ammunition depot" that was full of chemical weapons, inadvertently releasing a toxic cloud.
But Stefan Mogl, a member of the OPCW team that investigated the attack, said he found evidence that the Sarin used in Khan Sheikhoun belonged to the Syrian government.
There was a "clear match" between the Sarin and the samples brought back from Syria in 2014 by the OPCW team eliminating the country's stockpile, he said.
The JIM report said the Sarin identified in the samples taken from Khan Sheikhoun was most likely to have been made with a precursor chemical - methylphosphonyl difluoride (DF) - from Syria's original stockpile.
"It means that not everything was removed," Mr Mogl said.
Mr Tangaere, who oversaw the OPCW's elimination of Syria's chemical stockpile, said: "I can only assume that that material wasn't part of what was declared and wasn't at the site that we were at."
"The reality is, under our mandate all we could do was verify what we'd been told was there. There was a separate process to investigate potential gaps in the declaration."
But what of the other 105 reported attacks mapped by the BBC team? Who is believed to have been behind those?
The JIM concluded that two attacks involving the blister agent sulphur mustard were carried out by the jihadist group Islamic State. There is evidence suggesting IS carried out three other reported attacks, according to the BBC's data.
The JIM and OPCW have so far not concluded that any opposition armed groups other than IS have carried out a chemical attack. The BBC's investigation also found no credible evidence to suggest otherwise.
However, the Syrian government and Russia have accused opposition fighters of using chemical weapons on a number of occasions and have reported them to the OPCW, who have investigated the allegations. Opposition armed factions have denied using chemical weapons.
The available evidence, including video, photographs and eyewitness testimony, suggests that at least 51 of the 106 reported attacks were launched from the air. The BBC believes all the air-launched attacks were carried out by Syrian government forces.
Although Russian aircraft have conducted thousands of strikes in support of Mr Assad since 2015, UN human rights experts on the Commission of Inquiry have said there are no indications that Russian forces have ever used chemical weapons in the Syria.
The OPCW has likewise found no evidence that opposition armed groups had the capability to mount air attacks in the cases it has investigated.
Tobias Schneider of the Global Public Policy Institute has also investigated whether the opposition could have staged any air-launched chemical attacks and concluded that they could not. "The Assad regime is the only actor deploying chemical weapons by air," he said.
Dr Lina Khatib, head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, said: "The majority of chemical weapons attacks that we have seen in Syria seem to follow a pattern that indicates that they were the work of the regime and its allies, and not other groups in Syria."
"Sometimes the regime uses chemical weapons when it doesn't have the military capacity to take an area back using conventional weapons," she added.
Sarin was used in the deadliest of the 106 reported attacks - at Khan Sheikhoun - but the evidence suggests that the most commonly used toxic chemical was chlorine.
Chlorine is what is known as a "dual-use" chemical. It has many legitimate peaceful civilian uses, but its use as a weapon is banned by the CWC.
Chlorine is thought to have been used in 79 of the 106 reported attacks, according to the BBC's data. The OPCW and JIM have determined that chlorine is likely to have been used as a weapon in 15 of the cases they have investigated.
Experts say it is notoriously difficult to prove the use of chlorine in an attack because its volatility means it evaporates and disperses quickly.
"If you go to a site where a chlorine attack has happened, it's almost impossible to get physical evidence from the environment - unless you're there within a very short period of time," said Mr Tangaere, the former OPCW inspector.
"In that sense, being able to use it leaving virtually no evidence behind, you can see why it has happened many, many times over."
3. The use of chemical weapons appears to be strategic
Plotting the timings and locations of the 106 reported chemical attacks appears to reveal a pattern in how they have been used.
Many of the reported attacks occurred in clusters in and around the same areas and at around the same times. These clusters coincided with government offensives - in Hama and Idlib in 2014, in Idlib in 2015, in Aleppo city at the end of 2016, and in the Eastern Ghouta in early 2018.
"Chemical weapons are used whenever the regime wants to send a strong message to a local population that their presence is not desirable," said Chatham House's Dr Khatib.
"In addition to chemical weapons being the ultimate punishment, instilling fear in people, they are also cheap and convenient for the regime at a time when its military capacity has decreased because of the conflict."
"There's nothing that scares people more than chemical weapons, and whenever chemical weapons have been used, residents have fled those areas and, more often than not, not come back."
Aleppo, a city fought over for several years, appears to be one of the locations where such a strategy has been employed.
Opposition fighters and civilians were trapped in a besieged enclave in the east as the government launched its final offensive to regain full control of the city.
Opposition-held areas first came under heavy bombardment with conventional munitions. Then came a series of reported chemical attacks that are said to have caused hundreds of casualties. Aleppo soon fell to the government, and people were displaced to other opposition-held areas.
"The pattern that we are witnessing is that the regime uses chemical weapons in areas that it regards as strategic for its own purposes," said Dr Khatib.
"[The] final stage of taking these areas back seems to be using chemical weapons to just make the local population flee."
From late November to December 2016, in the final weeks of the government's assault on eastern Aleppo, there were 11 reported chlorine attacks. Five of them were in the last two days of the offensive, before opposition fighters and supporters surrendered and agreed to be evacuated.
Abu Jaafar, who worked for the Syrian opposition as a forensic scientist, was in Aleppo during the last days of the siege. He examined the bodies of many of the victims of alleged chemical attacks.
"I went to the morgue and a strong smell of chlorine emanated from the bodies," he said. "When I inspected them, I saw clear marks of suffocation due to chlorine."
The use of chlorine had a devastating effect, he said.
"The gas suffocates people - spreading panic and terror," he said. "There were warplanes and helicopters in the sky all the time, as well as artillery shelling. But what left the biggest impact was chemical weapons."
When liquid chlorine is released, it quickly turns into a gas. The gas is heavier than air and will sink to low-lying areas. People hiding in basements or underground bomb shelters are therefore particularly vulnerable to exposure.
When chlorine gas comes into contact with moist tissues such as the eyes, throats and lungs, an acid is produced that can damage those tissues. When inhaled, chlorine causes air sacs in the lungs to secrete fluid, essentially drowning those affected.
"If they go up, they get bombed by rockets. If they go down, they get killed by chlorine. People were hysterical," said Abu Jaafar.
The Syrian government has said it has never used chlorine as a weapon. But all 11 of the reported attacks in Aleppo came from the air and occurred in opposition-held areas, according to the BBC's data.
More than 120,000 civilians left Aleppo in the final weeks of the battle for the city, according to organisations on the ground. It was a turning point in the civil war.
A similar pattern of reported chemical weapons use can be seen in the data from the Eastern Ghouta - the opposition's final stronghold near Damascus.
A number of attacks were reported in opposition-held towns in the region between January and April 2018.
Maps show how the incidents coincided with the loss of opposition territory.
Douma, the biggest town in the Eastern Ghouta, was the target of four reported chemical attacks over four months, as pro-government forces intensified their aerial bombardment before launching a ground offensive.
The last - and deadliest, according to medics and rescue workers - incident took place on 7 April, when a yellow industrial gas cylinder was reportedly dropped onto the balcony of a block of flats. The opposition's surrender came a day later.
Videos published by pro-opposition activists showed what they said were the bodies of more than 30 children, women and men who had been sheltering downstairs in the basement of the block of flats.
Yasser al-Domani, an activist who visited the scene that night, said the people who died had foam around their mouths and appeared to have chemical burns.
Another video from a nearby building shows the bodies of the same children found dead in the block of flats wearing the same clothes, with the same burns, lined up for identification.
The BBC spoke to 18 people, who all insist they saw bodies being taken from the block of flats to the hospital.
Two days after the reported attack, Russian military specialists visited the block of flats and said they found no traces of chlorine or any other chemical agents. The Russian government said the incident had been staged by the opposition with the help of the UK - a charge the British government dismissed as "grotesque and absurd".
An OPCW Fact-Finding Mission team visited the scene almost two weeks later and took samples from the gas cylinder on the balcony. In July, it reported that "various chlorinated organic chemicals" were found in the samples, along with residues of explosive.
The FFM is still working to establish the significance of the results, but Western powers are convinced the people who died were exposed to chlorine.
A week after the incident in Douma, the US, UK and France carried out air strikes on three sites they said were "specifically associated with the Syrian regime's chemical weapons programme".
The Western strikes took place hours before the Syrian military declared the Eastern Ghouta free of opposition fighters, by which time some 140,000 people had fled their homes and up to 50,000 had been evacuated to opposition-held territory in the north of the country.
"I saw the amount of destruction, the people crying, bidding farewell to their homes or children. People's miserable, exhausted faces, it was really painful. I can't forget it. People in the end said they'd had enough," said Manual Jaradeh, who was living in Douma with her husband and son.
The Syrian government would not answer the BBC's questions about the allegations that it has used chemical weapons. It refused to allow the Panorama team to travel to Damascus, examine the site of the reported attack in Douma, and turned down interview requests.
When asked whether the international community had failed the Syrian people, former OPCW inspector Julian Tangaere said: "Yes, I think it has.
"It was a life and death struggle for the Assad regime. You know, there was certainly no turning back. I can understand that.
"But the methods used, and the barbarity of some of what's happened has... well, it's beyond comprehension. It's horrifying."
So has President Assad got away with it? Karen Pierce, the UK's ambassador to the UN, thinks not.
"There is evidence being collected," she said. "One day there will be justice. We will do our best to try to bring that about and hasten it."
Panorama: Syria's Chemical War will be broadcast in the UK on Monday 15 October on BBC One at 20:30. It will be available afterwards on the BBC iPlayer. It will also be broadcast on BBC Arabic on Tuesday 23 October at 19:05 GMT.
Credits: Producers Alys Cummings and Kate Mead. Online production David Gritten, Lucy Rodgers, Gerry Fletcher, Daniel Dunford and Nassos Stylianou.
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Millions of people across England will be banned from meeting friends and family inside their household from Saturday. The regions have been told they will move to stricter Tier 2 restrictions to try and stop the spread of coronavirus. But how will locals cope with the new rules? | By Sam FrancisBBC News, London
The restrictions in London, Essex, York and other areas mean more than half of England's population will be living under high or very high-alert restrictions.
The infection rate in London has been steadily increasing for several weeks and in the week to 9 October it was 77.8 cases per 100,000 people.
Henry Conlon owns the Dublin Castle, an iconic pub and live music venue in the capital's Camden region, and he fears the worst.
"This is the day the music died," he said.
"If you can't meet your mates in the pub, then what's the point in them?
"The 10pm curfew really stuck the knife in, but there was a bit of hope when things were returning to normality.
"We'll be lucky if we can keep our staff after this."
Tougher Tier 2 restrictions will put up to 250,000 jobs at risk in London's hospitality sector, according to the industry's trade body.
Amanda, an A&E doctor in Essex, said she supported the move to Tier 2.
"I think we should stop [the virus] now rather wait until it gets worse," she said.
"We are coming into a full department in the morning and we have patients on trolleys waiting for wards, and that's before we've hit flu season.
"It's dangerous to carry on and just assume everything will be fine."
The leader of Essex County Council, David Finch, said it was the "correct decision" to move the region into Tier 2 restrictions.
He said a stricter lockdown was "guided by the science and the fact is that the number of cases in Essex is rising exponentially".
"We understand that the move to the High local Covid alert level may affect people's lives and businesses and understand the very strong feelings about this," he said.
"However, we have a duty of care to the people of Essex, and we firmly believe that this is the best route to minimise disruptions, to save lives and to protect businesses."
Jeremy Josesph, owner of the G-A-Y nightclub chain in London and Manchester, said the new lockdown rules were "too confusing".
"Keeping households from mixing seems unmanageable," he said.
"If a group come to G-A-Y, who's responsible in making sure they're all from the same household? And who gets fined?
"We need the government to be working with business to make things work."
Beth Stephenson, a shop manager from York, said she feel "frustrated" by the lockdown rules she feels "make no sense".
Her work fitting women for bras means she is in close contact with people all day. "But now I can't meet my mum at her house, even if we socially distance," she says.
"I think I'll go insane during another lockdown. I'm quite a social person.
Ms Stephenson says she now plans to "have a few friends round for a few drinks tomorrow whilst I still can".
Ruth Ifode, from Brentford, says she has made emergency plans to see her parents on Friday night.
"I don't know when I'll next get to see them," she added."I kind of wish we just did a proper lockdown. You can see we're creeping towards it anyway, when you see people dancing in the streets, people are misbehaving and won't listen to the experts."
The areas to go into Tier 2 restrictions this weekend are:
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan believes the new restrictions are "necessary in order to protect Londoners lives".
Speaking at Mayor's Question Time, he said: "Nobody wants to see more restrictions.
"This move is based on the expert public health and scientific advice about what is necessary to save lives in the capital."
The lobby group Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) said pubs in areas being placed into Tier 2 were "being put into a devastating danger zone".
Nik Antona, Camra's chairman, said they would suffer the "additional restrictions" without the "additional support" that forms part of a Tier 3 lockdown.
"Because pubs aren't being forced to close, they aren't eligible for Government support - despite being forced to operate under much tighter restrictions that other businesses," he said.
"This also has a huge knock on effect for our brewers, who will struggle to get their product to market."
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A 15-year-old girl has been injured in a "targeted" shooting in Birmingham, West Midlands Police says. | The teenager and a 36-year-old woman were hurt on Frodesley Road, in the Stechford area of the city, at about 21:40 BST on Thursday, according to the force.
Both suffered gunshot wounds and are in hospital with minor injuries.
The force said enquiries were on-going but believed the shooting to have been a targeted attack.
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Hospitals warning vital supplies might run out and operations would be cancelled, an ambulance service stockpiling tyres, and officials "close to panic" - these are recent stories about NHS efforts to plan for the possible consequences of the UK leaving the European Union with no agreement in place at the end of March. | Hugh PymHealth editor@BBCHughPymon Twitter
So, should patients be worried? There are two answers.
Ministers and NHS leaders say every effort is being made to ensure there will be enough medicines and clinical equipment available in the event of delays to imports caused by traffic chaos near the Channel ports.
The Whitehall line is that everything that can be done is being done.
But the other point being made is this is an unprecedented scenario - and nobody can be sure what will happen if the UK leaves the EU without an agreement.
There is a tension at the heart of NHS no-deal planning.
On the one hand, there is a need to reassure the public and avoid panic stockpiling of medicines, which would simply exacerbate supply shortages.
But on the other, senior hospital executives need to identify the risks to their organisations and patient care and warn of any gaps in planning.
Brexit halt to blood donor sessions amid traffic fears reversed
Pharmacists warn of a 'surge' in shortage of common medicines
Brexit: Is NHS already finding it hard to get medicines?
Brexit: NHS managers warn about impact of no deal
A board paper at a leading hospital trust, revealed by BBC News, sets out in stark terms what might happen in a chaotic no-deal scenario.
In it, Dr David Rosser, chief executive of University Hospitals Birmingham Trust, says: "By far the greatest concern is the availability of medicines, devices and clinical supplies."
He questions the reassurances from the government and says trusts still don't know which products are at risk.
Trusts, he says, could "quickly run out of vital medical supplies".
Dr Rosser makes the point that complex surgery on a patient does not begin until thorough checks are made on the right supplies and equipment being available.
But the checks applied in the operating theatres do not, he says, cover post-operative care, during which medicines might not be obtainable.
And there would, therefore, have to be widespread cancellations of non-urgent operations.
The Birmingham memo has emerged days after news of a discussion about a no-deal Brexit at a board meeting of University College London Hospitals Trust was revealed in the Evening Standard.
Close to panic
At this meeting, the chief executive, Prof Marcel Levi, told colleagues the tone from government and NHS officials had changed completely in recent weeks.
And words of reassurance had been replaced by "almost daily communications which are very close to panic".
Meanwhile, it has also emerged that separate papers, for the London Ambulance Service board, include a reference to preparing for "potential disruption following the UK's exit from the EU".
And this includes stockpiling fuel and tyres and "discussions with the military… to establish support if required in the event of political unrest".
Ministers and NHS leaders, meanwhile, say they already have robust contingency plans for a difficult no-deal Brexit scenario:
And NHS officials say they have completed an exhaustive analysis of drugs that might be affected by supply disruption.
A Department of Health and Social Care official said: "We are working closely with the NHS, industry and the supply chain to make detailed plans to ensure continued access to healthcare, medical devices and clinical supplies in the event of no deal."
But clearly hospital managers are not totally convinced that national level contingency planning as currently described is sufficient.
The deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery, said: "Trusts are following advice from government closely - but at this stage, they urgently need more clarity.
"A disorderly Brexit could pose a risk to the supply of medicines and equipment.
"There would also be implications for staffing across vital health and care roles."
Ministers have a tricky balance to find.
Patients need reassuring that stockpiles are in place to ensure their medication will be obtainable.
But hospital managers have to be helped to cover every eventuality that might threaten patient safety.
As long as no deal is agreed and 29 March draws closer, this balancing act will become harder to achieve.
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An outdoor ski village in Sheffield has been struck by a second fire, days after the main building burnt down. | South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue said it received a call at about 05.15 BST after a wooden hut which controlled the ski lift at the top of the Sheffield Ski Village slope was alight.
The service said it believed the blaze had been started deliberately.
On Sunday the main building was destroyed after a fire, which is currently being investigated.
In March 2011 the adventure playground at the village was destroyed after a suspected arson attack.
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Welsh Lib Dems would cut the basic rate of income tax to help "ordinary workers" once the power passes to Wales, its leader has said. | Kirsty Williams promised a costed plan to cut the 20% starting rate to 19%.
She said the Lib Dems had cut taxes for low and middle-income earners during the UK coalition government.
She denounced the Welsh Tories for promising to prioritise tax cuts for higher earners, and expected Labour and Plaid Cymru to defend the status quo.
During his Autumn Statement last Wednesday, Chancellor George Osborne said control of some of the income tax levied in Wales could be devolved without a referendum.
The sharing of tax powers between ministers in Cardiff and London would mean the Welsh government controlling £3bn of taxes a year by 2020.
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A statue of Captain Mainwaring from the BBC series Dad's Army has been unveiled in the Norfolk town where many of the classic sitcom's scenes were filmed. | The life-size bronze cast of the character, played by Arthur Lowe, is seated on a bench by the Old Anchor Hotel in Thetford.
Bill Pertwee, who played Warden Hodges in the series, was among those who returned to the town for the unveiling.
Others cast members and writers are in Norfolk on Sunday for a Dad's Army Day.
Many of them stayed at the Old Anchor Hotel during the filming of the series in the 1960s and 1970s.
The statue was funded by the Friends of Dad's Army Museum, also based in Thetford.
The sitcom, about the Home Guard during World War II, was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft and first ran between 1968 and 1977.
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A teenager has been rescued from the Calf of Man after suffering chest pains during a family visit to the island. | The 17-year-old, who had recently undergone heart surgery, was taken by lifeboat from the island's south harbour at about 23:00 BST on Thursday.
A spokesman for the RNLI volunteer group said the crew had carried out a "perfect rescue" .
The boy was taken to Noble's Hospital on the Isle of Man for precautionary checks.
In severe weather the remote Calf of Man can be cut off for weeks, with supplies delivered by boat.
It is populated by two wardens who receive basic accommodation in a small farmhouse for nine months of the year.
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Bargain-hunters have been up since dawn, giving a warm welcome back to bric-a-brac sellers at their nearest car boot sale. How does a post-lockdown rummage work and what have people made of the changes? | By Zoe Applegate & Orla MooreBBC News
For car boot aficionados, nothing quite compares to the thrill of finding a bargain amongst the piles of unwanted goods.
Mother-of-three Kelly Mallett is pleased with her haul - boxing gloves and pads for her five-year-old for £8, parasol lights and a pot plant for a pound, plus two placemats for 50p each.
"That's the joy of a car boot - the random stuff. You won't get these placemats for that price in a shop. It's the little things. I even got a pair of flippers for free. I don't even need flippers."
Mrs Mallett is one of more than 800 punters on the lookout for a good deal at Arminghall car boot sale. The 15-acres of farmland outside Norwich has been home to this particular rummage sale twice a week for more than 30 years and is one of the biggest in the region.
To get the event back up and running post-lockdown, landowner and organiser Mark Sadd has put in a one-way system for buyers, with each stall two metres apart. Sellers arrive to set up two hours before buyers and they have moved to contactless payment.
An overflow car park allows numbers to be controlled and when it gets busy, a one-in one-out operation unfolds.
"It's like a miniature version of passport control at the airport," joked Mr Sadd, who was at the site from 04:00 BST.
He said that so far, the feedback had been positive and he hopes the car boot will become busier as time goes on.
"As soon as the government said we could restart, there was a lot of soul-searching on how we'd do it. We didn't know where we were going with it until we came down and started putting barriers up to see what it looked like.
"Because of the size of the site, you are reliant on people using their own common sense."
The farm has been in Mr Sadd's family since 1985 and the car boot has been running since 1987. It's been a full family affair since 2010, with Mr Sadd's sister Charlotte running the catering, his brother-in-law Vernon Ellis co-organising, and his wife Maria collecting stall fees.
"The new way of working, buyers and sellers love it," he said. "It works like a dream. We can get 1,000 to 1,200 people at a time.
"Separating the start time for sellers and buyers has really worked, it gives people peace of mind."
The very nature of a car boot sale - outside, with plenty of space - lends itself quite nicely to adhering to social distancing rules. But what's it like for those behind the tables hoping to make a decent day of sales?
Megan Briggs, from Hull, and Fiona Smith from Derby, have recently completed their studies at the University of East Anglia. The contents of their house are up for grabs and the proceeds will go towards a year working in Australia.
"We're flogging everything and going minimal," Megan said. "Anything we can't take with us will be better off in someone else's home."
However, the boxes of DVDs are not the top sellers they imagined.
"At the last car boot we made £10 - but entry was £8 so we only made two quid," Fiona added.
Stallholder Victoria Pyne has travelled from Thetford to set up her stall. The 24-year-old chef has been on furlough for three months and will return to work next week.
"During lockdown I organised everything and decided to sell off the things I didn't need," she said.
"Being outside is better than inside, there's much more room and you don't have to have much contact with the customers. I only let them touch things if they intend to buy them.
"It's a good thing to get rid of stuff for money rather than take it to landfill. I'll take the rest to a charity shop."
Damian Penk, a teacher from Stoke-on-Trent, is on holiday in Hemsby, Norfolk, but has come to Arminghall to indulge in his love of car boot sales.
"There's always that little bit of trepidation after lockdown with so many people but it seems pretty safe," said the 44-year-old.
"We're OK using cash, we carry hand gel everywhere, and we are wary of how close we are to people.
"My son's getting in on the [car boot] act. He does show-and-tell with the things he buys. Maybe he'll start his own channel with bargains he finds out there for kids."
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Retired nurse and mother-of-four Gillian Belden, 65, has been running a stall for more than 30 years, but usually pitches up at a neighbouring car boot which has yet to reopen.
"This is like pocket money," she said. "Lockdown didn't bother me, I wasn't nervous about returning. When you're an ex-nurse you have to be aware anyway, wash your hands and that.
"But it's nice to get out and about and see people, especially when you're retired."
Jason Berry's stall is full of items that have been "sat around collecting dust... it's a bit of a house clearance, a chance to make a bit of space".
His children, who are five and eight, are sitting in the car watching him sell some of their old toys.
"It's good to get the kids involved," he said. "It's a good learning tool for commerce. If they want things, sell old stuff, collect the money and buy something else.
"But there's no rhyme or reason to what will sell. It's whoever rocks up on the day."
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Further cuts would "threaten" the National Library of Wales' ability to deliver services, its new president has claimed. | Rhodri Glyn Thomas called on the next government of Wales to protect the institution and said politicians should "acknowledge that the library fulfils a unique role, which is irreplaceable".
The Aberystwyth facility had coped with nearly a decade of cuts, he said.
He stressed it now needed a new strategy and budget from government.
"The National Library plays a very important role in the life of the nation and must be given the resources to fulfil its responsibilities," he added.
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From meringue makers to manufacturing businesses, firms in Telford export a higher proportion of their wares to the EU than their counterparts in any other town or city in the UK. How do bosses feel as Britain heads towards a decision on a deal - or no deal? | By Sophie MaddenBBC News, West Midlands
Leanne and Brian Crowther have come a long way since the days of running their cake and bakery business in their garden shed, separating eggs by hand for treats destined for a Shropshire market stall.
Now Flower and White, known for its gourmet meringues, exports to 12 countries, many in the EU, and employs 35 staff at its headquarters in Telford - producing a million meringues a day.
But the global success has meant the firm has endured years of uncertainty over whether the government will strike a Brexit deal - and that was before trade was hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
"We have seen export business fall by 85%, so I think a lot of it is to do with Covid, but also everyone is now just sitting tight. Some customers have been brave enough to order but the orders have been smaller than we expect," said Mrs Crowther.
Sales to Switzerland, Denmark and Germany continued to do well, she added, but orders to other countries have dried up amid the uncertainty caused by the pandemic and a looming Brexit date.
"It is really tricky to plan. We don't have the time, in the amount of time that is left, to be organised enough to deal with a no deal. As usual, we just have to get on with it."
It is a feeling shared by many business owners in Telford. Figures from the Centre for Cities think tank have shown it to be the UK town with the largest share of its exports going to the EU, about 70%. All eyes, then, are on the government to sign a deal by by 15 October.
"There will be no winners from a failure to secure a trade deal with the EU as it is the most important customer for every city and large town in Britain," Centre for Cities' Director of Policy and Research Paul Swinney said.
"For Telford, the failure to sign a comprehensive trade deal covering both goods and services would be very damaging to the local economy."
The Ironbridge Gorge, within Telford, is renowned as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution as it was where Abraham Darby discovered a more effective method of smelting iron, which transformed the way the metal was used and led the way for an industrialised world.
Tim Luft, from the Telford Business Board, said this tradition of manufacturing was part of why exports in Telford were so high.
"Telford has a lot of manufacturing - a lot of companies working in the supply chain of automotive and aerospace - and in that supply chain a lot of those link into Europe.
"So I absolutely imagine why Telford is such an important town and why companies need to be aware of Brexit for when they are looking to supply goods into Europe or really bring services back into the UK," he said.
One such manufacturer is Hitherbest, which fabricates sheet metal parts for retail, office, hospitality, rail, museum and education sectors.
It is owned by Dr Nicky Evans, whose father Chris set up the business in 1985. She said an ethos of "prioritising steady long-term growth" meant her company had so far survived 2020 while some others could not.
"In so far as Brexit goes, the primary concern for us is our supply chain, but we have done some due diligence there and are relatively confident we should be able to continue in the event of a no-deal Brexit," she said.
The company has seen a "push" by companies based in the UK that have previously sourced parts from Europe but were now looking for ways to purchase what they needed domestically, to avoid any supply chain problems once Brexit has taken place, Dr Evans added.
"I think we're firmly in wait and see mode, we are confident if there is a shock, we will be able to absorb it and we'll have a look, sort-of, middle of next year and see where we are," she said.
"From what I've seen, the manufacturing sector in the West Midlands is resilient, agile and innovative. It may be a rocky road at times, but I'm optimistic for the future."
The British Chambers of Commerce claimed only half of UK firms that traded internationally had considered the impact of Brexit on their business ahead of the end of the Brexit transition period on 1 January 2021.
Jonathan Ritson runs Dyson Ritson Consulting, a Telford-based business consultancy firm, and has been working with companies to help them prepare for leaving the EU.
He said Telford was a "diverse economic community".
"My understanding of things as they are is that the bigger businesses, the ones with more economic clout, the ones that have already got international bases, are going to be better prepared than the small to medium businesses," he said.
"Businesses have just been focusing on surviving during the pandemic and are only just now, if at all, being able to turn their attention to issue of Brexit."
That has been the case for Derek Tallent, director of sound and lighting company Press Red Rentals, who said business had been "pretty tough" because of the shutting of the exhibition industry this year. He said he was not sure what the future would hold.
"Having gone through the 'we hate Brexit, we don't want it to happen' to 'actually it's happened and we're coming towards the end of the transition period', you just have to bite the bullet and get on with it," he said.
"I would like us to stay in the single market and the customs union but that's obviously not going to happen - but it would be nice for them to get a good trade deal."
The re-emergence of exhibitions in Europe was a good sign, he said, provided a deal - or no deal - allowed the firm to be involved.
"The worst thing will be if we can't work. If we can't get permits for trucks, if we can't get work visas," he said.
Flower and White has already begun to manage the issues posed by leaving the EU, signing a three-year deal with a US importer and has been focusing on any positive opportunities that could come from the next year.
Leanne Crowther said while uncertainty was a pain, she could not change it and it would do no good to sit around worrying about what was coming.
"I believe small businesses will respond the best to this situation, because you have to - you are used to grasping, but that doesn't make it desirable by any stretch of the imagination," she said.
"We have to dig our heels in and get on with it, what else can we do? We can't lie down."
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Proponents of 5G say it will offer ultra-fast connections, speedier data downloads, and be able to handle millions more connections than 4G mobile networks can cope with today. One use for 5G is self-driving cars, but will they really need it? | By Mary-Ann RussonBusiness reporter
The telecoms industry envisions autonomous cars equipped with hundreds of sensors collecting and receiving information all at once over a network.
It calls this concept "Vehicle-to-everything" (V2X).
To achieve this, the car needs to detect blind spots and avoid collisions with people, animals or other vehicles on the road.
As the car drives, its sensors will pick up information about:
Once the information is gathered, either an on-board computer will make an instant decision, or the data could be sent into the cloud to be processed, and then a decision would be sent back to the vehicle.
Smarter than humans
Imagine a scenario where Car A is travelling down a highway at 80mph. Suddenly, Car B pulls out in front of Car A.
To avoid an accident, the sensors on both cars would need to talk to each other. As a result, Car A would brake, and Car B would speed up, in order to avoid a collision.
"We need to look at how long it takes for the message to be transmitted between sensors and then get to the computer in each car, and then how long it takes for the computer to make a decision, and all of this has to be in less time than a human would take to make a decision - 2 milliseconds," Jane Rygaard, of Finnish tech firm Nokia, tells the BBC.
"We need a network supporting this, and 5G is that network."
UK national mapping agency Ordnance Survey agrees: "When you switch a light on, it turns on immediately. That's what you need with autonomous cars - if something happens, the car needs to stop immediately. That's why the high frequency 5G signals are required."
But it's not just about the car itself - technology firm Ericsson says that in the event of a major disaster, or severe congestion around a football stadium, authorities could send instant alerts to autonomous cars, warning them to use alternative routes instead.
Ericsson has conducted tests in Stockholm, Sweden with car manufacturer Volvo and truck maker Scania, using a counter-terrorism scenario whereby police were able to disable a hijacked connected truck or prevent it from entering certain geo-fenced locations.
Levels of automation
US engineering organisation SAE International has set out six categories of automation for cars:
Research firm Gartner expects Level Three and Level Four autonomous vehicles to begin appearing in late 2018 in very small numbers, and by 2025, it expects that there will be more than 600,000 autonomous vehicles on the roads worldwide.
Millimetre wave antennas
Ordnance Survey says autonomous vehicles are possible with 5G, but initially, they will only be able to run in a well-mapped geographic area, such as a densely populated city.
The government agency is building a detailed 3D map of the UK that visualises all permanent fixtures like buildings, street signs and bridges, as well as temporary objects like Christmas decorations, cranes and hanging flower baskets - all of which could affect the strength of the 5G signal a car receives as it drives by.
In order for autonomous cars to simultaneously connect to the mobile network, existing 4G mobile antennas on buildings will not be enough - there will need to be lots of smaller millimetre wave antennas, located 200-300m apart from each other.
"For every one mobile base station we have today, you'll probably need 60 or 70 millimetre wave transmitters and receivers," explains Richard Woodling, a managing consultant with the Ordnance Survey.
It is unlikely that fully-autonomous cars will be possible for a long time to come, but Ford is hoping to launch a Level Four car in 2021.
To this end, Ford is mapping the roads and environment in Miami.
It has developed simulation software to try to predict all possible situations that a car might find itself in, so that it can eliminate unsafe outcomes.
But Mr Woodling is sceptical that an autonomous car in a city will be ready so soon.
"I don't see it happening in my lifetime," he says. "There's no way you could put that in London and say we're ready for everyone to have an autonomous vehicle - we're a long way away from that."
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5G or Wi-Fi?
Some people in the industry argue that self-driving cars don't need 5G.
Since the automobile industry is already making connected cars today that use 4G to access weather and road updates, 5G critics say it can continue to use 4G, together with Wi-Fi protocols.
"Self-driving cars have to be completely safe and reliable without mobile coverage, and if this is possible, then why do they need mobile coverage at all?" says Prof William Webb, a consultant and author of the book The 5G Myth: When vision decoupled from reality.
"I agree car-to-car communications would be sensible and enhance safety, but that communication is available now within Wi-Fi protocols or 4G.
"For car-to-car communications you don't need a network - the cars connect directly to each other."
Enrico Salvatori, president of Qualcomm Europe, whose chipsets are already being used by 33 automobile makers worldwide, strongly disagrees with Prof Webb.
"Wi-Fi can address short-range communications, but V2X includes vehicle to the network, to the city, to the cloud, so you need to have a standard that is including all the possible applications end-to-end," he tells the BBC.
"It needs to be able to connect to any distance, near or far."
Ford says that it sits somewhere in the middle of these two sides of the argument.
"We were previously proponents of the Wi-Fi protocol because it was the only technology available at the time," explains Ford's executive director for connected vehicle platform and product Don Butler.
"We do believe that a mobile approach to vehicle-to-vehicle communications is a better alternative than Wi-Fi."
Research firm Gartner agrees 5G will have an impact on self-driving cars, but there's a catch.
"5G will indeed be essential to the development and use of autonomous vehicles, with two important caveats - the network must truly be 5G, and the vehicle must truly be autonomous," Gartner analyst Will Hahn.
"Neither of these appear to be likely in the near term."
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Liat Malka longed to have children but hadn't yet met the right person with whom to start a family. Then she became involved in an unusual plan - to help fulfil a stranger's dying wish of fathering a child. | By Sarah McDermottBBC World Service
In 2013, Liat Malka was a single, 35-year-old kindergarten teacher living in southern Israel, when she felt the urgency of her biological clock ticking.
"I was worrying about time passing and maybe missing out on motherhood," Liat says. "So I went to the doctor and did some fertility tests."
When the results came back, they suggested that the number of eggs Liat had left was low. The doctor warned that if she waited for the right person to come along she might not ever become a mother.
"So right away I decided that I would do anything I could to have a baby as soon as possible," Liat says.
When Liat arrived home, she immediately went online to explore her options.
"I really wanted my child to know their father and that's not possible with a sperm donor," she says.
Find out more
Liat Malka and Julia Pozniansky spoke to Outlook on the BBC World Service
Listen again here
But then Liat stumbled across an interview on YouTube that had been broadcast on TV news in 2009. In it, a couple called Vlad and Julia Pozniansky explained that they were trying to obtain legal permission to have a child using sperm left by their son, who had died the previous year. They had already found a woman to be the mother of their son's child.
Liat wondered if a similar arrangement might also be a good option for her: "Because this way the child can know who their father was, know their history and have grandparents and family," she says.
She decided to contact the couple's lawyer to ask for more details - and was surprised to learn that although four years had passed since the interview had been recorded, Vlad and Julia still didn't have a grandchild and the woman selected to be the mother was no longer on board.
Liat arranged to meet the Poznianskys and on the day of the meeting the couple brought with them an album filled with photographs of their beloved son, Baruch.
More than a decade after his death, Julia still finds it almost unbearable to talk about her "brilliant, outstanding" son.
At 23, while studying ecology at the Technion, a renowned university in Haifa, Baruch noticed a wound in his mouth that wouldn't stop bleeding. It was later diagnosed as cancer.
Because chemotherapy can slow down or stop sperm production, some of his sperm was banked and frozen before he began treatment. He lost his hair and eventually doctors had to partially remove his tongue, leaving him unable to speak - but not before he made a wish.
"He said that if he died he wanted us to find an appropriate woman and use his sperm to have a child," Julia says.
Baruch died on 7 November 2008 at the age of 25. He was single and childless.
Almost immediately Julia set to work trying to fulfil her deceased son's wish.
Before his death he had created a biological will with the lawyer, Irit Rosenblum. Rosenblum has spearheaded the posthumous reproduction cause in Israel and Baruch was the first person in the world to create such a will, which made his biological legacy legally binding - in this case, the banking of his sperm for the purpose of fathering a child.
Julia's task was not only to find a woman to be the child's mother, but also to get permission from an Israeli court to gain access to the sperm.
With Irit Rosenblum's help, Vlad and Julia eventually found an Israeli woman of Russian origin who they thought could be a mother to their grandchild. They went to court to obtain permission to use Baruch's sperm and won their case, but within a week or two the woman had met a new partner and withdrawn from their agreement.
"Another young woman came to us, a very nice one," Julia says. The woman's name was added to the court verdict, instead of the first woman, and she began the IVF process. But after seven rounds the woman had failed to conceive, leaving the finite supply of Baruch's sperm depleted.
"I was ready not to live any more. But I decided that if I was going to live I had to return some happiness to my life, and some love," she says.
"I wanted my son to continue living - somewhere deep in my heart I wanted to return him physically - I thought maybe a boy would be born who would look like Baruch."
Uncertain whether she'd ever be able to fulfil Baruch's dying wish, and longing for a baby in her life, at 55 Julia started trying with Vlad for another child, using IVF and a donor egg.
When their son was born, Julia says it felt like breathing fresh air again.
Julia clearly remembers the day that she and her husband first met Liat in early 2013.
"She was a beautiful young woman. Black hair, red coat, and I loved her from the very beginning," Julia says. "I saw that she was a good person."
She showed Liat the album of photos of Baruch that she'd brought with her and Liat says she felt an immediate connection to him.
"Just looking at the pictures I already knew who this person was - such good eyes, the biggest smile you can ever imagine, surrounded with friends and very handsome," she says.
"And it looked like he was really connected to his parents, because in every picture they are holding hands and hugging. I could see the love and the happiness in his eyes - there was no doubt he was a great person."
As Julia showed Liat the photos, she talked about how much Baruch had loved life, how smart he was, and how sociable, how he'd loved cooking and what great friends he'd had.
In that moment Liat decided that she wanted Baruch, a man she had never met and who had died five years previously, to be the father of her child.
Liat, Vlad and Julia signed contracts which gave Liat ownership of the sperm so that nobody else could use it subsequently, and the contract also formalised arrangements for Vlad and Julia to visit.
"To protect our rights to see the child," Julia explains. "We were doing it not only to fulfil Baruch's will, but also to have a dear, beloved grandchild."
No money changed hands - something that was very important to Vlad and Julia, in order to prevent attracting the wrong type of person.
Julia and Liat then had to meet a social worker who questioned them about what conflicts they anticipated in their relationship and even about what would happen if they quarrelled over what the child would be named. Julia felt as though the whole judicial system was playing God, deciding if a human being would live or not, and she told the social worker as much.
"And this nice woman felt really uncomfortable with my answer," she says.
Liat then began fertility treatment, but her first round of IVF was unsuccessful.
"There was just one egg," Liat says. "That was a shock - I expected more - and then it didn't develop to be an embryo."
Liat tried to remain hopeful, but despite being given an increased dose of the medication which encourages the ovaries to produce more eggs, on the second attempt again there was only one egg.
"They fertilised it and I had to wait for a day and then call to find out if it was developing into an embryo," Liat says.
This time there was good news.
"I thought, 'Wow, maybe this is it?'"
The fertilised egg was transferred into Liat's womb. For a week she rested, waited and hoped, then took a pregnancy test and called the hospital for the results.
"They were yelling like, 'Yeah, you're pregnant!'" Liat says.
Liat shared the exciting news first with her sister and then with Julia. Then, over the following few days, the seriousness of her situation began to sink in.
"I was in shock - I didn't think it was going to happen," Liat admits. "So when it did I just couldn't believe it. I didn't even know Vlad and Julia that much - I'd only met them two or maybe three times."
Liat was worried about how her own family would get along with Baruch's family - her parents had come to Israel from Morocco, while Vlad and Julia come from Russia. The two families are culturally very different, she says.
At this point she had not even told her own mother about meeting Vlad and Julia and the plan to become a mother to their dead son's child.
"I didn't want the burden of everyone's opinions, especially my mum's, so I had kept it a secret," she says. "But when I called her to say I was pregnant she was happy - at least I was having a child!"
Liat's pregnancy progressed but her doubts didn't diminish. She was very stressed and couldn't cope with trying to forge a relationship with Vlad and Julia while trying to grow a baby. At night she would dream about how her child might look.
Julia, too, was worried. She wanted to be closer to Liat, but had to respect Liat's wishes and keep her distance.
"I spoke to one of my relatives, a very wise woman, and she said, 'Let her have her child and afterwards everything will be OK,'" Julia says.
When Liat went into labour she didn't feel comfortable about calling Julia to share the news, and told her own mother not to come to the hospital that evening since a doctor had advised her it was unlikely the baby would arrive before morning.
"But at midnight she had a feeling, took a taxi and arrived at the hospital at the last minute," Liat says. "I was very happy that she came. She was in so much shock that she couldn't even speak. My two sisters were with me too, and I have a sister in the US who was on Skype and we put her on the shelf. It was a really amazing experience."
Shira was born on 1 December 2015, more than seven years after her father had died.
"She was exactly like she was in the dream," Liat says. "She was so beautiful, I really couldn't believe it."
Liat called Vlad and Julia to tell them the news.
"I felt that my heart started to beat again for the first time after my terrible loss," Julia says.
The photos of Baruch that Julia brought when she first met Liat are now kept at Liat and Shira's apartment in Ashkelon, and they often look at them together, talking about the man in the photos who is smiling back at them. Liat points out Baruch's blue eyes, just like Shira's.
"One day she told me, 'Maybe soon he will knock at the door and come to see us,'" Liat says. "So I said, 'No, he won't come.'"
Shira is now three. Her mother says she does sometimes worry about Shira not having a father.
"But today you have so many kinds of families," Liat says, "This is just another one. Shira knows that she does not have a father, but she's very loved and she's very happy."
And having fulfilled her dying son's last wish, Julia has no doubts about what she has done, and feels certain that Baruch would love his daughter too.
"She's beautiful, she's smart, she's happy, she's everything you could want from a child," Julia says. "She's perfect, she's really perfect."
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I met my boyfriend 12 years after giving birth to his child
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Many thousands of Somalis have fled famine and warfare at home, braving a treacherous journey across the continent to reach South Africa but some feel their new lives in Africa's richest country are little better than the misery they left behind. | By Pumza FihlaniBBC News, Port Elizabeth
"If we wanted to fight we would have stayed in our land. We didn't come here to die we came here to take care of our families," says Qorane Haji, 29, whose shop was looted and burnt down in recent months.
Mr Haji has been living in South Africa for over five years. He owns a shop in Motherwell, a township in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape Province.
More than 300 shops are owned by Somalis in the area, he says.
Most of the Somali population in South Africa lives in the Eastern and Western Cape provinces.
But business has not been easy.
Poverty and unemployment are high in South Africa - many people in the poor communities believe that foreigners are "stealing their jobs".
Somali-owned shops have been looted or burned down as a result.
In 2008, South Africa saw a wave of xenophobic violence which shocked the nation and shook up the world's view of the "rainbow nation".
Some foreigners were necklaced - set alight with petrol doused tyres around their necks - and their shops were burned down.
Mostly Somalis, Zimbabweans and Mozambicans were targeted during the violence which left more than 100,000 foreigners displaced and at least 60 people dead.
The government's response to the crisis was to increase police presence in affected areas and to send its officials to address disgruntled communities.
But after a while the police patrols stopped and with them, the visits by officials.
Those behind the attacks were never brought to justice - after some months it was as though the attacks had never happened.
No brotherly love
"When they came in 2008 my brother and I were sleeping inside the shop, he was in another room. A group of men came in, shot him and burned the shop down - I was lucky to escape," Mr Haji recalls.
It took him more than six months to rebuild the store then but the attacks have now resumed.
"Xenophobia is back," he says.
A few months ago - some men burned down his shop again. He says the ordeal made him feel "unsafe and unwanted".
His brother Anwar Haji, 28, agrees.
"No-one can save us, we came to South Africa to be safe but are being killed just because we are foreigners," he says.
Many Somalis own spaza shops - makeshift kiosks usually run from private houses or a shack of corrugated iron.
The authorities have dismissed reports of xenophobia, saying the attacks are due to business rivalry.
This has done little to allay the fears of foreigners, who say they are victimised daily by locals who call them "makwerekwere", a derogatory term used for foreigners.
The Department of Home Affairs, in charge of registering refugees and asylum seekers says there are more than 32,000 documented Somalis living in South Africa.
But some say this is an underestimate because many more have come into the country illegally.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says Somali nationals are the second largest group of asylum seekers in South Africa - after Zimbabweans.
'Unfair competition'
The latest influx of Somalis has sparked fears that relations between Somali and local shop-owners could worsen, says Abdi Habarwa, 45 a spokesperson for the Somali community in the Eastern Cape.
But Daluxolo Mpengu, 51, who heads the Nelson Mandela Spaza Forum of South Africa (NMSFSA), a new association established by South African businesses owners in and around Port Elizabeth, insists that foreigners are exploiting their market.
"We have found that some foreigners own more than one shop in the same area which is bad competition for us," Mr Mpengu told the BBC.
He says they don't condone xenophobia, but says foreigners need to abide by certain rules if that want to continue business in the townships or have their shops closed.
NMSFSA says foreigners are not allowed to open a shop within 500 metres of an existing business selling the same wares.
This rule will later extend to local shop owners, the association says.
Many residents, however, don't want the Somalis to be forced to close their shops and are happy with the low prices and wide variety of goods they stock.
Mr Habarwa also owns a shop in Motherwell and hopes the new guidelines will help to ease tensions.
He says he uses some of the money he makes to support his relatives living in the world's largest refugee camp in north-eastern Kenya.
"I am not the only one depending on the money the shops makes. This shop is helping me to give my family in Dadaab a better life," says Mr Habarwa.
He fears they could suffer if the continued attacks mean he has to close down his shop.
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This exhibition at The Queen's Gallery in Buckingham Palace starts with a huge painting of a huge man: the aptly-named Peter the Great of Russia, the first Tsar to leave his country in over 100 years. | Will GompertzArts editor@WillGompertzBBCon Twitter
The catalogue says it presents us with "a tall, virile, handsome warrior".
The diplomat Prince Boris Kurakin (1676-1727) was similarly enamoured with the artwork. He said: "The famed portrait of His Czarish Majesty standing in all his imperial armour and so attractive, that I have nowhere seen its equal."
I do not share their view.
Godfrey Kneller's very grand and historically significant picture depicts a bug-eyed, 6ft 7in, fey-looking 26-year-old who seems to be as much at home in his suit of armour as Ann Widdecombe was on Strictly Come Dancing.
The painting was Peter's gift to the English king, William III, to mark his three-month-long fact-finding visit to England in 1698. The ambitious young ruler was keen to build a Russian navy from scratch to match those of the great European powers.
So he rented a house in Deptford from the writer and diarist John Evelyn, a chum of Samuel Pepys, and set about learning all there was to know about shipbuilding at the local dockyard, while hoovering up tips on navigation from the nearby Royal Observatory at Greenwich.
The trip was a tremendous success for Peter, who, by the end of his reign, had 28,000 men serving 49 ships and around 800 smaller boats.
It wasn't so good for John Evelyn, though. His majestic tenant had a rock star's approach to renting: paintings were used for target practice, wheelbarrows as go-karts, and the furniture - that which remained - was left in more pieces than a jigsaw of St Petersburg.
William III was happy to overlook the wayward behaviour of his Russian opposite number, seeing the empire-building emperor as an important strategic ally and valued trading partner. And so began a diplomatic relationship between the two monarchies that would span centuries, marriages, wars and the exchanges of many gifts and paintings.
On the whole, it is the gifts and subsequent purchases of Russian objects made by the British Royal Family that are the stars of this show.
The paintings are a mixed bag - some good, some bad, none great. Quite unlike the cabinets full of pieces by the Russian jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé, which are exquisite.
His pair of late 19th Century decanters topped off with silver dolphins with mouths formed into spouts are wonderful. As is the gold and blue moire guilloche enamel cigarette case, which is decorated with a diamond-set snake biting its tail, a symbol of everlasting love (it was given to King Edward VII by his mistress, Alice Keppel).
And then there are the three Imperial Fabergé Eggs, the most striking of which is the Mosaic Egg and Surprise. The lattice-like exterior is not only the most beautiful piece of craftsmanship, but is also a profoundly sad vessel encapsulating a tragic event.
Inside the egg, the "surprise" is an enamel portrait of five children in profile, on the reverse of which is a basket of flowers and an inscription of each of their names. Tsar Nicholas II commissioned it for his wife Alexandra - Queen Victoria's granddaughter - as an Easter present. The children it depicts are theirs.
It was made in the spring of 1914 shortly before Russia became embroiled in World War One. Nicholas was not a great leader, nor a popular figure. Millions of Russian soldiers died, leading to revolution and his forced abdication in 1917. The provisional government confiscated the Mosaic Egg and Surprise.
The Tsar asked the British Royal Family to rescue him - after all, the families went a long way back, as this exhibition demonstrates.
King George V declined.
On 17 July 1918, Tsar Nicholas, his wife and all five children were executed by Bolshevik guards.
Fifteen years later, George V purchased the Mosaic Egg and Surprise from Cameo Corner, London, for £250.
This is but one of the hundreds of historical events reflected in the objects and paintings in this rigorously researched exhibition.
It is a grand tale of international relations and inter-family arrangements, of cultural exchange and competing agendas. The major players line the walls in over-the-top gilt frames, while the objects that fill the exhibition spaces tell their stories.
There are instances when the object is not as interesting as the piece of history it represents, but that is not the case in the sideshow of Roger Fenton photographs of the Crimean War that is connected to the main exhibition, which serves as a reminder that all was not always rosy in the 300-year Anglo-Russian relationship.
Fenton's intelligently composed images of the soldiers and battlegrounds are as good as those produced on any subject since the birth of the medium. When you take into account the limitations of his equipment and the hostile environment in which he was using it, you quickly recognise that his photographs are remarkable.
Having been commissioned by the print publishers Thomas Agnew & Sons to take pictures of British and French soldiers as source material for a studio painting by Thomas Barker, Fenton set off for the Crimea in the spring of 1855 with a makeshift, horse-drawn photographic van and an assistant.
He organised group photographs, individual portraits and desolate landscapes strewn with the debris of war. The most famous photo is Valley of the Shadow of Death - a bleak and barren dirt track littered with cannonballs: an image of Armageddon.
It is a haunting picture of war without any blood or bodies.
His portrait of the unlucky Lord Balgonie, who stares out into the middle distance in wide-eyed confusion, is thought to be the first image taken of shellshock.
There are few occasions in the exhibition where a Fenton photograph is hung beside a picture an artist has produced from it - and the comparison is illuminating. It brings home Fenton's genius for finding the truth in his subject, and the utter hopelessness of the artist attempting to do the same.
When he returned home, his Crimea photographs were much admired by Queen Victoria and her tech-savvy husband Prince Albert, who had previously commissioned the photographer to take portraits of the Royal Family.
Being sensible people, they bought the lot.
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Killing Eve season two picks up where season one ended, which is to say… badly. After seven faultless episodes, the grand finale of the best TV series of 2018 was almost as underwhelming as Eve Polastri's marriage. | Will GompertzArts editor@WillGompertzBBCon Twitter
All the delicious ingredients of the previous shows were still there (excellent acting, writing, soundtrack, and directing), but someone tweaked the recipe and served up a bit of dog's dinner with a distinctly hammy whiff.
The smell lingers well into the opening episode of the new series, which is a little too knowing and, on occasion, close to becoming a pastiche of itself.
Villanelle (Jodie Comer) is too predictable, Eve (Sandra Oh) is too wrung out, and Niko her husband, too needy. Thankfully, Fiona Shaw shows the way with understated class and intelligence, as Eve's boss Carolyn.
The action begins 30 seconds after the last season finished.
M16 agent Eve is standing on the staircase of assassin Villanelle's Parisian apartment. She is holding the bloody knife with which she stabbed the ruthless Russian psycho-killer, who has played her party trick and disappeared into thin air.
There's a lot of hyperventilating and many a furrowed brow. That's on screen, and maybe off it as well in the writers' room.
The daunting task facing Emerald Fennell and her scriptwriting collaborators was how to pick up where Phoebe Waller-Bridge left off and somehow re-juice a dried up drama.
The mutual obsession between Eve and Villanelle, which is the key dramatic device driving the story, had climaxed at the end of season one in a disappointingly limp stand-off followed by a dull heart-to-heart and a half-baked fight.
It put the show into intensive care, which is where Villanelle soon fetches up while Eve heads back to London to try to fix her marriage and find a new job.
The quality of the acting, our investment in the characters, and some quickly laid new plotlines are enough to entice you to watch the second 40-minute episode.
At which point Killing Eve returns gloriously to form, with a funny, clever script that starts to rebuild the sexual tension between agent and assassin. The two remain infatuated with each other but now there is some added spice.
Villanelle has competition for Eve's attentions and it ain't coming from Niko. That's the hook, not the mysterious baddies The Twelve, who any one of the protagonists could belong to for all we know - or care. Needless to say, Villanelle still murders people with the regularity and sensitivity of an automated phone call asking if you've been in a car crash, but the killings are a side show.
The real drama is in the relationships between the players: Carolyn and her son Kenny (Sean Delaney). Eve and Niko. Villanelle and her handlers. And, of course, between Eve and Villanelle.
Will they get it together? Will one kill the other? Can a cold-blooded murderer become a vulnerable, compassionate human being?
In other words, the same issues that kept us on tenterhooks in season one.
It fell short.
Will season two be better and succeed in delivering its punchline? You can find out later on Saturday when the entire series drops on the BBC iPlayer.
I've seen the first four and my hopes are high. Killing Eve is top quality television. And not just from a British standpoint, it ranks with the very best shows coming out of Hollywood. It's no surprise the head of Netflix has cited it as the one title he truly covets.
That it is superbly made is a given in these golden days of box office box sets.
But that's not what makes it stand out; it is not the reason that Killing Eve will sit alongside Friends and Breaking Bad as an all-time TV classic. It is the balance it strikes between bone-dry humour reminiscent of the best of early James Bond, and an exploration of identity, sexuality, and isolation in the second decade of the 21st Century.
For this, much of the credit must go to Luke Jennings, the Observer's dance critic. For Villanelle is his creation. He originally self-published the story as a series of online novellas before it was picked up by a canny TV producer. Once it had been commissioned for telly Jennings had his work cut out to do his day job while collaborating with Waller-Bridge on the television scripts, "I felt like Stalin, planning murder all day and watching Swan Lake in the evening," he wrote in the Observer last year.
His background in ballet provides an interesting insight into his creation.
The juxtaposition between beauty and the beast is what makes Killing Eve so compelling. As does the not-always merry dance he takes us on. You could argue that Jennings has written the most brilliant, exquisitely choreographed, blood-soaked pas de deux.
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To all intents and purposes, Saudi Arabia and Israel are de facto allies in the struggle against Iran's rising influence in the region. It's a developing but highly sensitive relationship, but every so often there is a hint of what may be going on beneath the surface. | By Jonathan MarcusDefence and diplomatic correspondent
Last week Israel's Chief of Staff, General Gadi Eisenkot, said in an interview with UK-based Saudi newspaper Elaph, that Israel was ready to exchange intelligence with the Saudis in order to confront Iran.
"There are shared interests and as far as the Iranian axis is concerned we are in full accord with the Saudis," he said.
A few days later, speaking after a conference in Paris, a former Saudi justice minister, Dr Muhammad bin Abdul Karim Issa - a close associate of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman - told the Israeli newspaper Maariv that "no act of violence or terror that tries to justify itself by invoking the religion of Islam is justified anywhere, including in Israel".
This was rare public criticism from inside the Arab world of attacks against Israelis.
And just the other day a former senior Israeli military figure speaking in London told of two recent meetings with senior Saudi princes, both of whom said to him words to the effect that, "you are not our enemy any more".
Such signals are not sent by accident. They are carefully co-ordinated and intended to warn Iran of the developing relationship as well as to prepare Saudi society given the likelihood that such ties may become ever more apparent.
The Israelis - given the nature of their political culture - tend to speak rather more openly about the relationship than do the Saudis. We know little about its practical realities or its strategic content. But it is real and it is developing.
Threat from Iran
This is at one level "a coalition of circumstance". The destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq in 2003 by a US-led coalition removed a Sunni Arab strategic counterweight to Shia Iran.
The resulting Shia-dominated political leadership in the new Iraq has close ties to Tehran. It is no accident that Iraqi Shia militias have been active in the fighting in Syria supporting the government of Bashar al-Assad.
Iran's decision to back President Assad in the Syrian civil war, along with Russian air power and equipment, helped turn the tide in his favour. It opens up the possibility of an Iranian corridor stretching all the way from Tehran to the Mediterranean - something that many Sunnis see as a foreign, Persian intrusion into the heart of the Arab Middle East.
So the enmity between Iran and Saudi Arabia is both strategic and religious.
For the moment Iran and its allies and proxies, like the Shia militia group Hezbollah in Lebanon, appear to be winning. So a strengthening of the relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia makes sense to both countries.
Both insist that Iran should never be allowed to become a nuclear weapons state. Both are uneasy about aspects of the international agreement limiting Iran's nuclear activities. And both see an increasingly well-trained and well-equipped Hezbollah in Lebanon as a force for instability in the region.
Trump factor
But there is something more going on here as well. It is not just the problem of a rising Iran. Other crucial factors need to be considered too, notably the impact of the new Trump administration in the United States and the broader trajectory of the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring and the horrific war in Syria.
At first sight neither Saudi Arabia nor Israel should have any complaints about the new administration in Washington.
Mr Trump in visits to both countries seems to have embraced their strategic outlook and he too is deeply sceptical about the nuclear agreement with Iran.
He is lavishing Washington's allies in the Gulf with new arms sales of ever more sophisticated weaponry.
But empathy is one thing, practical strategy quite another. However welcome many of the president's words may be in Israel and Saudi Arabia, both governments know that US policy seems adrift in the region.
The US and its allies have been out-gunned and out-played in Syria by Russia and Iran.
For all the talk the US has not yet put forward a credible and coherent policy for containing Iranian influence.
No wonder the Saudi Crown Prince has decided that his country must be more active in its own interests. There is a sense in which both Israel and Saudi Arabia are adjusting to a waning of US influence in the region and the return of old actors like Russia.
Israeli fears
And there is something more fundamental too. Prince Mohammed is embarking on a dual strategy of trying to confront Iranian influence while also re-shaping and modernising the kingdom.
The latter is in many ways a response to the upheavals of the Arab Spring and the threat of Islamist violence.
Prince Mohammed appears to have determined that the region must change if it is to have any future. And change begins at home. Reform may be as important as containing Iran.
A number of private discussions lead me to believe that this is something that Israel buys into too. They recognise that Prince Mohammed's activism comes with many risks.
But they have watched with horror from the sidelines of the war in Syria, not least at what some Israelis see as the "normalisation" of the use of chemical weapons; this prompting a very limited response from the wider international community with Moscow actually lending its protection at the UN Security Council to its Syrian ally.
Israelis see Syria as "a laboratory" of what could be the region's future. Hence their willingness to stress the positives in what Prince Mohammed is trying to do.
How far might this Israeli-Saudi dynamic go? Well that depends upon a lot of factors. Will Crown Prince Mohammed's bold attempt to change Saudi Arabia's course succeed? Might he over-reach in terms of Saudi Arabia's effort to exert regional influence?
Fundamentally, if the Saudi-Israel relationship is to emerge blinking into the sunlight, there needs to be progress on the Palestinian front. The Saudis have long said this must come before they will openly recognise Israel.
Without the renewal of a meaningful peace process that actually promises Palestinian statehood the Saudi-Israel "alliance" must remain in the shadows.
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The grim and violent climax to the Paris hostage crisis was followed with horror wherever the news is watched. Israel's community of French-speaking Jews followed the unfolding drama with particular sadness but without surprise. | By Kevin ConnollyBBC News, Jerusalem
The mood was captured when Israel's Channel 10 interviewed one of the survivors of the siege at the kosher supermarket who had hidden in a basement cold room as the gunman murdered his victims in the shop above.
Yohan Dumas described how the frightened little group had struggled to stay warm - but then broke off in mid-interview to announce that he had decided to move to Israel at the start of the next week.
By way of explanation he said simply: "We're not waiting around here to die."
Significant trend
Not many French Jews make the decision to emigrate here in such public or such painful circumstances - but the number making the decision to migrate has increased in recent years.
It is a trend which touches on one of the key arguments that lay behind the creation of Israel - the idea that a history of persecution and statelessness gave the Jewish people the right to a place of safety.
It was an idea which was given renewed force in the aftermath of the Holocaust - the UN vote which led to the creation of the Jewish state was held just two-and-a-half years after the end of World War Two.
In Hebrew, the phenomenon is known as "aliyah", and it describes the process when Jews born anywhere in the world take up their right to Israeli citizenship - it is a core value of Zionism and a right guaranteed under Israeli law.
About 7,000 Jews came to Israel from France in 2014. That's around double the number that came in the previous year, and it meant for the first time in history more Jews came to Israel from France than from any other country.
It may be a small proportion of the half-million or so Jews who live in France but it is a significant trend.
'Bad feelings'
Now clearly all sorts of factors will lie behind every one of those individual decisions, but in Israel the rising numbers of French migrants will be seen by many as a kind of rough and ready measure of the level of anti-Semitism in French society.
Retired businessman Albert Levy was born in Morocco a little over 60 years ago into a French-speaking Jewish family.
When the time came to enter higher education it was natural for him to gravitate to Paris and he did so with no fears for his safety and security.
A few years ago he, his wife Yveline and their three children came to Israel.
Mr Levy uses a resonant but depressing phrase to explain the decision: the time of the Jews in Europe, he says, is over.
Asked to explain he says simply: "Look, we [his generation] did what we did but for our children we had this strong feeling that the situation was going to get worse and worse and worse. Everyone has an instinct about this...
"You either feel comfortable or you feel bad, you wake up thinking 'What's going to happen today?' Today I can say that every Jew in France has those bad feelings."
It's only fair to point out that Mr Levy blames the media at least in part for the current atmosphere and argues that it has tended to demonise Israel in recent years in the wake of events ranging from the first Gulf war to the first and second Intifadas.
That perhaps is a debate for another time - and it is worth pointing out that France naturally insists that its Jewish population can safely remain there.
Changing atmosphere
Israel is in the middle of an election campaign, and several party leaders - including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - have travelled to France in the aftermath of last week's attacks.
Mr Netanyahu's message to French Jews was simple - Israel stands ready to welcome them with open arms if they decide to come.
The body charged with overseeing the migration and absorption of Jews who exercise their right to live in Israel is the Jewish Agency, whose spokesman is Yigal Palmor.
To convey his sense of surprise - perhaps shock - at the changing atmosphere in Europe he quotes his boss, agency chairman Nathan Sharansky, who was once a dissident in the Soviet Union, jailed to punish him for wanting to move to Israel.
Mr Palmor says simply: " He [Sharansky] says he'd never have believed a time would come when Jews would feel safe to walk down the street with their head covered in a kippah in Moscow and not in Paris... We all share that surprise. How is it possible in Paris or London or Rome that Jews do not feel safe the way they used to and the way they're supposed to after World War Two? That's a mystery that continues to perplex us."
The number of Jews making enquiries about moving from France to Israel reached 50,000 last year.
As the funerals take place in Jerusalem of four of the victims of the Paris shootings it is hard to see anything on the horizon to reverse that trend or even slow it down.
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In the tiny group of gamblers who have become top players at both blackjack and poker, there is only one woman. In her own words, Cat Hulbert describes how she got rich beating male opponents - and the casinos - and explains why in her view women are innately better at poker than men.
| For 40 years, a well-known gambling author would, for fun, make bets at the poker table about whether the cocktail waitress would be able to answer commonplace questions. Questions like: Who is the vice-president? Or, what is the longest river in the US?
One day, this guru - who smelled like blue cheese - turned to where I was sitting, next to the dealer, and placed a bet about whether I would know who said: "I think therefore I am". When I answered correctly - I have a degree in philosophy - he said, "You're the smartest woman I've ever met."
This is the sort of nonsense I had to put up with throughout my whole career.
That a brilliant mathematician and poker author was so afraid of women that he felt compelled to denigrate them didn't surprise me. A friend told me he even kept a copy of "How to Pick Up Women" on his nightstand, with sections highlighted in different colour codes.
But though we strive for equality, chauvinism is a very good thing for female players. It makes us a lot of money.
To win at cards, each woman has to use whatever she's got.
If you're beautiful, men are going to be distracted with thoughts of how to get you into bed - which will give you an advantage.
Other women act more child-like, appealing to men's paternalistic nature. They ask innocent questions, nod respectfully and then catalogue everything Daddykins wishes to reveal about the way he plays the game.
Now that's a tactic that never worked for me.
I have this arrogant coating to me. A frosting. And the male opponent that sees no fear in a woman - that drives him crazy, his competitive desire to crush her is so high.
When I played poker, I dressed expensively because men can't stand a woman with money. In fact, they often felt compelled to ask where I got my money from, and I would try to make them feel uncomfortable by saying, "Well, a trust fund - doesn't everybody have a trust fund?"
One time, I had a $500 poker chip thrown at me as I sat down at the table - money to go away because one of the assembled men "didn't play with girls". I sent it back with my own message: "And I don't play with assholes - but I don't have a choice either."
Not all male players are like this. I'm just talking about the ones who smirk instead of smile, who see your very presence at the poker table as an affront that they have deal with. I'm talking about men who don't just want to beat you, they want to humiliate you.
With these players, I found I only needed to play straightforwardly to have them throw money at me. They would try to intimidate me by raising and raising. They raised me to the moon and all I had to do was call the bet, show down the hand and take their money.
If I was feeling particularly cruel, I'd stack their chips with extravagant slowness, prolonging their agony.
Over the course of a game, I was able to turn my opponents' insecurities into rage. The more they lost emotional control, the worse they played.
Even men who were not involved in a hand rooted against me and would openly cheer when I lost. I played against one Iranian man who would lean over and punch me every time I won his chips. He made it look like it was done in jest, but day after day I was going home with a black-and-blue on my arm.
Then one day something boiled up inside and I grabbed a water bottle and swung like Mickey Mantle on the side of his neck, knocking him right out of his chair.
So you could say that I don't mind confrontation.
We had no money when I was growing up, but I never knew that because of the sacrifices my mother made.
She once told me that the most hurtful thing I ever said to her was, "Where's my college fund?"
My mother was a nurse, my father a truck driver, and there were five other children apart from me in an overcrowded house.
I warred constantly with my mother, and at 15, I left home. I rented a room, and took a job working at a soap factory every day after school. This was in a podunk town in upstate New York: 200 people and only one channel on television.
I funded myself through university. There I was - an atheist who liked to spew Ayn Rand at any given opportunity studying morals and metaphysics in a Catholic college. I told you I was confrontational.
After graduating, I got a job working for the Senate minority leader in New York State. Because they knew that I had an obsessive interest in games of all sorts, they gave me a research job investigating whether they should legalise gambling.
I supported legalisation. In fact, I had always wanted to be a professional gambler, but I decided to go to Las Vegas to see what it was really like - to check whether it was good for the public. So I went for a holiday, to blackjack dealer's school.
I had no intention of becoming a blackjack dealer, but I immediately knew the casino was where I belonged. So right after the course I quit my job, packed everything I owned into my Honda Civic, and headed out west through the biggest snowstorm Ohio had ever recorded. It was 1977 and I was 25.
I told the guy who hired me for the Plaza that I wanted to deal blackjack. He said: "Let's see how the college graduate likes the Big Six."
You could say he had a chip on his shoulder about my education. The Big Six was a vertical wheel with numbers and spokes - you spin it, it goes click click click click click click click and lands on $20, $1, or whatever. Frankly, you could train a chimp to spin that money-gobbling wheel.
I was so displeased that I learned how to spin the wheel so it made a bunch of revolutions before landing on the highest payout, 40-1.
The casino is supposed to have about a 35% edge on Big Six - but not the way I spun it. The casino management - who are always very superstitious - decided I was an "unlucky" Big Six spinner and put me on the blackjack tables.
Before long I noticed that a few players seemed to frequently get a blackjack - two cards with a face value of 21 - after placing large bets. I began to wonder if they had a system and slowed my dealing down to try and help them - a kindness I later found was the opposite of helpful.
Then one day I just came right out and asked one of the players across the table what his system was.
"Shh!" he said. "Come for coffee later and I'll tell you. But say nothing more about it here."
There is a subset of people who are kind of removed from life because our brains focus so much on one area of thinking. We are misfits who cluster together because we understand one another, and we gravitate to the world of gambling and games in order to feel part of a community.
We are so very odd. I went out with a guy who could play 12 games of chess blindfolded, but he could not pump gas. When the service stations turned over to self-serve he had panic attacks. I knew another, one of the world's greatest card counters, who thought Mozart was a baseball player.
The smartest people I have known in my life were blackjack players. IQs over 150. Some of them quit the game after a while because they were able to make a lot more money on Wall Street.
Others died. They died from drugs or depression or not taking care of themselves.
The man who I'd spoken to across the table - I will call him Peter - was one such mathematical genius. He wore his trousers up high around his waist, so you could see his socks. I've always found these arrogant, emotionally stunted people irresistible and he and I began a relationship.
Peter had a card-counting team which came to be known as the Czechoslovakians, because of the nationality of most of the members.
He thought it would be a great idea to teach a woman to count cards, because no casino would suspect a female of doing such a thing.
Find out more
In blackjack, you play against the dealer. Adding up the face value of your cards, you try to come as close to the number 21 as you can without going over. You play your hand before the dealer plays his or hers, which gives the house a slight advantage.
But if you have an idea where the 10s, face cards and aces might remain in the deck you gain a slight advantage over the house. To "count cards" is to use a memory system that gives you a more precise idea of your chances of being dealt these cards at any given moment in a game.
It's not as hard as you might think. Card counting takes more guts than brains (though brains do help).
My first job for the team was seat-occupier - in other words, bimbo - sitting next to the famous card counter Ken Uston. That man was so egotistical, I'm surprised he thought I was good-looking enough.
It was 1978, the year Atlantic City opened for gambling. New Jersey's state legislature had developed the city's rules for blackjack, but unfortunately they didn't employ a maths mind to look them over, and so allowed a technical rule that gave card counters even more of an edge.
Consequently, every counter in the world swarmed to the famous boardwalk. When the doors of the new casino, Resorts International, opened at 08:00 in the morning, there was a stampede for seats.
By putting me in the seat next to him, Uston was able to place bets on my cards and double his earnings. Naturally, as a woman I was not trusted to place bets myself - though the great man did have to ask me what the count was quite a few times after he lost track.
I was paid by the hour, but I invested $2,000 of savings in the team's bankroll, and after two weeks I had $10,000.
We played as a team so that we could pool our funds to place higher bets, and so the natural losses that players suffer along with wins - what gamblers call fluctuation - was evened out into a steady, marginal gain.
If people really knew about fluctuation before they decided to become players they would give up on the idea. It's possible to play correctly and lose for a grotesque amount of time. It might sound strange, but part of what makes a professional gambler is an ability to lose and lose and lose without going bonkers.
Being a professional gambler sounds so James-Bond-glamorous but it isn't. Sure, I travelled the world with Peter and his team of counters, but on economy. I played in swanky European casinos, but spent much of my time, with several other gamblers, in the back of a VW camper van that was constantly leaking oil.
Many times, I sat at a table and won $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, but that was my team's money, not mine. I was still going to eat in McDonald's, then going back to the camper van or some grotty youth hostel. Then on to the next casino, no time for sightseeing.
In blackjack the gains are so marginal that it's only worth doing if you re-invest all your money instead of spending it.
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To begin with, in Atlantic City, we were all just openly counting cards, placing minimal bets, and then raising the stakes when the deck became more favourable.
But after casinos started to bar us, we adopted guerrilla techniques. For example, there was the so-called Big Player routine. My job was to play discreetly, placing low bets. But at the right moment, I would tap my earlobe and the Big Player would come in, all flamboyant and talkative with an outrageous girlfriend on his arm. He would act drunk and place high bets.
I would continue to place low bets, but the way I stacked my chips signalled to the Big Player how much he should bet.
Card counting is not illegal and it's not cheating. We're not peeking at the dealer's cards, we're just using our brains. But casinos thought any money you took out their doors was cheating. So they got together and contracted the Griffin detective agency to create a book of photos of "undesirable" people, to be escorted off their property as soon as they were spotted.
I used to joke that I was the Griffin Book centrefold, but a few years ago I saw a copy of the photo they had of me, and realised I was wrong. I had been photographed in the Sahara Casino wearing a dress I had bought at Marshall Rousso - it was cinched at the waist and had gold braid - but in this shot I look more Baader-Meinhof gang than Playboy.
For this article, I asked a few friends what I looked like when I was 29. Let me quote from one email: "Fantastic skin, tanned, stylish interesting hair, sometimes longish, other times pushed up. Always black, black as night with roguish curls and waves defying rules and regulations, but always under control."
Another friend wrote: "A brunette beauty, she could have had her choice of men and had it made. But that wasn't her style. She made her own way." This friend goes on to allow that I "may be a little 'fluffier' now".
To be fair, I am often covered in cat hair. And some of my hair is now a violent shade of pink. But while you can't stop the process of ageing, it's good for the soul to stay in touch with people who remember what you looked like at 29.
Actually, it turned out that having a girl counting cards was not good camouflage after all. I stuck out like a sore thumb. For many years I was the only one - and women generally are looked at more closely than men.
There isn't a blackjack player I know who hasn't used a disguise, but I couldn't grow a beard or get false teeth like my male friends.
Casino management scrutinise games from an area called the pit. You knew you were in trouble when a casino pit boss came over and barked "Break the shoe!"
All the cards would then be removed from the shoe - the device from which the cards are dealt - and shuffled. Not only did this kill your count, it meant the jig was up and you were in danger of being "back-roomed".
The back room is dismal - no windows, no clocks, just a steel bench with rings for handcuffs and an empty desk. The brawny head of security would begin an interrogation and your job was to act confused by their accusations.
If I was detained too long, I would ask them to call the police so they could charge me with an offence. They never did.
This happened to me at least 50 times. As horrible as the experience was, my main worry each time was whether my chips would be waiting for me after I left or whether the casino would confiscate them.
I can remember like yesterday the moment the pit boss at the Hilton in Las Vegas came to my table, threw out his long arm and yelled, "Deal past that girl!" Then two guards picked me up under my arms, dragged me over to the craps table and pressed my face against the felt, snarling, "You want to play craps, little girl? How about using that stolen money to play some craps?!"
Then they dragged me over to the roulette wheel and did the same thing, before shoving me out the front door on to the sidewalk.
I walked away shaken. Looking back, to check whether I was being followed, I saw the neon sign above the entrance: "The Friendliest Casino in the World".
On that occasion, I decided to retaliate.
I flew to New York City and paid a theatre company to teach me how to carry myself like a man. I bought a professional disguise of moustache and beard. Then I flew back to Las Vegas, re-entered the Hilton - and was picked out almost immediately.
"Disappointed" does not come close to describing my feelings at the time.
I became rich at blackjack - but this cat-and-mouse routine with the pit bosses, and all the travelling around, wore me out.
I moved on to the lowest and dirtiest form of gambling there is.
In Vegas they had banks of mechanical slot machines hooked up together, and when they got close to their pay-out it became worth investing. Because I got barred from doing that - yes, I actually got barred from playing slot machines - I recruited some geriatrics to do it for me.
This is the only time in my life I have been an employer. Let me tell you it was a damn pain having to deal with the Internal Revenue Service. My geriatrics were "paid contractors" but they were always messing up their tax returns.
The main attribute that someone had to have if they wanted to work for me was that they be over 70 years of age.
I've always liked old folks. And I found that if you hired young people, and paid them $12 an hour to pull on a slot machine, they had a hard job parting with $23,000 when the machine hit the jackpot. But my team of geriatrics seemed happy to be in the middle of the hustle and bustle of professional players, pulling that handle as fast as they could.
Unfortunately they didn't pull it nearly as fast as I would have liked. And they got tired. Then I'd have to do a shift swap, and they didn't move very quickly.
After a while I got fed up sorting out their tax affairs and packed it in. And now I'm a Weeble like them, wobbling back and forth. In fact, my respect for these slow-moving people has risen immeasurably as I've grown older and more like them.
It seems I inherited my mother's joint problems as well as her brains.
I've always wished I was more like my father. He was a silent man who got Parkinson's very young, so he was bedridden for the last 20 years of his life. But he never complained - you could ask him how he was doing and he would say, "Right! Just wonderful! Top of the day, I can still hear the birds singing!"
But I was always more like my mother. And as she got older - I mean really, what a nightmare!
In 1964, I crawled into a snow bank at the back of my house with the intention of freezing myself to death. I was 14 years old and my boyfriend had left me.
Was this anything other than attention-seeking histrionics? Probably not, but it signalled the start of a lifetime of see-sawing emotion. At 18, I made the mistake of answering truthfully when someone asked if I ever thought of harming myself. I was put in a mental hospital on 72-hour suicide watch.
There have been times in my life when I have had a lot of fun, but made poor life decisions and alienated people. At other times, I have been so depressed I have been in physical pain.
At the age of 40, in 1990, I discovered why I seemed to think so differently from other people when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Since then, I've spent half a million dollars on therapy and I've never come off the medication. Those pills are fun-blockers for sure - they take the edge off my personality and I have gone from needing four hours' sleep to nine. On the plus side, they have saved my life.
Being bipolar is not ideal in my world. When you play cards you already have a seat on that pendulum between mania and depression. To switch metaphors, some of the time you're the puncher, other times you're the bag.
This is especially bad in poker, which I had started to play by the time I was seeing my psychiatrist.
In that game, you're constantly fighting to maintain composure. The more you lose, the less confidence you have, the bigger the target on your chest. Seriously, one large error will cause you to lose for a whole day.
Blackjack is entirely mathematical - every hand has a particular way it should be played. Sometimes the cards aren't in your favour and you lose, but you at least know for sure that you didn't make any errors.
You don't have this in poker. There's a lot more judgement, and more opportunity for self-blame.
At least, that was my experience. In fact, too many poker players blame everyone else for their errors - the woman at the table, the tourist, the dealer. You would not believe the amount of abuse dealers are subjected to, and it's often racist.
That was something else I struggled with. I was used to working with people of the highest integrity, like Peter and the Czechoslovakians - I travelled with them as a team and trusted them completely. But when I started to play seven-card stud poker, I found myself in a fishbowl of piranhas feeding off one another, borrowing money and stiffing debts.
I had to deal with constant crudities at the table, an endless flow of inane misogynistic remarks. I would get drawn into fights too easily, forgetting that I wasn't at the table to change the world, but just take people's money.
Despite all this, for us game-oriented people, few things in life are more absorbing or exciting than poker. Every hand I was dealt had the allure of an unopened present. Even in the dull periods when I didn't have a playable hand, I would watch other people's choices and behaviour and play along mentally, figuring out their puzzles for myself.
Blackjack had given me a big bankroll and a big ego. The first three years I played poker I lost and I lost and I kept losing.
Then I met David Heyden, who was regarded as the world's greatest seven-card stud player. Actually, I stood up at the end of a talk that he was giving and, in front of everyone, asked him out on a date.
Besides becoming the great love of my life, he taught me how to play.
I went back to basics, and steadily built up my skills and my betting limits, until I was really very good. In 1996, Card Player magazine included me in their list of the world's top seven-card stud players.
David steered me towards a calmer and more regimented lifestyle. I played for five days a week, then had a weekend like a normal person. I did not drink the night before playing, and in the morning I did not take calls or make plans to see friends. I just focused my mind with mental exercises and took careful stock of my mood.
I would arrive at the casino at noon and, if I was losing, leave no later than 8pm.
Having to go home and walk my dogs saved me from a lot of bad situations. It's very hard to get up from the poker table when you're losing because all the while you sit there your emotions are in the deep freeze. You tell yourself that by playing on you might break even, but really you're just putting off the inevitable.
I cannot describe how excruciating it is to walk out the door of a casino into the bright desert sunlight after you have been up all night losing.
I wore the most outrageous outfits. They were costumes really, and I actually did have a different one for every day of the year.
I had a baseball-themed one, a cowgirl one, a biker chick one. I'd be Cruella de Vil one day, the Queen of Hearts the next. The bags and shoes and jewellery all had to match. In fact, if anyone really wanted to mess with my mind at the poker table, all they had do was wear mismatched clothes.
Playing poker is like taking a drug that makes everything fascinating, especially when you start to observe the profound differences between the male and female brain.
As a feminist I blush to admit it, but for most of my life I have preferred the company of men. I'm talking about the good men - you know, those super-clever ones with the miswired brains and the trousers pulled up so you can see their socks.
But after I started giving poker classes to women, I began to enjoy the splendours of female companionship.
I do believe we are innately better players than men. We are more reflective and intuitive, and seem to have more guises at our disposal.
Maybe it's because we've always grown up to think, "Oh what's my boyfriend thinking? Why isn't he calling?" Men don't think that way.
On the downside, women are more compassionate, and there is no room for that at the poker table. We also lack brute strength, which may be one reason I have been robbed numerous times, including once at gunpoint behind the Peppermill in Vegas.
I taught the game to more than 200 women, and I went on to write a book, Outplaying the Boys. When my copies came in the mail and I saw them for the first time, it was the greatest feeling, far above any winning session I had experienced.
For 30 years, I had pleaded with my mother to feel proud of me. She was in the hospital, close to death, when she asked somebody to go up to Barnes and Noble to get a copy of my book. She wanted to show it to the nurses.
A card game is a coming together of luck, brains and temperament, and to really enjoy the complexity and nuance of poker you must play face-to-face.
But I also found that with the arrival of online poker in the late 1990s, it was very enjoyable to play cards in my pyjamas, smoke cigarettes until my lungs oozed tar and take my finger off the curse-control button. Suddenly I didn't have to put up with lowlife company for eight hours at a time, and if I became short-stacked - that is, found myself on a losing streak - none of my opponents was any the wiser.
It was also a huge adrenaline rush. I would play for 16 hours straight, multiple games at the same time, 300 hands an hour, up to $600 a hand. The routine I had established for playing in casinos, with David Heyden's help, didn't apply in my own home.
Friends would call me on the phone. When I stopped picking up, they came to the front door and I sent them away. One time I missed Thanksgiving dinner because I was playing - and I was the one who was supposed to take the turkey.
It became clear to everyone except me that I was going to lose all my money, my friends, and my self-respect.
What is the difference between passion and addiction, really?
All through my career, after games, I would replay the hands in my head and I could remember every single card. That made me a better player. Was it an addiction?
The fact that I had previously won more than I lost, did that mean I wasn't addicted?
If these were the questions online poker was leading me to ask, I was starting to feel differently about the casino game too.
When you sit down at the poker table the first thing you do is assess each opponent's weakness. But this is not good for the soul, to be always evaluating people in a how-can-I-hurt-them-if-they-hurt-me-first way.
After more than 20 years of playing poker, I realised my nerves were becoming frayed, my temperament was turning sour and facing the public each day had made my brain ill with contempt. I had become a people-hater.
I think back to the 1970s, when I went to Las Vegas to investigate gambling. If the state of New York were to ask me now whether they should build casinos, I wouldn't hesitate to tell them "No".
Only 5% of players have the ability to win at poker, and I've seen many, many lives ruined. Watching the destruction of a good man or woman by gambling addiction is just heart-sickening.
How have I made the world a better place, playing cards? It is a taker's profession. People say: "If I don't take that person's money somebody else will." Well, that's the same with pulling the handle on the electric chair. The point is, do you want to be the one that does it?
My last proper poker session was a month-long stint at The Borgata in Atlantic City in 2010. The first day I lost $22,000 but I didn't lose a wink of sleep because I knew it was going to be easy, if the cards held up, to win my money back. The East Coast tourist players were wealthy and their skill level was god-awful.
But my luck only worsened. Every day the hole got deeper, and my wires for money became more frequent.
I lost heart that month. In the final analysis, it's a game of stamina, and I realised I just couldn't take losing one more hand that was 90% certain to win. The fluctuation had finally got to me.
This is very hard to talk about or even acknowledge. I wish I had retired at the top, with my self-confidence intact, but I didn't. I retired beaten-down like a prisoner.
Unlike thousands of Americans I did not lose my home, my self-respect, or my family to my addiction. The reason I am not flat-broke is the same as the reason I'm not rich - I was never willing to risk everything.
I live in a nice house with lots of unique art objects. I swim, watch Yankees baseball and Netflix, read, write and care for my animal buddies. My best days are when I have no interaction with the human species whatsoever. If it turns out that I haven't lived a worthy enough life to get into human heaven, that's fine with me, I'll ask St Peter if he can send me to animal heaven instead.
I have no clue - truly I don't - why any woman would choose to have a child rather than adopt an animal. I have never regretted that decision, not even on Mother's Day.
But I accepted two marriage proposals because I was so damn flattered to be asked. The first time it lasted nine months the second only two weeks.
The nine-month marriage came soon after David Heyden and I broke up. The sex was good, but he was as dull as a doorknob.
I knew my second husband less than a month before accepting his romantic proposal at the Redcoat's Return Inn in the Catskill Mountains on Christmas Eve. I suggested we set a wedding date for the next Friday the 13th, whenever that might be. Inappropriately enough, it turned out to be February 13th, the day before Valentine's Day.
My friends proposed faking a kidnapping. I should have let them follow through with this bizarre plan because two weeks after our wedding my new husband was talking to me about a sex change. Even more alarming, I found him glued to the TV for hours every day watching The Wide World of Wrestling.
I broke many a heart before I was 40, but payback has happened in the years since.
My last love was a woman. She is still a dear friend, but I was an incompetent lesbian - possibly the world's worst. It would take four shots of tequila before I could think about sex.
Now I prefer to be alone. No turmoil. No need to make adjustments or compromises. No requirement to share the television remote.
I have the kind of cancer you don't talk about in polite company. The kind that leaves you open to all the snide remarks. People say, "Well, she's an asshole. What do you expect?"
It has a very high cure rate, anal cancer, but the treatment is brutal. The oncologist said I did so well because of the people who cared for me. After a lifetime spent with men, it was an all-woman team that got me through. My friend Robyn found the best doctors, researched the disease endlessly for me, and told me the truth in gentle ways to mitigate my fears. Another friend, Linda, immediately flew from Germany to be by my side and offered any financial help I might need. My sister Cheryl called me every day.
As for the hard work, the chore of taking care of me physically and witnessing the side effects of the radiation and the chemo - that assistance was gifted by another Linda, a former nurse, one of my first poker students, who just gave me her time with no expectations, endlessly optimistic and energetic.
The radiation was like walking through fire. The chemotherapy killed my taste-buds. Now alcohol is like gasoline, and I can't taste anything else except lemon. My skin is thinner and I bruise more easily.
Most upsetting of all, it damaged that most precious asset, my short-term memory.
They have a blackjack hall of fame, you know. It honours the people who have done the most for the game and there are no female members.
When it started, I had no interest in being part of this old boys' club, I just didn't care.
Then I started to care - but too late. I was a stellar blackjack player. But when I really was somebody I didn't know it, and by the time I really knew it, I was no longer somebody.
I earn a living today as an online casino consultant.
A professional sports bettor also allows me to piggy-back on his bets, a repaid kindness from our blackjack history. I do menial little jobs for him, like gathering the weather reports for all the baseball stadiums.
I create no havoc. No-one gossips about me. I'm just an old crone that calls everybody "honey". As my behaviour becomes more normal, more predictable, my friends and family feel increased trust.
But would I do it all again?
Without a moment's hesitation. Gambling afforded me freedom. Freedom from nincompoop bosses giving me warnings for insubordination. Freedom to travel worldwide, make friendships with the highest quality of minds and meet people from all walks of life. Freedom to be the naturally odd or strange person I am.
Don't ask me how much money I earned. Not as much as some people you read about, but enough to be a clothes horse for three decades, invest in outlandish ideas, support my mum and sister, put my veterinarian's children through college and pay for the most expensive shrink on the West Coast.
I do still play poker with my old friends, just for fun.
It is just ridiculous. These guys are all multi-millionaires except me, and they play the smallest stakes I've ever played. We're talking $2, $4 a hand.
As told to @williamkremer.
Cat Hulbert appeared on the Conversation on the BBC World Service in May 2016. Listen to the programme.
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The Irish parliament has passed legislation granting a pardon to thousands of soldiers who left the armed forces to serve with the Allies during World War Two. | The Irish Republic remained neutral in the conflict between 1939 and 1945.
In order to fight, thousands of soldiers left the country and the Irish army to join the British forces.
The men were found guilty by military tribunals of going absent without leave and branded deserters.
After the war they faced discrimination, lost their pensions and were barred from holding jobs paid for by the state.
Last year, the Irish government apologised for the way they were treated.
The legislation to pardon them was passed on Tuesday and will be signed into law by the Irish president within days.
The bill also grants an amnesty and immunity from prosecution to the almost 5,000 Irish soldiers who fought alongside the allies.
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The judge in appeal court hearing the case of the disappearance of lankaenews journalist Prageeth Eknaligoda criticised the
state counsellor for not filing the objections on behalf of the police. | State counsel was pleading for a postponement of proceedings of the case citing that the police officers needed more time
for their submissions.
Saying that "this is an extremely important case", the judge Ranjith De Silva said that he is reluctant to postpone the proceedings
due to lack of preparations of the police department.
The counsel said the police had launched an investigation into the disappearance of Prageeth Eknaligoda. The judge said that
it is not relevant to the current proceedings.
Adjourning the case until the 18th of January, the judge set an ultimatum for the state to file objections to the court.
The case filed by the journalist’s wife Sandhya Eknaligoda is against the Inspector General of Police and the officers in
charge of Homagama and Koswatte police stations.
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Sally Challen was jailed for the murder of her husband in 2011 but her solicitors believe a new law, recognising psychological manipulation as a form of domestic abuse, could be a defence in an appeal hearing next month. Her son David explains why he's backing the appeal and hopes to see his mother freed. | By Judith BurnsBBC News
Sally's last words to David were supposed to be heartfelt but undramatic. "You know I love you, don't you?" she said, fixing his gaze through an open car door, as she dropped him off at work.
A day earlier, she had killed her long-time husband, and father of David, in a frenzied hammer attack. But as he headed to his job, David knew nothing of Richard Challen's gruesome death.
After that drop-off, she had planned to swiftly end her own life - jumping from the top floor of a nearby car park. When she realised the car park was closed, she pressed on regardless, driving to Beachy Head in East Sussex. There she planned to jump to her death off the chalky precipice.
From the clifftop, Sally called her cousin to admit the killing. She repeated the admission to a suicide team and a chaplain, who had been called to help her.
It took them two hours to talk her down from the edge.
She was charged with her husband's murder, convicted and jailed for life.
However, eight years on, lawyers acting for Sally Challen are hoping to make legal history, and David is working to help them. They hope to use a law passed in 2015, which recognises psychological manipulation, or coercive control, as a form of domestic abuse, to secure her release.
Just as physical violence in a relationship has been recognised as a mitigating factor in a killing, her lawyers say her history of psychological abuse by Richard provides a defence of provocation.
The circumstances around the killing itself give a taste of the sort of coercive control Richard exerted over his wife.
In the wealthy suburban village of Claygate, Surrey, one wet Saturday morning in August 2010, Sally visited the house she had, until recently, shared with Richard, her husband of 31 years.
He lived there alone since she had walked out on the relationship the previous November, after discovering he had been visiting prostitutes.
David and his elder brother James, who prefers to avoid media attention, say their father inflicted years of psychological abuse on their mother. Having left Richard, the sons were adamant their mother should stay away from him.
However, unknown to them, she had secretly begun seeing Richard again, hoping to patch up their marriage.
What actually happened in the family home that morning was far removed from reconciliation.
On this particular morning, she drove the short distance from her new home. In the car with her was a handbag and, stashed inside it, a hammer.
Richard had wanted her to approve a post-nuptial agreement that would cut her rights to the £1m family home and impose stringent conditions, such as not interrupting him and not talking to other people when they were together in restaurants.
There was no food in the house and Richard was hungry, so he asked her to go out and buy something for his lunch.
As she headed back from the shops, Sally suspected Richard had had an ulterior motive for getting her out of the house. So, on her return she picked up his phone, rang the last number he had dialled and found it answered by a woman.
In the family kitchen, Sally fried bacon and eggs on the hob. Richard sat with his back to her at the table.
Counting Viagra pills
She served him, and, as he ate, she pulled the hammer from her bag and hit Richard 20 times over the head.
She then wrapped his body in curtains and blankets, left a note saying: "I love you, Sally," and left.
She bought herself some cigarettes, drank some wine and composed a suicide note. But she decided to delay killing herself until she had seen David who, at 23, still lived with her.
The next day, David remembers, his mother dropped him at work and, as he stepped out of the car, she made her heartfelt pledge of love.
Later that day, David was summoned by his manager.
"Then came round the corner, my cousin, followed by a police officer, uniformed, and rushed to me, grabbed me on both shoulders and said, 'your father's dead'."
Charged with her husband's murder, 10 months later Sally stood in the dock of Guildford Crown Court. Her hair was a mess and her fingers stained yellow from smoking. David remembers the proceedings being hard to watch.
"Anyone standing up who had anything worth saying was not saying enough, or not feeling as if they had enough time, or not being asked the right questions. She was being painted as vengeful and jealous."
Here was a woman who counted her husband's Viagra and monitored his phone calls, the prosecution said.
In court, Sally hardly spoke. But there was video evidence in which she admitted to the killing and testimony from the Beachy Head suicide prevention team. They recounted her confessing: "I killed him with a hammer. I hit him lots of times... If I can't have him, no-one can."
Convicted of murder and jailed for life, all hope appeared to have expired for Sally. Then, in 2015, a law came into force that recognised psychological manipulation, or coercive control, as a form of domestic abuse.
In March 2018, Sally Challen won leave to appeal against her conviction.
Her solicitor, Harriet Wistrich, of the feminist campaigning organisation Justice for Women, says the new law should be accepted as "new evidence" in the case.
"We're arguing, for the first time, that the framework for understanding domestic abuse that's set out in coercive and controlling behaviour which became law in 2015, provides a way of understanding Sally's actions which would support a defence of provocation."
She believes this is the first time coercive control has been used as a defence in a murder appeal: "Our argument is that if this evidence is allowed as fresh evidence it renders the murder conviction unsafe therefore that murder conviction should be quashed."
She says that the appeal court could reduce the conviction to manslaughter or order a retrial.
The fact that the family want to see her freed - and none of Richard's friends or relatives has come forward to say otherwise - is significant, she believes. But she fears the fact Sally brought the hammer with her "with a conditional intent to use it", suggests some premeditation. This could mean the murder conviction will stand, says Ms Wistrich.
Both grown-up sons back the legal challenge, with David clear that his father's treatment of his mother is a textbook example of coercive control.
"It was tick, tick, tick - everything: financial abuse, psychological manipulation, controlling her freedom of movement, just controlling every facet of her mind... It was almost like she was a robot and he punched in the commands of what she had to do."
Richard's psychological hold over Sally began early, David believes.
Sally Jenney was 15 when she met Richard, five years her senior, in 1971. They were married in 1979. Sally had nothing but wide-eyed love for Richard, David says, but his father felt otherwise.
"Seeing women, cheating on her, brothels."
And when she challenged him, David remembers his father questioned her sanity: "'Sally, you are mad'. It was a mantra."
There were petty rules. In restaurants she was not allowed to speak to other people.
"He didn't like her having any independence in terms of friends, it was only friends together. It was total control."
Insults about weight
If she displeased him, Richard would restrict her car use to work travel only, and all household spending came out of her earnings. Neighbours have said he treated her as if she belonged to him.
And Sally was subjected to constant criticism.
"My father would refer to my mother as 'saddlebags', 'thunder thighs', really critiques of her weight... and that was something me and my brother witnessed and heard all the time. Not just in our own company but with other friends as well... It was just not right."
At the original trial, it was suggested Sally attacked Richard in a rage, after realising he had called a girlfriend that morning. But David says he believes his mother's claim that she was unaware of her actions when she killed Richard.
"She took that hammer and she killed my father. I recognise what happened but we have to recognise what psychological control does. I don't know why she took that hammer. She doesn't understand why," he says.
David says his mother still loves Richard, something he and his brother "can't understand".
"We don't know what to do with that... my father's not alive any more and he still has power over her."
David says he hopes the appeal "will acknowledge my mother's mental abuse, will acknowledge what she suffered throughout her life".
"The cause is not that she's a jealous wife," he adds. "She has been manipulated psychologically all her life, tied down by this man, my father. She deserves her right to freedom. She deserves for her abuse to be recognised."
Additional reporting by June Kelly and Sally Graham
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This table lists the 100 schools and colleges in England with the best results in advanced vocational qualifications.
| The schools are ranked on the average points scored per student.
Ties have been broken on the number of students in the institution who took the relevant qualifications.
Schools where the full-time equivalent of fewer than 30 pupils took the qualifications are not included.
Best performing schools
Average points score
Average points per full-time equivalent vocational student
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A catamaran which had been apparently missing for nine days, has been found by a search and rescue helicopter from RNAS Culdrose. | The crew from 771 Squadron found the dismasted vessel about 100 nautical miles off the Cornish coast.
The Orinoco Flo, which was en route to Falmouth from Antigua, was last seen on 2 June but had been out of radio contact since.
The skipper, who had rigged an improvised mast and sail, was unhurt.
The catamaran's radio had been damaged when the mast fell, he said.
The skipper told the helicopter crew he had food and water on board, but with his boat making "very slow progress" and poor weather forecast, he would accept the offer of a tow to the Isles of Scilly by the St Mary's all-weather lifeboat.
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Tuol Sleng is Cambodia's most notorious prison - in the 1970s, at least 12,000 people were tortured there and murdered. Only a handful of prisoners survived but now, 40 years after Pol Pot took control of the country, two of them return to the cells every day to remind people what happened. | By Kirstie BrewerPhnom Penh
Chum Mey had never heard of the CIA before, but after 10 days of torture he was ready to confess to being a secret agent for the US.
We are in Tuol Sleng prison, Phnom Penh, in the very cell where he was held. Almost four decades on, Chum Mey still has nightmares and yet he returns to this place every day.
"If those guards hadn't tortured a false confession out of me, they would have been executed - I can't say I would have behaved any differently [in their position]," he says.
Tuol Sleng, codenamed S-21, was converted from a school to an interrogation centre on the orders of Pol Pot when his Khmer Rouge movement took control of Cambodia in April 1975.
At least 12,000 people who were held here were killed. Just 15 prisoners survived.
Eighty-three-year-old Chum Mey is one of the few still alive today. Bou Meng, 74, is another. One a mechanic, the other an artist, their practical skills were useful to the Khmer Rouge and their impending death sentences were put on hold.
For the past three years, the pair has taken up a sort of day-residence at S-21, which is now preserved as a genocide museum - this is how they have chosen to spend their retirement.
They are also allowed to sell their memoirs - at $10 a copy, they make a modest living this way.
There is something ambassadorial about their presence. They are celebrity survivors, modern-day reminders of Cambodia's dark past.
"The important thing is to document what happened here," says Bou Meng. He sits at a stall in the prison courtyard, decorated with a large banner that reads: SURVIVOR. "I want people around the world to go home and tell their friends and family about the genocide of the Khmer people."
Buy their books and you'll be presented with a business card and encouraged to sit down with them for a photograph. They recognise the potency of photographs. The museum houses row upon row of headshots taken of prisoners when they first arrived.
I accompany them both separately on a walk around the museum. Like living artefacts, they shuffle in and out of the cells, nodding their thanks to visitors and studying the photographs on the walls.
"So young," says Chum Mey, gently tracing his finger along a row of teenage boys and girls.
They say they are haunted by the faces that look back at them and that these faces compel them to return every day and tell their stories.
Chum Mey had been working as a mechanic for the Khmer Rouge, when suddenly he was arrested on 28 October 1978 and taken straight to S-21. He still doesn't know why.
"I was blindfolded and my hands were tied behind my back - I pleaded with my captors to let my family know where I was," he recalls.
"Angkar [the ruling body of the Khmer Rouge] will smash you all," a voice hissed in his ear.
Upon arrival, after being measured and photographed, prisoners were stripped and shackled to the floor of a cell barely big enough to sit down in.
"After that I cried because I felt so hopeless and confused," says Chum Mey. In the 12 days that followed, he was taken from his cell three times a day and tortured in one of the prison's interrogation rooms.
Two guards took turns beating him with a stick covered in twisted wire. Eventually they decided to pull out his big toenail. He looks down at his feet and explains in unflinching detail how the guard tugged and twisted the nail until it came out.
"I could tolerate the pain of being beaten and even having my toenail pulled out, but it was the electric shocks I was terrified of," he says, tapping the side of his head.
These were administered by electrodes placed inside the ears. Chum Mey is deaf in one ear as a result and says he hears the sound of rushing water when he moves his head.
"It felt like my eyes were on fire and my head was a machine - after that I started telling them whatever they wanted to hear. I didn't know what was right or wrong any more."
He sits down at the desk where his confession was typed up by his two interrogators. In front of the desk is a bed frame and heavy iron shackles. There is dried blood on the ceiling. A photograph on the wall shows an emaciated man lying on the bed with his throat cut.
Most of the people who ended up in these cells were Khmer Rouge cadres and their families, accused of collaborating with foreign governments or spying for the CIA or KGB.
"The regime was a breeding ground of paranoia," explains a museum guide. "Soldiers would grow to know too much and then they themselves could be subject to torture and death."
Chum Mey's fellow survivor, Bou Meng, was originally a Khmer Rouge supporter - an artist by trade, he had painted some early propaganda posters.
He and his wife were arrested on 16 August 1977. "They screamed in my wife's face that Angkar had never arrested the wrong person," he recalls.
The first thing Bou Meng does when we sit down in the prison courtyard is show me an illustration he has drawn of his wife.
"Ma Yoeun," he says with tears in his eyes, gesturing for me to repeat his late wife's name. In the picture she is screaming, stooped over a mass grave, and her throat has been cut.
Most S-21 inmates were eventually trucked by night to Choeung Ek - one of the sites that became known as the Killing Fields. A team of teenage executioners would be waiting - they were told ahead of time how big a grave to dig.
Ma Yoeun was a midwife but only Bou Meng was deemed worth saving. "Why couldn't they keep her alive too?" he asks. "She only ever looked after people."
The couple had been separated on arrival at S-21. Bou Meng was photographed and taken to a large holding cell filled with emaciated prisoners.
Like Chum Mey, he was relentlessly questioned and beaten - he shows me the scars on his back. He too is deaf in one ear as a result of regular torture.
Prisoners were given two ladles of watery porridge a day. Chum Mey was so hungry he would eat the rats that scurried into his cell.
A small ammunition box served as a toilet. "If any waste spilled out we had to lick it from the floor," he says.
Bou Meng still remembers the oppressive stench in the air. "At first I thought it was something like dead fish or mice because I had never smelt rotting human flesh before."
After several months of interrogation, Bou Meng also relented and gave a false confession, admitting to being part of a CIA network, and naming other "collaborators".
Painting portraits "saved my life," he says. When the prison chief, known as Duch, found out that he was an artist, he told him to reproduce a black and white photograph of Pol Pot. Duch warned him that if it wasn't lifelike he'd be killed.
Bou Meng took three months to finish the painting - it was 1.5m wide and 1.8m high.
Pleased with his work, Duch later requested large portraits of Karl Marx, Lenin and Mao Zedong, as well as several more of Pol Pot. Bou Meng was also told to draw the Vietnamese communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, stranded on a rooftop in the middle of a big storm.
"I don't know why Duch needed these paintings, and I didn't dare to ask," he says.
Duch kept Chum Mey alive because he could fix typewriters - crucial for taking down confessions. He also fixed sewing machines, used to make thousands of black Khmer Rouge uniforms.
In 2009, both men testified at a UN-backed war crimes tribunal against Duch - a former Maths teacher who became the architect of the torture and execution methods at S-21. Like their return to S-21, it has helped bring them some solace.
S-21 was a microcosm of what took place across Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. An estimated 90% of artists, intellectuals and teachers were killed in an effort to return the country to "Year Zero" - Pol Pot's vision of a classless, agrarian society.
By the time Pol Pot fell from power, about two million people - a quarter of the population - had been murdered, starved or struck down by disease.
Bou Meng's two young children were among those who died from disease during the Pol Pot years and it was only during the 2009 war crimes tribunal that he learned his wife had probably ended up in a mass grave.
He returned to the prison in the 1980s to look for Ma Yoeun's photo as well as his own.
He shows me a copy of the photo taken of his wife when she first arrived here - he never found his own. "I see her here, in front of us right now," he says, staring into the middle distance. He would like to be able to visit her grave and say prayers over her bones.
Testifying at Duch's trial, he was given a chance to ask one question, so he asked Duch where his wife was killed. A tearful Duch was unable to say.
Chum Mey never found his photo either, only a copy of his confession and a list of prisoners. Next to his name was a note: "Keep for a while."
His wife also remained alive until 7 January 1979, when Vietnamese troops captured Phnom Penh, signalling the end of the Khmer Rouge's grip on the country. The events caused panic at S-21 and the guards took their prisoners and fled into the suburbs to await orders. Here Chum Mey was reunited with his wife and newborn son.
But only he survived the fighting between the Khmer Rouge and opposition forces.
He had already lost his three-year-old son to fever during the forced evacuation of Phnom Penh in 1975. His two daughters disappeared while he was in S-21.
Bou Meng and Chum Mey both remarried and have new families. Chum Mey's grandchildren are playing in the prison courtyard as we talk.
"Visiting every day brings me closer to the victims in those photographs," he says. "I feel their presence here and our responsibility to tell the world what happened."
Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge
1968 Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge launches an insurgency aiming to return Cambodia to "Year Zero" and build an agrarian socialist utopia.
1973 - 1974 Khmer Rouge controls most of Cambodia - city-dwellers are forcibly moved to the countryside.
April 1975 Khmer Rouge captures the capital, Phnom Penh.
1976 The regime divides citizens into three categories, which determine their food rations. Urban residents, land owners, former army officers, bureaucrats and merchants fall into the "undeserved" category and face execution, starvation and hard labour. All religion and money is banned.
January 1979 Vietnamese armed forces and the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation capture Phnom Penh. Pol Pot flees.
15 April 1998 Pol Pot dies in Cambodia on the day it is announced that he will face an international tribunal. He is swiftly cremated, prompting suspicions of suicide.
2009 Kaing Guek Eav, known as Comrade Duch, is the first Khmer Rouge leader to face the UN-backed Khmer Rouge Tribunal. He is sentenced to 35 years in jail, later extended to life.
2014 - Two more Khmer Rouge leaders, Nuon Chea and Kheiu Samphan, are sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity.
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Hassan Al Babi, a Syrian refugee from Damascus, is steadily carving slices of chicken shawarma off a gas-heated rotisserie. It's lunchtime in Oberhausen and the German city's first Syrian restaurant is doing a brisk trade. | By Howard Johnson and Tobias BrauerBBC News
"It's not about the job as such," says Hassan.
"It's about the fact that I'm working and producing and not waiting for help at the job centre."
In the year since BBC News first visited Oberhausen, refugees have started to become part of the community.
More than 2,500 refugees, many fleeing conflict in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, are currently settled in the city.
The Royal Cafe opened in August this year. The €30,000 (£25,000; $32,000) start-up cost was covered by German-Palestinian, Omallah ali Maher.
The café is managed by Mr Al Babi and another Syrian friend. It employs a further three Syrian refugees to serve its customers. Mr Ali Maher met them at the Red Cross camp in Oberhausen.
"They told me that they wanted to work for themselves. They don't want to be beggars," he said.
"We don't have a written contract. I just looked in their eyes I see they are really honourable people."
All profits made by the business go towards paying the staff and paying back their debt.
According to Mr Ali Maher, who helps the men by collecting supplies and doing their German paperwork, the café's model of using business to help refugees is the answer to Europe's migrant crisis.
"We can be successful by solving the refugee problem in Germany, when we get people to work," he says.
"I am 71 years old, I feel like 60 and I work from morning until the evening but I feel happy because I am doing a kind of nice work for those people and their families."
Café Royal's success is a positive reflection of how refugees are adapting to life in Oberhausen.
The city's new arrivals have now been moved from shared accommodation - blocks of flats used to house groups of migrants - and most are now in state-provided flats around the city.
"I think we are on top of the situation completely," says Joerg Fischer of the German Red Cross.
"Now a system is in place and is working well. Around 40 refugees arrive every week. This is nothing compared to last year when we had up to 300 a week. So we can manage this and the integration of those who've been here for longer."
Oberhausen lies in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which took in 172,511 asylum-seekers in the first 10 months of 2016.
That is almost 27% of the total number of people seeking asylum in Germany over that period, and more than double the number of the region with the next highest number of refugees, Baden Wuerttemberg.
A BBC team first visited a year ago and returned last spring to speak to aid workers, residents and the asylum seekers themselves.
How one German city is coping with migrant crisis - BBC visits Oberhausen in November 2015
Changing attitudes of a German city - BBC visits Oberhausen in April 2016
Settling into school
In April this year Svenja Beyer's integration school in Oberhausen was struggling with a class made up of 34 pupils from nine different countries.
There were problems with aggressive behaviour and fights between different ethnic groups.
But now some of the older pupils have moved on to other schools and the number of pupils in her class has fallen to 12, although still of several different nationalities.
"We have a different atmosphere now. It's calm, it's peaceful," she says. "The pupils are motivated and they learn very rapidly, they want to learn and so fewer children means more time for every child."
For adults there are numerous state-run and non-governmental group initiatives aimed at helping them find work.
But one that has made headlines is Serap Tanis's women's empowerment group, the Courage Project. The local group aims to help newly arrived immigrants and refugees realise their potential while living in Germany.
Ms Tanis, the project leader, is herself an immigrant of Turkish descent. She moved to Germany from Istanbul when she was six years old. She compares herself to a pearl diver, believing that "there is a 'treasure in everyone hidden deep below".
Through discussion groups she helps women to think about education and employment in a new light. However, Ms Tanis is keen to stress she's not trying to turn them into Germans or transform them overnight.
"Empowerment is a process and we give them the courage to find their strength," she says.
One of the women she is helping is Roudin Davo, a Syrian Kurd who fled from Kobane in Northern Syria after jihadist group Islamic State captured the city in October 2014.
She arrived in Oberhausen in April 2016 after a treacherous journey through Europe with her husband and two young daughters.
"We lost everything, but here we try to begin again from the bottom," says Mrs Davo.
"Before [in Syria] I thought: I am a mother, I have to stay at home. But then my friends told me there is a school where they look after my girls and I can learn German."
It's difficult to know whether schemes like the Courage Project have helped refugees into work, but unemployment in Oberhausen has fallen this year from 11.7% in March to 10.3% in October.
That is still far higher than the 6% average across Germany.
When BBC News last visited Oberhausen in April its Chief Police Inspector Tom Litges said there was a sense of fear towards refugees among some of Oberhausen's residents following the New Year's Eve sex attacks in nearby Cologne.
Some of Oberhausen's residents even began calling for civil patrols. But nothing ever came of it and the fear has dissipated.
"There haven't been any serious crimes related to migrants in the last six months," says Chief Inspector Litges.
But right-wing activists have been targeting the city. Since April, there have been two anti-immigration rallies - made up of about 70 far-right protestors, mainly from neighbouring Essen.
The right-wing nationalist party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), has been growing in popularity since it started in 2013 and now has MPs in nine of Germany's 16 state parliaments - although none in North Rhine-Westphalia.
"Every now and then what we do have is [right-wing] demonstrations and usually those who are against the right-wing demonstrators are normally five, six, seven times more [in number], says Chief Inspector Litges.
"So for that reason the people of Oberhausen show that they do not accept right-wing propaganda."
The BBC will return to Oberhausen in six months to find out what happens next.
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Five men who became stuck on a crag on Snowdon had to be roped down to safety by rescuers on Sunday night. | The group were on the east side of Snowdon, which was covered in snow and mist.
Llanberis mountain rescuers hiked up Y Cribau ridge and helped the team down the Llanberis path to a Land Rover.
Meanwhile, a couple needed help from the Aberdyfi search and rescue team after they got lost on Cader Idris in Snowdonia.
A spokesman for the rescue team said the couple, from Cannock, Staffordshire, had become disorientated and had come down the wrong side of the mountain after reaching the peak from the Minffordd side.
Rescuers found them using information sent directly from their smartphone and walked the pair off the mountain.
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Workers at the Jaguar Land Rover plants in Castle Bromwich and Solihull, both in the West Midlands, have faced a worrying time after hearing one of the plants could shut. They tell of their relief and happiness their jobs are secure.
| The welder
Paul Wootton, a body welder at the Castle Bromwich plant, said it seemed too good to be true.
The 62-year-old from Shard End, has worked there for 11 years.
He said: "People don't want to be messed around.
"They need to know what is happening and now they do."
The paint shop worker
Mick Jones, 49, from Erdington, works at the Castle Bromwich plant. He described the news as "better than good".
"It is far more than we could have expected and I am gobsmacked," he said.
"It shows the company has faith in us."
The newcomer
Ali Khan has only worked at the Castle Bromwich plant for two months.
The 31-year-old, from Highgate, said he was glad the company was putting money into the plant.
It gave him and other workers security, he added. Mr Khan said he was an agency worker and could work elsewhere.
The family member
Yvonne Washbourne, from Birmingham, was waiting at Lode Lane to give a lift to a family member who works there.
"That's fantastic news, not only for the workers but for the economy of Birmingham and the West Midlands, because obviously with the recession a lot of people are worried about their jobs and their future and their homes.
"As the West Midlands has taken a rather big hit since the recession started, this will give a boost to the small companies that supply goods to the three factories."
The plant convener
Bob Nason, a plant convener at Solihull, said it was great news.
"We've still got to get it to the membership. That ballot will take place in a few weeks' time, we've got the presentation next week, but I think it's good news.
"Not only have we secured what we believe is a good pay deal, we've also secured the future of all three plants for the next 10 years.
"It's all about securing job security not just for the three plants but for the component industry as well."
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Women who survive a heart attack caused by a condition called SCAD are usually told not to have children due to the risk of it happening again. Now the first babies are being born at the world's first clinic that helps heart attack survivors to have a baby. | By James MelleyBBC Victoria Derbyshire programme
Hayley Martin, 47, vividly remembers the morning her life changed forever.
"I woke up and I felt very, very poorly. I put my hands to my head and I was drenched in sweat. I knew straight away it was a heart attack," she told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme.
She was a healthy 38-year-old when she had a Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD), a rare and often undiagnosed condition.
It is the leading cause of heart attacks in women of childbearing age, affecting around 1,000 women a year.
It occurs when there is a sudden tear in one of the coronary arteries, blocking the flow of blood to the heart.
In hospital, Hayley, from Congleton in Cheshire, feared the worst.
"I can remember saying to them, 'am I dying?' And they just kept saying, 'we've tried everything we can, but nothing is working,'" she said.
'I felt less of a woman'
She survived, but like many women with SCAD, was told pregnancy would mean the risk of another heart attack.
"I think it was another thing that was stolen from me, so I almost don't allow myself to think about it, because it could take you down a dark path of sadness," Hayley reflected.
"I felt less of a person, less of a woman, more of a failure, like I was faulty."
What is SCAD?
Source: Leicester Cardiovascular Biomedical Research Unit
Patient's decision
Hayley is the kind of woman who consultant cardiologist Dr Abi Al-Hussaini is trying to help, with her clinic at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.
Dr Al-Hussaini assesses the damage done to the heart by the SCAD and reviews the patient's medication, generally lowering the amount they are on.
She uses that information to advise the patient how risky a pregnancy could be.
This does mean sometimes she has to advise that the risk to health might be very high, but the key is the patient makes the decision, rather than the usual blanket advice not to get pregnant.
If one of her patients decides to proceed, they are referred to the pre-existing "high risk pregnancy team" at the hospital, who monitor them throughout the pregnancy.
"I have seen a lot of patients over the last few years who have come to me unhappy that they have been told they cannot have a child ever again," she explained.
"That's one of the reasons I established the clinic, to give these patients the correct advice and allow them to make an informed decision themselves."
She believes a lack of research into the condition is why most cardiologists prefer the blanket advice.
Sharp pain
One of the first women helped by the clinic was Julie Murphy, 40, from Ruislip.
Shortly before her honeymoon in 2013, she started to feel unwell, like she had flu. While on holiday in Kenya, the symptoms got worse.
Then, while swimming, she had a sharp pain in her chest. When she got home, she had tests on her heart and, "the next day I found out I'd had a heart attack".
The days and weeks that followed were very tough.
"All the medication I was on really slowed me down so I couldn't even walk up the stairs when I came home from hospital. That was really difficult to get my head around," she says.
Like Hayley, Julie was initially told she would not be able to have children. But she became part of a research project led by Dr Al-Hussaini and had her first daughter, Holly, in 2015.
'Awesome team'
She then became one of the clinic's first patients when she became pregnant for a second time.
"I was worried that they would say there's no possibility or it would be too dangerous for us to try to have a baby, that it might mean that I'm putting my life at risk," she said.
Bella was born in April.
"They're such an awesome team that you felt so looked after," Julie said.
Despite the hope she is giving patients, Dr Al-Hussaini says she has encountered resistance from doctors around the world, in terms of what advice they give their patients.
"In America, they are against becoming pregnant any time after a heart attack, or having had a spontaneous coronary artery dissection," she said.
"But again, I think that's because there hasn't been a huge amount of research - but there is a growing amount of research at the moment that's been developed."
Follow the Victoria Derbyshire programme on Facebook and Twitter - and see more of our stories here.
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While the cost of college education in the US has reached record highs, Germany has abandoned tuition fees altogether for German and international students alike. An increasing number of Americans are taking advantage and saving tens of thousands of dollars to get their degrees. | By Franz StrasserBBC News, Germany
In a kitchen in rural South Carolina one night, Hunter Bliss told his mother he wanted to apply to university in Germany. Amy Hall chuckled, dismissed it, and told him he could go if he got in.
"When he got accepted I burst into tears," says Amy, a single mother. "I was happy but also scared to let him go that far away from home."
Across the US parents are preparing for their children to leave the nest this summer, but not many send them 4,800 miles (7,700km) away - or to a continent that no family member has ever set foot in.
Yet the appeal of a good education, and one that doesn't cost anything, was hard for Hunter and Amy to ignore.
"For him to stay here in the US was going to be very costly," says Amy. "We would have had to get federal loans and student loans because he has a very fit mind and great goals."
More than 4,600 US students are fully enrolled at Germany universities, an increase of 20% over three years. At the same time, the total student debt in the US has reached $1.3 trillion (£850 billion).
Each semester, Hunter pays a fee of €111 ($120) to the Technical University of Munich (TUM), one of the most highly regarded universities in Europe, to get his degree in physics.
Included in that fee is a public transportation ticket that enables Hunter to travel freely around Munich.
Health insurance for students in Germany is €80 ($87) a month, much less than what Amy would have had to pay in the US to add him to her plan.
"The healthcare gives her peace of mind," says Hunter. "Saving money of course is fantastic for her because she can actually afford this without any loans."
To cover rent, mandatory health insurance and other expenses, Hunter's mother sends him between $6,000-7,000 each year.
At his nearest school back home, the University of South Carolina, that amount would not have covered the tuition fees. Even with scholarships, that would have totalled about $10,000 a year. Housing, books and living expenses would make that number much higher.
The simple maths made Hunter's job of convincing his mother easy.
"You have to pay for my college, mom - do you want to pay this much or this much?"
'Mind blowing'
The financial advantages of studying in Germany have not been lost on other US students. Katherine Burlingame decided to get her Master's degree at a university in the East German town of Cottbus.
A graduate of Pennsylvania State University, Katherine spent less than €500 ($570) a month in Cottbus, which included housing, transportation and healthcare. On top of that she received a monthly scholarship by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Council) of €750 ($815) which more than covered her costs.
"When I found out that just like Germans I'm studying for free, it was sort of mind blowing," Katherine says.
"I realised how easy the admission process was and how there was no tuition fee. This was a wow moment for me."
In the 2014-2015 academic year, private US universities charged students on average more than $31,000 for tuition and fees, with many schools charging well over $50,000. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Sarah Lawrence University is most expensive at $65,480.
Public universities demanded in-state residents to pay more than $9,000 and out-of-state students paid almost $23,000, according to College Board.
In Germany, tuition fees of €500-1000 were briefly instituted last decade, but Lower Saxony became the last state to phase them out again in 2014.
Students pay a fee to the university each semester to support the student union and other activities. This so called 'semester fee' rarely exceeds €150 and in many cases includes public transportation tickets.
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
When Katherine came to Germany in 2012 she spoke two words of German: 'hallo' and 'danke'. She arrived in an East German town which had, since the 1950s, taught the majority of its residents Russian rather than English.
"At first I was just doing hand gestures and a lot of people had compassion because they saw that I was trying and that I cared."
She did not need German, however, in her Master's programme, which was filled with students from 50 different countries but taught entirely in English. In fact, German universities have drastically increased all-English classes to more than 1,150 programmes across many fields.
US students in Germany
4,654
fully enrolled at German university
61%
pursue Master's degree
29% Languages, Cultural Studies
27% Law, Social Sciences
12% Engineering
10% Math, Natural Sciences
In 1999, European Union members signed the Bologna Accords, which called for uniform university degrees, and established a Bachelor/Master system across Europe. With hundreds of thousands of students from Portugal to Sweden freely travelling abroad, studying and getting degrees in other countries, English became the common language.
At Hunter's university, the Technical University in Munich, 20% of students are non-German. The University president is keen to have every single graduate programme offered in English, and only in English, by the year 2020.
"You can feel sad and think it's a pity that we are losing our own mothers' tongue in the technical disciplines, but that's the development in the world," says Wolfgang Herrmann.
He acknowledges that people wanting to study philosophy and other cultural sciences would still have to be taught in German.
"But in the technical disciplines you could say the world is easier."
Still, to thrive in daily German life, students and experts alike told the BBC that German language skills are crucial.
"If you go to a pub or supermarket and you don't understand what everyone is saying in the long run you don't feel comfortable," says Sebastian Fohrbeck, Director of Scholarships at DAAD.
Most universities offer subsidised language programmes, and in some cases a certificate proving the applicant's German skills is required to apply to certain courses or scholarships.
What's in it for Germany?
One student in Berlin costs the country, on average, €13,300 ($14,600) a year. That number varies according to the field of study. With no tuition fees that expense is shouldered by the individual states, and ultimately the German taxpayer.
Of 170,000 students in the capital city of Berlin, more than 25,000 are from outside Germany. In simple math, that's €332.5 ($364.3) million that Berlin spends a year on foreign students. The question is why?
"It's not unattractive for us when knowledge and know-how come to us from other countries and result in jobs when these students have a business idea and stay in Berlin to create their start-up," says Steffen Krach, Berlin's Secretary of Science.
German students do not need to worry either, he says, because the city has increased capacities massively in recent years at its universities and there is enough space for everyone on campus.
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Research shows that the system is working, says Sebastian Fohrbeck of DAAD, and that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany.
"Even if people don't pay tuition fees, if only 40% stay for five years and pay taxes we recover the cost for the tuition and for the study places so that works out well."
For a society with a demographic problem - a growing retired population and fewer young people entering college and the workforce - qualified immigration is seen as a resolution to the problem.
"Keeping international students who have studied in the country is the ideal way of immigration. They have the needed certificates, they don't have a language problem at the end of their stay and they know the culture," says Fohrbeck.
Can it last?
Yet with more students from the US and across the world turning their attention to a cost-effective education in Germany, questions arise how long this system can be sustainable.
At Technical University in Munich, Dr Herrmann can imagine a future when international students are asked to pay in order to keep up with the global competition.
"If we ignore the question of how to finance an outstanding university in the future we will not continue to have outstanding universities in Germany." Dr Herrmann says. "Education, teaching and research are very intimately connected with money. That's a global law we cannot escape."
An amount of €5,000-10,000 ($5,400-11,000) would be appropriate, says Dr Herrmann, who thinks these fees would also see an increase in services for international students.
But students and educators alike are warning that even the smallest fees could bring an end to the flow of talent to Germany from certain parts of the world.
"I definitely think a limited amount would be fair for American students," says Katherine, who finished her degree in Cottbus and is now living in Berlin.
"But they also have to consider students who come from developing countries that can't pay these kind of tuition fees."
In the capital city of Berlin, the most popular destination for international students, the state government says it has no plans to introduce fees anytime soon.
"We will not introduce tuition fees for international students," says Krach, the Secretary of Science. "We don't want the entry to college to be dependent on your social status and we don't want that the exchange between countries is only dependent on the question of finances."
In the US, meanwhile, there won't be any movement to create a system similar to the one in Germany as long as people flock to expensive schools for their reputation.
"College education in the US is seen as privilege and expected to cost money and in Germany it is seen as an extension of a free high school education where one expects it to be provided," says Jeffrey Peck, Dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College/CUNY. "It's a totally different attitude in what we expect as a society."
Personal recommendations
After Jay Malone received his Master's degree in the West German town of Siegen last year he decided to stay in the country and start an agency called Eight Hours and Change which advises US students who wish to study in Germany.
Selling a free college degree to US high school students and their parents isn't a hard undertaking.
"Most of the questions are 'is it really true?' and then I have to spend five minutes reassuring," says Jay. "But slowly people have wrapped their mind around it and have started associating Germany with this system."
One of the biggest stumbling blocks for potential applicants is convincing them that the quality of education can be high even though it is free.
"Nobody in the US wonders why high school is free," says Sebastian Fohrbeck of DAAD. "Our economic success proves that we are not completely wrong. If you really train your manpower and womenpower well, this is of extreme benefit for the whole country.@
Katherine also decided to stay after graduation and moved to Berlin to work for a start-up association. Sitting in a trendy cafe where the bartender speaks little German but fluent English, Katherine says this experience made her question the way education is financed in the US.
"I can't imagine ever thinking that my children one day are going to end up in thousands and thousands of dollars in debt when they can come to Germany and have no debt and you can live so cheaply as a student."
Even during stressful times studying in a foreign language in Munich, Hunter has not regretted the step he took, and already knows he wants to stay in Germany after graduation.
"I miss my family all the time, but there was never a moment where I thought I belong back home. Germany as a whole fits so well to my needs in life."
His mother Amy is okay with that as long as her son finds a good job and doesn't struggle. She does wonder why her own country was not able to give him a similar education at a price tag that this single mother could afford.
"I feel like my child is getting an absolute wonderful education over there for free. Betrayal is too strong of a word, but why can't we do that here?"
Written by Franz Strasser whom you can tweet here.
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It's going to be an historic Budget because of the numbers. But between the fiscal fireworks and the extension of rescue packages, Chancellor Rishi Sunak was always going to have to point the country towards a changed economy. | Faisal IslamEconomics editor@faisalislamon Twitter
Post-pandemic, post-Brexit and ahead of significant "net zero" decarbonisation challenges, the plumbing of the economy is about to change.
The vaccine progress will obviously impact the timing, and perhaps the speed, of recovery from crisis.
But I'm also told that the chancellor will make the argument at the Budget that the successful rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine in the UK represents a model for transforming these profound medium-term changes in the economy into sustained recovery.
It might be called the "OxAz model" of high science, big business, public participation, significant state funding and rapid regulation.
Appearing alongside the head of the Oxford vaccine team at one of his pre-Budget events, the chancellor said: "Our regulatory system has proved to be more agile and nimble and much better joined-up, than others, perhaps around the world."
He described the public-private partnership between government and AstraZeneca as a "success".
Prof Sarah Gilbert, who designed the Oxford vaccine, suggested that the past year had disproved misconceptions that vaccine research was the preserve of Big Pharma: "There's an awful lot of research that goes on in universities and in small companies.
"And we've seen some really creative partnerships really helping to move things forward."
It's well known that the government poured money into various vaccine research programmes, funding them through early stage trials and even enabling the charter of private jets to help trials, at one point.
A potential deal between Oxford University and a US drug-maker was blocked in favour of the UK's AstraZeneca, until then not a big player in vaccines.
Trials took advantage of the integrated network of controlled testing available across NHS hospitals.
Regulators pushed the system to allow for the same intensity of scientific trials - but in an extremely compressed timeframe.
State-funded innovations
We have seen the end product of publicly-funded science, state-brokered commercialisation, big business partnership, and the logistical efforts of the NHS and volunteers working together. Are there lessons for electric car batteries, financial technology, or even new forms of food?
The argument has already been deployed in favour of the new Advanced Research and Innovation Agency, modelled on the US defence agency Darpa, which had a role well before the pandemic in funding the first mRNA vaccines that paved the way for the Pfizer vaccine.
In announcing that, the government said it would have a "much higher tolerance for failure than normal", because the "freedom to fail is often also the freedom to succeed".
Indeed such thinking may have been present throughout the last year's rolling responses to the pandemic crisis from sourcing ventilators, and protective equipment to the test and trace system and testing technologies. The success in vaccines was pre-dated by a more mixed picture in other parts of the pandemic response.
Will the government be throwing equivalent sums of money at other forms of economic innovation, as it did for vaccines?
It was a risk given that no human coronavirus vaccine had ever been approved, let alone within one year.
But as the National Audit Office has reported, the initial £11.7bn spent upfront on vaccines was justified using a cost-benefit analysis by Alok Sharma's Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
BEIS said the money spent would bring estimated potential benefits of between "£11bn and £231bn, excluding wider health and social benefits".
The vaccine stands on its own on that score. But as well as saving lives and helping reopen the economy, the shot in the arm could have a far longer-lasting economic effect.
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Two people were rescued after their catamaran capsized off the north Wales coast on Saturday. | A member of the public alerted the coastguard at about 14:30 BST after seeing the incident unfold from the promenade at Llanfairfechan, Conwy county.
Beaumaris RNLI lifeboat, coastguard teams from Bangor and Llandudno and a rescue helicopter all responded.
The casualties were brought back to the slip and did not require any treatment.
The catamaran was also towed back to shore.
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When Louise Westra and her partner decided to adopt a child in November 2018, they were aware of the long process that was ahead of them, but they were not to know that the coronavirus pandemic would hold them back from completing the adoption of their son. | By Sooraj ShahTechnology of Business reporter
On 27 March, their petition was due in court. As lockdown had taken effect, telephone conferencing would be used instead of going to court.
However, after the phone call, Ms Westra received an email from her solicitor explaining that the papers had not been served to the biological parents of the child. This continued every month after lockdown, as it wasn't possible for the papers to be physically served.
"It's farcical because one of them is the biological father who lives with the biological mother who has had her petition but the biological father hasn't and they live in the same premises," Ms Westra says.
Serving papers has to be completed by post via Royal Mail or in some cases lawyers would instruct a process server to physically take the papers and hand them to the person.
"It sounds very archaic but if [the person] won't take them by hand, the processor can drop the papers near them and tell them what the document contains and that's technically counted as full service," says Rebecca Ranson, a solicitor for Maguire Family Law.
Unless a judge approves it, emailing or any other forms of digital communication are not considered valid - even though the majority of people in the UK have access to email and the internet. It is this kind of process, in need of a digital upgrade, that is frustrating for Ms Westra.
Ms Westra's case is one of many that have been delayed. The number of outstanding Crown court cases was 43,676 on 26 July, and the entire backlog across magistrates' and Crown courts is more than 560,000. The Commons Justice Committee has announced an inquiry into how these delays could be addressed.
The reality, however, is that there was already a huge backlog back in December, and Covid-19 has just exacerbated an existing problem. Cases like Ms Westra's have been affected by the pandemic, but many lawyers believe that the legal system could have been better prepared through technology investment over the years.
"We've got people being held for longer than they otherwise would be, and for every person in custody waiting for trial or waiting on bail for trial, there are witnesses, and complainants and their families awaiting a resolution. Whether it's the lack of technology links in prison, using Skype and improvising or not having enough Nightingale courts - it all boils down to a lack of investment," says Joanna Hardy, a London-based barrister.
More Technology of Business
In 2016 HM Courts & Tribunals Service began a £1bn court reform programme. This included a video-conferencing tool called the Cloud Video Platform (CVP), which allows for a dedicated private conference area, so criminal lawyers can speak to their clients without visiting prison.
A programme for testing and adopting video technology was planned out until 2022, but in the pandemic, the government had to get CVP up and running in 10 weeks. This has since been extended to civil courts. But this implementation has been challenging, as there are only a restricted number of physical video links allowed.
"As we weren't ready for this huge technological revolution no-one had manned the tech rooms or built enough rooms on the other end in the prison. We can have as many laptops as we like, as much software as we like but if we can't put a prisoner into a room with a screen, the other end is pointless," Ms Hardy says.
According to Ms Hardy, the waiting times to get these slots have been "completely unacceptable", and it has meant that sometimes hearings had to go ahead without the defendant present.
"It's like human beings failing where technology could have bridged the gap," she says.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said that it had offered more than 400 CVP meeting rooms since the outbreak of coronavirus, but added that it is taking steps to increase the available capacity of video conferencing at some locations by extending operating hours. The spokesperson said that the MoJ is also undertaking urgent action to increase the physical number of video link outlets at critical sites.
At the moment, criminal trials are going ahead using social distancing - meaning sometimes a second courtroom is linked by technology, but this is creating further backlogs, as it means one case is occupying the same space as two.
Justice, the all-party law reform and human rights organisation, has trialled a virtual jury trial with a mock case, and suggested it should be considered as a possible option, but this hasn't been taken on by the courts.
The issue with virtual jury trials is whether or not they could affect the outcome of a trial. Some lawyers feel like juries should see a witness, feel an exhibit and dispense justice to a fellow human being in the confines of a court room.
"You can lose the impact of cross examination. When you're challenging their evidence in person it's easier to get them to trip up if they're not being honest, whereas if they're on video it might be easier for them to cover it up," says Jodie Hill, solicitor and managing director of Thrive Law, an employment law specialist.
For smaller hearings, online alternatives could be here for the long term, as it means lawyers don't have to travel all over the UK unnecessarily. This doesn't mean that every hearing that can be done remotely, should be done remotely.
"We don't want overkill. We think some cases still need to be in the room, particularly if you're dealing with vulnerable people or sensitive cases. It has to be a balancing act of harnessing the benefits of technology and thinking about the specific case," says Ms Hardy.
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When Iron Man 3 is released this spring, moviegoers eager to see the latest adventures of Robert Downey Jr's playboy superhero may catch a glimpse of a 110in giant TV screen made by Chinese consumer electronics company TCL. | By Katie HuntBusiness reporter, BBC News, Hong Kong
The film will also feature TCL phones and a scene where the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard is blown to smithereens. The landmark, which hosts many a red-carpet premiere, has just been renamed TCL Chinese Theatre as part of a 10-year $5m (₤3.2m; 3.72m euro) deal.
"TCL has attached great importance to the collaboration with Hollywood," said Li Dongsheng, TCL's chairman, when the product placement deal was announced in January.
His company is one of a growing number of Chinese corporations using Hollywood's marketing machine to promote their products to a global audience.
Others are hitching their wagon to European football teams or the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the United States.
It is an expensive strategy but one they hope will turn Chinese consumer brands into household names that trip off the tongues of shoppers worldwide.
Double whammy
Hollywood is particularly appealing for Chinese brands because it allows them to raise their profile in the global marketplace but, equally, it plays well at home, says Patrick Frater, the chief executive of Film Business Asia.
Often the Chinese brands and products featured in Hollywood movies are not available outside their home market.
For example, in 2011's Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, Shia LaBeouf wears a T-shirt made by Chinese clothing maker Metersbonwe and, in one scene, a character drinks a carton of Shuhua milk made by dairy group Yili.
"I don't know whether this means anything to international audiences… but in a way that is not really the whole point," Mr Frater says.
"The point is to establish to Chinese audiences that this is a big brand, big enough to be in Hollywood movies."
The same factor is at play for soft drinks maker Wahaha, which, along with China Construction Bank, announced in January that it was sponsoring Premier League football team Manchester United.
"I think it's one of the greatest soccer teams in history and it's wildly popular in China," says Lyndon Cao, Director, China Practice, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide.
"Chinese brands going global want to see some repercussions back home. They have their own agenda," says Mr Cao, who is based in New York.
Some Western brands like BMW and Coca Cola have entered product placement deals with Chinese film directors, but navigating the the country's film industry can be tricky.
Films released in China are subject to censorship as the makers of the latest James Bond film discovered when a key scene was deleted and dialogue altered in Skyfall for its China release earlier this month.
Limelight
Once content to be "hidden dragons", toiling in the shadow of high-profile multi-national clients, Chinese companies are seeking the global limelight for a number of reasons.
While buoyant compared with much of Europe and the US, China experienced its slowest growth in 13 years last year prompting many companies to look for new revenue streams, says Shaun Rein, the managing director of the China Market Research Group.
Some are taking their own brands overseas, while others are picking up established Western brands.
The latter tactic is particularly favoured by Chinese property developers, which have also been constrained by government limits on real estate.
China's Wanda Group bought US cinema chain AMC last year, while Fosun Group has made investments in holiday group Club Med and Greek luxury jewellers Folli Follie.
Ego is also at play, says Mr Rein.
"Entrepreneurs are very aggressive and ambitious. They want to become global brands and they want to be a global brand now."
"They are not quite as patient as Japanese and Korean firms were."
And the international aspirations of China's corporate elite have been quietly encouraged by Beijing, which is keen to be seen to have companies that compete at the multinational level.
Challenges
Despite their ambition, there are few examples of Chinese companies that have truly succeeded as a consumer brand outside their home market.
Appliance maker Haier has found a niche selling dorm-sized refrigerators in the US.
Lenovo's products are sold worldwide, although its brand recognition was helped by its purchase of IBM's ThinkPad brand in 2005.
Li-Ning, which wishes to compete with Nike and Adidas, has struggled despite its sponsorship of NBA stars.
Mr Rein said that customers might still pick an Apple or a Sony for other reasons: "Can they [Chinese companies] really back up their claims of coolness? I am not sure they can."
Fertile ground
Mr Cao at Ogilvy believes that the leading Chinese brands will become global names in the next 10 years just as Japanese brands such as Toshiba or Fujitsu, that once seemed strange to Western ears, now no longer raise eyebrows.
However, he says Chinese companies may not necessarily do this by competing in mature markets like the US and Western Europe, where regulation and distribution is more challenging.
"I believe at this moment some of the most fertile ground for becoming a global brand in China will be emerging markets," says Cao, who recently advised state-owned carmaker JAC Motors on its Brazil expansion.
"They should seize the moment and reach out and compete against some of the established brands in this market and I believe they stand a good chance of winning there."
It is a stretch to imagine that consumers will clock the strange logos cropping up in the latest Hollywood blockbuster and rush out to buy a TCL phone or Metersbonwe T-shirt, especially when such products are not widely available.
But building a global brand is a long game and it is clear that it is a task that Chinese companies are taking seriously.
"It's going to be a slow process," says Mr Rein. "I mean it took decades for Toyota and Sony to become viewed as anything other than (makers of ) cheap trinkets.
"But you are going to see more Chinese brands penetrating the everyday lives of European and American consumers."
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Three different wind farm applications have been considered by planning councillors in the Scottish Borders. | The first bid - for nine turbines at Shawpark near to the present Long Park wind farm - was rejected.
No objection was made to moves to construct an 11-turbine extension of the Crystal Rig wind farm on the Berwickshire-East Lothian border.
The same view was taken of plans for a 213-turbine offshore wind farm off the Angus coast.
The closest turbine in that development is more than 30 miles from the Scottish Borders coastline.
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Consider it a menu of choices. But be warned: it's not a very appetising one. | Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland
The Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) has provided a very useful guide to the tax questions so far dominating the Holyrood election campaign, and one that takes us beyond the yah-boo rhetoric.
The newly-opened Scottish branch of this left-leaning think tank has crunched the numbers, using an income survey of 6,000 Scottish homes, the Family Resources Survey.
It gives the manifesto writers - and us voters - what it calls a "£2bn challenge".
That is: they are setting out the choices of how to use a significant boost to taxation and welfare powers, expected to reach Holyrood for the 2017-18 fiscal year.
Not significant enough, say nationalists and - in another new report just out - Reform Scotland. It says the high emphasis on income tax powers make the package of reforms too blunt an instrument to have the desired effects.
Corporation tax, national insurance and more of the welfare system need to be devolved, argues Reform Scotland. That would begin to look like the "devo max" idea, which would hand all tax powers to Holyrood, from which it would pay Westminster for shared services.
IPPR Scotland is not arguing over more powers. It is looking at the ones already heading in Holyrood's directions.
The biggest part of that £2bn funding question is what politicians plan to do about the £1.2bn cut in the spending plans for Scotland's devolved powers.
That's the likely effect of current Westminster plans for devolved powers, unless Holyrood makes changes.
With the economy faltering, tax take is likely to fall short of previous expectation. And with the Chancellor, George Osborne, wanting to get the budget into surplus by 2020, there could be a bigger spending cut on the way. We'll know more with his 2016 Budget on 16 March.
Either way, the claims of being able to counter austerity come at quite a cost.
Softening the blow
Likewise, Westminster changes to the welfare system are expected to take around £600m out of Scottish household incomes, much of it masked by the introduction of Universal Benefit.
IPPR Scotland says that 700,000 Scottish households will lose out by an average of £730.
So what are the next Holyroodful of MSPs going to do to soften that blow? Finding the cash to see off the impact of the bedroom tax (spare room subsidy) was a start, but how much further can the next Scottish government afford to go?
Ministers could counter the cuts to levels of in-work benefits. Keeping that at current levels would cost £300m, calculates the IPPR.
The Department of Work and Pensions is more sharply tapering away entitlement to benefits as the Universal Credit is introduced. In other words, as you move up the income scale, benefit entitlements fall away at an earlier point than has been the case.
To avoid that happening, and to keep things the way they have been, MSPs would have to find another £300m.
There's a case for increasing disability benefits in line with earnings rather than inflation. That carries a £100m annual price tag by 2020.
The smallest tranche of this set of challenges is in a change being planned at Westminster at the higher rate of tax. Conservative ministers want to do more for higher earners than they achieved in the past six years.
The threshold for paying higher rate tax has been held back, and as incomes have risen, more people have drifted into that 40% net. Under the previous Labour government as well, the Exchequer benefited from this "fiscal drift".
From next month, the threshold will be £43,000. By the 2017-18 fiscal year, when Holyrood gets its main bundle of new tax powers, that will likely be raised to £43,600.
At the Treasury, George Osborne then wants that threshold to rise to £50,000 by the 2020 election. But he has not said how fast that rise would take place. We may hear more in his Budget this month. But it costs him money to reduce tax that way.
He, could, meanwhile, confuse things further by taking a lesson from the Scottish Conservative tax commission, which recently suggested an intermediate band of tax - for instance, taxing the £30,000 to £50,000 range at perhaps 30%.
Tackling inequality
So what will Holyrood do in response to Westminster raising the threshold to £50,000? It will have control over that threshold of higher tax, so it will have to do something, even if it is to choose to follow the Tory agenda.
It could decide that higher rate tax payers should pay more. There's been a lot of talk of tackling inequality, and taking a different approach to higher rate tax would be one way of doing so.
That could be by retaining the lower level of threshold below Westminster's level, or by raising the 40% rate.
IPPR Scotland reckons that raising the threshold in line with Tory plans would leave Holyrood short by £300m. Keeping it at £43,600 would raise £300m, as people move into that income bracket.
So, of course, Holyrood's finance minister could set the threshold at a point in between - estimates of inflation would push it up to at least £46,100, for instance - and have a broadly neutral effect on revenue.
Apart from raising the threshold, what about raising the rate of tax on earnings over the £43,600 level?
The calculation here is that a 1p increase, to 41%, would affect 400,000 taxpayers in Scotland and cost them, on average, £300.
And whereas a 1p increase on basic rate tax could raise about £400m, targeting it only at higher rate taxpayers would raise £100m.
Then, there are the super-earners, on more than £150,000. On that income, you pay additional rate tax of 45%, under Westminster tax rules. Holyrood could choose to lower that threshold or to raise the percentage rate, or both.
The IPPR Scotland report does not have a reliable set of figures for the impact of that. Because only 17,000 Scots fall into that top earning category, the Family Resources Survey does not reach enough of them.
The guess is that a reduction in the threshold for paying the highest rate of tax were to drop £10,000, to £140,000, that could raise less than £10m. In other words, not much.
A menu of tax options
Source: IPPR Scotland
Any change in income tax is likely to alter people's behaviour - how many hours they work, for instance, and to some extent, how, when or where they declare their earnings.
The impact is all the greater at higher levels of income, at which people are relatively mobile, and they can pay for the smartest accountants. So it is particularly unclear what behavioural impact a change in additional rate tax would have.
This behavioural effect could mean that higher tax rates actually lower tax take, and vice versa. The IPPR Scotland model has not taken that into account.
Given the porous border between Scotland and the rest of the UK - in people, finance and goods - it's very hard to guess how big the impact will be of a cross-border tax differential.
It is not just that higher rate taxpayers can move earnings south of the border and beyond to avoid higher rates in Scotland (or vice versa, should MSPs choose to make Scotland a low-tax haven): it is also that the new income tax powers do not capture earnings from savings and dividends.
So, for smallish businesses that pay their tax through the income tax system - and there are a lot of them, including the self-employed - their owners can choose to shift at least some of their earnings from income (taxable in Scotland) to dividends (taxable at a UK level, and potentially at a lower rate).
And another thing: this is not just a question of whether higher taxes push high earners and their earnings out of the Scottish tax jurisdiction. Higher tax also sends signals to potential incomers, such as inward investors, who are thinking of bringing business to Scotland. How big an effect? No-one knows.
'No detriment'
A further interesting question thrown up by IPPR Scotland: it points out that the one income threshold that will continue to be controlled from Westminster is the starting rate for income tax.
This year, that is at £10,600. The Tory manifesto last year promised to raise that to £12,500 by 2020.
If it does so, it will cut back the tax take for the Scottish finance department by around £300m.
That is a detriment to the Scottish budget. And the Smith Commission on devolution agreed there should be "no detriment" from a decision taken in one parliament that impacts on the finances available to the other. So would that £300m be paid as compensation?
And returning to today's other report, from Reform Scotland, it is a reminder that national insurance is a fiscal lever that remains firmly controlled at Westminster.
If the intention of policy on either side of the border is to reduce payroll taxes, to help the lower-paid, and to encourage job creation, then there is a diminishing return from raising the starting threshold for income tax.
Instead, there is a strengthening case for cutting back national insurance contributions. If there is to be "no detriment", and a likely impact on welfare calculations, doing so could be messy in devolution terms.
Passive to active
These figures are only indications of the kind of options facing politicians and the electorate at May's election. But they point towards options that cannot be ducked.
Sticking with Westminster tax rates is a choice to be made actively rather than tolerated passively.
What these choices miss, only briefly mentioned by IPPR Scotland, is that variations to tax and spending are not the only options open to Holyrood.
There are some measures that can be made to change the rate of economic growth - increasing the size of the pie from which taxes are taken.
And public services can be delivered differently and more efficiently, if ministers are willing to push through reforms.
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A man wearing a trilby hat and flip-flops was photographed riding a bicycle on the hard shoulder of a motorway. | The man, apparently using a folding bike, was pictured on the northbound M3 near Chandler's Ford, Hampshire, on Sunday.
A man in his 60s was escorted off the motorway at 14:40 BST and given a penalty notice, police said.
Motorists said online the speed limit was cut to 40mph because of "pedestrians", causing traffic queues.
Police said they could not explain why the cyclist was using the motorway.
In 2018, two cyclists blamed a navigation app when they were seen riding on the Aston Expressway and the M6 near Birmingham.
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Strong winds could bring disruption to planes, trains and ferries and lead to power cuts on Friday. | The Met Office has issued a yellow weather warning for wind for Carmarthenshire, Neath Port Talbot, Pembrokeshire, Swansea, Bridgend and the Vale of Glamorgan from 04:00 BST until 16:00.
Drivers of high-sided vehicles on exposed routes and bridges have also been told to expect delays.
Short term loss of power is possible.
Spray and large waves are likely for some coastal communities, the Met Office said.
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Important: There are NO spoilers for Game of Thrones season eight below, but this article does contain some plot details up to the end of season seven.
Game of Thrones has finally ended, thrilling and disappointing fans in equal measure, and bringing eight years of storylines to a close. | We know who lived, who died, who took power, and who got so angry they signed a petition asking for the whole thing to be filmed again in the precise way they wanted.
The final episode revealed the fates of the remaining Stark children, including Bran Stark, who was played by Isaac Hempstead Wright.
In April this year, Isaac told Radio 1 Newsbeat about his time on the show and how he'd been worrying about being bumped off since season one.
A grisly demise was the first thing they looked for when they received scripts for each series, he says.
He played Bran Stark since the first episode, when he was pushed from a tower and crippled by Jaime Lannister.
Bran had a lucky escape that time, but Isaac was worried about his character being killed in every series since.
"The first thing everyone would do when they got the script was check if they were dying," he says.
"Then when they saw they were safe, they'd check if their friends were dying."
And when the axe fell (quite literally, at times) viewing was as rough for the cast as it was for the fans at home.
"You'd always be dreading any particular landmark scene that you knew was coming up, like the Red Wedding."
If you haven't watched the show a) why are you reading this?! And b) that's a major event in season three when some major characters are killed off - most of them were Isaac's on-screen family, the Starks.
"We all knew that was on its way and we were going to lose lovely Michelle [Fairley] and Richard [Madden] and Oona [Chaplin]. That was really sad."
'I nearly quit on the first day'
Isaac turned 20 this year. He's been acting in Game of Thrones since he was 11.
Bran survived unscathed through the first seven seasons, taking an extended trip from his family and home to travel "beyond the wall" and return as the Three-Eyed Raven - a time-travelling psychic who lives for centuries.
But when he started the job, Isaac wasn't sure he could hack the pace.
"I can remember the very first day and we shot in this beautiful place called Tollymore Forest, just outside of Belfast. It rained non-stop all day.
"It was the scene where we find the direwolf pups and it was just relentless.
"I remember going back to the hotel with my mum and saying, 'I don't know if I can do this, it's really hard'."
And sure, things brightened up the next day, but the conditions rarely improved for the cast while filming the show for the best part of a decade.
"It was a pretty good introduction to what weather we would be facing for the next nine years of our lives."
'No sex with your brothers or sisters'
Starting on the show young meant that Isaac was exposed to things most people don't have any knowledge of until much later in life.
Incest, extreme violence and sex are all recurring themes right from the start.
Isaac's character Bran was pushed from a castle tower when he catches brother and sister Jaime and Cersei Lannister having sex in the first episode.
He says there were parts of the early seasons he was too young to watch.
But he says seeing some of the more shocking scenes in the show being filmed was less traumatic for him than they might have been for viewers.
"When you are on set and you see a decapitated body and you see the guy hiding behind the chopping block pumping out blood from the prosthetic it takes all the magic away from it," Isaac says.
"Sex-wise, it just meant my mum would give me endless embarrassing lectures on it, and say things like, 'So darling, no sex with brothers or sisters, that is wrong'."
But while what happened on set didn't have an effect on him, it was what happened off set - back in real life - that made him understand the change Game of Thrones had made.
"University was the first time I was like, 'Oh this is not much fun'," he says.
Isaac dropped out of his maths and music course at Birmingham University in 2017 after just eight weeks because of the attention he received on campus.
"I'd anticipated people would be excited but I didn't see that coming. That was really full-on.
"I couldn't walk out of my halls without having to take a selfie, I was terrified to go out and get drunk because everyone would be watching and taking pictures."
The end is 'terrifying'
But while he's clearly more comfortable in front of TV cameras than being snapped by fans, Isaac's now ready to mark this moment and move on.
"There was talk of everyone who made it from the pilot season to the last to get a tattoo," says Isaac.
"There are only about eight of us from the original pilot who are still alive.
"It is really bizarre - we all feel like we have lived an entire life and career but our lives have just started so it is a pretty amazing position to be in.
"It's really exciting. It is terrifying, but it's exciting."
There were some extra bits from our interview with Isaac that we really didn't want to cut out. Below are some bonus nuggets.
Spoilers for Sean Bean
Sean Bean had no idea what happened to his character Ned Stark in series one - until his co-stars broke the news.
"We were shooting the pilot with Jennifer Ehle, who originally played Catelyn Stark and we were just chatting," says Isaac.
"She said, 'Yeah you die at the end of the first book, Sean.'
"He goes, 'What? Do I?' He didn't know he was getting killed off."
His teachers loved it
When filming was over and Isaac went back to school, it wasn't his classmates who were impressed with his TV job - they were too young to care about the land of Westeros.
"It was the teachers who would get really excited," he says.
"I had a really nice English teacher who was a massive Game of Thrones fan - he was really sweet.
"I think it meant I could interact with them as an adult."
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Lawyers, politicians and generals alike will be looking with great interest at a ruling by a Dutch court that the Netherlands is liable over the killings of more than 300 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys at Srebrenica in Bosnia-Hercegovina in July 1995, writes Media and Criminal Justice Professor Jon Silverman. | As ever with legal rulings, the devil is firmly in the detail.
It appears that the judges of the Hague district court made a distinction between the 300 Bosnian Muslims who were expelled from the UN compound before air support was requested and those, the vast majority, who were expelled later and subsequently murdered by Serb forces.
Why is the issue of air support important? Because the failure to provide it was held to be a direct responsibility of the UN - not the Netherlands Dutchbat peacekeeping force and, standing behind it, the state.
'Important precedent'
Relatives of the victims, campaigning as the "Mothers of Srebrenica", believe this is an artificial distinction and have already said they will appeal.
The Dutch international criminal defence lawyer, Jozef Rammfelt, said the judgment had the potential to be of great significance.
"Admittedly, this is a ruling of a lower court, but it follows a ground-breaking judgment of the Netherlands Supreme Court in 2013 that the state is liable to pay compensation for the victims of genocide," he said.
"This set an important precedent that countries providing troops for UN peacekeeping operations can be held legally responsible for their actions. Other states around the world will have to take note and I imagine they will think twice about their legal liabilities."
In the context of international law, this is yet another development in an ongoing debate about the UN's relationship with the conventions of international humanitarian law.
According to the UN, when states assign troops to peacekeeping duties, the forces answer solely to the Security Council.
And the UN Security Council is not a party to the Geneva Conventions and its various protocols.
For at least two decades, this has provoked tension with bodies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, and in the absence of a controlling international legal regime and with sometimes ambiguous mandates, the burden of responsibility falls on field commanders on the ground.
The Hague court ruling means that there is a growing acceptance that an individual state can be held liable for deaths in a UN-mandated operation.
Professor Philippe Sands, of University College, London, argues that while the Srebrenica massacre has been accepted by international jurisprudence as an act of genocide "it is potentially very significant that the Hague court has ruled that the Dutchbat force should have been aware that a genocide might be perpetrated".
Prof Sands is representing Croatia in a suit against Serbia for genocide during the 1991-95 conflict.
After last year's Supreme Court ruling that the Dutch state was liable for the deaths of three Bosnian Muslim men expelled from the UN compound and subsequently killed, the government offered 20,000 euros ($27,000;£16,000) to each of the victims' relatives.
This latest ruling will require a far larger amount to be paid out. But it is the consequences for existing and future UN peacekeeping operations where the true impact may be felt.
Jon Silverman is Professor of Media and Criminal Justice at the University of Bedfordshire.
Timeline of Srebrenica siege:
6-8 July 1995: Bosnian Serb forces start shelling Srebrenica enclave
9 July: Bosnian Serbs step up shelling; thousands of Bosnian Muslim refugees flee to Srebrenica
10 July: Dutch peacekeepers request UN air support after Bosnian Serbs shell Dutch positions. Large crowds of refugees gather around Dutch positions
11 July: More than 20,000 refugees flee to main Dutch base at Potocari. Serbs threaten to kill Dutch hostages and shell refugees after Dutch F-16 fighters bomb Serb positions. Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic enters Srebrenica and delivers ultimatum that Muslims must hand over weapons
12 July: An estimated 23,000 women and children are deported to Muslim territory; men aged 12-77 taken "for interrogation" and held in trucks and warehouses
13 July: First killings of unarmed Muslims take place near village of Kravica. Peacekeepers hand over some 5,000 Muslims sheltering at Dutch base in exchange for the release of 14 Dutch peacekeepers held by Bosnian Serbs
14 July: Reports of massacres start to emerge
Timeline: Siege of Srebrenica
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There are 31 parties putting up candidates for the European elections in Britain on 22 May. Some are well known, others less so. Here's a guide to all of them, beginning with those who already have a Member of the European Parliament:
| Conservative
Prime Minister and Conservative leader David Cameron said he had a track record of delivering on Europe at the launch of his party's campaign. On the party website, the Conservatives are focusing on their pledge to hold a referendum in 2017. Candidates: Fielding candidates in every region of Britain. 2009 result: 27.7% of votes, 25 MEPs elected
UK Independence Party
UKIP leader Nigel Farage predicted "an earthquake" in politics at his campaign launch. The party, which wants the UK to leave the EU, is focusing on its website on the impact of being in the European Union on control of the UK's borders. Candidates: Fielding a full slate of candidates in every region of Britain. 2009 results: 16.5% of votes, 13 MEPs elected
Labour
Ed Miliband promised to campaign for change within the European union as he launched his party's election campaign. On its party website, Labour says its MEPs will put "jobs and growth" at the heart of the EU. Candidates: Fielding candidates in every region of Britain. 2009 result: 15.7% of votes, 13 MEPs elected
Liberal Democrats
Nick Clegg pitted his party's "optimism and openness" against the "fears and falsehoods" of "isolationists" at the launch of the Liberal Democrat campaign for the European elections. On the party website, the Lib Dems say the "fight is on" to keep the UK in the EU. Candidates: Fielding candidates in every region of Britain. 2009 result: 13.7% of votes, 11 MEPs elected
Green Party of England and Wales
At the launch of the Green Party of England and Wales campaign, leader Natalie Bennett said the party would continue to "make a real difference" on issues like bankers' bonuses and fishing policy. On its party website, the Greens say European policy "does not need to be a shouting match" between extremes. Candidates: Fielding candidates in England and Wales. 2009 results: 8.6% of votes, two MEPs elected.
Scottish Green Party
The Scottish Green Party is hoping to beat the Liberal Democrats to sixth place in Scotland, claiming the constituency's final available seat in the European Parliament. The party backs a Yes vote in September's independence referendum and is campaigning for more power to be handed to local communities and better public services, according to their website. Candidates: Scotland only. 2009 result: 7.31% of vote, no MEPs elected.
British National Party
The BNP wants the UK to withdraw from the EU, while maintaining trade-based co-operation with other European countries. On its website, the party says it is the true patriots of British politics. Candidates: Fielding candidates in every region of Britain. 2009 results: 6.2% of vote, two MEPs elected.
Scottish National Party
The SNP promised to "ensure that Scotland's interests are always defended" in Brussels at its campaign launch. On its party website, it says Scotland needs a "seat at the top table" to make its voice heard. Candidates: Fielding candidates in Scotland only. 2009 result: 29.1% of votes in Scotland, two MEPs elected.
Plaid Cymru
Skilled migrants from other countries should be targeted to move to Wales, Plaid Cymru said as it launched its manifesto. On its party website, it says it will campaign for Welsh to be given the same status as other languages within the EU. Candidates: Fielding candidates in Wales only. 2009 result: 18.5% of votes in Wales, one MEP elected.
Here are the parties hoping to secure their first MEPs, listed in order of the number of candidates they are fielding:
English Democrats
The English Democrats launched their campaign pledging to "look after English interests" and arguing it was unfair to charge English people for prescription charges and tuition fees when these are free for residents elsewhere in the UK. On its party website, it points out the launch took place on site of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt. Candidates: Fielding candidates in every region of England.
An independence from Europe
The party is pledging to take the UK out of the European Union without a referendum, to scrap VAT and build stronger links with the Commonwealth. It describes itself as an inclusive, democratic, Euro-realist, party on its website. Candidates: Fielding candidates in every region of England
No2EU - Yes to Democracy
The party wants to hold a referendum on EU membership as a prelude to leaving the union. On its party website, it says it opposes privatisation and campaigns for workers' rights and decent public services. Candidates: Fielding candidates in the east and north-west of England, London, the West Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, Wales, and Scotland.
Christian Peoples Alliance
On its website, the party says the EU must be reformed to reflect the "Christian vision" of its founders and unless this happens, the UK should seek to leave. Candidates: Fielding candidates in the east and south-east of England, and London.
Socialist Party of Great Britain
On its website, the party says it will be campaigning for common, democratic ownership of public services, the abolition of property rights and an end to inequality. Candidates: Fielding candidates in south-east England and Wales only.
Britain First
On its website, the party promises to promote a "robust and confrontational" message about the need to leave the European Union, end immigration and put British workers first. Candidates: Fielding candidates in Scotland and Wales only.
Peace Party
The party supports the UK's continued membership of the the European Union, which it says is a "force for peace", but urges the EU to be more pro-active. On its website, it also calls for a living wage and all foreign troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan. Candidates: Fielding candidates in south-east England only.
Animal Welfare
The party is campaigning for EU subsidies to be redirected away from livestock and fisheries farming into plant-based agriculture. On its website, it lists its other objectives including promoting healthy, plant-based lifestyle initiatives through public health and education campaigns. Candidates: Fielding candidates in London only.
Communities United
On its party website, Communities United says it is campaigning for reform of council tax and business rates and a university education for all. Candidates: Fielding candidates in London only
4 Freedoms
The party is vowing to give London a "strong voice" within the EU. On its website, it commits to aligning its MEPs with the European People's Party, the largest grouping in the European Parliament. Candidates: Fielding candidates in London only
National Health Action Party
The NHS should be exempt from a proposed new free trade treaty between the European Union and the United States and food regulation should be strengthened, the party says on its website. Candidates: Fielding candidates in London only.
National Liberal Party
If elected, the party says its MEPs will consult constituents through social media and petitions before deciding how to vote on key issues. On its party website, it says its MEPs will also donate part of their salaries to good causes. Candidates: Fielding candidates in London only.
Socialist Equality Party
The European Union should be replaced by a United Socialist States of Europe, the party says, with "workers' governments" and an end to the "age of austerity". On its party website, it says it is aligned with its sister party in Germany, Partei Für Soziale Gleichheit. Candidates: Fielding candidates in north-west England only
We Demand a Referendum Now Party
At its launch, the party said it had just one policy, to force a referendum on EU membership. On its party website, it says the debate must be settled "once and for all". Candidates: Fielding candidates in the West Midlands only.
Europeans Party
On its party website, the Europeans Party says it is committed to promoting the UK's national interest within the EU and fighting "prejudice and discrimination" based upon nationality. Candidates: Fielding candidates in London only.
Harmony Party
On its party website, the Harmony Party describes itself as "ready and willing to remedy the inequalities of the current system of governance where the UK and Europe are concerned." It is fielding candidates under the slogan "zero immigration, anti-EU, pro-jobs". Candidates: Standing in the East Midlands, West Midlands, London, and south-east England only.
Socialist Labour Party
The party, led by Arthur Scargill, advocates withdrawal from the EU so the UK can "regain control of its economy, sovereignty and political power". On its party website, Mr Scargill says British farmers are "being paid not to produce food" at a time of worldwide shortages. Candidates: Fielding candidates in Wales only.
Liberty GB Party
On its website, the party says it is campaigning for withdrawal from the EU, the repeal of existing EU laws, the abolition of the Human Rights Act and legislative guarantees for freedom of speech. Candidates: Fielding candidates in south-east England only.
Pirate Party
All institutions, including the EU, should be more transparent and accountable, the party believes. It also wants EU data retention and intellectual property rights directives to be repealed. On its party website, it claims there "is more to life than Nick vs Nigel". Candidates: Fielding candidates in north-west England only.
Yorkshire First
On its party website, Yorkshire First says it is campaigning for a stronger voice for the region in national and European politics and more devolution, including a Parliament for Yorkshire. Candidates: Fielding candidates in Yorkshire and the Humber only.
YOURvoice
On its website, YOURvoice is pledging to deliver "a better democracy". It states that constituents will be able to vote online to directly influence how its MEPs represent them in the European Parliament. Candidates: Fielding candidates in south-east England only.
Roman Party
The party, the brainchild of bus driver Jean-Louis Pascual, campaigns for an end to injustice and greater educational opportunities - as well as increasing knowledge of the Romans' contribution to modern Britain. It does not have a website. Candidates: Fielding one candidate in south-east England only.
A separate system is in place in Northern Ireland. More details on the candidates.
Here is a full list of candidates standing across the UK.
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A man has been charged after police seized cannabis worth £510,000 at Larne Harbour in County Antrim. | The 37-year-old is accused of two class B drug offences as well as possessing an offensive weapon.
A lorry was stopped and searched at the harbour at about 19:10 GMT on Tuesday.
Police, working with Border Force and HMRC officers, seized the drug.
The man is due to appear at Ballymena Magistrates' Court on Thursday.
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After the anxiety and drama of the past few days in Nigeria, it is tempting to get carried away by the impact of this ballot - what it represents for both Africa's largest democracy and for those countries on the continent still wrestling with the notion that power can change hands without the world coming to an end. | Andrew HardingAfrica correspondent@BBCAndrewHon Twitter
The significance of General Muhammadu Buhari's victory should certainly not be underestimated.
An electorate that has savoured the rich experience of ousting an incumbent by the mere act of voting cannot easily be persuaded to forget it.
And that must surely be a contagious experience on a continent where, it is often said, roughly one in five people are Nigerians.
Besides, this was no "people's revolution" - something that the continent's remaining strongmen could loudly dismiss as a dangerous threat to the natural order of things.
Instead Nigeria's election was something much more prosaic, and more subtle - a challenge to entrenched autocracy.
It was, despite the disruptive efforts of a few, a very ordinary thing: A peaceful, modern, well-monitored, uncontestable transfer of power.
Nothing to be feared. A casual precedent that should echo loudly around the region.
"It establishes a link between performance and accountability - knowing that if you don't perform you can be thrown out of power by the electorate, not by the military," Adekeye Adebajo, from the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, told me by phone.
"It's an incredibly powerful incentive for better governance in the future.
"It sends a strong signal to the rest of the continent. There will be autocrats in Khartoum, in the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda, who are thinking of staying on in power. They won't welcome this."
International clout
The election also gives Nigeria more credibility and clout within the West African grouping Ecowas, at the African Union, and internationally, as the continent seeks to shrug off the enduring influence of former colonial powers like France.
Nigeria's leaders can no longer be dismissed as hypocrites when they lecture neighbours like Mali, Niger, Guinea and Guinea Bissau, on the need to keep the military out of politics. That can only be a good thing for African democracy.
On a more nuts and bolts level, these past few days have been a valuable reminder of quite how difficult it is becoming to rig an election.
Social media, fingerprint scanners, and an army of young volunteer observers armed with mobile phones have all played their role - as they have done in other recent African elections - in limiting the possibilities of ballot stuffing and other shenanigans.
That's not to say people didn't try to rig this election - and won't in the future.
But once the data is out there - posted online - it becomes much harder for the backroom cheats to cook the books.
Muhammadu Buhari in focus:
Five reasons why Goodluck Jonathan lost
Profile: Muhammadu Buhari
Then there's President Goodluck Jonathan's abrupt decision to accept defeat - a move made, I'm told, without consulting some key officials and against the wishes of many in his party.
It was a bold, selfless move that may well have saved many lives in Nigeria.
It will go down as a new milestone for African democracy, and may help redeem Mr Jonathan's presidency, at least partially, in the eyes of his many critics.
Does that mean Nigerian democracy is safe? Perhaps not.
Challenges ahead
A new man may be coming to power.
But Gen Buhari is not young, and he presides over an untested coalition.
He is inheriting an empty treasury - broken by falling oil prices, the cost of supporting the national currency, and now threatened with more looting by sticky-fingered officials heading for the door.
Boko Haram's insurgency in the north-east remains a huge challenge to a corrupt and humiliated army.
Perennial frustrations in the oil-rich south of Nigeria could well begin to boil over. The list goes on.
And now comes a six-week period of administrative limbo - another new experience for Nigeria - as the old regime prepares to empty its desks, and a new team is formed.
Gen Buhari has much to do, and to prove, in a short time.
Who will he chose to run the economy? How can he prevent any last-minute looting? Can he get the army to secure, and build on the territorial gains it has made against Boko Haram in the last few weeks?
And how will he balance the need for a smooth transition against what must surely be his instinct to make an example of those public officials who have been greedily stealing from Nigeria's oil revenues for years?
Nigeria, by all accounts, is not an easy country to run.
As we saw on Tuesday night with the state television's reluctance to even broadcast news of an election upset, there are entrenched interests here that will struggle to adapt.
After a political earthquake, aftershocks are almost inevitable.
But for now it is the optimists both in Nigeria and around the continent who must, surely, have the upper hand.
The uncontestable fact of a democratic transfer of power trumps any legitimate, but unrealised concerns about whether a different president, and a different party, will actually make life better for the people of Africa's most important nation.
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Poor visibility caused by thick fog has led to the cancellation of about 50 flights at Heathrow airport, a spokeswoman said. | Passengers have been warned about foggy conditions across the UK and Europe causing disruption to flights. They are advised to check with their airlines.
The airport did not expect any further cancellations or delays.
The Met Office has issued a yellow weather warning for fog.
It is expected to become widespread and dense in the London area from Sunday night into Monday morning.
Passenger Ed Drewett wrote on Twitter: "Stuck on the ground at Dublin due to fog at Heathrow. Gonna miss my flight to LA."
Tim France also tweeted that he was delayed leaving Dublin.
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Sir Stanley Matthews remains one of England's most famous footballers and was known as the Wizard of Dribble. But he was also arguably the first global icon, paving the way for superstars such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. And it all began in Ghana, writes Scott Anthony. | Football is the closest thing the planet has to a global popular culture.
Wherever you go in the world, you'll find people kicking a ball around, watching matches in cafes, wearing replica shirts, and betting or playing football games on their phones.
Yet the idea of a footballer as a global icon is a relatively recent phenomenon. The idea that a footballer could bring nations, classes and races together had to be invented. And it was an idea that was arguably invented in Africa.
The story begins 60 years ago in Ghana when veteran English footballer Stanley Matthews strode out to play for Accra's Hearts of Oak against Kumasi Kotoko.
'A god among us'
Newly crowned as the first European Player of the Year, Matthews came to Ghana to play a series of exhibition matches to celebrate independence.
"Matthews' visit had a tremendous impact," says football writer Fiifi Anaman. "When I spoke with some of the players about it, they said they couldn't believe Matthews came - it felt almost as if a god was walking among them."
The media had hyped up the visit, speculating how local hero Baba Yara, "Ghana's King of Wingers", would measure up against the superstar of European soccer.
Matthews was mobbed on arrival and more than 80,000 spectators turned up to watch his first three matches against Kotoko, Sekondi Hasaacas and Kumasi Cornerstone.
Shortly after his arrival, Matthews was presented with an ivory sword and installed as a "soccerhene" (soccer chief) in front of the press.
Using sport to promote pan-Africansism
Matthews' tour of the region led people to compare European and African styles of football.
Newspapers emphasised that Matthews rarely ran, played corners short and almost never passed the ball off the ground. He avoided heading the ball.
His visit prompted calls for Ghanaians to prioritise teamwork and alertness over effort and physicality.
Even more importantly, Matthews arrived as Ghana's first President, Kwame Nkrumah, was trying to create an identity for Ghana - a country knitted together from numerous different ethnic groups under colonial rule.
Removing the portrait of Elizabeth II from stamps and coins was easy but it was more difficult to create new symbols capable of bringing the new nation together.
In particular, President Nkrumah stressed the need for real-life examples. He wanted to emphasise the idea that you live your values rather than passively inherit them.
Who was Sir Stanley Matthews?
The story of Sir Stanley Matthews
The success of Matthews' tour helped convince Mr Nkrumah that sport could also play a significant role in the dissemination of African values.
At this defining moment, Matthews was playing alongside the early greats of Ghanaian football such as James Adjaye, Chris Briandt and CK Gyamfi, who would go on to define that greatness.
Ultimately, Ghana's president believed that sport was the perfect vehicle for the expression of pan-African idealism.
"By meeting together in the field of sport," Mr Nkrumah said, "the youth of Africa will learn what our elders were prevented from learning - that all Africans are brothers with a common destiny."
In the years immediately after independence, Ghanaian football would not only serve as a vehicle for the development of what the president termed "the African personality" but be invested with the hope that it could help build a new kind of global solidarity.
'The saint of soccer'
The England international, aged 42 when he arrived in Ghana, was a compelling if unusual figure.
He had become a celebrity during World War Two when Allied authorities promoted the matches of touring All Star XIs to keep up morale in war zones.
Here Matthews was a propagandist's dream. In addition to his amazing dribbling ability, he was never booked and lived an ascetic life. The contrast between Matthews' modesty and the icons of Fascist sport could not be clearer.
After Matthews' Blackpool beat Bolton in the 1953 FA Cup final, popularly known as "the Matthews final", his fame was propelled worldwide through newsreels and television.
Affection for "Our Stan" grew as his stringent fitness regime allowed him to play professional football until the age of 50. During his visit, Ghanaian newspapers labelled him "the Saint of Soccer" as he visited schools and hospitals.
Independent Ghana required its own brand of heroic gentlemen.
Approachable but exceptional, the example of the "soccerhene" encouraged Ghana's government to make sport and sports stars central to their project.
As independence spread throughout the African continent, Mr Nkrumah's use of sport for nation-building would be widely imitated.
Later in the 1960s, it would become fashionable for icons of global sport, from Pele to Muhammad Ali, to make pilgrimages to newly independent African states.
Immediately after Matthews' visit, the Englishman George Ainsley was appointed manager of the national team, the "Black Stars".
Ghana became the first African nation to tour Eastern Europe and the first sub-Saharan African nation to qualify for the Olympic Games.
In 1963 CK Gyamfi would coach Ghana to victory in the African Cup of Nations, a trophy they retained in 1965.
Mr Nkrumah also pushed Fifa to guarantee a spot for an African side at the World Cup, which was introduced after African nations boycotted the 1966 World Cup.
Matthews himself would become a regular visitor to Africa, playing and coaching in countries such as Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.
In later life he favourably contrasted the collective spirit of African football, especially in Soweto, with the economic bigotry he saw taking over the game in the UK.
"Going into the townships at a time when racial discrimination was at its most intense [was] something that had all kinds of ramifications," remembered Archbishop Desmond Tutu. "It made a dent in the apartheid armoury."
In Ghana, President Nkrumah's politicisation of football would prove a double-edged sword, as the regime's centralising and authoritarian tendencies eventually brought the league into disrepute and fanned regional factionalism.
Internationally, however, African governmental activism broke the European and South American duopoly over football and in the process the idea that football was an uncontainable and universalising global force was born.
Scott Anthony is a fellow at the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Study
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Heriberto Lazcano, the leader of Los Zetas, one of the Mexico's most feared and brutal drugs gangs, was killed this week in a shoot-out with the Mexican marines. This news was not a major surprise to Mexico-watchers - but then something strange happened. | By Will GrantBBC News
The life of a drug lord is generally pretty short.
The world's most notorious was probably "El Patron" - the Colombian cocaine baron, Pablo Escobar, who died aged 44, barefoot, bloated and riddled with bullets on a rooftop in Medellin.
Most do not rise that high in the drugs trade, though, nor live that long to tell the tale.
We receive constant reports from the Mexican attorney general's office of supposed lieutenants and middle-ranking soldiers from gangs like the Sinaloa Cartel, the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas who have been murdered by their enemies or killed in shoot-outs with the authorities.
They are more often boys than men.
Twenty or 22 years old, their hands tied behind their backs, a bullet to the head, dumped on the roadside. A final adios to an all-too-brief life which brought them fleeting riches, cars and women.
By his industry's standards, then, Heriberto Lazcano was a veteran.
He was my age, born in 1975, and over this past year, covering the twists and turns of his murderous and violent organisation, I have often thought of that fact - and wondered what took a supposedly loyal Mexican soldier and turned him into the watchword for drug-related terror in his homeland.
The only photo we ever saw of Lazcano alive shows a young man, in his military days, wearing a beige shirt, dark jacket and tie, staring impassively at the camera, revealing nothing of the murderer - "The Executioner", as he would later be nicknamed - that lay within.
The photo we saw this week of El Lazca showed him lying dead on a slab. Naked, with his eyes closed, his hairline had receded a little over the years and his mouth looked puffy and damaged. But it seemed to be him sure enough.
Mind you, the Mexican authorities were slow in officially confirming the death.
When the first reports started to come in late one night that, perhaps, the head of Los Zetas had been killed, it did not come as any huge surprise.
The organisation has been tearing itself apart for months now, as one faction appears to be telling the authorities where to find their former comrades.
The marines said they were waiting for DNA evidence on Lazcano, conscious, perhaps, of the last time they made a song and dance about a big name, which quickly turned into a PR disaster.
Earlier this year, the authorities said they had detained the son of the world's most wanted man, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
They brought out a stocky young man dressed in a bullet-proof vest, paraded him in front of the world's media and said for sure he was El Chapo's son.
Then his mother spoke up, and said not only was he not the son of the biggest drug lord in Mexico, he was in fact a used-car salesman from Guadalajara. That one took some speedy back-pedalling.
Still, by the folllowing morning, it should have been clear whether this was El Lazca's body or not. Instead, the story got even more surreal.
The reason for the delay soon became clear. The government no longer had the body.
After El Lazca had been shot outside a baseball game on a dusty patch of land in the northern state of Coahuila, the marines took his fingerprints - without even realising who they had killed - and passed his body on to a local funeral home.
Later that night, on learning that their leader had fallen, the foot-soldiers of Los Zetas - imbued as they are with a sense of military fraternity - stormed the funeral home in balaclavas and with automatic rifles, and took back Lazcano's body. Perhaps to give him their own send off, perhaps to stop word getting out that he was dead and they were weakened. Who knows?
But the lack of a body does two things. It denies the government the trophy it so craves after six years of fighting the gang, leaving the hastily-snapped images in the funeral home as the only evidence that the man so often seen as a monster in Mexico has gone.
Secondly, it introduces an element of doubt. In a country which thrives on rumour and counter-rumour, that is an important weapon for the conspiracy theorists who plague the internet message boards and narco-blogs (which document the events of the drug war in Mexico).
More than once the comparison has been made to the infamous "Senor de los Cielos", Amado Carrillo Fuentes, leader of the once all-powerful Juarez Cartel.
The official version of events said he died under the plastic surgeon's scalpel while trying to change his identity. The surgeons later turned up dead and rumours still abound that he faked his death.
In the case of Heriberto Lazcano, responsible for some of the most gruesome crimes in Mexican history, it seems pretty clear that he died face-down in the mud in the city of Progreso, meaning Progress.
One can only hope that that is what his death will bring.
How to listen to From Our Own Correspondent:
BBC Radio 4: Saturdays at 11.30am and some Thursdays at 11am.
Listen online or download the podcast
BBC World Service: Short editions Monday-Friday - see World Service programme schedule.
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Firefighters have extinguished a house fire on Anglesey which they say had spread to a neighbouring property.
| North Wales Fire and Rescue Service was called to Capel Coch, near Llangefni, at 05:50 BST on Wednesday.
Crews from Benllech, Llangefni, Menai Bridge and Rhosneigr, and an incident command unit from Rhyl were called to the blaze at the terraced properties.
A spokesperson said the fire, caused by an electrical fault, affected the house's kitchen, storeroom and roof.
The blaze also damaged the roof space of the neighbouring property.
There were no injuries, said the spokesperson.
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It has led people to jump off buildings, bite others and run into people's homes. Now police say it is only a matter of time before someone dies as the result of "monkey dust" - a synthetic drug rising in popularity in the West Midlands. | "At night time I won't go out, because that's when the people on drugs tend to come out," Molly Lawton, a 19-year-old chef from Stoke, tells the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme.
"You see someone who's on monkey dust swinging their arms around, shouting and screaming. [At night] that would frighten me to death."
Monkey dust is a class B drug that has been in circulation for several years.
But now emergency services within Stoke are worried it is becoming an epidemic.
The drug can stop users feeling pain, and causes them to experience hallucinations - making them highly unpredictable.
What sets it apart, however, is that its effects can last for days.
Police have been called to cases where individuals have run into traffic and jumped off buildings.
No-one so far has died. But there is concern it is just a matter of time.
Selling for £2 a bag, monkey dust is said to be used among many within the city's homeless community.
One man, who gave his name as Smithy, has been using it over the last year.
Aged 31, he has been sleeping rough for 10 years, and says it is one of the most potent drugs he has ever tried.
"I hate the fact that I like it. I hate it every time I have it, but I still have it," he says, wishing he was not addicted.
"It's everywhere. There's that many people on it."
'The worst we've seen'
Chief Supt Jeff Moore from Staffordshire Police says the force has dealt with 950 calls related to the drug in the past three months.
"Frequently we see the paranoia - instances of people jumping into traffic, jumping onto bridges and high buildings, running into people's houses," he says.
"From a drug perspective this is the worst we've seen. It's a consequence of not just taking the drug, but people risking others' safety too."
He said it was difficult for officers to deal with, as those on the drug are so unpredictable, and called for a wider look into the social and public health issues that contribute to its use.
"It's not just about a group of people who are homeless and in town," he added, saying people of different backgrounds and ages were using it too."
'People hiding weapons'
Darren Murinas, a reformed drug-dealer working with the group Expert Citizens, says he previously lived with three people using the drug.
"These guys had been using crack and heroin, but no longer did because of the price," he says.
On one occasion, he explains, one housemate "thought there was someone under the floorboards after him, and wouldn't sleep for days.
"I've seen it induce a psychosis - people hiding weapons because they were scared," he adds.
Mr Murinas says he knows one person who is "constantly in hospital" having been addicted to the drug, and another with serious brain trauma.
"We need to start recording this issue so we can get the data," he says.
"And we need to look at it with a mental health lens, not just with police."
The Home Office said its drug strategy "sets out a balanced approach which brings together police, health, community and global partners to tackle the illicit drug trade, protect the most vulnerable and help those with a drug dependency to recover and turn their lives around".
Among those in Stoke city centre, many have seen the visible effects of the drug.
One security guard, Ari, says it is causing problems for businesses in the area.
Charlie, an 18-year-old student who has tried the drug a few times and whose surname we are not using, says he would never take it again.
"I felt weird," he says, remembering its effects. "I felt like when I first took it I was walking like a zombie. It's not clever."
He says there have been efforts to educate students about the dangers of the drug at his college, as the city becomes more aware of its effects.
For Molly, the worry is that the situation will become worse before it can get better.
"There's a lot of it, because the drug dealers are selling it for just £2 a bag," she says.
"With it being so cheap, there's going to be a lot more [taking it] around Stoke too."
Watch the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme on weekdays between 09:00 and 11:00 BST on BBC Two and the BBC News Channel in the UK and on iPlayer afterwards.
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Two 14-year-old boys have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a man was stabbed. | A 56-year-old man was stabbed in the neck and stomach during an altercation in Barnfield Road, Southampton, at about 12:40 GMT on Tuesday.
He was taken to Southampton General Hospital where his injuries are described as serious but not life-threatening.
The boys, both from Southampton, remain in custody.
Police are appealing for anyone with information to contact them.
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Work has started on a £348m contract for three Royal Navy warships at BAE Systems' yards at Scotstoun and Govan on the River Clyde in Glasgow. | The offshore patrol vessels will be known as HMS Forth, HMS Medway and HMS Trent. The first will be ready by 2017.
They will be used to support counter-terrorism, counter-piracy and anti-smuggling operations in UK waters.
The vessels will be capable of global deployment, able to carry the latest Merlin helicopters and special troops.
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Manchester Airport train station was evacuated and a man detained after a suspicious bag was found while officers were investigating reports of a man behaving "erratically". | Greater Manchester Police said a cordon was put in place and bomb disposal officers carried out a controlled explosion.
Trains, trams and buses were suspended for a number of hours and the station reopened at 11:20 BST.
The detained man was taken to hospital.
Police confirmed the bag did not contain a viable device and there was "no evidence" to suggest the incident was terrorism related.
Ch Insp Andy Sutcliffe said: "Public safety is our top priority so a controlled explosion of a bag was carried out as a precaution before an inspection of the contents confirmed that there was no viable device or components inside."
Passengers were asked to follow directions from police officers as they were evacuated from the station and there were long queues for taxis.
Related Internet Links
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Manchester Airport
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Unseasonable weather has been blamed for limiting growth in passenger numbers at regional airports.
| Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd (Hial), which runs 11 sites, said numbers rose by 0.7% last month compared with June 2011.
Heavy fog caused disruption at Kirkwall on Orkney and also at Inverness and Wick airports.
Hial had previously reported strong growth in the number of passengers using its sites.
In May, passenger numbers rose by 7.8% from the same to 114,366.
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Countless historic artefacts were looted from around the world during the colonial era and taken to Europe but there is now a growing campaign to return them. Among the most famous are the Benin Bronzes seized from modern-day Nigeria. Barnaby Phillips finds out about one family's dilemma. | One morning in April 2016, a woman walked into Barclays Bank on London's exclusive Park Lane, to retrieve a mysterious object that had been locked in the vaults for 63 years.
Attendants ushered her downstairs. Three men waited upstairs, perched anxiously on an uncomfortable sofa, watching customers go about their business.
Twenty minutes later the woman appeared, carrying something covered in an old dishcloth. She unwrapped it, and everyone gasped.
A youthful face cast in bronze or brass stared out at them. He had a beaded collar around his neck and a gourd on his head.
The men, an art dealer called Lance Entwistle and two experts from the auctioneers Woolley and Wallis, recognised it as an early Benin Bronze head, perhaps depicting an oba, or king, from the 16th Century.
It was in near-immaculate condition, with the dark grey patina of old bronze, much like a contemporary piece from the Italian Renaissance. They suspected it was worth millions of pounds. The bank staff quickly led them into a panelled room, where they placed the head on a table.
The woman who went down into the vaults is a daughter of an art dealer called Ernest Ohly, who died in 2008.
I have chosen to call her Frieda and not reveal her married name to protect her privacy.
Ernest's father, William Ohly, who was Jewish, fled Nazi Germany and was prominent in London's mid-century art scene.
William Ohly lived "at the nexus of culture, society and artists", says Entwistle.
His "Primitive Art" exhibitions attracted collectors, socialites, and artists such as Jacob Epstein, Lucian Freud, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell.
He died in 1955. Ernest Ohly inherited his love of art, but was a more reserved character.
"A very, very difficult man to know. He didn't let anything out. You did not know what he was thinking," said Entwistle.
Ernest Ohly's death provoked a ripple of excitement at the lucrative top end of the ethnographic art world. He was rumoured to have an extensive collection. His statues from Polynesia and masks from West Africa were auctioned in 2011 and 2013. And that, dealers assumed, was that.
But his children knew otherwise. In old age, he had told them he had one more sculpture. It was in a Barclays safe box and not to be sold, he specified, unless there was another Holocaust.
In 2016 matters were taken out of the children's hands. Barclays on Park Lane was closing its safe boxes; it told customers to collect their belongings.
I met Lance Entwistle in 2019, in his library lined with books on African sculpture. His website said his company has been "leading tribal art dealers for over 40 years".
"Tribal art" is a term that Western museums now avoid, but is still common in the world of auctions and private sales.
Entwistle has rarely been to Africa, and never to Nigeria, but he's well connected. The British Museum, the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris and the Metropolitan in New York have all bought pieces from him.
I asked him how he had felt when Frieda pulled the cloth away from the Benin Bronze head in the bank.
"I was bowled over," he said. "It was beautiful, moving, and its emergence from obscurity was so exciting. I'm very used to being told about a Benin head, a Benin plaque, a Benin horse and rider. Generally I'm not excited because 99 times out of 100 they're fake, and often the remaining 1% has been stolen."
Provenance is everything in Entwistle's world. This time, thanks to the Ernest Ohly connection, he was confident he was dealing with a bona fide piece.
He told Frieda the Benin Bronze head was significant and unusual, and convinced her to take it home in a taxi, to her terraced house in Tooting, south London.
The Benin Bronzes were brought to Europe in the spring of 1897, the loot of British soldiers and sailors who conquered the West African kingdom of Benin, in modern day Nigeria's Edo state.
Although they are called Benin Bronzes, they are actually thousands of brass and bronze castings and ivory carvings. When some were displayed in the British Museum that autumn, they caused a sensation.
Africans, the British believed at the time, did not possess skills to produce pieces of such sophistication or beauty. Nor were they supposed to have much history.
But the bronzes - some portrayed Portuguese visitors in medieval armour - were evidently hundreds of years old.
Benin had been denigrated in British newspapers as a place of savagery, a "City of Blood". Now those newspapers described the Bronzes as "surprising", "remarkable" and admitted they were "baffled".
Some of these bronzes are still owned by descendants of those who pillaged Benin, while others have passed from owner to owner.
Victor Ehikhamenor, an artist from Edo state, told me the bronzes were not made only for aesthetic enjoyment.
"They were our documents, our archives, the 'photographs' of our kings. When they were taken our history was exhumed."
But as their value in the West has increased, they've also become prestige investments, held by the wealthy and reclusive.
London auction sales tell the story. In 1953, Sotheby's sold a Benin Bronze head for £5,500. The price raised eyebrows; the previous record for a Benin head was £780.
In 1968 Christie's sold a Benin head for £21,000. (It had been discovered months earlier by a policeman who was pottering around his neighbour's greenhouse and noticed something interesting amidst the plants).
In the 1970s, "Tribal Art" prices soared, and Benin Bronzes led the way. And so it went on, all the way to 2007 when Sotheby's in New York sold a Benin head for $4.7m (£2.35m).
Entwistle kept an eye on that 2007 sale. The buyer, whose identity was not publicly revealed, was one of his trusted clients.
Nine years later, presented by Frieda with the challenge of selling Ernest Ohly's head, Lance knew where to turn.
"It was the first client I offered it to, which is what you want, there was no need to shop around," he said.
There was only a minor haggle over price. The client, Entwistle insisted, was motivated by his love of African art.
"He will never sell, in my view." Whoever he is, wherever he is, he paid another world record fee.
The "Ohly head", as Entwistle calls it, was sold for £10m - a figure not previously disclosed.
If you envisaged the woman who sold the world's most expensive Benin Bronze, you might not come up with Frieda.
We met in the Tate Modern gallery, overlooking the Thames. She had travelled from Tooting by underground. She is a grandmother, with grey close-cropped hair and glasses. She used to work in children's nurseries, but is retired.
"My family is riddled with secrets," she said. "My father refused to speak about his Jewish ancestry."
She did her own research on relatives who were killed in Nazi concentration camps. Ernest Ohly was haunted, "paranoid", says Frieda, by the prospect of another catastrophe engulfing the Jews.
Six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust - and, according to the Jewish Claims Conference, the Nazis seized an estimated 650,000 artworks and religious items from Jews and other victims.
Ernest Ohly distrusted strangers and lived in a world of cash and secret objects. He kept a suitcase of £50 notes under the bed.
"Ernie the Dealer" was the family nickname. The children grew up surrounded by art. But by the end he was tired of life.
His house was chaotic, his Persian rugs infested with moths. The family found the suitcase of banknotes but discovered they were no longer legal tender.
Ernest Ohly may have let things slide, but he had been a formidable collector.
"He and my grandfather never went to Africa or the South Pacific, but got their knowledge from being around objects," said Freida.
"There was a whole group of European dealers in London, in the 1940s through to the 1970s."
The British Empire was ending, and the deaths of its last administrators and soldiers brought rich pickings.
"I never understood why my father was so interested in reading obituary pages. The Telegraph, the Times, really studying them. If they were Foreign Office, armed forces, anything to do with Empire, he wrote to the widows."
Ernest Ohly listed his buys in ledger books. That's how Entwistle found what he was looking for: "Benin Bronze head... Dec 51, £230" from Glendining's - a London auctioneers where he also bought coins and stamps.
In today's money, that is just over £7,000. In other words, a substantial purchase. But Ernest Ohly knew what he was doing. He had a steal. He put the head in the safe box in 1953, and it stayed there until 2016.
"It was like a lump of gold," said Frieda. The windfall was not quite as large as it might have been.
Ernest Ohly's affairs were a mess, and the taxman took a substantial amount. Still, Frieda says, she can sleep easy now. The Benin head bought care for her family, and property for her children.
Frieda is married to a man of Caribbean descent - and her son is a journalist.
A few years ago he wrote an article about how the Edo - the people of the Benin Kingdom - tried to stop the sale at Sotheby's of a Benin ivory mask.
In fact, although he did not know this, it was a mask that his great-grandfather, William Ohly, displayed at his gallery in 1947.
The article described Edo outrage that the family who owned the mask - relatives of a British official who looted it in 1897 - should profit from what they regarded as theft and a war crime.
Frieda is too intelligent and sensitive not to appreciate the layers of irony behind her story. She had followed the arguments about whether the Benin Bronzes should be returned to Nigeria.
Britain has laws to enable the return of art looted by the Nazis, but there is no similar legislation to cover its own colonial period.
"Part of me will always feel guilty for not giving it to the Nigerians… It's a murky past, tied up with colonialism and exploitation."
Her voice trailed off.
"But that's in the past, lots of governments aren't stable and things have been destroyed. I'm afraid I took the decision to sell. I stand by it. I wanted my family to be secure."
Frieda is not the only owner of Benin Bronzes who has wrestled with their conscience in recent years.
Mark Walker, a doctor from Wales, returned two Bronzes which had been taken by his grandfather, an officer on the 1897 expedition.
He received a hero's welcome in Benin City.
Others are hesitant. In an imposing west London mansion block I met an elderly woman whose grandfather also looted Bronzes in 1897.
Ten, or even five years ago, it would not have been difficult to get somebody in her position to talk. But today the owners of Benin Bronzes are cautious, and I agreed to hide this woman's identity.
She showed me two brass oro "prophecy birds". I asked if they made her feel uncomfortable.
"I've felt misgivings, considerations that crossed my mind… Maybe misgivings is too strong a word. I don't feel like giving them anything." There was a long silence.
"You know," she said, "one bumbles along for 77 years, and suddenly this has become a sensitive subject. It never was before."
Frieda and I left the Tate and were walking along the Thames.
I was about to say goodbye. Unprompted, she returned to the Benin Bronzes.
Sometimes, she said, she wished her father had sold that head when he was still alive.
A dilemma would have been taken out of her hands.
"It was difficult for me," she said again. "Part of me felt we should have given it back." Then she was gone.
Battle for the Benin Bronzes:
Nigeria's opportunity for return of Benin Bronzes
Barnaby Phillips is a former BBC Nigeria correspondent. His book Loot; Britain and the Benin Bronzes will be published on 1 April.
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Sue Townsend, the creator of fictional diarist Adrian Mole, has died. The character who started life at 13 3/4 has permeated culture and led to unlikely comparisons to real life figures. Here are five.
The prime minister | Magazine MonitorA collection of cultural artefacts
John Major was compared so closely to Adrian Mole that a spoof column appeared in Private Eye called The Secret Diary of John Major (aged 47 3/4).
Townsend, herself, once said of Adrian in an interview: "I couldn't imagine what he looked like until I saw John Major on the television and Margaret Thatcher was introducing her Cabinet... There was this geeky looking man at the back of the group. I said to my children, 'My God that's Adrian Mole'."
After John Major's affair with Edwina Curry was made public, Private Eye editor Ian Hislop said in the Sunday Telegraph in 2002 that the details of the affair were in keeping with Mole.
"The extract in Edwina's diary that refers longingly to this man 'in his blue underpants' does not turn Major from an typically English joke figure into a suave and sophisticated French-style politician; it just makes him more ludicrous."
The aristocrat
One grew up in suburban Leicester, the other in the stately home Longleat in Wiltshire. But The Daily Mail's June Southworth found many similarities between a 19-year-old Viscount Weymouth, Ceawlin Thynn, and Adrian Mole. In 1993 she was struck by his "eyes shining with idealism behind his granny glasses".
"A skinny, pale youth, he sports jeans, T-shirt and a short-back-and-sides, and has the slightly prim and earnest air of a social worker trying to bring some order to the chaos of a problem family."
The diarist
Unrequited lust was a running theme in Adrian's life. Something David Mellor noted in 1998 in the Mail on Sunday was also present in Alan Clark's diaries.
"Alan reveals himself here to be not so much a mole at the Ministry, as Adrian Mole at the Ministry. Lots of breathless stuff about big-breasted Folkestone shop assistants and sad passages such as: 'At lunchtime I was on the news both going into and emerging from Number Ten. I do hope Jane sees it.'"
The king
He was alive more than 400 years before Adrian Mole was old enough to fret about pimples, but that didn't stop historian David Starkey comparing Edward VI to the diarist. The prince, like Mole, recorded his painful time growing up Starkey points out in his documentary Edward and Mary.
"Remarkably Edward has left us his own account of the turbulent years of his childhood, written as if he were a character in his own drama".
The generation
The New Statesman's Martin Bright noticed back in 2005 that the rising stars of Labour, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives were roughly the same age as Adrian.
Adrian Mole was born 2 April 1967, meaning both David Cameron and Nick Clegg would have been in the same school year, with Ed Miliband three school years below.
On age alone, he rightly predicted "whatever happens in the next few years. One way or another we will have Adrian Mole as Prime Minister."
He says the context they grew up in was bound to have an influence.
"The Moles, like Adrian himself, had their politics forged in the sectarian politics of the 1980s. Their university years - Oxbridge of course - were bracketed by the miners' strike and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The economic recession that followed made them cautious and socially conventional."
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Producers, promoters and publishers turned down Melanie Blake's story The Thunder Girls for two decades because it's about four women in their 50s, the writer says. Now the tale of a former girl group is a book and sold-out play. | By Ian YoungsEntertainment & arts reporter
Pop reunions are big business, but one thing fans are even more fascinated to see than their idols back on stage is how they really get on behind the scenes (or not). The response to the hilariously revealing Bros documentary proved that.
Melanie Blake saw the truth about pop stars' personal relationships while working on Top of the Pops in the 1990s, as a journalist and then as an agent. She used to manage Bros's Luke Goss, as well as Steps' Claire Richards and Spandau Ballet's Martin Kemp.
While she was a freelance journalist, a magazine assigned her to write about life on a 1980s reunion tour. "I went on the tour bus. It was absolutely hell," she says.
"Everybody hated each other. People wouldn't talk to each other, and then they'd be like, 'Hello Wembley!' and they'd sing their songs, and then they'd all come back and immediately get in different parts of the bus and wouldn't speak to each other."
The Thunder Girls is her deliciously bitchy story of an '80s girl group who get back together to discuss a reunion 30 years after a toxic break-up.
"Every band from Fleetwood Mac to Steps and the Rolling Stones have got missing members and have all had these meetings," she says. All five Spice Girls met up last year, she points out - but only four ended up going on the reunion trail.
"Every band that reforms has to have a reunion dinner to see if old wounds can be healed enough so that the blood stops seeping whilst they're on the stage. That's what nobody ever sees."
The Thunder Girls are meant to have been prototype Spice Girls, and certainly have girl power. But their wounds run deep. Resentment and jealousy about romantic betrayals, financial skulduggery and career-ending bad behaviour have built up over decades.
Blake, from Stockport, wrote the first version in 1999. She eventually published the Thunder Girls novel in July and used the book advance to finance a stage version starring Coronation Street's Beverley Callard, Nolan sister Coleen, Emmerdale's Sandra Marvin and ex-EastEnders star Carol Harrison.
The characters have to decide whether a big pay cheque can overcome the fact that they hate each other's guts. There are some fabulously catty lines. "Did you have a lift on both of your faces?" asks the hard-up Roxie, played by Callard, of Harrison's Chrissie, who has overshadowed her former bandmates as a TV talent show judge and tabloid favourite.
Nolan plays Anita, who dropped off the radar after a disastrous Eurovision appearance. As one of the Nolans, one of the biggest groups of the late '70s and early '80s, she also brings some insight.
"Oh my God, I've known bands over the years that genuinely, apart from when they're on stage, can't stand each other," she says. "They all have separate dressing rooms and separate cars. But when they're on stage, it works."
Despite the fact that Blake managed the Nolans' lucrative 2009 tour, they insist that was one reunion that did not inspire The Thunder Girls. "We were sisters, so there was no toxic fallout," says Nolan.
The Thunder Girls stage show, directed by Joyce Branagh (sister of Sir Ken), is on at The Lowry arts centre in Salford for just five nights and broke the record for the fastest ticket sales for a new play in the venue's Quays theatre.
It has gone down particularly well with women of the same age as the characters, who can relate to the themes of ageing and long-term friendships.
Blake is already talking about taking it to London's West End, and the initial response is vindication after two decades of being told that a story about four middle-aged women would never work.
"First it was picked up as a book. And then publishers said 'Well, we'll do it, but we think it should be based on younger women.' And I said no."
Then the rights were optioned by a TV company, she says. "They came back and said 'We like it, but we think they should be 35.' I said, 'No, they have to be in their 50s because they have to be women. They have to have lived, loved and lost.'
"And then last year, when we started looking at the stage show and we started looking at investors and promoters, they were all like 'What, four women? Over 50? Singing? And they actually still think they're it, do they?'"
Callard, best known for playing Liz McDonald in Coronation Street, says ageism and sexism are still rife in the entertainment world.
"More often than not you look at a film script, or you look at plays or films or television things that have been made, and you would get 10 male actors in it and maybe two women if you're lucky," she says.
"More often than not, you would see a husband who's maybe 50 with a 30-year-old wife. It happens all the time.
"Our business is so sexist and so anti-women. When Melanie told me about this play, and when I read it, I just said 'I've got to do this'. Because it's about real women."
'No expiration dates'
Speaking during a break in rehearsals, Blake says a male-dominated force in the entertainment industry ("Let's call it 'the man'") has tried to dictate what people want to see.
"It shouldn't be the case that there's only one woman in every show, or that there's only one older woman. I've just watched four women over 50 smash it.
"It's electric because they've lived lives. Too many people like to write women off with expiration dates. Women don't have expiration dates. Life only makes them more interesting."
The Thunder Girls is at The Lowry in Salford until 28 September. Melanie Blake's novel is published by Pan Macmillan.
Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected].
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A man has been arrested at Stansted Airport in Essex by counter-terror police who suspected he was planning to travel to Syria. | The 37-year-old was due to board a flight for Turkey on Tuesday evening when he was held on suspicion of preparing for acts of terrorism.
His arrest is not connected to Monday night's suicide bomb attack at Manchester Arena, Scotland Yard said.
Two residential addresses in north London are being searched.
The UK's terror threat level has been raised in the wake of the arena attack, which killed 22 people and injured 59.
It stands at its highest level of "critical", indicating further attacks may be imminent.
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Starting university is a massive step at the best of times - let alone during a pandemic. | By Alice Evans & Mary O'ConnorBBC News
Coronavirus restrictions may mean you can't pop home for the weekend to get away from that annoying housemate (you know, the one who always leaves the fridge door open in your student kitchen).
And your plans to make loads of friends during a fun-filled freshers' week may have fallen a bit flat, as many events are online only.
Meanwhile, with many of your lectures and seminars being done remotely, getting your work done requires heaps of self-motivation and energy.
Bearing all of this in mind, we've asked some experts for their tips on how students can look after their mental wellbeing this year.
1. Embrace that awkward Zoom pub quiz
Many of us are fairly weary of Zoom quizzes as a locked-down format of socialising, but it's worth gritting your teeth and showing up, says Lily Margaroli, a co-ordinator of Exeter University's student helpline, Nightline.
Lily, a 21-year-old Politics, Philosophy and Economics student, points out that while meeting people on group video calls can feel "cringe and awkward", it's a starting point for you to meet people who you can then strike up friendships with in a more personable setting.
If you feel you might have clicked with even one person on the Zoom session, why not message them for a socially-distanced walk or coffee, she suggests.
"It's about having those connections that maybe can lead to something in person further down the line."
2. Hate your flatmates? Don't write them off
Students, like everyone else in the UK, cannot meet up in large groups due to coronavirus restrictions. In Scotland, students have specifically been told they cannot socialise outside of their household. It's therefore higher stakes than ever that you get on with the (often randomly-generated) group of people with whom you're bunged in a flat.
If you don't immediately connect with one or two people who are sharing your living space, it can become all too easy to cut yourself off from everyone, says clinical psychologist Dr Anna Colton.
But rather than retreating to your room, Dr Anna says it's about being "open-minded enough" to put yourself in situations that don't always feel comfortable, and to persevere with them, given that it's now harder to go out and find friends elsewhere.
"If you take yourself out of the equation, you don't get the opportunity to reassess that relationship at a later date. Just double-check you're sure you really don't like someone before you write them off."
Dr Fran Longstaff, Head of Psychology at Fika, a student mental fitness platform, says it can be useful to "take some time to think about what you want from friendships", and consider the "characteristics you value in others".
She adds: "Ask yourself - what is it you need from your friends to help you be the best version of yourself?"
Dr Fran says not to worry if it takes trial and error to find friends who share your values: "Research shows it takes 50 hours to move from acquaintance to even casual friend - so be patient with yourself."
3. Turn on your webcam (yes, even in your dressing gown)
Many universities across the UK have relied on making lectures and seminars available online, instead of asking their students to gather on campus. Zainab Ali, 19, who is studying psychology at Queen Mary University of London, has noticed many of her course-mates are reluctant to show their faces on video calls - and it's hampering her chances to get to know people.
"It would be so different if it was face-to-face, but online everyone is really shy and anxious," she says. "I think they're just uncomfortable because they don't know how other people are - they might judge."
The webcam reluctance adds to the difficulty Zainab is having forming friendships with any of the 187 other people on her course. As Zainab is living with her grandparents in east London, instead of on campus, the only contact she's had with course-mates outside of a learning environment is on a Whatsapp group.
Back down in Exeter, Lily, who is in her third year, says she is "happy to sit in my dressing gown and go to a [video] seminar" - but she accepts that many freshers will still be finding that level of self-confidence.
"As a fresher it's a really different situation but if you can just put that camera on, knowing everyone else is in the same situation and feeling a bit self-conscious, you'll feel slightly more connected."
4. Forget FOMO
Whether you're doing all your socialising online, like Zainab, or able to enjoy small face-to-face gatherings (at a social distance), it's important to take time for yourself and not worry about FOMO - the fear of missing out - says Dr Anna.
She suggests activities - such as exercising, reading a book, or even just painting your nails - can be helpful ways to "decompress", especially "when life is as emotional and turbulent as it is now".
Try not to think about FOMO during that time, she says.
"I know young people might worry that if they're not there with people, that bonds will be formed and they'll be left out. But it's not going to be a disaster, you can't be there 24/7."
5. Share the (information over)load
Lily points out that while the government's simple "stay at home" mandate earlier in the pandemic was easy enough to understand, there are now various localised regulations across the UK - as well as universities setting out their own individual rules. This could make students feel bombarded.
"You might have a ton of emails and only one or two of them are really important, but they're mixed in with everything else. It's really difficult to say don't check social media or your emails, but at the same time you don't want to get too obsessed with checking them."
Lily and her housemates have found a way to avoid the information overload. They take it in turns to read emails from university officials that they've all received, and then relay the important bits to each other. If one person feels more anxious about the coronavirus situation on any given day, they can rest assured they can switch off their phone without missing any really important updates.
6. Plan things to look forward to
Mark Mon-Williams, a professor of psychology at the University of Leeds and the Bradford Institute of Health Research, makes the point that it's unrealistic to expect young people not to socialise, and that this is a time when it's important for their personal development to meet new people.
"I think we really should think seriously about how we can support young people to have those social interactions, while maintaining the overall safety of the population," he says.
Lily adds that having something social in your diary at least once every couple of days - be it a socially-distanced walk, coffee, or film - is a great way to maintain a positive outlook.
7. Show your vulnerability
"It is normal to feel worried, stressed, anxious and discombobulated" as we are all living through the "most extraordinary times", says Dr Anna.
She explains: "There's no-one unaffected by Covid-19. We're all in the same storm but we're in very different boats. Some of us dealing with this storm are in luxury super-yachts, and some of us are in tin boats with holes in the bottom."
It is important to remember that your experience is valid, Dr Anna says, adding that - if you're feeling low - "talk about it early" rather than waiting for it to build up, because "mental health difficulties become mental health problems when they're sat on and they grow".
Lily says that while she knows it takes a lot of courage to send a text to let a housemate know you're struggling, chances are they'll be relieved and will tell you they're finding things hard too.
Meanwhile, Mark Fudge, chairman of the Universities and Colleges division of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, encourages students to access the university student services, many of which are offering remote and online support.
He adds: "Universities have been planning and planning throughout the summer to make sure that this is as good as an experience as it possibly can be."
If you feel overwhelmed or anxious, help is available. Student Minds has set up Student Space to offer support, online and over the phone.
8. Map out your money, and speak up
As a student, managing money can be stressful at the best of times, let alone during a pandemic, when part-time jobs can be harder to find.
Mark Fudge says: "Students are the gig-economy workforce - they are often the waiters, the bar staff, the baristas, in most cities. Many have lost jobs or are struggling to get employment because the hospitality and retail jobs just aren't there."
His message to students in this situation? "It's not a rejection of your skills, your abilities, or your personality, it is a financial situation that is very difficult at the moment. Just know that this is temporary and it will hopefully get better."
He also encourages anyone struggling financially to contact their university. Most have money and welfare teams, he explains, who "can help with hardship loans if things get really desperate, or with budgeting advice and tips".
Dr Fran says problem-solving is a great way of managing and reducing stress, like financial worries.
She suggests mapping out your monthly budget, whilst factoring in some added "leeway" for the "best and worst-case scenarios" can help you stay on top of financial worries. She says things like meal-planning, sticking to a planned weekly shop and keeping track of how many nights you go out in the week can also help.
9. Remember, you deserve to be here
Whilst A-levels - your ticket into university - looked very different this year due to exam cancellations and then the U-turn over predicted grades, you still deserve your place, says Dr Anna.
"There's been quite a lot of invalidation of results", she says. "Students earned their grades through a two-year period of hard work. Yes, they didn't have the normal way of having that assessed, and that's a bummer, but that doesn't mean that they didn't work hard. They earned their places."
She says it's important students know and believe that.
If you or someone you know are feeling emotionally distressed, these organisations offer advice and support. In addition, you can call the Samaritans free on 116 123 (UK and Ireland). Mind also has a confidential telephone helpline on 0300 123 3393 (Monday-Friday, 0900-1800). StudentSpace has lots of useful resources on mental health at university, and you can find out if your university has a Nightline here.
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Homeland, Game of Thrones and Modern Family took top honours at this year's Emmys with four awards each, while ITV1's Downton Abbey won just one out of its 16 nominations.
| Mad Men missed out on its fifth best drama prize, with the honour going to Homeland.
Here is a list of winners and nominees from the key nominations for this year's awards, which were held in Los Angeles.
Outstanding Comedy Series
Outstanding Drama Series
Outstanding Miniseries or Movie
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie
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A lorry has blown over following "a sudden spike" in winds on the M48 old Severn Bridge. | The crossing has been closed in both directions after the incident at about 11:45 GMT on the eastbound carriageway, Highways England said.
Police said the lorry driver was still in the cab and was receiving treatment for minor head injuries.
Highways England said road users were being diverted via the M4 on the Prince of Wales Bridge.
It added the bridge would remain closed in both directions "for some time" because it would not be possible to recover the lorry until "wind speeds reduce".
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Five fishermen have been rescued after their fishing vessel broke down eight miles off the Isle of Man coast. | Ramsey's lifeboat crew was called to the aid of the Jersey registered fishing vessel on Monday after it got into difficulty near the Point of Ayre.
The Mersey class RNLI lifeboat towed the vessel, which was unable to make any headway, to Ramsey Harbour.
An RNLI spokesman said the rescue took about four hours to complete and confirmed that no-one had been injured.
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Donald Trump says that if he's elected, he'll fix Washington and run the nation like a business. People here are wondering whether he'd make good on his promise. Would President Trump fix Washington - or would Washington fix him? | By Tara McKelveyWhite House reporter
Trump scares the Washington Establishment, an amorphous group of lawmakers, lobbyists, journalists, lawyers and others. If he were elected, he could up-end Washington - and break things.
"He's saying he could completely overturn Washington," James Madison University's Marty Cohen said, describing Trump. "Whether he could do it or not, it's still a threat."
Not surprisingly, the nation's capital has been reeling.
"I can't think of a president who represents such a change," said Michael Kazin, the author of The Populist Persuasion: An American History.
He said the closest analogy to Trump is President Andrew Jackson, who served from 1829 to 1837.
Jackson's supporters were seen as "unruly masses", "back woodsmen who drank too much", said Kazin. After the election, they threw a party and "broke crockery".
People in Washington are worried that Trump would unleash that kind of energy - or worse.
As University of Maryland's David Karol, co-editor of a book called Nominating the President, put it: "They're horrified."
Things got tense when Trump rose in the polls. In August he came within three points of his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, according to Ipsos/Reuters.
She's now way ahead in polls. But the FBI has reopened its investigation into her use of a private email server. This has again raised fears among the Washington elite about a Trump victory.
At a rally in Florida earlier this month, he gave them a warning. "For those who control the levers of power in Washington, and for the global special interests," he said. He told the audience that the days of the Washington establishment were numbered.
"Our campaign represents a true existential threat like they haven't seen before," he said.
How might Trump 'drain the swamp'?
What would a Donald Trump presidency look like?
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump compared to world leaders
For those at the rally - and many others outside of Washington - the possibility of a Trump presidency has been invigorating.
Stephen Moore, a senior economic adviser for Trump, said he'd start a new chapter. "He's a businessman," said Moore, saying Trump would be the "CEO of America and of the federal government".
"He knows how to cut expenses and make a profit," said Moore. "The US government is a $4 trillion enterprise, and someone who knows how to run something would be a real asset."
Trump is unconventional in many ways.
Still, he falls into a tradition of the outsider-candidate.
Everyone from Jimmy Carter, a Democrat who was elected in 1976, to Ross Perot, a business executive who ran an unsuccessful campaign as an independent in 1992, has done it.
Even Barack Obama, a US senator (and consequently a Washington insider), used this approach.
"In Europe it's a different kind of system," said University of Nebraska's Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, co-author of Stealth Democracy: Americans' Beliefs About How Government Should Work.
"They don't have the same type of dysfunction. So you don't see the real frustration that Americans feel."
Surveys show people in the US have little faith in political institutions, and outsider campaigns tap into the resentment Americans feel towards Washington. They see the city as a cesspool of the federal government, a symbol of bureaucracy, laziness and ineptitude.
The outsiders demand change - and often have huge popular support. "He's revealing all this stuff that people in Washington have to deal with," said Theiss-Morse.
"The perception is that government can't be trusted."
No wonder people who are in the establishment are concerned. They're worried about an array of things.
First Lady Michelle Obama is concerned about her garden.
Earlier this month, she told visitors: "I take great pride in knowing that this little garden will live on."
Trump doesn't seem to like vegetables. People are worried the garden will lay untended (or get cemented over).
The fate of Guantanamo could shift. One-third of the 60 men at the prison have been cleared to leave. But Trump said he wants to fill the prison up again with "some bad dudes".
The commander of the prison camp, Navy Rear Adm Peter Clarke, said earlier this year he wondered about the fallout from a Trump victory - and what the prisoners would do.
Once in office, Trump would learn about nuclear launch codes. Given his expansive attitude about nuclear weapons (he's said South Korea might want to consider them), some find the possibilities unsettling.
While campaigning, he's expressed admiration for President Vladimir Putin. "There's the danger of foreign policy disasters, military disasters," said Peter Wehner, a former senior advisor to President George W Bush.
Gordon Gray, the director of fiscal policy at the American Action Forum, a centre-right think tank, has looked at the budget poses: "Not good - not good at all. He would risk a recession."
During this time, according to environmentalists, the planet will heat up - and Trump will renounce the Paris agreement.
He could tear up the nuclear deal with Iran.
"You know," Karol said, and sighed. "Change to what end? The Taliban shook things up."
Who is ahead in the polls?
As scholars explain, however, true revolutionaries like Trump have a hard time.
Under President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, both of whom had already spent many years in government, knew how to pull levers.
But when you've campaigned against your own party, Kazin said, your options are limited: "Who do you appoint - Sarah Palin as secretary of the interior?"
He added: "The established power structures have a way of disciplining the person."
Cohen said: "A lot of people go to Washington, and they end up changing, and Washington ends up staying the same."
He and others said that real change is done through institutional reform such as campaign finance and term limits. They agreed that these changes are unlikely to be carried out by the people who are here.
"Reform a system that serves them well?" Cohen said. "The people that are going to decide these things are the people who are benefiting from them."
They say that regardless of who's elected in November, the Washington elite will remain - the Washington elite.
Follow @Tara_Mckelvey on Twitter.
Predict the president
Who will win? Play our game to make your call
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Sitanan Satsaksit was on the phone to her brother early in the evening on 4 June when he told her to hold the line. Wanchalearm, also known as Tar, was handing over a few dollars for meatballs at a stall opposite his home in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. | By George Wright & Issariya PraithongyaemBBC News
Then Sitanan heard noise coming from the other end of the line.
"I heard a loud bang. At first I thought he had a car accident as he shouted 'I can't breathe, I can't breathe,'" she tells the BBC.
Sitanan could hear the screams of her brother as men shouted in Khmer, a language she doesn't understand.
But her brother had not been hit by a car - he was being kidnapped.
Witnesses at the scene say they saw a group of armed men bundling Wanchalearm into a black SUV. As he shouted for help in Khmer, some people started moving towards him, but the armed abductors warned them to back off, before speeding away.
Confused and terrified, Sitanan could hear the muffled voice of her brother for another 30 minutes. Then the line went dead.
A friend of Wanchalearm made some inquiries for her.
"Twenty minutes later, this person called me back to say: 'Keep calm sister, Tar was abducted,'" she recalls.
Wanchalearm Satsaksit, 37, a prominent Thai pro-democracy activist who had lived in exile in Cambodia since 2014, has not been seen since. He is the ninth exiled critic of Thailand's military and monarchy to become a victim of enforced disappearance in recent years.
A popular and colourful character, Wanchalearm's activism started more than a decade ago, primarily focusing on gender and LGBT rights in Thailand. Over time, his interest started to shift to broader calls for democracy in the country, says Sunai Phasuk, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch Asia and friend of Wanchalearm.
By the time of the 2014 military coup led by General Prayuth Chan-ocha, Wanchalearm was affiliated with the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD), also known as the Red Shirts. The group was first formed in 2006 to oppose an earlier military coup which overthrew then prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra.
Wanchalearm was angered by what he saw as yet another affront to democracy by the military in 2014. The new junta wasted little time in rooting out its critics.
Soon after the coup, Wanchalearm's face appeared on TV and he was called to attend a meeting at a military camp, Sunai says. He didn't turn up. Wanchalearm knew this meant he needed to flee his homeland and start a new life in Cambodia.
Once in Phnom Penh, Wanchalearm settled into his new surroundings. But while he had swapped the dangers of Thailand for relative safety in the leafy outskirts of the Cambodian capital, he was still building up an online following in his homeland through his witty takedowns of the Thai government.
"He sees himself as a satirist, almost like a political comedian," Sunai says. "He made fun continuously of the military junta. He made fun of Gen Prayuth, who at that time was leader of the coup group, he made fun of other generals.
"He exposed what he considered to be stupid blunders of the junta using the dialect of north-easterners," he adds. "Most of them are poor and he is from that region. He did it to show that a commoner can make fun of those in power. That seemed to be the way of getting even with the oppressors."
But his playful poking did not go unnoticed.
In June 2018, Thai authorities issued an arrest warrant for Wanchalearm based on allegations he violated the Computer-Related Crime Act - which criminalises writing that incites unrest - through his Facebook page. The police vowed to bring him back to Thailand.
Wanchalearm was just one of many Thai exiles speaking out from the perceived safety of a neighbouring country. But in reality, doing so is becoming increasingly perilous.
At least eight other pro-democracy activists have disappeared since the 2014 coup.
The bodies of exiled critics Chatcharn Buppawan and Kraidej Luelert were found disembowelled and stuffed with concrete along the Mekong River border with Laos last year. The Thai army says it had no knowledge of what had happened.
Jakrapob Penkair, who served as government spokesman under Thaksin Shinawatra, has been living in exile since 2009 after he says he received a tip-off that he was to be killed. He has known Wanchalearm for many years.
Speaking to the BBC from an undisclosed location, Jakrapob says he was shocked by his friend's disappearance due to the light-hearted nature of his activism. He sees almost no chance that Wanchalearm is still alive.
"I think the message is: 'Let's kill these folks. These are outsiders, these are people who are different from us and they should be killed in order to bring Thailand back to normalcy,'" he says.
"But nothing could be more wrong in that interpretation. I believe their decision to kidnap and murder Tar, and others before him, has been subconsciously radicalising the people.
"Like it or not, I think Tar's disappearance and his murder could be a turning point."
Wanchalearm's disappearance sparked protests in Bangkok, with demonstrators accusing the Thai government of involvement, while demanding the Cambodian government investigate the case fully. Posters of Wanchalearm and other disappeared activists have been cropping up around the city.
#SaveWanchalearm was trending on Thai Twitter in the days following his abduction.
The hashtag "#abolish112" was also written or retweeted more than 450,000 times. This is a reference to Article 112 of Thailand's criminal code, which states: "Whoever defames, insults or threatens the King, Queen, Heir-Apparent or Regent shall be punished with imprisonment of three to 15 years".
Some of the disappeared dissidents were accused of violating the article. Any public questioning of the monarchy in Thailand was until recently almost unheard of.
Many activists believe this abduction is linked to the palace, but the strict laws against any negative comment on the monarchy make this a dangerous link to explore or investigate.
Despite widespread outrage over the kidnapping of Wanchalearm, few are holding out much hope for his return.
"The abduction is not for money, it's not a private matter. There is no need to keep him alive," says Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, a prominent activist who served seven years in jail on charges of lese majeste - or "insulting the monarchy" - and defamation.
"The objective of kidnapping is to kill him and to create the atmosphere of fear in Thailand and other countries where [Thai] people are active in criticising the monarchy," adds Somyot, whose daughter was once in a long-term relationship with Wanchalearm.
Somyot was in little doubt as to who was behind the disappearance.
"The government knows very well about this kidnap and disappearance. I can insist that the government are the ones behind this violation," he says.
Thai government spokeswoman Narumon Pinyosinwat told the BBC: "We have no idea what happened to him.
"We don't do anything in that category of invading into other countries. They have their own law and control," she said.
"The person who can answer that question best should be the government of Cambodia because they know what happened in that country to this person."
In response to questions raised by opposition politicians in parliament, Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai said that Wanchalearm did not have political refugee status, so Thailand had to wait for Cambodia to finish its investigation.
The spokesman of the Cambodian interior ministry did not respond to requests for comment. A justice ministry spokesman told Voice of Democracy last week that investigations are under way to ascertain "whether the news is true or not".
Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said: "Cambodia and Laos have obviously decided to look the other way as now nine prominent Thai exiles have been abducted, and likely killed, by unknown men."
The Thai government is pursuing a "quid pro quo" with its two neighbours, he said, accusing Bangkok of making Thailand "off limits" to Cambodian opposition figures.
"You can be sure there will be more refugees on the chopping block unless governments around the world start publicly demanding answers and accountability from leaders of these three rights abusing governments," he said.
Sunai Phasuk says Cambodia must investigate fully what has happened to Wanchalearm if it expects to be seen as a country that has "improved from a lawless society into a country with due process".
"A crime like this cannot happen in broad daylight. This is a test case for Cambodia," he says.
But Sitanan has little hope of ever seeing Wanchalearm alive again and is just trying to make sense of why someone would want to kill her younger brother.
"I want to know if someone has his own opinion, does he need to be so severely punished?" she asks.
"He didn't rob anyone, he didn't rape anyone. He just thinks differently. Do you really need to kill him?"
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This is a full transcript of Disabled and out of money in North Korea as first broadcast on 13 March and presented by Beth Rose
| JITE- I got a few stares of course. I'm bald. I had a beard. I was in a wheelchair. I'm black. The first two that I went to said, "No, no, no, we probably can't do that." I didn't want to do something which was challenging for me only, rather than North Korea. Oh, well that's a tough place to go to.
[jingle: Ouch]
BETH-I've been so excited about bringing you this Ouch podcast. A few months ago I received an email. It said, "Hi Beth, a friend of mine, Jite Ugono has multiple sclerosis, or MS, and uses a wheelchair. He's just about to travel to North Korea. Would you like to talk to him?" "Yes," was my answer, "very much so."
I'm Beth Rose, and you're listening to the BBC Ouch podcast, and for a while Jite has been on my mind. From the day he flew to China to get his visa, to the five days he would spend in the country we know very little about. And finally, he's back. Also, just a quick note to say that this podcast was recorded long before the Corona virus outbreak.
[music]
BETH-Hello.
JITE-Hello, hi.
BETH-So how was the trip?
JITE-Everyone says surreal, but it was surreal. Being inside a communist country and being restricted. Also in a wheelchair, there are no provisions at all for wheelchair access and that kind of stuff. Most of the places I went to were only accessible by stairs, so they carried me, which was nice. And that's one of the good things about having a guide, because I had two guides and a driver.
BETH-So you said you were thinking about this trip a year ago. It's the kind of trip that most people won't even think you can do, so why did you suddenly decide to book your holiday to North Korea?
JITE-Well I've got MS so they said one of the treatments of MS could be stem cell therapy. So stem cell therapy involves chemo and the rest of it. I thought to myself why not do something as rare as stem cell therapy? It was almost like a redefinition of my identity. I didn't really want to be known solely because of MS or the treatment, because everyone's going to ask about the chemo. I wanted to do something else which was kind of equal and opposite.
BETH-It's quite rare, stem cell therapy for multiple sclerosis isn't it?
JITE-It is. I hadn't heard of it. Chemo for cancer, we know all about that, but as soon as she said chemo for this… For me it was quite emotional because my mum died the year before of cancer and she went through chemo as well. It was a shock, but it was also some hope. It seems less bleak. What I have is Primary Progressive MS, a steady degradation of mobilities. And they have less treatment for that, so most other treatment comes for Secondary Remitting, when you have attacks and then you can recover.
BETH-So what does the chemo do?
JITE-Chemo reduces your immune system. So what they want to do is kind of knock out the immune system and then reintroduce the stem cells and then restart the immune system.
BETH-That sounds quite an intense treatment.
JITE-I was in hospital for a month. So I went in for chemo, I was in hospital for a week or so, first of all, came back out, did the injections, back into hospital for a month. It was tough going through, but easier when you do it in stages. You think, okay I'm going to do this chemo first, in ten days I'll do the injections. Bite size. So by the end of it it's like oh, I've done it. I think it taught me whatever I go through I have to be a bit more patient.
BETH-How long ago were you diagnosed with MS?
JITE-2009.
BETH-So you were quite young?
JITE-I'm 45 now, so yeah, the symptoms got worse maybe six or seven years ago in terms of difficulty walking. And that's the main thing. The first thing was the eyesight, so the eyes were playing up and I thought maybe I should go to the optician. It didn't really make a difference. So it got progressively worse. I did an MRI scan and then the consultant said, "Well, it could be MS." So I was kind of aware and I kind of knew that it was something quite serious. So when he came back and he said MS. You make a decision about how you're going to deal with it.
For me, it was you're not going to feel sorry for yourself because people go through worse. For me, it's only when I'm faced with stuff you realise you can do it. I didn't just want to survive. Because when you're diagnosed with stuff it's like getting through the day. Everyone says, "Oh, you're so brave. You went to work?" For me it's just one life, you can't spend it getting through the day, you want to do something else.
BETH-So was it when you were having your chemo when you were in hospital, the idea for North Korea?
JITE-It was actually the first consultation when she told me, "You're going to do stem cell therapy." They told me that I was going to be able to maybe walk with sticks and I thought, why waste it?
BETH-I feel like a lot of people would have had similar thoughts but maybe thought South of France would be quite nice?
JITE-It would have been challenging. If anyone said they were going to the South of France, oh okay. I didn't want to do something which was challenging for me only, rather than North Korea, oh well, that's a tough place to go to, regardless of whether you're in a wheelchair. It was important to me to do something which was challenging, not because of MS, not because of the wheelchair, but it was challenging.
BETH-So how do you go about booking a trip? Can you go to a travel agent?
JITE-I mean, that's what I did. So the first two that I went to said, "No, no, no. We can't do that, there's no access." And I was probably more determined. That's another lesson it taught me, it's more important for me that I wanted to do it. And no one was coming back to me to say, "Why don't you go?" So when the third person came back and said, "Actually, we could do that," the normal way of going to North Korea is through a group tour, with my condition anyway. You think about what the problems could be. Getting onto the coach. Holding people up.
So my tour was me on my own. I had two guides and a driver and that was it. They sorted out the visa to China and once you get to China you get the visa to North Korea from China.
BETH-Touching upon the issues of getting onto a bus, what is it like for you with MS? How does it manifest itself?
JITE-My balance is a problem. I can't really use my left leg at all. My eyesight's a problem. Maybe sometimes my memory and my vocabulary. They're difficulties which arose mainly because I did chemo. We know that the drugs are quite aggressive and concentrated, so they give you lots of water to dilute and because you're given that you're given drugs to help you relieve that stuff, so you're peeing like every ten minutes.
So it went down to probably once every hour and that became a problem and that affects your confidence, you're afraid to kind of go out, maybe there won't be toilets around, that's kind of what I was thinking about, going to North Korea.
BETH-Did you even know about that? Is there information about toilets or accessibility?
JITE-Not at all, not at all. It's only when I got there that I realised that the… And sorry to go on about toilets, but it was important to me. [laughs] Okay, so in North Korea they had two types of toilets, they had the European toilets and then they had the Korean toilets, ground toilets, so you have to kind of balance, which I didn't even attempt. So everywhere we went to it was okay, "Is it a Korean toilet here or a European toilet?" Even the guides started to realise and started to know after a while.
BETH-I mean, that's such a gamble isn't it, not knowing the accessibility, not knowing what the toilet situation's going to be like. I'm guessing this was all in your mind?
JITE-Every problem has to have a solution. So before I went I'd got it up to you can pass an hour now, because I'd gone to the gym, I'd started doing core stuff, even in the plane, because it was ten and a half hours there. You think about the problems that you could face, it's personal of course, but also there are people around that can give you a hand.
And that was another thing, getting vaccinations was a problem, because when you do chemo and your immune system is low they don't advise that you have vaccinations. So I was intending to go to Korea in September but that was super close to my stem cell.
BETH-When you were flying, initially to China, what was going through our mind?
JITE-It was just getting through that first bit, hoping that someone's going to be there to meet me. The luggage I even took I had to make sure that I could carry. That's one of the solutions with a wheelchair, you're going to have to push the luggage as well so it can't be too big. Two pieces of hand luggage is what I took. That's what I was thinking about, I wasn't thinking about Pyongyang yet, I was thinking about how to get to China.
Beijing was packed, traffic everywhere. It was surprisingly western. The cars were German cars. In North Korea I had the guides, in China I didn't have guides, I had a person to take me from the airport to the hotel and that was it. So I didn't really have the confidence to kind of venture out. I got in a day before, so as soon as I landed in China I had to go and get the visa. As soon as you get the visa is when they give you a briefing, what you should and shouldn't do. The chap apparently had been doing it for 28 years, and no one had ever missed a briefing until me.
BETH-Ah! [laughs]
JITE-I mean, only because the person who picked me up said, "Oh, I can get the visa for you."
BETH-So they were being helpful, but actually…
JITE-Yeah, so they went out and got the… And I was appreciative, because getting in and out of the car was such a pain. And I am quite lazy naturally. If I can do without it then I won't do it, you know. So when they gave me an opportunity not to, oh okay. The travel agent contact in China was almost panicky on the phone, "No one's ever done this."
BETH-Wow, and I bet your heart was racing at that point.
JITE-To an extent, but I kind of knew what not to do. I mean, I'm not rude, and plus I'd seen stuff on YouTube and the guides tell you as well. So I was quite prepared. I flew into Pyongyang. The airport was a surprise. They only have a few planes that land for the day. They had one from Beijing, one from Shanghai and one from Moscow. There are soldiers everywhere, but the soldiers were, "Oh, look at this guy," I suppose maybe because I was a novelty in a sense. They'd never really seen someone in a wheelchair before. They were super helpful.
I'd met the guides at the airport as well. I got a few stares of course. I'm bald, and they have like five haircuts. I had a beard, I was in a wheelchair. I'm black. So all those things together.
BETH-So did you feel like you stuck out?
JITE-I didn't feel like I could relax, only because you feel like you're always on. I couldn't be anonymous, there's always someone watching, and that's tiring.
BETH-And did you feel like you were being watched by your guides?
JITE-Maybe the brief was to watch, but it is different when you have a relationship with people. So I didn't feel that way. I suppose they were constantly on about how great the leader is and after a while it got a bit tedious. Everyone walked around with badges. And it's difficult to tell because they spoke the language quite a bit. I don't know what they're saying.
BETH-They greeted you at the airport.
JITE-Yes.
BETH-Had they had disabled travellers before?
JITE-I don't think they had. What happens is that when you go on your own there is no camaraderie, I was mostly alone, but the advantage is you could probably get closer to people. There's good and there's bad about it.
BETH-What's it like, Pyongyang?
JITE-For me it was super quiet. I mean here we have adverts and stuff, people are selling you stuff all the time, there is different, you have pictures of the leaders surrounded by flowers and you have to respect that. If there's an image of a leader you can't really take a photo of it and you can't stand in front of it obscuring it. Or you can't crop it. Apparently they check people's phones to see what they've taken.
BETH-Did you take photos?
JITE-I took photos but they didn't check. But everywhere was empty. The place is set up for tourists but there are not many tourists. You go into a restaurant and there are people standing around. The restaurants are empty. It's bizarre.
BETH-So it's not really like a bustling city?
JITE-Not at all. Actually I went during… King Il Sung who's the grandad of this present leader, it was his birthday, so there were two days of celebrations. I think there were more people on the street than normal, and then they had volunteers picking up stuff or gardening or… I mean, because it's a communist environment they pay for everything but you have to work. They've got big roads, no cars.
BETH-Wow.
JITE-Yeah. The days were quite long. Maybe eight o'clock they'll come for me and then eight o'clock in the evening I'd finish. So there was always something to do and you were always with people. I think they had five channels, that was about it.
BETH-TV channels?
JITE-Five TV channels. On the channels they have the leader, Kim, pointing at stuff. He designed the theme park.
BETH-What's the tourist trail like?
JITE-There is an itinerary, so you would go to the war museum, flower exhibition. I went to their subway, it's the deepest subway in the world. So everything's the best in the world or the tallest in the world.
BETH-How did the subway compare to the tube?
JITE-It was more opulent. I only saw two of them and I think those are the two they show people, so maybe the others are less. There are chandeliers and stuff.
BETH-And the restaurants, you said you went into one, but they've got all the staff just waiting around?
JITE-Yeah, the restaurants seem to be for tourists, and because I was on my own, seven, ten people just standing around looking. I went to a casino, which was strange.
BETH-Oh, okay?
JITE-Yeah. But the casino was in the hotel. I think I was the only one in there. So when I went to North Korea I didn't take enough cash, and that was a problem obviously because no cards. So the guys were like, "You need some money? Go to the casino, you can change your money."
BETH-Oh, I thought you were going to say to like gamble and win.
JITE-At first I went to change money, but they didn't take sterling, they took US dollars and euros, but I didn't have either, so they allowed me to gamble, so I did.
BETH-Did you win? Did you get some money?
JITE-Yeah, I did. I don't want to get used to it. [laughs]
BETH-What game did you play?
JITE-Black Jack. I didn't know what was going on, but people around, they were almost cheering, and I was thinking by the time I won a hundred dollars I thought it's time to go, it's time to go. And everyone's around you willing you on and you don't want to disappoint them but you think okay, I'm going guys.
BETH-Is it expensive then, if you ran out of money and you're having to gamble to boost your-?
JITE-To boost. Okay, so I mean they have their own currency and they don't let you take the currency out.
BETH-I bet your guides quite enjoyed being in the casino.
JITE-The guides said, "Oh, we're not allowed in." Even when they came up to my hotel room I had to have Al Jazeera because that's the only English speaking channel, but they were almost transfixed. They were shaking their heads. Look around the world, look how happy we are type of thing. So you kind of understand why they would let Al Jazeera in, because Al Jazeera can be quite, look what's happening around the world, the protests here, the protests there.
BETH-And did you find people were willing to help you?
JITE-I think it was more because they see you as being vulnerable. "Oh, you're not comfortable, let me move your legs." So you always get somebody helping, which is not necessarily what you want all the time. Because you want to be able to be self-sufficient. Certainly in London people are a bit more patient to offer, "Okay, how can I help?" and then they stand back. In Korea it was, "Oh, we can do that for you." [laughs]
BETH-Did you see any other disabled people out and about?
JITE-No, I didn't.
BETH-No one at all?
JITE-I didn't at all. One of the guides was quite insistent on how great their society is. That's why they stay kind of thing, away from everyone else, and they obviously saw it as a good thing.
BETH-Oh, that's interesting. I was going some research, and there's a lot of reports from the UN and different charities where they say basically they send people away in an out of town community.
JITE-Yeah, they don't expect you to try. So maybe that was part of it, they were almost surprised that this person is doing something on their own.
BETH-And were they quite surprised how you just got on with everything?
JITE-Yeah, I suppose. Maybe they were. So even when I'd be going down the road people would lean over and look. They weren't rude about it. They would look, they were curious, but they weren't intrusive. And sometimes you look and they look away, except the kids, so the kids would be staring. But that's normal though, even in London you'll get kids staring. One of the guides took a video of me being lifted up the stairs, and it was quite tough to watch because you don't really see yourself as being vulnerable, except when you see it.
It's like hearing a recording of yourself and you think oh, do I sound like that? Or do I look like that? Am I really that vulnerable kind of thing? No wonder everyone helps. [laughs] It was tough to see. I didn't really see the footage until I got to the hotel and you kind of think, you know, is that how it is? They were helpful, and it sounds ungrateful almost, but it is what you think about.
It's a lack of confidence to think people only help you because you look so vulnerable. Maybe people are just nice. And that was one of the good things about going to North Korea. People say that Londoners are quite cold and I don't find that, Londoners can be helpful, and especially if you're patient enough. And MS for me does that, it allows you to be patient.
BETH-So what kinds of things is nice to have help for?
JITE-Probably getting in and out of cars. In London not so much, in London you kind of want to get strong. I know that I'm going to have to get in a car, and not everybody gives the same level of help, so you have to be self-sufficient. In North Korea there's no need. And I'm never going to be in North Korea again.
BETH-How did the access pan out? Because that was the big mystery wasn't it really? I mean, you had no idea.
JITE-It was just people lifting me. Only one place, the museum was difficult.
BETH-Your guides would just pick you up would they? Pick up your wheelchair.
JITE-Yeah, with me in it.
BETH-Wow, and you're like six foot plus aren't you?
JITE-Yeah.
BETH-How fair was your MS when you were out there?
JITE-For me you tend to pace yourself, so fatigue is a problem, because it's such long days and it's all the time. I got tired and my symptoms got worse. The eyesight, so I couldn't really take that many photos of the place because I couldn't see at all. You'd be driving past something and oh, that would make a good photo, but you can't really stop because it's just such a pain to get out of the car, get your wheelchair. But otherwise you just couldn't see.
BETH-Was that worrying or were you kind of prepared?
JITE-I don't think I was prepared, and I think that's partly the problem. If I knew how difficult it was then I probably would have been more anxious about it. If you have to do it you do it. A lot of people with MS have depression. I know that could be a problem so I face it before it comes. So you met this challenge? Oh that's a good thing. You did chemo? Oh, that's good. So when it comes to another challenge, I did this before. An example of trying to do practice walking. Yesterday I walked to the lift, so that means I can walk to the door. You know, they're small victories. So North Korea in itself, it's not the end of the story, it just helps, okay, next time I'll do something else.
When I was younger there was more depression, I was less able to face it. As I get older I'm more aware of the signs, so there are times of lows like anyone else but they are not enduring because I'm aware that okay, I've done this bit. So anxiety's not the end of the story, but I'm anxious about maybe travelling. I'm anxious now, if I need to go out you're thinking oh, is there disabled access? Are there toilets? So there's always something to think about, but what helps with my anxiety is knowledge I think. I went online and I checked out North Korea, where I'm going to be staying, so that kind of eased it a bit. Thinking badly of it doesn't help.
BETH-So in North Korea what were your highlights and your lowlights?
JITE-The lowlights were that video of seeing myself, and the highlights were the people. Regardless of the system, communism or capitalism, the people generally, they're happy and they're helpful, they smile, and for me it's a good thing, you know, experience. Everyone's been to other places. Well when you say Pyongyang, okay, that's different. I only went for five days in Pyongyang, but for longer like ten day tours, they go outside Pyongyang. For me that would be more difficult because wheelchair access would be impossible.
BETH-And going full circle almost back to your stem cell therapy, did it work for you?
JITE-I think it did cognitively. The memory's improved. And people always talk about brain fog. I didn't think about it until after the treatment, because you don't realise that you are slowly getting worse. There's a difference mentally. Word finding is far better. The walking around could be better. I think they managed my expectations quite well. They said maybe it will stop the degradation, the progression of the condition. It will be a few years to kind of know. And the only way they can tell is by MRI scans.
BETH-What kind of reaction did you get from the doctors that you see regularly?
JITE-When I said when I was going?
BETH-Yes, or when you came back.
JITE-I mean, I didn't say I was going. I didn't tell anyone I was going because doctors would be cautious. They'd say, "No, don't do it." When I came back I spoke to one of them, I said, "I went to North Korea," he was like, oh well.
BETH-I guess now that you're back they're really thrilled that you went, but obviously were going to be cautious.
JITE-But that's kind of what it is, the conversations that I have about North Korea. It's not about stem cell therapy. So ultimately I'm now thinking more about the positive and not necessarily like a negative, because stem cell therapy was a challenge, but it's a passive challenge, because it's something that happened to me. Going to North Korea was something I did. I don't want to be passive. Why not go out there and kind of look for stuff?
BETH-What would you have done if it had gone wrong?
JITE-Yeah, that's a good one. There were no contingency plans at all.
BETH-I love the idea that you were a new traveller, disabled and out of money in North Korea.
JITE-Yes. [laughs]
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