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Politicians and police in Britain have spoken of "heightened concern" in Jewish communities following the terror attacks in France that included the killing of four men at a kosher supermarket. So what has been the impact on people living and working in Jewish areas, such as London's Golders Green? | By Emma Ailes & Mario CacciottoloBBC News
"An attack in our community is inevitable."
Israel Morgenstern is bracing himself for a terror attack aimed at the Jewish community in Britain. "It's going to come. It all depends how and where."
Mr Morgenstern, 37, who lives in Golders Green but is originally from Israel, is married with three children, and says he has a weight on his mind whenever he sends them off to school.
While he is talking, he points out three police cars which pass by, and also says that he welcomes local patrols conducted by the Community Security Trust (CST), a Jewish security charity.
However, he says that he does not know "how much they would be able to help" in the event of an attack. "Maybe, just maybe they would alert the police two minutes earlier.
"I like it in this country, I prefer it to Israel. We want to relax here, but we can't right now."
'On edge'
Lord Sacks, former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, has told the BBC that anxiety levels among British Jews are at an "all-time high" in his lifetime.
However, he adds that "the most recent survey shows that the overwhelming number of Jews in Britain feel safe here. It remains one of the most tolerant societies on earth".
The threat has been a background noise for many years, he says. "We are used to it, we are well prepared. This is well under control."
Along with the visible increased police presence in Jewish areas of London, "internally our security level has risen", he says.
At one of the area's largest kosher supermarkets, all appears to be business as usual. But its manager Chuny Rokach says that, since the Paris attacks, anxious customers have been phoning and emailing him to ask what security measures the shop has in place.
"We've trained our staff on what to do if there is an incident - how to communicate, where the exits are," he says.
"They have radios, and we've checked our CCTV to make sure it's effective. People are still shopping, but our customers are definitely on edge. "
Mr Rokach is in daily contact with the CST, but says he wants to see more police actually walking the beat, not just driving up and down the main road.
"The police haven't been in touch to talk to us about security. We haven't had any issues, but obviously it's a concern.
"You do see some extra patrols on Saturdays and Sundays, but we've communicated through the CST that we'd like to see a more visible police presence in the area."
Party security
The authorities say they are listening to concerns. On Friday, Met Police assistant commissioner Mark Rowley, the national policing lead for counter-terrorism, said a security review was under way, and that police were holding talks about providing "more patrols in key areas".
It is a measure that has been welcomed by leaders in the Jewish community, while some individuals are also taking their own steps in order to feel safe.
Frances Bronzite, 64, is visiting Golders Green from her home in Redbridge, Essex, to buy supplies for her son's engagement party.
She consulted with the CST about the party, and was advised that they should arrange to have security present.
"I told my son, and I thought he'd laugh, but he said, 'No mum, they're right,'" she says.
"It's a party at his fiancee's house for about 200 people. They told us we should have security on the door.
"That never would have occurred to us before."
Mrs Bronzite says it is not just the threat of Islamist extremism that worries her, but also what she sees as a rise in right-wing anti-Semitism.
"I haven't changed my behaviour. Why should I? I still go about life as normal. We're British, born and bred.
"But I think we have to be very wary and very observant. I haven't felt this worried before."
It is a view echoed by two women who stop outside a Jewish bakery to chat. They are happy to give their opinion, but do not want to give their name or a photograph for fear of being "targeted".
The younger of the two is visiting from Israel.
"Of course there are attacks in Jerusalem, but I was more scared in London," she says. "I was scared to go to the kosher supermarket.
"Personally, I feel people here should be moving to Israel."
Her companion is more stoical, however.
"I've lived here for 40 years," she says. "Of course we're worried after seeing what happened in Paris, but you still have to go shopping and do things.
"The way I deal with it is to not think about it. If I let myself think about it, of course I will be scared. But you have to get on with life."
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Police have issued a drugs warning after a 25-year-old man died and an 18-year-old woman was left critically ill. | Officers in Cardiff said they have launched an investigation into the supply of dangerous drugs, believed to be linked to the anaesthetic ketamine.
South Wales Police said there was "every possibility" the drugs "contain a cocktail of toxic ingredients".
They have appealed for help in tracking down the supply.
Ketamine is often snorted as a powder, and can be mixed with unknown contaminants.
It is a hallucinogenic and can have potentially life-threatening side-effects if mixed with some other drugs, such as ecstasy or amphetamines.
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A racist man who murdered a Muslim grandfather within five days of coming to the UK from Ukraine and then planted bombs outside mosques in the West Midlands is facing a life sentence. But who is Pavlo Lapshyn and what was his motive for carrying out a 90-day campaign of terror? | By David Lumb and Dominic CascianiBBC News
During his police interviews, the Ukrainian student made no secret of his motive. "Racism," he said. "I would like to increase racial conflict because they are not white and I am white."
The software engineer had only been in the UK for five days when he stabbed to death Mohammed Saleem on the streets of Small Heath in Birmingham. He went on to launch three bomb attacks on mosques - and detectives believe he would have done it again had he not been discovered.
Lapshyn's journey to a conviction for murder began when the PHD student specialising in technology of machine-building won a competition for a work placement with Delcam, a specialist software firm in Birmingham.
He arrived on 24 April and moved into an apartment on the industrial estate where the company is based - right in the heart of Small Heath, one of Birmingham's most ethnically diverse areas.
Just a few streets away lived Mohammed Saleem. On 29 April the 82-year-old grandfather was walking home from evening prayers.
He was just yards from his front door when Lapshyn attacked from behind, stabbing the pensioner three times.
His daughters said that it was clear from the start that he had been the victim of a premeditated attack on an elderly Muslim man.
"My Dad was a well-loved man," Shazia Khan told a news conference. "He was respected by everyone in this community. We all have the right to feel safe and nobody should have to go through this.
"The inflictions and brutality that he had to suffer - he was an elderly man. It is just unbearable, unbelievable. We cannot even comprehend what he must have gone through."
Bomb plans
Police released grainy CCTV video of a white man running from the scene but nobody knew who he was. And alone in his isolated apartment, Lapshyn had already switched to new plans. He built three bombs - each increasing in size and capability.
The first, hidden inside a child's lunchbox, exploded outside Walsall's Aisha Mosque on 21 June. Worshippers were inside at prayers and nobody was hurt but it still led to the evacuation of 150 people from nearby homes.
Lapshyn pleaded not guilty to causing an explosion likely to endanger life at that mosque. But he did plead guilty to preparing acts of terrorism, including in relation to that device.
Another device, on 28 June, targeted Wolverhampton Central Mosque. People reported hearing a loud bang but the bomb was not discovered by police until three weeks later.
The most powerful device, which Lapshyn packed with 600 grams of nails - 25mm long - exploded outside the Kanzul Iman Masjid mosque in Tipton on 12 July.
Lapshyn pleaded guilty to causing this explosion which the court heard could have killed somebody.
The bomb could have killed people in the busy car park, it heard. But prayers at the mosque had been put back an hour because of Ramadan.
It was the week before an English Defence League demonstration was due to take place in the region and Waste Zaffar, Birmingham City Council's cabinet member for Community Safety said Muslim communities felt under attack.
"Communities were scared," he said. "Communities were fearful of what was going to happen next."
Breakthrough
But West Midlands Police were struggling to make progress in what Det Supt Shaun Edwards said was an extremely difficult investigation.
"No witnesses, very little forensic evidence," he said. "Poor quality CCTV. Despite lots of appeals and a £10,000 reward offered through Crimestoppers, we had practically nothing."
Firefighters had even been drafted in to recover nail fragments embedded in trees at the Tipton blast, in case they yielded vital forensic leads.
Then the police had a breakthrough. Officers spotted a man on CCTV walking towards the Walsall mosque carrying a lunchbox. CCTV footage later linked the suspect to the still-unknown Lapshyn on a bus in Small Heath.
Ultimately, they traced the man back to the industrial estate where a Delcam employee confirmed his identity.
Delcam's chief executive Clive Martell confirmed Lapshyn was on a temporary work placement at the firm. He said the company had cooperated with police inquiries and had been "shocked and saddened" by events over the summer.
When police searched Lapshyn's apartment, they found computer files confirming his extremist mindset and online bomb research.
Lapshyn had bought chemicals and a coffee grinder to prepare devices. He had also adapted three mobile phones to act as timers. Everything for the bombs had been bought over the internet, from market stalls or local supermarkets.
When police officers asked Lapshyn why he had attacked Mr Saleem, the student said: "I have a racial hatred so I have a motivation, a racial motivation and racial hatred."
Det Supt Edwards said: "He's been described by colleagues who interviewed him as calm, calculated and committed. His hatred of what he described as non-white people and his knowledge of how to [build] bombs, all put together, made him extremely dangerous."
Lapshyn acted alone but police don't know whether he had formed his plans before coming to the UK.
"At the moment we are still making inquiries with the Ukrainian authorities," said Det Supt Edwards.
"We have no evidence that he pre-planned or specifically targeted Mr Saleem. It would appear that he targeted him tragically because he was in the wrong place at the right time [for Lapshyn's plans]."
Evidence has however emerged from Ukraine about Lapshyn's mindset and past.
Lapshyn published a reference to an extremist neo-nazi text on his Russian-language social media page before coming to the UK - and a reference to it was found on his computer in Birmingham.
And three years ago Lapshyn was investigated in his native city of Dnipropetrovsk over mishandling explosives which damaged his flat. He told local police that he had been experimenting with chemicals for scientific purposes. He received a fine.
Mr Saleem's family remains dissatisfied with the way the police initially handled the inquiry.
Other Muslims in the West Midlands have questioned the government's response to the murder and the three mosque attacks, comparing it with how the government dealt with the street-killing of Fusilier Lee Rigby weeks later.
"The fact that a Cobra meeting [of ministers and security chiefs] wasn't called is not only appalling but shocked me to bits," says Waseem Zaffar of Birmingham City Council. Pavlo Lapshyn was a "calm, calculated and committed" killer, motivated by the hatred of anyone who wasn't white.
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Bomb disposal experts were called to a Birmingham building site after workmen found a wartime grenade.
| The World War II grenade was found by workers at a demolition site on Bristol Road, Selly Oak.
The road was closed to all traffic at about 17:00 BST and opened again at 20:30 BST.
Police set up a 100m cordon around the area and evacuated a "handful" of people from nearby homes while investigations continued.
By 20:45 BST the force declared the area safe again.
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Some call it military rule by stealth. Others prefer to describe it as the generals and the politicians working harmoniously in the national interest. But however you look at it, there's no denying the Pakistan army's political power is growing. | By Owen Bennett-JonesBBC News
It all dates back to the Peshawar school attack of 16 December 2014 when the Pakistani Taliban murdered 132 schoolboys.
Within days the civilian leadership had formulated a 20-point National Action Plan to confront the militants, curb their hate speeches, control their religious seminaries and cut their finances.
Aware that the civilian courts are generally reluctant to convict Jihadists, the parliament then passed a constitutional amendment to establish military courts.
The army then announced new "apex committees" that brought together senior politicians, bureaucrats, intelligence officials and military officers.
As many as 50,000 suspected militants have been detained or arrested and in another sign of the state's resolve, Malik Ishaq, the leader of a formidable sectarian group, Lashkar e Jhangvi, was shot dead by police in what is widely believed to be an extra-judicial killing.
The crackdown has led to sharply reduced levels of militant violence.
And with media highlighting the role of the army chief General Raheel Sharif, the army is enjoying a surge of public support.
But for all the hopes that the Peshawar School attacks might have marked a significant turning point, some wonder whether the National Action Plan will bring lasting change.
After all, Pakistanis could be forgiven for thinking they have seen it all before.
Tens of thousands of suspected militants were detained by General Musharraf's regime in 2007, only to be released a few months later.
Since the state lacks the capacity to investigate the detainees the same could well happen again.
When he announced the National Action Plan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif stated that Pakistan would no longer distinguish between the "good" Taliban (who fight Pakistan's enemies) and the "bad" Taliban (who attack targets in Pakistan itself).
Selective targets
But in reality the state is still being selective about which groups it targets.
Pakistani-based Jihadist groups with a history of fighting Indian forces in the disputed territory of Kashmir are being left alone.
So too are the Afghan Taliban and the Afghan-facing Haqqani Network which stands accused of mounting recent attacks in Kabul.
Perhaps most controversially of all Lashkar e Toiba (or as its renamed itself, Jamaat ud Dawa), the group accused of mounting the 2008 Mumbai attacks, has not been confronted.
The group's leader Hafeez Saeed is frequently quoted in the Pakistan press.
And no-one is expecting further legal action against, for example, LSE graduate Omar Sheikh who has been convicted of involvement in the 2002 murder of the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl. His appeal has been pending since 2002.
Nor is there likely to be any resolution of the case of Mumtaz Qadri who in 2011 killed the Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer.
Qadri, who objected to Taseer's calls for reform of the blasphemy laws, enjoys hero status in Pakistan.
Neither the army nor the government will want to risk undermining public support for the National Action Plan by including Qadri in its net.
Privately officials say they have to prioritize militants who attack targets within Pakistan.
But even that claim is questionable. Fearing a violent backlash, the state has hesitated to confront militants in their strongholds in Southern Punjab.
The risks are real. Within three weeks of Malik Ishaq's death, for example, Lashkar e Jhangvi hit back with a suicide bomb attack that killed the Home Minster of Punjab, Shuja Khanzada.
There are also questions about the impact of the National Action Plan on Pakistan's notoriously volatile civil/military relations.
Elected representatives both in the national parliament and provincial assemblies complain that they have been cut out of decision-making.
Cult of personality
Some also express fears about an emerging cult of personality around Army Chief General Raheel Sharif.
Posters of him have appeared on billboards throughout Pakistan's biggest city Karachi.
Mysterious websites, which seem to have access to images sourced from the military, praise him to the skies.
After decades of very poor PR, the army is now producing emotive, patriotic rock songs to bolster support for the anti-Jihadist campaign.
While Pakistani liberals worry about these developments, they simultaneously concede that if the counter narrative to the Jihadists has a militaristic air, its only because the civilians have failed to come up with an effective information strategy of their own.
The contest for public support has had an impact on Pakistan's previously irrepressible TV news channels.
Many have become so nervous about upsetting the army that they are making use of a 30-second delay on live broadcasts so that the sound can be muted before it's transmitted.
Originally brought in to stop uncritical interviews of Jihadists, the mechanism is now being used to protect the army's reputation.
One prime time TV host described how her voice was muted as soon as she used the word "military".
The person controlling the mute button did not know if she was going to say something supportive or critical of the men in uniform - so decided to play it safe.
The army's ascendency means that despite his strong electoral mandate Nawaz Sharif is unable to pursue some of his objectives.
His desire to improve relations with India has run up against the army's insistence that the intractable Kashmir issue should be at the forefront of any talks process.
General Raheel Sharif
Wary embrace
Mr Sharif has also been blocked from pursuing legal action against the man who removed him from power last time round, General Musharraf.
The army is unwilling to see a former chief on trial for treason.
For now the government and the army are locked in a wary embrace.
They are working together but in part that is because the civilian politicians fear that if they allow a gap to emerge between them and the military there will be another coup.
Some wonder how long the current situation can last.
"Let me tell you what I have learnt from history," said Pakistan's most prominent human rights lawyer, Asma Jahangir.
"Our army doesn't want power. It wants absolute power."
Listen to Owen's report on the Newshour Extra podcast.
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Wales has train trouble.
So how did we get here? And is there light at the end of the tunnel?
The BBC Wales news website sat down with Nick Servini - presenter of this week's Week In Week Out programme which examined the issues in detail - in search of some answers.
You can watch the full programme here on the iPlayer | So what exactly is the problem with trains in Wales?
They are old, they cost a lot to maintain, there are not enough of them and passenger over-crowding has reached record levels. All that is leading to disruption at certain times on some services
Passenger numbers are on the up - they've risen from 18 million in 2003 when Arriva Train Wales (ATW) first started running our trains, to 30 million currently.
But Arriva Trains Wales, who run the Wales and Borders franchise, have a zero growth contract - which means they are stuck with the same number of trains they had in 2003.
People rely on trains to get to work so Arriva is the first to be blamed when things go wrong. And over the past couple of months, they've been fielding a torrent of complaints.
Quite often there are only two carriages on trains, they fill up quickly so people further down the line towards city centres can't board and have to wait for a later services which frequently makes them late.
Some feel a poor train service is holding back our local economies.
That's not good. Time to modernise?
Yes, indeed. Arriva needs new trains that don't need constant maintenance; trains like those being assembled at one of the largest train manufactures Bombardier in Derby.
There have been inquiries from Wales but no trains will be ordered from anywhere until it's clear which company wins the new franchise to run our trains which is up for grabs in 2018. There's also the question of whether our trains will be diesel, electric, hybrids or something else.
But compared to the rest of the UK, we're doing ok aren't we?
Depends how you look at it. Of course over-crowding on the railways is not unique to Wales - a busy city like Manchester is a case in point.
According to the latest Department of Transport figures for 2015, over-crowding rates for Manchester are higher than in Cardiff.
But the problem is the rates are falling in Manchester whereas in Cardiff the number of people on the morning commute is rising - and rising at a faster rate than anywhere else in the UK outside London.
And that increase was recorded before ATW admitted that over-crowding on its services had reached its highest level in recent years.
So we're back to that basic problem again - Arriva's contract means it is trying to deal with the extra demand, with the same number of trains they had back in 2003.
Ok, so there's a lack of trains. The solution is simple - buy some more and add on a few more carriages to existing ones?
That's difficult due to the contract under which ATW runs the trains. It's a zero growth contract.
Rail industry expert Tony Miles explains: "You are locked into the number of trains you'd got at the beginning over a long contract. That is the problem.
"How do you predict what's going to happen in 15 years' time? And get it right? On a long contract like 15 years, we didn't know people would be abandoning their cars and saying I'd prefer to commute on public transport.
"That's one of the flaws in the way it was done. Lovely to have everything nice and secure and signed off but it gave no flexibility."
It doesn't help pressure that trains in Wales are some of the oldest stock in Europe - our oldest train has done 4.5m miles. And the average age of Arriva Trains Wales rolling stock is 27 years, with the oldest being 40 years.
So you're telling me ATW's contract continues until 2018 and it can't be changed which includes adding any more trains to existing stock. But is it really as black and white as all that?
Not exactly. There have been changes. For instance, Ebbw Vale's station didn't exist when ATW took over the franchise in 2003.
But the new line was built and services began in 2008 and thanks to money from the Welsh Government, three additional trains were leased to take passengers up and down to Cardiff.
So it seems where there's a will - and money - you can agree to run more trains and more services, above and beyond any franchise agreement.
And that's not the only example. Two years ago a new train was introduced to run from Holyhead to Manchester thanks to extra cash from the UK Government.
A north-south Wales service and extra capacity on some valley lines have been added too thanks to Welsh Government money.
You say passenger numbers are shooting up. Surely all the additional fares from those passengers could help fund extra trains?
The way we run our railways is full of surprises. A big one for me is that the Welsh rail services are among the most heavily subsidised in the UK.
Arriva is paid anything from £110m to £160m through their contract every year to run trains in Wales - that's because while some routes make money from fares many others are carrying what's referred to in the industry as "thin air".
Ok, so in the meantime why doesn't Arriva lease some more existing, second-hand trains?
Er… once again not quite that simple. I asked Simon Hughes, ATW's director of engineering the same question and he said they'd love to get more trains but they're unable to get the right kind at the moment although they're going to keep on trying.
It is true that the UK's three big rolling stock companies don't have the trains Arriva wants.
But then rail expert Tony Miles says there are smaller companies with rolling stock that could be used in Wales.
He says some are available to railway companies to use on a daily services , but he says as they use a locomotive to pull them they are very expensive to use as charges are levied on ATW by Network Rail who are responsible for the railway tracks.
ATW's director of customer services Lynne Milligan says it's not an ideal solution.
What about the Welsh Assembly Government - where does it stand in all this?
I asked Welsh Government minister Ken Skates what he thought...
And to press that message home further, he added: "Because a franchise was a failed franchise. And a franchise that is not fit for purpose, it has not obligated the operator to go out to seek additional rolling stock that we would wish to use."
How about ATW - one of the heaviest subsidised franchises in the UK - using some of its profits to tackle overcrowding?
ATW says it operates about 20% more than is contractual so they feel they've made a commitment to this business. the company also points out that they've invested well over £30m in a whole series of customer enhancements and this year alone are going to invest a further £2.5m despite fact that in 18 months' time they could well be walking away from it.
But Ken Skates thinks ATW's 6.9% profits are too high and says the company should be investing more in the service.
ATW is quick to point out that 10 years ago government subsidy made up 55% of its income and now makes up 40% as that subsidy declines every year.
Regardless of the arguments, in 18 months' time there will be a new franchise.
Whoever is successful, drawing up the right contract is going to be essential.
As for solving the current overcrowding? That seems to have descended into a blame game with the commuters stuck in the middle.
The latest Passenger Satisfaction Survey which looks at issues from ticketing and toilets to staff availability and stations shows that Arriva's overall results are stable, but people's happiness with the actual trains has declined.
Meanwhile, ATW director of customer services Lynne Milligan says the company is doing its very best every day in difficult circumstances.
"I'd love to be able to say here's more trains, give everybody a seat on those services but just don't have it so for us the challenge is how do we make the best service we've got," she added.
Is it true that half the problems experienced by passengers are not the trains but the track?
The track is Network Rail's responsibility as well as things like cleaning leaves off the line and fixing broken signals etc.
Over Christmas they were major delays due to work being done Cardiff Central but the station's signalling control room Route managing director Andy Thomas believes the changes will deliver real benefits.
"The £300 million signalling system in Cardiff was the biggest signalling commissioned ever for the UK to date.
"It's designed to increase the number of trains to go through Cardiff - from 12 trains per hour to 16 trains per hour. And that resilience is important because that allows us, when things go wrong we can recover quickly to minimise the impact on passengers."
And what about Cardiff Central station itself?
The station is decades out of date and is just one example of what some say is an underinvestment in the Welsh rail network.
Ken Skates said that the amount being spent on the network in Wales has only been 1% on provision of the network improvements despite the fact that we have 6% of railway lines in Wales.
I asked Mr Skates if he was shouting loudly enough. He said he has but it's been met with resistance from the UK Government consistently. Undeterred he said they've been equally consistent in demands for fair share of network funding and for devolution of responsibility so the Welsh Assembly Government can invest where necessary.
The UK Transport Secretary Chris Grayling declined to be interviewed. His Department highlighted their recent investments in signalling and electrification but say the provision and funding of the rail franchise in Wales is, yes you guessed it - the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
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A Michelin-starred restaurateur, a former press photographer called Tintin and a homeless Englishman who says he was in the SAS: these are the main suspects in last week's botched kidnap of a luxury hotel-owner on the French Riviera. | By Hugh SchofieldBBC News, Paris
Jacqueline Veyrac, millionaire proprietor of the Grand Hotel in Cannes, was seized last Monday on a street in central Nice.
Two days later she was freed after being spotted by a passerby on a road in hills above the city. She was bound and gagged and lying on the floor of a parked van.
The passerby had been drawn to the vehicle because one of its registration plates was hanging off - revealing a second plate underneath.
On Sunday, the state prosecutor in Nice praised Mme Veyrac's courage throughout her two-day ordeal, all of it spent on the floor of the van.
"She never gave up. She showed exceptional character," said Jean-Michel Pretre.
Twice the 76 year old managed to wriggle out of the plastic cords binding her hands and ankles, but each time her captors spotted her.
Throughout her captivity she refused to eat the food she was offered, and took only water.
Unusual cast
According to the prosecutor, six people have been arrested and placed under investigation for kidnap and extortion. A seventh man - a former policeman - faces the lesser charge of not reporting a crime. Five of the seven remain in custody.
The main suspect is Giuseppe Serena, a 63-year-old businessman and restaurateur from Italy, who used to run the famous La Reserve restaurant on a promontory above Nice harbour. La Reserve is a Nice landmark - and also belongs to the Veyrac family.
According to the prosecutor, Mr Serena bore a grudge against Mme Veyrac, who he blamed for the collapse of his venture at La Reserve.
In 2007, he had signed a contract to run the restaurant in partnership with Finnish chef Jouni Tormanen. The two had previously controlled the Michelin-starred L'Atelier du Gout in Nice.
But by 2009 La Reserve was crippled with debt. They scaled back the operation, but too late, and their company was eventually declared bankrupt. Today La Reserve is under a new team.
According to the prosecutor, Mr Serena was planning to issue a ransom demand to the Veyrac family in order to recover the large sum of money he says he lost in La Reserve.
To plan the kidnap, he allegedly recruited an unusual cast of characters.
They included a man named by the prosecutor as Luc G, nicknamed "Tintin", a former paparazzo turned private detective whose task - according to the prosecutor - was to place GPS tracer beacons on Mme Veyrac's car.
Another alleged recruit was a Briton living rough on the Promenade des Anglais - the Nice seaside drive that was the scene of last July's deadly lorry attack.
This man allegedly claimed to have served with UK special forces and was given the job of tracking Mme Veyrac's movements. The others indicted are said to have carried out the kidnap.
Police are trying to see if there is a link with a previous failed kidnap attempt on Mme Veyrac in 2013.
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It's Friday 8 May, the day after the general election. The votes have been cast and counted, and a clear picture has emerged - the UK will have a second successive hung parliament. | The question on everyone's lips: What next?
This is the challenge the BBC's Newsnight has set four political commentators, giving each a different election outcome and asking them to envisage what might happen if the results came true.
Here, they imagine how the political landscape may change given such fictional scenarios:
Rafael Behr, The Guardian
The scenario given to Rafael Behr sees Labour gain 20 more seats than the Conservatives, with the Lib Dems down from 57 MPs in 2011 to 25 in 2015.
In the early hours of Friday 8 May it looked as if David Cameron might still cling on - after all, it is his right as the incumbent to have first go at putting a government together.
But the arithmetic was against him. Tory backbenchers were already talking openly about joining UKIP.
Boris Johnson, the newly elected MP for Uxbridge, said David Cameron had been "neutered by numbskulls and the numbers". And it was true - by the end of the day the prime minister had resigned.
Two weeks passed between election night and the moment Ed Miliband stood on the steps of 10 Downing Street.
He had negotiated what he called "an alliance for change" - not a formal coalition, but an agreement in principle by the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Scottish Nationalists to support a "progressive government" on a case-by-case basis.
This was an arrangement newspapers started calling "suck it and see", while the Independent ran the headline "Green there, done that!", as the Green's MP for Brighton Caroline Lucas was offered the role of climate secretary - announcing an immediate moratorium on fracking.
For the SNP, renewal of the UK's nuclear deterrent, Trident, was put on ice.
So, if the alliance held, Miliband would have a majority of 29. But it didn't.
Since Labour took just 31% of the vote - second to the Tories on 35 - newspapers started referring to the new government as the "League of Losers".
Soon there were demonstrations, and on social media badges appeared saying "We are the 69%" - the percentage of people who had never even voted for Miliband.
Nick Clegg stood down as Lib Dem leader to accept a role as chair of a new Constitutional Convention, but he soon clashed with Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander when he claimed relations with the EU as part of his new job.
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon threatened to withhold support for a Labour budget when Chancellor Ed Balls refused to consult her on spending in Scotland.
Newly chosen Conservative leader Boris Johnson tabled a no confidence vote and called for MPs to end the "mathematical monstrosity of moribund Mili-minority".
The Lib Dems split, the SNP abstained and in the end it was 30 despairing Labour rebels who brought their own government down.
Under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, the parties have a fortnight to hold negotiations on a new coalition. Otherwise, there's a second election.
Quentin Letts, Daily Mail
The scenario given to Quentin Letts sees the Conservatives and Labour on an equal footing, with the SNP gaining 45 seats.
Yes, Labour's collapse in Scotland had been predicted, but it was still a jolt to see Alex Salmond standing alongside Prime Minister Ed Miliband in the Downing Street garden that May morning.
The deal? A Scottish independence referendum for the SNP. And for Labour - power.
Deputy Prime Minister Salmond - now Westminster leader of his Edinburgh-based party - looked very much the senior partner alongside a blinking, stammering Miliband.
And here was the big question now dominating politics: Who runs Britain - England or the Celts?
A mini-coalition with Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and Sinn Fein made the SNP kingmakers. They were never going to side with the Conservatives.
The end game for the SNP remained the break-up of the UK, but some nationalists feared going into coalition with Labour would dilute their identity as separatists.
A source close to Mr Salmond described the wider goal - infuriate the English so much that they want to end the union. "Nats the way to do it," ran the Scottish Sun.
Full of bravado, Mr Salmond swaggered up Downing Street and announced outside the door of No 10: "It was the Jocks wot won it."
Interrupting Ed Miliband at the press conference, he said: "The English bossed us around for 300 years, now it's our turn."
At an occasionally violent rally in Wembley stadium, the Tories - led by Theresa May - and UKIP demanded a referendum on English independence. The Queen begged English voters to "think very carefully" about any breakaway. Financial markets were jittery.
Meanwhile, from Dover House - Whitehall residence of our new deputy PM - there came the sound of bagpipes, Scottish reels and the melodious baritone of Alex Salmond.
Isabel Hardman, The Spectator
The scenario given to Isabel Hardman sees UKIP gain 6 MPs, while the Conservatives amass 17 more than Labour.
UKIP's ability to secure six seats on the green benches was a feat unimaginable not all that long ago, and in the early hours of that May morning chaos reigned.
Tory backbenchers weren't happy, and the drawn-out nature of the Conservative-Lib Dem negotiations had left David Cameron's critics with plenty of time to launch their own campaigns against him.
Nick Clegg's demand for 50% representation on the Quad - the top decision-making committee in government - took up five full days of horse-trading alone.
After three weeks, we finally had a government. Cameron insisted that all members of his Cabinet appear on TV to put their names to the new agreement.
What helped them was the bloody ejection of Ed Miliband after Labour's abject failure. The new king? Chuka Umunna.
"Over the Umunna," ran The Mirror's front page. "Red Ed Dead," went The Sun. And Guardian polls showed Nick Clegg's popularity was still not getting any better.
The knives were sharpened for Clegg, but after surviving a botched leadership bid from Vince Cable he once more became deputy prime minister as the Lib Dems ended up with 10 ministers.
Clegg continues to chair the cabinet committee on home affairs, which he uses to block all policies he doesn't like.
But this isn't a coalition governing by majority. It is a minority government, relying on UKIP to deliver budgets and other key votes. The price for that? A 2016 EU referendum.
No-one expects it to last very long or produce much in the way of big reforms. But unless all the parties involved in government vote to end it, the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act means the lifeless Con-Lib government - propped up by the kippers - lurches on.
What this strange new government will achieve while it lasts is anyone's guess. But if you thought the last government ran a zombie Parliament, just wait until you get a load of this one.
Helen Lewis, New Statesman
The scenario given to Helen Lewis sees Labour lead the Conservatives by 23 seats, while the SNP amass four more than the Liberal Democrats.
By the morning of Friday 8 May, Ed Miliband knew that either the Lib Dems or the SNP could deliver him enough seats to pass a budget. So should he go tartan, or yellow?
Trying to dodge a hungry press pack, it was over a sausage and egg supper at an M1 service station that Alex Salmond and Mr Miliband met to thrash out a deal.
But as the Labour leader emerged from the rendezvous it was clear that the SNP's leader at Westminster was asking for too much. Miliband wouldn't give up Trident, and he refused to strengthen his rivals by giving them even more tax powers in Scotland.
So he moved on to a dinner date with Nick Clegg. There was plenty for their parties to agree on - Lords reform, higher property taxes, votes at 16.
The sticking point was the men's frosty personal relationship. There was only one thing for it - Nick Clegg sealed the Lib-Lab coalition, and promptly fell on his sword.
This meant a rather steep elevation for former party president Tim Farron, who went from backbencher to Lib Dem leader and deputy prime minister in one fell swoop.
Elsewhere, in the defeated Tory party it was all-out war. Backbenchers rounded on their leader and the shadow cabinet imploded. "Eton Mess: Tories turn on one another" was the Telegraph's headline.
As David Cameron returned to Oxfordshire to stick the kettle on, Boris Johnson took on Theresa May for the party's leadership.
After a bruising battle, Boris emerged victorious - but his reign over the Tory party only lasted six months, until the Mirror's astonishing scoop over his unfortunate incident with the bicycle pump in the nunnery.
Ed and Tim embarked on a somewhat familiar feeling programme of sweeping changes - another NHS reorganisation, withdrawing benefits from migrants, tough cuts to get the deficit down.
And so, within a year of the 2015 election, the new Tory leader George Osborne was facing Ed Miliband across the despatch box.
As the Labour leader blamed the new economic crisis on "the mess we inherited", voters wondered whether anything had really changed at all.
Analysis: Allegra Stratton, BBC Newsnight Political Editor
George Osborne likes to quote Lyndon B Johnson's first rule of politics: It's "practitioners need to be able to count."
These days I have a lot of conversations in Westminster's Portcullis House that go like this: "The Tories lose 30 seats to Labour, get 15 off the Lib Dems and lose one to UKIP - which puts them on 290ish. Labour lose over 20 to the SNP.
"Lib Dems get 30 seats, go back in with the Tories - that equals 320. With the DUP's 8 MPs they are over the magic 326 [the number of MPs needed for a majority]."
The next conversation runs the numbers another way entirely: "Labour win 50 seats off the Tories and 15 from the Lib Dems..." and so on. A Beautiful Mind it isn't, but it's still more maths than Marx.
It remains possible that between now and the general election - some 100 days away - there is a march back to the mainstream. That one of the two main parties breaks away from the other, with closer to 40% of the electorate planning to vote for them than 30%, as the public start to form a firmer idea of which they'd like to run the show.
But we aren't there yet. Opinion polls show Labour and the Tory party edging along next to each other - crowded around a 32%, 33%, 34% low-water mark, only yielding each of them around 290 seats.
So how to get over 326 MPs - or 323 if you factor in that at the moment the five Sinn Fein MPs don't take their seats?
Opinion pollsters agree that if the polls stay where they are, three parties - not just two - may be needed to form a majority government.
Newsnight broadcasts Monday to Friday on BBC Two, from 22:30 GMT.
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Two decades ago a boxing promoter deciding to live as a woman might have got a mixed response in the media. But perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of Kellie Maloney, formerly Frank, announcing her new identity, was an almost uniformly positive reaction. | By Tom de CastellaBBC News Magazine
"What has been particularly heartening has been the reaction to the news," commented the Daily Mirror. "A few years ago such an announcement would have been met with derision and prejudice. The response to Kellie has been warmly supportive."
The Daily Express's chief sports writer John Dillon wrote: "Frank Maloney was an extraordinary man. Now Kellie will be an extraordinary woman."
Maloney's case shows how much society and the media have changed. There was a time when transgender (or trans) people were viewed as freaks by society, says the writer and campaigner Jane Fae. Before the mid-1990s "transgender was up there in the popular imagination with sexual deviants".
It explains why she, like Maloney, waited so long to come out as trans. Another phase came in the 2000s when the legal position of trans people began to be questioned, Fae says. "We were winning rights but we were a group of people to be pitied."
It is only in the past five years that trans people have started to be treated with respect by society. The 2010 Equality Act, granting equal access to employment as well as private and public services, regardless of gender reassignment, was a milestone.
There are many things that trans people still hate about media coverage. "Dead naming" - referring to someone by their old name - is painful for many trans people, Fae says. "It's almost like a small electric shock if I see my old name in print."
Then there's the before-and-after picture. It's something readers may be curious about, but like giving someone's previous name, it is another way that the trans person is trapped by their past.
In the early 20th Century, sex changes, as they were then usually known, were so rarely reported that stories evoked amazement rather than moralising.
Lili Elbe
In the 1930s a number of partial sex change operations were carried out at London's Charing Cross Hospital. There was the case of the female British javelin thrower and shot-putter who became Mark Weston. "Woman Athlete Now a Man!" reported the Sunderland Echo in 1936. The reaction was one of astonishment rather than condemnation.
Although the details of Weston's case are not known, gender historian Geertje Mak, from Radboud University, says many of the 1930s cases involved people who would not be considered trans today. "It's what in the 19th Century were called hermaphrodites [the term intersex is preferred now as hermaphrodite is deemed offensive by many] - people who were raised as female but turned out to have testicles [for example]."
Alison Oram, author of Her Husband Was a Woman: Women's Gender-Crossing in Modern British Popular Culture, says that in the 1930s readers of the News of the World and People newspapers became familiar with the idea. "There was a tone of sympathy but also a huge fascination with [the possibilities of] medical science."
But in the 1950s as the modern concept of the sex-change operation developed, it seems sympathy began to wane and a tone of censoriousness arrived.
It is thought that Lili Elbe was the first to have undergone a modern sex-change operation. She died in 1931 as a result of one of the operations.
In the early 1950s Christine Jorgensen, an ex-American GI, was one of the first to have a successful sex change operation from man to woman. She had to petition the Danish government to change the law to allow castration. When she returned to the US she was treated with curiosity by media and public, earning a degree of admiration for her glamorous appearance.
Roberta Cowell, an RAF pilot in World War Two, also announced she was a woman in the 1950s and was for a time feted in the same way as Jorgensen. But as time went by both were subject to remarks along the lines of "you're not really a woman", says Oram.
In the 1960s, former Times journalist James Morris became Jan Morris, today a famous travel writer.
The press coverage of Morris seems from a modern perspective to have been relatively sympathetic. But a writer with a public school and Oxbridge background may have been treated differently by the newspapers than someone of a lower social status, says Oram. The same goes for certain professions - the media or military - or people from certain class backgrounds, she adds.
But widespread discrimination continued. Michael Dillon, who'd had a sex change during the war from woman to man, was a ship's doctor until he was outed by the Sunday Express in 1958. He gave up his job and went to India.
Then there was April Ashley, who had gender reassignment surgery in 1960. She became a successful model and had a role in a film starring Bing Crosby. But when her story became public, she had her film credit removed. In 1970 a judge ruled that her brief marriage to the aristocrat Arthur Cameron Corbett could be made void.
"It was common ground between all the medical witnesses that the biological sexual constitution of an individual was fixed at birth (at the latest) and could not be changed," Mr Justice Ormrod told the court. As the Times reported, the case appeared to be the first time a court in England had been called upon to decide the sex of an individual.
The workplace was still an oppressive place. In 1980, Karen Ulane, a pilot in the US for Eastern Airlines, was dismissed after having gender reassignment surgery. Ulane won the case against Eastern but it was overturned on appeal.
As the Maloney story shows, the UK press has become far more sensitive. The Leveson Inquiry gave a platform to campaign group Trans Media Watch to raise awareness about hostile coverage. It pointed out how people were often featured merely for being trans rather than any real news angle.
One Sun story began with the line "Burly Nigel Weston has shocked trucker pals by telling them: 'Call me Nikki-Jane.'"
Trans Media Watch complained that the subject was referred to as male throughout, that the story used her former name nearly twice as often as Nikki-Jane, and used a before and after photo. And then there is language - the term "burly" is common in such stories, intended to "underline the subject's presumed visual incongruity", the group argued.
But perhaps the biggest jolt to the media was the tragic story of Lucy Meadows, a trans teacher who killed herself in March 2013 following what campaigners termed a "monstering" by the press. One of her wedding photos ended up in the papers, as did pictures from siblings' Facebook pages. Reporters parked outside her house.
One piece in particular, by Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn, was singled out. The article has since been removed from the paper's website. Headlined "He's not only in the wrong body… he's in the wrong job", Littlejohn asked whether anyone had thought of "the devastating effect" on the pupils of what Meadows had done. The coroner at her inquest criticised the media over the "character assassination" and accused the Mail of learning nothing from the Leveson inquiry.
Others defended Littlejohn saying his facts were correct whether or not one agreed with his opinions. A Mail spokesman at the time said Mr Littlejohn's column had "emphatically defended the rights of people to have sex change operations but echoed the parents' concerns about whether it was right for children to have to confront complex gender problems at such a vulnerable young age".
The reaction may vary according to circumstances. The first Church of England vicar to have a sex change operation, in 2000, received a standing ovation from all but one of the congregation in Upper Stratton, Swindon.
The UK media at least does seem to have changed the way it covers trans issues. But that does not necessarily reflect the whole of society, where outright discrimination and violence still occurs. In some US states there are still battles over "bathroom bills" - fierce debates over whether trans people can use women's toilets. Of course, in much of the world, discrimination and violence is far, far more prevalent.
But in media terms at least, the story of Kellie Maloney shows how far understanding of gender change has come since the astonishment of the 1930s.
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The world watched in horror last month as gunman Seifeddine Rezgui killed 38 people at the Tunisian resort of Sousse. Survivors of the attack tell Panorama's Jane Corbin what it was like to go through the experience. | Holidaymakers on the beach in front of the Imperial Marhaba Hotel were just about getting ready for lunch. As it neared midday on 26 June, they relaxed on sun loungers. New arrivals had just had their introductory meeting with a tour rep. Some of them walked across the hot sand for a swim. Others tried paragliding. All was calm as temperatures rose towards the low 30s.
I've been going on holiday to Tunisia for 15 to 20 years. I like the people. I love the white, sandy beaches. And I don't think I've ever been to a bad hotel, so you're almost guaranteed a good holiday there.
We got to Tunisia the previous day and, that morning, we had a welcome meeting with Thomson's. It was very enlightening. My friend wanted to go on the camels, so we arranged a camel trip.
I'd heard good reports about the area and the hotel and that it was safe. The pictures looked nice, so we booked the holiday and off we went.
My son Callum, being a teenager, didn't want to get up so didn't join myself and Thomas for breakfast. We got ready, went downstairs, had breakfast and then sat round the pool and read a book.
I was switching between reading a book and listening to music, just sunbathing, trying to catch the rays.
It was lovely, very clear, very nice. White sandy beaches and the water was lovely. It was just like any other morning. We thought we'd go on a walk to the other end of the beach. So we walked for about 40 minutes. When we got back we went into the sea to cool down and went back to the sunbed. I ended up standing up to cool down.
Then I just happened to look to the right-hand side and, all of a sudden, I saw a man with a gun.
Most didn't notice as a slim figure, dressed in black shorts and T-shirt, turned up on the beach. Tunisian student Seifeddine Rezgui removed a Kalashnikov he'd concealed in a parasol.
Ellie: He brought out this massive black gun and started shooting everybody. He shot all around him. People were dropping to the floor so quickly. There are no words to describe how quickly it happened. It was literally split-second, and then we just ran. I ran for my life.
Angela: At first I thought it was fireworks, firecrackers. My friend and I looked up and instantly realised it wasn't. It was a boy, a young man, dressed all in black with a huge gun. He was systematically going from side to side, shooting people, killing them, people who were lying on sun loungers. He was murdering them. We saw people trying to run. They were just targets to him.
In my time in the Royal Air Force I fired many automatic weapons myself. I knew that that was sustained gunfire.
I started shouting. First of all I said to my wife: "Run back to the hotel. Take cover." But I couldn't go with her at that point because there were too many people who were just lazing on the loungers, just looking up, without any sense of urgency. I started shouting at the top of my voice for people to run. I was waving my arms around and I must have stayed there another minute or more.
I was walking as fast as I could. My heart was beating so fast I was trembling. As I started to cry, a lady came towards me with her husband, asked if I was on my own, put her arms round me and gave me a hug.
Panic spread among those on the beach.
Most people around us tried to lie down on the ground. My friend and I were among them. But many people panicked and stood up to see what was going on and they were shot at. Those who were lying down were safer.
Angela: We looked at each other and played dead. We threw ourselves to the ground, put our heads right in the sand. We couldn't see anything but could still hear. All you could hear was this loud noise. Such a heavy noise it was, and it was coming closer and closer. He was getting nearer.
The gunman kept on firing at holidaymakers.
Ellie: We ran back to the hotel. We could hear shots getting louder and him getting closer. The screaming was awful. It was so loud. It was worse than babies crying 24/7. People's arms were in the air. You see it on TV and think: "God, that's awful." Seeing it yourself, with your own eyes, it was even worse.
For two minutes he was shooting and killing people. People were running. My friend took a little girl and helped her to escape.
It quickly became obvious to the Tunisians on the beach that 23-year-old Rezgui was only trying to shoot Westerners. Some tried to reason with him.
We said: "Please stop shooting." He didn't listen to us. He just kept shooting. He didn't care.
I found two tourists in the water, running away from the bullets. I talked to them and got them into my boat.
The surviving tourists on the beach were in a state of terror and confusion, as the gunman walked within a few metres of them.
Angela: There was no more screaming. [Rezgui] was at the side of me. I was lying down and I could see his feet. At that time you just know you're going to die in a minute.
Then there was a click and something dropped because the sand came up over me. There was another, louder click, almost a crunch. I suppose he'd run out of ammunition, but he'd refilled.
He was above. He was just there. I just remember thinking: "Oh, God." Then there was a bang, a big bang. I don't know what it was, but it was enough for him to turn. I knew he'd turned because of all the sand that came up on me.
Issam: As soon as people started to group together, he started to shoot more intensively. I didn't move, because he was shooting so close to us. I saw him load the second magazine.
Rezgui, seemingly calm, moved methodically, seeking out more victims. He walked up the beach to the swimming pool in the hotel grounds. Guests there were initially unsure what was going on.
Sam: We were just lying there thinking "we'll have to go and get some lunch" and heard a loud, continuous banging. I thought: "Why is somebody letting off fireworks?" It really sounded like fireworks. I thought: "That's a bit silly because it's light." And then it stopped for a while.
Tom: A lot of people stopped still and looked up. It was like a deathly quiet, a horrible eerie feel. Everyone was looking around to see what was going on and I heard someone say: "People are running from the beach. People are running from the beach." So automatically you stand up and look. Then it happened again - more gunfire - and that's when I turned to my mum and said: "Run. Run. That's not fireworks. Just run."
Sam: So we got up, picked up our belongings - I don't know why - and ran from where we were and just kept running and running and running.
Issam: He was shooting by the pool. He took a lot of time at the pool. He had a grenade that he threw in the pool.
Mohamed: He was shooting. One [victim] and then he'd go to the next one. He was like a professional. We tried to help the people. There were old people and young. What did they do to [deserve to] die?
Sam: He was behind us. We could hear him shooting. It was getting louder. I didn't look back. I just ran towards the hotel, up the steps to the right of the hotel. There were loads of other tourists there. They were running in the same direction. We knew at that point it was obviously guns but it sounded like there were five or six of them.
Hotel staff attempted to get as many people as possible to safety.
Sam: There was a receptionist waving us through a door, so we ran with some other guests through a door, up a flight of stairs and just kept running down a corridor which was the staff area. The staff there were looking at us saying: "What are you what are you doing here?" And we said: "There's a gunman shooting. There's a gunman." They looked really shocked.
Emboldened by the fact that Rezgui wasn't shooting at Tunisians, some started to follow him.
Aimen: We encouraged each other and we decided to get in the hotel and kill the terrorist. And I started filming. I was afraid when he was shooting. But when I followed him and filmed him, I didn't care if I was killed. We must defend our lives and protect ourselves.
He wasn't a big man. He was armed. It was the Kalashnikov that gave him power.
Angela was still lying on the beach, pretending to be dead.
Angela: I could hear the shootings were going away. You could tell they were moving up to the hotel. And at that point we both looked at each other under the sun loungers.
We got up. We held hands. I said: "Look, we've got to go. We've got to go." I knew there was another hotel next door, so we both started running. But I couldn't run very far and I ended up crawling a lot of the way. I don't think I'll ever be able to explain that fear. I don't know a word big enough.
I had to go through these [dead and injured] people and this lady. She just said: "Please help me. Please help me." And it wasn't like I thought bullet holes [would be]. You think it's going to be a hole, but they were like gouges out of her body and I could only say, "I'll be back. I'll come back."
There was no one moving. We just had to keep moving until we got to the next hotel.
Angela made her way towards the Imperial's neighbouring hotel, the Bellevue Park, thinking this would offer safety. Ellie was already inside the lobby.
Ellie: I asked the staff had they rung the police. Had they done anything about it? Was security aware? They said they didn't know what was going on. They weren't sure.
[They asked] could they do anything to assure us. I said: "Well, I'm asking you the questions. You should be reassuring me, telling me that there's police coming." There was a massive confusion. Everybody was running around.
At the time of the attack I was at another hotel about 1km away. I got the phone call to tell me that the attack had started, that there was a terrorist in the hotel. I thought immediately of my clients and my staff. I was distraught. My first reaction was to ring the minister of the interior while I was still on my way, to inform him of the disaster.
From the Imperial's outdoor pool area, the gunman walked into the spa complex to the side.
Issam: People in the hotel were screaming. They couldn't see him. They just heard the sound of him shooting. People were crying and running after him. People were not so far from him.
The gunman made his way into the hotel and up to the first-floor management area where more than 20 tourists, including Sam and Tom, had fled.
Sam: We carried on running down the corridor and we came to a dead end.
Tom: As we turned around, I heard two shots fired. As people parted ways, I saw two people had been shot right at the bottom of the corridor and there was just one gunman stood right at the end of the corridor opposite me. It was like something off a horror movie - the bad guy being at the end of the corridor.
Everyone was trying to get into the nearest door, or down the corridor - scurrying, trying to find anything. As all this happened he must have thrown a grenade and also shot in my direction. It landed about a metre-and-a-half/two metres in front of me.
Sam: I felt the shrapnel hit the back of my leg and that's when Thomas fell to the floor and said: "I've been hit. I've been hit."
Tom: I remember watching it, like in slow motion. I got blown back by the blast of the grenade.
Sam: It happened so quickly. I thought at that point that we weren't going to survive this.
Tony Callaghan, who'd found his wife Christine after leaving the beach, was also in the corridor.
Tony: The gunman had followed us up and was firing in the corridor. I felt a bullet hit my left calf as I was running. Chris was right behind me. I just turned into this little alcove and the chap in front of me, with another guy, had burst the door open and we all sort of dived into an office.
The first chap was attempting to put a bookcase against the door to barricade it. But I looked round and Chris wasn't with me. I shouted out my wife's name and "where is she?" A chap said: "You know we can't go out. What if the gunman's there?"
I said I needed to be out there with her. As I said that I heard my wife shouting out: "Tony, please help me. I've been shot." I was inside, relatively safe, and I couldn't do anything about it.
I couldn't get outside to help her.
Christine: I was so frightened. I thought they were going to come and finish us off. I was so traumatised.
Tony: The nightmare that I can't get out of my mind is not being able to help Chris when she was shot. I feel guilty I couldn't help her. But I couldn't do anything else. I couldn't jeopardise the other five people in that room. That will stick with me. I've got to try and come to terms with that.
Zohra: He shot in all directions. It was like a robot shooting everywhere. The staff saved a huge number, dozens, if not hundreds, of clients. Without them there would surely have been a much higher death toll.
In the Bellevue Hotel, next door, Ellie was by now hiding under a bed in case the gunman entered and searched the building.
Ellie: I was texting my parents, saying: "I love you all so much and this is probably going to be the end." What do you say to family that you don't think you're ever going to see again? You just pour your heart out. I was doing that for about 40 minutes, not knowing if I was going home or if I was going to be coming back in a body bag.
The gunman left the staff area of the Imperial and walked back out on to the beach. The Tunisians once again tried to get him to stop.
Aimen: I wanted to stand in his way and hit him with something. When I saw he was thin, I realised I could attack him even if he was armed. He took piece of paper from his bag. I think it showed how to find his way around. Then he prepared a grenade. He picked up his Kalashnikov.
There was a disagreement on the beach.
Mehdi: When I saw the tourist policeman, I said to him: "Why aren't you shooting the terrorist?" He said to me: "I don't have a bulletproof vest."
Mohamed: I told him: "I've got no vest, but I'm going." He said: "It's your risk if you die." I said: "OK, no problem, no problem."
The police were scared. One said: "If he sees me with a police T-shirt, he will shoot me." So he rolled up the T-shirt in his hand and he ran with the people.
A young Tunisian man in red shorts seized a gun from an unwilling policeman and headed off to try to fire it at Rezgui. He missed him and the gun jammed after two shots.
There were reports from some tourists of seeing a second gunman in red shorts. But Aimen's video, taken together with Tunisian eyewitnesses, leaves little doubt that the so-called second gunman was in fact the brave Tunisian in red shorts.
Rezgui retaliated to being fired at by throwing a grenade, forcing the group of Tunisians following him to drop back and re-group. He moved back to the beach, to the area in front of the Bellevue hotel.
By now, Angela had crawled along the beach to the Bellevue, where a member of staff hid her in his office.
Angela: There was a lot of shooting going on. I didn't know if I was ever going to get home. I didn't know if I was going to get out of the room and if there were a lot of these murderers, whether they were going to come and search everyone out. I did a lot of praying.
Several Tunisians formed a human chain outside the Bellevue to prevent Rezgui entering and killing more tourists.
Mehdi: He asked me: "Why are you here?" So I said to him: "You are destroying my livelihood by murdering people. And you ask me: 'Why are you here?'"
I pulled two pots from the beach and tried to hit him with them. He wasn't shooting any Arabs. So I was among those who could get near him and wouldn't be harmed.
Sam and Tom, both wounded, were still hiding in the toilets in the management area of the Imperial.
Sam: We heard this other girl who followed us in there and she was crying in the toilet next door. I was saying: "Please be quiet. Be quiet." We didn't know if he was still in the corridor or if there were more of them. So we brought her into the toilet and she passed out. We had to sit her on the toilet and bring her round.
Tom: She had a massive piece of shrapnel in her leg. I said to her: "I'm going to have to take this out if I'm going to stop the bleeding." So she said OK, and I pulled it out and packed her leg with tissue paper, and used my top to tie it round to try and stop the bleeding. Then I did the same with my mum's leg.
Sam: I felt so sick. I thought: "This is it. We're not going to survive this." I didn't even know if my youngest son was OK. We were in sheer panic. Luckily we had our mobiles with us. The lady of the family that had Callum - they'd taken him and barricaded themselves in - rang me and said: "We've got Callum."
The killer was followed along the beach by a human chain, barring him from entering the Bellevue Hotel. He began to run, turning into an alley leading from the beach to a shopping street.
Aimen: We were running behind him. We were all running behind him.
Mark Barlow and Becky Catterick, from Scunthorpe, had already escaped the beach.
Becky was struggling to run in flip-flops and so I was dragging her up the road. She couldn't even run.
It was fear. I was frozen, basically.
Some shopkeepers offered shelter to terrified tourists.
[Rezgui] came from the beach. I said: "What's the problem?" Someone told me: "Terrorist, terrorist." I said: "OK, you come in. Go inside. Go inside." They came inside and they stayed here, kept quiet. Everyone stayed. I said: "Listen, if something happens, I will protect you until the end."
Rezgui fired several shots at the door of Ajmi's shop. Mark and Becky were already taking refuge in another shop nearby.
Mark: We were all silent. You could hear a pin drop in the toilet that we were in. Everything was going on outside. It was just constant gunfire.
Becky: It was getting closer and closer and you could hear it louder and louder. I turned to Mark and [other friends] and said: "You know, I love you guys."
Mark: I said: "I love you back." I was quiet and, with my head down, I was holding everybody, arms round everyone, trying to keep calm.
Builder Moncef Mayel was watching from a rooftop above the street.
The tourists were all running, as were the hotel workers. We saw the silhouette of someone running about on the beach but then he came up this street here.
As he came closer, I shouted insults at him, asking him what he was doing, that this was contrary to Islam, that what he was doing was wrong, that he was a terrorist, stuff like that.
He raised his gun and fired but his aim was off because he was tired. I took tiles and threw them down on him. I was throwing down the second lot when my neighbour started shouting: "Stop. He's fallen. He's fallen."
After apparently being shot once by a police officer, Rezgui got up again, started moving and fired at police. But, 38 minutes after he began shooting tourists, police finally cornered him further down the street.
Aimen: He fell down and he stood up again. After that, he started shooting at the police. There were so many policemen there. He tried to run away but he was injured. There were lots and lots of bullets. There were so many policemen.
Rezgui continued to fire his Kalashnikov. Police shot him several times.
Aimen: I was sad because I hoped that they wouldn't kill him, but arrest him alive. It would have been better if he was arrested - to be accountable and to be asked about the motive behind killing those people.
The gunman was dead, but those back at the Bellevue had no idea what was going on, or whether they were safe.
Angela: There was an awful lot of gunshots, a lot of noise. A man came back into the office to say that the police had killed him and that it was alright now, we could come out. But there was still more shooting. It didn't make sense. So, again, we wouldn't come out and he went away. He came back, maybe five minutes later, to try and reassure us we could come out, so we did.
There were scenes of devastation at the Imperial.
Sam: During all this time, there was a lady who was badly injured from the grenade in the corridor [of the Imperial]. I can hear still hear now: "Help me. Help me. I'm dying." At the end of the day, we were just too scared to come out. That's still upsetting for me now because I couldn't go and help her. I was too frightened to go out there. But eventually we heard friendly voices. At that point we went out and had a look and the lady was being attended by the medics, but she was very badly injured. I just feel awful inside that I didn't go out and help her.
You don't normally see things like that, the poor, poor people in that corridor. It'll take a long time to be able to come to terms with a lot of that, that happened there.
Tom: Right at the end of the corridor there were two dead bodies. We had to walk around them to get out.
Sam: It was horrific. How we didn't die in that corridor is unbelievable.
Tony and Christine were reunited.
Tony: When we thought it was safe enough to go out, we pulled the barricade away and got out. I could then see what carnage had taken place in the corridor.
As soon as I saw Chris I was absolutely overwhelmed by what I saw. It was an appalling sight - Chris's leg 90 degrees across her body.
I gave her a great big hug and I remember saying if you lose your leg - because we thought her leg might go - it doesn't matter. We're alive and we're actually going to get through this together, no matter what injuries we've got. I comforted my wife.
Others were less fortunate.
Tony: A lady obviously had been shot in the back. Her husband was there. He was OK. He was frantic, didn't know what to do.
In one of the little offices to the right there was a young guy, sitting in a chair, and his girlfriend was dead. He was holding her hand and he said: "What do I do?" I said: "Have you checked for her pulse?" I pulled him out of the way and I checked and there was no pulse whatsoever.
I said: "I'm so sorry. I think she's passed away." He said they were meant to be getting married in two weeks' time.
Once the immediate shock of the attack was over, guests were desperate to know what had happened to their friends and loved ones.
Zohra: It was total chaos. People didn't know who had died, who was injured. People were looking for their partners, their families, their personal friends. Even among the staff, we didn't know who was or who wasn't dead. There were moments of fear, seeing the bodies, seeing this terrible massacre.
Angela: People had no time. They couldn't do anything. They were just gunned down.
It took police almost three hours to check whether Rezgui was wired with explosives before taking his body away. Only then were Mark and Becky able to leave the shop where they were hiding.
Becky: It didn't actually hit me until I'd sat down in the hotel reception and my mum answered the phone. I said: "I'm alive. I'm safe." And she burst out crying. That's when it hit us all, when we knew we were safe.
The survivors of the Imperial Hotel massacre are trying to come to terms with their trauma.
Tom: I wouldn't want to ever be in that situation ever again and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
Becky: There've been terrorist attacks in the UK and people still go to London, on the Tube, where the bombings were. It could happen anywhere, at any time at any location. You're never really truly safe anywhere. So it wouldn't stop me from going back to the country.
Tunisia's tourism industry is expected to be heavily damaged by the attack.
Zohra: The British have always been our friends. I'd like to say to them: "Come back. You're very welcome here. We'll battle together to fight for individual freedom, for human freedom."
Of the 38 people Seifeddine Rezgui killed, 30 were British. All the British tourists interviewed by Panorama are back at home. Sam and Tom are recovering from their injuries and coming to terms with what happened.
Christine is still recovering from being shot - her injuries are described as "life-changing". She has had three operations on her leg and is due to have another. She is spending time with Tony, her children and grandchildren.
The relative calm of being back in the UK has allowed survivors time to contemplate what happened.
Angela: I have nightmares. I can see and hear it in the daytime. I just hope that it will maybe ease and let me sleep and that every minute isn't preoccupied with it. The noise, the noise of that gun. It's still coming towards me.
I went to church the other day. I went to look for answers. Those poor people didn't even have time to say: "Please help."
I didn't get answers. But I realised I was there to ask for them to be looked after.
Terror on the beach
Panorama: Terror on the Beach will be shown on BBC One at 21:00 BST on Thursday. It will be available after that on the BBC iPlayer
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In a sign of the changing political fortunes of a man who was once a pariah, Eritrea's President Isaias Afwerki has proven to be a staunch ally of Ethiopia's Nobel Peace Prize winner and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, giving his troops much-needed support to fight the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) in Tigray. | In a recent address to the Ethiopian parliament, the Nobel laureate revealed that Eritrea, a highly militarised one-party state, had fed, clothed and armed retreating Ethiopian soldiers when the TPLF first attacked them and seized their bases in Tigray, an Ethiopian region which borders Eritrea.
Mr Abiy said this made it possible for them to return to fight the TPLF, a former guerrilla movement with about 250,000 forces, until it was ousted from power in the region on 28 November.
"The Eritrean people have shown us... they are a relative standing by us on a tough day," he added.
This was a significant acknowledgement by Mr Abiy, though he did not go as far as to admit claims that Mr Isaias, had also sent troops to help defeat the TPLF, a long-time foe of the Eritrean leader who has been in power since 1993.
Hospital allegedly shelled
The claim that Eritrean troops are fighting in Tigray was made by the TPLF, civilians fleeing the conflict, and Eritreans inside and outside the country.
"Isaias is sending young Eritreans to die in Tigray. The war will also further weaken the economy. But Isaias will be in power for a long time. He lets people fight for their survival so that they do not fight for their freedom," said Paulos Tesfagiorgis, an Eritrean human rights campaigner who was forced into exile by the regime in Asmara.
A US state department spokesperson also said there were "credible reports" of the presence of Eritrean troops in Tigray, and called it a "grave development".
Both governments deny the reports, with Eritrea's foreign minister, Osman Saleh Mohammed, describing them as "propaganda".
As for UN chief António Gueterres, he said Mr Abiy had assured him there were no Eritrean troops in Tigray, except in territory that Ethiopia had agreed to hand over following a historic peace deal between the two nations in 2018.
The deal ended the "no war-no peace" situation that had existed between the two nations since their 1998-2000 border war, which left up to 100,000 people dead. It earned Mr Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize, though Badme - the main flashpoint of the war - had not been transferred to Eritrea by the time the conflict in Tigray had started in early November.
Mr Abiy's government has heavily restricted access to Tigray for the media, UN agencies and human rights bodies, making it difficult to verify reports or to investigate allegations of atrocities made against all sides in the conflict - including the shelling of a hospital from Eritrean territory.
Eritrea has not commented on the alleged shelling, mentioned in a statement by the UN human rights chief. Mr Abiy denies that his troops have killed a single civilian in Tigray.
"This war has been fought in absolute darkness. No-one knows the true scale of the conflict or its impact," said Kenya-based Horn of Africa analyst Rashid Abdi.
Eritrean forces accused of looting
US-based analyst Alex de Waal said he had been informed by a UN source that the conflict had caused the "large-scale displacement" of people in the region, the poorest in Ethiopia with a population of about five million.
"If it goes on like this, there will be mass starvation in Tigray, and a population that is embittered and angry," Mr de Waal said.
He added that he had also learned from reliable sources in Tigray, including clerics, that Eritrean forces were involved in looting.
"We are hearing that they are even stealing doors [and] bathroom fittings," he said.
More on the Tigray crisis:
Other Eritreans said that soldiers, including their relatives, were fighting TPLF forces on several fronts, and some of them were even wearing Ethiopian camouflage.
Eritrea insists that it does not have troops in Tigray, with its foreign minister quoted as saying: "We are not involved."
But exiled former Eritrean diplomat Abdella Adem said he personally knew soldiers who had been wounded in combat, while a source at the public hospital in Eritrea's southern town of Senafe told the BBC that both Eritrean and Ethiopian troops had been treated there.
'Isaias seeks TPLF's liquidation'
Other sources in Eritrea said that Ethiopian troops had also been seen regrouping around the central town of Hagaz, and taking their wounded to the nearby Gilas Military Hospital.
UK-based Eritrean academic Gaim Kibreab said he believed that Mr Isaias had sent troops to Tigray to pursue the "liquidation" of the TPLF, which, he added, has been the Eritrean leader's key objective since the 1998-2000 border war.
The TPLF was in power at the time in Ethiopia's federal government and the Tigray regional government.
"In the war of 1998-2000, the TPLF humiliated the president [Mr Isaias] by taking over the small village of Badme. Even when an international tribunal ruled that the village belonged to Eritrea, the TPLF refused to withdraw from the occupied place for 18 years.
"The president has been waiting for this moment and the TPLF underestimated his craftiness and patience at its own peril," Mr Gaim added.
Missiles fired at Eritrea
Mr Isaias' supporters insist that Eritrean troops have not crossed into Tigray, saying they had only pursued the objective of regaining sovereign territory by taking over Badme, and its surrounding areas, without causing casualties.
Expressing a different view, Mr Paulos said: "Badme is back in Eritrean hands, but there has been no public announcement about it because that is not Isaias' main concern. He is still pushing on to crush the TPLF.
"Abiy started as a peacemaker and a reformer, but he then fell into the trap of seeking revenge against the TPLF, which is what Isaias wanted."
Mr Abiy says he tried to resolve differences with the TPLF peacefully, but was forced to act against it after it seized military bases in a night-time raid on 3 November, convincing him that it wanted to overthrow his government.
Although Mr Isaias rallied to his aid at the time, Eritrean state media has kept its audiences in the dark about the conflict, failing to even report on the TPLF-fired missiles that landed on the outskirts of the capital Asmara in early November, causing loud explosions that were heard by residents.
"Eritrean TV talks of bombs in Syria but when the missiles landed in Asmara, it said nothing," noted exiled Eritrean former government official Dawit Fisehaye said.
In a tweet, Eritrea's information minister Yemane Meskel said it was "pointless to amplify its [the TPLF's] last-ditch, predictable, though inconsequential acts".
'Refugees abducted'
Internet access in Eritrea is limited and the country has no independent media and no opposition parties - the fate of 11 politicians and 17 journalists detained almost 20 years ago remains unknown.
Furthermore, military conscription is compulsory while job opportunities are limited, resulting in many people - especially youths - fleeing the country. About 100,000 had been living for years in UN camps in Tigray.
The UN refugee agency said it had received "an overwhelming number of credible reports" that refugees had been killed, abducted and forcibly returned to the one-party state during the current conflict.
Although it did not say who was behind the abductions, a refugee told the BBC that it was Eritrean soldiers who loaded them onto lorries in the town of Adigrat and took them across the border to Adi Quala town.
Eritrea has not commented on its alleged involvement, but it has previously accused the UN agency of "smear campaigns" and of trying to depopulate the country.
Mr Dawit said he did not believe that the regime would ever reform.
''There was no change in Eritrea up to now because the leadership did not want it and the demise of the TPLF will not change that. Expecting reform is a pipedream," he added.
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It's not often you are sent a set of pictures that make you gasp, especially ones taken decades ago. Yet here they are, beautiful black and white pictures that have remained hidden, buried in a loft waiting to be brought out into the light. | Phil CoomesPicture editor@philcoomeson Twitter
These pictures were taken by John Turner, a property manager based in the centre of London, and were recently unearthed by his daughter and her husband, Liz and Martin Carroll.
Following John Turner's death in 1987 a suitcase was passed to them by his widow, Betty. A quick glance revealed family photos and other pictures taken for his camera club, and it was consigned to the loft for 30 odd years.
"Having a clearout last year, I started going through the case to weed out family photos worth saving," says Martin Carroll who used to work as a commercial industrial photographer. "To my astonishment, I found I was pulling out one great image after another."
It is believed the pictures were taken while Turner worked as a property manager, snatched as he travelled from one location to another.
Martin and Liz are unsure as to whether her father showed the work to anyone - but now they are out of the loft, I'm sure many will want to view them.
They feel the photographs really deserve to see the light of day, and for John to be appreciated for the talented photographer that he was. They also hope to arrange an exhibition of his work at some point.
"We should add that, having gone through all the negatives, that he seemed only ever to take just the single frame of each subject - nailing it in one, as it were," says Martin.
Martin has been scanning the original negatives as many of the pictures were not printed, just the contact sheets, providing a glimpse into John Turner's work.
Turner worked with a variety of formats from 35mm through to 6cmx9cm roll film, using folding cameras a lot, as well as a Leica and a Rollei.
His daughter Liz feels they capture the real John Turner.
"These pictures are who I think he really was," she says. "They show his artistic talent that was hidden."
Liz told me that as a young man in the 1930s her father lived in the heart of London, Carnaby Street, and lived a "bohemian life". He would regularly set off dressed in a dark blue shirt and yellow tie to Paris on the boat train, the Golden Arrow.
Once married, he settled into a steady job and as Liz puts it, wore the "bowler hat".
He always had a camera to hand, but Liz was only aware of his pictures taken for the local camera club in Bromley, which were of a more conventional nature for that period.
His pictures offer a wonderful glimpse into pre-War London, and beyond. His ability to capture a telling moment is indisputable, as these pictures show.
His daughter Liz has an idea as to why.
"Found in his possessions when he died was the catalogue for the first surrealist exhibition in London, during the 1920s," she says.
"Maybe seeing that encouraged his eye for the quirky?"
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Siobhan Shannon has a gift for remembering faces. It was this ability that helped her to land a job with Northumbria Police, where she aims to find and save children who are targeted by online paedophiles. | By Duncan LeatherdaleBBC News online
Some of these predators are adept at covering their tracks online, using software to mask their location. It is in these cases that Mrs Shannon, inspired by a determination to catch the abusers and rescue their victims, puts her skills to use.
How does she track online abusers down - and how emotionally troubling is the kind of work she does?
He was known simply as "The Boy".
Blue eyes framed by green-rimmed glasses, probably of primary school age, he was a child in dire need of rescue.
Mrs Shannon had spent four months looking at pictures of him, examining every detail for clues that could lead to her finding him.
The Boy's is one of the thousands of faces to have been seen by Mrs Shannon and her colleagues on the Northumbria Police Paedophile Online Investigation Team (Polit) since the unit's formation in 2016.
As one of the team's two victim identification officers, her task is to identify the children from images using clues such as plug sockets, logos on clothing or a view from a window in the background.
Some are pictures the children took themselves, perhaps coerced by a chatroom predator into removing clothing or performing sexual acts - often not realising that the person they are sharing these intimate moments with is an abusive adult rather than another experimental youngster.
Other photos Mrs Shannon must look at are those taken by the predators themselves, and these sometimes feature the worst kinds of sexual abuse.
The Boy fell into the latter category.
"We knew he was in danger and it could be happening right now," Mrs Shannon said. "I just couldn't get his sad face out of my head.
"Everyone in the team knew him, we all needed to find him. I became a bit obsessed, to be honest."
She found the brand of his glasses and contacted stockists to learn where they had been sold, but that provided no leads.
She spent hours scanning social media sites looking for other pictures of The Boy, anything that could help her find out who and where he was.
Finally, after weeks of searching, she had a breakthrough.
"I keep a list of the children I have been unable to trace as I won't forget about them and when I think of something new, I give it a try," she said.
How to get help
The NSPCC offers a range of guidance to children and parents about how to stay safe online.
A full list of other organisations offering help and support can be found here.
"I was searching forums, groups, everything possible linked to children wearing glasses, trawling public posts. And then one day I stumbled across a comment written by a woman with a boy on her lap who looked like him.
"I couldn't believe it when it actually was."
A criminal case is now being pursued and The Boy has been removed from harm. For now, this is enough for Mrs Shannon to know.
She joined Northumbria Police three years ago from the Greater Manchester force, where she was on duty the night of the Manchester Arena bombing.
The 51-year-old mother of five said her new role had enabled her to "achieve something".
"The team here is dealing with such horrible images and situations daily but their goal is always the safeguarding of children," she said.
The 15-strong unit will try to work out where and who the victims and suspects are. They use IP addresses and, in cases where online offenders have masked their location, the detective work encompasses such methods as the ones Mrs Shannon used to find The Boy.
Locating and protecting children is the priority for Polit, which is based in Byker in Newcastle, with prosecution an important second.
"When they get a conviction it's good, but finding the victims feels 10 times better," Mrs Shannon said.
She is faced with harrowing images every day.
"The only way I can deal with it is by thinking 'if I am looking at it then we are dealing with it'... and that's got be a positive," she said.
"Some images stay with you and will never go. There is an anger. It's a frustration that you cannot do more."
One of the most high-profile cases the team cracked was that of Michael Coulter who was jailed in 2018.
He would spend hours a day posing as a teenager on the video app Live.Me and persuade teenage girls to perform sexual acts, which he would record and share with other abusers.
Mrs Shannon and her colleagues identified 47 victims around the world, with one girl traced through her distinctive football shirt.
One aspect that particularly concerned the mother of five was how the abuse would often take place close to the victims' parents, who were oblivious to their children's plight.
"When he was talking to children you could see the parents walking behind them," she said. "You could see them walking by while their child was being groomed.
"In one case, he told the child to go to the bathroom and you could hear EastEnders on in the next room."
Her job is an unusual one in policing, according to Det Sgt Allen Hull, one of the Polit team leaders.
"Normally the first thing you have is a crime scene, and then you find the evidence," he said.
"But Siobhan starts with the evidence and works backwards to identify where that crime scene is and who is the victim."
Cases are often referred to the team by websites and social media platforms concerned at the tone of content.
The unit makes about 30 arrests a month and there is "no indication that is likely to change", Det Sgt Hull said.
Keeping children safe online can be a daunting prospect for parents, he added.
"They are very good at protecting their kids in the real world, but then will give them an iPad with open internet access and leave them alone.
"We cannot arrest ourselves out of this. It's a much bigger societal problem."
While continuing to educate parents and children about online safety is crucial, Mrs Shannon said she had been seeing an encouraging number of youngsters "disengaging" from conversations, sometimes calling the groomer "gross".
Some of the children may not have realised they were victims at all, and there is a risk that to inform them they have been could traumatise them.
But the greater risk is not to educate about them staying safe online, Mrs Shannon said.
"If this behaviour is normalised for them they might encourage other children to do it.
"If it's just a game for them they might see it as just a game for their little sister. Education has to come into it."
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Vladimir Putin accused the US and EU of conspiring to weaken Russia at his end-of-year news conference on Thursday, but as the country's economy tanks he has nobody to blame but himself, argues Russia analyst Ben Judah. | Russia blames the West. Not only for the war in Ukraine - the result, it says, of a revolution orchestrated by Western powers - but for the slump in the oil price, and the collapse of the rouble. There is talk in the Kremlin of an American-Saudi conspiracy and Nato economic warfare.
But in reality the war and the rouble crisis could have been avoided, and nowhere is this more evident than in relation to the oil-dependent economy.
The Kremlin has known, ever since the oil boom took off 10 years ago, that a political system was being built on the basis of the one thing in Russia that Vladimir Putin could not control - the price of oil. The Kremlin's own accounts estimate that sales of oil and gas accounted for 50% of Russia's federal budget revenue in 2013. And ominously, roughly half the Russian population lives off the state budget - either as state employees, pensioners or as benefit claimants.
Ben Judah
Ben Judah is the author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In And Out Of Love With Vladimir Putin.
He is now writing a book about London as a global city.
This means that a collapse in the oil price threatens the fragile foundations of the current system, in which the Kremlin buys the loyalty of the majority with state handouts. The Kremlin needs the price of oil to remain high, and even to rise if it is to continue to deliver rising living standards.
Instead Russians may now have to face austerity.
"If the situation continues to develop unfavourably like this, we will have to adjust our plans, and it is certain that cuts in some areas will have to be made," Putin said at his news conference.
Russia's 2015 spending plans had assumed that oil would remain over $100. The country can only balance its budget with the oil price around that mark. The Kremlin may soon no longer have the cash to buy Russians' enthusiastic patriotism with television extravaganzas like the Sochi Olympics (price tag $50bn), or the sudden invasion and annexation of Crimea ($75bn, according to one estimate).
For the masses, the association between Vladimir Putin and rising living standards may soon be broken, while for the elite the Russian president no longer looks like a guarantor of economic stability. Within government there is talk of significant cutbacks and even mass lay-offs at state corporations like Gazprom. There is also a risk that to escape the currency crisis Russia may face a period of inflation, inflicting further wounds on ordinary people's living standards. Russia's middle classes are already facing onerous mortgage repayments, and the imported goods and foreign holidays they enjoy may become unaffordable.
At his news conference, Putin accused the West of conspiring to weaken Russia, and building a "virtual" Berlin Wall to contain it. In the Kremlin, the allegation is being made that Washington DC and Riyadh have conspired to collapse the price of oil in order to weaken Russia and Iran.
But even this would not absolve Vladimir Putin of responsibility for Russia's crisis. One of the main topics of debate in Moscow over the past decade, in both liberal and conservative circles, has been how to build a new economy able to withstand wild oscillations in the price of oil. The vulnerability of the rouble was well understood - there is consensus among the political elite that as long as more than 60% of Russia's export revenue continues to be drawn from oil, the currency will never be treated by markets as more than "paper oil".
There were reports from the intelligence services and from liberal think-tanks such as the Institute of Contemporary Development (INSOR) warning that an oil-dependent economy was hostage to Western financial markets and to possible manipulation.
Russian economy
Energy exports
50%
of Russia's government revenue comes from oil and gas
68% of Russia's total export revenues in 2013 came from oil and natural gas sales
33% of these were crude oil exports, mostly to Europe
Putin ignored advice from Yegor Gaidar, the former Russian prime minister who took up his post immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992. He wrote a book-length appeal to Putin, The Collapse Of An Empire, arguing that the Soviet Union had financially imploded due to the sudden collapse in the oil price - thanks to American-Saudi agreements to increase production - and that the new Russia was repeating its mistakes.
Moscow was to blame, he wrote, for basing its economy on barrels of oil, whose value could so easily be manipulated by its worst enemies. He drew a parallel with Spain, which became addicted to gold and silver in the 16th and 17th Centuries, and then slid into insolvency and lost its empire when the value of bullion tumbled.
Russia's own government knew that an oil crash was inevitable. Vladimir Putin ignored the government's Strategy 2020, which proudly announced that "structural diversification of the economy will become evident in the composition of exports". He ignored the pleas of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, then serving as titular president, who in 2009 rhetorically asked the Russian public: "Can an economy based on raw materials and endemic corruption take us into the future?" Even the powerful Kremlin aide, Vladislav Surkov, currently leading on operations in Ukraine, warned in 2010: "We are not like Kuwait… We are unable to be a small prosperous emirate. We are a great big country that oil will be unable to feed. We must learn to make money from our brains."
The projects proposed by Russia's conservatives to invest in new industrial stock were ignored. The idea pioneered by Dmitry Medvedev and Vladislav Surkov to create a science park at Skolkovo outside Moscow grew into little more than a Potemkin village. Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, has often seemed to prefer the fast-paced dramas of Ukraine and Syria to the difficult work of fostering infant industries, promoting new technologies or small businesses.
"We found ourselves in a perfect storm and I guess it's not an accident, because in some way we prepared this storm ourselves," Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev told the Vedomosti newspaper on Thursday.
Putin, meanwhile, said: "We have not done much of what we were planning to do and saying we would do to diversify our economy for the past 20 years."
He added that "life itself" would now ensure the work was done.
But at the same time, he blames the West. It would be more accurate to say that responsibility lies with the Russian president and the politicians who failed to challenge him - and missed the opportunity to build a robust economy for Russia while they had the chance.
@b_judah is the author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In And Out Of Love With Vladimir Putin.
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Stack it and sell it. What could be more simple when it comes to the world of the supermarkets? But in this multi billion pound industry, there's a complex relationship between the retailers and the companies who supply the many products they sell. | By Emma SimpsonBusiness correspondent, BBC News
The accounting scandal at Tesco brought the issue into the limelight, and highlighted just how reliant it, and the other big supermarkets, are on supplier income.
Its £250m profit overstatement centres on payments from suppliers, and how that income was recorded on its books, an amount that would have accounted for around a quarter of its expected half year profits.
Suppliers compete to get the supermarkets to feature their products prominently. And they'll pay handsomely to get the best place on the shelves. The real sweet spot is the end of the aisle.
"Suppliers can see their sales multiply about tenfold during the period they're there. It's not uncommon for them to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds, knowing that they're generating the sales with which to pay for them," says David Sables, founder of Sentinel Management Consultants, a business that advises suppliers on how to negotiate with retailers.
And that's not the only thing suppliers pay for. There are a host of different fees and charges, many of them linked to performance.
Suppliers pay for promotions and usually give a discount or rebate to the supermarkets if targets are met. It's all part of what's known as commercial income.
It's nothing new or illegal. These payments have been widespread across the industry for decades.
UK food supply chain
3.6m
People employed in food supply
13%
Of national employment
£97bn Gross value of food supply chain (2012)
300,000 Agricultural enterprises involved in food supply
7,400 Food processing businesses
British retailers don't publish how much money they receive from commercial income but the declared income from a number of big American supermarkets gives a clue.
According to Fitch, the credit rating agency, the payments are the equivalent to 8% of the cost of goods sold for the retailers, equal to virtually all their profit.
It could be a similar picture here.
Duncan Swift, a partner at Moore Stephens Food Advisory Group, knows his way around UK supermarket balance sheets.
He is a chartered accountant who specialises in helping suppliers in financial distress, and has also given evidence for the Competition Commission's investigation into the groceries market, published in 2008.
'Lucrative'
He conservatively estimates supplier contributions to be worth around £5bn a year to the top four supermarkets. But that sum is still more than they made in combined pre-tax profits last year.
"Over the years, it's become a very lucrative source of additional profits for the supermarkets.
You'd think the amount of price reductions that a supermarket can get through rebates is going to be nothing like what we as consumers spend at the tills and relatively you're right.
But in profit terms, at the margin, it's far more attractive for a supermarket to get ever larger supplier rebates than it is to encourage the likes of you and I to spend more money at the till, " he says
For the big four, getting us to spend money has never been more challenging. Discounters like Aldi and Lidl have been stealing customers and consumers are changing the way they shop.
But in a market with next to no growth, are suppliers being seen as an easy touch for more contributions?
Transparency
David Sables from Sentinel says things are always tough, but they've recently got tougher as trading has gradually worsened for the supermarkets.
"There's constant pressure on these businesses to improve results, and as the pressure grows it can be particularly intense when they're suffering and their sales are not doing very well, and they're losing market share," he says.
"When you see that happening, you expect that to come with a phone call to their suppliers asking for a little bit more."
Suppliers I spoke to were too afraid to speak publicly for fear of being dropped by the big supermarkets. Duncan Swift says not all supplier relationships are bad, but he believes the supermarkets have been finding ever more sophisticated ways of getting more money out of their suppliers than before.
"Significant deductions are being made from what suppliers are owed by the supermarkets without any explanation. I've seen short-notice order cancellations to try to force suppliers to put goods on promotion, to further reduce the price they supply to the supermarkets. And I've seen further demands for marketing and promotional costs [from supermarkets]," he says.
The supermarkets deny mistreating suppliers. They say they wouldn't be in business without good relations. Indeed, many suppliers have done incredibly well from shifting vast amounts of goods through the supermarket aisles. And some of the biggest brands are bigger businesses than some of the retailers they sell to.
The British Retail Consortium says regulations introduced in 2010 on supplier and supermarket promotions make it clear that they "must be agreed by both parties and cannot be required solely by the retailer on their terms".
For Tesco, how it records its supplier income has landed the retailer in serious trouble, with more than £3bn being wiped off the company's value, as well as putting it in the sights of regulators and politicians.
The city wants to know if Tesco took things too far, in order to prop up falling sales. That investigation is still under way.
But there are now calls, including from Fitch, for more transparency about supplier payments among all the big European retailers.
"Better disclosure would make it easier to spot errors, aggressive accounting practices or misuse, " Fitch said.
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A 14-year-old boy has been charged with plotting an "Islamist" terror attack, police have said. | The teenager, from Eastleigh, who cannot be named, faces one count of preparation of terrorist acts.
Hampshire Police, which arrested the boy on 12 June, said it believed the investigation was "isolated". The boy was later re-arrested by counter-terror police.
He is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Thursday.
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A man has been charged with manslaughter after an 80-year-old woman died after being pushed in north London. | Police believe the elderly victim was pushed in Camden Road at around 14:20 BST on 31 March.
The woman was taken to a hospital and later discharged, before being readmitted to a second hospital where she died on Tuesday.
Harry Goodwin-Sims, 29, appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court.
He was remanded in custody to appear at Southwark Crown Court on 2 May.
The woman's next of kin have been informed and formal identification is yet to take place.
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No charges are to be brought against a woman accused of posting a malicious message on Facebook about a terminally ill five-year-old boy. | Bradley Lowery. from Blackhall Colliery, near Hartlepool, has terminal neuroblastoma.
A 24-year-old from Hartlepool was arrested in December on suspicion of offences under the Malicious Communications Act.
Cleveland Police said the case remained open and inquiries were continuing.
Bradley, who was diagnosed with the disease in 2013, made headlines around the world after featuring as Sunderland Football Club's mascot.
Last year £700,000 was raised for him and treatment has now begun in hospital in a bid to prolong his life.
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Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, has set out an economic plan that he says offers the Palestinians a "more prosperous future" if they agree a peace deal with Israel. | He described the proposals, which envisage $50bn (£39bn) being invested in the region over 10 years, as "the opportunity of the century".
Mr Kushner was speaking at the start of a two-day "workshop" in Bahrain.
Palestinian leaders have rejected the plan and are boycotting the event.
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, has insisted that, before anything else, there has to be a political agreement.
Mr Trump is not expected to release the political part of his peace plan until possibly November, once Israel holds a general election.
What did Jared Kushner say?
He opened his speech by warning the Palestinian people that they had been "trapped in an inefficient framework of the past". The White House's economic plan - dubbed "Peace to Prosperity" - offered them "a modern framework for a brighter and more prosperous future", he said.
Mr Kushner, addressing Palestinians, stressed that President Trump and the US had "not given up you", and that economic growth and prosperity was not possible without an "enduring and fair political solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"However, today is not about the political issues. We'll get to those at the right time. The goal of this workshop is to begin thinking about these challenges in a new way.
"Let's try to view this conflict and the potential of the entire region through a different lens and work together to develop a concrete plan to try to achieve it."
0%real GDP growth in 2018
31%unemployment rate
67%of youths in Gaza are unemployed
24%of Palestinians live below the $5.50 a day PPP poverty line
70-80%of Gaza's GDP comes from aid or the Palestinian Authority
Mr Kushner also dismissed critics who he said mockingly referred to his plan as "the deal of the century" - a reference to President Trump's desire to secure what he has called the "ultimate deal".
"At its core, it is not just about making a deal," he said. "In fact, this effort is better referred to as 'the opportunity of the century' if leadership has the courage to pursue it."
What does the US economic plan propose?
It envisages donor countries and investors contributing $50bn for a newly created fund administered by a development bank. About $27.5bn would go to projects in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip - areas the Palestinians want for an independent state - while the rest would go to Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.
The projects would seek to "unleash the economic potential of the Palestinians" by:
The aims of the plan are to more than double Palestinian gross domestic product (GDP) within 10 years; create one million jobs; bring down the unemployment rate to nearly single digits and reduce the poverty rate by 50%.
Who is in Manama?
The US delegation is being led by Mr Kushner, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Mr Trump's Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt.
The finance ministers of several US-allied Gulf Arab states are also attending, along with International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde and World Bank president David Malpass.
Jordan and Egypt have sent less senior officials, while Lebanon and Iraq said they would not participate in solidarity with the Palestinians.
The US did not invite any Israeli officials because of the Palestinians' absence.
What do the Palestinians say?
The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, cut off diplomatic contacts with the US in late 2017 after Mr Trump decided to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move the US embassy to the city from Tel Aviv.
Since then, the US has ended both bilateral aid for Palestinians and contributions for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
The Palestinian Authority has also reacted angrily to recent suggestions that the US peace plan would not be based on the so-called "two-state solution" - the international community's shorthand for a final settlement that would see the creation of an independent state of Palestine within pre-1967 ceasefire lines in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, living peacefully alongside Israel.
President Abbas asserted that the Manama workshop would not be successful.
"We will not be slaves or servants for Greenblatt, Kushner and [US ambassador to Israel David] Friedman," he told foreign journalists in Ramallah.
"We need the economic [support], the money and the assistance," he added. "But before everything, there is a political solution."
A spokesman for Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza, insisted the Palestinians "will not sell out their rights for all treasures on Earth".
What do the Israelis think?
Israel has not officially taken a position towards the US plan.
"We'll hear the American proposition; hear it fairly, and with openness. And I cannot understand how the Palestinians, before they even heard the plan, reject it outright," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.
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Leaked documents have suggested the US government is able to access details of smartphone and internet activity under the Prism scheme. But what can be found out about users in the UK and what other information is held? | By Tom de Castella and Kayte RathBBC News Magazine
The Prism allegations suggest US intelligence agencies had direct access to the servers of nine firms including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Skype and Apple.
The Guardian has reported that the UK's electronic surveillance agency, GCHQ, had been able to see user communications data from the American internet companies, because it had access to Prism.
Going online
When you visit a website, your IP address, type of machine and screen size can easily be ascertained.
The website can also see how you got to the site - by what search term or the last website you were on. Your location can be found by cross-referring your IP address with other data.
If you are using a work computer, it's easy to find out who your employer is. It is an entirely automated process, says technology expert Tom Cheesewright. But an IP address is actually not a foolproof way to follow individuals, he adds.
A user's IP address on a personal computer can change regularly, he says. For this reason, most companies will only use the IP address to get a vague idea of where their visitors are coming from.
In theory internet service providers (ISPs) can "see" everything a user chooses to do online including every website they visit. But BT, one of the biggest British ISPs, says: "In terms of internet usage BT doesn't keep a record of any of our customers' browsing activity as we have no business need for this."
Many will know of the issue of using cookies for tracking. If you are looking at a news site and click on an advert for a car that will be remembered. When you visit a different site a car advert is likely to appear. Commercial transactions go back forever on a site like Amazon. They know what books you've looked at and didn't buy. Travel sites will record flights you reserved but didn't end up booking.
It is remembered for at least six months, says Prof Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, co-author of Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think.
Theoretically, a news site could use cookies to establish that you often clicked on stories about terrorism. That might be interesting information for the security services.
Of course, clear your cookies at the end of every browsing session and part of the ability to follow you disappears.
Searching
Search engines like Google have the ability to remember your search terms. "Even when you make a mistake it's remembered," says Mayer-Schonberger.
Theoretically, this might lead to someone with a legitimate academic interest in terrorism and bomb-making techniques being labelled a terrorist by a computer tracking programme.
But there is disagreement among the experts over the way search engines like Google remember. It is easy to clear your cache and cookies, Cheesewright says. Once you do that Google may remember your searches but can't connect them to you specifically.
He believes Google's desire to find out more about you as an individual is tempered by a fear of breaching privacy laws and expectations. It is only interested in the information it needs to target you with advertising and it has quite enough to do that successfully without storing named records of individuals' search histories.
Email
Gmail and Yahoo both scan users' emails. They do algorithmic analysis of your email messages, targeting ads that relate to the content of your messages. Defenders point out that "they", are not people, but machines. And they argue that it is a harmless way of making advertising relevant to users and raising revenues.
Others might say that whether a machine or a human is doing the work, the potential for a privacy breach is there. The Prism whistleblower Edward Snowden has claimed that the National Security Agency has built an infrastructure that can intercept "almost everything".
"With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards."
Some experts have theorised that US security agencies can use basic keyword searches backed by high-powered computing systems to sift through vast quantities of data.
ISPs have certain obligations set out in security legislation. The EU Data Retention Directive requires providers to retain data - such as sender, recipient, time and duration - from both email (and other electronic messaging) and telephone calls for between six and 24 months. The content of messages or calls is not included.
Apps and e-readers
Many apps rely on following a person's exact location. Cycling and running apps show how far you have travelled, your route and average speed. All such data will go "back to the mother ship", says Mayer-Schonberger. We don't know what happens to all this data that the application provider has at its disposal. Perhaps nothing. But there is a risk. Such travel apps usually start from someone's home so they could give away someone's address.
E-readers can give a surprising amount of data away about someone. Whenever you underline a favourite bit on a Kindle that can be sent back to Amazon. As an author, Mayer-Schonberger says it's fascinating to see the five most underlined phrases in your book.
Social media
On Facebook, people willingly share information with a group of their friends and acquaintances. But the mining of that information for commercially useful data is controversial.
"All the seemingly trivial details we reveal about ourselves online every day can be cross-referenced and correlated often to startling effect," digital and technology writer Tom Chatfield has said.
If you tweet and say you're popping out to a particular park for a coffee, someone is on the trail of finding your home address. Cross-refer the postcode of the park with the person's surname and you might get a person's website registration details listing home address, mobile and email address.
Tweeting with your location is disabled by default for everyone. But people who enable this feature may later forget just what they are revealing.
Every Facebook like is being logged. Researchers at Cambridge University recently published research showing how even this seemingly trivial data gives people an accurate insight into our personal characteristics. Facebook Likes were 88% accurate for determining male sexuality, 95% accurate distinguishing African-American from white American and 85% accurate in differentiating Republican from Democrat.
Phone
People may regard their phone as more intimate and therefore more private than a computer. But that is not the case, says Gareth Beavis, phone editor at technology website TechRadar.
A person's location can be tracked in three ways via a phone. Even when not in use for a call, a mobile phone that is switched on may be tracked to the nearest masts from which it is taking a signal. This is unlikely to give a very exact location, but it has been used in a number of murder cases.
There's also the wifi network that a phone is using and its GPS - these are both more exact.
Phone calls are seen by many as even more private than emails. After an outcry in the US over the NSA's request for data from phone operator Verizon, President Obama insisted "nobody is listening to your phone calls". Instead, the authorities may see telephone numbers and serial numbers, who is calling whom, when a call is made and how long the call lasts. It does not include the content of a call or the callers' addresses or financial information.
On transport systems
Travel systems that use swipe cards have the potential to accrue data. For instance, when you travel on the London Underground using an Oyster card, swiping the card in and out to pay for your journey, Transport for London (TfL) collects data about your movements.
It records the location, date and time an Oyster card is used both on the Tube and on National Rail services where Oyster is accepted. TfL says the data stays linked with your individual card for eight weeks, after which it is permanently disassociated from that card and held by TfL for "research purposes".
TfL says it takes the privacy of its customers "very seriously" and complies with the Data Protection Act. It says it does not hand the data to third parties for marketing purposes.
But journalist Henry Porter, who has written about privacy, says this kind of data allows potentially anyone to be traced.
"If you have a target and you do have access to Oyster card data you can piece it together with CCTV footage to track someone's movements," he says.
Shopping
Most people know that when they do their weekly supermarket shop and use a loyalty card, their local supermarket is building up a profile of them and their shopping habits. The supermarkets use this to target advertising and special offers and make sure their marketing is making the most impact on customers.
When someone signs up for a loyalty card used by chains such as Sainsbury's, Argos and Homebase, they agree to share their shopping habits with the retailers, who then analyse it to send special offers and information they think the customer might be interested in.
And it's not just about special offers. It has recently been reported that Tesco intends to use data from its 16 million Clubcard users to help tackle obesity, by giving customers tailored suggestions for how to shop more healthily.
It was claimed that the Target chain in the US was able to second-guess if a woman was pregnant before her own family.
Even supermarkets that don't have a loyalty card scheme - such as Morrisons - will still track customer habits. Morrisons use an anonymised card number from your debit or credit card when you pay to track which groceries people buy.
CCTV
The UK is said to have arguably the greatest concentration of CCTV in the world.
No-one knows precisely how many cameras are actually watching the UK, but estimates range from 1.85 million to 4.2 million, making Britons among the world's most watched people.
But CCTV systems are not connected so there is no overarching control room able to see and collect all our movements.
Facial recognition technology, which uses algorithms to identify facial features and match them to an image database, is also on the rise - offering the prospect that one day "a face could be traced through an entire day in a city centre", according to Porter.
CCTV images are covered by the Data Protection Act, which gives you the right to see CCTV images of yourself, or images which give away personal information, such as your number plate, but there are no rules on exactly how long the images can be kept for.
The government has recently introduced a new code of conduct to regulate CCTV use. Councils and police forces will have to review regularly all of their cameras to see whether they are still "necessary, proportionate and effective", but there are fewer regulations on those operating in businesses and on private property.
Driving
Police have been using automatic number plate recognition cameras for a number of years to track vehicles.
Their network of cameras, which is around 4,000-strong, logs more than 10 million vehicles every day. It takes a snapshot of a car's number plate and records the date, time and place of capture. The cameras capture the front of cars, and photographs can include images of the driver and any passengers.
The cameras work by scanning number plates and instantly checking them against information stored in various databases to identify vehicles of interest to the police. An ANPR (Automated Number Plate Recognition) camera can read a number plate every second. The data can be used in real time to track and catch anyone of interest to the police on the roads.
In some cases, cameras will actually alert police when a specific number plate drives past it. When officers were looking for those suspected of killing police officer Sharon Beshenivsky in Bradford in 2005, the monitoring system "pinged" every time the getaway car drove past a camera, allowing the police to track their movements in real time.
HM Revenue and Customs and the Serious Organised Crime Agency also use the ANPR system for investigations. So do the DVLA and the Highways Agency.
Private companies can use similar technology on a much smaller scale using their own cameras - for instance, if a supermarket or car park chain wants to enforce parking restrictions or ensure customers do not leave without paying.
The government is introducing a new code of conduct to tighten up access to CCTV and ANPR databases, which it says will ensure both are used proportionately, and are more focused in helping to fight crime.
But critics argue that the code is not strong enough, that it lacks sanctions against those who breach the code, and does not properly regulate private CCTV and ANPR systems.
Credit reference agencies
Credit reference agencies gather data on an individual's financial life, including data on their credit cards, bank accounts, mortgages and bills.
Banks, mobile phone providers and even utility companies are among those who pass customer information to these agencies so they can produce reports on creditworthiness.
The three credit reference agencies in the UK are Experian, Equifax and Callcredit. They use a range of data, from the electoral roll to credit card payments. Everyone has the statutory right to see their report, usually for a £2 fee.
A typical credit history lists credit accounts, the date they were opened, the credit limit or loan amount, and whether the individual has missed any payments. It will also include personal details such as name, current and previous addresses and date of birth.
All three major UK agencies have contracts with both central and local government to help tackle benefit fraud - such as benefits claimed on the grounds of living alone.
A local authority could run checks on those receiving the single person discount for council tax, and credit agencies would flag up when other people were also linked with that address - perhaps through bank accounts, mobile phone bills or simply the electoral roll. Further investigations could then be made.
All the agencies stress that they are are bound by data protection legislation and that this is very strictly adhered to.
Electoral roll
It is illegal not to register to vote in the UK, although many people choose not to, for various reasons, and avoid punishment. The result of registration is the electoral roll - a public record of where each voter lives that has proved a goldmine to junk-mail firms, marketing people and journalists over the years.
Britons now have the option not to appear on the publicly available list and instead only to appear on a restricted version for the use of the authorities. But credit reference agencies have successfully argued that they should have access to this unabridged version. Political parties and MPs also have access to the full register.
Choosing not to register means you will struggle to get even the smallest amount of credit.
The publicly available version of the register can be sold to any person, organisation or company and used for any number of purposes, including direct marketing. The electoral roll provides a history of every place you have ever lived.
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It is nearly four years since Google's Street View arrived in the UK, and now it is getting a major revamp. The Street View cars have been roaming Britain, refreshing the coverage in the big cities and bringing new images to remote places, such as the Isle of Lewis. | Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter
The latest version has added another 15% of the UK's roads, bringing the total covered to 65%. And by using backpacks with lightweight recording equipment the company has brought the service to new places, from the interiors of buildings like the BBC Radio 1 studios to the towpaths of canals. But what do we now think about this close-up view of our streets, a project which has been marked by controversies over privacy?
I've been talking to the man behind Street View, Luc Vincent - via the rather clumsy medium of a Google Hangout - and asking him about the project's ambitions. (Our edited interview is above - but you can see the full version here). He started by stressing that his boss Larry Page had come up with the original idea, roaming the campus of Stanford University taking pictures.
It had then turned into Luc's 20% project - the blue sky ideas Google engineers are encouraged to work on for a fifth of their time - and had been launched in five US cities in 2007. Now it has mapped large areas of the world at street level. Forty seven countries now have coverage, and the cars have driven five million miles.
But how useful is it? I've always suspected that many people use it once to look at their own house - and then forget about it. Luc Vincent says it is true that much of the traffic is local, but he insists it has become a very attractive service: "People use it to preview the restaurant they want to go to, or choose a vacation spot or search for real estate," he told me.
But when it launched in the UK, while some were fascinated, others were appalled at what they saw as an invasion of their privacy by a Big Brother American business. In the village of Broughton, near Milton Keynes, residents chased a Street View car away, and accused Google of trying to peer through their windows.
In Germany, the reaction was much stronger, with entire streets blanked out as residents rebelled against the idea. Google has stopped taking images there, so that some big cities have coverage but elsewhere there is nothing.
Luc Vincent seems bemused by this kind of reaction. "I think the Big Brother aspect is really overstated," he says, "it's not we are driving in one place at one time, it's not like a camera is pointing at you all the time."
The other controversy which surrounded Street View was the discovery that some of its cars had been collecting data from unsecured wi-fi networks. Mr Vincent says that did cause harm to the project: "It certainly slowed us down quite a bit," he says, "we've done what we can to fix the problem, we don't collect any wi-fi right now."
In the UK, at least, the privacy row seems to have abated. When I looked on Street View the village of Broughton was there in full glorious detail, and I could not spot any homes that had been blanked out. And when I contacted a couple of residents they no longer seemed too concerned: "We've moved on," one person told me. It seems the bigger issue there now is getting proper broadband.
Nevertheless, I do sense a wider disquiet about the growing power of Google in so many areas. Many of its services - like Street View or the mobile operating system Android -seemed to have no obvious commercial purpose when they are launched. Executives like Luc Vincent would have us believe that the only motivation is to give as many as people as possible useful information, with any thought of profit a long way down the road.
But look at China's concerns this week about the dominance of Android - a worry shared by some global telecoms operators - and recent concerns about the way the company scans Gmail to serve users relevant adverts. No longer is the world content to assume that the search giant's motives are always pure.
Google's mission to organise the world's information takes another step forward with the expansion of Street View. But the more closely they watch us, the more we may need to keep a critical eye on them.
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In the years since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia movement's strongholds have recovered from the widespread destruction they suffered - in large part down to major investment from its closest ally, Iran.
The assistance has helped consolidate the relationship, but while Iran's role has drawn praise from Lebanese Shia, others are suspicious of its motives, as Carine Torbey reports from Beirut. | A recent report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) on the impact of international sanctions on Iran found no indication that the sanctions had affected Iran's regional role.
And the report's principal author says there is no evidence of any financial support provided to Hezbollah. "There isn't a single line in the budget that confirms any aid or financial support to Hezbollah", Ali Vaez contends.
But in one specific area, this support is clear and tangible: reconstruction and development projects.
Seven years after the Israeli airstrikes on al-Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut, the area is almost unrecognisable.
Modern buildings have risen from the ruins and some new structures have been added to the area, a stronghold of Hezbollah.
Iran's money is key to this. "If it weren't for Iran, we wouldn't have returned to our home", says Farah Malak, a resident of the area.
The reconstruction of al-Dahiyeh cost $400m, according to Hasan Jechi, the director of "Waed" ("Pledge"), the project set up after the 2006 war by Hezbollah to manage the reconstruction of the area.
Half of this amount was paid for by Iran, as was conceded by the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.
"We consider the reconstruction projects as instrumental to our support to the resistance against Israel in Lebanon," says Ghadanfar Rokon Abadi, Iran's ambassador to Lebanon.
This support is also clearly felt in southern Lebanon, also a mainly Shia area, which is bordered by Israel.
There too Iran has heavily contributed to the reconstruction of the area after the 2006 war.
To highlight its projects and its influence, it has chosen a strategic spot in a border village, Maroun el Rass, to establish "Iran's park".
The green family and fun area overlooks Israel. It's divided into different sections, each named after an Iranian region. But the park is also planted with posters of Iranian leaders, both civilians and clerics.
One imposing picture at the entrance of the park is of Husam Khos Navis, the late director of the Iranian reconstruction commission.
He was killed last February on his way to Beirut from Damascus. It was later disclosed that he was also a leading member of the influential Iranian Revolutionary Guards and his real name was Hasan Shateri.
The incident raised many suspicions about the real role he had played in Lebanon.
Reaching out
But Iran insists its support to Lebanon is not driven by any sectarian vision. Mr Abadi says an essential principle of the Islamic Republic of Iran is to always stand by the oppressed and those suffering injustice.
"Iran stands by all regardless of their sect or religion or their political affiliations. That's why we don't support the development and reconstruction projects in one area or another. We help everyone in Lebanon, everywhere."
The message doesn't resonate in all parts of the country.
An Iranian donation to build a proposed dam in Tannourine, a Christian town in northern Lebanon, has provoked outrage among some local residents.
The donation goes back to 2011 and it was approved by the Lebanese cabinet, but so far the project hasn't started yet and some are doubtful it will ever go ahead with the Iranian money.
The minister of energy at the time, Gebran Basile, secured the Iranian donation. He's a member of the Free Patriotic Movement, a prominent Christian political party allied to Hezbollah.
"The donation was on condition that an Iranian company carries out the work. If they come here, they'll establish their own community, which means that they will establish a colony in this purely Christian area and we don't want this to happen", says Mounir Tarabay, the mayor of Tannourine.
He claims that Iran's ultimate aim is to "invade the Christian mountains through peaceful means, if possible, because they want Lebanon as a substitute to Syria".
But not everybody in this idyllic area agrees. Some residents suggest local petty politics behind the fierce opposition to Iran's gift.
They also point out to the fact that other big projects in the area were sponsored by some Gulf countries without stirring a similar controversy.
"It's an illusion. They are using Iran... in their partisan conflicts. I don't think Iran has any ulterior motives in Lebanon. On the contrary, they're doing good things to the country."
Iran might be trying to win the hearts and minds of different groups of Lebanese. But with Lebanon's sectarian and political divisions, Iran knows well that it won't be received warmly everywhere.
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A nine-year-old boy has been injured after being hit by a motorbike in a park. | He was struck by the vehicle in Rosmead Park off Southcoates Lane in Hull at about midday.
The boy was taken to hospital having suffered life-changing injuries, police said.
A 24-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of causing injury by dangerous driving. He remains in police custody for questioning.
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Aberdeen councillors have reaffirmed their commitment to a new bridge over the River Don at the proposed site near Tillydrone. | Supporters of the project insist the bridge would ease traffic congestion.
However, Labour has long been opposed to the route currently planned at Tillydrone.
There was a lengthy debate on Wednesday, and councillors voted to reaffirm their commitment to the so-called third Don crossing.
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It is as if the campaign is still going on. | By James NaughtieSpecial Correspondent Radio 4 News
Two weeks away from his inauguration, Donald Trump seems to prefer the role of "candidate" - flaying his opponents and aiming arrows at the federal government from the enemy camp.
It is almost as if he does not want to accept fully that he is the new chief executive who will be dealing with official Washington from the moment he drives back from the Capitol as the president on 20 January.
And his weapon of choice, forged for him like a legendary warrior's sword in the furnace of the new technology, is Twitter.
No president-elect has battled like this.
Most of them go to ground, secluded with the staff who will take over the West Wing, and make their plans. Dream their dreams, you might say.
They have followed the golden rule: do not give too much away, because it will make life more difficult when the inauguration is over and the business of power begins.
Trump Tweetwatch: 'I'm a big fan' of intelligence agencies
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The Trump Twitter account is not just a break with that pattern, but a challenge to the very idea.
His New Year tweet (one of them, I should say) wished love to everyone "including my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don't know what to do".
The implication, of course, is that he does know what he is going to do. The trouble with his Twitter account is that it makes you wonder.
More than 34,000 tweets to nearly 19 million followers (many "enemies" among them, no doubt) and a narrative that has become a kind of stream of consciousness. They read like the unfiltered, disconnected thoughts of someone for whom patience is an ugly word.
You always have to say something, even if you say the opposite the next day. On Twitter, who cares?
Yet, the messages are powerful. One contemptuous tweet about the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives winding down the Office of Congressional Ethics led them to beat a humiliating retreat and cancel the plan.
Mr Trump's choice as White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said the other day: "Whatever he tweets, he is going to drive the news."
And, bizarre though it may seem, the South Korean government is poring over them. The JoongAng Daily reported that a Twitter-watching position had been set up in the foreign ministry in Seoul "because we don't yet have an insight into his foreign policies".
What insight will they get from tweets which have criticised the Central Intelligence Agency, praised Julian Assange - the Whistleblower of WikiLeaks and a bete noire to most Republicans - and praised President Putin, who gets more friendly treatment than all Democrats and some Republicans at home?
And remarkably the tweets take aim at the entire intelligence community in Washington. What precisely are the South Koreans meant to make of that?
Not too much, you may think, because who can tell how this mercurial candidate is going to be moulded into a president? We still do not know and what his Twitter account tells us - colourfully, astonishingly, sometimes hilariously - is that he is refusing to let us know.
Far from revealing what a Trump presidency is going to be like - as he says his tweets do - they have the effect of enveloping him in a thick fog.
Yes we know he will "make America great again", cut immigration, build his wall, cut taxes, be Israel's greatest ally and so on. But how he is going to build a White House team on foreign affairs and security, conduct relations with Capitol Hill, deal with allies in Nato and the rolling chaos in the Middle East, we have very little idea.
And when the first crisis arrives - as it will before long - will he be able to find the calm that he needs?
No president-elect in modern times has said so much and revealed so little.
We know how Mr Trump feels about almost everything, but about priorities, his approach to the compromises of power, the way he will deal with the bureaucracy - in practice we know very little.
A week or two before election day in November, one of his close associates told me that, if he won, Mr Trump had agreed that in office he would relinquish control of that Twitter account, because it would be inappropriate in the White House.
The satirists' loss, certainly. But, if it happens, a step into reality, at last.
Some day he has to stop being the candidate and playing that game, even though he enjoys it so much.
So the first great test for the Trump White House team is surely getting his finger off that keyboard.
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Twenty nine would-be illegal immigrants have been prevented from entering Kent via the English Channel after they were found inside lorries at French ports.
| Three women and two men from Vietnam were discovered by Border Force officials in a Romanian-registered vehicle at Dunkirk on Monday morning.
On Friday, two women and 17 men from Iran and Vietnam were found hidden in a Latvian-registered lorry in Dunkirk.
Five men from Afghanistan were found in a Polish-registered lorry at Calais.
All the stowaways were handed to the French authorities.
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Manasi Joshi had just begun a career as a software engineer, when what should have been a routine commute to work ended in a tragic accident. But this moment of horror changed her life in a surprisingly positive way. | By Ayeshea PereraBBC News, Hyderabad
The moment
It was December 2011 and, for 22-year-old Manasi Joshi, a normal Friday morning.
She had recently graduated and just started her first job as a software engineer in the hectic Indian metropolis of Mumbai.
The house where she lived with her parents was barely 7km (4 miles) from her office, so Manasi would commute to work by motorbike.
But that Friday, barely 10 minutes into her journey, disaster struck - as she took a U-turn under a flyover, a lorry travelling in the wrong direction ran over her leg.
"I was still conscious after it happened. I managed to sit up and take my helmet off. I immediately knew my injuries were serious," she says.
People rushed to the spot but no-one really knew what to do.
"Indians are helpful by nature but they are not very skilled, especially in emergency situations," Manasi says with a wry smile.
After waiting in vain for an ambulance, police lifted her on to a "rickety" stretcher and took her to a nearby hospital.
However, it was ill-equipped to deal with the injuries to one of her hands, and to her left leg - which was completely crushed. There was no surgeon, and not even an ambulance to take her to a larger hospital.
"I was so frustrated. I had lost so much blood, and I was losing time," she says.
The hospital's ambulance, when it arrived a full two hours later, turned out to be a dilapidated van - a far cry from the "state-of-the-art" vehicle that had been promised. Her 10-12km journey to the hospital where she would finally be treated was torturous, every bump, every pothole, only increasing her agony.
It was only at 17:30 that evening that Manasi received proper medical care - about nine hours after her accident.
Doctors made saving her leg a priority. She was in hospital for 45 days, going into surgery every five to 10 days. But eventually gangrene set in and the medical team had to concede defeat. There was no choice but to amputate her leg.
Before
When she was growing up, studies were always the priority in the Joshi household. Manasi's father was a government scientist at Mumbai's prestigious Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and was determined that his children should also do well academically. That is how she ended up pursuing computer science and becoming a software engineer.
But Manasi was also one of those children who took part in all sorts of extracurricular activities.
"I played many sports like football, basketball and even volleyball. And it was not just sports. I was also exposed to music, singing, art... you know how parents want their kids to be exposed to lots of activities," she says.
Badminton was a favourite, though. Manasi's father was her first coach - when she was barely six, he had taught her how to hold a racket and hit a shuttle.
So after her injury, she returned to the sport as part of her rehabilitation.
After
In August 2019 in Basel, Switzerland, Manasi created history.
In the eight years since her horrific accident, she had begun seriously pursuing para-badminton, made it on to India's national team, and was now representing the country at the finals of the World Championships.
The final was against defending champion and fellow Indian Parul Parma. Manasi had never won a match against her. But this time, she was confident.
"I was very fit, I was very quick on court, and my hand, my strokes, everything had its own clarity," she says.
As the match progressed, Manasi began to surge ahead of Parma, dominating the game. The last set was a decimation - she won 13 points in a row, and suddenly, seemingly just like that, she was a World Champion.
But how did she make the journey from amputee to para-athlete?
When she describes the days immediately after her accident, Manasi does not look back on them with any real bitterness. Instead, she recounts how her college friends and colleagues flocked to her bedside making her hospital room "the coolest hang-out spot", how the intensive care nurses became her friends, and how an anaesthetist paid her a visit to boost her morale, after being touched by her plight in the operating theatre.
"Trust me, there was not even a single point where I felt something very bad has happened to me. I'll say the worst I felt was when I came home and I looked at myself in mirror and said, 'Oh yeah this doesn't look good!' But then after a few days I felt 'It's OK, it's just a scar... it's just a leg.'"
Badminton began as part of a process of rehabilitation to help her walk again with a prosthetic limb, but she began to show exceptional skill. One day she caught the eye of a fellow para-badminton player, who saw her defeat able-bodied competitors at a corporate tournament. He encouraged her to try out for the Indian team, which led eventually to her getting called up
to take part in a tournament in Spain.
Although she didn't win, she did, for the first time, feel the "transformational power" of the sport.
Here were people, some with injuries far more severe than Manasi's, out on the court, playing what she calls "flawless" badminton.
"And they were so kind and generous. They actually came up to me and thanked me for choosing the sport! That was part of the reason I decided to take this up full-time," she says.
It was a chance meeting with legendary Indian coach Pullela Gopichand that truly transformed her career. A former international champion, Gopichand is the man behind India's recent dominance on the world badminton stage - he's coach to world champions like PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal.
She was working at a bank in the western city of Ahmedabad when Mr Gopichand paid a visit - and she went straight up to him to ask if he would train her.
Mr Gopichand laughs when I ask him about his reaction.
"She looked like quite a brave girl, her story was very inspiring, I said, 'OK we will look into it,'" he says.
But training a para-athlete was a new challenge. Gopichand scrutinised videos of matches, and even practised playing while limping on one leg to try and get a sense of what it was like for her. Then, along with his coaching staff, he designed a training schedule for Manasi, who he describes as "very focused and gritty".
It was those qualities that got her to the World Championship and the pinnacle of her sport.
When I meet Manasi, she is in the middle of an intense training session with her coach, Hari, at the prestigious Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy in the southern city of Hyderabad.
As I watch her play, I can tell that I am witnessing something very special.
It is not just the fact that the lithe, athletic woman on the court is wearing a prosthetic leg. She also returns a flurry of increasingly tricky shots, smashing and volleying with ease.
Afterwards, it becomes evident that Manasi's victory in Basel has turned her into a celebrity.
"Everything has changed. People are recognising me in the streets," she says, laughing.
I travel home with her, and as we enter her apartment complex, a young man stops his motorcycle and, with the engine still running, he hurries after her to ask for a selfie.
Her apartment is filled with mementoes and gifts she has received from fans and there are stacks of greeting cards in the hall.
She shows me a large handmade poster pasted on her bedroom door. It has drawings of shuttlecocks and badminton rackets on it, along with the words "Congratulations Manasi Joshi aunty" written in different coloured crayons.
"This was the sweetest gesture. Even before I came back, my win was all over social media. So the kids of the building pasted this poster right on our front door. I wasn't there so my flatmates took it and pasted it on my bedroom door," she says.
Inside her bedroom, Manasi shows me some of her medals.
There is, of course, the glittering gold World Championship medal. But she says her favourite is a Bronze she won at the Asian games. It has text in Braille and makes a jingling sound when you shake it. She says the amount of particles in each medal differs between Gold, Silver and Bronze, so that each medal makes a different sound. This allows visually impaired athletes to immediately identify what they are holding.
"That is the inclusive design or society I wish to live in. Where we consider everybody even when we give out trophies," she says.
Now, Manasi has set her sights on her next goal - getting chosen for the Paralympics in Tokyo.
She won the World Championship playing singles, but there is no singles event in her disability division at the paralympics, so she hopes to compete by playing doubles instead.
Playing doubles may be new to her, but the one thing she has demonstrated is the ability to excel in unfamiliar situations.
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Neelam Krishnamoorthy's children loved watching films - but one afternoon a routine cinema trip ended in a moment of tragedy, and left Neelam fighting a decades-long battle for justice.
The cinema tickets that destroyed a family
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The new chief constable of Avon and Somerset Police, Nick Gargan, officially starts in the role later.
| His appointment was ratified in January after he was chosen by new Police and Crime Commissioner Sue Mountstevens.
Mr Gargan is the former chief constable and chief executive of the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA).
He replaces Colin Port who retired in January after refusing to re-apply for his own job.
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The UK's highest railway is to be closed for a month to allow for major maintenance work to be done, its operator has said. | CairnGorm Mountain said the funicular railway near Aviemore will be unavailable from 4 June to 4 July.
A team of engineers from Switzerland are to work with CairnGorm Mountain's engineers to replace ropes and carry out inspections of a motor and gearbox.
More than 110,000 people used the funicular between November and April.
The railway in the Cairngorms connects a base station with a restaurant 1,097m (3,599ft) up Cairn Gorm mountain.
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A double-decker bus used as a homeless shelter could be forced to move, after it was issued two parking tickets in a week. | The bus, which was parked on Old Tetbury Road in Cirencester, received the tickets after parking in a bus bay.
Gloucestershire County Council said the fines would be cancelled as long as it was moved to a safe and legal spot.
The Big Yellow Bus only began operating on Christmas Eve and was issued the first fine on New Year's Eve.
Truck driver, Gerry Watkins, spent nearly £30,000 converting the double-decker bus having launched the project in 2017.
Mr Watkins said the county council were wrong to issue the two £70 fines because it was registered as a bus with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA).
Councillor Joe Harris said it was ridiculous that it had been fined in the first place.
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Envoys from the United States, the European Union, Japan and Norway have been meeting in New York to discuss the recent upsurge
in violence in Sri Lanka between government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels. | The American assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, Richard Boucher, said fighting in the north was increasing,
and the envoys had put an emphasis on protecting civilians caught up in the conflict.
He said they'd also discussed the need for both sides in the conflict to make sure humanitarian deliveries could get through
to those displaced by the violence.
An estimated two-hundred thousand people have been dispalced due to the escaling fighting.
He said discussions were taking place with both the government and the rebels.
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For seven years, Julian Assange took refuge in a small office that was converted into a bedroom in Ecuador's embassy in an upmarket neighbourhood of central London, where he lived with his cat, James. | By Hugo BachegaBBC News
It had a bed, sun lamp, computer, kitchenette, shower and treadmill.
During his time there, the 47-year-old Wikileaks co-founder welcomed guests including Lady Gaga and Pamela Anderson and, from a tiny balcony, addressed supporters and held news conferences.
But, apparently, not everyone was happy. Relations between him and Ecuador's government worsened after President Lenín Moreno took office in 2017. This became evident last year when Assange was given a set of house rules, including paying for internet use, food and laundry, taking better care of his cat and keeping the bathroom clean.
That fuelled speculation that Ecuador had finally had enough.
On Thursday, President Moreno said Ecuador's patience had "reached its limit" with Assange's "discourteous and aggressive behaviour". Accusing him of "repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols", he announced on Twitter the abrupt end of Assange's diplomatic asylum.
From skateboarding to insulting staff
More details emerged later, when Foreign Minister José Valencia told Congress that Assange had been using a mobile phone not registered with the embassy, repeatedly insulted the mission's workers - reportedly calling them US spies - and damaged the facilities by riding his skateboard and playing football, despite being told not to do so.
Cleaning staff, Mr Valencia said, had described "improper hygienic conduct" throughout Assange's stay, an issue that a lawyer had attributed to "stomach problems". One unnamed senior Ecuadorean official told AP news agency that other issues included "weeks without a shower" and a "dental problem born of poor hygiene".
Interior Minister María Paula Romo then complained that Assange had been allowed to do things like "put faeces on the walls of the embassy and other behaviours of that nature".
Vaughan Smith, a friend who visited Assange last week, told Reuters that he rejected this claim. "Julian has been under stress but seemed in a balanced frame of mind every time I have seen him. It doesn't seem in character."
Mr Valencia added that the decision was taken to prevent a further deterioration of Assange's health, without giving details. Quoting an unnamed friend, the New York Times said Assange had become deeply depressed and that diplomats - many of them recently appointed by the Moreno administration - were tired of his behaviour.
Spying suspicions
President Moreno, who ordered Assange to cut back his online activity soon after taking office, also said Assange had "violated the norm of not intervening in the internal affairs of other states", most recently in January 2019 when Wikileaks released documents from the Vatican.
He said that, and other cases, confirmed suspicions that Assange was still linked to Wikileaks. The president also accused Assange of having installed forbidden "electronic and distortion equipment" and of accessing the embassy's security files.
There was also the suspicion that Wikileaks was linked to an anonymous website that said the president's brother had created an offshore company, and leaked material included private pictures of President Moreno and his family. Mr Moreno denies any wrongdoing.
Mr Valencia added that, in January, Assange told Ecuador's ambassador he had installed panic buttons that he would activate if he considered his life to be in danger.
It was not clear what he meant by that but British authorities who arrested him on Thursday were careful to prevent Assange from returning to his room during the operation, according to AP.
The whistle-blower also allegedly played loud music - in at least one occasion this reportedly happened during office hours, disturbing staff who were working - and deliberately blocked the embassy's security cameras.
Assange's stay at the embassy cost Ecuador some $6.5m (£5m) from 2012 to 2018, Mr Valencia said. Assange's Ecuadorean citizenship was also suspended.
Why did Assange end up at the embassy?
The Australian national had been in the Ecuadorean embassy since 2012, after seeking asylum there to avoid extradition to Sweden on a rape allegation, which he has always denied. He was given protection by then President Rafael Correa, a strong advocate of Wikileaks.
What about his cat?
It is unclear what has happened to James. His own Instagram account has not offered any clues, with the last picture posted in 2017.
Reports suggest he was given to a shelter by the Ecuadorean embassy some time ago while Italian newspaper La Repubblica said last year Assange had himself freed him.
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Ram-raiders smashed through the front of a shop and made off with items from inside. | The Sainsbury's Local store on Station Road, East Boldon, South Tyneside was targeted at 23:15 GMT on Thursday.
Police said significant damage was caused to the frontage and a number of items were stolen.
A blue Subaru Forrester van believed to have been involved was later found burnt out in a field off Newcastle Road.
Northumbria Police has urged any witnesses to come forward.
Related Internet Links
Northumbria Police
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France's far-right National Front (FN) is voting this weekend on whether to allow a change of its name. Leader Marine Le Pen has said she wants a new name to reflect a "change in the nature" of the party.
Since losing to Emmanuel Macron in the presidential run-off last year, Ms Le Pen has lost voters, endured attacks from her father and seen the defection of some of the party's most important figures. Will a name change turn the FN's fortunes around? | By Lucy WilliamsonBBC News, Cogolin, France
The pastel buildings and sun-soaked palm trees of Cogolin give the square a tranquil, postcard feel.
This tiny Mediterranean town, nestled alongside Saint Tropez, is renowned for producing hand-made pipes. It is a place that values tradition and the old ways of life.
Cogolin chose Marine Le Pen over Emmanuel Macron by a clear margin but, almost a year on, her party seems to have lost momentum even here. Mayor Marc-Etienne Lansade quit the party after the election, disillusioned with both its economic policy and, he says, its chances of ever winning power.
Bystanders at the town's pétanque court said there was no clear opposition party in France now either.
"The left-right divide is dead," said one woman. "Political parties are no longer relevant, but they all have some good ideas: Marine Le Pen, [the far-left leader Jean-Luc] Mélenchon, and the others too."
The FN received almost 11 million votes in the election, presenting itself as the natural party of opposition to Mr Macron's liberal, internationalist vision. So why, since then, have more than a third of party members failed to pay their dues and several key figures quit?
Who is in, who is out
Florian Philippot, once the party's number two and popular with newer converts, left the FN last year to launch his own far-right political movement, Les Patriotes.
Marine Le Pen's niece, Marion, also left, weakening her aunt's support among traditional FN voters. Marion said she was withdrawing from politics completely but many believe she is biding her time to challenge her aunt for the party.
"There would be room for her if she came back," a senior FN figure told French radio recently.
And then there's the old conflict with Marine's father, Jean-Marie, who has launched continued attacks on his daughter and her leadership of the party he founded - most recently in a memoir about his early career, published this month.
"He managed to speak ill of me in a book which stops in 1972 - when I was four years old," Marine Le Pen told Le Figaro newspaper. "You have to be really motivated [to do that]."
Add to this the still-fresh memory of Marine Le Pen's disastrous performance in the presidential debate and the party's "identity crisis" over whether it represents economically liberal right-wingers or former communist blue-collar workers - and it is not hard to see why the FN has struggled to lead the opposition.
And that is without Laurent Wauquiez.
A new threat?
He is the new leader of France's traditional centre-right party, Les Republicains. He is young, straight-talking and unashamedly right-wing. The media have nicknamed him France's Donald Trump.
"I support the National Front," said one woman in Cogolin's weekly market, "but I think Laurent Wauquiez will emerge: he's got good ideas, he's young. Of course he's criticised but that's because the Paris upper-crust don't like him."
Mr Wauquiez's brash approach has won him a lot of media attention and right-wing support - and even grudging acknowledgement from MPs in President Macron's party, like Bruno Bonnell.
"Wauquiez is the same generation [as Mr Macron] and will be a strong fighter," Mr Bonnell told me. "I'm convinced he'll gather a lot of forces around his ideas. Obviously we don't share the same vision of France but he'll be a strong opposition."
But the FN's Jean-Lin Lacapelle says Mr Wauquiez is no threat to his party: "He's either poaching [our voters] and is an imposter or Wauquiez is serious and the doors are wide open for a grand alliance of nationalists. That's what Marine Le Pen is calling for."
The question of whether the FN might form an alliance with France's centre-right is hotly debated. Laurent Wauquiez has repeatedly rejected the idea and recent polls suggest that almost two-thirds of French voters are opposed to it. Among centre-right voters themselves, opposition is even higher.
Which is partly why Marine Le Pen is pushing for a change of name - hoping that it might loosen attitudes towards her party, and help open the door to alliances.
"'Front' expresses the idea of an opposition against someone or something," she told Le Figaro. "From now on, we need to go beyond that. We need to express our own ambition for government."
"I have a lot of affection for the name," said FN official Jean-Lin Lacapelle, "but it can appear a bit aggressive. It had a bad reputation in the past. Some people are happy to vote for Marine Le Pen but don't want to vote for the National Front."
The FN leader already dropped party branding from much of her presidential campaign in a bid to "detoxify" her image. But now polls suggest the French are less likely to consider the FN capable of government than before, with that perception dropping more sharply among FN voters themselves.
None of the changes of the past seven years has so far been enough to secure the party pride of place in either government or opposition.
Marine Le Pen says she even propelled the recent change in French politics, opening up a new division between globalists and nationalists. But, she said, it was "Emmanuel Macron [who] passed through the door that we opened".
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The new president of the National Library of Wales has been named as Rhodri Glyn Thomas. | Mr Thomas is stepping down from his seat as Plaid Cymru AM for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr before May's assembly election.
He described his appointment as a "huge privilege".
Mr Thomas will start work at the Aberystwyth library on 6 April and will be in post for four years.
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Seven people have been arrested after reports of a shooting. | A 30-year-old man was taken to hospital with a suspected shotgun wound after an incident in Hirst Gate, Mexborough, South Yorkshire, on Saturday, police said.
Three men, aged 25, 27, 48, arrested on suspicion of assault and firearms offences have been released under investigation.
Two other men and two women have been released on bail.
Those four were also arrested on suspicion of assault and firearms offences.
A South Yorkshire Police spokeswoman said: "Officers believe these to be targeted incidents and enquiries are ongoing to understand the circumstances.
"Shots were also fired at properties on Chaucer Road and Hawthorne Crescent, causing minor damage."
Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
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What has been described as the biggest fibre cable laying project of its kind in the UK in years has started off the west coast of Scotland. | The project forms part of the £410m Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband initiative.
A specialist vessel, the Rene Descartes, will be involved in laying some of the 249 miles (400km) of cable.
Among the places involved include Largs, Cumbrae, Cowal, Mull, Oban, Ardgour and Corran.
Funding for the superfast initiative is coming from the Scottish government, Highlands and Island Enterprise, Broadband Delivery UK and BT.
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One person has been killed and another injured after scaffolding collapsed outside the central station in the Belgian city of Antwerp, police say. | The victims were two construction workers who were on the scaffolding when it fell shortly after 10:00 local time (08:00 GMT).
The injured worker's condition was stable, police said.
No further victims were found under the twisted metal, which emergency crews were preparing to dismantle.
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In a crisis there can be opportunity. | Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
This is now a crisis - the rules that traditionally have preserved governments are out of the window.
The prime minister has been defeated again. Her authority - if not all gone - is in shreds.
But for Number 10 there's an opportunity too, because MPs will soon be presented with a new choice - back the PM's deal, which has already been defeated twice, or accept the chance of a delay to Brexit.
This isn't the choice of a government that's in control. But the tactic is to make the best of chaos.
To use nerves among Brexiteers to shove them towards accepting Theresa May's deal in the absence of another solution with no other agreed alternative - yet.
The prime minister is beginning another day not sure of where it will end.
MPs are bristling to push their own different solutions - none of which she or Parliament as a whole, let alone the public, is ready to accept.
Yet even if this pandemonium strangely leads the way to order, to a smooth departure from the European Union, there's a different question: could a functioning administration ever again exist under the present cast?
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A fire on an offshore platform east of Shetland is being investigated. | The incident happened on Statoil's Mariner A platform in the emergency generator room on Monday.
Statoil said no-one was injured as a result.
A spokeswoman said: "The relevant authorities were informed. An investigation is under way into the cause of the incident and to determine remedial actions."
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A power cut that affected large parts of Guernsey was caused by the failure of the undersea cable with Jersey.
| Homes in St Peter Port, St Martin, the western parishes and the Vale lost power just before 19:00 BST on Sunday.
Guernsey Electricity started a back-up generator and the lights were back on within half an hour.
The company said it was investigating the reason for the failure and would release more information when those investigations were complete.
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A man is in a serious condition after he and a boy had to be rescued from the sea in Cornwall. | The pair got into difficulty in water off Gunwalloe near Helston, where police, coastguard and lifeboat crews were called at 14:20 BST .
The man was treated at the scene by paramedics while the boy was taken to hospital, Devon and Cornwall Police said.
A warning for strong winds was issued for Cornwall on Thursday and Friday.
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Heavy monsoon rains in India's financial capital, Mumbai, have brought the city to a standstill. | Waterlogged roads have caused severe traffic blocks along arterial roads and all flights have been delayed.
The local train service, used by hundreds of thousands of commuters daily, has been suspended, with many stranded at stations.
The annual monsoon often causes a complete breakdown of infrastructure and transport services in Mumbai.
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Guernsey's Treasury and Resources Department has proposed an automatic fine for the late submission of tax returns in future.
| While the island's tax office already has the power to impose a penalty, it is a lengthy process.
The new fines would be automatic, and would involve a maximum penalty of £300 with additional daily charges of £50.
Currently, tax returns for the previous financial year must be submitted by the first week of July.
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Lost in the most consistently astonishing US presidential campaign since the 1864 Democrats ran on a platform of conceding the Civil War, is a disturbing question that seems to bring into doubt the very premise of the American experiment. Exactly how would Donald Trump deport 11 million undocumented migrants from the US? | By Keith OlbermannNew York
Who does and doesn't fit his perception of who belongs here was the ground zero of his campaign. The demonisation of Mexicans, the wall, the asset freeze, the elimination of birthright citizenship, much of the white-power undertone to his rhetoric - all of it mainlines back to this one premise.
And the premise came to the fore again on Thursday when, on national television, Trump told a self-declared supporter that it didn't matter if her undocumented relatives had been here for a quarter of a century, they would be deported. "I'm sure these are very, very fine people. They're going to go, and we're going to create a path where we can get them into this country legally, OK? But it has to be done legally."
A President Trump would take about 3.5% of everybody here and round them up. Move 'em on, head 'em up, cut 'em out, ride 'em in.
Sure.
For the moment, let's brush past the morality and the ethics and the economic impact, and the resultant $20 tomato and the nationwide repetition of the year Georgia expelled all its "illegals" and had nobody to harvest the crop, and $140m (£98m) of it rotted in the fields, and the sheer Sisyphean nature of the thing (so - you get them all out of here and none of them ever come back because wall, even though they might think of coming back because tunnel).
The obvious but largely unexplored question is: What if they don't want to go?
I'm suggesting - and please tread carefully as you go out on this limb with me - that 11 million people who beat extraordinary odds to come to this country because they saw a chance for a life here, might hesitate to just go back. You know, just like my great-great-grandfather Frederick stayed (sorry, I don't know where his papers are, he died in 1860) and Donald Trump's grandfather stayed (I bet you Trump doesn't have his papers either).
I know I'm positing something outlandish, almost to the point of being science fiction, but I truly believe that those who live here under constant threat of exposure and removal, doing the worst jobs, for the lowest pay, almost always outside the most minimal protections of the law and the lawmen, would not respond to a Trump administration "deportation force" like kids caught in a game of hide-and-seek. They might, you know, resist.
But let's say I'm wrong. Let's say 11 million people here do choose - in Mitt Romney's gloriously naive phrase - "self-deportation". No hesitation, no resistance, no struggle, no relatives hiding them, no documented immigrants or birthright citizens standing up for them. Just "Exit, stage right." How is Trump going to pull even that trick off?
During a debate, Governor John Kasich of Ohio expressed disbelief at the logistics and Trump replied: "I built an unbelievable company worth billions and billions of dollars. I don't have to hear from this man, believe me. I don't have to hear from him."
To date Trump has offered only two details:
That's a ratio of 37 immigrants per agent.
If the entire expulsion process from round-up to judicial acquiescence and appeal was somehow sped up to an average of six months, and it somehow required a ratio of just one agent per immigrant, Trump's "Deportation Force" would be on pace to be able to clear them all out some time in the year 2035. If for some reason it took longer, or you kept the speed but found you needed say, three agents to give these people their parting gifts, including a home version of The Trump Entertainment Resorts Collector's Edition Monopoly Game, the process wouldn't be over until around the election of 2072.
Even if these wildly optimistic numbers turned out to wildly underestimate the American spirit to throw out the newest arrivals in fear that they somehow endanger the penultimate arrivals, the absolute best-case scenario still stretches out over a decade. ICE (an acronym for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement - a name almost as bad as Homeland Security) claims it could deport 400,000 undocumented immigrants a year. Apply Trump's triple formula not just to the staffing but to the results and it's still 2027 before the last of them is gone, and again this presumes nobody puts up a fight, nobody tries to come back, and nobody new tries to get in.
So what do you do with all of them between now and 2027, 2035, or 2072? You'd need to keep them somewhere.
I mean, physically, you can't throw 11 million people out of the country at the same time. Especially if there's a wall there. 11 million is a little less than the population of Ohio. "OK, Ohio, everybody out of the pool!" doesn't work.
You'd need to keep them somewhere.
Camps.
Detention camps.
Processing camps.
Perhaps 10 huge camps, each big enough to house the population of Dallas. Or 20 smaller camps, including one for the estimated 500,000 undocumented workers in New York City alone - a population larger than that of the New York borough of Staten Island.
And around the beds, hurricane fences, barbed wire, guard towers, detainees arriving via train in some empty corner of Wyoming - all the dystopian details we've seen unfolding at the refugee/migrant camps in Calais and Greece and throughout Europe - would be a particularly American touch: a lovely redux of the imagery of World War Two Japanese internment - or worse.
To a lot of Trump's fans these would be positive boons but a year ago, analysing the insanity of trying to throw out 11 million people and concluding it would cost $400-$600bn (£280-£420bn) and shave $1.6 trillion (£1.1tn) off real GDP, the president of a conservative think tank called American Action Forum underscored the optics to the magazine The Atlantic:
"It still would be, I think, a shocking sight to the American people, to have the detentions, the deportations, the detention centres, the need for the administrative end of this," said its president Douglas Holtz-Eakin. "If you were to do it faster and have vans sweeping in, I think that would have the untenable feel of the police state to the American people."
And that's with at least some cooperation from the people Trump would be expelling. We aren't even looking at the answers here that involve prosecuting Americans "guilty" of hiding their friends, lovers, relatives, neighbours, and strangers in their attics, or the raids by Trump deportation squads, or documented residents swept up in the madness, or suicides at detention camps the size of army bases, or the bodies of the undocumented dead in the street because a lot of people would rather die than go back, or what happens when somebody fights back.
So, that's how Donald Trump would deport 11 million people from this country. But don't worry, he promises, "You would do it humanely."
If you have any other questions about the details, ask Trump himself. I'll wager he'll tell you he has the right to ignore you because he makes more money than you do.
Keith Olbermann is an American political and sports commentator and host, most notably of Countdown and election night coverage on MSNBC, 1997-98 and 2003-2011.
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The family of a man who died in a crash in Portsmouth last month say he will be "deeply missed and forever loved". | Benjamin Ringe, 30, died after his Vespa scooter collided with a Mini Cooper car in Copnor Road late on 29 December.
His twin brother described him as the "best twin anyone could ever ask for", while his partner said he was an "amazing dad and a great step-dad".
Police are continuing to investigate the circumstances of the crash.
Anyone with information or dashcam footage should contact Hampshire Constabulary.
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Hampshire Constabulary
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Pupils and residents were told to stay indoors when what was thought to be a grenade was found in Middlesbrough.
| The device was discovered on Tuesday morning on grass outside the grounds of Hemlington Hall Primary School.
Headteacher Karen Edmenson was in touch with police and was advised there was no risk but children stayed inside and texts were sent to parents.
Bomb disposal experts from Catterick took the device away for further examination.
Mrs Edmenson stressed there was no danger to anyone and if there had been any risk, the school's 333 pupils would have been evacuated.
She said some parents living near the school had telephoned to check what was going on and the text message system had been used to keep them informed.
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Coronavirus is grinding the country to a halt with school and business closures and health workers stretched. Tales of shop shelves being emptied by panic buyers and government social distancing advice being ignored have brought criticism, but the outbreak is also bringing the best out in some people. | With vulnerable neighbours and relatives being told to self-isolate, many communities are rallying around.
More than 1,000 volunteer groups have been set up to help those self-isolating during the coronavirus outbreak.
Tens of thousands have come forward offering to pick up shopping or deliver medicine to the most vulnerable across the country.
A group of traders in Sherborne, Dorset, launched a service offering home deliveries and dog-walking.
Organiser Jules Bradburn said 60 people came forward to volunteer within hours of launching.
A pub in Gosport, Hampshire, has been offering toilet roll and handwash to locals after being inundated following an appeal when it ran short.
The Jolly Roger ended up with 150 loo rolls which it said it would distribute.
Leicestershire milkman Tony Fowler has also been delivering much more than his usual milk on his rounds to help those self-isolating.
Many of his customers are over 70 so he has been giving them whatever they need, from toilet roll to light bulbs.
"It's about making sure people are OK," he said.
Shops have also changed their hours to create special shopping sessions for those most at risk from coronavirus.
Constantine Bay Stores, near Padstow in Cornwall, now opens its doors between 08:00 and 08:30 GMT only for those born in or before 1950.
Owner Christopher Keeble said he hoped it would give older shoppers "a little bit of peace of mind".
Becky Wass, from Falmouth in Cornwall, went viral on social media with her postcard for people to offer help.
The print-at-home template has been used across the country, with those in need able to request shopping, urgent supplies or "a friendly phone call".
Many have taken it upon themselves to send messages of hope and positivity to others, with children across the country painting rainbows to put up in their windows.
With many care homes suspending visits, residents have taken it upon themselves to let their families know they are coping.
Residents at St Vincents Retirement Home in Ryde, Isle of Wight, wrote notes to their families which the care home shared for them.
Some people have started being pen pals, including 17-year-old Gracie Stewart from Norwich who has 26 of them.
She started writing letters to people 18 months ago after being diagnosed with a rare leukaemia, and urged people to "try something new".
"It preoccupies you writing letters because it can be dull when you're stuck indoors all day," she said.
Three grandmothers from Salford decided to move in together for the duration of their self-isolation.
Dame Vera Lynn tried to cheer the nation up by recording a video to mark her 103rd birthday.
Charlotte Bredael, 18, from Gosforth in Newcastle, is sending personalised videos to children as Disney princess Rapunzel.
Musicians in London have been holding impromptu concerts outside the homes of those self-isolating, while traders in Norwich have been delivering goods to a couple via a basket from their balcony.
Others have failed to let a global travel cancellations stop them, such as Robert Ormsby who saw a trip to Iceland collapse.
He had been planning to propose to his girlfriend Patsy Murdoch in the country, but found a way to still pop the question - at their local Iceland supermarket in Tonbridge, Kent.
People have also been keen to support bars, cafes and restaurants during the outbreak.
A number of voucher schemes have been launched to encourage people to pay now for meals they can have when the crisis is over.
Aidan's Kitchen in Newcastle got a big boost with one customer ordering 25 servings of his favourite pancake and coffee order totalling almost £250.
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"The solution to government surveillance is to encrypt everything." | By Paul RubensTechnology reporter
So said Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman, in response to revelations about the activities of the US National Security Agency (NSA) made by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.
Schmidt's advice appears to have been heeded by companies that provide internet-based services.
Microsoft, for instance, says it will have "best-in-class industry cryptography" in place for services including Outlook.com, Office 365 and SkyDrive by the end of the year, while Yahoo has announced plans to encrypt all of its customers' data, including emails, by the end of the first quarter of 2014.
For many smaller businesses too, 2014 is likely to be the year of encryption. That's certainly the view of Dave Frymier, chief information security officer at Unisys, a Pennsylvania-based IT company.
But he believes the driving force for this will be different: not government surveillance programmes, but the threat of attacks from hackers.
Diamonds and paperclips
Rather than encrypting everything, Mr Frymier advocates that companies identify what he believes is the 5%-15% of their data that is really confidential, and use encryption to protect just that.
He says employees should then be barred from accessing this data using standard desktop and laptop machines or their own smartphones or tablets, which can easily be infected with malware. Access would be restricted to employees using secure "hardened" computers.
"When you look at the increasing sophistication of malware, it becomes apparent that you need to establish highly protected enclaves of data. The only way to achieve that is through modern encryption, properly implemented," says Mr Frymier.
"You can split your data into diamonds and paperclips, and the important thing is to encrypt the diamonds, and not to sweat the paperclips."
Prakash Panjwani, a general manager at Maryland-based data protection company Safenet, also believes that the large number of high-profile data breaches in 2013 - including hacker attacks on US retailer Target, software maker Adobe, and photo messaging service Snapchat - means that 2014 will inevitably be a bumper one for encryption vendors.
"Snowden has focused attention on surveillance issues, but the real threat is organised crime and the number of data breaches that are occurring," he says.
"Companies are going to come under extreme pressure from boards, customers and regulators in 2014 to take action so that if there is a data breach they can say, 'We didn't lose any data because it was encrypted.'"
Keeping the regulator happy
A large number of companies already use encryption to protect the data they store on their own systems "at rest", as well as data "in flight" as it is sent over networks to customers, other data centres, or for processing or storage in the cloud.
But Ramon Krikken, an analyst at Gartner, believes that the way encryption is used by many of these companies is likely to change in 2014.
"Companies are certainly going to have to take encryption more seriously thanks to the Snowden revelations," he says.
"At the moment many companies are using encryption for compliance reasons, not for security. They are not using it to protect their data, but because it is the easiest way to comply with regulations: encryption is the auditor's and the regulator's favourite check box item."
'Back doors'
One question that companies will need to consider is which encryption algorithm or cipher to use to best encrypt their data. It's an important question as some older ciphers can now be "cracked" relatively quickly using the computing power in a standard desktop PC.
And there is a question mark over whether the NSA may have deliberately used its influence to weaken some encryption systems - or even to introduce "back doors" that provide easy access to encrypted data to anyone who knows of their existence.
"The problem is that even if you can inspect the source code, it is certainly not a given that you would be able to spot a back door," Mr Krikken says.
He believes it is more important to establish where all the parts of an encryption solution come from.
"If you procure software or hardware from overseas, from a country with a government which does not have your best interests at heart, you need to remember that it may not be as secure as you think," Mr Krikken says.
"So you have to decide who you trust, and find out where the vendor gets all the parts of its product from."
Don't be cheap
Another thing companies need to consider when they implement encryption is how strong the encryption should be. Using a longer encryption key makes it harder for hackers or governments to crack the encryption, but it also requires more computing power.
But Robert Former, senior security consultant for Neohapsis, an Illinois-based security services company, says many companies are overestimating the computational complexity of encryption.
"If you have an Apple Mac, your processor spends far more time making OS X looks pretty than it does doing crypto work."
He therefore recommends using encryption keys that are two or even four times longer than the ones many companies are currently using.
"I say use the strongest cryptography that your hardware and software can support. I guarantee you that the cost of using your available processing power is less than the cost of losing your data because you were too cheap to make the crypto strong enough," he says.
"No-one ever got fired for having encryption that was too strong."
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The Pike River mining disaster was a tragedy that shocked the world. Twenty-nine men who were in the New Zealand coal mine died when it collapsed in a series of explosions. The BBC's Phil Mercer covered the accident 10 years ago and has been talking to families of victims still coming to terms with their loss. | The day after his 17th birthday, Joseph Ray Dunbar began his first shift underground at the Pike River coal mine in New Zealand.
He was a "strong-minded boy" who wanted to carve his own path in life, but on that day in November 2010 he became the youngest victim of a mining disaster that killed 29 men.
Their bodies have never been recovered, and a decade later the teenager's father Dean is still looking for answers.
"In a modern society you don't wipe out 29 men and just walk away," he told the BBC. "Joseph's legacy is righting the wrongs of the past whether it be by government agencies, police or politicians."
In 2012, a Royal Commission found the miners and contractors were exposed to "unacceptable risk" and that "there were numerous warnings of a potential catastrophe at Pike River," but there have been no prosecutions.
The inquiry concluded the men "died immediately, or shortly afterwards" from a methane gas blast or the "toxic atmosphere". Two workers did manage to escape the blast and survived.
News of an accident at the mine in the Paparoa Ranges began to emerge in the middle of the afternoon on Friday, 19 November, 2010.
Family members soon gathered, and in the hours and days that followed, there was hope that the men might still be alive, although the authorities said a rescue mission was too dangerous. A nation prayed for another mining miracle.
A few months earlier, 33 miners in Chile's Atacama Desert had been pulled out alive after being trapped underground for 69 days.
"That was totally on my mind the whole time," explained Anna Osborne, whose husband, Milton, died at Pike River.
"I saw how successfully those Chilean miners were rescued and I thought if they can all come out alive, it can happen to us. But little did I know that that mine (in Chile) wasn't a gassy one."
For five long days the families waited. As a reporter sent to cover the story at the time, it was excruciating for me to watch their anguish and frustration grow.
There would be no rescue, and on 24 November another explosion ripped through the mine, and all hope was gone.
Ms Osborne told the BBC that she is "still fighting to get the truth and still wondering why our guys were allowed underground when the mine was so volatile (and) was a ticking time bomb."
Not all of the families want the men's remains to be recovered, but she said it would be a great comfort to bring her husband home.
"He was working in the south (part of the mine), which was flooded. My husband couldn't swim, so he hated the water and I close my eyes every night and visualise him floating in this water that he hated so much and I just thought I can't have him down there. If we can, I would like as many men to be retrieved," she added.
The Pike River Recovery Agency is a government department that has re-entered the so-called drift, a 2.3km (1.4 miles) tunnel that connects the entrance of the mine to the working areas and coal seams.
It is looking for clues that might help explain the explosions and to "help prevent future mining tragedies." Re-entering the mine was delayed by safety concerns.
The end of the drift is blocked by a huge mass of fallen rock. This roof collapse was caused by the ignition of methane, and there are no plans for the agency to move further into the mine where most, if not all, of the bodies remain.
"The Agency's mandate from the government did not include recovering beyond the drift access tunnel," said a PRRA spokesperson. "It remains less likely that we will recover human remains."
"That rockfall is impenetrable," said Tony Kokshoorn, the former mayor of the local Grey District. "The 29 miners are in the coal mine proper. At least they are all together and that is their final resting place."
"Many of the families want them to be together in there because it would have been pretty tough on a lot of families if some had come out and the others couldn't come out."
The police inquiry into the disaster is continuing, with a spokesperson saying they "remain committed to a full and thorough investigation into events" and will everything they can to "provide answers".
The grief was felt far beyond New Zealand's rugged West Coast by bereaved families in Australia, Scotland and South Africa.
The mine will almost certainly never reopen, but Bernie Monk, whose 23-year old son Michael died in the disaster, wants one, final push to bring the men out.
"The times that I went up to the mine portal with anniversaries, I swore and declared and I looked down that tunnel, and I said to them, 'we're coming to get you guys out'. It was an emotional day for me when I first went down into the mine," he said.
"We're are only 50 to 100 metres away from them. I think we've got a right to go and get those men," Mr Monk told the BBC.
Out of tragedy comes pain, anger and calls for accountability and change. It is 10 years since Anna Osborne's husband, affectionately known as Milt, never came home, and she continues to agitate for stronger health and safety laws, and for employers to be prosecuted when things go wrong.
"We have had 700 people lose their lives in workplace accidents since Pike River. That is like a Pike River every five months in New Zealand," she said.
But above all else there is a sadness that may never fade.
"I love him so much. It still hurts. It is still very, very raw."
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In 1957, the British military began conducting nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean and based themselves on Christmas Island. The tests ended six years later and parts of the island were sealed off for decades. What signs are left of its dramatic history? | By John PickfordBBC News, Kiritimati
Main Camp: The name is all that is left of the British military headquarters of 50 years ago. Christmas Island's only hotel, the Captain Cook, stands there now.
The searing east wind blows and the ocean swell booms ceaselessly on the reef, like a distant train in a tunnel. There is a ruined church of coral rock close by. An inscription, etched in cement, invites Church Notices. Who pinned up the last one and what did it say?
Christmas Island has gone through a lot of change. It is now part of the Oceanic state of Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas) with a capital in distant Tarawa, a day's flight away via Fiji. And it has a new name, Kiritimati.
The people of Kiribati, formerly the Gilbert Islands, have difficulty pronouncing the letter S. So Christmas becomes Kritmat, and then Kiritimati - a new name is born.
Most significant is the increase in the human population, now approaching 10,000. There are more vehicles today than there were people in 1958.
Concerns have been raised about the island's carrying capacity due to its unreliable water supply, but the Kiribati government has continued to encourage resettlement from overcrowded Tarawa. Some fear this poses a 21st Century threat to Christmas Island's environment.
There are new schools, a bank and even a small hospital. I spoke to a tired looking doctor, the island's obstetrician. How many babies in a week? "Oh not many, about 10," she says. That is 500 in a year.
But for others connected with this island, time has stood still. Trevor Butler, now 75, went out aged 20 as a sapper with the Royal Engineers.
After his return he developed a cataract in his right eye and for much of his life he has been trying, and failing, to get compensation from the Ministry of Defence for what he alleges was harmful exposure to radiation during his military service. He is a vigorous, determined man and still fascinated by the island. Before my departure he asked me if I would see if there was anything left of the structures he had helped build during his time there.
A few weeks later I am on Kiritimati in a lorry heading south. To my left is the deep blue of the ocean and to my right mile after mile of salt-bush scrub, a rich green after recent rain. The road is remarkably good, considering it is 50 years old. Then I remember Trevor telling me they added cement to the tarmacadam to help it set.
I am with William from the Wildlife Department and we are driving to the remote south-east tip of the island, once ominously called the Forward Zone. It was high in the atmosphere over this area or just offshore that the bombs were detonated, and for decades it was sealed off.
William traps feral cats out here because they are a threat to the sea bird colonies and he says he has seen something I might find interesting.
We have driven fast for two hours - this is the biggest coral atoll on earth - but now slow to a walking pace.
It is the birds. Sooty terns. Tens of thousands of them, in the air and on the ground. A glorious, teeming, deafening cacophony. Did they really explode an atom bomb over this? Well they did, and there must have been a moment after the flash when there was silence.
William stops the lorry and we begin walking into the scrub. It is taller than we are so it is like entering a maze.
What we are looking for has something to do with the giant tethers that were constructed for a couple of the atom bombs which were suspended from balloons and detonated, rather than dropped as air bursts from planes.
The sun is setting and I am beginning to get worried we are lost, when William calls out: "Here!"
It is a massive slab of concrete about 50 metres square with huge rusted steel rings set into it. In the middle there are six bigger rings close together.
I suddenly think of Trevor with his shovel, stripped to the waist in his army shorts like in the photos he showed me.
There was a major clean-up of remaining military debris in 2006 but this looks unmoveable. The thing is so extraordinary and in some respects so bizarre in that wild, bleak place that you cannot help but be impressed.
You wonder what a visitor from space might make of it or an archaeologist in 500 years with no knowledge of our civilisation. You would have to explain so much: that there was something called a Cold War going on and a once great imperial power was struggling to keep up.
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It has a good claim to being the most daring and innovative technology company of the last 20 years. It has launched at least two world-changing businesses - an online retailer of breathtaking scale and efficiency and a cloud computing service that has changed the way thousands of businesses work. But why on Earth is Amazon launching another Kindle, and who on Earth is going to pay £270 for it? | Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter
That was what came into my head as a group of Amazon executives showed me their latest e-reader this week. I'd come to the warehouse in Hoxton - London's Hipster Central, where Amazon's fashion division is based - on the promise of learning about the tech firm's next giant leap forward. I'd rather hoped to hear that the Echo, a fascinating product which puts a virtual assistant inside a speaker, was coming to the UK.
Instead I am ushered into a library with a white table where the entire history of the Kindle is laid out, from the 2007 original, a chunky slab with a keyboard, to the slimline touchscreen Voyage. And then the new product, the Oasis is brought out.
It is a thing of beauty - slim and light, with a bright, very readable screen, the same page-size as previous Kindles but presented so that the rest of the device seems to melt away. Amazon's vice-president for industrial design, Chris Green, explains that the gold standard is paper, and that the Oasis takes the company another step towards that.
"Our goal is to get the device out of the way and just give you the content.. It's the best reading device we have ever made." The Wigan-born designer of all of Amazon's devices makes an eloquent case for the technology and craftsmanship which has gone into building the Oasis.
He raves about the back of the e-ink display: "200 microns - thinner than a sheet of tin foil" and about the "matrix of components" that makes for the perfect reading experience.
But then I come to the price - £270 (ok, £269.99) for an e-reader!
You can get a very nice illuminated touchscreen Kobo for £139, and Amazon's budget version of the Kindle costs just £59.99. And when I canvass opinions amongst colleagues I got this: "Blooming heck" (I paraphrase), "£270 just to read a book?" Then: "Think of all the books I could buy for that."
And perhaps most pertinently: "I've got a phone, I've got a tablet, why do I need a Kindle?"
These days, you can read Kindle books on all sorts of devices, so why buy something separate?
Back at the Hoxton warehouse, the Amazon team concedes that there is a smaller market for e-readers than smartphones, but insists there is still a demand for Kindles, and even for a luxury-priced version like the Oasis. "This isn't going to be our highest volume device, we know that," says Jorrit Van der Meulen, who runs the devices business in Europe. "But for the people who buy it, you're absolutely not going to be able to prise it out of their hands."
The other question is whether the demand for digital books and hence for e-readers has now peaked. The Bookseller reports that UK sales of digital books by the five biggest publishers actually shrank in 2015, although Amazon is keen to stress that self-publishing on Kindle is soaring, and that it's handing more royalties direct to authors.
And while Waterstones' boss James Daunt described sales of Kindles as "pitiful" last October when he removed them from the shelves in his stores, Amazon tells me "the e-reader business continues to grow".
What is clear is that selling digital books and e-readers is now just a small part of this technology behemoth's activities and likely to get less significant in the future. Why then the big hoopla over the Kindle Oasis, with Jeff Bezos teasing today's big announcement in a tweet last week? Perhaps because the Kindle was Amazon's first and still most successful venture into hardware, and the signal that it was much more than just a very skilled online retailer.
The first version sold out within two hours and instantly made Amazon the leader in the move to digital publishing. Later gadgets - tablets, TV streaming devices, and the ill-fated phone - have had a more mixed reception and have not had the same impact on their markets.
Or perhaps the hard-driving Mr Bezos is still just a little sentimental about books and reading. After all, they are the foundation on which his empire was built. "It's right at the core of our DNA, we started selling books," Van der Meulen admits. But he says this is not about the boss's attachment to the past: "He loves to read, he loves devices but this isn't anything for Jeff, this is years and years of focusing on our customers."
Bezos has said in the past that Amazon's devices are sold at cost - they are designed to sell content rather than to be money-spinners in themselves - and his team insists that the same applies to the Oasis. But it's hard not to think that this Rolls-Royce of an e-reader is a monument to Amazon's past, rather than a signpost to its future.
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A hare photographed against a snowless, green hillside has highlighted the unseasonably mild conditions in Scotland's hills this December. | The image was captured in the Southern Cairngorms on Sunday by the Sportscotland Avalanche Information Service (SAIS).
The service's latest season started last week amid some of the warmest conditions experienced by its teams.
However, there was snow on Sunday above 1,000ft in the Northern Cairngorms.
Mountain hares change colour from brown to white to better camouflage themselves against winter snow.
Also known as blue hares, they are found in the Scottish Highlands, parts of Derbyshire and throughout Ireland.
SAIS avalanche forecasters photographed mountain hares in snowy scenes last winter, including one in the Southern Cairngorms in January.
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Kim Jong-un has had his fair share of headlines in 2018, be it for threatening nuclear Armageddon, jousting verbally with Donald Trump, or signing peace agreements. But every time he makes the news, two very unlikely beneficiaries prepare for their phones to start ringing, writes David Cox. | Howard X, a political satirist living in Hong Kong, and Seoul-based Minyong Kim - who goes by the professional name of Dragon Kim - are the only members of what they call the Kim Jong-un Impersonators Union.
For the past six years, the duo have each been cashing in on their uncanny resemblance to the North Korean leader - earning up to £10,000 a day, they say, for jobs ranging from starring in video games, opening shopping malls, and entertaining guests at billionaires' birthday parties.
"Whenever Kim Jong-un does something like firing off a missile or calling Trump a 'dotard', then my phone goes with a job," Howard says. "It's always last minute, sometimes just 24 hours notice. And it can be absolutely anything."
Minyong is in negotiations with Kentucky Fried Chicken about shooting a new commercial, while Howard was recently hired to appear at an event in Macau together with Trump and Putin impersonators. "They had a cake shaped as a big missile and the three of us had to crack it open," he says.
When Kim Jong-un first came to power in December 2011, Minyong was still doing military service in South Korea.
"It was really stressful," he remembers. "Every time Kim Jong-un would do or say something, my seniors and juniors would come to me and say, 'It's all because of you, you look like him.'"
Having finished military service, though, he decided to try and embrace his resemblance to the North Korean leader. For Halloween, he persuaded an embarrassed local barber to give him Kim Jong-un's trademark haircut, bought a cheap black suit and headed out into Seoul's trendy Hongdae district.
He soon found himself mobbed.
"I literally had thousands of people taking photos of me and the next day I ended up all over TV," he says. "Within a month I had companies requesting to shoot commercials with me."
Howard tells a similar tale of overnight fame, which began when he posted photos of himself as Kim on Facebook, one April Fool's Day. The pictures went viral and kickstarted his career, but he then faced a struggle to get the haircut right.
"It was initially tricky as it's extremely hard to find a picture of the back of his head. But I did my research, printed out a load of photos, took them to a local guy and after a bit of experimenting, he perfected the look. He's now my regular stylist," he says.
"But he's had to adjust his usual way of cutting in order for me to look this ridiculous - apparently it goes against every single rule for a good haircut."
Looks aside, the two impersonators have very different approaches to the job. Minyong - who dreamed of being an actor as a teenager before pursuing an economics degree - is a master of accents who has perfected Kim Jong-un's precise dialect and vocal mannerisms to create as realistic a portrayal as possible.
Howard, who grew up in Australia and speaks no Korean, is unashamedly provocative. His antics have ranged from asking shocked Singaporeans, "Who's the better-looking dictator, me or your prime minister?" while opening a chilli crab restaurant, to starring in a music video produced by Russian rave band Little Big, where he falls in love with, and goes to bed with, a nuclear bomb.
"As an actor impersonating a bad guy, you can do stuff which, for example, an Obama impersonator could never get away with," Howard says. "So there's no bottom for me. I can say the most outrageous, politically incorrect thing, and it would be funny because it's coming from the character of Kim Jong-un."
At this year's Winter Olympics he infuriated the North Korean delegation by appearing at different venues in front of their cheerleaders, waving the national flag. He was ultimately manhandled out of the ice hockey stadium.
"I had no idea what they were saying at the time, but a translator later told me, they were shouting, 'How dare you do this,'" Howard remembers. "Dictatorships don't have a sense of humour."
It isn't only the North Koreans who don't see the funny side. Minyong has faced criticism from South Korean charity workers trying to help North Korean refugees who have fled their country. "They're worried that by us doing this, people might develop a more positive image of Kim Jong-un," he says. "They say that would be really humiliating for people who have escaped North Korea and suffered under his government."
Impersonating a dictator does come with its risks.
During one trip to New York, Minyong was nearly assaulted by a member of the public who tried to punch him, believing he was actually the North Korean leader. It was only his friends, dressed as Kim Jong-un's bodyguards, who stepped in and restrained the assailant.
In addition, Minyong says his growing profile across Asia has brought him to the attention of North Korean intelligence services.
"One day, I found that my personal email account had been hacked," he recalls. "And my password is pretty complicated, and I'd never changed it. I checked the IP address for where it was last logged on, and it was somewhere in China. I reported it to the national intelligence agency and they said it was North Korean spies."
Minyong says he briefly considered quitting altogether at the request of his family and friends.
In 2014, South Korean TV reported that North Korea had warned that anyone impersonating Kim Jong-un would be punished. But Minyong found he couldn't turn his back on the money and media attention. So instead, he tries to fly beneath the radar by avoiding saying anything overly political.
"I figured out that if I'm doing this, and objecting to Kim Jong-un's policies and saying bad stuff about him, I may possibly get killed or kidnapped," he says.
Howard, on the other hand, is pretty bullish about any potential threats. The North Koreans can't do anything to him, he insists.
"The blowback would be too much for them. I'm actually kind of disappointed that Minyong's been hacked and not me, because I've done far more than him, in terms of being insulting to the leader."
Howard is actually more concerned about the fact that Minyong has often been willing to work for far cheaper rates, driving down his own potential earnings. Minyong also sometimes dresses up as Kim Jong-un for nights out in Seoul even when he's not being paid.
"When I go downtown I usually dress up as Kim Jong-un, because I'm so popular that I don't even need to bring my wallet," Minyong says. "Bar owners always give me free food and drinks, people buy me food and drinks, and I get free entry and queue jump to all the famous clubs."
Howard, however, isn't amused. "I refuse to do that kind of thing because it kind of cheapens the impersonation when you're working for free," he says. "I want dollars."
Howard has an unlikely ally in the shape of Minyong's long-term girlfriend. She detests her boyfriend's career as a Kim Jong-un impersonator, and has begun to limit his public appearances.
"I'd dress up as Kim Jong-un every day but my girlfriend hates the hairstyle," Minyong admits.
"She complains every time I get a new haircut. She also hates it because when I go to bars and clubs, girls want to take photos with me, and sometimes try to hug and kiss me. We began dating before all this, and she tells me that if she knew I was going into this line of work, she never would have gone out with me. So I'm trying to minimise it and just accept things which pay really well, in order to keep her happy."
But the stream of highly paid jobs shows no sign of drying up.
"I told the Trump impersonator, you'd better make good money now because you've only got four, maybe eight years if you're lucky," Howard says. "But these dictators, it's a job for life. Unless he dies of high cholesterol or diabetes, I reckon I've got a good 30 years."
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For their five-night stay at the Yanggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang, Calvin Sun and the other members of his group had been supervised by their guides. Now was their last opportunity to explore the building alone. They made their way to the open rooftop and to the revolving restaurant on the top floor. Someone then noticed that the button for the fifth floor was missing...
READ: The man who went to the North Korean place that 'doesn't exist'
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A man and woman in their 60s have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a man was found with stab wounds on an industrial estate. | The 37-year-old is in a critical condition, police in Birmingham said.
He was found on Camp Hill Industrial Estate in Bordesley at 06:30 GMT on Friday, following a disturbance earlier in Priestley Road, Sparkbrook.
A man aged 65 and a woman, 60, are being questioned over what detectives believe is a domestic incident.
Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, and sign up for local news updates direct to your phone.
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A man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder following an attack outside a pub on the Isle of Wight. | A 49-year-old man suffered a life-threatening head injury in what police described as a "serious assault" in Sandown on Monday.
Officers were called to reports of an assault outside The Old Comical in St John's Road at 19:55 BST.
A 24-year-old man from Sandown is being held in custody on suspicion of attempted murder.
The injured man was taken to Southampton General Hospital.
Hampshire Constabulary is appealing for anyone who may have seen what happened to get in touch.
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The political crisis in Portugal sends a signal that the eurozone crisis is not over. The interest rate on Portugal's ten-year bonds edged above 8% today, a reminder of conditions when the crisis was at its most intense. | Gavin HewittEurope editor@BBCGavinHewitton Twitter
The government in Lisbon has been zealous in following the Brussels/Berlin script by cutting spending and implementing reforms. Portugal has applied some of the fiercest tax rises and budget cuts. In Brussels it was feted as an example of a country doing everything asked of it
It appears, however, that the austerity drive has reached its limits. Even within the government ministers are having doubts. The recession has shown no sign of ending. Unemployment is at 17.6%. There are 932,000 people without jobs. Thousands of graduates are leaving the country. Last week Portugal endured another general strike.
Portugal has already been granted more time to reach the target for cutting its deficit. Even so the IMF has said its debt levels remain "very fragile". The level of concern could be judged by statements from the European Commission today. It called on Portugal to clarify its situation "as soon as possible". The President of the Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, warned that the "financial credibility built up by Portugal could be jeopardised by the current political instability. If this happens it would be especially damaging for the Portuguese people..."
The head of the Eurogroup (the eurozone finance ministers), Jeroen Dijsselbloem, said "the situation is worrying. So I'm calling on Portugal to take responsibility."
Germany weighed in, saying it was "confident" Portugal would stick to the reforms. Politicians in Portugal are under enormous pressure to stick with the programme.
Another bailout?
So what is to be done? Portugal will struggle to find political consensus behind continuing with the reforms and cuts. The government might try and persuade Brussels to ease again the terms of its 78bn-euro (£66bn; $101bn) bailout, which was agreed in 2011. That will not be easy.
The prime minister has already warned the Portuguese people to prepare for new sacrifices, to avoid a second bailout. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel, facing an election, may be very reluctant to contemplate a second bailout. It would raise, once again, doubts about the whole strategy.
What this latest crisis underlines is just how difficult it will be for countries like Portugal to exit their bailout programme and regain access to the markets.
It is not, however, just Portugal which remains in crisis. Greece is once again in trouble. The ruling coalition is fragile and the country has only a few days to demonstrate how it can meet the terms of its EU/IMF bailout. The privatisation programme, which was central to it raising funds, is faltering. New problems are emerging in the accounts of the state-run health insurer. The IMF is signalling its alarm. Greece will have to show how it can meet its targets or the IMF may withdraw from the rescue programme. That, in itself, would deepen the crisis.
There are some hopeful signs. Activity in the manufacturing and service sector in much of the eurozone seems to be improving, but very slowly and, all the time, the patience of voters in many of these countries is being tested.
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A man has been arrested on suspicion of stealing from a flood-damaged property in West Yorkshire. | The 40-year-old man, from Dewsbury, was arrested at about 07:30 GMT after police received reports of a man in a white van taking items from a property in Mytholmroyd.
West Yorkshire Police said the man is being held in police custody.
Parts of Mytholmroyd were flooded when the River Calder bursts its banks on Boxing Day.
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The Royal Shakespeare Company has been praised for its "outstanding contribution" to tourism.
| The Stratford-upon-Avon company was given the award by tourism company Visit England which said it was a "shining light" in English tourism.
An RSC spokeswoman said the company was passionate about encouraging audiences and visitors.
The awards were given out at a ceremony in Birmingham organised by Visit England and the Caravan Club.
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After months of work, the UK has ditched the way its coronavirus-tracing app works, prompting a blame game between the government and two of the world's biggest tech firms. So what went wrong? | By Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent
At the end of March, I got a text from a senior figure in the UK's technology industry. This person said they were helping the NHS "on a very substantial project that will launch in days and potentially save hundreds of thousands of British lives."
That was the first I knew of the plan to build a contact tracing app, a project that soon appeared to be at the very centre of the government's strategy to beat coronavirus and help us all emerge from lockdown.
The tech luminary had somehow assumed that I could be an adviser to the project - I made it clear that could not be my role but I was very interested in following its progress.
Now, nearly three months on, after missing deadline after deadline, there has been a radical change in direction. The app that has been developed so far is being scrapped, and a new approach will be tried based on a system created by Apple and Google.
But there is no guarantee when, if ever, this will be rolled out. So what went wrong?
March
When the team from the NHSX digital division was assembled they were told they were engaged on a vital mission. According to a presentation the team was shown the Covid-19 app would have four aims:
Once installed on a user's phone, the app would use Bluetooth to keep a record of other people with whom they came into close contact - as long as they too had installed the app. Then when someone tested positive for the virus, alerts would be sent to their close contacts of recent days telling them to go into quarantine.
The epidemiological expertise was provided by a team of Oxford scientists who had argued that there was an urgent need to identify people who were spreading the virus without knowing. "Very fast contact tracing was likely to be essential," says one of the Oxford team, Dr David Bonsall. "And smartphones have the technological capability to speed up that process."
But using the Bluetooth connection on smartphones to detect contacts was untested technology. Still, the team was inspired by Singapore, which had released its Trace Together app using that system.
Contact tracing app timeline
App announced
12 April
Heath Secretary Matt Hancock announces the development of "a new NHS app for contact tracing".
Isle of Wight launch
5 May
The app is launched on the Isle of Wight. It is downloaded by 60,000 people, under half the population of the island, over the following 10 days. Mr Hancock tells BBC Breakfast that if the trial on the Isle of Wight is successful, the app will be rolled out nationwide by the middle of May. He also says the public would have a "duty" to download the app and that 60% of people in the country would have to do so for the system to function.
PM says test, track and trace will be ‘world-beating’
20 May
Prime Minister Boris Johnson tells Parliament: "We will have a test, track and trace operation that will be world-beating and yes it will be in place by 1 June." He also says there will be 25,000 trackers who "will be able to cope with 10,000 new cases a day".
Contact tracing launched without app
27 May
Contact-tracing system is launched without a nationwide app. Anybody who has been in close contact with someone who has tested positive will have to self-isolate for 14 days. According to government figures, in the first week tracers contact 5,407 people with the virus.
Minister says: ‘I can’t give you a date’
5 June
Business Minister Nadhim Zahawi says the app tested on the Isle of Wight will "be running as soon as we think it is robust". Speaking on BBC Question Time, the minister says: "I can't give you an exact date, it would be wrong for me to do so." Asked to confirm it would be rolled out nationwide this month, he says: "I'd like to think we'd be able to manage by this month, yes."
Minister says the app ‘isn’t the priority’
17 June
Lord Bethell, the Minister for Innovation at the Department of Health and Social Care, says the app "isn’t the priority". Answering a question about the app from the Science and Technology Committee, the minister says: "We are seeking to get something going for the winter, but it isn't the priority for us at the moment." He declines to offer a launch date for the app.
App switches to Google-Apple model
18 June
In a major U-turn, the UK ditches its version and shifts to a model based on technology provided by Apple and Google. The Apple-Google design is promoted as being more privacy-focused. However, it means epidemiologists will have access to less data.
April
But it soon became clear that using Bluetooth was tricky. Reports from Singapore suggested people were reluctant to download the app because it had to be kept open on the phone all the time, draining the battery.
Then on 10 April came a surprising announcement from Google and Apple. The two tech giants - on whose software virtually all the world's smartphones depend - said they were going to develop a system that would help Bluetooth contact-tracing apps work smoothly. But there was a catch - only privacy-focused apps would be allowed to use the platform.
Apple and Google favoured decentralised apps, where the matching between infected people and their list of contacts happened between their phones. The alternative was for the matching to be done on a central computer, owned by a health authority, which would end up storing lots of very sensitive information.
The app the NHS was developing was based on a centralised model, which the Oxford scientists felt was vital if the health service was to be able to monitor virus outbreaks properly.
Two days later, with quite a fanfare, Health Secretary Matt Hancock unveiled the plans for the Covid-19 app, promising "all data will be handled according to the highest ethical and security standards, and would only be used for NHS care and research".
But immediately privacy campaigners, politicians and technology experts raised concerns. "I recognise the overwhelming force of the public health arguments for a centralised system, but I also have 25 years' experience of the NHS being incompetent at developing systems and repeatedly breaking their privacy promises," said Cambridge University's Prof Ross Anderson.
Yet the project was still gathering pace with the first trial of the app at RAF Leeming, in Yorkshire. The trial was held under artificial conditions, with servicemen and women placing phones adjacent to each other on tables to see what happened.
Meanwhile, privacy-conscious Germany became the latest country to switch its app to the decentralised model, using the Apple and Google system. It seemed that Apple had made it clear that it would not cooperate with a centralised app.
Michael Veale, a British academic working with a consortium developing decentralised apps, warned that the NHS app was on the wrong path, asking on Twitter "will the UK push ahead with an app that will not work on iPhones - which has devastated adoption in Singapore?"
May
But the UK pushed ahead with a trial in the Isle of Wight. As it got underway Mr Hancock told the public they had a "duty" to download the app when it became available and that it would be crucial in getting "our liberty back" as the lockdown was eased.
First sight of the app showed it was very simple, asking users whether they had a fever or a continuous cough. But any symptom alerts sent out to contacts merely echoed the standard "stay alert" advice - test results couldn't be entered into the app at this stage. It left many residents confused.
Still, the fact that the app was quickly downloaded by more than half of the island's smartphone users saw the government branding the trial a success.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times revealed that the government had hired a Swiss software developer to build a second app, using the Apple and Google technology. NHS insiders were quick to downplay the significance of this move - although one admitted "Downing Street is getting nervous".
Work continued on a second, more sophisticated version of the original app, which was again going to be tested in the Isle of Wight before a national rollout - though the original deadline of mid-May had been missed.
On 20 May, however, it became clear that the government's focus was switching to manual-contact tracing. The prime minister announced that a "world beating" tracing system would be in place by the beginning of June, though Number 10 stressed that the app's contribution to the system would come a bit later.
As May drew to a close the boss of the wider test and trace programme, Baroness Dido Harding, said the app would be the "cherry on the cake" of the project. It was no longer the cake itself.
June
By early June, more deadlines for the national release of the app had come and gone. Three weeks into the Isle of Wight trial residents were getting restless, with very little information on how it was going or when an updated version of the app was coming.
France launched its centralised Stop-Covid app, which had drawn heavy criticism from privacy campaigners, and digital minister Cedric O said 600,000 downloads in the first few hours was "a good start".
On 4 June, Business Minister Nadhim Zadhawi was coaxed into saying the app should be ready by the end of the month, but that was the last firm deadline that would be promised.
Singapore, which had continued to struggle to make its contact tracing app work, announced plans to give all citizens a wearable device in the hope that this would do a better job than a smartphone.
On 14 June, Germany became the biggest country to launch a decentralised app on the Apple/Google platform. It quickly outstripped France in terms of downloads with something approaching 10% of the population installing it.
By now the silence from the UK government about the NHS app was deafening. What was going on?
Around lunchtime on 18 June all became clear. The BBC broke the story that the government was abandoning the centralised app and moving to something based on Google and Apple's technology. Despite all the spin, the Isle of Wight trial had highlighted a disastrous flaw in the app - it failed to detect 96% of contacts with Apple iPhones.
The blame game has already begun. Mr Hancock and some of the scientists working with the NHS believe Apple should have been more cooperative. Technology experts and privacy campaigners say they warned months ago how this story would end.
Apple says it did not know the UK was working on a "hybrid" version of the NHS coronavirus contact-tracing app using tech it developed with Google.
Meanwhile, there is scant proof from anywhere around the world that smartphone apps using Bluetooth are an effective method of contact tracing. Back in March, it seemed that the hugely powerful devices most of us carry with us might help us emerge from this health crisis. Now it looks as though a human being on the end of a phone is a far better option.
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The last Peugeot to be made at the company's Coventry plant rolled off the production line 10 years ago. It could have been the death knell for the city's automotive industry, but new technology is inspiring confidence once more in the UK's "motor city". | By Sarah PortlockBBC News
Ten years ago the mood in Coventry was sombre, certainly at the Peugeot plant, near Ryton, where production was ending.
Jim O'Boyle, union convenor and Peugeot worker for 20 years, said he watched the last vehicle coming off the track (production line).
"They were ripping up the track just behind it as the last car came off. It was terrible," he said.
These days he is the cabinet member for jobs and regeneration at the city council: "When I joined (Peugeot) I couldn't imagine ever doing anything else.
"Now I can't believe I was ever there."
Coventry's automotive heritage:
Twenty-three years ago the RDM Group, on Humber Road, near Ryton, had a plant harnessing component parts for firms such as Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), Rolls-Royce and Bentley.
Now its employees, 80% of whom are engineers, are at the forefront of 21st Century engineering and design - one project, for example, involves creating software to enable cars to park themselves in garages.
The company is currently waiting for the council to agree to a trial, which the government is paying £20m towards, for autonomous vehicles in the city. Smaller trials have already been held down the M1 in Milton Keynes.
"We are looking at how the cars communicate with the pods. For example, you could be travelling along in your Land Rover towards the city centre," marketing director Miles Garner said.
"The computer in the car will communicate with a pod. It will tell the pod it has two guests to pick up - and then your last half mile or so of the journey will be in the pods."
Humber Road, as the name suggests, is the site where the Rootes Group once produced its Humber car.
"It's nice to be leading these technical drives where all the old car manufacturing used to be," he said.
Not all the old car sites are still being used in the automotive trade.
Browns Lane, once home to Jaguar and Daimler and where car production ended in 2004, two years before Ryton closed, is due to become a 24-hour distribution centre for Amazon.
The former Peugeot plant was demolished and the site is now home to various companies and warehouses.
Meanwhile JLR is expected to push ahead with its expansion into electric vehicles with a planned "global centre of excellence" for battery research.
Its Whitley site, two and half miles out of the city and the firm's global headquarters, is already earmarked for expansion but it is expected to need more space, with sites around the city's airport, in Baginton, being looked at.
Last month chief executive Dr Ralf Speth laid out a vision which could see 10,000 new jobs created in the West Midlands. Already the largest carmaker by volume, JLR would like to double production from 500,000 to one million cars a year.
The firm is expected to be working with Warwick Manufacturing Group, which is part of Warwick University, on the edge of the city.
Mr O'Boyle thinks this could bring manufacturing back to Coventry.
"The biggest change is the type of vehicles. Clean-air vehicles and electronic cars, that is a massive opportunity," he said.
"But we need new expertise and we are working with the Warwick Manufacturing Group and Warwick University to get that - that's where the future lies.
"Once the prototype is in place, you get your product in the showrooms, make them affordable and then you need the workforce to build them.
"Jaguar wants to do it in Coventry. We just need the infrastructure in place."
Top ten employers in Coventry - 2011. Source: Coventry City Council
1) Coventry City Council 15,617
2) University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire 6,500
3) University of Warwick 6,000
4) Coventry University 4,600
5) Coventry & Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust 3,500
6) Jaguar Cars Ltd 2,570
7) Barclays Bank Plc 2,400
=8) Royal Mail Group 2,000
=8 )Severn Trent Laboratories Limited and Severn Trent Centre 2,000
10) Admenta UK Plc (AAH Pharmaceuticals & Lloyds Pharmacy) 1,800
In Ansty, five miles northeast of the city, black cab producer the London Taxi Company is just about to move into its new 50,000 sq ft plant where it will produce its new vehicle, the all electric TX5.
The firm has outgrown its Holyhead Road premises in the city, where it started life in the 1920s producing car bodies for Jaguar, Rolls Royce and Bentley.
It currently employs more than 400 full-time people and company president Peter Johansen says that could go up to 1,600 if a third shift is introduced to produce the cabs. The firm hopes to have the capacity to produce 36,000 vehicles.
In his opinion, Coventry is still the UK's motoring centre, albeit with a larger surrounding area.
"I would actually say Coventry still eclipses all of the country - although you would include the wider area with Birmingham and firms south of Coventry into Warwickshire and along the M40 corridor," he said.
He cited firms such as Ricardo in Leamington Spa, Pro-Drive in Banbury, Aston Martin and other research and development firms in Gaydon plus the Warwick Manufacturing Group, as all contributing heavily to the progress in the automotive industry.
Penso, employing more than 200 people and which has been based at the airport for 12 years, focuses on design and engineering solutions for the automotive industry.
With the Renewable Energy Directive in mind (all EU countries must ensure 10% of transport fuels be renewable by 2020) it works with new technology to reduce waste.
In Coventry Penso has a huge press making carbon fibre components and is notable that it, along with LTC, are the two firms producing London's black cabs (which are also sold all over the world).
The city council's crest features a phoenix rising out of the flames and represents the new Coventry rising out of the old (the city was heavily damaged by German bombers in November 1940).
The motto is apt for the city's industry, sales director Michael Collins said.
"Out of adversity comes dynamic change. It was sad when Ryton closed but I think such things drive innovation."
The city's universities, Coventry and Warwick, lead the way with industrial design and companies like Penso are taking on apprentices to help out with a skills shortage, he added.
"When Ryton closed its doors that was the last of the car production in Coventry," Jim O'Boyle said. "And we had fought to keep it open.
"But now we have the opportunity to skill up the workforce and I think it can be done pretty quickly.
"Cov has the ability to bounce back. We have the high-end jobs, we need to look at getting the semi-skilled.
"I can see Coventry doing very well."
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Mexicans consume more carbonated drinks per person than any other nation, and the country has one of the world's highest rates of childhood obesity. Two years ago the government introduced a tax on sugary drinks - but is it working? | By Katy Watson and Sarah TreanorBBC News, Mexico
Silvia Segura lives in a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Merida, in Mexico's Yucatan state. She invites us into her modest house. Three armchairs face a television and a ghetto-blaster turned up high with Mexican music blaring out.
On the walls are hooks with hammocks hanging from them. These are where the family sleeps - they are more comfortable than beds in the region's baking climate.
In the living room, however, a double bed stands in the middle of the floor. Silvia says this was her mother's bed after she became too ill to climb into a hammock. She died recently because of complications caused by type 2 diabetes - but until the end, Silvia says, her appetite for sugary drinks never left her.
"All my family drinks Coca-Cola," says Silvia. "My mother, may she rest in peace, was a true cocacolera - she couldn't live without it, she'd drink it three times a day if she could. She said it kept her alive."
When her mother went into hospital, "we'd smuggle the coke in and give her some sips," Silvia says.
Mexicans are the thirstiest consumers of sugary drinks in the world. Each gets through an estimated 163 litres (36 imperial gallons) on average per person every year - 40% more than an average American (who drinks 118 litres, or 26 gallons).
And this, says the government and the health campaigners, is a serious problem.
All too often, the headlines coming from Mexico focus on the country's bloody drugs war - which has claimed over 100,000 lives in the past decade. Type 2 diabetes, on the other hand, kills 70,000 per year.
So acute is the problem that two years ago, in January 2014, Mexico introduced a national tax on sugary drinks and junk food - a 10% tax on every litre of sugar-sweetened drinks and an 8% tax on high-calorie food.
The effect of these on children is a particular concern - according to Mexico's Health Ministry, the country leads the world in childhood obesity.
"About 10% of kids are being fed soda from zero to six months of age," says Dr Salvador Villalpando, a childhood obesity specialist at the Federico Gomez children's hospital in Mexico City.
"By the time they reach two it's about 80%."
The problem is aggravated by the fact that children are often short, their development sometimes hindered both physically and mentally by a diet high in junk food and low in nutrients.
Although the country's appetite for sugary drinks has sometimes been put down to the lack of clean water in some parts of the country, Villalpando disagrees.
"It's cultural," he says.
"Mexican mums like having chubby kids in their homes as it shows they're feeding them properly. And they are so used to feeding them sodas, they don't stop even when there is clean water."
The children coming to his clinic often show early signs of diabetes - patches of dark skin on their necks and regular spikes in their blood sugar levels. Children with pre-diabetes cannot process sugar in the same way as healthy children and after consuming sugary food or drink their blood sugar rises dramatically.
Young children who are accompanied by their mothers have less chance of getting better than teenagers who come alone, Villalpando says. That's because parents continue overfeeding the young children, while often the older ones are determined to lose weight and improve their health.
According to research by Mexico's National Institute of Public Health, together with the University of North Carolina, in the first year the tax reduced consumption of sugary drinks by an average of 6% over the 12 months, reaching 12% by the month of December.
In the poorest households, monthly purchases of sweet drinks fell by a full 17%.
Find out more
The drinks industry disputes these figures, however.
"We did an analysis with the National Institute of Statistics and Geography and what we have, until June 2015, is that consumption and sales have been affected by 1% or 2%," says Jorge Terrazas of Mexico's bottled drinks industry body, Anprac.
He adds that fizzy drinks only account for 5.6% of Mexico's average calorie consumption so can only be a small part of the solution to obesity and diabetes.
No data has yet been published that would indicate whether the tax is having an effect on Mexicans' health. But Dr Miguel Messmacher, under-secretary of revenues at Mexico's Ministry of Finance, says he is in no doubt that it is working.
"We've raised close to 20bn pesos (£760m)," he says. "It's a fairly significant amount. I think the results we have so far have led to the changes in behaviour we wanted."
So what do the big US brands make of Mexico's approach?
Hank Cardello of the Obesity Solutions Initiative, a research group in Washington DC, cracks open a can of diet ginger ale and tells us.
"You have to look at ways of expanding the tool kit of solutions," he says.
"The typical regulatory tool kit is tax, ban, limit, constrain - those kinds of anti-growth words, if you would. They're anathema to what the companies have to do.
"We should ban the word 'should'. It's like a parent talking to a child. 'You should eat better, you should do this.'
"No. When broccoli tastes like a cheeseburger, I'll eat more broccoli. You don't lecture to people to get them to change."
But in Berkeley, a short drive from San Francisco, Josh Daniels sees things very differently.
He was the co-chair of the "Yes on Measure D" campaign, which resulted in an overwhelming vote in favour of introducing a soda tax in November 2014 - the first in the US.
The tax is one cent per ounce, which amounts to about 10% of the value of a bottle of soda, just as in Mexico. It raises about $150,000 per month for health-focused community initiatives.
"I came to understand the damage that sugary drinks have been doing," says Josh. "By showing that Mexico did it and was successful, it gave support to our position that this was a viable policy."
Now the city is leading the way for other US cities, he says, 31 of which have already tried and failed to introduce a tax, but may try again.
The idea of a sugar tax has also been floated in the UK.
In October a report by Public Health England recommended a tax of between 10% and 20% on high-sugar products as one measure needed to achieve a "meaningful" reduction in sugar consumption. Food Standards Scotland also proposed a sugar tax two weeks ago.
"I don't really want to put new taxes on to anything but we do have to recognise that we face potentially in Britain something of an obesity crisis," Prime Minister David Cameron said last month, promising to announced details of a "fully worked-up programme" to tackle obesity later in the year.
In Mexico, the tax may be working but sometimes it can be hard to see how.
Across the country, corner shops are painted red and white, reminding Mexicans where their loyalties lie.
Posters tempt school children with cheap offers of fizzy drinks and sugary snacks on their way to school. It makes you wonder whether Mexico's thirst for pop can ever be truly quenched.
Do you think sugar companies should pay a "sin tax"? What role should government play? The BBC World Service is holding a live debate on Friday 5 February at 13:00 GMT. Send your questions to [email protected] or via Twitter to @bbcworldservice using the hashtag #bbcdiabetes
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An early morning drive through the city helps to give new perspectives. So I've been told. I'm not that good with mornings. | Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland
So a few hours before fresh figures were released this week on the state of the jobs market, I found myself heading for the station in Delhi, on a journey that brought wider reflections on how people make a living.
Stray dogs had scavenged what they could through the night, and lay curled up. A few bleary people were stirring, one or two firing up a gasoline stove, for tea.
Hundreds upon hundreds of bundles of blanket, each containing a slight human frame, lay along the raised pavements, sheltered from rain but with little protection against the foggy winter chill.
No-one in the city - even the richest - is protected from the polluted air, tinted orange in daylight, catching the throat, tiring the eyes, tasting on each breath.
My destination was Delhi's main railway station. The hustlers will still be asleep, but the porters were up and eager for custom. The concourse was filled with the bright colours of clothing and bedding where hundreds of families were ending their night's rest as I arrived, having bedded down there ahead of early departing trains.
National pride
The newspapers led with news from Davos.
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday delivered a long speech to business leaders at the super-rich, super-powerful Alpine summit, emphasising India's heritage and culture, telling them that globalisation is shrinking and at risk, "its shine is fading", but that India is open for business and aims to be a "job-giver" more than a "job-taker".
On Friday, the nation marks Republic Day with a grand parade through New Delhi's broad avenues. With Swiss snow barely melted from his boots, Mr Modi will host a clutch of other Asian leaders from countries to his south-east, attending an ASEAN summit.
He's using this display of national pride and military pageant (I passed the camel cavalry of the Border Force, post-rehearsal, bedraggled by rain) to tell them that India is a superpower.
It is regional, perhaps, for now, but becoming a global force in time, if not already. So, for your kind attention, ASEAN, China is not the only game on the continent.
Tight market
Two questions you may be asking. What am I doing in India, when there are export figures to be reported in Scotland? And what about those job figures?
The first answer I'll leave to another day. The second one, on jobs - well, there may be some value in putting Scotland's employment picture into an international perspective.
Yes, it remains in line with the UK headline figures, which remain unusually strong. Employment levels have rarely been higher, and rate well by international standards.
Unemployment figures have been at, or around, a historic low, and that too compares well with the neighbours.
The underlying factors that make fewer headlines are around the vulnerability of those jobs, and the squeeze on real pay as price inflation continues to outstrip wage rises.
Even with a tight labour market, and much concern about skill shortages, employers are able to hold down pay increases.
Instead, it is expected that they may choose to increase hours, paying more in overtime rather than recruiting and training more workers. In some cases, they may require longer hours without paying more.
I've seen that happen to former colleagues in the newspaper industry, for instance - lucky, arguably, to retain a job, but under immense pressure to keep delivering news in print and online with fewer staff.
Bosses have the option of offering skill upgrading, to help workers become more productive, and to help retain them. Losing staff, and having to recruit, is expensive.
Or bosses may run the sums on how much it would cost to invest in new equipment rather than looking to the labour market to hit growth targets.
With rapid advances in technology, the rise of the robot is seen by many as a big threat to the less skilled worker, and many more skilled ones too.
Extreme poverty pay
All these factors help fuel a sense of insecurity, which has been driving political responses across Europe and the USA.
But the international picture tells us that insecurities close to home are as nothing compared to the lot of many working people elsewhere. And that, in turn, helps explain why so many of them are willing to take immense risks to migrate into more prosperous job markets.
This week, the International Labour Organisation published its take on the two years ahead. It contained good news, but also not such good news.
It showed how much the numbers on extreme poverty pay have fallen, and sharply, over the past two decades.
In South Asia - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and smaller neighbours - that is around 300 million fewer people in working poverty since 2004. But the number is still big - 285 million this year, or 41% of workers.
It's the kind of change that doesn't make many headlines, but is of massive significance for the economy, for social improvement and for humanity, as emerging economies emerge.
Apart from easing deprivation, it has helped build a ready market, with at least some disposable income, on which new businesses are thriving.
The reckoning behind the report was also that the uplift in demand across the world economy should help reduce unemployment in 2018 and 2019, including in some dark spots such as southern Europe.
Breathtaking pace
Not such good news: the reduction in poverty pay is slowing. Extreme poverty pay is counted as less than $1.90 per hour, adjusted for the amount it can purchase in-country.
In sub-Saharan Africa, according to the ILO, that accounted for 37% of workers in 2017.
"Moderate working poverty" means pay between $1.90 and $3.10, adjusted for purchasing power in each country. In sub-Saharan Africa, that accounted for a further 24% of workers last year.
Translate the percentages into actual Africans, and you find it means 228 million people. It includes 38 million young Africans, or two-thirds of those entering the labour market.
In India, that is the kind of money earned by the rickshaw-wallahs and street cleaners who sleep rough in Delhi and every other city on the Indian plains. Many come to the big city because there's no income to be had in their villages.
And unlike China, where the one-child policy now means a shrinking working-age population, on the sub-continent, the working population is rising at a breathtaking pace, of nearly 7% last year, and more than that this year.
Even if India's healthy growth rate can keep generating new jobs in abundance, it won't reduce unemployment by much.
Vulnerable workers
Another piece of less welcome news from the ILO is that the reduction in the number of worldwide workers classified as being vulnerable (working on their own account or informally in a family business, such as a farm) is not just slowing but may be about to go into reverse.
We know what "vulnerable" can often mean in Britain - the gig economy, zero hours contracts, self-employed "consultants" who struggle, often in advancing years, to get back into a full-time post.
In India, it's all that but without the minimum wage or the safety net of a welfare state, including pensions - however inadequate that might seem in Britain.
The sectors most likely to have vulnerable workers, as well as the low paid, are the ones that remain dominant, notably agriculture. Whereas the number of farm workers in China and its neighbours has plummeted, they remain close to 60% in South Asia.
So "vulnerable" workers on the Indian sub-continent account for 72% of the workforce. For women, that is around 81%.
We've long known that India's work, working conditions and pay were very different from Europe's. But in a global economy, the connections across continents matter more.
And with the ILO watching closely for social unrest linked to labour market weakness, it's a reminder that the consequences can reach across continents too.
Older and inflexible
Two other points worth noting from the ILO report.
One is about older workers. The UK has just passed the threshold of one million people working past their 65th birthday by last autumn.
In Scotland, there's been a sharp rise in the past year, to 99,500, or 9.9% of that age group.
Why? Partly because they can. The law changed. But also because many feel they have to. Occupational pensions aren't what they were. The kids may be grown up, but they often still need support.
That change in a productive later life can be seen as a good thing. But the blunt-speaking labour market economists of the ILO are not that flattering about the impact on the economy of this ageing workforce being a factor around the world.
Older workers bring the benefits of experience and consistency. But they are also reckoned (it says here) to be a hindrance on productivity gains.
Why so? They are either slow to learn new tricks with technology, or employers are unwilling to pay for upskilling them. They are reluctant to take a risk on leaving work, because it's harder to get another job when you're older.
So inflexible older workers are seen as slowing up the process of adjustment within the economy, both to new ways of working and to new industries.
Caring for 'seniors'
Whether oldies are to blame, or employers, or governments, that's not so good for the economy. And if left to the market, it means a skills gap that governments will have to fill.
When these workers get older and cannot work any longer, that's when the other labour market factor kicks in.
Caring for elderly people is clearly a big growth area.
President Trump may not highlight it when he talks about Making America Great Again, but the biggest employment prospect for Americans in the next six years is in caring for "seniors". Some 633,000 new care jobs are expected to be created in that time.
And so it goes around the world. Either caring has to be made into a more attractive, higher status, better paid option, says the ILO, or we'll see even more people - mainly women - opting out of paid work to look after ageing relatives.
It may look and feel like very hard real work to those doing it. But it could often be better delivered by those with training. And in an economy measured by statisticians, unpaid work doesn't count.
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A pensioner has died after being struck by a car in Johnstone, Renfrewshire. | The woman, 80, was taken to hospital following the incident on Thursday, but later died.
Another woman, 73, was taken to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow.
The incident happened on Walkinshaw Street at the junction with the High Street at about 11.45. Police Scotland said inquiries were ongoing into the circumstances.
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Lawyers for exiled Cambodian opposition figure Sam Rainsy have filed legal action against Facebook, in a case that highlights how the quest for "likes" has gripped the small Southeast Asian country's leading politicians. | By Ben PaviourFreelance journalist
The petition in US federal courts asks the social media giant to disclose information related to the popularity of the Facebook page of Sam Rainsy's rival, Prime Minister Hun Sen, whose Facebook page ranked third in global engagement among world leaders, according to public relations firm Burson-Marsteller.
The petition accuses Hun Sen of using state money to buy Facebook ads and says he levelled death threats against Rainsy in violation of the platform's policies, including a speech posted to his page last week vowing to attack opposition members with rocket launchers.
"Facebook should act to prevent its platform being manipulated to help prop up dictators," said Rainsy's lawyer, Richard Rogers, a partner in the London and Paris-based firm Global Diligence.
Rainsy, who has lived in Paris since November 2015 in the face of a slew of court cases, accuses Hun Sen of purchasing support in countries such as India and the Philippines, where the prime minister's page is popular and which are home to "click farms" that produce fake followers for social media accounts.
Illegitimate likes often come from fake accounts or from real users who are paid for liking the page, according to Facebook.
Cambodian courts found Rainsy guilty of defamation in November 2016 after he accused officials of creating fake accounts to support Hun Sen's page.
The filing in Northern District of California federal court asks Facebook to disclose information about the authenticity of Hun Sen's likes, as well as communications he may have had with associates on the platform on a variety of topics, including the July 2016 killing of political commentator Kem Ley.
The information would clear Rainsy's name in a number of Cambodian court cases and change Cambodian voters' perception of Hun Sen before July's national elections, Mr Rogers said.
"If you're going to vote for the winner, [Facebook] is one of the ways to discern who is the winner," Mr Rogers said. Hun Sen's current, allegedly fraudulent Facebook popularity "shows that he's still liked even though he commits all of these human rights abuses", he added.
A suspiciously international following?
Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia for 33 years, adopted Facebook with gusto in the aftermath of his Cambodian People's Party's near-upset at the hands of Mr Rainsy's opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) in the 2013 national elections. His page has showcased a more accessible, selfie-prone strongman who likes strolls with grandchildren and swims in the ocean.
The light mood on the page contrasts with an ongoing crackdown on dissent in the run-up to the July vote.
Cambodia's last six months were marked by the shutdown of several independent media outlets, the jailing of two reporters and the arrest of CNRP president Kem Sokha. In November, the Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP for alleged treason.
Without the CNRP, most observers say the upcoming national election lacks any credibility.
Rainsy and other critics have also cried foul on Hun Sen's online popularity. About 45% of Hun Sen's Facebook followers have accounts in Cambodia, according to social media monitoring site Socialbakers.com, compared with almost 80% of Rainsy's followers and 90% for Hun Sen's eldest son, Hun Manet.
Huy Vannak, an undersecretary of state for Cambodia's Ministry of Interior and head of a pro-government journalists union, refused to comment on Rainsy's Facebook case beyond calling it "stupid" and defending restrictions on free speech on Facebook.
"Cambodia, just like other civilized nations, is not a free place for criminal acts and defamation," he wrote in a message.
Facebook spokesperson Genevieve Grdina declined to comment on the specifics of Rainsy's case, citing company policy, but said it was in the company's financial interest to root out fakes that undermined advertisers' trust in the platform.
In its third quarter 2017 financial filings, the company admitted that up to 13% of accounts were either duplicates of real accounts or outright fakes. Ms Grdina noted that page administrators could also pay for Facebook ads to promote their page in other countries.
But US-based marketing consultant Mark Schaefer said it was "cheap and easy" to buy fake Facebook likes as a shortcut to social validation.
"Unfortunately this practice is becoming commonplace," he said.
Hun Sen's lead Facebook strategist, Duong Dara, suggested he was unaware of sites like liftlikes.com, where 1,000 "real human likes" cost $8.99.
"Can we buy it? Do you know how to buy it?" he asked in a message, without responding to follow-up questions.
Facebook also made headlines in October after it began an experiment in Cambodia and five other countries that moved content from pages from the News Feed to a separate Explore Feed.
Publishers complained of plummeting web traffic, although Phannara Leang, web editor for the popular independent outlet Post Khmer, said last month visits to the site had recovered to pre-test levels.
In recent years the Cambodian government has stepped up its prosecution of Facebook critics, including a woman who in April posted a video of herself tossing a shoe at a sign featuring Hun Sen's face.
In 2014, government documents shown to local media described the creation of a so-called Cyber War Team designed to monitor social media and "maintain every achievement of the government".
Critics likened it to a pro-government propaganda machine in a setup similar to censorship units in Vietnam and China - both close allies of Hun Sen.
Mr Vannak said he didn't know about the group but added that "we do support any effort for the interest of Cambodians."
Meanwhile, experts are divided over how significant Rainsy's lawsuit is.
Hang Vitou, head of the Young Analyst Group, argued that Cambodians weren't likely to be fooled by inflated social media likes, and called Rainsy's case "useless."
"Hun Sen uses his Facebook page to gather support from the public but it is not as effective as he thinks," Vitou said.
"People just need to follow the prime minister's work and activities, [but] that does not mean that they support him."
Ben Paviour is a freelance journalist and former politics editor of the Cambodia Daily.
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Emergency officials in Nigeria say more than 40,000 refugees have poured over the border from Cameroon since last October - and their numbers are growing by the day.
They are fleeing violence in the country's south, where the military launched a bloody crackdown after separatists declared a breakaway state - "The Federal Republic of Ambazonia". | By Ishaq KhalidBBC Africa, Agbokim village, Nigeria
In Agbokim village, in southern Nigeria, the BBC met father-of-four Frank Okoro, who has welcomed 28 refugees into his five-room home.
Frank, 57, is a secondary school teacher and a deeply religious man.
He uses his salary and what he earns from his cocoa and cassava farms to cater for his many house-guests. Some are related to his wife, who is from the Cameroonian side of the border - but others are not.
He decided to take them in because their situation was so dire. But it's a squeeze to find room for so many.
'We place mats on the ground," he says. "Almost all the children are on the ground, either on mats or their mothers' wrappers - provided they sleep and wake up peacefully in the morning."
The newcomers try to help with whatever he does - perhaps on the principle that there's "no food for a lazy man".
As farmers, they have enough to go round. "God is helping us greatly," says Frank. But he concedes: "As the father of the home, I have to add more struggle to be able to cope."
Without support from wider family or kind-hearted strangers, the refugees face chronic food shortages. They rarely get aid from local or international agencies, and lack basic healthcare services. Their children have no access to schools.
But the alternative was staying in Cameroon while the military wreak havoc, they say.
'I trekked eight days in the bush'
One young father, Rene, told the BBC he was separated from his wife and children when soldiers completely destroyed their village, killing several people.
His loved ones managed to cross into Nigeria after a long trek, he says, with help from good Samaritans on a motorbike. But he trekked for more than a week in the bush to escape the violence - surviving only on wild fruit and water from streams.
He wandered for more than two days before he found a footpath that led to the village of Bashu in Nigeria's Cross River State - where he was lucky enough to find his family.
They are now hosted in the town of Ikom, about 27km (16 miles) from the border with Cameroon.
"We were living in our village peacefully. All of a sudden, soldiers just invaded our community. After a few minutes we started hearing gunshots, so we were running left and right... I spent eight days in the forest, running."
The 32-year-old says it was the worst experience of his life. He showed me some deep wounds on his leg which he suffered while staggering through the forests and hills.
Like many refugees, he says he doesn't want to go back to Cameroon until peace returns to his community.
'I was stripped naked and thrown in the river'
The women who fled speak of being assaulted by the security forces in Cameroon.
Nguma, in her 20s, alleges that she and some other women were "beaten, stripped naked and thrown into the river" by Cameroon military personnel. They made it to Nigeria in boats carrying other refugees.
Another woman, Regina, told me she was accosted by three soldiers while rushing home to get her children after riots broke out in her village.
She alleges that a soldier grabbed her as she reached her home. "When somebody is not your husband and is holding your breast, holding you tight onto him... I was really afraid as they say soldiers used to rape people, so I started shouting.
"When the army man saw my children coming out, then he left me in the house corridor."
Many of the refugees who fled to Nigeria say they are still traumatised by the violence they witnessed.
"If we have our independence I will go back," says Regina. "But if the war does not end, I will not go back, because I fear soldiers. Because of those heavy guns, I have some pains in my heart now.
"If I hear the gun [go] boom, my heart goes inside like I want to die. I will not live with those guns inside Cameroon."
There is a strong sense of uncertainty among the refugees - about Cameroon, which they have fled, and Nigeria where they are taking refuge.
There are now limited routes for refugees to cross over into Nigeria because of the violent military operation on the Cameroonian side. The official routes are not accessible, so desperate people can only cross into Nigeria through the bush.
What is the fighting about?
Cameroon is dominated by French-speakers and the English-speaking minority has long complained about being marginalised.
In late 2016, some Anglophones began protesting, saying they were excluded from top civil service jobs, and that the French language and legal system had been imposed on them.
The government responded with a security crackdown and even shut off the internet to English-speaking regions for several months.
But the protests have continued and some have started demanding independence for what they call the "Federal Republic of Ambazonia" - the Anglophone North West and South West provinces.
Some have taken up arms and several members of the security forces have been killed.
The government denies allegations of abuse. It says the military is only trying to protect the territorial integrity of the country.
Find out more:
Cameroon's government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary told the BBC the state was open to dialogue on any grievances, but would not tolerate any secession attempt or violent movement.
Nigeria is already grappling with more than two million people displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency in the north - so the influx of Cameroonian refugees has added to its challenges.
Most are in the southern state of Cross River and the central state of Benue.
John Inaku, head of the Emergency Management Agency in Cross River, told the BBC: "So far it is a very hectic experience, and a sad one indeed for you to see an influx of people - especially when you have not budgeted for them. It becomes difficult to assemble them, not to talk of feeding them.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), and the International Committee of the Red Cross are among the groups trying to help the thousands of refugees.
The UNHCR has warned against any forceful repatriation of Cameroonian asylum seekers in Nigeria, saying it would be against international law.
Tensions remain high in the English-speaking areas of Cameroon, and it is not clear how long the refugees will stay in Nigeria.
Emergency agencies say they are considering setting up permanent camps for the swelling number of refugees, which they say could reach more than a million in the coming months if peace does not return.
So it looks as though Frank's house-guests are here to stay for some time yet.
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From the World Cup to the Olympics, it is not a significant event if you don't have an unusual opening ceremony to go with it. | This was also the case when the Gotthard base tunnel, the longest and deepest in the world, was inaugurated on Wednesday.
Here are some of the most striking moments from the ceremony - we have tried to explain what is going on as far as possible. It was not always possible.
Warning: This article contains partial nudity
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Children from a Czech Republic village destroyed during Word War II are visiting Stoke-on-Trent to learn about the man who helped rebuild their home.
| The massacre at Lidice in 1942 was ordered by Hitler following the assassination of one of his generals.
Sir Barnett Stross, a former councillor, led the Lidice Shall Live campaign to raise money for the village.
Children from Bustehrad School are in Stoke-on-trent until Thursday.
Mr Stross, along with local miners and other workers, raised what would now be £1m to help construct a new village after hearing what had happened to it.
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A new railway station could be built in a Derbyshire town after the county council agreed to put up funds for the £6.5m project. | Ilkeston has not had a station for 46 years and is one of the largest towns in the UK without one.
Derbyshire County Council is set to spend £754,000 on the stop.
The majority of the money needed would come from the government which announced £20m funding for new stations in July.
The authority said the station would reduce congestion on roads to Nottingham and support economic growth.
When the new stations fund was announced, Transport Secretary Justine Greening said it had been directly inspired by Ilkeston.
It is thought services from the railway station would include hourly trains to Nottingham, Chesterfield and Sheffield.
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A man wearing make-up on the street may elicit unwelcome glares, questions about his masculinity and even his sexuality. But in South Korea, ideas about how to look good as a man are changing attitudes and influencing the world, as the BBC's Saira Asher reports. | When the BBC posted a video about the make-up routine of a 16-year-old YouTuber in Seoul on Facebook, the reactions ranged from intrigued to downright vitriolic.
Some assumed this meant he was gay, while others admonished him for his choice saying "real men don't wear make-up". There were, of course, those that argued for his freedom to live life however he pleased and against the "fragile masculinities" on show.
But Kim Seung-hwan is used to it. He says he's been called gay by some Koreans online for as long as he's been doing make-up tutorials.
When asked about whether he thought he looked feminine after he put on make-up, he was confused by the question as if he had never even thought about it.
"No I don't. I do not think about this being a girly look," he says. "It's about looking good."
Inside a male beauty salon
For those uncomfortable with men who wear make-up, the scene at a high-end salon for men in Seoul's Gangnam district would have been quite something. But it points to an important shift in cultural expectations.
Senior make-up artist Han Hyun-jae expertly applies foundation, eyeliner and lipstick on a man. He chooses from an array of products and brands that will be familiar to most women, and goes in for the final touches of what he calls the K-pop (short for Korean pop) look . It's a scene that repeats itself day after day.
Packs of confident young men saunter into the salon and then leave with perfect skin and hair. Many of them are singers or actors on their way to promotional events.
One man is there for his wedding make-up, a common practice for men in South Korea. He chooses to get red lips for his special day.
"We make their complexion cleaner, eyebrows darker, contour their faces and draw out their masculinity in a way they can't do themselves," says Mr Han. He says men come in wanting to look like their favourite K-pop idols.
In the last few years, K-pop bands and Korean dramas have become the major influence on young people in the country and last year K-pop broke into the mainstream US and UK music scenes.
"I think Korea is a trailblazer in men's beauty culture, definitely in Asia at the moment, if not the world," says Joanna Elfving-Hwang from the University of Western Australia, who has done extensive research on beauty and image in South Korea.
"The way they (K-pop stars) play with masculinity, what it means to be a beautiful man in a heterosexual or non-heterosexual way, it opens up possibilities for men on the street and eventually makes it more acceptable."
This doesn't mean every man in Seoul walks around with a full face of make-up.
But in young and fashionable neighbourhoods like Myeong-dong it's common to see men walking around with foundation or BB cream (blemish balm) - a moisturiser and light foundation hybrid.
More importantly it has allowed for a much looser interpretation of what's acceptable for men when it comes to beauty.
And some young Korean men are unapologetic about the drive to enhance their look.
From tough guy to pretty boy
That wasn't always the case. In the 1980s and 90s the salaryman was the prevailing male aesthetic. Suits, luxury watches and a traditional strong male look were the norm. Korea has mandatory national service and that moulded and defined what men thought would look appealing.
"In the 80s and 90s, men in Korean pop content were largely portrayed as tough guys in gangster and detective films, and rebellious young men in some TV dramas," says Sun Jung, the author of Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption.
But all that changed in the mid-1990s when music group Seo Taeji and The Boys came onto the scene, says Prof Elfving-Hwang. They used rap, rock and techno influences and incorporated English language into their music.
They kick-started fan culture which has now become a major force in the music industry, she says.
Then followed the big entertainment companies churning out K-pop girl bands and boy bands, and their influence has been like nothing before it.
"Compared to the 80s and 90s, now there are a lot more soft masculinities - pretty boy images and gentle male images - represented in media, and consumers welcome and widely consume them," says Dr Sun Jung.
They came to be known as Khonminam - combining the words for flower and a beautiful man. She says it takes inspiration from similar concepts in Japan of bishonen or beautiful boys and Shojo manga - girls comics.
But it's not feminine.
"I think the phenomenon should rather be explained through the notion of hybrid or versatile masculinity - soft yet manly at the same time - which is different from effeminised," says Dr Jung.
She cites Song Joong-ki, the star of hugely popular Korean drama "Descendants of the Sun" as the embodiment of this. He may be a khonminam in his look, but as a special forces captain in the military he is also a tough guy.
Descendants of the Sun and other Korean dramas have helped spread the South Korean look around Asia and now the world. And that means the ways to achieve that look are in demand.
Male idols are plastered on billboards in Seoul hawking products like face masks and moisturisers. Companies are actively hiring men to sell women make-up products.
Their fandom in places like China, Thailand and Singapore is not to be dismissed either. Huge crowds show up to their performances and product launches.
"Men in China and South East Asia tend to think that Korean men are the typical beauty," says Lee Gung-min, a consultant to South Korean beauty companies.
"That is having a huge impact on male consumers in Asia."
Korean beauty boom
Beyond Asia, brand Korea is starting to sell well in the US and Europe.
Walmart and Sephora now have K-beauty (Korean beauty) brands on their shelves and beauty bloggers are spouting the virtues of the 10-step K-beauty routine for glowing skin. American and European make-up enthusiasts are fast becoming acquainted with brands that were previously only popular in Asia like TonyMoly, Innisfree and Etude House.
Most interestingly, established beauty brands are making their own versions of products that originated in South Korea - like Clinique, Lancome and L'oreal introducing cushion compacts.
The drive for the perfect face has undoubtedly also contributed to a well reported rise in cosmetic surgeries in South Korea to achieve the desired jawline or nose. But it also stems from a deeply ingrained preoccupation with how you present yourself to others.
That's a common sentiment across Seoul. People here really care about how they look and how they come off to the world - both men and women.
You can't walk a few steps without coming across a cosmetics or skincare shop with a salesperson outside trying to lure you in with a free face mask, and companies are definitely capitalising on that self-care culture to sell products.
But men are now as much at the receiving end of that drive - or perhaps pressure - for self enhancement that women have felt for generations.
All images copyright.
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Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld has died, aged 85, in Paris.
| He was one of the world's most iconic designers, at the heart of not one, not two, but three fashion houses.
Karl Lagerfeld had been at the creative helm of Chanel since 1983 and had been designing for Fendi since 1965. He also designed collections for his own brand.
Lagerfeld was born Karl Otto Lagerfeldt in pre-war Germany. He changed his name because he believed Lagerfeld sounded "more commercial".
The designer emigrated to Paris as a teenager, and became a design assistant for Pierre Balmain.
He began his career with Chanel in 1983, a decade after Coco Chanel died. In 1984 he launched his own name label.
He cut a striking figure wearing a distinctive ensemble of crisp white, high-collared shirts with black tailored jacket and jeans, punctuated with a tie, shades, fingerless gloves and black boots.
As a designer he transformed the fortunes of Chanel, one of the leading names in high fashion.
In 2018 Chanel become the first luxury fashion house in the world to stop using exotic animal skins, like snake, crocodile, lizard and stingray.
"We did it because it's in the air, but it's not an air people imposed to us," Mr Lagerfeld said. He argued "there was not much fur" in Chanel's work to begin with.
German model Claudia Schiffer and English model Kate Moss though displayed fur creations designed by Karl Lagerfeld for the Fall-Winter ready-to-wear collection of Chanel in Paris.
Lagerfeld also transformed the catwalk. For the Chanel AW14 show in Paris it became a high-end supermarket.
In 2016 Chanel staged its show in the Cuban capital Havana - the first international fashion show since the 1959 communist revolution, shown in the two images below.
World celebrities gathered at a leafy promenade that was turned into a catwalk for the firm's Cruise collection, even though Chanel goods are not sold in Cuba.
Celebrities - including actor Vin Diesel and supermodel Gisele Bundchen - attended the show at Havana's Prado promenade to see Lagerfeld displaying the new collection.
Lagerfeld said the line was inspired by Cuba's "cultural richness".
The designer had been unwell for several weeks, and had missed a number of fashion shows.
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2017 has been a bumper year for malware outbreaks. We had the WannaCry worm causing havoc around the world for days, followed most recently by the Petya outbreak. But they are not the first to spread so far, so fast. The history of technology and the net has been regularly punctuated by outbreaks and infections. | By Mark WardTechnology correspondent, BBC News
The Morris worm
In 1988, just as the internet was starting to catch on, computer science student Robert T Morris was curious about just how big it had grown. He wrote a small program that travelled around, logging the servers it visited.
Bugs in his code made it scan the net very aggressively so every server ended up running multiple copies of the worm. Each copy used up a little bit of processing power so the servers gradually slowed to a halt.
The scanning traffic clogged the net making it almost unusable. It took days to clean up the infection.
Mr Morris was caught and found guilty of computer fraud and was fined $10,050 (£7,785).
These days, he is a computer scientist at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The Morris worm has one strange parallel with WannaCry. Mr Morris was the son of the NSA's chief scientist and the WannaCry worm is based on code stolen from the NSA.
ILOVEYOU
In May 2000, millions of Windows users found endless copies of an email bearing the subject line ILOVEYOU in their inboxes.
It spread so far and so fast thanks to the booby-trapped file attached to it. Opening the file fired up the small program it contained which sent a copy of the same message to all the addresses found in a victim's address book.
It was also helped to spread because all those messages appeared to come from someone a recipient knew. And the subject line made people curious too.
ILOVEYOU rattled around the world for almost two weeks racking up more than 50 million infections. High-profile victims included the CIA, Pentagon and UK Parliament.
Philippine students Reonel Ramones and Onel de Guzman were found to be the creators of ILOVEYOU. They escaped prosecution because there were no computer misuse laws in the Philippines at that time.
Code Red
Active in July 2001 and named after the fizzy pop being drunk by the researchers who found it, this worm targeted web servers running Microsoft IIS software.
It caused severe disruption and many websites, small businesses and larger firms were knocked offline for a while.
No-one has ever been named as Code Red's creator although on servers it compromised it displayed a message suggesting it originated in China.
Like Wannacry, Code Red exploited a known bug and caught out servers that had not been updated with a patch.
SQL Slammer
This worm emerged in January 2003 and was so virulent that it is believed to have slowed down traffic across the entire net as it spread.
Slammer was a tiny program, roughly 376 bytes, that did little more than create random net addresses and then send itself to those places. If it hit a machine running a vulnerable version of Microsoft's SQL server, that machine got infected and then started spraying out more copies seeking more victims.
The slowdown was caused by net routers struggling to cope with the massive amounts of traffic Slammer generated while seeking out new hosts.
Again, a patch was available for the bug it exploited but many people had not applied it despite it being available for six months.
MyDoom
This Windows email worm from January 2004 is believed to hold the current record for spreading fastest - hardly surprising given that it was reputedly created by professional spammers.
It worked so well thanks to a clever bit of social engineering. The email bearing the worm was designed to look like an error message. This fiction was aided by the message's attachment which purported to hold a copy of the email that did not arrive.
Opening the attachment kicked off the malicious code that re-sent the same message to everyone in a victim's address book.
Conficker
November 2008 saw the arrival of this virulent worm which hit up to 15 million servers running Microsoft software. It ran rampant and caught out hospitals, governments, the armed forces and many businesses.
The outbreak was so bad that Microsoft offered a $250,000 reward for any information leading to the identification of the worm's creator. No-one has ever been identified as its originator.
A patch closing the loophole it exploited was released by Microsoft about a month after it appeared. Even today, 10 years on, data traffic generated by machines infected with Conficker regularly turn up.
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Twenty-one-year-old Lorna Fitzpatrick has been writing to her American penfriend since she was 11. There's nothing particularly unusual in that - except he's a convicted murderer awaiting execution in Louisiana. | By Francesca WilliamsBBC News
Casual references to visiting a pen pal on death row can bring conversations to a grinding halt. One time, when she was working at a children's camp, Lorna spotted a shop selling the kind of American sweets a prison bus driver had shared with her. "Does anyone want a Now and Later?" she had asked the other staff. "I had them on the bus to death row."
"You had them on the WHAT to WHAT?" they replied, astonished.
Lorna knows her situation is eyebrow-raising. But, sitting in her mother's kitchen, with one foot pulled up on the chair, arms around her knee, she seems kind and sensible - not someone likely to make friends with a man on death row out of a sense of rebellion or the desire to shock.
"I'm not saying it's not weird," says Lorna, who is from Newcastle in the north east of England. "It is weird - but really nice." It was awkward, though, when her penfriend sent a note to her boyfriend saying: "You better look after her - I'm on death row, so I know people."
"He didn't mean it. I thought it was really funny," she says. "My boyfriend didn't find it that funny."
The writer of this note, Bobby Lee Hampton, grew up in Louisiana in America's Deep South, one of six children. His mother was only just pregnant when his father was shot dead.
By the age of 12 Hampton was in trouble.
Shoplifting came first, followed quickly by battery. Then, in his 20s, aggravated assault, armed robbery, inciting riot. He was 25 when in 1995 he and two cousins robbed a liquor store in his home city of Shreveport, in the state's north west. Hampton was convicted of the first-degree murder of a member of staff called Russell Coleman and sentenced to death.
Mr Coleman's sister later revealed that the family's distress was, for her, complicated by a firm opposition to the death penalty.
Conflicting witness statements, and the absence of one witness at trial, led to an appeal. It was rejected, but a problem facing the state authorities had the effect of putting Hampton's execution on hold anyway: the required cocktail of lethal drugs was proving almost impossible to obtain.
Increasingly reluctant to allow their products to be used to carry out the death penalty, pharmaceutical companies were taking legal action to stop this from happening. Hampton is part of a class-action lawsuit claiming the state's method of execution is unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, he writes.
That he writes to Lorna is thanks to a church event in the English cathedral city of Durham.
Her mother, Brid, took the family to hear Sister Helen Prejean, a noted opponent of the death penalty and the author of Dead Man Walking. Her message: all humans are capable of redemption.
"We are all better than the worst thing we have ever done," says Brid, a committed Catholic. "Obviously that's quite a complex message to get across to a child who's 11 or 12."
But she felt it was an important lesson which, if you believe in, you should be prepared to put into practice. So Brid signed up with the charity LifeLines, which arranges penfriends for people on death row, and started writing to Hampton. Little notes added by Lorna gradually grew into letters of her own.
"When he wrote back she shared the letters with me - I don't know what I would have done if she hadn't," Brid says. "I would probably have asked to see them but I didn't have to. I'm not minimising the fact that it's a serious thing to do, but I didn't think it was dangerous."
According to Lorna, the only thing her mother was worried about was people thinking Lorna had romance in mind. The 21-year-old says she's "very quick" to make it clear she doesn't.
Lorna is busier now, having just finished a degree in computer science but, in the early years, she would write a letter a week, a little nervous of upsetting Hampton with tales of freedom. Now they write about anything and everything - what's going in their lives, what has made them happy or sad, their families, the future.
Hampton keeps the letters. "I reread them to remind myself someone cares about me," he says. "That strengthens my faith and hope; the thought of knowing that they care about me and that they are not judgemental toward me. Their visits mean the world to me."
He will also phone - which can be something of a communal experience. "He calls me Missy Moo and he'd be like, 'Oh, Missy Moo's on the phone'," she says. "All the other guys in the row would be like, 'Hey Missy Moo', screaming from their cells."
Hampton has now been in prison for nearly a quarter of a century. Over the past decade Lorna has taught him about emojis and hashtags - "he doesn't really get them" - and explained cultural innovations like Netflix and Spotify.
"He's like a time-warp of a man," she says.
Tucked in a bend in the Mississippi River, Louisiana State Penitentiary is the largest maximum-security prison in the US. It houses more than 6,000 prisoners and nearly 2,000 staff and, covering 28 sq miles (73 sq km), it is bigger than Durham and Newcastle city centres put together.
Known by the name of the old slave plantation on which it sits - Angola - it's like its own town. There's a farm, staff housing, a post office, a church, cemetery and golf course. For children born to prison warden parents living on site, there used to be a school. The prison even has its own museum and a gift shop selling "Angola Gated Community" mugs and "Been to the Pen!" pencils.
Lorna's first visit to the prison in 2012 was her idea. Her family had a holiday planned to Philadelphia and she suggested the 1,300-mile detour. The prison authorities thought it was "really lovely" they had come all the way from England.
She is complimentary about the "really nice" staff but surprised it did not seem to cross their minds her family might be opposed to the death penalty.
Brid remembers the automatic entrance gates that trap you, briefly, between two chain-link fences as one swings shut before the other one opens - an experience she describes as "seriously freaky".
They were searched and X-rayed and inspected by a sniffer dog the 14-year-old Lorna was disappointed not to be allowed to stroke. Then it was on to a prison bus for the half-hour ride to Hampton's block.
"We were the only white people on the bus - and the only people to get off at death row," Lorna says. "Even amongst all these people who're going to visit their family who were in prison, we could feel the judgement."
The first visit was non-contact - "like you see in the films" - with a glass partition and phones on either side. In a few weeks, on what will be their third trip, Lorna's family will be allowed three contact visits, all of them together in the same room with Hampton, eating, playing cards, talking.
Hugging is permitted at the beginning and the end.
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Neither Lorna nor her mother has looked up Hampton on the internet. Nor has Lorna read his case file. But, she sighs, the first thing everyone asks is: "What did he do?"
"It's the whole opposite of the point," she says. "The reason we write to Bobby is because he's much more than whatever he's in prison for. Bobby doesn't deny being in that convenience store. Bobby had a gun and he was robbing someone. But I think actually prison's been a really reformative experience.
"I wouldn't have old Bobby come to stay in my house. Old Bobby wouldn't be my friend.
"But new, current Bobby?
"Yeah."
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On 28 April, 1944, four German E-Boats opened fire on a convoy of eight US ships that were making their way to Lyme Bay on England's south coast in a practice exercise ahead of the D-Day landings. | By Claire JonesBBC News
The disaster that followed - in which about 800 servicemen lost their lives - was deemed by US top brass to be so grave they ordered a complete information blackout.
Now a British millionaire is planning to restore one of those German E-Boats in honour of those who lost their lives. Here are the accounts of US survivors and the German captain who opened fire on that fateful night.
US sailor Steve Sadlon - Survivor of LST 507
"Burn to death on the ship or freeze to death in the sea" - that was the conundrum Steve Sadlon, a radio operator on board US Landing Ship Tank LST 507 was faced with when a torpedo struck in the middle of the night.
"All hell was breaking loose," he said. "Fire was everywhere, ammunition as well as gas cans were exploding. We had nothing, we were a floating, burning hull of a ship."
After weighing up his options, he decided to take his chances in the sea.
"We had to escape the burning oil. There were hundreds of guys all around us in the water screaming for help. There were dead bodies floating everywhere. We got past the burning water, the dead, and the people yelling for help.
"I floated by this officer who told me to save my breath and stop screaming for help like the rest of them because nobody is going to help us."
Hypothermia kicked in and he woke up on board another landing craft, LST 515. After leaving hospital two weeks later, he was reassigned to LST 500, a ship that was one of the first on Utah Beach on D-Day.
"In comparison to the E-Boat attack, Utah Beach was a walk in the park," he said.
"I found out years later that the captain of LST 515 disobeyed orders, returned to where the ships went down and picked up survivors. If it wasn't for that captain, John Doyle, I wouldn't be here today."
Steve Sadlon has since passed away.
US Officer Ensign Douglas Harlander - Survivor of LST 531
Just 15 minutes after the assault on LST 507 an attack began on another landing craft - LST 531.
As the craft received its second and fatal blow, it began turning over to its starboard side. It would only stay afloat for another six minutes.
A surviving officer on board, Ensign Douglas Harlander, now 94, had little time to decide what to do.
"We were dead in the water," he said. "We were completely loaded with trucks, vehicles, tanks, and all of them were loaded with fuel to the hilt and it was an immediate mass of fire.
"I realised saving the ship was futile so I turned my attention to trying to save the men.
"The ship was sinking and fast turning over and I was the last man over the port side.
"As I was walking on the outside of the ship's hull, it sank beneath me. I dove off and got away as fast as I could to avoid being dragged under by the suction of the ship's descent."
But as the night progressed, many of his comrades disappeared below the waves.
"They slipped away as they became unconscious. At about 6am you even wished you could be picked up by the Germans because the men were falling off like flies," he said.
The survivors were rescued at about 07:00 by the British ship HMS Onslow.
The exercise that killed so many American servicemen was considered by US top brass to be such a disaster that it was immediately covered up.
Any survivor who revealed the truth would face a court martial, they warned.
"In the coming weeks I came to realize that the ordeal I survived was not to be officially acknowledged by the Navy or the United States or British governments," said Mr Harlander.
"The report was classified to prevent damaging the morale of the D-Day soldiers who had to travel through those same waters to reach their destination on 6 June, 1944.
"The sad part of the whole thing is that the surviving family members didn't know for so many years what had happened to those missing.
"They were told only that they were missing in action or killed in action. I estimate that at least two-thirds of those on board never made it off the ship and today their remains rest at the bottom of the English Channel."
Mr Harlander was the sole surviving officer of LST 531. Following Exercise Tiger, he became a dentist and still lives in Frederic, Wisconsin.
Kapitan zur Zee Gunther Rabe - the German captain
Forty years after the attack, in a letter dated 19 December 1983, the German commander of E-Boat S-130 gave his account of what happened to US Navy Doctor Eugene Eckstam.
Kapitan Gunther Rabe said the "chance discovery" of the US training mission came during a routine journey from his base in Cherbourg, France, to the Lyme Bay area.
"We knew that during April 1944 there was constant traffic on the route off the south coast of Great Britain as we met with increasing resistance from a rapidly growing number of gun-boats, launches and other escorts," he wrote.
"After a while, we happened to get visual contact with a convoy of LSTs, lined up in a rather long line and from our position we did not see any escorts.
"The shadows were clearly to be seen in a south-easterly direction. We approached in good distance at comparatively high speed in order to come in a favourable position for torpedo attack.
"My boat fired two torpedoes at about 2.05am. As there were many more ships in the area we could not attempt to close in to look for survivors.
"For a man who went through the longer part of his life in the meantime, today these events look very much different.
"I think we, in our generation, have to do everything possible to prevent that governments repeat the same mistakes again."
The restoration
The ship that claimed the American lives is currently to be found in a shed in a Cornish seaside village.
Entrepreneur Kevin Wheatcroft bought the craft - the last surviving German schnellboot S-130 - for £1 in 2009 and plans to restore it back to its 1943 configuration and performance.
He said the boat's restoration was "an acknowledgement of its sinister past and an apology for what it did".
"The first mission, under my control, will be back to Lyme Bay and we will torpedo the same number of poppies out of the boat as the amount of people who died there," he said.
Kevin Wheatcroft
The S-130 boat had a range of up to 700 miles and a crew of 35 and was used as a fast-attack craft for mine-laying.
After the war, the vessel was returned to the German navy and used to train sailors in underwater weaponry before being decommissioned in 1991.
It later served as a houseboat before being brought to Britain where it fell into disrepair.
Mr Wheatcroft said he believed it would cost £5m to restore the boat and he expected the project to take up to five years.
In order to restore the ship, Mr Wheatcroft acquired the salvage rights on three sunken schnellboots off the Danish coast to use for parts.
Once it is finished, the vessel will become a floating museum and visitor attraction.
He said he would like to one day see the boat on the River Thames as a constant reminder of the bloodshed of World War Two.
"It's an icon of the sea, a killing machine of an era no-one will ever forget. I never lose sight I'm dealing with a killing machine.
"I've had 90-year-old veterans crying, touching and patting the boat - it's one of the most emotional things I've ever seen.
"The last time they saw it they were fighting for their life, it's what was responsible for their friends' deaths.
"If this thing could talk it could tell a million stories."
Laurie Bolton - Host of Exercise Tiger reunion tours
Since 2003, there have been a number of reunions of Exercise Tiger veterans arranged by the niece of Sgt Louis Archer Bolton, who was killed on board one of the landing craft.
She said she knew very little about his death until she watched a documentary about World War Two and began looking into the background to the disaster.
"I contacted one of the veterans who survived on board LST 531 and he told me what happened on that night," said Ms Bolton, from Kingsburg, California.
She discovered her uncle was in the tank deck on board that craft when it took a direct hit by two torpedoes. His body was never recovered.
"In 2003, I began hosting reunions, brought over some veterans and family members for the 60th Anniversary in 2004, the 65th anniversary in 2009, and a final journey with veterans for the 70th anniversary year," she said.
"It has been very rewarding to meet these men and their families and has helped with the feelings of loss in losing an uncle I never knew."
One of the most emotional aspects of each reunion has been visits to the hulk of the S-130 kept by Mr Wheatcroft.
John Casner, 88, from Summerville, South Carolina, returned to Slapton Sands, the beach of Lyme Bay, and the E-Boat restoration site in 2013.
"I was glad to come back to Slapton Sands to pay tribute at the tank memorial and participate in the commemoration," he said.
"That was when I became emotional. I was very surprised at how big the the E-Boat was, it seems like I should have seen it at the time of the attack."
Nathan Resnick, now aged 90, was onboard LST 511 during the attack.
He had not told his wife about the exercise for 50 years because it was "such a painful memory" but visited Slapton Sands and the E-Boat in 2009.
"The E-Boat was an eye-opener because I never thought of it as so big and powerful," he said.
"It was a mammoth, lethal weapon. I think it's good the German E-Boat is being restored because it will be a valuable piece of history for future generations."
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It looks like a thankless task trying to build a new force in UK politics. It is, says English Democrats chairman Robin Tilbrook, but he still thinks it's worth the bother. | By Alex HuntPolitics editor, BBC News Online
For more than a decade his party has campaigned for English devolution without ever coming close to making a breakthrough at Westminster.
That's dozens of annual conferences and election meetings, thousands of miles of pavement pounded, gallons of tea (or something stronger) drunk, 35 million leaflets distributed and hundreds of letters written.
And what has been the result? At the last general election the English Democrats got 64,826 votes, 0.2% of the total. That could be seen as disappointing, but on the other hand it was the best performing party without an MP or Euro MP.
What about the European elections in May? The party was again "best of the rest", with 126,024 votes. The only downside was that it had almost twice as many votes five years earlier. Like many of the smaller parties it saw votes being Hoovered up by the UK Independence Party.
So, I ask father-of-three Tilbrook, after more than 12 years is it worth the effort?
"Yes," he replies, "Obviously we haven't been crowned with successes yet, but I think we have moved the debate in the direction that we are interested in."
In British politics, as the Electoral Commission's mammoth list of registered political parties shows, small parties come and not long afterwards small parties tend to go.
English Democrats over the years
2005: The BBC went campaigning with Garry Bushell
2007: Tony Blair opposed an English parliament - they disagreed
2008: A dragon being slayed featured at their London mayoral launch
2009: After the Euro elections they hoped for a "break through"
2009: English Democrat elected mayor of Doncaster
2010: Launching the party's General Election campaign
2011: Campaign launched for more mayors
2013: Doncaster mayor quits party 'over BNP'
2013: Tilbrook says one in 10 English Democrats 'are ex-BNP'
2014: English Democrat goal is English independence
So how come the English Democrats have stuck around?
Tilbrook, 56, says: "The thing is we have a coherent strand of thought. It hasn't reached that point where it's overwhelmingly successful of course, but at the same time, even with very little coverage and a lot of emphasis on UKIP we still got 126,000 votes in the recent European elections."
He also points out that it is still a young party - noting that it took the Scottish National Party more than eight decades to get to the point of an independence referendum.
It is also true to say that their core policy - English independence - could be about to come a huge leap closer, if Scotland votes for independence in its September 2014.
That prospect has led the English Democrats to register with Electoral Commission as an active participant in campaigning in Scotland.
How welcome they are in Scotland is another matter. Tilbrook says they have a "constructive relationship" with the SNP, but they have yet to decide what to do "because we are conscious that we don't want to do anything which treads on the Yes campaign's toes".
He says that in England the debate tends to be about whether people feel English or British, but the Scottish referendum debate is less about whether people feel Scottish or British and more (on both sides he says) "in terms of being hostile to England and Englishness".
"We've had some noises of welcome and we've had one or two people saying 'you're English, keep your noses out of Scottish affairs'."
He says that it is not just people who think "like us that the United Kingdom is past its sell-by date" who should care about the Scottish referendum in England, and he produces a leaflet outlining the constitutional history of the UK and what it says are the consequences of Scottish independence.
It all looks a bit high-brow, and Tilbrook, a former politics teacher, is happy to talk at length on the subject.
Focus on the Scottish Referendum
* A referendum on whether Scotland should become independent is to take place on 18 September, 2014
* People resident in Scotland will be able to take part in the vote, answering the "yes/no" question: "Should Scotland be an independent country?"
What's going on it Scotland?
Why don't the English want more power?
Could areas of England leave the UK?
But we get back to the question of whether or not it is possible for a small, new party to break through in the British political system.
The former Conservative council candidate - who once did an internship for Tory MP Tim Yeo in Parliament - says they have just had to "keep at it" despite a system "designed to try and prevent small parties from standing if at all possible".
"You meet total obstructionism from much of the bureaucracy," he says.
"The way the system operates is pretty unfair, quite frankly. It gives the superficial appearance of being fair, but when you come down to it there are so many obstructions, hassles and niggles and costs - it is very much designed to keep out other parties, he says, "and I think it is getting worse".
"They pay lip service to democracy, but it is not very democratic," he says.
In politics, money talks - the English Democrats reckon they spent about £30,000 on their recent EU elections campaign, compared with the millions spent by some of the bigger parties. So, and this might be perhaps clutching at straws, it is possible to claim they got more votes per pound spent than their rivals.
"We were only able to make two million leaflets - there's twenty five million leaflets which could have been distributed but that would have cost £125,000," and that could not have been done "without selling up houses and so on and families getting extremely upset".
So, why England and why go into politics?
Tilbrook says he did not become interested in politics until he went to university, after a six month stint in the army. Educated at Wellington College alongside the recent Lords leader Lord Strathclyde, he says his politics were conventionally Conservative.
Afterwards he spent some years as a politics teacher - his pupils at Stowe included Guardian journalist and environmental campaigner George Monbiot, he says - before becoming a solicitor with his own firm.
He also did some canvassing and stood for the Conservatives in council elections in Essex but the key moment came after the Scottish and Welsh devolution referendums in 1998. He started to question why the Conservatives were not proposing to do something for England, adding: "I am a patriot and that's what got me involved."
Tilbrook says he put as much effort into lobbying within the party as he could - including with his local MP, Eric Pickles, but "what I basically got overall was that the Conservatives were hostile to saying anything about England - basically I reached a point where I thought I had to do something about it or shut up".
He ruled out joining the UK Independence Party - then political minnows - because, as their name suggests, they were all about the UK rather than England.
Starting a new party involved arranging a series of meetings, putting up a website and registering the party with the Electoral Commission and recruiting members.
Anyone who's ever been involved in choosing the name for a band or a pub quiz team can probably sympathise with the lengthy process of settling on a name for the new English nationalist party.
The first name was a conscious echo of the SNP - The English National Party. But that was ditched when people thought they were "something to do with the British National Party". The initials ENP didn't work either, he says, because people heard it as the BNP.
"We were sufficiently savvy," he says, to realise the name was going to be vital. So their next attempt was the English Democratic Party. But that was rejected by the Electoral Commission because there was already a Democratic Party registered. So they settled instead on what he describes as the slightly less grammatical English Democrats.
Unduly cynical?
They set off on their long journey with about 100 members (he says they have about 3,500 now). At the time the idea was to bring "a sharp edge to the campaign for an English parliament".
"It seemed to me quite unlikely that our politicians would react to a serious, slightly intellectual but well thought-out series of arguments about the logical case.
"The only thing that was probably going to make a difference to them was anything which was going to impact on their careers.
"It may be unduly cynical but, taken in the main, it is what is needed. And we've seen that with the reaction to UKIP. No-one would be considering an EU referendum if it wasn't for UKIP making some progress.
"We thought that by standing in elections we would get a certain amount of publicity and that would help to spread the message to people."
He says that over the years they have become a fully-fledged political party and last year their key goal changed from getting an English Parliament, to getting independence for England.
"The way political decisions are made, everybody who is around the table gets a bit of the cake and the amount of cake that they get depends on their level of leverage. They don't actually focus on the problem they are there to address.
"And England isn't represented - that's why we get treated unfairly."
The party's most notable election success was Peter Davies being elected mayor of Doncaster in 2009 - but that ended with him quitting the party in February last year over claims of an influx of members joining from the British National Party.
Tilbrook does not dispute gaining members from the BNP - up to one in ten could be ex-BNP, he has said - but says that all parties have been joined by people who have left the BNP during its "meltdown".
'Times have changed'
"They are mainly people who are actually interested in the sort of things we are saying, so I feel they are converts to the cause. We are a small party... if we started off on the basis we were going to be difficult to everyone who came to us, without giving them a chance to show they are a genuine convert to what we are trying to achieve then we couldn't hope to make any progress."
The English Democrats say they want to put an end to mass immigration by using a points-based system along the lines of those in Canada and Australia. Tilbrook says that, as a result of media reporting of racist comments, UKIP was widely believed to have a similar policy at the European elections, but was, he says, actually "in favour of mass immigration" from outside the EU.
When people become aware of this "quite a lot of their support evaporates", he says.
As the son of a military man, born in Malaya during the days of the British Empire, he admits to not really seeing a difference between being English or British for many years. But times have changed - the census shows that a growing proportion of people see themselves as English now, he says.
"We are 20 years behind Scotland and Wales where they moved from people saying they were British. In England, until relatively recently people have tended to say they were British. I think the English have now woken up to this."
There is the question of how to define English. Tilbrook says that from a democratic point of view the people of England are people who are settled in England.
"We have quite deliberately not been trying to make any racial point, but at the same time we are not going to deny that some people do consider themselves to be, and do have, a family history of being ethnically English as well.
"There are a number of different classifications. Somebody who is of West Indian origin - if you asked them, I don't think they would claim they were ethnically English, but that doesn't stop them saying or thinking of themselves in national identity terms as English.
"The thing we are saying about national identity is it's in your heart, and your loyalty to that community."
As to being a Little Englander? "I'm quite happy with that term. It originally came from those who did not want to get involved in the Boer War and wanted to mind their own business - I think we ought to be minding our own business."
That sounds a bit at odds with the effort taken to set up a party. So back to the original question. Has it been worth it?
"Yes. There is a need to have a political party to force the hand of the established politicians - we'll go on," he says.
And what advice would he give someone thinking of setting up their own political party? "Don't!" he laughs.
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Indian officials in charge of a controversial biometric identity scheme have filed a police complaint after a report that citizens' personal details were being sold for as little as 500 rupees ($7.8;£5.8) online. | The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) wants a probe into "unauthorised access" to its database.
But it said biometric data was safe.
The Tribune newspaper claimed that it bought user details via an "agent" advertising his services on WhatsApp.
The report is the latest revelation against the UIDAI biometric system known as Aadhaar, which means foundation.
It said that once it paid the "agent", its reporters were given a username and password that allowed them to enter any Aadhaar number into the UIDAI website and get access to user information including name, address, photo, phone number and email address.
The report added that payment of a further 300 rupees provided "software" that allowed them to print out any Aadhaar card for which they had the number.
The UIDAI says the breach seems to be a misuse of a grievance redressal scheme that allowed Aadhaar agents to rectify issues like a change in address and wrong spelling of a person's name.
However, it added that the scheme did not grant access to people's biometric details.
The revelations in the report made headlines in India, with many on social media expressing concern over the security of their personal data.
Aadhaar started out as a voluntary programme to help tackle benefit fraud, but recently it has been made mandatory for access to welfare schemes.
Critics have repeatedly warned that the scheme puts personal information at risk" and have criticised government efforts to compulsorily link it to bank accounts and mobile phone numbers.
The government has always insisted that the biometric data is "safe and secure in encrypted form", and anybody found guilty of leaking data can be jailed and fined.
A case challenging its mandatory linking to schemes and bank accounts is pending before the country's Supreme Court.
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Pandemic permitting, it's a week of workaday legislating at Westminster, with the two main flashpoints the Labour debate on the cladding crisis in the Commons on Monday, and the Lords going another round in their battle to get a genocide amendment added to the Trade Bill. The Lords hope that, a week later, rebel MPs will be able to force it through. | Mark D'ArcyParliamentary correspondent
Some of the most interesting action will be in committee, with the Health Committee quizzing the under-fire Test and Trace boss, Dido Harding. The Treasury Committee's budget preview session may provide a glimpse of the economic storm clouds gathering over the horizon.
Meanwhile, Westminster's year of Covid is drawing to a close; the parliamentary year that began with Boris Johnson's electoral triumph in December 2019 now looks set to end in April, with Parliament suspended or prorogued until after the major set of devolved and local elections due on May 6th.
The signal for this was, admittedly, rather oblique. Ministers proposed a motion to allow the Environment Bill to be carried over to the next parliamentary session, confirming that they did not believe they could get it through its remaining parliamentary stages before they ended the current one. Taking into account assorted holidays, that suggested they intend to prorogue in April.
This matters because a new session means a State Opening, a new programme of legislation and a moment to draw a line (ministers hope) under the miseries of the last year, and offer a vision of sunlit post-Covid uplands to come. It could well be accompanied by a cabinet reshuffle, to allow a shiny new team of ministers to deliver the new agenda.
Of course the traditional pageantry of State Opening might have to be scaled down somewhat, and even when restrictions are relaxed, it's hard to imagine the authorities will allow the kind of crowding normally seen. It might even be semi-virtual ("You Majesty needs to unmute….") but the government will doubtless want it to be a signal of a return to normal service.
Here's my rundown of the week ahead. Remember, this is based on the published agenda at the time of writing - ministerial statements, urgent questions and last minute changes can be added with minimal notice.
Monday 1 February
The Commons opens (14:30) with an hour of Defence Questions - and there's normally then an urgent question or ministerial statement or two (unusually, last Monday there were none).
The main debates are on two Labour Opposition Day motions - first on the cladding crisis, where Labour will doubtless highlight the amendments they have proposed to the Fire Safety Bill to protect leaseholders whose safety and finances are threatened by flammable cladding on the buildings in which they live. It's not yet clear when the Bill will come back before MPs.
Then, a debate on border security. Will the government stick to its tactic of whipping its MPs to abstain? That could be awkward for many on the cladding crisis.
On the committee corridor Public Accounts (14:30) looks at digital services at the border with Matthew Rycroft, the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office and senior officials.
Treasury (15:30) takes evidence on the way London Capital & Finance PLC was regulated. The "mini-bond" company collapsed in January 2019 owing £236m. The main witness will be Dame Elizabeth Gloster, the independent investigator into the Financial Conduct Authority's regulation of London Capital & Finance.
The Procedure Committee inquiry into the working of the Commons under coronavirus restrictions will culminate in a session with the Leader of the House, Jacob Rees-Mogg. Given the tensions over the Leader's approach to operating the Commons during the pandemic, this could be fun.
In the Lords (13:00) proceedings open with the Introduction of two new Conservative peers, the veteran think-tanker, Lord Godson, Director of Policy Exchange and a former chief leader writer for the Daily Telegraph. He's followed into the chamber by Lord Hannan of Kingsclere, the former Conservative MEP and Vote Leave founder Daniel Hannan, who had a prominent role in the referendum campaign.
Questions to ministers range across Iraqi interpreters working with foreign militaries targeted by militia groups and protections for interpreters working with UK Armed Forces, the World Health Organization's International Year of Health and Care Workers in 2021, the Dunlop Review into UK government union capability and the impact of the end of the Brexit transition period on the UK logistics industry.
Then, peers continue their detailed examination of the Domestic Abuse Bill with day 3 of committee stage.
Tuesday 2 February
The Commons begins (11:30) with an hour of Justice Questions. Former Conservative minister Paul Maynard has a Ten Minute Rule Bill on local welfare assistance, requiring councils to publish details of how they use the funding provided to help individuals and families in difficulty.
The main legislative action is second reading of the Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill, which started its parliamentary life in the Lords. This is a pretty uncontroversial measure aimed at improving the management of Britain's congested skies. It also contains provisions brought in after rogue drone activity forced the closure of Gatwick Airport in 2018.
On the committee corridor, Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs (09:30) has an interesting looking session on the Evolution of Devolution: English Devolution, starting with some powerful local leaders including Manchester Cllr Sir Richard Leese, followed by Lord Heseltine, who was a key player in the Cameron era "City Deals" which saw negotiated agreements to devolve powers and funds to local councils, and the Labour former cabinet minister John Denham, who now leads the Centre for English Identity and Politics.
Health and Social Care (09:30) conclude their inquiry into the safety of maternity services in England with NHS England maternity leaders, alongside Patient Safety Minister Nadine Dorries. The Committee will explore key themes from the evidence so far including the blame culture and the difficulty for staff in speaking out when mistakes happen.
MPs on the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee (10:00) hear from Notting Hill Carnival on the importance of festivals to local communities in its future of UK music festivals inquiry, with a session focused on the contribution festivals make to local economies. The session will cover the impact of cancellations on local residents, volunteers and audiences.
In the Lords a further two new peers are introduced; Sir Richard Benyon, the former Conservative MP and wildlife minister, and the former Conservative Party Treasurer Sir Peter Cruddas. His appointment was controversial because the government rejected advice from the Lords Appointments Commission that he should be refused a peerage.
Question time ranges across assessing online learning for school pupils, financial support for farmers after Brexit and the impact of Covid-19 on youth unemployment.
Then, peers debate some important pandemic regulations - the Public Health (Coronavirus) (Protection from Eviction) (England) Regulations 2021 - motion to approve. There's also a motion to regret from the Labour Peer, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede.
The main legislative action will be consideration of two sets of Commons amendments removing changes peers have made to two bills. First up is the Medicines and Medical Devices Bill, where peers had made changes to limit the powers given to ministers.
But the big event is the consideration of Commons amendments to the Trade Bill - where Peers look likely to double down on the genocide amendment proposed by the independent peer, Lord Alton. This was passed by a hefty majority in the Lords, and then narrowly rejected in the Commons, after a Conservative backbench revolt cut the government majority to 11.
The original Alton amendment created a workable legal mechanism to declare that a state is committing genocide, by giving the High Court the right to rule on the issue. This is important because such cases can only be referred to the International Criminal Court, which is supposed to decide these matters, by the UN Security Council - so referrals can be vetoed by the permanent members.
Under the original Alton amendment, a decision by the High Court would automatically cancel any trade deals between the UK and a country ruled to be committing genocide. That led to concerns that the courts would be empowered to strike down treaties negotiated by the government, so a compromise was proposed by the Conservative ex-minister, Nusrat Ghani, which would instead require a minister to come to the Commons and respond to a genocide ruling, so any final decision on trade agreements would be in parliament, not the courts.
This wasn't put to the vote when the Commons rejected the Alton amendment, but peers may well now decide to fire back a warmed-over version of the Ghani amendment, to see whether that might find favour with MPs. It might. The government had a narrow squeak in the previous round of ping-pong, and might be minded to offer some kind of compromise of its own.
But if the law is changed to allow the High Court to make this kind of determination, expect quite a number of groups to bring cases against quite a number of states, accusing them of genocide.
Wednesday 3 May
The Commons day begins (11:30) with half an hour of Wales Questions, followed at noon by Prime Minister's Question Time.
Former Cabinet Minister Theresa Villiers has a Ten Minute Rule Bill on improving air quality.
Then MPs will rattle through a series of orders and regulations - like the snappily-titled Value Added Tax (Miscellaneous Amendments to Acts of Parliament) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, and the equally exciting-sounding Value Added Tax (Miscellaneous Amendments to the Value Added Tax Act 1994 and Revocation) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 (S.I., 2020, No. 1544). And then there's The Travellers' Allowances and Miscellaneous Provisions (EU Exit) Regulations 2020.
Three hours have been set aside to debate 20 orders renewing, post-Brexit, international sanctions imposed through the EU. These cover, among others, Burundi, Guinea, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nicaragua, cyber sanctions and unauthorised drilling in the eastern Mediterranean.
With Westminster Hall out of commission for the time being, the Petitions Committee has some rare time in the House of Commons, with a debate on two petitions about grooming gangs.
These are e-petitions 300239, which calls on the government to release the Home Office's Grooming Gang Review in full. The petition, which attracted more than 131,000 signatures, complains ministers are refusing to release official research on the characteristics of grooming gangs. The government says it intends to publish a paper on group-based child sexual exploitation this year, which will set out key findings and their implications for policy.
That will be debated alongside e-petition 327566, which calls for a public inquiry into grooming gangs. It attracted more than 29,000 signatures. It is worth remembering that these debates will not result in a resolution requiring the government to do anything - they're a chance to air the issue and get a response from a minister.
The big event on the committee corridor is the Science and Technology Committee evidence session (09:30) on the governance, operation and performance of NHS Test and Trace, starring Baroness Dido Harding, the Executive Chair of Test and Trace.
Elsewhere the Treasury Committee (14:30) previews the 2021 Budget, with a panel of experts headed by Paul Johnson, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Work and Pensions (09:30) questions Secretary of State Thérèse Coffey on her department's response to the pandemic, Transport (09:30) discusses pandemic challenges with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, and Home Affairs (10:00) holds an evidence session on the impact of the pandemic on domestic violence.
In the Lords (12:00) peers quiz ministers on support for the music sector with touring and other work in Europe, the case for a dedicated minister for the hospitality sector and annual reporting to parliament on the state of national preparedness for top-tier risks in the National Risk Register.
And then they resume detailed scrutiny of the Domestic Abuse Bill with the fourth day of committee stage consideration.
Thursday 4 February
The Commons opens (09:30) with forty minutes of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Questions, followed by a mini question time for the Attorney General and Business Questions to the Leader of the Commons.
The main debates are on two subjects selected by the Backbench Business Committee - there's a general debate on the future of the UK Space Industry and then a debate on the Towns Fund - the £3.6 billion government fund for improvements and investments in towns to drive economic growth. The Public Accounts Committee has warned that a "lack of transparency" over how money has been awarded could "fuel accusations of political bias".
The day's committee action sees Public Accounts (10:00) hold one of its regular groundhog day sessions, returning to the wearily familiar quagmire of the Defence Equipment Plan 2020-2030, with top officials from the Ministry of Defence.
In the Lords (12:00) ministers are questioned on the possibility of introducing flexi-season tickets and other marketing initiatives to encourage rail travel as Covid-19 restrictions are lifted. They'll also consider bringing back physical proceedings in the House of Lords once Covid-19 restrictions come to an end.
Then comes the Second Reading debate on the National Security and Investment Bill, which aims to give the government new powers to block takeovers of British companies, if the result might be the loss of critical intellectual property, or manufacturing capability, or even a threat to national security.
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BBC journalists Shaimaa Khalil and Rupa Jha hosted the inaugural 100 Women event in October 2013. On the eve of the second event, they look back at the past year and pick out their highlights from this year's coverage.
| Shaimaa Khalil, Islamabad correspondent, BBC News
"Misha, why did you take off your hijab?" Misha is the nickname my five-year-old niece Danya has chosen for me.
The hijab she is referring to is the headscarf I no longer wear. She asked the question on the day I was visiting my mum and my sister and making my first appearance to family without the hijab.
How do you explain an important decision like that to a child without getting into complicated discussions about religion, tradition and social pressures?
"Choice, Doodi," I finally said. "Remember when your mum said you can choose what you wear to go out? You can choose your friends. I chose to not wear the hijab any more."
The discussion went on for a while and I realised I was no longer talking to my niece about how I looked, but about something much more profound.
Last year's 100 Women season ended with Messages to my granddaughter, a video montage filmed on the day of the BBC's event. There were many inspiring messages Mine would be what I told my niece that day - the importance of choice.
'Just like her'
One hundred remarkable women from around the world came together in 2013 under one roof and started many discussions, some of which are still ongoing.
I'm now based in Pakistan as the BBC's correspondent. A few weeks ago I was at a girl's school when Malala Yousafzai, the education activist who was shot by the Taliban, won the Nobel Peace Prize.
A 12-year-old student told me: "When I see her on TV, I just want to be like her."
It was a great achievement for the young activist, but for girls education is still a struggle, sometimes one of life and death - not just in Pakistan but in many countries.
And women's bravery carries on well past school age. Some are in the battlefield as we speak.
In Iraqi Kurdistan I met a group of Pershmerga, female fighters who have picked up arms and joined their male colleagues on the frontline to fight Islamic State militants.
Mother-of-two Awas Tawfiq told me: "I am not afraid. I know I will be defending my land. I am very excited to go."
This year 100 Women is returning to the BBC. There are many stories of courageous women we want to share with you: stories from the home, the classroom, and from work or conflict zones.
I can't wait for the discussions to start.
Rupa Jha, BBC Hindi, Delhi
When I heard the news in India on the morning of 27 May, I thought - so what is new? How many more stories am I going to hear of violence against women?
This time, two young teenage girls were reportedly brutally gang-raped and then hanged in Uttar Pradesh as they wandered around in the dark because there were no toilets in their village.
It disturbed me, but it disturbed me more because the story seemed so normal, so routine - something I had become completely used to.
But then came the video, and the image of two tiny bodies wearing bright orange and green traditional clothes, dangling from the branches of a big, peaceful tree.
'Forced outside'
For me, that became the defining image of India this year.
There was outrage - and the world noticed. Reports since have said there was no rape, but the situation reported at the time is a real problem in India.
Around 600 million people in the country are forced to defecate outside. The UN has reported it is common for females in this situation to be harassed, physically assaulted and raped.
Following this case, new Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced every school should have separate toilets for girls and that building toilets should take priority over building temples.
I just hope this does not end up being another case of political rhetoric. I look forward to India truly taking such a basic issue seriously and spending proper money on it.
Meanwhile, for this year's 100 Women, I am really excited about one project that focuses on another basic necessity.
We will be seeing and hearing about the lives of women in conflict zones through their struggle to provide meals for the family.
It will symbolise the way women struggle to keep the family intact and functioning, even under the most extreme conditions and bring a human face to a story that can otherwise be rather one-dimensional.
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As Scotland's coronavirus death toll passes 5,000 and continues to rise, we are sharing the stories of some of those who have lost their lives to Covid-19.
If you would like to share the story of a loved one lost to the virus, please contact us via the form at the bottom of this page, or here . | By Nichola RutherfordBBC Scotland News
Andrew Slorance
Andrew Slorance was a civil servant in charge of the Scottish government's planning and response to crisis situations - including the coronavirus pandemic.
He grew up in Hawick and became a journalist before joining the Scotland Office. He led the new Scottish Parliament's media team when it opened in 1999, then became the official spokesman for First Minister Alex Salmond.
A father-of-five, he was diagnosed with Mantle Cell Lymphoma in 2015. He documented his experience of the rare cancer - including six rounds of chemotherapy - in a blog he called "The fight of my life".
He relapsed in 2019 and a stem cell transplant scheduled for Easter 2020 was delayed by Covid. While shielding at home in Edinburgh, he spent the first part of the pandemic working on the government's response from a spare room.
Mr Slorance was finally admitted to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow for his stem cell transplant in October. He tested positive for Covid shortly after that and died on 5 December, aged 49.
Tributes from across the political spectrum, including First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, have been paid to Mr Slorance. His wife, Louise, told BBC Scotland: "He was a proud family man who was the life and soul of any party, loving and loyal."
Andrew Kettrick
Andrew, or "Andra", Kettrick was a porter at Stirling Royal Infirmary for 28 years.
He would take patients out on "mystery tours" in a "big blue hospital ambulance bus" his son, also Andrew, told BBC Scotland.
"The old people loved my dad as he would often stop and buy them all fish and chips or ice cream - all this was paid for out of his pocket," he said.
Mr Kettrick's work was recognised by hospital bosses and they put him forward for a British Empire Medal which he received in 1991.
The father-of-three, from Cowie, Stirling, died at Caledonia Court care home in Larbert on 17 November. He was 86.
Tom Maley
Tom Maley never wanted for anything, but after enduring months of Covid restrictions this year the 73-year-old retired joiner set his heart on a big Christmas tree.
It had been a tough year for the normally sociable pensioner who was renowned for his jokes (good and bad) and was devoted to his wife of 53 years, Georgina, and their family.
They usually decorate a small table-top tree for the festive season, but this year Mr Maley ordered a 5ft showstopper illuminated with multi-coloured stars to fill the window of their Grangemouth home.
The great-grandfather will never get to see the tree in its full glory. He died at Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Larbert on 12 November, shortly after falling ill with Covid-19.
His granddaughter Claire Taylor told BBC Scotland, said: "My gran has made sure that the tree he ordered will go up and it will shine bright for Granda."
David Burgess
Davie Burgess was one of 10 siblings born in the Townhead area of Glasgow, but he had a lifelong love of the fresh air and the scenery of the Scottish countryside.
As a young man, he worked as a fireman on the steam train to Crianlarich - a trip which included a two-hour stopover allowing him to explore the hills.
Later in life he loved driving up to Acharacle to visit his son and his family, where he could go for long walks with his grandchildren and their dog, Mac.
Married for 60 years to May, the father-of-three worked for the Milk Marketing Board at Hogganfield Loch. He was a hard worker who even after he "retired" took on three jobs, including running a caravan park.
His family described him as a "gentleman" and a "man of pride". He died on 25 November, aged 86.
Tracey Donnelly
Tracey Donnelly was born and brought up in Edinburgh but she moved to the north-east of England after meeting her husband, George.
"I loved her the first time I saw her, and I always will," he said. "She was so loving and kind - just an extra-special person in every way."
Tracey had four children, three step-children and eight grandchildren, and she worked as a support worker for the North East Autism Society.
Care manager Michael Ross, said: "She loved her family, and she loved the service-users in her care. This tragic news has ripped the heart out of the team and her colleagues are absolutely devastated."
She died at Sunderland General Hospital in mid-November after testing positive for coronavirus. She was 53.
Third autism charity worker dies with Covid-19
Jim Grant
Jim Grant was originally from Bo'ness but he spent most of his life in Grangemouth where he brought up two daughters, Margaret and Senga, with his wife Mary.
He worked as a labourer at BP before taking early retirement when he was 60.
The 88-year-old great-grandfather spent his last months at the Caledonian Court care home in Larbert before his death on 8 November. He was one of 20 residents who died in the space of a month after testing positive for Covid-19.
His granddaughter, Nicole Ritchie, said he was a gentleman who always had a huge smile on his face, and his death had had a huge impact on the family.
She told BBC Scotland "As a family, we would like to thank Caledonian Court from the bottom of our hearts. They looked after my grandad for the last 11 months of his life and they couldn't have done a better job, he was so happy and very well looked after."
Care home suffers 20 Covid deaths in a month
Frances Brown
Frances Brown spent lockdown shielding in her room in the Glasgow care home where she had lived for almost 10 years.
After months of keeping in touch via video calls, the 76-year-old was finally able to meet up with her sister, Anne Turnbull, in August.
Ms Turnbull said her sister, who had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and bi-polar disorder, had a special bond with staff at the David Cargill care home.
And she praised the home which remained Covid-free until a staff member tested positive on 4 October. Frances contracted the virus and died in hospital on 13 October.
In a statement, the care home described Frances as "the most incredible woman, a real character, and an absolute pleasure to know and care for".
'An absolute pleasure to have known and cared for'
George Cairns
Former ambulance technician George Cairns was a resident at LittleInch Care Home in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire.
His family said the move from his Renfrew flat to the home in January had reinvigorated him and brought out his mischievous sense of humour.
During the lockdown period Mr Cairns, who was bipolar, even joked about topping up his tan in the garden.
The 71-year-old tested positive for Covid-19 on 8 May despite displaying no symptoms, but his condition deteriorated and he died in the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley nine days later.
His daughter, Gillian, paid tribute to his caring nature, saying: "Even if you only met him once he would tell you a story, a terrible joke or offer a supportive ear when you needed it the most."
John Morrison Brown
Retired farmer Jock Brown was a keen ice hockey player in his youth, and he represented Scotland for six years in the 1950s.
He told his family that he was selected for the team because he was the only Scotsman who played as goal tender (goalkeeper) at the time. They insist this is not true.
Married to Mary for 48 years, they had two children and four grandchildren.
He farmed near Falkirk - on land next to what is now home to The Kelpies - until his retirement in the 1980s.
Mr Brown's family said he was a quiet man with a great sense of humour. He had dementia and he died with Covid-19 at Burnbrae care home in Falkirk on 14 May. He was 89.
Ina Beaton
Ina Beaton was a well-known figure on the Isle of Skye and she lived in her own home in Balmaqueen until two years ago.
She died on 11 May aged 103, the seventh resident of Home Farm care home in Portree to die after contracting Covid-19.
Ina lived through the Great War and the 1919 Spanish Flu outbreak. During World War Two she moved to Glasgow to work as a conductress on the trams and survived the Clydebank blitz.
Her grandson, Ailean Beaton, said his loss was shared across the island, especially the north end "where she was mum, granny, friend to more than just the Beatons.
"Her crystal memory and broad experience of life in Skye over several generations meant that she contributed to our shared knowledge of the place we're from, its language and culture," he added.
John Angus Gordon
John Angus Gordon, 83, spent the last few years of his life at the Home Farm care home in Portree on Skye.
He had dementia and the sense of touch reassured him - he liked to shake a hand or hold the hand of the person he was talking to.
Unable to visit the home, his family spoke to him for the last time in a video-call a few hours before he died on 5 May.
As he listened to their voices, he reached out to the hand of the carer sitting with him, dressed in full personal protective equipment.
"We found it quite poignant that my dad put out his hand to hers and she was wearing these blue protective gloves," said his son, John.
Son's grief at not being at father's bedside
Paul McCaffrey
Paul McCaffrey was an "amazing dad" of two children and two step-children who was always busy, according to his partner Caroline McNultry.
"He was always helping someone, whether he was in someone's house helping them out or just on-the-go in work all the time," she said.
The healthy 49-year-old from Glasgow fell ill after returning home from work at a care home where he was a highly-regarded maintenance manager.
Rather than the traditional coronavirus symptoms, he complained of a headache and aching limbs but he was eventually admitted to hospital in Glasgow where he tested positive for Covid-19.
He was transferred to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary where he could be hooked up to an ECMO machine, which performs the tasks of the lungs. After three weeks, he died on 4 May.
Robert Black
Robert Black was a paramedic but he was also a talented musician and part of the team behind Argyll FM.
Paying tribute to him on social media, the community radio station said he was "a genuine good guy... everyone was his pal".
The Mull of Kintyre Music Festival described him as "one of our pals" and a "true gent, wonderful musician".
He was a well-known and loved character in Campbeltown, according to Kintyre Community Resilience Group.
The father-of-two died in hospital in Glasgow on 2 May.
Paramedic dies after contracting Covid-19
Karen Hutton
Karen Hutton was a "much-loved" care home nurse who died with coronavirus days after her granddaughter was born.
The 58-year-old was a staff nurse in the dementia unit at Lochleven Care Home in Broughty Ferry, Dundee.
Her only daughter, Lauren, gave birth to a girl just two weeks ago, according to care home operators Thistle Healthcare.
Care home manager Andrew Chalmers-Gall said: "Karen was a tenacious advocate for her residents and she always put their needs first."
She died at home in Carnoustie, Angus, on 28 April after testing positive for Covid-19.
Alastair Sinclair
Alastair Sinclair split his younger years between Reay in Caithness and Lanark before being called up for national service.
But his army career was cut short when he stood on a mine in Korea and lost a foot.
His son told BBC Scotland that he was persuaded to pursue a career in developing artificial limbs as he was being fitted for his own prosthetic.
In retirement, the father-of-three moved with his wife from Newtown Mearns in East Renfrewshire to Wishaw in North Lanarkshire.
He moved into Erskine Park care home in Bishopton shortly before lockdown and died, aged 87, five weeks later on 27 April.
Pearl Paterson
Pearl Paterson grew up in Dennistoun in the east end of Glasgow and was just 10 years old when World War II broke out.
She was a teenager when she joined the Women's Land Army but it wasn't until she was in her 80s that she received official recognition - and a badge - for her efforts from the UK government.
Pearl spent much of her working life employed as a domestic assistant in hotels across Scotland, before settling in Largs, Ayrshire, with her daughter, Fiona.
An animal lover, she had a special Chihuahua called Flash, and she read the People's Friend magazine every week.
On her 91st birthday in March, her family was able wave to her in the conservatory at her care home in Glasgow. She died with Covid-19 on 26 April.
Gordon Reid
Known to all as Gogs, Gordon Reid was a taxi driver from Edinburgh who loved football, played golf, enjoyed a pint and doted on his grandchildren.
He stopped working as a precaution four days before the lockdown came into force but within a week had fallen ill with Covid-19.
His wife, Elaine, and daughter Leemo Goudie, were able to spend some time with him in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary before he died on 24 April, aged 68.
Leemo said: "My dad was a normal guy, no health issues, a non-smoker, fairly fit. It can happen to anyone."
As only a small number of mourners could attend his funeral, people stood and applauded as his hearse passed some of his favourite places in the city.
The coronavirus funerals 'ringing with applause'
David Allan
David Allan joined a local running club in Edinburgh in retirement, after spending 36 years as a science technician at the city's Trinity Academy.
The fit and healthy 64-year-old was training for a half marathon and was planning to take part in some Park Runs in Sydney during a trip to visit his nephew in Australia this year.
When the holiday - including a trip to Fiji - was cancelled due to coronavirus restrictions, David was pragmatic and told his wife, Glenda, they could rearrange for a later date.
It was a shock when he tested positive for Covid-19 after being admitted to hospital with a chest infection. He died on 24 April after more than four weeks in ICU.
Glenda took comfort from the funeral, when neighbours lined the streets, running club friends and former colleagues stood outside the crematorium, and hundreds watched the service online.
Angie Cunningham
Angie Cunningham worked for NHS Borders for more than 30 years before her death.
The 60-year-old from Tweedbank was a much-respected and valued colleague who provided "amazing care" to her patients, the health board said.
As well as being a much-loved mother, sister, granny and great-granny, she was proud to be a nurse, her family added.
She died in the intensive care unit at Borders General Hospital from Covid-19 on 22 April, NHS Borders confirmed.
Nurse dies in hospital after contracting coronavirus
Kirsty Jones
Kirsty Jones, a healthcare support worker with NHS Lanarkshire, was a bubbly, larger than life character, according to her colleagues.
She joined the health board after leaving school at 17 and spent much of her career working with older patients.
But the 41-year-old recently took up a role on the frontline of the pandemic, working at an assessment centre in Airdrie.
Her husband, Nigel, said she devoted her life to caring for others and was a wonderful wife and mother to their two sons.
She died on 20 April.
'Bubbly' healthcare worker dies from coronavirus
Evelyn Brown
Evelyn Brown dedicated her life to her family and her community. Born and bred in Peterhead, she was married to Charles for 50 years and they had two children.
She gave up her job as a bank manager to care for her son Craig after he was born with Down's syndrome in the 1970s.
Her daughter Emma, who was born two years later, said her mother was a selfless woman who loved spoiling her grandchildren with "gifts and love".
Mrs Brown was an adult Guide leader and later a district commissioner, she volunteered with Barnardo's and was an active member of the Church of Scotland.
After her death at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary on 19 April, aged 75, her family raised £3,000 in her name for the hospital's staff garden.
Jane Murphy
Jane Murphy was known as "Mama Murphy" by close friends and colleagues at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
She worked at the city hospital for almost 30 years, first as a cleaner before retraining as a clinical support worker.
The 73-year-old, from Bonnyrigg, was placed on sick leave due to her age when the pandemic broke out.
It's understood the mother-of-two died on 16 April.
Her friend Gerry Taylor said: "She wasn't afraid to tell nurses, doctors or consultants if they were not pulling their weight and they loved her for it."
Edinburgh NHS worker dies with Covid-19
Mary McCann
Mary McCann, 70, was a "strong, wonderful woman" who was dedicated to her family, according to her son, David.
She spent the last three months of her life in an East Kilbride care home, having being diagnosed with cancer last year.
The grandmother was doing well in the Whitehills home, where she was putting on weight and smiling again, David said.
But in early April she developed a urinary tract infection. Her condition deteriorated quickly and within days she was struggling to breathe.
She died in the care home on 16 April with her son, Derek, by her side.
'Mum was doing well, then came this crazy disease'
David Whittick
David Whittick joined the Royal Navy as a pilot on his 18th birthday in the midst of World War Two. Aged 19, as part of 835 Naval Air Squadron, he was flying off aircraft carrier HMS Nairana in the Arctic.
Almost 70 years later he received the Arctic Star for his role in Arctic Convoys - described by Sir Winston Churchill as "the worst journey in the world".
He survived two serious accidents during his long civilian career with Scottish Airways and later British Airways, before dedicating himself to supporting the Riding for the Disabled charity in his retirement.
His work - including helping to raise funds for a purpose-built facility at Summerston in Glasgow - led to him being appointed an OBE by the Queen for his services to charity.
He was married to Joyce for more than 60 years and they had four children. His son, Peter, said he lived a full and active life, even enjoying a trip on a seaplane in January this year. He died at Erskine care home in Bishopton on 14 April, aged 95, after falling ill with coronavirus.
Anne Duncan
Anne Duncan contracted coronavirus in Letham Park care home in Edinburgh.
Her daughter Linda, a lawyer for the BBC, had hoped she would survive the virus as she was from "strong stock".
She last saw her mother in March when she travelled from London to warn her they may not be able to visit her during the pandemic.
The pensioner had been "extremely distressed" afterwards, Ms Duncan said.
She was taken to Edinburgh's Western General Hospital on 12 April and died three days later.
Care home death 'hard to process' for family
Derek Wilkie
Derek Wilkie worked for 27 years as a firefighter before retiring in December 2017.
He had senior roles in Badenoch and Strathspey, and Shetland before becoming station commander for Inverness and Nairn District.
Colleagues said he was a "diligent and capable firefighter... with a larger than life personality".
His wife and two sons - who all work for the NHS - thanked those who cared for Mr Wilkie and urged people to stay at home.
He died at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness on 12 April.
Ex-firefighter dies after contracting Covid-19
Bill Campbell
Former Merchant Navy engineer Bill Campbell died of suspected Covid-19 at Erskine Park care home in Bishopton.
The 86-year-old had dementia and carers initially thought he had a chest infection but he developed a cough and a high temperature.
His condition deteriorated and he died on Easter Sunday, with his daughter, Linda Verlaque - in full protective clothing - by his side.
She praised the work of carers at the home but she said his death was "horrific" as undertakers came to take away his body in full hazmat gear and goggles.
"Instead of having people surrounding me and giving me a hug to say everything was all right, everyone was just standing there and we were watching my dad being taken away, which was traumatic," she said.
Dad's virus death in care home was 'traumatic'
Gerry McHugh
Maths teacher Gerry McHugh was a "true gentleman", able to inspire every single student who walked through his door.
His death would have a "devastating effect" on the Notre Dame High School community in Greenock, head teacher Katie Couttie said.
Unable to attend his funeral due to the lockdown, past and current pupils found a unique way to pay tribute to the 58-year-old.
They wore red and posted images on social media in memory of the lifelong Manchester United fan.
He died on 11 April.
Pupils find safe way to honour much-loved teacher
Helen McMillan
Helen McMillan was 10 days short of her 85th birthday when she died at Almond Court care home in Glasgow's Drumchapel on 9 April.
She spent most of her life in Summerston, where she widely known as "Auntie Ellen" - even to those she wasn't related to.
"Everybody loved my mum," her daughter, Jackie Marlow, told BBC Scotland. "She knew everybody in the community and was the life and soul of the party."
Helen worked in McLellan's rubber factory in Maryhill until she was in her 50s.
A grandmother to Hayley and Josh, she developed dementia in later life but she was still "pretty agile and loving life", her daughter said.
Mary Martin
Mary Martin and her husband, Alex, were keen ballroom dancers.
Although their roots were firmly in Glasgow, they spent seven years in Dunblane where they were tasked with encouraging people on to the dancefloor at the Dunblane Hydro.
Before that, Mrs Martin brought up her family in Mount Vernon, later moving to Bearsden. She had three children, six grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and a great-great grandchild.
Her daughter, Sandra O'Neill, told BBC Scotland she was "just a wonderful person - gentle and kind".
In her later years she had vascular dementia and she lived at the Almond Court care home in Drumchapel. She died there on 8 April, aged 88.
Maureen and Vic Sharp
Vic and Maureen Sharp, who were both 74, had been together since they were teenagers.
Underlying health conditions meant the couple from Oakley in Fife were both asked to shield themselves during lockdown.
But their daughter, Yvonne Sharp, believes the letter came too late and they caught the virus during a weekly trip to the supermarket.
Maureen died in hospital on 8 April and then, Yvonne said, her father "just gave up". He died the following day.
Only six members of the family could attend their funeral but a piper led the funeral cortege through Oakley, where locals lined the streets.
Lockdown causing 'acute grief' for bereaved
Ann Tonner
When Ann Tonner left the Nazareth House orphanage in Glasgow as teenager, she was one of the few women of colour in the city, according to her son, Tony McCaffery.
She was "exotic-looking and quite glamourous" and was soon in demand as a model for local shops and boutiques before working as a celebrated hot-dog girl in an Odeon cinema.
Her first husband tragically died and her second was largely absent, leaving her to bring up six children and - at times - hold down five jobs at once.
She was a "remarkable, formidable woman with a strong work ethic", Mr McCaffery told BBC Scotland, but she was also a "gentle soul with an incredibly child-like sense of humour".
A grandmother and great-grandmother, Mrs Tonner died at a nursing home in Glasgow where she was living with Alzheimer's, on 8 April. She was 84.
Janice Graham
Janice Graham was the first NHS worker to die with coronavirus in Scotland.
The health care support worker and district nurse died at Inverclyde Royal Hospital on 6 April.
One colleague said she had a "bright and engaging personality and razor sharp wit".
Another said the 58-year-old was the "most kind, caring and compassionate HCA I have had the privilege to work with".
Her son, Craig, told STV News he would miss everything about her.
Nurse remembered for her 'kindness and compassion'
Andy Wyness
Newly-wed Andy Wyness developed a high temperature and a cough following a trip to Wales.
When his symptoms worsened the 53-year-old drove himself from his Wishaw home to an appointment at an assessment centre.
That was the last time his wife, Sandra, saw him.
The grandfather, who was a keen bowler, was taken straight to hospital by ambulance. He died on 6 April.
"Even walking out the house that night, although I knew he wasn't well, I never imagined he would never walk back in," Sandra said.
My husband went to the doctor and never came back
Rita Hawthorn
Rita Hawthorn spent the first 35 years of her life in Hamilton, where she was born, grew up and had her own family.
But when her husband, Robert, lost his job as a miner the couple and their three children re-located from the west of Scotland to the far north in 1973.
While Robert took up a new job at the Scottish Instruments Factory in Wick, she worked as a cleaner at a nearby job centre and became secretary of the Highlands and Islands Civil Service Union.
She was sadly widowed at 51 but she was "fiercely independent" and went on to fulfil her dreams of travelling - a trip up the Nile, a safari in South Africa, and solo bus tours to Austria and Paris.
Rita, who was a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, fell ill during the first week of lockdown. She died at Caithness General Hospital on 6 April, aged 82.
Bill Paul
Bill Paul grew up in Giffnock on the south side of Glasgow and did his national service as a radar operator with the RAF in Malta.
In his youth he was an extremely accomplished tennis player and it was through the sport that he met his first wife, Frances, who died in 1984.
With his second wife, Liz, he loved to play golf and travel - hobbies that he continued after her death in 2012.
An extremely active man, he loved to go on cruises with a group of like-minded friends. However his last cruise to the Caribbean was cut short by the pandemic in March.
He returned home to Arran and fell ill with Covid within a week. He died at Lamlash Hospital on 5 April, aged 81.
Mofizul Islam
Mofizul Islam was beginning a new life in Scotland after relocating from Bangladesh when he fell ill with coronavirus.
His family believe the 49-year-old caught the virus on his daily three-hour journeys between their Edinburgh home and his job at a pizza outlet in Midlothian.
He died on 5 April and was buried in the Muslim section of a city cemetery but his wife and children were in isolation and unable to attend.
His death has left the family "completely helpless", according to a family friend as they have no documents, no bank account and they are struggling for money.
"We are very worried about our future because we don't have our father," said Mofizul's 19-year-old son, Azahural. "He was everything for us. And now we are just hopeless."
Family 'helpless' after father's coronavirus death
Catherine Sweeney
Catherine Sweeney was a "wonderful mother, sister and beloved aunty", her family said after her death on 4 April.
Born and raised in Dumbarton, she worked as a home carer for more than 20 years.
Her family said she would be sorely missed after a "lifetime of service" to the community.
And they praised the medics at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley who "heroically" looked after her in her final days.
Carer was 'dedicated to the most vulnerable'
Lord Gordon of Strathblane
Lord Gordon of Strathblane was a former political editor of STV and he founded Radio Clyde.
He died at Glasgow Royal Infirmary on 31 March after contracting coronavirus, Radio Clyde reported. He was 83.
His family paid tribute to his "generosity, his kindness and his enthusiasm for life".
Former First Minister Jack McConnell said Lord Gordon had "an outstanding career in business and public service".
Labour peer dies 'after contracting coronavirus'
Ryan Storrie
Ryan Storrie was in Scotland to celebrate his 40th birthday with a trip to a Rangers match when he fell ill.
The father-of-two was from Ardrossan but lived in Dubai.
When he developed symptoms, the asthmatic isolated in his hotel room and waited for the virus to run its course.
His condition deteriorated but he wouldn't let his wife, Hilary, phone 999 as he was convinced he would recover and didn't want to bother the NHS.
She found him dead in his room on 31 March.
'Ryan was the last person I expected to die'
Mary and Andy Leaman
Mary and Andy Leaman began self-isolating at the end of March after falling ill with flu-like symptoms.
Their son, Andy, told the Glasgow Evening Times the couple were married 50 years and doted on their only granddaughter, nine-year-old Anna.
Mrs Leaman died at home in Castlemilk on 30 March - four days after the death of Anna's maternal grandfather, Dougie Chambers.
The schoolgirl lost her third grandparent almost three weeks later when Mr Leaman died in hospital on 19 April.
Her mother, Lynsey Chalmers, told BBC Scotland: "For a nine-year-old girl whose three grandparents were her world... why does a wee girl need to get punished like that over and over again?"
Earlier lockdown 'could have stopped 2,000 deaths'
Robert Tarbet
Robert Tarbet was "self-opinionated and witty", according to his daughter, Paula Karoly, but also "hardworking, loyal and beautiful".
He spent his working life as a plumber with Glasgow City Council before retiring in the early 2000s.
In his spare time, the sociable man was a mason who was a keen follower of Rangers FC. He loved country and western music and watching musicals in the theatre.
A father and a grandfather-of-three, he was being treated for cancer when he contracted coronavirus.
He died on 29 March at Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, aged 76.
Ian Wilson
School janitor Ian Wilson was at home in Coatbridge for two weeks with a high temperature and delirium before being admitted to hospital.
Despite his worsening condition, doctors initially told his wife, Sandra, she would not be able to visit the 72-year-old who had a heart condition and diabetes.
Staff eventually granted access provided she wore protective equipment - a decision which meant she could be at her husband's side when he died on 29 March.
Although nurses were unable to comfort her with a hug due to social distancing protocols, Mrs Wilson is grateful they allowed her to be with her partner at the end.
"I was able to talk to him and just say goodbye. I've got strength from that," she said.
The impact my husband's death had on NHS staff
Dougie Chambers
Dougie Chambers was one of several people who fell ill after the 40th birthday party of his daughter, Wendy, on 7 March.
Within days, the 66-year-old, who had an underlying health condition, went into hospital and tested positive for Covid-19.
Mr Chambers, who was from Castlemilk in Glasgow, died two weeks later, on 26 March.
Two other members of his extended family - Andy and Mary Leaman - also contracted the virus and later died.
Wendy said: "If we knew then what we know now, we wouldn't have had the party. It wouldn't have happened."
Earlier lockdown 'could have stopped 2,000 deaths'
Danny Cairns
Danny Cairns was a healthy 68-year-old before he fell ill with coronavirus, according to his brother, Hugh.
When he developed a cough and sore throat at the end of March, he isolated at home in Greenock.
But within days he was so ill he had to be taken to hospital by ambulance.
In a video call from his hospital bed, his last words to his brother were: "I'm on my way out, mate".
He died on 26 March, three days after arriving in hospital.
'I'm on my way out, mate'
Margaret Innes
Margaret Innes lived with her daughter, Sally McNaught, in Edinburgh for four years before her death at the very beginning of the pandemic.
She was housebound and very frail but she loved sitting with their pet cat and dog, doing crosswords and watching quiz shows.
Her favourite soap was Neighbours and she used to say "I'm off to Australia now".
Ms McNaught said they stopped visitors coming to the house a week before lockdown, they washed their hands, cleaned everything and thought they would be safe.
But Ms Innes woke up on Mother's Day with severe breathing difficulties. She died on 25 March, three days after going into hospital. She was 93.
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A man has appeared in court charged with manslaughter and causing death by dangerous driving following the death of a three-year-old boy in Bristol. | Freddie Hussey died in hospital after being hit by a Land Rover pulling a trailer, on Hastings Road, Bedminster, on 27 January.
Tony Davies, 37, of Hallen, appeared at Bristol magistrates and is due before the city's crown court, next month.
He was granted unconditional bail until the hearing on 4 September.
Mr Davies is also charged with using a motor vehicle or trailer in a condition likely to cause danger of injury.
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The Isle of Man has confirmed its first coronavirus-related death in nearly two weeks, taking the island's toll to 24, Health Minister David Ashford said. | Until now, there had been no Covid-19 death announcements since 4 May.
The latest death "was related to Abbotswood" care home and came at the Noble's Hospital site, Mr Ashford said.
Twenty of the 24 deaths on the island have been linked to the nursing home in Ballasalla, which had its licence suspended in April.
The total number of people to test positive for the virus now stands at 334 after two new cases were confirmed on Friday.
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An 18-year-old has been charged with assault after a man was stabbed in a West Yorkshire park. | The victim, 20, was taken to hospital by air ambulance with serious injuries following the attack in Calder Holmes Park, Hebden Bridge on Saturday.
Samuel Smith, of Elm Bank, Bradford Road, Cleckheaton, is due to appear at Bradford Magistrates' Court later.
A 19-year-old man who was also arrested in connection with the incident has been released on police bail.
More on this and other West Yorkshire stories
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An RAC recovery worker who died when he was hit by a car while repairing a vehicle in Nottinghamshire has been named as David Stokes. | The 33-year-old man died at the scene on the A617 in Rainworth at about 19:20 BST on 15 June.
Nottinghamshire Police said it is appealing for any witnesses or motorists with dashcam footage of the collision to come forward.
No arrests have been confirmed by the force.
Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
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We know what Prince Harry's giving up. | Peter HuntDiplomatic and royal correspondent@BBCPeterHunton Twitter
We don't yet know what will fill the considerable void that the absence of a military career will leave in his life.
It's no surprise that Harry describes quitting the army as a "really tough decision".
He's cherished doing a job which he was given on merit - and not because he's a prince.
It's a job which, when he was in Afghanistan, included targeting and killing Taliban fighters.
In the coming months, as he undertakes voluntary work in Africa and the UK, he'll have to decide how to occupy himself in the years that lie ahead.
He's rejected, for now, the option of becoming a full-time senior royal.
Officials will be hoping he embraces something which fulfils him and which doesn't give him time to once again be cast as a party prince.
It's little wonder Harry himself talks of being at a crossroads.
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Suffolk's fire authority has agreed to look at the joint business case for a full merger with Cambridgeshire.
| The two fire services already share a control room in Cambridgeshire.
Suffolk County Council has now decided to look at the financial implications of either merging, or having more collaboration while remaining separate.
Both fire authorities said they were facing 12% budget cuts over four years, but no final decision would be made without public consultations.
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On 1 January 1985 a passenger jet crashed into a mountain in Bolivia killing all 29 people on board. No bodies were ever found. Nor were the black boxes that would have revealed the cause of the accident. But last year two young Americans decided to have a look themselves - and ended up achieving far more than official investigators. | By Claire BatesBBC World Service
"What are the chances that a couple of knuckleheads, with no mountaineering experience could actually go up to the top of this 20,000ft mountain and find anything?" asks Isaac Stoner.
"Still I thought it would be a neat vacation."
It was his flatmate, Dan Futrell, who came up with the idea one Saturday afternoon in 2015, as he idly browsed the internet looking for developments in the search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.
He found himself on a Wikipedia page listing 19 unrecovered flight recorders, and one immediately caught his attention - Eastern Airlines Flight 980, which had crashed in Bolivia in 1985, as it was coming in to land in the capital, La Paz.
Unlike most of the missing black boxes, this one wasn't at the bottom of the sea, it was on land. It hadn't been found, Wikipedia said, due to "extreme high altitude and inaccessibility of the accident location". But to Futrell it just seemed like "a typical Andean peak".
"We were on the couch drinking beer," Stoner recalls, "and Dan said, 'Look, this black box is just sitting on the top of a mountain in Bolivia. Let's go get it.'"
Futrell, 32, a former soldier who served two tours in Iraq, says he misses physical challenges now that he works at an internet company in Boston. So he seeks them out, and gets 31-year-old Stoner, who works at a biotech company, to accompany him.
They started finding out more about Eastern Airlines Flight 980. It had set off from Asuncion on New Year's Day 1985, heading to Miami via La Paz, carrying 19 passengers and 10 crew. The Boeing 727 had just been cleared to land at El Alto airport at 19:47, when it veered off course and crashed into Mount Illimani, the 21,000ft (6,400m) peak that towers over La Paz. Everyone on board was killed.
The crash site was located a day later by the Bolivian air force, however a search team was forced to turn back by heavy snowfall. In all, at least five expeditions made it up the mountain over the next 30 years, but none recovered bodies or flight recorders.
As contraband was often smuggled on flights from South America to Miami, conspiracy theories swirled around. Five members of one of Paraguay's richest families were on the flight and the US ambassador to Paraguay would have been on it too, if he had not changed his plans at the last minute. One unsubstantiated theory even alleges that a climber who reached the wreckage two days after the crash removed the black boxes to prevent a successful investigation.
Stoner started contacting climbers in Bolivia to see if two "ordinary guys" with no mountaineering experience could make the trip. One, Robert Rauch, said that they could.
"He told us 'I can put you right on the wreckage.' It turns out the glacier where the plane had crashed had retreated and there hadn't been much snowfall, so we might be able to see debris not seen for decades," Stoner says.
Rauch also revealed that some of the wreckage had fallen over a cliff, landing 3,000ft (915m) below the rest of the plane. This lower site was more accessible and a good place to start the search.
It was still high though. They would be operating at altitudes between 13,000ft and 20,000ft (4,000m-6,100m), where oxygen levels are 50% lower than at sea level.
Rauch warned them they would need at least three weeks in La Paz to acclimatise, but this was more time than they had available.
"We told him we had a total of two weeks' vacation," says Futrell, 32. "So he recommended we sleep in an altitude tent beforehand. We rented one and set it up in the basement. It pumps in nitrogen and simulates a low oxygen environment. It was awful and we would wake up with headaches."
Rauch also told the pair to build up their upper arm strength to prepare them for ice climbing.
"[We did] a lot of pull-ups with backpacks on," says Futrell.
"Isaac mostly attempted and I did all the pull-ups for both of us. I envisioned him hanging off the end of a cliff and me being the only person that could save his life."
"I envisioned cutting the rope and sending Dan down to the bottom of the abyss," jokes Stoner.
Other training included trekking up and down the steps of the Harvard Football Stadium in Boston. They also got a prescription for Diamox, which helps the body to absorb oxygen.
On 17 May last year they flew to El Alto airport in Bolivia where they met up with their team - guide Robert Rauch, Bolivian cook Jose Lazo and journalist Peter Frick-Wright, who went on to write a detailed story for Outside magazine. After a few days of acclimatisation, they drove to a nearby peak to practise emergency drills.
The friends planned to split their time between the lower site Rauch had told them about and the impact site on the glacier, higher up the mountain, where the plane tail was still lodged in the snow.
"Robert decided that the best course of action would be to get us up on a mountain, to teach us how to ice climb, because we honestly didn't know what we were doing when it came to crampons and ice axes and being tied into a rope," says Stoner.
The housemates also struggled with the changes in temperature that veered from -6C (21F) in the shade to 9C (48F) in the sun.
"We knew we were going to suffer," says Futrell, "and in fact that was part of the draw of this trip. Worthwhile things are often challenging and that's what we were looking for."
Find out more
The team set off for their base camp at 15,400ft (4,700m) above sea-level in a battered four-wheel drive, though two miles short of their destination they came to a halt. The road had been blocked by a rock fall, and they had to get out and walk.
"We camped at this spooky old abandoned mine with a view of the big cliff face where the crash had happened," Stoner says.
"Every now and then there was a distant avalanche that sounded like a runaway train. Apart from that it was silent. We were up above cloud level and it was really wild and beautiful scenery."
The next day they hiked for 45 minutes and, as Rauch had promised, they found themselves in the midst of the plane wreckage.
Debris was scattered over one square mile of rocky ground. Pieces of mangled plastic and wiring mingled with cutlery, wheels and broken cockpit equipment.
The first thing they saw, however, was a life jacket - "a piece of equipment intended to save somebody's life" as Futrell puts it.
"So not only did we know we were in the right spot, but we were instantly reminded that there's tragedy here for 29 families."
They had planned a grid search pattern but in their excitement decided first to go off in different directions to take a look.
The friends were busy picking through the wreckage when they were called by Rauch on their walkie-talkies. They rushed over to see what he had found. Slowly they realised they were looking at a human femur lying among the rubble.
"We all took a moment. We tried saying a few words but couldn't come up with anything," says Stoner.
The discovery disproved one conspiracy theory put forward by former Eastern Airlines pilot George Jehn in his book Final Destination: Disaster. After no remains were found on the first five expeditions, he suggested a bomb had depressurised the cabin and sucked the passengers out of the plane. This would have flung the bodies far from the wreckage. However, Futrell, Stoner and their companions found six body parts in separate locations.
They decided to bury each find and mark the spot with a geomarker and a stack of rocks, in case anyone wanted to retrieve them later on.
"We also found silverware from the meal service, a sink from one of the bathrooms, shoes and shirts and jackets with pilot stripes on them. We found the emergency slide and life jackets, plane windows, landing gear and part of the instrument panel from the cockpit," says Futrell.
"There were wires everywhere and thousands of reptile skins which were likely to have been contraband."
However, there was no sign of the black boxes, which despite their name are typically bright orange.
"We were finding orange bits of metal the whole time, but I was holding on to the hope they weren't pieces of the black box as they are supposed to withstand a plane crashing into a mountain," says Stoner.
But on the final day of searching at the lower site, Stoner unearthed a piece of metal with a label attached to some wires that read "CKPT VO RCRD" an abbreviation of Cockpit Voice Recorder.
They decided this probably meant that at least one of the recorders had broken apart.
Not far away, they found a spool of magnetic tape.
Would this hold a recording of the final moments of the aircraft? Futrell describes this as his "greatest hope".
After three or four days at the lower site, the team decided to move on to the higher debris site and drove to a higher base camp. They set off at 04:30 the next morning but soon ran into serious problems.
"We had wanted to get up there and back in one day but we found we didn't have the time to do it. We were going slower as we were inexperienced at mountaineering and new crevasses had opened up which meant we had a longer and more difficult route," says Futrell.
They eventually decided it was too risky and turned back.
Returning to La Paz they boxed up the orange pieces of metal, wires and tape they had found and flew home with them to Boston. They suspected this might be breaking the rules of air investigations but decided it was the right thing to do anyway.
"We knew there was a specialist government lab in the States that would give us the best shot at an answer as to why the plane went down. Plus it was a US airliner and there had been no Bolivians on board," says Stoner.
Back home in the US, though, they had a problem. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the US department in charge of investigating plane crashes, didn't want to touch their packages.
"They said 'Great job guys, but we can't do anything with it unless we get Bolivian sign-off,'" says Futrell.
The housemates then spent months sending emails and letters and telephoning Bolivian officials.
"So at this point the black box has been sitting in our apartment on the kitchen counter next to the dog food for seven months," Stoner said at the end of 2016. "And really it's become a key part of the decorative aesthetic in the apartment."
Finally, in December, they were contacted by Capt Edgar Chavez, operations inspector at the General Directorate of Civil Aviation of Bolivia, who gave the NTSB permission to analyse the material.
So on 4 January, Futrell and Stoner handed over the plane fragments to Bill English from the NTSB, who took them to a laboratory in Washington.
The housemates had already concluded that poor weather, the tricky descent to El Alto airport and unreliable equipment had all probably played a part in the crash. However, data from the voice recorder might give conclusive answers to the families who had lost their loved ones.
"We had people reaching out from Paraguay, we had family members reaching out from the US, right down to an old girlfriend of the pilot calling me on the phone," says Stoner, "and most of them just really did want to say, 'Nice job guys, thank you.'"
One of the family members was Stacey Greer, the daughter of Mark Bird, the flight engineer on Eastern Airlines Flight 980. Greer was only two years old when her father was killed.
"I was surprised that someone would be interested in finding out what happened. It gave me hope that people still care," Greer says.
She had asked Futrell and Stoner to bring back some metal from the plane for her.
"It was a really touching meeting," says Futrell. "She got to put her hands on pieces of the plane, the last plane that her father flew and that took his life. She took this metal home and she turned one of the pieces of metal into a necklace just in memory of her dad and his loss."
"Usually there is a grave site or a memorial for a lost one, but my family never had that. Now we have something," Greer says.
On 7 February 2017, the NTSB released a statement.
Futrell and Stoner had not found the cockpit flight recorder, it said, but rather the rack that had fixed it on to the plane - and the promising spool of tape turned out to be "an 18-minute recording of the 'Trial by Treehouse' episode of the television series 'I Spy', dubbed in Spanish."
"Needless to say, we're disappointed," Futrell wrote on his blog.
However, it means both the recorders are still up on the mountain and could still be intact. Futrell and Stoner hope others will now follow in their footsteps.
Already one member of the US Forces has declared his intention to organise an expedition to recover human remains.
"This tragedy really deserves a formal, resourced, governmental investigation," says Futrell. "We've proved that 'inaccessible terrain' is an unacceptable reason for failing to close this investigation."
Additional reporting by Lucy Wallis
Photographs courtesy of Dan Futrell and Isaac Stoner
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Some 120 diners celebrating a baptism at a restaurant in a north-western Spanish town all fled the restaurant at once without paying, the owner said. | The diners, who had paid a deposit of 900 euros ($950; £770), left the El Carmen restaurant in Bembibre as dessert was due to be served, Antonio Rodriguez said.
"It happened in the space of a minute," he said. "It was something they had planned and they left in a stampede."
They owe 2,000 euros more, he added.
Mr Rodriguez gave police the details on the reservation but said he held out little hope of being repaid. Police told El Pais newspaper they had not yet been able to contact any of the diners, who are not thought to be Spaniards.
The diners had consumed starters, a main course and 30 bottles of various alcoholic drinks, he said, adding that it was the first time in 35 years of working in the restaurant trade that he had seen seen anything comparable.
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Community leaders on Kenya's coast are warning that Islamic extremism is on the rise. The killing in August of a Muslim cleric was followed by days of deadly riots in the city of Mombasa, from where the BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse reports on a region caught between economic deprivation and religious fundamentalism. | We met Yusuf Mohamed in an obscure back street of Mombasa.
As the mosques filled up for Friday prayers, we discussed the topic the whole neighbourhood was talking about: The recent drive-by assassination of Sheikh Aboud Rogo Mohammed.
The preacher had been driving north of the city.
A vehicle pulled up alongside his car. A gunman - or gunmen - shot him dead at close range.
Mr Rogo's wife was in the car with him. She was injured, but survived.
"They killed him as an animal, not as a human being," Mr Mohamed said.
Nervous
In his 20s, and like many young men in the city of Mombasa, Mr Mohamed is unemployed.
Sometimes he prays at the Masjid Musa, the mosque where Mr Rogo used to preach.
He said people in the neighbourhood were nervous.
"Today it is Mr Aboud Rogo. Tomorrow it might be me," he explained.
People here say it is not the first time "troublesome" Muslims have been targeted.
Aboud Rogo was certainly troublesome.
He urged his followers to take up arms against Kenyan government forces fighting in Somalia.
His name appeared on a US and UN sanctions list, accused of providing "financial, material, logistical or technical support to al-Shabab", the Somali militant group aligned to al-Qaeda.
No-one has admitted to killing the cleric, but many in Mombasa believe he was assassinated at the behest of the Kenyan government.
Some believe the Americans were behind the assassination - allegations both governments have denied - but that belief is fuelling radicalism.
City with two faces
"I think jihad is very slowly gaining more and more credence amongst the youth," says Hussein Khalid, a lawyer at the non-governmental organisation Muslims For Human Rights (Muhuri), based in Mombasa.
"We have seen it happening. We have seen youth leaving their families, leaving their communities and joining militias on their way to Somalia."
Mr Khalid says tensions between the Muslim community and the security services are one reason for the rise in jihadist sentiment.
But he believes there is a deeper underlying cause.
"Look at the youth within the coastal region - there is no employment whatsoever," he says.
"Look at infrastructure - again our region lags behind.
"If you look at the road network in this region - it is amongst the poorest in the country.
Mombasa is a city with two faces.
For hundreds of years this palm-fringed coastal paradise has been a meeting place for civilizations, a place where traders from across the world, both Muslim and Christian, have prospered.
But Mombasa is also a city of entrenched poverty: A place where chronic under investment and high unemployment leave many struggling simply to stay alive.
At the market in the Old Town, stalls are piled high with produce - locally grown fruits and vegetables sit next to imported spices.
But outside, men are picking their way through a vast mound of rubbish.
One squats down, eating long-discarded chunks of food as he seeks out barely edible morsels.
There is widespread support here for a movement known as the MRC, or Mombasa Republican Council, a separatist movement that advocates autonomy for Kenya's coastal region.
Its leaders argue that the coast and its people see little economic benefit from the region's trading ports and tourist industry.
The organisation was banned in 2010, but the order was overturned in court earlier this year.
The MRC draws its support from both the Muslim and the Christian communities.
But recent unrest is threatening to pull people apart.
Beach business
In a mixed neighbourhood known as Kisauni, the Sunday service at the Presbyterian Church of East Africa now features an armed security presence.
Half a dozen officers in camouflage fatigues mingle with the congregation dressed up in their Sunday best.
During the riots, a mob of Muslim youths looted the church and tried to burn it down.
"Actually, they were looking for the pastor," says Beatrice Mburire, one of the worshippers.
"They wanted revenge on another preacher - a Christian preacher," she added referring to the earlier killing of the Muslim cleric.
Outside the city centre, long, white beaches stretch as far as the eye can see. The coastline is dotted with hotels and resorts.
The Ministry of Tourism says the number of people visiting Kenya was up by 3% in the first six months of this year, compared to 2011.
But that was before the recent riots, and the modest rise is not reflected on the beaches.
Vendors selling carvings and trinkets say they are much less busy than usual at this time of year.
"Business is very poor now," said Charles Mwandiko, who has been hawking carved elephants and hippos on Mombasa's beaches for a decade.
He blamed al-Shabab and the recent bombing of churches.
It is almost always local people, not tourists, who are the victims of violence on Kenya's coast.
But every time there is a riot or a killing, more and more foreign visitors choose to stay away.
And so the region is caught in a downward economic spiral, with potentially dangerous consequences.
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The Middle East is entering what many analysts see as a dangerous new phase. With the Islamic State group on the brink of defeat, the long-simmering rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran threatens to boil over, with Lebanon in the crosshairs. | By Martin PatienceBBC News, Beirut
It was a resignation like no other and it is still sending shockwaves through the region.
The Lebanese Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, unexpectedly quit last weekend.
He made his announcement not from Lebanon but in Saudi Arabia, the country that acts as his political backer. Many Lebanese believe he was pushed into the decision by Riyadh.
It is still not clear when, or if, Mr Hariri will return home.
The spectacle of the missing prime minister is being seen as part of the wider regional struggle between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shia-dominated Iran.
For now, Lebanon is uncomfortably centre stage - it is after all where proxy wars have been fought in the past.
Iran backs the Shia movement Hezbollah here. Its supporters believe Mr Hariri's resignation was orchestrated by the Saudis in order to weaken their influence in the country.
Hezbollah has been accused of operating a "state within a state". Its armed wing is more powerful than the Lebanese army and it leads a bloc which dominates the cabinet.
On Thursday, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies further ratcheted up the pressure by urging their citizens to leave Lebanon, sending a clear signal of a toughening up of its policy towards the country.
"The Americans, the Saudis, the Israelis are all trying to prevent Hezbollah from maximising its gains from the wars in Syria and Iraq," says Hassan Ileik, an editor at the pro-Hezbollah newspaper, Al Akhbar.
"What is happening in Yemen is also related to the Lebanon situation. Hezbollah and its allies have achieved enormous success. But they're now facing huge pressure because of this."
Saudi Arabia has accused Hezbollah of firing an Iranian-made missile at it from Yemen, where Riyadh says Iran is also equipping Shia rebels it is leading a long war against. Iran denies the claim.
Basem Shabb is a Lebanese parliamentarian from Mr Hariri's political bloc. He says that the influence of Iran and its allies need to be checked.
"As the situation in Syria comes to an end the regime has the upper hand," he says. "Iran and Hezbollah are seeking dividends in Lebanon for the role they played in Syria."
"Because this has a regional dimension the solution is not going to come from within Lebanon. The more powerful actors who are interested in stability will need to intervene with the local players to help us maintain stability."
'On the brink'
Meddling in Lebanon's affairs by great powers is nothing new. But the fear is a misstep now could trigger something far graver.
"In the last few decades, we've never been so close to the precipice," warns Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center think-tank.
"The threat of a regional war has never been this real where a conflict would involve a variety of different countries."
And that is why what happens in Lebanon matters to us all.
The so-called Islamic State group is all but defeated. What is happening now though - the growing rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran - could be even more dangerous for the region and beyond.
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The first Asian mayor has been appointed on Teesside. | Mohammed Javed has been installed at a virtual meeting of Stockton Council, becoming the first black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME) man in the borough to hold the ceremonial post.
Councillors were told Mr Javed is also the first Asian mayor in the north-east of England. He became Stockton's first Asian councillor in 2007.
Labour council leader Bob Cook said his nomination was "history in the making".
His appointment was "going some way to ensuring community cohesion within the borough goes forward", he said.
Mr Javed said he was "very proud".
"The borough has many multicultural communities and I'm looking forward to working with them to ensure everyone has equal opportunity to improve their lives," he said.
Working 'tirelessly'
Councillors were told Mr Javed's family had been forced off their land during the partition of India in 1947.
He moved to Karachi, in Pakistan, to take his A-levels before relocating to Abu Dhabi, where he worked to put his brother - now a Middlesbrough GP - through medical school.
Mr Javed later worked for the NHS in England, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.
Labour councillor Louise Baldock said he was "determined that education was the way out of poverty and the limitations of life in the village, and was prepared to work as hard as it took".
He had worked "tirelessly" in his Parkfield and Oxbridge ward and would do the same as mayor, she said.
Mr Javed replaced Conservative councillor Lynn Hall in the post. Kevin Faulks, of the Ingleby Barwick Independent Society, has been chosen as deputy mayor.
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It's nearly 50 years since the heist which became known as the Great Train Robbery. Novelist Jake Arnott got to know Bruce Reynolds - the leader of the gang - towards the end of his life. | At 3am on 8 August 1963, the night mail train from Glasgow to Euston was stopped in Buckinghamshire by a gang of thieves. They broke into the High Value Package coach and made off with 120 mailbags stuffed with £2.6m in used banknotes (something in the region of £41m in today's money).
The raid soon became known as the Great Train Robbery and 50 years on it still occupies a unique place in the history of British crime. The gang carried no firearms, although the train driver was coshed in the melee - an act of violence that the leader of the gang, Bruce Reynolds, always expressed regret for, right up until his final interview.
I knew Bruce, and though he may be remembered for his life of crime, it was as a man of letters that he always impressed me.
His memoir, The Autobiography of a Thief, is an exceptional book, not simply because of the extraordinary life it documents but because it's so well written. And in person he had an artful way with words. When we first met, at a book reading 13 years ago, I was struck by his wit and erudition and by that literary knack of hoisting just the right allusion to illuminate a story.
Standing on Bridego Bridge awaiting his greatest coup, he saw himself as Lawrence of Arabia on the Hejaz railway, his ear to the ground listening for the oncoming train.
Calling on a tradition of adventurism he also conjured: "Visions of Drake and his motley crew at Panama, of Max, my old cell mate who had continually exhorted me: 'You've got to sack a city.'" I remember Bruce quoting William Burroughs, whose art manifesto "Les voleurs" declared: "Steal everything in sight, everything belongs to the inspired and dedicated thief."
He cut something of a Burroughsian figure himself. Gaunt and elegant with a laconic and deadpan delivery, a southern drawl to his voice - albeit of Battersea rather than St Louis. He was the true literary outlaw.
Bruce could evoke the glamour and excitement of crime as well as the heavy costs his way of life incurred.
His descriptions of the haute couture of an elite villain were so vivid that I was reminded of Daisy Buchanan bursting into tears at the beauty of Gatsby's shirts in F Scott Fitzgerald's great American novel. But he was direct and honest about his own failings and vulnerabilities, and never flinched from describing the ill effects of his activities on himself and those around him. His life and works were the perfect illustration of the old Spanish proverb: "Take what you want, then pay for it."
Born in 1931 in South London, Bruce had an unsettled childhood that was further disrupted by wartime evacuation. He left school at 14 and, having failed his eyesight test to join the Royal Navy, decided that he wanted to be a foreign correspondent. He even found the confidence to apply in person to Northcliffe House, home of the Daily Mail and Evening News. He ended up as a messenger boy and then in the accounts department.
He longed for adventure but reasoned that he was unlikely to find it in an honest living. So, unfortunately, he applied his intelligence and ingenuity to larceny, graduating from petty theft to more and more serious crimes.
By the time he organised his most famous heist Bruce had become a major league villain and had created a character for himself out of his aspirations. Renting a villa in the south of France, driving fast cars and wearing exquisitely tailored clothes, he sought not just the trappings of wealth, but the sense of culture and entitlement that went with it. "I was the image that I created," he said of that time.
The Great Train Robbery took place in 1963, the "annus mirabilis" of Larkin's poem, "between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP" and right on the crest of a nascent social revolution.
It was also the year of the Profumo scandal and a sense that the new permissive society would need its ne plus ultra. The robbers had stolen the Queen's money, there was a feeling that the Establishment had been given a bloody nose and it duly lashed out. In the first trial, gang members were given 30-year sentences at a time when there was no parole system.
Bruce evaded capture for five years and went on the run, living the high life in Mexico with his wife Angela and young son Nick until the money ran out. Then he took the extremely risky decision to come back to England to plan another coup. The tenacious Scotland Yard detective Tommy Butler finally caught up with him in Torquay in 1968. Bruce was characteristically cavalier on his arrest, remarking: "C'est la vie, Tom."
Long-term imprisonment took its toll, however. The dull horror of incarceration, the pain of readjusting to the outside after a long sentence. He struggled to maintain and develop a strong relationship with his son Nick. And though their marriage broke down when he was in prison, Angela and Bruce were eventually reconciled. When she fell ill he committed himself to caring for her until her death in 2010.
And he became a writer. His own life was like a novel, but what was astonishing was his ability to set it down so clearly.
I believe that it was his love of words and his ability to use them that really set him free. Self-reflective, philosophical, for want of a better word, rehabilitated. When he came to my book launch a year ago we talked of the looming 50th anniversary of the Great Train Robbery.
He told me: "A lot of people are going to want to talk to me but I'm feeling a bit Greta Garbo about the whole thing, to tell you the truth." I wasn't sure he would agree to an interview.
When he came to the studio this January he was a little frail, he'd had a hard winter. But in front of the microphone he really went to work with his inimitable style. He talked for two hours. It was his final testament.
At the end he said: "I got what I wanted out of life, what I considered a good life. I wanted to live a life like Hemingway. When I was in Mexico the people I knew were bullfighters and motor racing drivers. But when you're in the position where you can do anything it no longer has the same attraction.
"You realise it's all tinsel to a degree. I only ever wanted to live in a place that I felt comfortable in, which, ironically I suppose, is about the size of a cell."
Radio 4's Archive On 4: The Crime of the Century is broadcast on 13 July, 20:00 BST
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The man blamed for killing two Nato officials inside the Afghan interior ministry at the weekend should never have been given security clearance, the BBC has learned. A catalogue of security blunders led to the shootings and his escape. There are now real concerns for the future of the relationship between Nato and its Afghan security partners, Bilal Sarwary reports from Kabul. | The shootings are the latest in a long list of incidents in whichmembers of the Afghan security forces have turned their arms on coalition troops. Officials feel powerless to stop them despite elaborate security mechanisms that are supposed to be in place.
Concern about the issue among US and Nato officials has now become so great that trust between them and Afghan security and military officials is at an all-time low. Many fear the long term strategic relationship between the two sides could be affected.
The interior ministry documents show that Abdul Saboor was sacked twice by police because on one occasion he got into a scuffle with his colleagues and another time he displayed violent behaviour.
But still he was able to get security clearance when he was re-hired by the police for a third time to work as an interior ministry driver.
Irretrievable breakdown
"He should never have been a police intelligence officer," a frustrated Western military official posted in Afghanistan said. "He should have never got the security clearance."
Occurrences in which Afghans turn their weapons on their Western counterparts happen on an almost weekly basis - shortly before the incident at the interior ministry, two US soldiers were shot and killed by an Afghan National Army soldier during protests at a Nato base in eastern Nangarhar province.
And on Thursday two more US soldiers were shot dead in the south of the country - Nato said one of the men was dressed in Afghan army uniform.
In fact, more than 70 Nato troops have been killed by Afghan colleagues in recent years, leading to what some diplomats say is an irretrievable breakdown of trust between the two sides.
Although Nato's Afghan commander Gen John Allen said he would still be willing to walk, unarmed, into the Kabul interior ministry, few coalition troops on the ground have such confidence in their Afghan colleagues - some of whom continue to receive Taliban propaganda on their mobile telephones.
The stark fact is that Nato troops are now nervous and twitchy whenever they are with their Afghan counterparts, and an investigation conducted by the BBC into what led to the interior ministry shootings on Saturday clearly explains why.
Interior ministry paperwork seen by the BBC suggests that the recruitment and vetting of personnel for the Afghan army and security forces is so deeply flawed that any effort to improve it is bound to be a time-consuming and painstaking process.
Western officials and their Afghan counterparts are in despair over how easily Abdul Saboor was able to bypass security in what was supposed to be a high security building and carry out the killings - apparently in retaliation to the burning of copies of the Koran by US soldiers.
''There are a number of serious security flaws," a senior officer of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), told the BBC.
"The first thing you do when such an incident happens is lock down the building and detain everyone, including eyewitnesses. But no such drill was carried out in this case."
This allowed the killer to jump three security cordons surrounding the ministry, he said. As if this was not worrying enough in itself, the incident also graphically exposed serious lapses in the vetting process of Afghan soldiers and policemen.
Much revolves around the recruitment process itself - many prospective employees have fake identities, fake references and fake signatures.
That begs the question, how many more Abdul Saboors might there be out there?
Violent behaviour
The documents seen by the BBC are hardly reassuring. They show that Abdul Saboor was twice fired from the Afghan National Police for "misconduct".
"How on earth then did he succeed in gaining entry to the intelligence wing of the police?" asked an investigating officer.
"Who gave him security clearance to be deployed at such a sensitive spot with his record?"
That is a question that is likely to go unanswered - there is currently a blame game between different governments ministries as to who is responsible.
Some of Abdul Saboor's relatives believe that there may be a peculiarly Afghan answer to this question, linked to patronage and corruption.
They say that he succeeded in winning the trust and backing of former Minister Hanif Atmaar after returning from religious school in Pakistan in 2007 to work in the ministry as a tea boy.
Interior ministry sources say that two of Mr Atmaar's top aides acted as his guarantors when he expressed a desire to develop his career and join the police.
Mr Atmaar denied having anything to do with Abdul Saboor, who he said was sacked after only four months at the ministry. He says that the priority now is to find out who re-employed him and who gave him such high security clearance.
Such informal arrangements - often with employees whose records are never properly checked - are commonplace in government ministries and other public offices.
Western diplomats say the problem can only be sorted out once long term problems such as patronage, corruption, personal connections and nepotism are addressed.
They say that a turf war between the NDS - the country's main spy agency - and the defence ministry also needs to be resolved.
In another peculiarly Afghan dimension to the Abdul Saboor case, Western and Afghan officials say Shiren Agha, the commander in charge of interior ministry security, was responsible for his recruitment. Officials say that Mr Agha is related to Interior Minister Bismillah Khan by marriage.
But Sediq Sediqi, a spokesman for the interior ministry, told the BBC there was no relationship between Shiren Agha and Mr Khan.
Although Abdul Saboor worked only as a bodyguard and driver for Mr Agha, he was still allowed entry into the most sensitive installations at the interior ministry, where night raids, counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics operations are planned and controlled.
"As painful as it might be, it is a reality that a combination of time-honoured problems and serious mistakes allowed Saboor to get into the ministry," a Western diplomat said.
"It is a pattern that is being depressingly repeated across the country."
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Plans to legalise same-sex marriage on the Isle of Man have split public opinion, according to the results of a recent consultation. | The survey, launched in October, had 176 responses - 76 were opposed, 90 were supportive and 10 were neutral.
The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill is based on the same legal framework introduced in England last year.
It would enable couples on the island to marry in a civil ceremony or subject to agreement, in a religious ceremony.
The act was introduced in England and Wales on 29 March 2014.
The law change triggered a rush of couples vying to be the first to tie the knot.
It is thought that the bill will now be introduced to Tynwald for debate in the coming year.
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The half year results of one of Northern Ireland's few publicly listed companies, First Derivatives, show profit before tax up 27% at £4.6m. | By Clodagh RiceBusiness Reporter, BBC News NI
That compares to £3.7m for the same period last year.
The Newry-based financial technology firm saw revenue rise 44% to £53.8m for the six months to the end of August
First Derivatives has bought a number of other firms over the last year, including ActivateClients and Affinity systems.
They employ more than 1,500 people around the world.
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Up to £750,000 is being made available to help bring empty and derelict buildings in a Carmarthenshire town back into use. | Carmarthenshire council will be making loans available to eligible applicants who wish to regenerate properties and redundant development sites in Llanelli town centre.
Interest free loans from £25,000 are on offer, repayable over five years.
It is hoped they will improve the vibrancy of Llanelli town centre.
Cllr Emlyn Dole, leader of the council and chair of the Llanelli Town Centre Taskforce, said it was a good opportunity for businesses, landlords and developers to kick-start regeneration projects for the benefit of the town.
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A council worker accused of taking money intended for victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster has been charged with fraud. | Jenny McDonagh, 39, is alleged to have obtained the cash "while being neither a survivor or bereaved family member", Scotland Yard said.
The Kensington and Chelsea Council employee was charged with four offences, including money laundering.
She is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court later.
Ms McDonagh, of Abbey Wood, south-east London, was charged with two counts of fraud by abuse of position, one count of theft by employee and one count of money laundering.
A fire ripped through the tower block in June 2017, leaving 72 people dead.
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A 23-year-old Indian student was fatally gang-raped inside a bus in the capital, Delhi last December. The attack caused international outrage and prompted India to introduce stringent anti-rape laws. A court sentenced her attackers to death this September. The BBC's Soutik Biswas met the family of the victim to find out how life had changed for them after her death. | Her father had returned home tetchy and tired after a gruelling 16-hour working day at Delhi's international airport on the night of 16 December 2012.
He received a call from a breathless policeman an hour before midnight that his daughter had met with an accident and had been taken to hospital. An hour later, doctors told him she had been gang raped on a moving bus by a group of men. Two weeks later, she died in a hospital in Singapore.
Wake up India, she's dead, screamed a newspaper headline, as India exploded in anger and outrage.
Life had changed in an instant for the woman's family.
'Poverty was better'
A year on from the attack, the family has moved into a two-room apartment gifted by the government in a thriving suburb of Delhi. It's dank and the stairwell lights often don't work at night, but it's still a vast improvement over their crumbling brick home in a tumble-down neighbourhood where monsoon rains flooded the rooms.
The private company that runs the city's international airport has provided the 54-year-old father with a new job making entry passes with regular hours and a wage of 20,000 rupees ($326; £200) a month.
It's a far cry from his backbreaking job handling baggage at the airport: he would work double shifts for a paltry 6,620 rupees ($107; £66) a month.
The family's two sons, aged 21 and 17 - their sister was the eldest at 23 when she died - now go to an upmarket engineering college and a prominent city school, their fees paid by the government. The elder son is studying to become a computer scientist; the younger one is planning to become a doctor.
Then there's the unrelenting public gaze: the parents have been on primetime TV news and have attended award ceremonies to remember their dead daughter, and everybody in the neighbourhood knows that the "victim's family" lives here.
Strewn around the sparse apartment, there's evidence of modest prosperity: a small TV on a rickety table, a cheap washing machine, a gas cylinder, a new water heater in the bathroom.
"But sometimes I feel," the father tells me, "poverty was better for us. We slept well. We were happier. Today, we have everything, but yet nothing. Without our daughter our world has turned colourless".
"You know, I used to say, my daughter is the engine of the family. All of us were like bogies [carriages] yoked to the engine."
In his cream trousers and striped brown sweater, the father sits on a plastic chair, his head hunched, his eyes gazing at the floor. He has calloused hands of a man who has done hard manual labour: first, as a worker in a small factory making pressure cookers and then a overworked baggage loader.
Public gaze
He has worked hard to get his children educated, doing double shifts, selling a small plot of family land for 200,000 rupees ($3,224; £1,995) to enable his daughter to enrol in a four-year physiotherapy course which she had completed.
His phone keeps ringing incessantly, usually from journalists wanting to visit the family. His 46-year-old wife, the victim's mother, is wearing a bright pink chiffon sari and staring vacantly at a noisy media scrum building up at the door. The younger son fidgets with his phone on the verandah outside. A pale winter sun struggles to creep into the cold room.
They have brought a few of her possessions to their new home.
Her favourite pink doll is one. "Let's keep my daughter on the bed with us for the picture," the mother tells the photographer.
A couple of her books on neurology and neuroscience and human anatomy, both photocopied because the family couldn't afford to buy the expensive originals, have made it to the new apartment. But most of her belongings, her brother says, lie packed in a trunk in the old house, where an aunt stays - "her clothes, her notes, her dreams".
It's understandable. Grief doesn't make living easy.
Grief arrives in paroxysms that make the mother break out in cold sweats at night when she thinks of what her daughter went through at the hands of her attackers. "I begin choking sometimes," she says.
Grief arrives in waves every Sunday when she breaks down and cries because it is a day the family enjoyed most together, but also the fateful day she went to see her first English movie - Life of Pi - with a friend and never returned home. "Sundays are the hardest. I feel she's moving around us," her mother says.
She says she doesn't step out of the house much, and hasn't bought anything for herself since her daughter's death. Sleeplessness has made her sick. An ear infection needed minor surgery, but she's still suffering.
'A dream'
All that the family is really left with are her memories, the good and the bad. And a dream.
Her mother says she remembers how her daughter would talk the night away with her father and her brothers about their hopes for the future. They remember her final hours in the intensive care unit after doctors gave up hope: her brother says the family stood around her bed as "her heart beat slowed, the alarm bells went ringing and the monitors flat-lined".
Her father says he has a dream often.
"She comes in one dream, you know," he says, his eyes gleaming suddenly, looking at me. "We are in a hotel in a town to see her. She visits us. She stands near me and asks me whether I need money. I tell her, I don't need any money, just take care of your brothers. And then she vanishes.
"She would always tell me not to worry about money. That she would take care of the family."
That is what poverty does to you, the father says. Think about money all the time. Think about whether you have enough money in your pocket to take your daughter's body home.
"When I went to the hospital on the night of 16 December with a friend the doctors told me my daughter would not possibly live beyond a couple of hours. My first thought was how will I take her body home?" he says.
"Between the two of us we had 1,000 rupees ($16; £9). Would it be enough to pay for the medicines and the ambulance? She survived the night. Next day a politician came and paid me 25,000 rupees ($405; £250). I felt better. At least I had the money to take her body home if she died. This is what poverty does to you."
On the first anniversary of her death, the family will hold a small memorial service. They also plan to launch a trust with donations to feed and educate poor children, to begin with.
"We just want to keep her memory alive as long as it's possible. I know one day people will forget her. But they will remember her death led to changes - changes in the anti-rape laws, a change in consciousness," her father says.
"Women are speaking up against harassment and violence now. There is some fear of the law.
"That is my daughter's contribution, isn't it?"
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Catholicism and conservatism go hand in hand in Latin America. | By Katy WatsonBBC News, Mexico City
It is a region where the family is sacred and laws are made with that in mind.
But for many, those family ideals have been tested by the recent news that a 10-year-old girl in Paraguay was denied an abortion after allegedly being raped by her stepfather.
Under Paraguayan law, abortion is illegal unless the mother's life is in danger.
In this case, it was ruled that the 10-year-old's life was not in danger.
It is a ruling that has been heavily criticised by the United Nations' Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights which said that the country had failed to protect the girl.
According to the World Health Organisation, the main causes of death in adolescent girls in developing countries are pregnancy-related complications and childbirth.
Deadly restrictions
Paraguay is not the only country in Latin America that restricts abortion.
In five countries abortion is outlawed completely and heavy restrictions such as those in Paraguay are in place across the region.
But this is not just an issue of competing liberal norms and conservative values.
It is mainly about inequality in a region where the gulf between rich and poor remains huge.
To access abortions, you either have to have the money to pay for illegal procedures or the funds to fly out of the country.
Bleak prospects
For the women who cannot afford that, the reality is far bleaker.
One doctor told me of a case in Central America where a woman put caustic soda inside her vagina.
It did not end her pregnancy, instead, she was so badly burned, she had to have a caesarean.
And these women still risk facing the legal consequences of what they do once they recover.
Erika Guevaras-Rosa is the Americas director for Amnesty International. She says strict abortion laws in Latin America criminalise poverty.
It is a view that is shared by several doctors I spoke to in El Salvador.
Money talks
In fact, they could not name any cases of women who had been jail on abortion charges after attending a private hospital.
The reality is that if a woman pays for a service and knows her doctor, she can get the treatment she asks for.
But for those with no money for private care it is a different story. They often face discrimination when they should be getting support.
The fate of the 10-year-old girl in Paraguay is not unique.
There are many more across the region, such as the 11-year-old girl known only as "Belen" who became pregnant by her mother's partner in Chile two years ago.
Her story also stirred debate.
Small steps
But Monica Arango from the non-profit advocacy group Center for Reproductive Rights says there are huge differences between Central and South America.
In her opinion, small steps are being made in South America to recognise women's rights.
Earlier this year, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet announced a plan to legalise abortion in cases of rape or when there is a threat to the mother's or the baby's life.
Ms Arango says Brazil and Argentina have also made small changes to their laws in recent months.
But she says Central America is a place where it is dangerous to be a woman of reproductive age.
During a recent visit to El Salvador, I met women who had lost their babies towards the end of their pregnancies.
Despite the fact they said they never aborted, their circumstances were viewed as suspicious.
Abortion is completely banned there and the consequences for those who are seen to be breaking the law are tough.
Some women I met had been locked up for as many as 40 years on abortion charges.
Without fail, the women I spoke to came from poor backgrounds; some were single mothers and many of them had been raped.
Some did not know they were pregnant and miscarried; others suffered complications at the end of their pregnancy and could not get help quick enough.
'Neglected and judged'
This is a major problem.
Many women from poorer backgrounds have problems accessing health services during their pregnancies.
It means they are not properly monitored and cannot always talk to doctors when necessary, or are afraid to do so.
One doctor in El Salvador told me that her pregnant friend called her in a panic one morning because she was bleeding.
Asked why she had not sought help earlier, the single mother with no money for private treatment just replied: "Are you crazy?".
She was scared that doctors at public hospitals would assume she was "just another single woman trying to abort her baby".
Such is the conservatism in places like El Salvador, it is not unheard of for single women to ask a male friend along to hospital to make it look like they are an upstanding couple.
As long as the Catholic Church remains strong, easing restrictions on abortion will remain a struggle and only those with the financial means will have the option to buy their way out of their predicament - an option which remains closed to many in this part of the world.
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Boston is Britain's unofficial Brexit capital and is being targeted by UKIP leader Paul Nuttall in the general election. So how do the Europeans who sought a new life in the Fens feel in the run-up to the 8 June poll? | Hana Rafajova: 'Terrible uncertainty'
"Most of us feel unwanted here," said Hana Rafajova, a translator who moved to Lincolnshire from the Czech Republic more than a decade ago.
"Many of us have developed depressions and anxiety since the referendum," the 37-year-old mother-of-one said.
"Brexit created a terrible uncertainty for us. Most of us were shocked at first, confused about what to do."
Ms Rafajova said some of her friends had already left and many more were now considering their future.
"If it was just me, I would have gone back to the Czech Republic a long time ago," she said.
But she said she needed to consider her 10-year-old son, who was born in the UK.
She said she would "rather suffer the 'you are not one of us' feeling" than see her son go through it.
Some of those closest to Ms Rafajova, including her partner Paul, voted to leave the EU.
She told Australian current affairs programme Dateline she felt betrayed when she found out.
"My first thought was 'does he realise he is in a relationship with a European woman who will be affected by his vote?'"
For his part, her partner said he did not think about the impact of voting leave, and that there was now no guarantee that people already in the UK could stay.
He said he did so because of what he perceived as increased pressure on local services.
Damian Bemben: 'Grown up together'
Damian Bemben, 19, is a Polish migrant who came to the town with his family 12 years ago. He is now studying computer science at university in Sheffield.
He said Boston took "a step backwards" after the EU referendum with the "hateful voices emboldened by the Brexit result".
He said it was also "no longer a certainty" that EU nationals currently working in the UK would be allowed to stay.
Mr Bemben said an English Defence League (EDL) march in the town in October unsettled many migrants and stirred up ill feeling.
"It resulted in a lot of hate being spewed and, as an immigrant myself, when I hear EDL members shouting 'get the immigrants out', it does not make me feel safe."
However, he said the majority of young people in Boston did not have a problem with integration as they had all grown up together, and did not judge people on the basis of where they were from originally.
Dimitrina Moskova: 'Hanging together'
Dimitrina Moskova, who runs D and F Bulgarian Food in the town, said she was surprised at the result of the EU referendum, but had not experienced any negativity since.
"I used to work with English people a lot in the factories and I never felt bad feelings," she said.
"We were usually hanging together in the breaks, so I was surprised when the town had the highest vote to leave the European Union."
Mrs Moskova, who started running the shop about two months ago, said: "Most of the people who come in our shop are English and they are happy to see us here.
She said the UKIP leader's intention to stand in the general election had "probably made some migrant workers feel unwelcome" but it would not, in her opinion, change anything.
"Living in Boston has been a good experience for me," she said.
Piotr Przytula: 'Friendly and tolerant'
Piotr Przytula moved to Boston 12 years ago from Slupsk in northern Poland with his wife Aga and their son Dawid, who is now 16.
He spent eight years working in a factory before starting his own business selling stationery.
Mr Przytula said that following the Brexit result some people were afraid and had already chosen to leave.
He said he was worried about the impact Britain leaving the European Union would have on the economy, and that migrants would be blamed for "increased austerity" and cuts to public services, which he believed would follow.
"The majority of British people in Boston are friendly and tolerant," said Mr Przytula.
"Many of my friends and colleagues who voted for Brexit say they have nothing against immigrants in general, [but are] overwhelmed by the scale of immigration."
However, he believed the level would naturally fall as the UK would become less attractive to workers from other EU countries.
He said in his experience, due to the weaker pound, only Romanian and Bulgarian workers were now coming to the town.
Boston profile
Read more about the Boston & Skegness constituency
The candidates standing in Boston and Skegness are: Mike Gilbert (Blue Revolution), Paul Kenny (Labour), Paul Nuttall (UKIP), Victoria Percival (Green Party). Philip Smith (Liberal Democrats), Matt Warman (Conservative).
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The new Children's Laureate is Malorie Blackman - the bestselling author of the Noughts & Crosses series for teenage readers. | Will GompertzArts editor@WillGompertzBBCon Twitter
Blackman, 51, who takes over from Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson, is the eighth writer to become laureate.
Previous Children's Laureates include Michael Morpurgo, Jacqueline Wilson and Quentin Blake.
Here is my report on her.
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